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- [00:04]
David McClaskey
This episode is brought to you by our new friends at NordVPN. Now, Gordon, you were ecstatic to hear that NordVPN, who protect your Internet connection and privacy online, are our very first sponsor, weren't you?
- [00:15]
Gordon Carrera
That's right, David. Because I've actually been a NordVPN user for a year now. I signed up even before I signed up for the podcast. As someone who's reported on national security, I do deal occasionally with sensitive information, which means I take my own cybersecurity pretty seriously. So I wanted a VPN and I chose NORD to give me the best security and privacy.
- [00:35]
David McClaskey
Now, I'm former CIA and so not very concerned with privacy, but definitely with privacy. And I've been very pleased to know that NORDVPN has the ability to shield your online activities from hackers, to encrypt your connection when using public wifi, for example, at a coffee shop. And if you're keen to be extra safe, you can activate a double VPN which makes you even more secure.
- [00:52]
Gordon Carrera
So if you want to make sure you're safe online, you should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. All you need to do is go to nordvpn.com restisclassified and when you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan and there's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is also in the episode description box. Hello and welcome to the Rest is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.
- [01:22]
David McClaskey
And I'm David McClaskey.
- [01:23]
Gordon Carrera
And this is a special emergency pod. We're breaking already our regular schedule. We've only been going two weeks and we're already shaking things up slightly because we thought it was important to bring you an emergency pod, a special pod looking at those really amazing events in Syria in the last few days. We're going to go back to our regular schedule and you're going to hear the second part of the CIA in Afghanistan on Wednesday, as expected. But we're recording this on the evening of Monday, 9th of December, because we just felt that there was some things we had to convey and we wanted to talk about, not in our normal format of telling a story, but more of a discussion between me and David because David has, as we'll hear, some real firsthand experience in Syria. So just to recap where we are, the Assad family had been in power in Syria for, I guess, more than half a century, ruling that country with what seemed like an iron grip. Then 2011, the time of that Arab Spring protests broke out against their hold on power, leading to a civil war, chemical weapons used by the regime against their own people. The west didn't intervene after that, but Russia did to prop up the Assad regime. And it looked, David, didn't it, like it was frozen and nothing was changing until, I mean, this really remarkable set of events, which started on November 27, incidentally, the day we launched our new podcast, although I don't think there's any link between those two things.
- [02:50]
David McClaskey
Butterfly effect, Gordon. Butterfly effect.
- [02:53]
Gordon Carrera
When this coalition of opposition groups led by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, began a march, and, I mean, in a matter of days had taken city after city and eventually on the weekend took Damascus, and President Assad fell from power and flew. His statues ripped down. I mean, David is someone who spent time in Damascus. How did it feel watching that?
- [03:16]
David McClaskey
Well, you know, I felt two emotions that I guess at the time I wondered if they were mutually exclusive. I don't think they are. You know, the first one was just joy, I think, at watching a regime that is murderous, psychopathic, exceedingly brutal, violent, enter sort of the dustbin of history. And to see, you know, the man at the top, Assad, turn tail and run was very satisfying as somebody who has watched this guy for a lot of his professional life and studied him for almost a decade at CIA. So there was a tremendous amount of joy in that moment. There was also, I think, joy in seeing that. And I think as we get into this conversation, Gordon, we'll talk about this group more Hayat Tahir Al Sham hts, which is sort of the primary rebel groups or opposition groups to Assad, that has governed a big patch of the northwestern part of Syria for most of the past decade. And that really kind of spearheaded this assault, although there were plenty of other factions involved, which we can talk about at due time. But in kind of watching this, I mean, I felt some joy in the fact that the people who overthrew Assad were not some constellation of foreign powers, but Syrians, and that Syrians will now have a chance to build a better Syria, you know, I think so. Real joy in those two dynamics. Now, I would also be remiss if I didn't say that I felt some amount of fear in that, you know, there will probably be more chaos to come. And it is so rarely the case in this region that things. At least it hasn't been the case recently that things get better. And so you really hope we're going to be proved wrong here. But I do feel a real sense of fear at what's coming next and how sort of a better Syria can be reconstituted. But I think it's just really important to stress that it is hard, I think, at this point to imagine a more odious, repressive structure than Bashar al Assad's regime taking root in Syria, at least over the near to medium term.
