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Welcome back to the Watch Floor. I'm Sarah Adams. This show exists to slow down narratives when they're moving way too fast. Today we're going to talk about Aleppo in Syria, but we're really only going to talk about two neighborhoods. These are Kurdish dominated neighborhoods. One is Sheikh Maqsood and one is Ashrafiya. What's unfolded over the course of the last week in these neighborhoods is very concerning. And I've noticed a lot of distortions of it in the press. Right, because we're being fed a lot of narratives when it comes to Syria because they're kind of at the top of this peace plan we're being sold. And it really needs to stay a positive talking point about how that government is coming together under the terrorist president, Abu Mohammed Al Julani. And I think what's important is we don't lose sight of some of these crimes being committed against our allies and we explain them and talk at least through them. It's very difficult, as you can imagine, getting quality information out of Syria, getting things that aren't misinformation out of Syria and trying to put the facts together. So I'm just going to explain things as I seen them over the course of the last week so you understand what's going on. First off, there's three words that are being thrown around and they're kind of like the excuses. So if you see something bad happen, they put these words out there and say, hey, it's a rough patch we're going through. Things like integration, these are security operations. This is what post war stabilization looks like. So when you hear any of those words, you already kind of need to perk up a little bit and realize, oh, I'm going to be fed some talking points. I might see some dead bodies, but they're going to tell me, oh, you know, it takes time to work through some of these kinks, you know, of a new government and a new democracy. Right. So I just want you to understand that. But what's really happening here is there's a forced displacement of the Kurds, there's a collective punishment against them, and there's basically targeted terrorism. And it's occurring right because they supported us, the US Government and the international coalition in the war against isis. And this is why it's occurring. And this damage really needs to be showcased for what it is. So to understand what's happening in Aleppo, I'm first going to just kind of do like a textbook definition of some of the players because it's confusing and sometimes I Think they made it confusing so no one ever really knew what was going on. I mean, think about Syria just for the last, you know, 15ish years, right? I mean, they had a whole civil war and still a lot of people had no clue who the actors were, you know, what side the US Government was on, you know, who was Al Qaeda, who was isis. A lot of these fighters switched off between the two groups. Especially if you read, you know, the book me and Dave Boone Benton put together on Benghazi. A number of our terrorists that attacked us in 20, 2012 in Libya traveled to Syria, right? Some of them first joined Al Nusra, which was an affiliate of Al Qaeda. Then they joined isis. Then they went back to Al Qaeda under Hoya Tahir Al Sham, which is hts, right? Which is Al Qaeda. And we'll talk a lot about them today because they now are kind of still present and they've really become like the powerhouse terrorist group in Syria. And so they're a huge part of this. Okay, so first off, we have the Syrian Democratic Forces. Now, this was the US backed coalition that was originally put together in Syria to fight isis. This is kind of when the government was like really collapsing and not being able to take control over large swaths of the country as ISIS was trying to build its caliphate. And the world was kind of just like frozen and didn't know what to do about it. And ISIS was making massive grounds, right? Something had to be pulled together, so this force was pulled together. Now a lot of people think this was just the Kurds, but that's not the case. It was like Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, and they all work together to fight isis. Now then in this present day, when we talk about these Kurdish areas, like who's protecting them, is that exactly the sdf? And no, really what it is is they're called the ASIish and all they are is essentially like neighborhood policing units. When I talk about these two neighborhoods in Aleppo, they're really no longer backed and supported and protected by the SDF because just for your understanding, back on March 10, there was an agreement put out and we'll talk about that today and some of the specifics of it. But it was basically agreed by the Kurds that SDF would leave these neighborhoods, right? And then this local policing force would like take over and be some sort of protection force and in these neighborhoods. So they're not like an army unit, they're not like foreign fighters, they're not some sort of force like that. They're really just locals who stepped up kind of like an advanced neighborhood watch. They do