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Radio War Nerd EP #527 — Syria: The Grim Sorting Out, feat. Joshua Landis (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-06 22:55:20
Edited:
2025-06-12 00:38:56
Imported:
2025-06
Tags:

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Content

Guest: Joshua LandisRecorded: June 5, 2025

Joshua Landis returns to the pod to update us on the new Syria under former Al Qaeda emir Ahmed Sharaa and his Sunni supremacist regime. Joshua also shares personal stories of pogroms suffered by his Alawite in-laws in Latakia province.

Follow Joshua on Twitter.

Previous RWN episodes with Joshua:-EP #486 — Return of the Jihadis-EP #473 — Nasrallah Assassination-EP #358 — Syria War Update-EP #150 — Idlib & the Syria Endgame-EP #118 — Turkey, Syrian Kurds & Afrin Invasion

Total time: 1:12:23Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

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Comments

Cameron Young

Haven’t listened yet, anticipating Landis beating me with the stick of hard reality

Kevin Walsh

Your direct link is pointing to episode 486.

sean Errington

Hi mark, some unasked for advice re: ticks on the cats. I work at a Vet and we always tell people all flea and tick products will work to kill the ticks, but the seresto collar is the only one that does at least a little bit of repelling. Just make sure its the actual seresto brand as there are a lot of knock offs that dont work

Connor Keeley

Great episode, always enjoy Landis’ bucket of ice water. Would love to hear you guys interview Rob Ashlar again about the Abu Shabab gang recently enlisted by the Israelis in Gaza - seems from his Twitter that he was on top of the story before the big media outlets.

Ana

I didn't realize Salafi terrorists made up the "majority" of Syrians, nor that Salafis were just your regular Sunnis now lol. God, Landis is such an apologist for the U.S. and its pathetic little fascist puppets. Hey, being a lobbyist pays well, I'm sure.

Lojban Chauvinist

Landis does a great job, but how could you even begin to establish facts about the strength, popular support, and legitimacy of various factions in a place like Syria? There is no opinion polling, only anecdotes that get picked up by competing propaganda efforts. Who is it who is saying "اللي يخرر يقرر" ("He who liberates, decides")? Is it 70 percent of Syria, or is it wealthy Sunni expats pushing a meme on social media? Landis is probably getting the details more right than the mainstream press, but who really knows.

Professor Jokes

My anecdotal experience has been, older syrians (religion unclear from aleppo mostly some from dara) are not too impressed but i think they're all baarhists, younger sunnis are optimistics, syrian kurds are not fans. I don't know any alawites. That's just what I've heard from Syrians in europe in my social world.

James

Landis spouts non-stop CIA talking points

Tyler Berglund

I think Landis is correct in his analysis of the different sects within Syria and how Assads collapse relates to them. I’ve spoken to many Syrians, and it goes like this: Rural Sunni Arabs are optimistic about the future, and Kurds fear ethnic cleansing and violence. I can’t comment on Alawites, as I don’t know any, but we’ve all seen the videos… they are facing major brutality. I disagree with Landis on what he chooses to emphasize tho. The whole story about what has been toughest for Syrians is 2 things: western intervention and sanctions. The sectarian grievances didn’t collapse the healthcare system and prevent rebuilding or flood the country with foreign fighters. Syrias short term is looking more optimistic for *most* Syrians because of sanctions relief, thats the bottom line and deserves all the emphasis. No rural Sunni Arab I’ve spoken with will admit that, they all say Assad is gone and thats was the source of all Syrias problems, but thats bull. Assad may have sucked, but life was made unliveable by sanctions and foreign intervention.

James

Landis’ pro-democracy Syrian friends are super excited about being ruled by the guy who was #2 in ISIS!

