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00:00Secretary, I understand you just got back from a trip to Syria and Lebanon.
00:04What were your initial impressions? And just kind of give us the lay of the land.
00:07Yes, I was in Beirut, in Damascus, and in Homs this week.
00:12And essentially, you see two countries which had good 2025s.
00:18In Syria, they got rid of a hated regime.
00:20In Lebanon, they established a new and credible government.
00:23But 2026 and the Iran war threatens to suck them back into a vortex of conflict and destabilization.
00:32Lebanon, you mentioned rightly, one in five of the population now being driven from their homes.
00:38A country of just five to six million people, already a million refugees from Syria.
00:43So this is a country that's really on the edge.
00:46And the scale of need is really monumental.
00:48If I just tell you that the poorest citizens in Lebanon are being given about a quarter of what they
00:55need to survive as a family of five for a month,
00:58you can see the kind of pressure, the pressure cooker, in fact, that exists in the country.
01:04There's a fascinating story on the Bloomberg Terminal about how Israel's war is pitting a country against itself.
01:11David, the ongoing war is driving apart communities because of the rift between Israel and Hezbollah.
01:19What can you tell us about that?
01:20That's a really good point, Joe.
01:22What I would say is that there are a lot of people angry with almost everyone who is present in
01:30the country and on the conflict.
01:31So there's a lot of anger towards Hezbollah, which fired rockets at Israel after the killing of the Iranian supreme
01:37leader.
01:38Obviously, Iran sponsors Hezbollah.
01:40So there's anger towards Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon to someone else's war.
01:45There's anger, too, towards Israel, which now occupies significant swathes of southern Lebanon.
01:52You'll remember that that's happened before, between 1982 and 2000.
01:56It was disastrous for Lebanon, disastrous for Israel, too.
02:00There's anger towards the government because people want the government to have more agency, more leadership.
02:05And there's enormous anger towards the international community, including the United States, for starting a war just as Lebanon was
02:12getting back on its feet and significantly for cutting the aid budget.
02:16Because just as needs are rising, we're having to lay off our own staff in Lebanon.
02:22We have 100 international rescue committee staff in Lebanon rather than 200.
02:25So the most basic humanitarian needs are just not being met.
02:30What is the relationship between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah?
02:33I remember I was there at the start of the Syrian war and went into the Bakah Valley and some
02:37of these strongholds.
02:38And at the time, when you drove around there, there were big banners of, you know, the Iranian leadership, of
02:44IRGC leadership.
02:45I don't think those are there anymore.
02:47And then earlier this year, you had this kind of striking moment where the Lebanese government kind of officially banned
02:52Hezbollah's independent military activities.
02:54They spoke out against Hezbollah.
02:56Has that had any kind of effect on the governing body and popular sentiment for Hezbollah in that country?
03:03Well, there are different communities in Lebanon, and they have different allegiances.
03:09Of course.
03:09The banners that you saw in the north of the Beqar Valley, they're still there.
03:14There are communities who feel they have no option but to support Hezbollah.
03:20That's the Shia communities, because the governments historically and the other communities have not given them enough of a stake
03:27in the system.
03:28And I think it's very important to recognize that the government that came in last week, last year, determined to
03:35make a new offer to all communities in Lebanon.
03:39That was the key.
03:40It's a government led by prime minister, former World Bank official.
03:45The system continues to offer different places in the political system to different representatives, different communities.
03:52But you can't say there's one attitude of the Lebanese population to any of these actors.
03:57It's a country that has many different denominations, many different factions and elements.
04:03And the critical question is whether the center can hold.
04:07And what you were pointing to, I think, in your question is that with a million Syrians in the main,
04:12the Shia population, pushed into other parts of the country,
04:16the great danger is that tension rises again in Christian, in Sunni, in Druze communities.
04:21Interesting. So what happens to these communities in the south that have essentially emptied out?
04:28Israel says it plans to seize control of territory south of the Latani River, and we have seen a mass
04:35exodus in that area.
04:36What will happen to those villages?
04:38Well, that question is exactly what I'm being asked by Lebanese people I met last Wednesday in Beirut.
04:45Beirut. They say to me, I'll tell you, the wife of a baker said, look, we had a bakery on
04:51the Lebanon-Israel border.
04:52It got bombed in November 2024.
04:54We moved to Tyre on the Mediterranean coast.
04:59We set up a new bakery.
05:01We've now had to leave that again.
05:03There's stories over the weekend of Tyre being bombed.
05:06And what that lady said to me, she said, look, what is my future?
05:11I can't go back, but I can't go forward.
05:13She's in a government shelter at the moment.
05:15About 15 percent of the total million people displaced are in government shelters.
05:20And when I say shelter, that's an old school.
05:22So kids are kicked out of school so that people have got somewhere to live.
05:25So that's what I mean by the vortex of conflict and instability.
05:28And that woman was saying to me, I don't know if I have a future in Lebanon.