a lot of this in Israel is a really great example. So kind of one of these community policing units. So that then is now who's in charge essentially, of these Kurdish neighborhoods. Just so that's clear. Now, on the other side of the coin, which is falls under, of course, the Syrian Ministry of Defense, as it's being called now, is the Syrian Arab Army. So this is the army that falls under the president in Syria, right. Abu Muhammad Al Julani, or, you know, he throws it on the diplomatic name, Ahmed Al Shara. And he is in command then, obviously, of his Ministry of Defense and the Syrian Arab forces. So that is the other side of this coordinate coin. Now, the US has an official relationship with both the Syrian Arab army, right, because we're now allied with Giuliani and his new government and the scf. So it's actually very, very interesting to kind of see the interplay here. Now, when we're specifically talking about Aleppo and the forces there for the Syrian regime under the Syrian Arab army, we're really only talking about three units. We have the 60th and the 72nd divisions and then elements of the 98th. If you don't have any understanding of these three units within Syria's army, they are actually controlled and dominated by hts. Again, we told you, HTS is Al Qaeda. So the simplest way to put it is like Al Qaeda has not been disarmed in Syria. They have not been de radicalized. They have definitely not abandoned terrorism. They've been rebranded and kind of rotated into these forces within this new government. And they're kind of becoming like state, like quasi government institutions. So a really great way to explain this, because they almost occur in the exact same way, which makes me incredibly nervous. So. So when Gaddafi fell in Libya, okay, so in late 2011, as you can imagine, all these different militias fought against Gaddafi and took them down. You know, it was first sold as this revolution of the people. But then we learned after that actually most militias were controlled by terrorists. A lot of them had been freed from prison to support the revolution. Except. So when Gaddafi fell, you had what was going to be this new government, and then you had all these militias that now had power, right? They had prestige because to the people, they were like saviors and heroes. And then they had weapons, right? Now, as you can imagine, for many, many years, if you weren't like in the Libyan army, you didn't really have access to weapons, right? Gaddafi didn't allow it. So now when you're in these militias and you won what you feel is a war, right, against this dictator in your country and you finally have arms. You're not going to give them up. So what the first and original idea was is, hey, we're just going to roll all the militias into a real military based out of the Tripoli government in Libya and all will be great. We'll work together. Well, that of course, didn't happen. The militias felt powerful. There was a lot of infighting with the new government being formed. Of course, the new government had concerning influences for the militias that were more moderate. They had members of Al Qaeda involved in the formation. They had, obviously the Muslim Brotherhood leaning in pretty heavily. So a lot of divisions going on and basically the integration into the government of Libya never happened. To this day, there really isn't what I would call a functioning military out of the Tripoli state side of Libya. It's really just a bunch of militias that still control, like the police services and the military and those type of things. It's really never been formalized. So the problem with this is then you also have kind of like differing leadership, different ideologies, different goals. You have a lot of Islamists in this mix, and that's a huge problem. So, of course, when we're saying these three units in Aleppo are all mainly from Al Qaeda, I mean, that's the truth. But then think about how harsh they are, how they govern, the ways they're trained, how we can expect them to not just deal with civilians, but now people like the Kurds, who they do view as the enemy. Right. It's extremely concerning when you think through it. And then, of course, as most people know, there is a silent partner as well in Aleppo, Right. The government of Turkey. You know, it's not some conspiracy that they're involved. Of course they're involved. Right. They provide drones intelligence. They've even provided some of the strike capability of some of these recent attacks that have occurred in Aleppo against the civilians. I want to explain to you how this works. I told you about this March 10 agreement. What ended up really happening is there is a push to displace the Kurds out of these neighborhoods in Aleppo. Well, what they did to try to push them out is these forces, these units I talked about basically started shelling these neighborhoods and attacking them to force displace the citizens there. Well, of course, the citizens knew exactly what's happening. It's like, no, no, no, I'm not leaving my home because you're threatening me with bombs. Right? Like, I