- [05:45]
Gordon Carrera
Well, let's talk about that a bit, because, I mean, you were there in Syria, I guess, before the civil war. Tell us a little bit about what your role was as far as you can, given it was for the CIA.
- [05:56]
David McClaskey
I was a CIA analyst. I started working on Syria in 2006 and worked on it all the way up until the day I left Langley. And I was working in Damascus in the time prior to the outbreak of the civil war. I was an analyst in the CIA's station in Damascus, just, you know, in office, in the embassy, which got, I believe, shuttered in 2012. We eventually closed our embassy there. And I actually had the opportunity to be there as some of these other uprisings in the region began, you know, in Tunisia in late 2010 and then in Egypt in early 2011. And most of what my job was there was actually pretty similar to what an analyst would do at Langley, which is, you know, you're sort of watching all of these disparate sources of information that we're collecting to build a picture of what's going on in Syria and being able to answer very specific questions for Arshiva Station, the ambassador, broader sort of US Policymakers on Syria. And it has struck me over the past few weeks that many of the questions that I would have been answering as the sort of Arab Spring initially broke out in 2011 are very similar to the bigger questions that analysts are probably needing to answer today. There are big, big questions around the nature of the opposition. I mean, it's not even opposition anymore, I guess, the nature of the interim government. It's so hard for me to. Yeah, get out of that old verbiage. There are, like, real questions around the nature of the opposition, how cohesive it is, how capable it is, you know, what is going to happen to elements of the regime that are still out there and its militias, all kinds of really huge questions that these analysts are doubtless working on today.
- [07:47]
Gordon Carrera
And just to go back a bit to your time there, I mean, you're working as an analyst at the station. I imagine you're not declared. Did you feel, though, the sense of, you know, a security service from the Syrian side watching you, watching the embassy did you feel that they had a kind of iron grip on the country? Because I think that was the sense people had before 2011, which was that this was a pretty tough dictatorship which had used real violence to keep control of that country and was willing to do it. I mean, did you have that sense that the Assad family willing to do whatever it took to hold on to power at that time?
- [08:21]
David McClaskey
Well, I'll tell you, you know, I mean, as an American working at the embassy in Damascus, you're, you know, you're going to experience surveillance. And I would say that it was almost more comedic than anything, right? I mean, you had guys in, you know, sort of government black cars that would follow you around, and they wore poorly tailored polyester suits and white gym socks, and, you know, they were just sort of keeping an eye on you. And honestly, you know, as an analyst there, like, it didn't bother me all that much because it actually made you feel like, well, if someone tried to rob me or carjack me or something, like, these guys are going to stop that, you know, because they don't. They don't want that to happen to, you know, an American diplomat on their soil. I mean, you know, Syria is the kind of place where, yeah, they break into your hotel room and send you these sort of signals that they could do what they wanted. And I will be very curious if at some point some of these archives get opened what the profile ON Young David McCloskey, some poor analyst in some piece of Syria's, you know, security services had to write up, or the boring surveillance reports of following me around some.
- [09:26]
Gordon Carrera
Surveillance photos of the young David McCloskey, which might exist somewhere in the archives. Who knows? Getting those now. I mean, it is always a big thing, isn't it, when. When a regime falls, one of the first things people go for is the. Who's going to secure the security service files because, you know, that's where the secrets are.
- [09:42]
David McClaskey
Well, right. And. And over the weekend, I think there was a big fire at the sort of one of these, an Immigration and Passport office in Damascus, which, you know, made me think initially of, you know, someone's burning files. I mean, if you see some of these photos that have come out now inside Syrian security services, inside their offices, I mean, they are full of files, right? I mean, there's a lot of stuff that is going to be there.
