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Radio War Nerd EP #118 — Turkey, Syrian Kurds & Afrin Invasion, with Joshua Landis (Patreon)

Published:
2018-01-26 20:33:06
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Guest: Joshua Landis, Director of Center for Middle East Studies 

Recorded January 23, 2018

Turkey's multi-pronged invasion into the Syrian Kurdish-controlled region of Afrin took a lot of MENA-watchers by surprise—including the War Nerd and seasoned Syria expert Joshua Landis. We spoke to Landis to make sense of not only Turkey's actions, but also all the other main actors in Syria—Syrian Kurds, the Assad government, the US military, Iran, Hezbollah, Saudis, and local Syrian Sunnis and jihadis. We also spoke to Professor Landis about his own fascinating history in Syria and Lebanon, and how it has informed his understanding of the region.

At 1:41:30 — a look at the World of Wars: Latest news on Turkey's Afrin invasion . . . USS Pueblo anniversary . . . Haqqani strikes again in Afghanistan . . . UAE snubs Qatar in Louve-2 map . . . Ames remembers Oliver Ivanovic, Kosovo Serb leader assassinated last week . . . weapons loons want to bring back the Stinger . . .

Joshua Landis is director at the Center for Middle East Studies and associate professor at U Oklahoma. Read his excellent blog Syria Comment and follow him on twitter: @joshua_landis. 

* Map: Turkey's invasion of Afrin

Total time: 2:50:34

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here.

Files

Comments

Matt Lewis

Really really enjoyed this one.

Borvis

Great episode!

lopakdesbandhu@gmail.com

Hey John, I am not getting the show notes despite subscribing for it. Why is it so

marcky

Are you on gmail? It was sending them to my spam folder...

Carl Zha

This is Awesome! Joshua Landis is one of the most knowledgeable observers of Syria, Looking forward to this!

Gee Mama

Couldn't listen past Joshua's justification of the Khan Shaikhun attack as a demonstration. It struck a highly strategic target (KS is on the road junction leading to almost every recently active frontline in Hama) during a rapid SAA counterattack amidst a chaotic rebel retreat, which, at the time, began to threaten Lataminah, and - as even some rebel media was gossiping - had high hopes of getting to Morek and Khan Shaikhun proper. And due to the gas attack the army just dropped everything and went "nope, nope, wasn't us, look!" Plus, what good is a demonstration that you have to deny. US didn't have to make Japan and/or USSR believe it *may or may not have* nuked Hiroshima. Demonstrating America's willingness to annihilate Japan wasn't overshadowed by concern that throwing too many nukes too obviously might result in the complete destruction of US itself by a much greater power. A situation like that would've changed Japan's strategic calculus.

Scott H

This hasn’t shown up in the RSS feed for me yet, anyone else?

Paul Vd

Great guest. Although he sometimes pisses me off. But I disagree that the US has Syria at its throat economically. I think the fact that the US won't play gives Russia and China full access to this project. Syria can be rebuilt and fully integrated into Chinese and Russian institutions. Iran is joining the EAEU. Syria can join next. And it can also join China's projects. SCO/OBOR. The US has no freaking money. All the US controls is some financial nodes in the system that can be worked around. China is already at work in Syria. Germany will also weasel it's way into the Syrian rebuild through Iran or something. That will be fun to watch.

Carl Zha

Oops, I had meant to reply to you but somehow my reply went to the mainline comments. Agree with you 100%!

Charles

I really enjoyed this one.

futt

Hey John, I was just wondering how/why you ever choose the pseudonym you did. If it's a literary reference it must be pretty obscure, was it just a random choice?

realBriannaWu

Wow, what a guest! Like others mentioned, even if Landis doesn't come to the same conclusions as the War Nerd hive mind, he's an incredibly intelligent person and I'm glad we got to hear from him.

Matthew C

This has been one of my favorite guests you've had so far. I understand why people disagreed with some of what he said, but I thought he was an amazingly informative guest and provided an fascinating perspective of the start of the syrian conflict from the point of Assad's government which I hadn't heard before. I would love to see him on again, because I could tell there was a lot more he could have spoken about if he had the time.

Avery

Patreon has a recurring technical glitch with updating the RSS feed, as it does with countless other things

Avery

I guess the Louvre is being monetized or something. They have permanently engraved the names of their biggest donors on a wall inside the museum. One of the big donors is the secretive Korean cult leader who was responsible for managing the unsafe tour boat that sank and killed hundreds of Korean school kids a few years ago. His name is still engraved there.

Factory Troll

Don't listen to the nitpickers. This is a top class RWN interview/interviewee.

Nick Fredman

It is interesting because of Landis’ obviously deep knowledge of Syrian society. But also annoying because his analysis is pretty much just on the level of culture and identity, nothing about the important class basis of the regime and of at least the early phase of the uprising, and he’s deeply ignorant of the Rojava movement. They’re not at all nationalist in the same sense as the right-wing KRG leadership, if at all, with an aim of radically democratizing Syria rather than a separate state, they’re not helpless dupes of the US, and they’re clearly not done in the current fighting. Serious analysts who unlike it seems Landis have spent time there like the authors of the book Revolution in Rojava, Australia-Kurdish academic and activist Hawzhin Azeez now back in Kobane from where she reports on Facebook, and Dutch journalist Frederike Geerdink who I saw speak recently, are a lot clearer on all that.

Paul Vd

Nobody is nitpicking. Landis is probably the best Syria watcher in the world. He has political views on the US empire like everyone else. And some of us just disagree with those views.

Jan Meyer

You can hardly have it all in one expert... take what you can and for the rest find another expert.

Paul Vd

Thx for the link. Hey check this out. Seb Gorka, who was in the white house not long ago, did a short interview on the matter. It's a doozy. He is telling and insisting that Turkey should not worry about the Kurds. "they are not jihadists so back off". How out of touch can they possibly be ? The Turkey-Iran-Syria-Russia threat to the Trump Administration's ally the Kurds. @SebGorka <a href="https://audioboom.com/posts/6620834" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://audioboom.com/posts/6620834</a>

Animals in Motion

I don¨'t know, there's a lot of idealistic bullshit about the Kurds in Northern Syria. I back the project, but there has been a lot of shit which looks just like classic violent nationalism to me. It's hard to tell though, since who knows where the information is coming from.

MS

Excellent interview. How about getting a joint chat with people like Amal Saad, Elijah Magnier and Landis? Perhaps ever month or quarter?

Hanso

Landis is such a great guest! One of the best. Congrats fpr having him on! Btw, I have an explanation for the oil-field grab i DeZ... in that part of Syria, SDF is in fact dominated by deeply local Arab militias (some of which have worked with ISIS before- believe it or not). Those guys are pure opportunists.

Michael Jochum

Do you mean you’re surprised that he thinks turkey should be worried about the jihadis and he thinks what he is saying makes sense? Because Turkey is obviously more comfortable with the Sunni militias than with the Kurds?