00:00Joshua Landis is the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
00:06Well, I think it's of the former. Syria is divided.
00:11It used to be that the Alawites ruled under Assad. That's a big generalization.
00:17He had many allies, particularly amongst the minorities.
00:21And today, the Sunni Arabs are supreme in Syria.
00:26And Ahmed Shara is a Sunni Arab. And so the minorities are quite frightened.
00:32And the Kurds in the Northeast, who make up about 12, perhaps 13 percent of the population of Syria,
00:39helped the United States defeat ISIS.
00:43And they've been armed and trained by the United States.
00:46But today, the United States has pivoted towards Ahmed Shara and the new Damascus government,
00:53leaving the Kurds in a very weak position.
00:57But they do dominate a very important part, perhaps 25 percent of Syrian territory,
01:02which has much of the gas and good agriculture.
01:05So the central government wants this back, not only because it wants to show that it's sovereign,
01:11but also in order to revive the economy of Syria.
01:14We know that the United States, you say, is now supporting the new government.
01:20They've also, and we've heard this in the last 24 hours,
01:23they have been attacking ISIS positions in different parts of the country.
01:28I wonder if you could give us a sense of how much of a threat is a group like ISIS still in Syria?
01:38ISIS is an annoyance.
01:41The problem for the Kurds and other minorities is that Ahmed Shara,
01:47the president of Syria, of the new president, used to be the head of al-Qaeda in Syria.
01:55He has transformed himself today.
01:58He has moderated.
01:59But many of his fighters are still quite radical and hold Salafi jihadist ideas.
02:07And so there's a spectrum of Syrians going from ISIS at the extreme right,
02:14right through other Salafi jihadists who are members of the present regime.
02:19And that terrifies Syria's minorities who are worried that they're going to be marginalized.
02:25They're going to be discriminated against.
02:27Given those competing forces, those fears, and that history on all sides,
02:33how much hope do you have for building a united state, for building a united country in Syria?
02:42Well, I think this government is on its way to doing that.
02:45The problem is, is that many Syrians, and about 30% of Syrians, belong to ethnic and religious minorities.
02:52They are going to get the short end of the stick.
02:55Now, of course, the Sunni Arabs feel like they have been victimized
02:59and gotten the short end of the stick for decades.
03:03So, in a sense, the shoe is on the other foot.
03:06Will they consolidate power?
03:07I believe they will.
03:08They are the majority, 70% of Syrians are Sunni Arabs.
03:12But I imagine minorities will begin to leave Syria in large numbers.
03:17They are the majority, 70% of Syrians are the majority, 70% of Syrians are the majority of Syrians.