- [10:05]
Gordon Carrera
But I guess what that tells you is, you know, all those files is that, you know, they did have a tight grip on the country. It seemed, you know, they really were, you know, they were a pretty effective police state willing to use ruthless violence, you know, as they did after 2011, which I guess makes it surprising in a sense that then things have moved so fast now and that they've effectively run and fled and collapse so quickly.
- [10:28]
David McClaskey
Well, it's probably worth a little bit on the Assad regime pre civil war and what that looked like, how it sustained power, and then comparing that to the Assad regime of late 2024, because we will see that this regime has changed and morphed massively in the almost 15 years. And the changes are, I think, the reason it's gone. Right. Or one of them. So the Assad regime of, you know, sort of pre Arab Spring, there's four principal security services, spy services. They've got wonderfully horrible sort of, you know, Stalinist names, the Political Security Directorate, Air Force Intelligence. They've got the General Intelligence Directorate. They've got Syrian Military Intelligence. There's sort of a constellation of other smaller groups inside different organs of the state. You know, you think spy service. You're like, oh, they're spying on, you know, people outside the country. No, I mean, some of them had that role. But it was primarily about maintaining control in Syria. Assad had a number of elite military units they used as sort of a praetorian guard. There's a long history of coups in Damascus. And so you have this structure that operated on what we called kind of a hub and spoke model, which was all of these different groups actually in different security services spied on each other. And oftentimes the regime would move people around inside the services. So you'd have, like, the deputy chief of the General Intelligence Directorate might actually have a direct line to Bashar al Assad when the chief doesn't. And the whole point of the deputy being there is to keep tabs on the organization. They move people around constantly. But here's the key, Gordon. There are official instruments of state security, and it is a highly centralized system. Even though there are, you know, multiple actors. You fast forward to what has happened to Syria's repressive apparatus really over the course of the past almost 15 years. And because Assad had to essentially become a Iranian and Russian vassal in order to stay in power, you had a proliferation of militias, military groups that were not really under his control. And you had a whole system of kind of black market trading and war profiteering that had been stood up to essentially keep the place going in these really trying years of the war. And so what you ended up with, and this is a Gross oversimplification. And there are great analysts like Charles Lister at the Middle East Institute, who have cataloged this stuff really, really effectively. And I think we'll include some links to some of these other folks and experts in the. In the show notes.
- [13:24]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [13:24]
David McClaskey
So listeners can go in and get kind of spirited to a lot of the people who've been doing this day to day over the past 10 years. But what you had happened, Gordon, was very similarly, I think, to the way the Iraqi army in 2014 essentially was just vaporized or melted away, rather, when.
- [13:45]
Gordon Carrera
Islamic State came and they just disappeared, mostly just disappeared.
- [13:48]
David McClaskey
You had a Syrian army and, you know, sort of a repressive apparatus that had become totally hollowed out.
- [13:54]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [13:55]
David McClaskey
Riven with corruption, riven with sectarianism, totally lacking morale or any purpose of fighting. It was a paper tiger. And so you have these maps of Syria from, you know, a month ago that show where Assad is in control, quote, unquote. And it's total garbage. He has a garrison there. He's got poorly paid conscripts or even if they're paid at all, who are stationing, you know, different posts and military bases and all this. And it was nothing. He could not use any of that anymore to attack Hayatar Al Sham Hts to sort of resist this push that they made out of Idlib, down into Aleppo and finally to Damascus.
