Conflicted Community: Aaron Zelin – Assad’s Fall and the Future of Syria

CONFLICTED

Message Heard

Religion & Spirituality, History

4.7 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

ANOTHER EMERGENCY EPISODE Things are, as ever, moving at lightning speed in the Middle East, as last weekend on December 8th, Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian regime fell. After 13 years of civil war, and more than 50 years of his family’s rule, in an extraordinary turn of events rebel groups from the south and the north marched on Damascus. Assad has fled to Moscow; the future for Syria is unclear. It’s one of the most momentous events in modern Middle Eastern history, so this week Thomas invited one of the world’s leading experts on the Syrian Civil War onto the show to help make sense of it (and he’s a dear listener to Conflicted himself!) – Aaron Zelin. Aaron is the Gloria and Ken Levy Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University, the founder of the hugely acclaimed website Jihadology, and the author of the really excellent book Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad. Many listeners will no doubt have also been glued to his social media feeds over the past week, for updates and analysis, as he brought his incredible insight in real time as Assad’s regime melted away. Thomas and Aaron discuss the incredible events over the weekend, before looking ahead to what the future might hold for Syria’s minority communities – from the Kurds to the Alawites – and how this new regime will affect the always fascinating geopolitics of the region. To listen to the full episode, you’ll need to subscribe to the Conflicted Community. And don’t forget, subscribers can also join our Conflicted Community chatroom, where you can interact with fellow dearest listeners, discuss episodes past and future, get exclusive messages from Thomas and Aimen, ask future Q&A questions and so much more. All the information you need to sign up is on this link: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	For exclusive bonus episodes of Conflicted, including interviews with renowned thinkers about the Muslim world, access to our Discord chat hub and ad-free listening, become a dearest listener now by signing up to the conflicted community.
0:17.7	The link to join is in our show notes or just go to conflicted.
0:21.6	Supportingcast.fm.
0:23.6	Hello, dearest listeners and welcome back.
0:31.6	As you may have anticipated, it's another change of schedule to our conflicted community programming because Syria's
0:39.1	Assad regime has fallen. Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad, who oversaw a state apparatus credited
0:46.9	with butchering hundreds of thousands of Syrians over 13 years of civil war is finished,
0:56.7	living now in exile in Moscow.
1:00.5	And, well, what else is there to talk about, honestly?
1:07.8	What transpired last weekend over the 7th and 8th of December, as rebel groups took the Syrian capital of Damascus,
1:15.0	has got to be one of the most extraordinary unexpected developments I can remember in modern Middle East history.
1:18.3	And how many times have we said that over the past year?
1:26.6	And so to help make sense of it, I'm thrilled to say we have one of the world's foremost experts on the Syrian Civil War with us today,
1:29.7	an expert especially on the jihadists that,
1:36.7	it seems, have come out on top, for now at least. He's the Gloria and Ken Levy fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a visiting research scholar in the Department of
1:41.6	Politics at Brandeis University, the founder of the hugely
1:45.5	acclaimed website, Jihadology, and the author of the really excellent book, Your Sons are at
1:51.5	your service, Tunisia's Missionaries of Jihad. I'm sure, like Usett conflicted, you've also
1:57.0	been glued to his social media feeds over the past week for updates and analysis
2:01.4	as one by one, assets, centers of power all fell to the rebels.
2:07.9	Conflicted community, please welcome Aaron Zelen.
2:11.7	Aaron, thanks so much for being here at such short notice.
	...

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