UK Column Radio
Syria Podcast Episode 1
Tired of the same old decorations? Rediscover the magic of the season with deals on everything holiday from Family Dollar. Family Dollar, helping you do more. - Welcome to the UK column. Joined today by Vanessa Billy. Thank you for joining me, Vanessa. And obviously the last five or six days has been pretty intense in Syria. - Yes. Many people will know you live in Damascus and have been there for how many years now? - It's coming up to it's sixth year, actually, although of course I've been working in Syria since 2016. So eight years, really. - And 2015, 2016, that was sort of the time when we got into contact. And I was just looking at some of those really early UK column news appearances. - Yes, lots changed since then. But what hasn't changed is that Syria is still on the receiving end of what we might describe as external interference. Because what's happened in the last five or six days is that the terrorists who have been pretty much holed up in their enclave in Idlib. And also, I presume, correct me if I'm wrong, but on the other side of the Turkish border as well, and Gazian Tub and whatnot, have managed to break out again. And of course, we've seen some really dark coverage or at least implications in mainstream press of effectively Syria collapsing and Assad government about to fall over. What is the truth of it? - Well, yeah, I mean, we even had a, I don't know, the last four days have kind of disappeared into a blur, but I think it was about 48 hours ago, there were stories being put out on social media of there being a coup and clashes between Syrian Arab army factions in Damascus. Hence why I published the video of myself driving through Damascus to show that it's perfectly calm, it's perfectly peaceful, and there is absolutely nothing of the kind going on. And in fact, I think it was today, or last night in Israeli media, they were saying that Syrian so-called rebels were storming the presidential palace in Damascus, which is interesting because that's at the point that the Iranian foreign minister was actually meeting with President Assad in the palace, so I'm not quite sure how they thought they could possibly get away with that kind of story, but that was Jerusalem Post that was publishing that. So it's, you know, it's even getting into the kind of what I would call the "substrider" of mainstream media, not only on social media, and of course it is being picked up by the likes of the BBC, NCNN, and the usual culprit. - Whenever we were covering Syria back in 2016, 2017, and so on, what we had to deal with was an mainstream media, which was completely bought into the regime change narrative and was promoting that as hard as they possibly could, and we can go into a bit of detail about that in a second, but, you know, we had people like you and Patrick Henningson and other people, Eva Bartlett, and all the people that were talking about Syria from, let's say, our side of the discussion, you could at least rely on what was being said. You could believe what was being said. What has happened in the meantime is, of course, we've had this whole censorship agenda, and it's not, which is not just about shadow banning and shutting down freedom of speech and so on. It's also about active operations by 77 Brigade and similar agents of the United Kingdom, the EU and the United States, to push out counter narratives, which appear to be narratives which are a counter to what the respective governments might want, but which are then taken up by people on social media without engaging their brains, and so actually, people are becoming part of the problem. - Definitely, and I think actually, I mean, we saw that very much, I think, during COVID with the kind of hysteria that was being generated by mainstream media, but then also picked up by social media, and the adversarial aspect of the whole of the COVID campaign was played out very much on social media. And what we saw particularly in the first 24 hours, I would say, and of course, the attack by the armed groups, both the Turkish proxies in the North and the kind of Turkish-US Ukrainian Israeli proxies in the Northwest will come on to the Ukrainian role in this in a minute. The attack came hours after the ceasefire came into effect between Israel and Lebanon, and then what actually happened initially, the reports were pretty sketchy, and we weren't really sure to what extent the terrorists had managed to breach the army defenses to the West of Aleppo and so on. And then suddenly, there was this deluge of information coming in, and what had happened was the sleeper cells from the terrorist groups that had remained in Aleppo after the liberation of all of the kind of suburbs and periphery of Aleppo were triggered to suddenly appear inside Aleppo and carry out, film themselves, pulling stuff down off the walls or four or five of them roaming the streets of certain areas of Aleppo, and then arriving in the center and taking more selfies. But if you actually looked at the content of the videos, in many of the videos, there were only one or two people close zoomed in, so you couldn't see whether there was 20 or 30 others with them, but I would guess no. And then the maximum, I think there was one photo in front of the citadel where they were 10 to 15, which is not a big force, and some of them were not