Ana

That everyone is just going along with al-Golani - who is deeply ideologically commited to al-Qaeda's cause, not some foot soldier who joined them as a "lesser evil" - changing his name back to al-Sharaa and pretending like he's a different guy now is just wild. I think there are a lot of middle class Americans who've never really commited to a cause seriously and don't understand what it means to do so. They think he's just gonna "turn moderate." But he's one of the co-founders of ISIS, not a fucking Democrat!

Terry Dunk

Not to be one of these scolds but you really shouldn't let your cats outside at all, especially if you're near any kind of nature. It very clearly isn't good for them, for you, or for wildlife. I have two and they're just fine to get their thrills looking out the window.

Mark Ames

yeah they're back to indoors now, going through hard detox

Mark Ames

Thanks, our vet prescribes them Revolution, but our new prescription is no more outdoors.

Mark Ames

gah you're right, not sure how that happened. fixed!

Terry Dunk

Good luck and all solidarity to you in putting the cat back in the bag, a famously easy thing to do

Connor Keeley

Definitely share a lot of the sentiment, but Julani wasn’t a cofounder of IS. He was briefly involved in an AQ cell in Iraq, imprisoned within a month, and after release he presented a paper to Abu Bakr with his plans for Syria. After a short stint as emir of Mosul, seemingly to test his abilities, he was packed off with a few guys and some cash to Syria to start a franchise. He would break with IS when they attempted to subsume his franchise and reverse his “nationalist” tactics, pledge to AQ, and then break with AQ because it was a political liability. He then did a mass purge of IS, AQ, and non-HTS jihadis in Idlib. I think his organization is committed to the same basic Salafi ideology as AQ, but he double crossed Zawahiri pretty quickly and broke their rule #1 by dealing with the Americans. While he’s 100% a Sunni sectarian and certainly not a democrat/liberal, it is pretty well documented that he’s a backstabbing political maneuverer and his association with IS was always somewhat tense and fraught with issues - they were suspicious of him from day 2 if IS accounts are to be believed.

LPO Crane Jefferson

ugh yeah the upstate NY ticks put others to shame. they are menacing little things and the horror stories. Always a great reminder to check yourself for ticks when camping in those parts.

Donnacha O'Brien

I had a cursory look at the "Lyme is a biological weapon" idea. Any book with "The Secret History" gives me the historian "ick" immediately. It seems like a long standing and highly dubious claim. Firstly, studies on ticks for military applications were of course focused on the diseases they carry like plague or tuloremia. These diseases actually have high mortality rates. It makes more sense to start with a disease that will kill you and work out how to go about amplifying, controlling, storing, or deploying them. It's the same reason Covid would never be chosen as a biological weapon, not enough of a body count and not discriminate. Giving most infected people the equivalent of a flu is not an effective weapon. US biologocal warfare on Koreans was with high mortality diseases. Also, while Lyme was identified in the early 80s, Sam Telford found it was present in tick samples from the 40s and the 1890s. 5,300 year old mummy Ötzi was infected with Lyme apparently. As I said, a cursory look but it gives me the ick.

Savannakhet

Yeah, I can never get through The Secret History of the Mongols without feeling 'ick' - that's a yikes from me Ögedei Khan!

MC

Can’t recommend “How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs” enough. Great book and I’m sure Dr. Elizabeth Thompson would be a great guest

Schaeffer Mallory

Maybe I'm missing something, but why is it optimistic for Syria in the long run? What evidence is there that there is any long term path towards a better future? Maybe sanctions will be lifted, but having a Sunni supremacist dictatorship seems far from "optimistic in the long run," even for the Sunni majority who will likely never be Sunni enough for the freaks running the government

Schaeffer Mallory

Like the "optimistic future" seems to be Syria turning into a full on Turkey/Israel style ethnostate. That seems apocalyptic to me

Jake Erickson

Well said. I've been having trouble articulating exactly why Landis' analysis seemed so off. I think in addition it's worth noting how poorly his analogy to Eastern Europe in the 40's actually holds up. The ethnic cleansing of Jews in Poland was not a project of a Polish nationalist majority, it was the holocaust, carried out by the occupying German Nazis and included a reign of terror on the Polish Slavic population. The ethnic cleansing of Germans from Poland after WW2 was in retaliation for the holocaust and done primarily to German settlers who had moved to Poland during the preceding decade, not to minorities who had been living in Poland for generations (although I'm sure some German Poles who had lived there for generations caught strays, but they definitely weren't the main target). I think it's very likely that if the holocaust hadn't happened in Poland, they could have developed into a modern nation-state without the ethnic cleansing.