- [14:41]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, I think that's really interesting. This idea, as you say, it was hollowed out. I mean, I was reading a fascinating piece about the drug trade that comes out of Syria, Captagon, which is this drug, which is widely used in the Middle east. And you realize that the kind of drug trade and criminality had become intertwined with the upper reaches of the regime. And kind of criminal groups were, if you like, using the regime to make money. And there are these kind of mafia, like, kind of arrangements at the top level. And you realize, you know, none of these people really cared about the state or the Assad family anymore. They were in it themselves. And so, you know, you're right. All it took then was this kind of one push for it all to fall over and to kind of topple in at amazing speed. I mean, it still, though, even with that, you know, context, it still feels remarkable how fast it collapsed. I mean, you kept on thinking, well, when they get to Damascus, then, you know, the last Praetorian guard, you know, will put up a fight and stop it. And yet even at that point, it didn't seem like there was anyone there willing to fight for Them that is.
- [15:43]
David McClaskey
One of the pieces of the last three days that given me some hope, I think, because I really was expecting there to be a battle for Damascus, you know, between some of these Syrian units. And I'm sure, you know, as more information will come out, we'll get more indications that military officials, pieces of the regime effectively understood that this was just, it was done and it wasn't even worth it, and probably reached out to these different opposition groups to sort of hasten the decline and protect themselves in the aftermath. I mean, you bring up the drug piece is a very interesting one. Right. Because they were making Captagon. I've read estimates that had essentially drug income being equivalent to all of the rest of Syria's GDP in recent years.
- [16:31]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [16:32]
David McClaskey
And Captagon is like a party drug. It's an amphetamine. It's I guess, called the poor man's cocaine. I mean, essentially Assad had become the like Adderall supplier to most of the Middle East. The Middle East. But I think what that statement probably doesn't quite get right, which I'll just amend what I said, is a lot of the people and the groups involved in this were not under his control. Really. There are these very interesting stories that have come out about Syria really since about 2020, when there was kind of a national ceasefire and a lot of the lines of control in the country were kind of. They date back to about then, is that you have these incidents of like, you know, a lot of these militias, they need to raise money and so they operate checkpoints to raise money on people who go through them. And the Assad regime at some point in the past couple years had attempted to get rid of some of these checkpoints because, hey, you know, they're supposed to ostensibly be the government and you don't want there to be checkpoints in kind of regime held territory. Right. I mean, that is effectively lawlessness or warlordism. And when Assad tried to get rid of some of those checkpoints, there was a spate of bombings around them that Syrians, many Syrians believe were actually conducted by a lot of these black market sort of traders and war profiteers, people running the checkpoints because they didn't want to have their sources of income, you know, sort of removed. And so the Captagon trade is an interesting example of Assad effectively turning his state. And it always had elements of sort of mafia tactics. And you could look at the regime as a mafia prior to the war, and you were analytically on pretty solid ground. But it really became A much more caricature, I would say, of a sort of Mafioso clan in the years since, and as a result, really ceded, I think, a lot of its sovereignty and power to a lot of really local groups. And it never got them back.
- [18:38]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, there just wasn't as much there as it looked like on paper or on the surface. I mean, it is a bit like the fall of Kabul, the fall of Afghanistan in 2021, when suddenly the Taliban just surprised everyone at the speed through which they raced through Afghanistan and the Afghan army, which of course had been backed by the west, by the US and the UK for so many years and to such great investment, and suddenly it just collapsed like that at a speed no one expected. You had those amazing chaotic scenes at Kabul Airport with people trying to cling to American aircraft as they flew out. And of course, that the subject of Afghanistan is the one we're currently halfway through, the story of the days right after 911 when the CIA first went in, which is, I guess, where that story started before it ended in 2021. And there have been extraordinary images and stories on social media in the last couple of days as well, David, of the prisons being kind of opened up and people being liberated and, I mean, some prisoners, I think, who'd been in there, it sounds like, for decades, are now being released as the regime falls.
- [19:40]
David McClaskey
Yeah, I think the social media coverage of this. And look, you can talk all day about sort of the ills of social media, but in these kind of incidences. Right. I mean, it's actually really fascinating what can come to the fore immediate. And you have, I think, this interesting, really sad dichotomy about the sort of autocracy of Bashar al Assad. Right. Because on the one hand, you have these horrendous videos of these prisons. And Gordon, I mean, there's probably still almost a hundred thousand people in this kind of prison system that are unaccounted for. Right.