armed and so on. But these videos were then circulating across social media. People in Syria were freaking out, right? So that's where the irresponsibility of social media comes in. And I know we talked about this before we're talking now, and the problem is that while social media is a tremendous tool for people like us, I think it's been infiltrated to such an extent by the likes of 77th Brigade and all manner of intelligence agencies that are effectively using it in one way or another to swarm global populations with misinformation or panic-generating news. And that was what was happening, but the worst thing for me was the psychological warfare against the Syrian people, because they go on social media to see what's happening to their country. And when they're seeing the biggest influences on X or on Telegram telling them their city is falling, it's been invaded, the terrorists have met with absolutely no defense, they've managed to get, they've crossed various districts in Aleppo in a matter of minutes, they're panicking. From Aleppo down to Hamas, to Homs, I have people calling me saying is that it? Do we need to prepare in Damascus? Do we need to prepare in Homs? Because if they've got that far, that fast in Aleppo, then they're gonna be with us any minute. So for me, this demonstrates absolutely more than anything, the absolute danger of social media and how it can be used to wage a psychological war against its target audience. And that is exactly what happened, because the problem is, you have a journalist like myself and I'm on the ground, but even for me, it was a confusing situation. So I needed time to actually kind of find out what was really going on, to try and substantiate what I thought was really going on. But these people don't care. These social media influences that are making money out of content on X or Telegram or TikTok or wherever it is, just want to get the sensationalist information out there, because that brings in the clicks, that brings in the money. And so we're always catching up. So to a degree, this infiltration of social media is damaging the good social media users, the ones that are genuinely trying to present at least evidenced and contextual information and journalists who are maybe taking a bit longer to actually gather the facts and put a bigger picture together, they're all getting marginalised and squeezed out of the picture in the very early moments of whatever event is ongoing. - I'm going to suggest that this is, it is a psychological attack. And I appreciate what you're saying about how this has affected people in Syria. But this is affecting every single one of us, because this is driving opinion in the West for the actions which are happening in Syria. This is driving opinions in the West for the actions which are happening in Gaza, it's driving opinions in the West for the actions that are happening in Ukraine. That's one point to make. The other point to make is that this term, post-truth world appeared a number of years ago, another term that began to be used a number of years ago was trust. And it was clear that fewer and fewer people trust the mainstream media and more and more people were trusting independent voices who were posting on social media among other places. And what has happened is that, well, let's put it this way, I would say that there are four categories that are making use of social media at the moment. One category is mainstream media, which is using social media to push out their material. That is clear, it's in the open, it's there. The other, another category is independent journalists like UK column, like Vanessa Bailey, like Patrick Hennigson, are out there doing what we're doing. And we, I would hope in most cases, are doing that with at least a view that we're doing it with integrity, whether we always get it right or not is another thing, but we're at least trying. There is a category of social media user that is the consumer of fear porn and will jump on the latest bandwagon, whatever that happens to be. They will look for stuff that gives them that hit, that adrenaline hit, whatever it is, and it'll just be shared without thinking. But they won't share stuff from us, because as you say, it's taken longer to get there, it's taken longer for it to be posted, because we are attempting to at least try to verify what we're putting out. - And it's not sexy. - And it's not sexy. - It's not sexy. - It's not sexy. - Right, and we don't do click bit in this kind of stuff. There's a fourth category, which is the professional agitator who are either working directly for intelligence agencies or for think tanks or whomever else is active in these areas that are paid to be influencers, and they tend to be posting anonymously. They tend to be producing the click bit in the first place. And unless the people that are in that third category, the people that are consuming social media content from whichever source learn discernment, this situation is only getting worse. And in fact, I would go as far as to say, they are part of the problem, very much part of the problem. - Definitely. - I keep hearing this term, this saying we are in a spiritual battle. And I believe it's true, but from my point of view, it starts with our own ability to rein in our worst impulses, which now we, I in the UK, on the UK column news, whatnot, we'll