05:33And I'm afraid there's no good answer to that question at the moment.
05:36The Israeli government have said that, I mean, in a chilling phrase, they've said that some towns are going to
05:41be razed in the Gaza style.
05:44So obviously that is heard in Lebanon.
05:47There's talk of occupation.
05:48The emergency coordinator for the United Nations said the danger is that the southern Lebanon gets added to the list
05:55of occupied territories.
05:57And there's no good answer at the moment.
05:58And that's why those of us who know that Lebanon and its stability are an important part of the mosaic
06:04of the Middle East, that's why we're worried.
06:07I do also want to ask you about Iran more broadly.
06:09But first, I do also want to ask you about your impressions of Syria, because, I mean, the fact that
06:14you were able to go to Damascus and homes still startles me as someone who covered that war for so
06:19long.
06:19I mean, I was in field hospitals in Lebanon interviewing people who'd been struck with bullets, fleeing homes, mothers, children.
06:25I think it's promising that you're able to go there safely.
06:28But how is al-Shura, how is that new Syrian government going, especially in light of what's happening in Iran?
06:34Do you think this is putting undue pressure on a very nascent government there?
06:38Well, it's a very good point.
06:40The government is under extraordinary pressure.
06:42When you cross the Jordan-Syria border, the Syrian—by the way, you can hear the air raid sirens on the
06:48Jordanian side as you reach the border.
06:50When I got to the border, there's a big sign which says, take a selfie here.
06:55Welcome to the new Syria.
06:56So there's a determined attempt by the government to say that there's change in the air.
07:01I was there last May, just after—five months after President Shiraz took over.
07:05I met clients, but I also had the chance to meet him.
07:08He said, I need this to be a Syria for all Syrians, but I need month-by-month progress.
07:13And the crisis that they face is between expectations and reality.
07:17Expectations are still high, but the reality on the ground is a very slow progress.
07:22And the great danger is that the money that was promised for Syria by the Gulf countries is now going
07:28to have to be spent in the Gulf, on defense, on resilience.
07:31And Syrians and the Syrian government are worried about where they fit in, given the pressures that they face.
07:36They've got a war in Iran to their east.
07:39They've got war in Lebanon to their west.
07:42They don't want to get squeezed.
07:43Yeah, that's a really good point.
07:44So, David, where does this leave rescue workers, something that you know a lot about, peacekeepers, people who are actually
07:51bringing resources to those in need?
07:53We saw two Indonesian peacekeepers from the UN Iterum Force in Lebanon killed by a roadside bomb last week.
08:01Two others were injured.
08:03Could we get to the point where help cannot get to where it's going?
08:07Well, we've already reached that point in some parts of the world.
08:10It's never been more dangerous to be a civilian or to be an aid worker.
08:13More civilians were killed in conflict in 2025 than soldiers were killed.
08:19100,000 or so civilians were killed, according to independent estimates, and 640 aid workers were killed as well.
08:27Now, obviously, that work that is absolutely essential to keep not just body and soul together for people who are
08:34in need,
08:35but frankly also as a mitigation of destabilization.
08:38I mean, if you don't treat humanitarian need, then you store up trouble.
08:42And that's the great danger at the moment because we face this assistive effect, if you like.
08:47On the one hand, needs are high and rising, in some ways becoming more complex.
08:52At the same time, the aid budget has been more or less halved.
08:56I mean, there couldn't have been a worse time to have an Iran war, and there couldn't be a worse
08:59time to be cutting the aid budget.
09:01And that's something that obviously is of concern to us at the International Rescue Committee.
09:05We have thousands of aid workers, locally hired staff across the Middle East as well as across Africa and South
09:11Asia.
09:12And what we see is that scissors effect really destabilizing the communities that we're trying to serve.
09:18There's so much conflict going on in the world right now.
09:20We were already at a point before these two recent conflicts where aid organizations were saying they were reaching not
09:26only the extent of what they could do,
09:28especially after the departure of USAID, but compassion fatigue even from donors.
09:32It is a holiday weekend.
09:33People are reflecting and talking about their families.
09:35You've been doing this for a while now.
09:37What is your best advice to people who feel like there's too much, they can't help, they don't know what
09:42to do?
09:43How do you fight that compassion fatigue and make a difference?
09:45Yeah, I think the most important thing that I've learned is that it's not hope that leads to action.
09:51It's action that leads to hope.
09:53And I would say to people, visit the IRC website, rescue.org, learn about what's going on,
09:59and learn about how, yes, each individual contribution may seem small,
10:03but we think we helped about 28 million people last year.
10:07That's a hell of an operation.
10:09And so this idea that we shouldn't care because there's nothing that can be done,
10:14I would turn it around.
10:15There's something that can be done, and surely we care enough.
10:19The world has more resources to do more good than at any time in human history,
10:22and woe betide us if we don't make the most of it.
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