know what Happens next, like, I will never return to my home if I give up Brown now. So that's kind of where we are now, right? That is where kind of, you know, the rubber met the road. And then unfortunately, these units, which were led by terrorists, pushed in stronger into these neighborhoods in Syria to force people to leave. And unfortunately, as you can imagine, to force people to leave. They've committed atrocities, kidnappings, torture, murder. I mean, the whole gambit, unfortunately, to where Syrians really had to get on buses and basically, I mean, Kurds had to get on buses. I mean, they're also Syrians and ship themselves out of these neighborhoods. So it's very concerning. But the false narrative that's come at us is, oh no, this is kind of warring and a battle between two militaries. It's a battle between the Syrian Arab forces and the sdf. But I told you, the SDF pretty much left solely in April as part of the March 10 agreement. It's funny for now, this narrative to be that they're the main entity fighting when they made the deal to pull out as part of this whole reintegration with the new government. It's a very, very frustrating thing, as you can imagine. Also, the point of this was to disarm the Kurds and to displace them. What happens there is since March, our government and really a lot of foreign powers have leaned heavily on the Kurds being like, hey, why aren't you supporting this new peace in Syria? Why aren't you giving up your weapons? Why aren't you being a part of this process? And it's almost like we're penalizing them for them being smart enough to say, hey, why should I give up my weapons? They already gave up their security and look what happened. Forces came in to displace them. Why should I put myself in this position of weakness when the government has proven that it's still run by terrorists? They have done multiple ethnic cleansings since they took over. Just over a year ago, they did ethnic cleansings against the Druze, the Alawites, and then of course, they kicked off this one against the Kurds this month as planned. This was a pre planned operation. It was planned many months ago. They had intended to come in and force displace the Kurds out of Aleppo. The thing is, how the Syrian government looks at all these kind of minorities is they if they have too much power and if they have weapons and if they have influence and if they have outside support, they are going to get in the way of the government's ultimate goal of finally declaring Islamic caliphate again in Syria. Syria, Right. That is the goal, no matter who tells you otherwise. That's the goal of the Turkish government as well, and why they support this regime. So when you're the Druze, the Christians, the Alawites, the Kurds, you are in the way of that occurring. So one thing is to disarm you, one thing is to displace you. And then eventually there'll be further ethnic cleansing, forced conversions to Islam, and all the horrible things that come when a caliphate is formed. And we just have to be honest about that. Sadly, what we're hearing in our press and even from some of our political leaders is what you're seeing in Syria right now is just failed integration. Don't worry. The Kurds are being difficult. They'll come around. It'll all be gravy because this, what's happening Syria is part of this peace process, which it's not peace. Peace is just the word. Nothing in real life agrees with that. The framing has become incredibly dishonest. Right. So what they wanted was the Kurds to kind of like, fall into submission. They never wanted to integrate them kind of into this new society. Right. They don't want them to have control of neighborhoods in Aleppo. Right. Like, none of this is what they want to exist, because they don't want Kurds at some point to have any control of any landmass in Syria. That's the ultimate goal. But I do want to talk a little bit about the March 10 framework, and I just want to walk through kind of some of the verbiage in it, just so you understand how it was written. Okay. So the March 10th agreement was presented publicly, you know, to all of us as a de escalation and coordination framework between Damascus and Kurdish authorities in Aleppo. Okay. In practice, it required the withdrawal, as I told you, of most SDF forces from Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafiya, while promising civilian protection. That didn't happen. Local security anatomy through the Asiya forces. Remember I said these neighborhood forces were supposed to be allowed to govern these areas? Well, of course that didn't happen, because how are you going to govern when shelling's coming in? And then it was supposed to be an agreement that kind of halted any hostilities between all these actors. The agreement contained no credible enforcement mechanisms and relied entirely on good faith from actors who've long broke ceasefires. I mean, I'm telling you, through these units are controlled by Al Qaeda. Now, this is very, very similar to the agreement we saw put together. Right? Between Israel and Hamas. So a ceasefire was