say to our audience, look, we need you to be the algorithm and to share our material because it's not, because we're being so heavily censored by the social media platforms. So this makes it very difficult because in the course of this conversation, on one hand, we're criticizing some people who are sharing with discernment. On the other hand, we still need them to share material. So how do we find that balance? - Yeah, I mean, I don't know, because if I think about, you know, some of the bigger platforms that were sharing misinformation, and were obviously coming at it from a great deal of ignorance on the history of the conflict in Syria and so on. So they were not really providing even the necessary context and so on. Because again, we talked about this, you know, even with the UK column audience, how many years, almost 10 years since we started working together on exposing what was going on in Syria, but in that time in particular, because it went relatively quiet after 2020 when the majority of the country was liberated. And as you said, most of the terrorists that had been operating throughout Syria were kind of, you know, shoved up into the Northwest into Idlib. And so therefore, I guess 70% of the country was living under peace time again. And then you had COVID come in, and suddenly, you know, that was the rush then for information to be got out and so on. So I know that UK columns audience increased tremendously during that because of the excellence of the work in UK column in exposing, you know, the entire project. And still is. But people kind of then lost touch with Syria. So now the war is starting again, and people are trying to catch up. There's some, well, I don't understand what's going on, why are Syrians fighting Syrians and so on and so forth, you know? So we're almost back to square one where we're having to point out that, no, this is propaganda. I mean, for example, I'll give you a very good example, which is very typical of what went on previously. There was a video put out that showed, according to them, the terrorist tanks and armored cars heading for homes. The reality was they flipped the video and it was actually Syrian army convoys of tanks and armored cars that were coming from homes to Hamas to strengthen the defense line in Hamas, which is kind of to the north of Homs, right? So this is the kind of thing that people are not aware of. We're used to it because we were covering all this and we exposed the white helmets. We exposed their fabricated chemical weapon attacks. We exposed their incredible propaganda methods. But now that's all coming back, but people are not prepared for it because there's been that kind of hiatus between COVID and now, four years, and people have either forgotten. And that is another point, actually, that I find quite interesting is people have literally forgotten. So it's like Syria before never happened and now we're starting again from square one. - Is it that people have forgotten or was it that actually the majority of people that are paying attention today never knew? - Maybe, yeah, maybe. Because even among some of the Iranian and Lebanese activists that I speak to, they were like 10 years old when the war against Syria started. So even they don't have the grasp of the history of it, that some of us veteran journalists have, for example. - The key thing that everybody needs to know is that this was never a civil war. - And also, I think, in addition to that, Syrians are not fighting Syrians. Syrians from all faiths and religions and communities inside Syria under the protection of the Syrian government, are fighting against Muslim Brotherhood factions in Syria that have been weaponized by the West for more than 40, 50 years in Syria. - And let's just make this point because Muslim Brotherhood was a British creation. - Yes, in Egypt. And basically they were created in order to be weaponized against target governments in the Middle East or in West Asia. And when people say Syrians fighting against Syrians, so that's the Syrian side of it, let's say, is the Muslim Brotherhood. But probably at least 50% of those that, let's say the government forces and their allies are fighting are foreign mercenaries. Whether from Uzbek, Afghanistan, Uighurs from China, Chechens, Albanians, Kosovars, Libyans, you know. - So they're not Syrians? - One of the points that we were making all the way through that time when we were covering this up until the things settled down in 2020, all those years we were covering this, one of the things we were covering was the sheer brutality of these people. You know, they are, they at that time were beheading people, they were beheading children. And in the last few days they've been beheading Syrian army if any that they've captured. - Yeah. And even the Kurds, I mean, we'll get on to why the Kurds are involved in the defense of Aleppo, because that's an interesting aspect. But even the Kurds that were captured, I think today in the northeastern access of the outskirts of Aleppo, the videos that were put out were of the women and the male captives being horribly mistreated. But, yeah, any Syrian army officers or soldiers that have been captured have been either executed on the spot or horribly beheaded as one video showed that I really wish I hadn't watched. And, you know, from Aleppo itself, the command was