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Radio War Nerd EP #203 — End of Syria War, End of Rojava (Patreon)

Published:
2019-10-27 23:37:56
Edited:
2019-10-29 16:16:38
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Guests: Narin Briar & Elijah Magnier 

Recorded: October 23, 2019

Recorded just after Russia and Turkey announced an agreement on the dismantling of Rojava, we talked first to Kurdish-American activist Narin Briar for the Rojava perspective of this grim moment . . .

At 1:05:00 we talk to longtime Middle East correspondent (and previous RWN guest) Elijah Magnier to talk about the sorry state of foreign reporting, recent protests in Lebanon, the final resolution in the Syria War, and the not-gonna-happen Iran-Saudi-US war . . . 

Check out Narin Briar's webpage. Follow Narin on Twitter.

Read Elijah Magnier's English-language articles, and follow Elijah on Twitter.

Total time: 2:23:33

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Files

Comments

Jimothy Realname

This episode is gonna be tough i think. Luckily I have plenty of booze, drugs and cigarettes. Fuck Turkey, fuck America, fuck Russia.

CR

nick dee

bien mal acquis ne profite jamais. it was all too predictable.

d

The war nerd travel book sounds awesome imo, I'd get one in a second

Matthias Höck

I'm usually not into esoterical stuff, but I heard that Cranio-sacral therapy can relieve the colics. Theory being that the cranial plates sometimes don't move smoothly into position, leading to tensions in the fontanelle. CST claims it can alleviate that and a friend told me it helped his kid. No guarantee though.

Ivan

Elijah Magnier is bloody fantastic. So knowledgeable, informative and eloquent. I wish you could have him on more often!

Ellen Harold

I love your show, but I don't see how a self-identified Irish patriot can call himself "anti-(left) antiimperialist". Who are these "left" anti-imperialists, anyway? And is there a distinction between imperialism and colonialism? Don't the needs of the empire always trump those of the locals? I certainly can't figure it out. Like yourselves, I hope that the ideology of Rojava will survive and spread, but haven't you yourselves implied that an archipelago of bases is not really sustainable, not to say defensible? And it's not as if the people in charge or that we are sending out there are exactly a purpose-driven cadre of idealists. http://internationalrelations.org/colonialism-vs-imperialism/

The January Storm

I couple of years ago in college I was fortunate enough to be in a class on Syria that included a lecture by Mathew Barber, an American academic who studies the Yazidi and was in the region by coincidence when ISIS took Sinjar, and thus was able to interview fleeing refugees. His story was actually way worse that what you've heard about what the KRG and the Peshmerga, he described how the Peshmerga not only left the Yazidi after they begged for protection they shot into crowds of Yazidi villagers and killed several of them when they tried to take weapons to defend themselves from the stockpiles the Peshmerga had looted from Iraqi army storehouses after the Iraqi army fled. They've been carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing ever since, systematically attempting to prevent Yazidi refugees from returning to their homes and preventing them from bringing back things like farming equipment they need to restart their lives as part of a campaign to expand the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan. They've also repeatedly shelled the positions of the YBS, the PKK-backed Yazidi self defense force established after the PKK's rescue in 2014 and ruthlessly repress anyone trying to spread Democratic Confederalism. The whole thing is absolutely heartbreaking and the KRG is downright evil. Barber is kind of anti-PKK but he wrote a good article about the KRG and the Yazidi on Syria Comment https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/krgs-relationship-yazidi-minority-future-yazidis-shingal-sinjar/

Mark Pfizer

Can I get your podcast directly to my podcast app? I use apple podcast.

JoR

Similarly, maybe the biggest video game release this year, call of duty modern warfare, seems completely "influenced" by the DOD, directly or not. Someone else posted in much better detail in the community section but basically the story revolved around many western tropes regarding the kurds, white helmets, etc. But, no mention of turkey, in fact Russia is the big villan. Apparently, it's a "rogue Russian general", so it's not supposed to be a political stance, but obviously that's a bunch of crap lol. Also another antagonist is an Arab strongman, similar to assad. So, the story of the game perfectly shows American ideals on foreign policy: love the freedom fighting kurds, but completely ignore turkey, make Russia the bad guy (not exonerating anything Russia does, but it's telling that they didn't model the villan off of erdogan)

Michael

Great episode. It's a difficult topic and I can always rely on RWN to bring the nuance all too often missing from online discourse. I'm not sure why, but the link to Narin Briar's site in the description links to a home improvement website. It's odd because the URL looks identical to the one I find on google, but the site is different.

MoldyTolge

@JoR The most recent Call of Duty game blames Russia for: (1 The Highway of Death (2 the ‘05 Haditha massacre (3 waterboarding jumpsuit wearing detainees BEFORE it was cool. (4 mass producing chlorine gas The last one is just weird because it implies that there’s no industrial use for chlorine, that it’s only utility is for killing civilians. The projection is so absurd it almost makes me think some 5th columnist writer hoped that consumers would be inspired to learn about the real events after playing.

