Jenny Keesden
speaker
114 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Jenny Keesden’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And so, yeah, again, without many podcasts of its own, and I'm sure you are making them, so I won't try and summarize it, but I think you can't talk about America's role in Syria and the Middle East in general without mentioning Israel and the role the Israeli state plays for and with America.
And things like, you know, we're all sort of following, and for you guys following more closely, because we're all following the current American administration and leadership and what's been coming out of there. sometimes you think like, God, is it just nuts?
And when you look at something like, you know, the video for like the new Gaza that they're going to make, for example, Trump's Gaza, whatever that was.
Yeah. So, I mean, it makes it sick. And then you're also not sure if it's serious or if it's mad, but I think unfortunately it's actually, yeah, it's quite an intelligent play. And what it speaks to that is relevant to what I'm saying here is this kind of long-term plan, right?
that to annihilate a region to the best of your ability so that you can move in and develop it is a tried and tested method of many, many governments. And America's not the only one.
But at the moment, we're at a kind of crucial moment in the Middle East when one sort of wall of forces are trying to greatly reduce the role and power of some others so that they can put their plan into place and so that they can Yeah, so they can make money. You know, it's always worth following money and where development can be made and where trade routes can be made.
And so what happened, the timing of the regime change that we've just discussed, the timing of HDS being able to move into Damascus and take it over,
it's no coincidence that it came after like a shift in the Israeli like genocidal war on Gaza and after what the then military action they were taking against Hezbollah in Lebanon yeah which they felt then had up to a point achieved what they wanted to achieve and then things kind of moved to Syria right yeah so I'm not saying that the new government has kind of come from has been sponsored by that at all I think there's a huge amount of tension there but
the withdrawal of like the weakening and or withdrawal of forces like Iran and Hezbollah here played a huge role with them being able to establish themselves as a government so that is also something that you know that's not directly necessarily every step sort of kind of puppeteered by the US at all but it is a part of politics that the US has had a long historical influence on and that it backs and that it's in conversation is in the whole of the Middle East it's this kind of greater Middle East plan it's
vision for it if you if you will and the other aspect that I think is important to talk about is the US's uh relationship with North and East Syria specifically you mentioned there like you know this like supposed friendship with we can say the like friendship with the Kurds as people will refer to it or the alliance and coalition between the SDF and the US which is
was sort of most famous and most well-known during the fight against ISIS, when the international coalition, it's obviously spearheaded by America, was bombing and providing air support for the SDF, as they called it, the boots on the ground, the actual ground force that could go and take territory back from ISIS, which, yes, did look like a friendship, but I think from both sides,
everyone always knew that that was a tactical alliance perhaps perhaps a strategic alliance at best we can say yeah but i think that the u.s has not got a history of operating on a basis of like friendship or of that kind of commitment to the forces it works with and a lot of history and modern recent history can attest to that um and from the side of people here
I think it's really important to say that yeah people were angry and that you know what you heard there you were talking about interviewing people and then kind of being like what are they doing like we we fought a war with them partly on their behalf like and then they deserve yes people are angry but the more kind of politically engaged someone is sort of moving up that scale I think the less faith they ever had in the US yeah so and now you've got the US kind of muttering about withdrawing their troops from Syria right yeah
And it's deja vu because they said this before. I was actually here, Wayne. They said this before. Back in 2019, I also happened to be in northern Syria. And it was, if I'm not wrong, it was Trump again. Yeah, it was. And they said we're withdrawing our forces from Syria. Did they actually withdraw? Not exactly, no.
You still saw them driving around in big cars, mostly right next to the oil fields. It was almost comical, sort of like when parts... Yeah. When parts next to the oil fields. But that withdrawal was symbolic. That withdrawal was... They withdrew from bases right on the border with Turkey.
Which lies just to the north of Syria, and as such, just next to north of East Syria, for anyone without the map immediately in their head. And they...
announced it very very clearly and very publicly and so it was a kind of it was a green flag to say to turkey yeah come on you come yeah we're not going to stop you we're not gonna um because what you don't want to do is hit an american by accident as you gave the examples they you know they brought down the drone because it was over an american base not because it was bombing civilians nearby which dozens of other were
And so you had that kind of symbolic withdrawal, which led to, in 2019, was one of the times that Turkey has annexed a section, essentially annexed a section of Syria, north and east Syria, under the remit of the Autonomous Administration, but nonetheless still technically Syrian territory. And in that time, it was Serekhaniye and Girespi, which people may have heard of.
And so that, yeah, that was the green flag to Turkey to take that step. And at that time, yeah, I'll maybe share, it's a lot of, A lot of political stuff, a lot of acronyms, a lot of all this, and maybe I'll just share a wee anecdote.
At that time, when they made the announcement they were going to leave, people organized a march to an American base. And I was here at the time, and I joined it with some of the women's organizations. It was the most amazing day. Like, I sort of went home and wrote this massive journal entity, because I'd already been here for a very long time, but my mind was still a bit blown by it.
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