for all of the at-risk communities. So the Shia Muslim, the Alawait Muslim, the Security Forces Police Army and any one connected to the government in Aleppo was told to evacuate the minute the attack started. And that's why Aleppo was left, largely undefended to protect those elements, but also to prevent clashes between those elements and the armed groups with civilians caught in the middle. So it was a deliberate ploy by the army once they realized there had potentially been a breach in the Syrian army defense lines, to withdraw far enough to leave a kind of buffer zone around Aleppo, where now the terrorists are gathering and they are being bombed by Syrian and Russian warplanes, so to withdraw to a certain distance. And then behind the new lines of the Syrian Arab army, the Russian and Syrian planes are bombing the supply lines, the ammunition warehouses, the drone manufacturing sites, the headquarters, the command centers and so on. I think also a lot of commentators have a kind of video game idea of war. And to be fair, if you've not experienced war, I'm not a military expert, I don't pretend to be, but I have lived through and experienced and witnessed a lot of military situations. So I think I do have a kind of an idea that it's incredibly complex, mistakes can be made, and often it'll be weeks, if not years after, that you actually get to find out exactly piece by piece, what really happened. And that's my point, you know, all these people that go on and sort of say, well, Aleppo fell and start criticizing the Syrian army because they surrendered, they ran away, they withdrew, that's it, the state has fallen. That's literally the extent to which people were sensationalizing what was going on. It was quite extraordinary forgetting that the Syrian army's defended Syria for 14 years, very successfully, despite going through similar, very grave times before, let's say, 2015, when Russia actually came into hell. The Syrian army was fighting on more than 100 fronts at that point. - It's completely insane to me that people would be jumping to these conclusions because, you know, the only people that know what the strategy and the tactics of any military operation are the commanders that are organizing it, they're the only people that know everything else is sheer speculation, we can analyze, we can provide analysis, intelligent analysis based on information that is discovered, but to just jump to a conclusion, oh, this happened in 30 seconds later, it's because they ran away, this is, this is, right now, the other thing that I wanted to ask about was, I've seen on social media, this photograph of the Turkish flag being held, being hung over a wall, is that real? Is that, is that, because-- - I honestly don't know, I think, yeah. - Sorry, sorry, there were a couple of things that struck me, but first of all, was it taken in the last day or two? Can anybody prove that? Second of all, who was holding the flag? Was it a terrorist? - Well, you'll remember Farish Shahabi, who, you know, we spoke to, I think, on a number of occasions, who was then, during the early years of the war and before the liberation of Eastern Aleppo, he was the head of the chamber of commerce in Aleppo and as one of the industrialists in Aleppo, he didn't abandon the country, he stayed in Aleppo throughout the war and was often on channel four, challenging their narratives much to their distaste. But just to let you know, I mean, he basically escaped within seconds, really, with his life because when the attack happened, he went to the Western reaches where his factories are and he took a selfie and he posted it on X and he told me afterwards, like after he posted it, they entered his factory and he managed to escape literally by a side door minutes before they came to the room or to the roof because he was actually on the roof taking the photo and he then was part of those that was evacuated from Aleppo because his house is basically in an area that would have been very easy for them to reach. So he evacuated because, you know, he's high risk. I mean, they would love to get ahold of him and God knows what they would do to him if they did. - Well, I don't think it doesn't take much imagination. - No, exactly, so thank God he got out. But he actually was sending me these images of the Turkish flag being hung over the walls of the citadel, which of course, as you know, is the iconic castle in the center of Aleppo, which is sort of, I don't know what you would call it, a huge mound that basically the army managed to hold the castle throughout the occupation of the eastern sectors of Aleppo despite coming under multiple attacks and the terrorists tunneled under the castle and came up in the grounds of the castle at one point, but they repelled all attacks. So it's a very important symbol. So the idea of someone hanging the Turkish flag over the citadel of Aleppo has huge importance for Syrians and of course, for the Turks, for Erdogan, because right from the beginning of the regime change war in 2012, it was Erdogan who dispatched his Al-Thawid brigades, the Turkish back brigades into the eastern sectors and into the industrial sectors to take over Aleppo. This has been Erdogan's kind of neo-Ottoman dream since pre-2011. So that's the symbolism of that image, but whether, you know, is it one person hanging the flag over the