Hello American prestige listeners. It's Derek, and I am joined once again. Very grateful to be

joined by Iman Jawada Tamimi, a translator and historian focused on Iraq, Syria, jihadist groups,

and medieval Iberia.

As I learned, the last time he was on the program just a few days ago, I mean, I know at the time I said, I was sure we would have you back on. I did not think it was going to be five days later

to talk about the ouster of Bashar al-Assad and Syrian rebels in the capitals. So why don't we start there?

First of all, thanks for coming back so soon.

And why don't we start with just bring people up to speed on what's happened over the past few days?

Right.

Basically, last time we were talking, it was really about the push of the insurgency in the northwest through to Hammer City and

to up and going to Homs and potentially splitting the Assad regime's territory in two.

And all the question was, was there going to be a big battle in Homs or was it going to be neighborhood, neighbor fighting?

Would there be more of a fight because of, say, of Alawites in Homs, of Alawites being the sect from which Bichard Asset comes and from what, you know, who lost so many young men during this war, during this war.

But really, actually, what happened is you just had a very

rapid collapse of the Assad regime's forces and just all these withdrawals from places across the

country, from the South, from the East. And it was all, it it was as though it seemed there was a sensible

impression that it was um gearing up for one last fight potentially a big battle for the capital

but really actually what's happened is uh what did happen was that the sy Syrian regime's army and the auxiliary forces with it were just

basically giving up and en masse and essentially therefore what then happened was in Homs that

the locals made clear that they eventually as they the rep, as the insurgents,

reached the outskirts, that they were not going to fight or they were not going to put up fight.

And they just called on the insurgents to spare bloodshed and made a commitment to nonviolence.

And this is what's happened.

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