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Radio War Nerd #267 — Turkey's Wars in Syria, Artsakh, Libya - with Lindsey Snell (Patreon)

Published:
2021-02-09 17:05:37
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Lindsey Snell, journalist 

Recorded: February 3, 2021

We talk to investigative journalist Lindsey Snell about what it was like to be kidnapped by Al Qaeda's Syria franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra/HTS, and her reporting on Turkey's wars in Artsakh, Libya and Syria.

Follow Lindsey on Twitter. Check out her recent reporting here.

Interlude music by Brendon Anderegg. Check out his group Mountains here.

Buy John Dolan's book "The War Nerd Iliad" and his audiobook "Pleasant Hell".

Total time: 1:30:39

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here.

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Comments

The Irish Story

Turkish Hezbollah (rebranded later as the political party Huda Par) are Kurdish Islamists (I think of the Muslim Brotherhood persuasion) who were mobilised by the Turkish state back in the 1990s to fight the PKK insurgency of that time. I gather that they had a substantial following among some Kurds in Turkey, though obviously not the majority. In more recent times I recall their supporters coming out to riot/fight against PKK supporters in Kurdish cities in Turkey around the time of the battle of Kobane in 2014/15.

Eamon

Excellent episode, what an incredible story

radiowarnerd

Good to know. There were a lot of strange things happening on the Turkish side of that border in 2014, like the death of Serena Shim.

Gengeros

Hey Mark and Gary, does War Nerds community have a discord channel by any chance?

mark

Good interview. Though let's be honest here. Lindsey snell is a Muslim sunni convert who went to Syria to support the more "moderate" jihadis. The mere fact that she differentiates between hts and ahrar al sham and other criminal gangs and that she appears to have lots of "friends" in jihadistan is very indicative. She also takes the mainstream liberal narrative of the conflict wholeheartedly. Just to be clear here.

The Irish Story

Yes indeed. I recall ISIS launching attacks on Kobane from the Turkish side of the border too at that time. But Huda Par/Hezbollah strikes me as being a little like Northern Ireland loyalist paramilitaries, at once an autonomous phenomenon and a semi-controlled deniable state asset.

John Johnson

Sunnis in areas where there are very few shia, don’t see themselves as a sect but as muslims. Sectional feeling among the Shia is stronger in general than among Sunni because they understand themselves as a sect. Among Sunnis this view was limited to areas bordering Shia populations. Only recently have Sunnis in areas that lack a Shia presence begun to see themselves as members of a sect of Islam. I think it is important to always keep this in mind. An Indonesian identifying as a Sunni Muslim is a very recent thing.

xnfec

Didn't Elija Magnier say in his appearance on RWN that most of Isis fighting in Kobane where themselves Kurds?

The Irish Story

I don't know, but I don't think that's true. For what I remember, ISIS had Chechens, European recruits and more there, but it was mostly Syrian Arabs. That said, without a doubt, there were some Kurds in ISIS especially Iraqi Kurdistan and probably some from Turkey and Syria at that time.

Inglorious Bustard

It will be hard for the War Nerd to top this incredibly harrowing escape, no matter how many Albanian landladies he forgets to pay.

Stephen Joseph

Something sounded fishy when she kept saying 'Syrian Regime". In fact a whole bit of her story sounds fishy.

Jim Vail

My head is still spinning on this one. Snell who produces documentaries for corporate media outlets like MSNBC and ABC News is openly talking about her ties to Turkish intelligence and having 'intel' for her American liberators. What?? No wonder she was kidnapped. I was thinking about when the CIA visited real investigative journalist Gary Webb and he naturally told them to fuck off. I understand Mark you're going for the shock value here of a kidnapped 'Twitter' reporter, but this was no Anna Politkovskaya. Quite the opposite.

Andy Cassidy

Do you know the denomination of all journalists or just the Muslim ones?