- [20:08]
Gordon Carrera
Oh. Who might be dead or might be.
- [20:10]
David McClaskey
Right. And who have been kind of forcibly disappeared into these, I mean, just dungeons. And the reality of some of these people who are being brought up is like, the first time they're going to see a smartphone is the person taking the video. Right.
- [20:25]
Gordon Carrera
Because they've been in there for so long.
- [20:26]
David McClaskey
They've been in there for so long. There were accounts of prisoners who thought that Hafez al Assad, who was Bashar's father, was still in power. I mean, you know, there's this gut wrenching, this kind of, I mean, really, the sadism of the regime on full display. And then on the other side, you have these insane videos of kind of almost like the, I guess, fallen dictator porn of a massive house with, weirdly enough, the houses are like, no, there's like no furniture. I don't know why. It was the same in Saddam's palaces. I don't know why the. Do the dictators take the furniture with them? I'm not exactly sure.
- [21:00]
Gordon Carrera
Or do people lose?
- [21:02]
David McClaskey
There's a massive fleet of, you know, luxury vehicles. I think when Yanukovych, the Ukrainian, I guess, Autocrat, fled in 2014, there was like an ostrich zoo. I don't think we found an ostrich zoo in Syria yet. But I think kind of the luxury of Assad at the top and then just the depravity of these prison systems.
- [21:20]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, there was some person who, yeah, he'd been imprisoned I think at the, you know, in the 80s, aged 18, finally reuniting with his family. So it's really emotional I think, to see, to see those scenes. Okay with that. Let's take a break, David, and we'll come back for more on Syria afterwards. This episode is brought to you by our new friends at NordVPN. Now, David, in the 20 or so minutes that listeners have heard so far, how many phishing sites have been launched?
- [21:48]
David McClaskey
Phishing is a scam technique to obtain sensitive information from people by sending out fake emails or text messages. And I'm sure every single one of our listeners has either received one or heard of one at some point. Hackers pretend to be from reputable companies and they try to manipulate you to click on malicious links. And unfortunately, a new phishing site is launched every 20 seconds, so probably about 60 in that time.
- [22:08]
Gordon Carrera
Wow. Well, I have good news. You can use NordVPN's threat protection software to, to stay safe from these. It will scan your files that you download, help you avoid malicious links and block dodgy ads. It also has a dark web monitor which will let you know if your credentials end up in the hands of a hacker.
- [22:24]
David McClaskey
To stay secure online, you should take advantage of our exclusive NORDVPN discount. All you need to do is go to nordvpn.com restlessclassified when you sign up, you can receive a bonus 4 months on top of your plan. And there's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is also in the episode description box.
- [22:46]
Gordon Carrera
Welcome back to the Rest is classified. And this special emergency pod in which we're looking at the unfolding situation in Syria. So looking at it from the perspectives of MI6 in the UK, the CIA in the US, David, I mean, they will be pleased to see the back of Assad. There were no friends of Assad. But they will be worried, won't they, about this group hts? Because it did come out years ago of a group which was affiliated to Al Qaeda, you know, the terrorist group which, you know, was behind 911 and behind those terrorist attacks. And even though it's now changed, I mean, that is a big question, isn't it? And I can imagine that, you know, the security service in the UK, MI5 will be thinking, what are the potential implications of that? You know, MI6 will be wanting to understand it. I imagine it will be the same in the CIA as well. And your kind of successes as analysts on Syria, that will be one of the kind of top things that policymakers are asking, aren't they? Is like, who are these guys and are they dangerous? You know, can we trust them? Can we work with them?
- [23:42]
David McClaskey
I do not envy my analytical progeny at CIA, Gordon. They have.
- [23:48]
Gordon Carrera
I don't know what analytical progeny look like, but I've got an image of little baby McCloster.
