Lawfare Archive: What's Going on in Syria
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2024
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From October 19, 2019: It's been a horrible week in northeastern Syria. The U.S. abandoned its Kurdish allies after the president had a conversation by phone with Turkish President Erdogan and pulled the plug on the stabilizing U.S. presence in the region. The Turkish government began a major incursion over the border, which has produced significant casualties and major questions about ISIS detainees in Kurdish custody.
To talk through it all, we pulled together quite a group. In the first half of the podcast, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Scott R. Anderson and Dan Byman, both of Brookings and Lawfare. In the second half, Ben sat down with Oula A. Alrifai, a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Leah West, a Lecturer of International Affairs at Carleton University in Canada.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:10.8 | at patreon.com slash lawfare. That's patreon.com slash lawfare. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings rational security chatter lawfare no bull and the aftermath |
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| 1:00.7 | That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. I'm Ben Green, intern at Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare Archive for December 15th, |
| 1:21.6 | 2024. |
| 1:23.3 | Following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the Free Syrian Army led led by Hayat-Tahrir al-Shan, HTS, |
| 1:30.2 | and their leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani have taken the reins of government. |
| 1:34.3 | With Turkey and Israel intervening in Syria to guarantee their security interests, |
| 1:38.7 | much attention has been devoted to the self-governing Kurdish regions in the northeast of the country |
| 1:43.2 | and how the American-backed Kurdish coalition regions in the northeast of the country, and how the American-backed |
| 1:44.8 | Kurdish coalition, under the banner of the Syrian Defence Forces, will be dealt with by the new |
| 1:49.4 | government and the involved foreign powers. For today's archive episode, I selected an episode |
| 1:54.6 | from October 19, 2019, The Lawfare Podcast, What's Going on in Syria, in which Benjamin Witters sat down with two groups of experts to discuss the first Trump administration's decision to discontinue aid to the Kurdish forces. |
| 2:08.7 | In the first half of the podcast, Witters spoke to Gail Tiemach Lemon, Scott R. Anderson, and Dan Biman. |
| 2:15.3 | In the second half, Wichers sat down with Ula A. Al-Refai, |
| 2:19.1 | a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, |
... |
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