battlements for the Photoshop? I mean, for the photo ops, sorry. You know what I mean? That's what I'm talking about. More Photoshop. That's what I'm talking about. It's like it's always only one person. Like they had, he sent me another video with a Turkish presenter walking around with a microphone and saying, you know, now this is Turkey, we'll bring electricity, we'll do this, we'll do that and so on. But it's insane, it's just one person. And there's no civilians around because the civilians are basically under curfew. They can only come out in the morning. The army has issued instructions for them, the civilians to stay away from big gatherings of Nusrah Front because they're going to be bombing them and they have been bombing them in the outskirts of Aleppo. And a couple of strikes sort of more centrally, but as far as I know, there have been no civilian casualties from the reaction of the Syrians and Russians in Aleppo. And that was the point to some degree when they saw that they were potentially going to not be able to hold the city itself. I'm assuming that's when they went to Plan B or Plan C or whatever it was and then withdrew to the area that I was speaking about. Let's just remind ourselves a little bit about, for some people, as we said, this won't be a reminder, it'll be the first time you've heard this, but let's just remind ourselves about the media operation that was running all the way through the Syrian conflict. And hopefully that helps people discern what's going on today because I think on Friday morning, I was heading into the office and surprise, surprise, who did the BBC have on? They had a representative of the White Helmets. - Yeah, of course. - Of course, right. Because, of course, they have been cheerleaders for that organization from the beginning. And aside from that, we have mentioned many, many times on the UK column that BBC Media Action, this charity, was working in Syria in 2004, so seven or eight years before the conflict began, and they were actively looking for opposition within the country, within the government, and actively working with them for them to become change agents or regime change agents. But as well as that, they were working with media companies or media journalists in Syria. And then what we saw was that people that had been trained by the BBC were then being used by Channel 4, for example, as voices from the ground, voices, journalists, local journalists, and it was never declared to us in the West that these people had been trained. So we were getting a narrative presented to us by the BBC and by Channel 4 and so on in the UK based on stories being told by people that they had trained in the first place. On top of that, then, they, of course, were amplifying the messages of the white helmets. And so we're gonna see that again, undoubtedly. - Yeah, oh, we're seeing it, it's already started. But I mean, there I have to, you know, hats off to us, really, because now when the white helmets are producing their usual one kid in their arms running towards the camera, they haven't changed much. People are really attacking them on social media. I mean, really going after them. And I would also say a lot of, 'cause I saw, oh God, Owen Jones is back on the scene attacking Assad and attacking Syria generally, because if you remember, when I was in Aleppo in December 2016 and I was following the army as it was liberating various districts of East Aleppo, Owen Jones was trumpeting in the Guardian that the Syrian Arab army were raping women and executing people in the streets. And I remember literally going on RT and saying, I have no idea what he's talking about as the Syrian army soldiers whose family lived in East Aleppo were carrying them out of the buildings, hugging them, falling on their knees in front of their relatives and things like, it was appalling, you know? And so these people, I mean, I don't know, they're just, they're absolute, they're parasites, really. And, you know, he's back on it again now. It's like the whole lot of them have just been re-triggered and it's like they're just back to business as normal now with Syria, but what is really interesting, until 2016, it was very difficult to push back against those dominant narratives. Now what I'm seeing on social media, 95% of the comments are, are you stupid, basically? People are pushing back. So that at least is a sign of the degree of success we had, finally, in demonstrating to people what was going on. And, you know, I'm sort of very pleased to see that that is a degree of encouragement, really. - Who are the people that are pushing back in that way? And what makes them different to the people that were amplifying the bogus narratives over the last few days? - I think you put your finger on it when you said there are elements within social media that have been established and allowed to flourish and grow to ridiculous levels who are being controlled. Whether it's by intelligence agencies of their country, media agencies, whatever it is, these people are there to literally misinform or to mislead. And they've been given, because of course, they're not shadow banned. They're not banned on YouTube. They're allowed to monetize to the nth degree, even though apparently they are following our narratives and they're being controversial, but funnily enough, they never get