Mac Robertson

Even that is better than decades of civil war

Mac Robertson

I disagree with the notion that a widespread, guaranteed flu wouldn't be an effective weapon. Incapacitating mass numbers of soldiers for weeks would wreak havoc on an army's logistics, especially if you can be sure your own soldiers aren't susceptible.

Schaeffer Mallory

Maybe? As they said, the chaos is giving the semblance of openness. Just seems odd to describe this outcome as optimistic given that the Al-Qaeda faction is now in charge

Tyler Pittman

Man where did you dredge up this clown? Treating genocides like a law of nature is dumb as hell when the west engineers this sectarianism for maximum leverage. Academia is cooked.

IRIDYSCENZIA

Excellent progress, just keep moving forward! 🔥

Doug Cartel

These post-Soviet decades are all very strong evidence that the idea of the nation-state is fundamentally violent and that it demands homogeneity in its citizenry above everything else. Hence why communism is internationalist and why Americans think communism is the enemy of all good things - well ok, today Americans hate communism because of either government propaganda or their parents brainwashing them, but 70 years ago there was a real theory of humanity guiding the rulers of america that said that internationalism was a threat to Anglo-Saxon hegemony that could only be defended against with nuclear weapons, more or less. So the crimes of communism were initially just the evidence for their argument, rather than an argument in and of itself; obviously the west not only didn't need communism to motivate their own atrocities and in fact justified their atrocities as the means to defeat communism.

Doug Cartel

And of course the worthless skinheads of the world point to all this violence and go 'see? The world would be so much better if everyone had concrete walls and border guards around their land and Volk, conveniently leaving out the part that historical and territory disputes guarantee never ending border disputes - which of course drives us to the actual utopia Nazis imagine for us, of never ending warfare in all directions. Because 'life without struggle is meaningless' or whatever their bored, pampered, lazy sponsors tell us through Nike ads and screaming thumbs on the tv.

Ander Pierce

Yikes. Israel just struck Iran's nuclear facilities 🫠

Miko

"It's a very happy day in Syria....unless you're an Alawite" Neoliberal whiplash in a single sentence. Sums up the inherent contradictions in the entire western leadership and worldview. "Bad things happen" they cluck as they remove their own agency and support allowing the very bad things to happen. It's good to hear Landis' view and perspective, but it really brings into focus the bizzare worldview internalized by the west and why it's absolutely going drive humanity into the abyss if it continues.

aqueous_steve

Given his support for Israel’s bombing of Iran, so much for Trump rejecting neoconservative policy in the middle east and therefore, so much for Landis’ perspective

Awil Jama

Landis has no perspective.

StingrayMD

So positive is economic and geopolitical alignment which will guarantee external peace and some economic prosperity for Syria. There is an undercurrent of Sunni supremacism which is inherent to right wing conservative Islam, but there is also a sense that the government is not intending to weaponize this against minorities. In Al-Sharaa's public proclamations to Syria - which in reality is his messaging conservative Sunni followers - he claims to be attacking specific militant groups and bad leaders rather than the minorities itself. Its difficult to interpret his actions. One one hand his actions could represent sectarianism for the sake of sectarianism, but the other is that he is consolidating power in the areas of religious minorities. This is all to say its not clear if this Sunni supremacism will be violent or oppressive of religious minorities or inclusive, which is the important question that remains unanswered.