00:00For more, let's speak to Henry Barkey, a professor in international relations at Lehigh University. Hello to you, professor. First question. Syria's military says it's captured strategic towns. Heavy clashes are reported elsewhere. Help us understand what's happening on the ground in Syria.
00:13Well, there has been a very quiet, shall we say, arrangement between the Syrian Kurds and the central government since Bashar al-Assad fell last year.
00:29The problem is that the Syrian government, which is run by a former al-Qaeda person, with the Turkish government behind it, has tried to take over, and what we're seeing now is an effort, take over the autonomous region that is run by Syrian Kurds.
00:54Now, Syrian Kurds had never really had any power in Syria under Bashar al-Assad and its father's regime, but was very instrumental in the overthrow of Assad.
01:07But more importantly, what the Syrian Kurds, in alliance with the United States, did was to fight the al-Qaeda or the, I should say, I'm sorry, the Islamic State, and defeated the Islamic State in Syria.
01:22And today they control big prisons where there are tens of thousands of former Islamic State prisoners that nobody really wants.
01:35So the Syrian government has been trying to control and get control over the whole region, and the two sides, the Kurds and the Syrian government, could not come to an agreement.
01:47They have a tentative agreement that they signed March 10th of last year, but that was a very ambiguous agreement that could not be implemented.
01:57So now, with the American government involved in so many different issues, whether it's Greenland or Gaza or Venezuela, Trump has not paid attention to this issue.
02:13So the Syrian government is taking advantage of that, pushed by the Turks, with Turkish support, taking over by force the Syrian Kurdish area.
02:24This is going to be very, very bad for Syria.
02:28It's going to begin, again, a major conflict between the Kurds and the Syrian government.
02:34It's going to be very bloody.
02:36Well, I wanted to ask you about that.
02:39We're 13 months after Bashar al-Assad was toppled.
02:42This new government had said it was going to unify the country.
02:45There's a lot of skepticism about that, but people did have hope.
02:49I mean, what is at stake at Syria now?
02:51Are these uprisings?
02:52Are these clashes, or could this bleed into something much, much bigger?
02:58Well, it has already.
02:59I mean, if you look at what's happening today in northern Syria, these government forces forced the Kurds to move east of the Euphrates River.
03:15Remember, the Kurds agreed to do it after the fighting, but now we are seeing the first signs of the Syrian forces trying to cross to the east of the Euphrates, into areas that are completely controlled by the Kurds, that are majority Kurdish areas.
03:34And if that happens, you're going to see major massacres.
03:39Remember, the government of Syria is run by somebody who runs something called Hayat Tashkir, which was an affiliate of al-Qaeda.
03:50It is really an Islamic State, and the big mistake that was made was for Trump to recognize and give support to Assad, the new president of Iraq, without putting any kind of limits on his behavior.
04:09And now we're seeing the results of that, and the United States seems to be completely out of this, out of the picture at the moment.
04:20This is really, really, really bad, and we will see that if the Syrian forces are really pushed back on the east of the Euphrates as well, you're going to see the Kurds becoming a guerrilla force.
04:36And there's going to be repercussions in other parts of the Middle East, because remember, Kurds are a minority not just in Syria, in Turkey, in Iraq, and in Iran.
04:48But in Iraq and in Turkey, this attack on the Kurds will undermine a whole series of arrangements and agreements.
04:58And I think we'll see violence increase, certainly in Turkey, as a result of this.
05:03Iraqi Kurds are in much better shape, because they're recognized as a federal state by the Iraqi government.
05:10But it is really in Turkey and Syria that we will see major fighting and massacres.
05:16All right, Professor, thank you very much for your time, Professor Henri Barkey, joining us from Washington.
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