censored. - Fine. - I mean, I'm hideously shadow bans on X. If Barla is, you are, you've been kicked off YouTube and forgotten how many times I'm constantly being struck off on YouTube and having my two week bans and so on. So there's no way on earth we can grow our audiences to the level that these people do. And they're there for that reason. - And the other thing about them is they appear very quickly. How did they get these big audiences almost apparently overnight, how does that happen? - Because they're given, they're managed basically. They're managed and funded. And they're managed and funded to stay on message, whatever that message may be. And they're allowed to, you know, well, no, they're not even allowed to. They're engineered to be controversial on certain subjects in order to achieve the credibility that they need. Although sometimes I do wonder, you know, how people jump on these kind of narcissist bandwagon that are literally being, that social media is being absolutely infiltrated with and how people don't see that this account is utterly managed, controlled, superficial and just literally directing narratives. This is one thing that I struggle to understand how people don't see through this. The people who are pushing back against the narrative, I would say, I've certainly seen a number of UK column members, but also I think, you know, I guess you're right. It's an age thing. The people who were not around when Syria first started and Iraq and Libya and so on, it's perhaps harder for them to catch up. They're perhaps even more attracted to the whole technocratic tyranny narratives because that's something that appeals more to their generation, to their age group and so on. Potentially, though, I'm just thinking out loud. But I think, you know, UK column played a huge part in pushing back against it. But I think now we're almost in a position where we need to really remind people of it and to start demonstrating that the same thing is happening again and not to fall for it again. I think I'm hoping the period of time for them to understand what's going on is gonna be much shorter than it was before because it took, what was it, nearly five years before really the public consensus started to shift after the liberation of Aleppo at the end of 2016. That's, for me, that was kind of the watershed moment. I suppose the thing that sort of makes me uncomfortable about this conversation as we've had it so far is that the criticisms that we have for how social media is being used echo the criticisms that the mainstream used to justify the creation of the online safety act, for example. I think we've got a, I'm not sure of what we do about it, but we've got to urge people to think about how they're using social media and to think about. I mean, is it an unfair rule of thumb to say that the more sensationalist and clickbait a post is, the more skepticism you should view it with? Is that a, would that be a good basic rule of thumb? - I think it's a good start, but I'm trying to think, I mean, that is what the majority of these accounts tend to do. You know, they know how to manage the algorithm, they know how to manage the audience. So, yeah, I mean, that is certainly one rule of thumb. I think for me, the best bit of advice, and I give it to myself because I'm not gonna lie, I was also, let's say, at least confused, and I was very affected by the fear that had been instilled in Syrians that I was speaking to. So even for me, I was struggling in those first, at least 24 hours and plus, some of the military high level had gone dark, and so this was also very, very disturbing for us because these are leaders and commanders who've really been in charge of the war from day one, and they kind of disappeared off the radar. Now, we did hear today that there was potential that the terrorists, when they came in, using probably Ukrainian or Israeli, or even Turkish technology, had managed to jam all of the communication systems. So I was, 'cause in the beginning, I was told there was an absolute breakdown in communication between the different brigades, and that had also led to confusion, but now it appears that there was a possibility that they had used these communication jamming techniques used, of course, we think, by Hamas on October the 7th to jam the Israeli surveillance systems, for example. That's what some reports have said then. So that would kind of explain these stories of breakdown in communication, the command didn't know what was going on, the soldiers had no idea what was going on, that was being said in the first 24 hours. So that's what I'm saying, you have to wait to piece together the bits of information that you can extract from a situation. And what I would advise people is, please don't go for those people who've made a conclusion in the first five minutes, because that is impossible. It's impossible, doesn't matter who they are, right? It's not possible. As I said, it takes time, and even now, as you said, who will have the full picture would be people in high-level command, and they're not gonna be sharing that information with anyone, we can only speculate, but at least let speculate with some of the facts from on the ground, not from knee-jerk reaction accounts that want to amplify one aspect of the story or another, Syria is falling, or Assad is gone, Assad has fled the country