MoldyTolge

He’s been places I’d actually want to visit, give me 3 chapters on traveling the Balkans over The Lonely Planet Guide to Northern Italy any day.

MoldyTolge

Search your email for the war nerd newsletter, it comes with a RSS link. If you past it into safari or the podcast app you’ll be set.

MoldyTolge

Tim “the Toolman” Tailor got kidnapped by Hezbollah, who knew?

Maggie+Al

Mark first few minutes were harrowing, was hoping we could move on from babies to something less traumatic like... Syria? Hope Gerry feels better soon.

Mark Ames

Let us know if you didn't get the newsletter, you're in the database, though we're highly prone to basic tech fuckups

Mark Ames

interesting, I'll run this past my wife

radiowarnerd

It's a good question. Rojava was always unlikely to succeed. We talked about hoping that it would but we've also said for years that the SDF should look into cutting a deal with the Syrian government because the US would betray it. Now the betrayal has happened. It wasn't surprising, but it was painful. What I meant about the anti-imperialist angle is that it's impossible to call US support for Rojava imperialist without realizing that this support was just a tactical expedient after the US, among others, forced regime change on Syria. When that happened, the SAA withdrew from what was, briefly, Rojava, and Rojava formed in a vaccuum--one that was created by regime-change imperialism. To locate imperialism in the half-hearted attempt to help Rojava, seems to me like objecting to the attempt to rescue people from a burning house; it is true that those doing the rescue were the arsonists, but I'd rather see the people saved.

Mark Ames

Patreon's hyperlink button got weird and buggy the past few episodes. Links should work now, but they require way too much fiddling, at least as far as my analogue-mind's concerned.

radiowarnerd

That sounds about right. It's a grim story. Thanks for the link.

Mark Ames

Thanks, kind of heartening to know I'm not just losing my mind and this really is painful on every level

Ivan

Seconded

Ellen Harold

Well, of course, one would prefer to see people saved!

Paul M

I've definitely experienced Turkish nationalists on Twitter, though I don't tweet enough about Turkey to get on a blog (I hope). But they swarm. Fortunately, all their handles are obviously Turkish, so it's easy to know their perspective. I often just block as soon as it's obvious they're trolling. Unfortunately, I often can't figure out what they're trying to argue, so I've probably blocked people who were trying to argue in good faith. I made a comment that I don't trust the Turkish army or their proxies to distinguish between PKK and civilian and the person replied that Turks deal with Kurds more than anyone so are better than anyone at distinguishing and I'm racist for saying that PKK look like civilians. Or something like that. I couldn't figure it out. I'm sure all nationalists are bad on Twitter. The Chinese and Turkish are the ones that jump out to me.

Joe Harris

Hi Mark, a friend of mine swears that a chiropractor was able to help with their kids colic. If you google colic chiropractic you’ll find studies that say that “while their is no clinical evidence that physical manipulation effects the source of colics, which is unknown, parents who take their children to chiropractors note a reduction in frequency and severity”. In my experience as a premed student I’ve found docs are often reluctant to prescribe any form of treatment that doesn’t line up with their current biomedical understanding or fall within current biomedical treatment styles. Ie when they nearly killed off mid wife’s as profession back in the 90,s because it competes with OYBGN. Or earlier when they tried to get rid of chiros. It may also help to know you and your wife took him to get a treatment and not just a diagnosis. There are also DO’s which are physicians that can work in any specialty who are taught methods of physical non surgical manipulation which might also help if you don’t trust chiro’s That scream must be excruciating to hear as a parent. Hope your baby feels better soon!

Mark Ames

Thanks Joe, my wife is looking into this right now after I sent on your comment, along with all the others, thanks again to everyone btw!

Danny Catwell

Great episode! You guys make art out of war and that's always given me hope. Seriously guys, you rock.

Ilya Fishman

Much health to yo, your family, and your kids!

Paul Vd

Yeah yeah. It's so trendy now to toss Russia in there with Turkey and the US. Russia stayed away from 2011 to late 2015. Russia stayed out of it even though it was its last real foreign military base. Per the podcast, the US amb. to Syria did a road show through Syria to set the whole war off. Yet here you are with your 11 up votes bashing Russia equally. It makes my bloody skin crawl Damn u

Paul Vd

Turkey is in NATO just as a means of holding territory. It is US property as long as it's in NATO. And if not, it's lost real estate

Benton

A lot of the Turkish nationalists on Reddit were organizing/coordinating their talking points openly hours after the US announced withdrawal. It was definitely a siege mentality and there was a strong sense of duty to the whole enterprise.