What's Going on in Syria
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 October 2019
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | We already see the serum regime advancing through these Kurdish areas. |
| 0:39.4 | They're surrounding towns while they're promising the Kurdish leadership to protect the civilians. |
| 0:45.6 | However, I'm very skeptical about that. |
| 0:48.5 | There's going to be a lot of civilian casualties on all sides. |
| 0:52.2 | There's already like 200 and probably 50 to 300 civilian casualties in the past 24 hours. |
| 1:00.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittis and this is the LawFair podcast October 19th, 2019. |
| 1:06.9 | It's been a horrible week in Northeastern Syria. |
| 1:10.4 | The US abandoned its Kurdish allies after the president had a conversation by phone with |
| 1:16.7 | Turkish president Erdogan and pulled the plug on the stabilizing US presence in the region. |
| 1:23.4 | The Turkish government began a major incursion over the border which has produced significant |
| 1:30.0 | casualties and major questions about ISIS detainees in Kurdish custody. |
| 1:36.6 | We got together a heck of a group to talk through it all. |
| 1:40.2 | Joining me in the first half of the show are Dan Bimon and Scott Anderson, both of Brookings |
| 1:46.3 | and LawFair and Gail Semahleman. |
| 1:49.8 | Joining us remotely, Gail is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations |
| 1:56.2 | and just finished a book on Northeastern Syria. |
| 1:59.8 | In the second half of the show, we have Ola Al-Ritha, of the Washington Institute and Leo |
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