- [23:53]
David McClaskey
I've never met them in person either. They're back. They're in the skiffs at Langley.
- [23:58]
Gordon Carrera
That's the Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence facilities. Have I got that right?
- [24:02]
David McClaskey
I believe it's Information Information Facility.
- [24:04]
Gordon Carrera
Thank you for.
- [24:05]
David McClaskey
Yes, yes.
- [24:06]
Gordon Carrera
That's where the secrets happen.
- [24:07]
David McClaskey
That's right. Also known as the vaults, which is where the workstations and safes and all of that are inside SCIFs at Langley.
- [24:15]
Gordon Carrera
Inside the SCIFs. Then what. What are the Syria analysts kind of looking at, do you think?
- [24:19]
David McClaskey
The poor Syria analysts in the skiffs. So let's take the question of interim government governance and Hayatar Al Sham HTS being one of, but not the only kind of group or faction that needs to be considered in that equation. I mean, that is a massive question. There is another question, though, and probably more around the United States has 900, I believe, soldiers in eastern Syria right.
- [24:47]
Gordon Carrera
Now doing counterterrorism work, aren't they? Yeah. Against isis, the Islamic State group.
- [24:51]
David McClaskey
Right. But through the sort of boots of a group called the Syrian Democratic Forces, the sdf, which has sort of Arab components and Kurdish components, Kurds being one of the other ethnic groups in Syria. And there are all kinds of issues we've seen, I think Donald Trump went on Truth Social maybe over the weekend, I believe, and basically said the Americans, we're not going to have anything to do with Syria. This is not our problem. So there are these other dynamics around what happens out in the east if 900 U.S. troops leave in February.
- [25:29]
Gordon Carrera
And let me just pick you up on that, because I think one of the things I know that UK counterterrorism officials worry about are the fact there are a lot of ISIS prisoners in camps which are run by SDF and those groups. And there's been longer fear that particularly, you know, the Turks who've been backing HTs, you know, want to go after the Kurds because they're long time enemies. The Kurds are worried about being cut loose by the Americans. If the Americans withdraw, they're saying, well, we won't be able to guard these camps. And then the risk is. And I think that will be the real worry from the kind of counterterrorism professionals is that then, you know, there's less security around those camps. People get out, ISIS fighters, some of them hardened, you know, dangerous fighters, as well as women and children, a kind of mixer in there, you know, could get out and that could pose a threat, you know, a kind of counterterrorism threat. So I think there are, you know, there are worries about the fallout from this, aren't there?
- [26:21]
David McClaskey
No, absolutely. I mean, in there, there are Islamic State cells operating in central Syria and these kind of desert regions that the Assad regime, frankly, is purposely not targeted, I think, because A, resources were scarce, obviously, and they didn't quite have the military capacity, I'm sure, to do it effectively. And B, the existence of sort of an Islamic state in Syria provided a kind of raison d'etre for the regime as flawed, I think, is that that logic is you've got the Islamic State and sort of, I guess what you'd call a problem of will that presence grow either under a new government in Syria or frankly because more likely because the new government is unable to enforce its kind of writ throughout and there's.
- [27:07]
Gordon Carrera
A vacuum in which they.
- [27:09]
David McClaskey
Right.
- [27:09]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [27:10]
David McClaskey
And then there's the other related question which you posed up front around what do these different factions, HTs, first and foremost, what do they really want? What kind of government will they install and will there be room for. Not necessarily in the government, but I guess maybe a wink at an odder. Looking the other way, I think this would be the fear toward these kind of transnational global jihadist groups like the Islamic State, who, you know, oftentimes have external attack plotting groups inside them who are trying to come up with new and creative ways to kill Europeans and Turks and Americans and, you know.