granted, but there was no plan in it for how you would disarm Hamas. Right. And I've discussed this many times. There really is still no plan this many months later to disarm Hamas. Right. They have not given up their weapons, they have not given up their training, their pipelines are going strong with recruits, et cetera. Right. What is going to be the plan to stop their control in Gaza? Because it just does not exist at this point. There's a lot of people like, well, if we rebuild Gaza and put an investment, we'll push out Hamas. Well, that's not true because we've done all that for the last 10 plus years. Gaza had everything like that in place and Hamas was still their government. Right. So it's so similar to what we saw in Gaza now happening in Syria. It's the same issue. And there's no real long term thinking or plan about what's going to occur when we allow for longer periods of times these terrorists to not just run a government, but to have access to all the funds involved. Remember, the United States is removing sanctions against the Syrian government just from oil revenues. They're going to have massive windfalls into their terrorist networks from that. It's a super frustrating thing to see. Then if we just go back to hts, they haven't abandoned terrorism, they've just become. They've professionalized their presentation. But I don't even know if they've done that because if you ever see any video of them, it's pretty clear they're terrorists. A large number of them look like foreign fighters. They seem to have no interest in blending into Syrian society, becoming moderates, et cetera. For them, this is just another rotation in a jihadi landscape. You know, it's not peace building as we've been told. This is really like the laundering of jihadists through bureaucracy. I mean, it's a crazy thing when you look at it that way, but let's talk about a few of the numbers for a second, right? Because we really want to talk about the Kurds who have been impacted here. So from 2014 to 2019, it was the Kurdish led units within the SDF that were the primary kind of US and coalition partner against ISIS. They fought in places like Cobain, Raqqa, et cetera. And they were really the entity that stopped ISIS stronghold in Syria, which of course to ISIS was a caliphate. Right. This was the entity that really successfully took it to isis. We've had full governments not be able to handle ISIS in the way the Kurds did. And we really need to be honest about that. But as you can imagine, there's a lot of wanted blowback towards the Kurds from these terrorists. Remember when we talk about isis, a lot of these fighters came from Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and they went to isis. So don't think the ISIS fighters are separate from the Al Qaeda fighters. They went back and forth all, all the time in Syria. Now when it comes to the SDF, 11,000 of these fighters were killed in this fight against ISIS and 20,000 were injured. But they broke up terrorist intelligence networks, sleeper cell networks, full bomb making, pipelines, had pipelines out to do attacks in the West. I mean, this wasn't just some sort of symbolic resistance. They really defeated isis. So, you know, when the president said we beat ISIS at the time, yeah, it was the Kurds that did it. Well, now there's a huge resurgence of isis, right? And we're almost watching like history repeat itself again. And the Kurds weren't some like, accidental ally, you know, in Iraq. We've been working with them since the 1970s. Unfortunately, over time, we really have kind of left them hanging like we're doing right now. We did it during the 1991 Gulf War. We did, of course, when we really got focused again on Syria. And then today we have government officials who use the Kurds during the Iraq war and some of these efforts in Syria and aren't saying a word about these massacres that have occurred against Semo Aleppo in the last week. It's a very, very frustrating thing to think that punishment that they went through was not accidental. It was purposeful because of their alignment with us. This is the watch floor. And our job isn't to repeat any of the narratives out there. We really just want to question them and talk through them and give you another point of view. We don't want to tell you you have to think this way, but we want you to know there is another side than what you're hearing from the Western media or our government's talking points. And what's happening in Aleppo was not a stabilization operation. It was not integration, it was not reconciliation. When you hear these buzzwords, I do want you to kind of do a little bit of a side eye and question who's talking to you. In Syria, we have this massive normalization of terrorism under this new flag. Unfortunately, for that to happen, for us to back now the terrorist government in Syria, that means we have to basically abandon our allies, the people who sacrifice in that fight against us. This is something. If we let pass quietly, it's going to have ripple effects far past Aleppo. We'll continue to watch. Thanks for tuning in.