and gone to Russia. I mean, that was like another one that was gathering a lot of traction, right? It's like, just take a deep breath. You know, you don't need to know right now what's happening other than the basics, but there's no point in trying to speculate on what might have gone wrong, what might have gone right. Was this a trap, was this a strategy? You can't say that. Even I can't fully say exactly what happened. I can't. It's impossible. I mean, you know, we've now got people that evacuated from Aleppo here in Damascus, so potentially I can go and talk to them and at least get an idea from them. But even from them, it's only gonna be one percentage of the overall perspective. For us here, we've got to recognize that there are people out there who have the intention of causing stress and angst. They are there specifically to wind people up and generate. More lies, more lies. You know, that's very important. Demoralize people. So we've got to learn to take a step back and just be a bit cautious about what we're looking at. Because, you know, this is gonna be a very long war and we have absolutely no idea what other factions are going to be involved. I mean, there was a statement put out by a former military intelligence guy, Mordecai Qedah today on one of the Israeli media channels. And basically he was saying that he had direct communication with the terrorist factions. And they were saying in return for normalization with Israel, the terrorist factions would normalize with Israel efficiently, of course, they already are. They want Israel to supply arms, supply weapons, supply technology. And we know that Ukraine has been training the terrorists in the Northwest under the command of Abu Ahmad Jalani for some time. And it's Ukrainian drones that are being used against the Syrian Arab army at the moment. And the interesting thing is some of the armed groups that noticed are wearing bright yellow ribbons around their helmets and around their sleeve. And I can only assume, because I've never seen it before in any of the groups, that this is related to Ukraine. Because they wouldn't use yellow normally because it's a Hezbollah, it's the Hezbollah flag is yellow. We're seeing exactly who's playing in this at the moment. Turkey, Israel, Israel immediately after the ceasefire, the pivot to Syria. And I think I spoke about that on the last UK column news that this is what was going to happen. And, you know, why should Israel or Turkey expand their own forces when they can use their proxies? You know, Israel can direct the terrorists to take vital supply routes, to destroy research and development centers, to take control of the borders with Lebanon, Israel doesn't have to lift a finger. It just provides the weapon, and potentially the air support. What we might see is if there's a major counter-offensive, which is now being prepared, against the terrorists that have come from Aleppo down the Western routes into the northern Hamaa area. And you will remember when I've spoken often about the Syrian-Christian towns of Schelby and Mahadeh, that are now back under threat. But the Syrian army now has sent massive reinforcements to the Hamaa front. They're bombing those terrorists that have come from Aleppo and are now basically being caddled in a certain area. They're bombing them, those Russian heavy artillery. And one interesting thing, because one of the rumours that were circulating was that there had been a degree of betrayal, or mismanagement, let's say, from the commander of the Russian forces, who was Sergei Kessel. Now, after Assad's visit to Moscow on Friday, he was dismissed. And Alexander Treyko is coming back immediately as the commander, and he was the commander during the last battles for Hamaa and all of the southern Idlib region. And he's known to be extremely effective. So this is another kind of pointer that there may have been even a problem with the Russian command, for example, right? Again, this is speculation, but based on the sequence of events. But the fact that Treyko is back here also reassures Syria to a large degree, because he's well trusted by the Syrian armed forces. - I think the point we've got to make just to end is that this isn't, and this is not a separate thing from the rest of what's going on in the world. Syria was never a separate thing. And this was, this I have to say, this is one of the things that people didn't get in the mid 2010s, you know, 2015, 2016, they all run that time. They didn't get that this was part of a much broader geopolitical action. - Yeah. - And we can't separate it from Libya. We can't separate it from Ukraine now. We can't separate it. In fact, we can't even really separate it from Iraq. - No. - And we certainly can't separate it from the fact that Iran is on the target list for the West. And we can't separate it from the fact that Russia is on the target list for the West. So, we've got to try to place what's going on in Syria in this broader, the wars with an S is actually the war because this is a global conflict now, really, because everybody's involved. I mean, you've just, you earlier listed the number of countries that are there as proxies against Assad in Syria, right? And we're seeing the same types of actors in fighting for the Ukrainian side. And the weapons have come from Libya and from other places as well. So, you