- [27:52]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, that's bound to be the top question, isn't it, for those. Those analysts? I mean, it's interesting as well, because there's a lot of debate in the UK about, you know, should we talk to this group because it's been prescribed as a terrorist organization and, you know, can we work with them? Should we work with them? You know, one of the things, you know, if you go back and look at the history of these things, you see groups fall in and out of favor and the state being willing or not to talk to them. I remember particularly Libya, this group called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and there were years when actually Britain backed them secretly, even though they were a kind of jihadist group in the kind of, you know, 80s and 90s, because they were against Gaddafi and we were against Gaddafi, and they were a kind of Gaddafi opposition group who was ruling Libya. And then Gaddafi became our friend after 2003, and these guys were the enemy. And then Gaddafi became our enemy again after kind of 2011. And then they became, you know, and then. And then they became our friend, and then they became a threat to us and became our enemy again. You saw how actually, you know, the British state and Western states sometimes can quite quickly move from considering some of these groups to be friends or enemies, depending on the circumstances and needs must. So I think we'll see. And I think a lot will depend on the leadership of hts, have kind of made the right noises that they want to be inclusive and involve other groups, and they're not going to be, you know, in any way kind of jihadist like the past. But I guess, Right, that's the question everyone's going to be watching, isn't it?
- [29:11]
David McClaskey
That is. I mean, I think that is one of the biggest questions about the future of Syria that, again, those people locked in skiffs at Langley right now are trying to. Trying to sort through is what does Jelani, the head of hts, what does he want?
- [29:28]
Gordon Carrera
What does he really believe?
- [29:29]
David McClaskey
What does he really, really believe? It has been fascinating to kind of watch his progression over the past 15 years, because this is a guy who fought the US in Iraq, was imprisoned for a while at Abu Ghraib, was the sort of Syrian franchisee of the group that created the Islamic State, then called Al Qaeda in Iraq. He turns on them and joins forces with sort of Al Qaeda central. And then when Al Qaeda central tries to build a franchise in Syria, Jelani turns on that franchise and essentially destroys it militarily.
- [30:09]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [30:10]
David McClaskey
And so you've got a guy who's maybe he's evolved, maybe he's a chameleon, maybe he's both. You know, I think he's obviously politically very cunning. He's saying the right things right now about dealing with, you know, minority groups in Syria. He's saying the right things about governance.
- [30:28]
Gordon Carrera
But saying the right things doesn't mean, you know.
- [30:30]
David McClaskey
No. Now. But what we do have, though, is the seven or eight year track record of HTS running idlit.
- [30:39]
Gordon Carrera
Idlit.
- [30:39]
David McClaskey
This northwestern province that they sprung from.
- [30:42]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. A more pragmatic rather than, if you like, totally jihadist.
- [30:46]
David McClaskey
I suppose they have a technocratic government in Idlib called the Syrian Salvation Government. But there are also plenty of instances where the religious ideology comes to the fore. And I think it's very clear, at least to this point, that he is not a Jeffersonian Democrat. They do not believe in popular sovereignty. Minority groups are not represented inside the political structures in Idlib province.
- [31:14]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [31:14]
David McClaskey
So there are a lot of questions. Right. At this point, before we finish, I.
- [31:18]
Gordon Carrera
Mean, I guess we should say a quick word about the geopolitics of it. I mean, it's hard not to see this as a blow to Iran and Russia, you know, for whom Assad had been their ally. I mean, they propped him up. Clearly at some point in the last, you know, 10 days, they decided, you know, the game was up. He wasn't worth expending any, you know, more effort over. I mean, Iran obviously has been on the back foot because it's lost its proxy Hezbollah, or at least it's not lost it, but it's been done enormous damage by Israel, you know, in, in the conflict there. Think about the pages and all those other attacks and, and Hezbollah had been used by Syria to fight in its civil war by the Assad family to keep in power. And Russia has an interest with a naval base and an air base. But at some point thought this guy's done and that's it. And it is a blow to them, isn't it? I mean, they might be able to salvage something out of it, but it's hard to see it as anything else.
- [32:05]
David McClaskey
Yeah, I think for both Russia and Iran, it does obviously seem like it's a. It's a massive geopolitical blow. Although I do think you look at the Russians, let's take them to start. I think this is a case where, you know, the sort of old dictum about how there are enduring interests, not necessarily allies. Right. The Russians are keen to maintain their naval facilities on the Syrian coast of Tartus which I believe the airfield on the coast and this naval facility are used to, like, resupply Russia's efforts in Africa. Including Wagner.
- [32:42]
Gordon Carrera
That's right. The air base, I think especially is important for cargo flights going from Russia through to Africa. Yeah, so it's important.
- [32:49]
David McClaskey
It's important. And it's also possible that either these opposition or these sort of newly formed governing groups, whatever we want to call them, will just allow it to continue, will potentially extract a price from the Russians to allow it to continue, or may not be able to actually, you know, enforce their writ along the coast is all. That's also a possibility kind of as you get going, that they may not fully control that territory. So the Russians might be able to keep a lot of what they got from Assad under a new regime. I mean, it's certainly a. It's a shakier prospect at this point.
- [33:26]
Gordon Carrera
And I guess, you know, trying to predict the future at this point, I mean, no one could have predicted the last couple of weeks, your progeny, if that's the right word, in the analytic units at the CIA who are working hard. I mean, you wouldn't want to be predicting, would you, at this point, you know, what's going to happen? Because I think it's a kind of range of outcomes. And if some policymaker, you know, if the President of the United States were to come to the Minnie McCloskey today and say, you know, kind of what's going to happen? I mean, you'd have to go, we don't know. There's a range of outcomes, aren't there? And it would be hard to predict.
- [33:57]
David McClaskey
I guess there's probably a scenarios piece. And when Assad began to totter in 2011, you know, me and some colleagues, we were the ones who wrote the sort of scenarios for Syria piece, and we came up with four of them. Because the way you do these analytic scenario exercises, there's typically four, and then we shaved it down to like three to make it a little bit simpler to communicate. I guarantee you that that piece has been updated and used a ton in those prior years. But also right now, I mean, there's probably a piece that an analyst wrote inside CA like two or three years ago on that exact thing that they are dusting off right now and working on to write up in the pdp.
- [34:36]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, President's Daily Brief. Yeah.
- [34:38]
David McClaskey
So it's absolutely a question of scenarios at this point. Absolutely.
- [34:42]
Gordon Carrera
Well, I guess the one thing is we finished to say it's in the hands of the Syrian people in A way no one thought it would be. And it's, you know, they're the ones, as you said earlier, they're the ones who've been, you know, instrumental in overthrowing this, this family, this regime which has ruled over them, oppressed them for so long. And it's in their hands to some extent. I mean, there'll be geopolitical players trying to influence it, but it's in their hands to see what happens, isn't it?
- [35:04]
David McClaskey
That's right. Well, and I think just, I would make one more point on that because I do think this, as our listeners consume media on this over the coming days and weeks, I just would really encourage everybody to really make an effort to not view this first through the lens of geopolitics. There's a time and a place for that. And it's, of course, valid to talk about all of these dynamics with respect to Russia and Iran and counterterrorism and all of that, but I think that there is time here to just take stock of the fact that it has been really the struggle of a lot of very ordinary Syrians and the sacrifice paid by so many Syrians to see this regime finally come down. And I just, I would really encourage people to prioritize listening to those voices, you know, in the coming days and weeks as we all try to make sense of this and what's coming.
- [35:59]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, that's a great note on which to end, so well. Thank you, David. Thank you everyone, for listening. Just a reminder, we'll be back Wednesday, which is for our regular episode, and that will be the second half of our story of the CIA in Afghanistan in the extraordinary Al Qaeda prisoner revolt that led to the first death of a CIA officer in the country after 9 11. But thank you for listening to this emergency pod on Syria and to the rest is classified.
- [36:25]
David McClaskey
Thanks for listening.