know, this is not a local conflict. - No, absolutely not. And, you know, the exchange for Ukraine supplying drones and technology and training to Giuliani's terrorist forces was for Giuliani to hand big terrorists to go and fight in Ukraine against Russia. So, yes, you know, the wars are now blatantly connected. And a few people have spoken to me, including the Venezuelan ambassador, of the possibility that Trump does want to, he was elected on ending the war in Ukraine, right? So, to some degree, he's gonna have to follow through on that. And he's been allowed to be elected on that. So, we have to assume that those that are actually controlling and pulling the strings do, for some reason, want to pull out of Ukraine or at least, you know, move on to another war theater, which is, of course, potentially China, I think is the ultimate end game. And so, there is a possibility that Trump, or Trump's spokespeople, or whatever, or advisers, are already speaking to Putin, in order to come to some kind of deal on Ukraine, in exchange, potentially, for something in Syria. And so, you know, are we going to see, for example, we know that the Kurds that are now working under the Syrian-Arabani command are only going to do that if they feel the US is going to abandon them. That's the only time that the Kurds will come and negotiate something with Damascus. So, is it potential that Trump is saying, "All right, okay, I'll withdraw out of Northeastern Syria." Because in his mind, we can use the terrorists, and Turkey and Israel can control the terrorists, and we can use them to cut the supply lines, to destroy the defense manufacturing capability of Syria, to take control of the borders. We don't actually need to do this, and we don't really need the oil. We can take our troops out of there, because then the job is done for Israel. We don't need to do any more, right? And then we'll keep the al-Tanif base, which is the biggest base on the border, with Jordan and Iraq, in case, you know, we're needed in the future, and we can keep incubating terrorists there, and to keep the pressure on Assad. There is potential for Israel to invade in the South. We've been talking about that for some time. And so, you know, then that's kind of job done in Syria, I think, from their perspective. So they'll leave them with their oil, because who cares, basically. They don't need to further weaken the state. I'm not saying this is gonna happen, but I'm just saying maybe that's how he's thinking, and then that frees him, he still has all his bases in Iraq, that frees him to pivot towards Iran or China. I mean, this is, again, as I said, this is just me thinking out loud, and some people have said to me, they think there are conversations going on already between Putin and Trump. But, you know, the fact that Russia now is definitely standing by Syria. It's not going to. I don't think it would allow that level of terrorist infiltration, and I think Russia sees ending the terrorist presence, as does President Assad, inside Syria. So, you know, we've got, as you said, a huge number of very powerful players involved in all the region, not only in Syria, in Palestine, in Lebanon, definitely. I mean, why did the ceasefire happen? Because the US was engineering internal strife, in Lebanon itself, I'm putting pressure on Hezbollah, because Israel started bombing other sectors of Beirut that were not related to Hezbollah. So, I don't think they had any choice but to accept the ceasefire. Putin has to support the Syrian government against the terrorists, because Putin has very much drawn a line in the sand in Ukraine with respect to extremist elements. There would be Nazis as he called them and so on. He can't take that position in Ukraine and then allow extremist activity in Syria and maintain any kind of credibility. Yes, that thing. But I do think you'll see under Trump, I do think you'll see the foot off the pedal in Ukraine and a pivot east. I do kind of think that's what's coming. And I think that's why you're also seeing now the color revolution in Georgia, gathering momentum. Because again, that's one, I think it's a bargaining chip, because look, you know, we'll create problems in Georgia again, if you don't come to the table about Ukraine and so on, see what I mean. So everything is connected, everything that's going on at the moment. And we all need to keep that in mind and be a bit more discerning with our social media activity. Please, because, I mean, really genuinely, it has such a detrimental psychological warfare effect on the countries and the people of the countries that are in the eye of the storm, it really does. And we need to remember that, you know, when we're attracted to sensationalism. And on ourselves, Vanessa, people are very fractious at the moment because people are under a lot of stress everywhere. And so we are killing ourselves in the process as well. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, we will leave that there for today. Thank you very much for joining me. We will follow up on this. Thanks, Mike. - Tired of the same old decorations? 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Mike Robinson speaks to Vanessa Beeley about the ongoing insurgency in Syria, and the effect of social media narratives on the lives of people living in Syria. This podcast was recorded on Tuesday, 3rd December.