--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This episode features some descriptions of violence. None of it's terribly graphic, but this is a heads up if you need it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll start in a moment. Jen Williams, co-host of Vox's Worldly podcast, the president made a big announcement this weekend.
--:-- Jen Williams: That's right. Who died? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS.
--:-- Jen Williams: His full name is actually Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri, but he goes by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. That's his kunya, his war nickname, basically.
--:-- Jen Williams: He's the head honcho of ISIS. He was the big guy in charge, and he's dead.
--:-- Jen Williams: Where is he from? He's from Iraq.
--:-- Jen Williams: He grew up in a kind of middle-class family in Iraq. He was very religious growing up.
--:-- Jen Williams: He actually did his master's thesis on this really obscure, like, medieval, Quranic text interpretation.
--:-- Jen Williams: And then the Iraq War happened. First Bush or second Bush?
--:-- Jen Williams: Second Bush. Got it.
--:-- Jen Williams: The U.S. invades Iraq in 2003. Iraq kind of turns into chaos.
--:-- Jen Williams: You have the U.S. basically disbands the Iraqi military, the Ba'athist regime. They kind of all scatter.
--:-- Jen Williams: There's no structure. There's no military. There's no security forces.
--:-- Jen Williams: So the U.S. is fighting all these different people on the ground.
--:-- Jen Williams: It actually ends up arresting Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi around 2004 and putting him in Camp Bukha, which is this really notorious U.S. prison in Iraq.
--:-- Jen Williams: And it basically became this kind of terrorist training camp.
--:-- Jen Williams: These people were able to network in this facility.
--:-- Jen Williams: And he comes out and basically has a lot more connections and is really pissed off.
--:-- Jen Williams: And then goes on to kind of basically exploit the chaos on the ground that proceeded out of, you know, the Iraq war.
--:-- Jen Williams: Flash forward, he creates this kind of really powerful organization.
--:-- Jen Williams: It kind of morphs out of this other organization, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and kind of turns into this thing.
--:-- Jen Williams: He becomes a rising star and eventually consolidates power and takes over.
--:-- Jen Williams: And then 2015 happens. ISIS takes over entire chunks of Iraq and Syria.
--:-- Jen Williams: And he becomes this monster, this horrific figure who's giving speeches and calling for, you know, the beheadings of people and calling for, you know, the declaration of this caliphate.
--:-- Jen Williams: So he was the figurehead of ISIS.
--:-- Jen Williams: So how does he go from, like, peak caliphate to hiding out in Syria?
--:-- Jen Williams: Basically, the U.S. decides to fight ISIS because ISIS starts carrying out attacks, takes over again entire chunks of Iraq and Syria.
--:-- Jen Williams: And then, you know, ISIS starts inspiring attacks from, you know, homegrown extremists here in the United States and in Europe.
--:-- Jen Williams: So the United States recognizes this is a really serious thing and starts fighting them through the efforts of both the U.S., but also Kurdish fighters on the ground.
--:-- Jen Williams: Our Kurdish kind of allies in Syria, basically decimate the caliphate and take it out.
--:-- Jen Williams: So he goes to ground. Al-Baghdadi basically goes into hiding.
--:-- Jen Williams: Nobody really knows where he is. Everyone's trying to find him.
--:-- Jen Williams: The caliphate's crumbling. He was really like not very present.
--:-- Jen Williams: He only would release videos maybe like once a year if that was mostly his spokespeople and the fighters on the ground who were doing that.
--:-- Jen Williams: And he was just kind of like behind the scenes, like the man behind the curtain pulling the strings.
--:-- Jen Williams: But it turns out he was basically hiding in this compound in northwestern Syria.
--:-- Jen Williams: And is this Syria that's controlled by Syria, Syria that's controlled by?
--:-- Jen Williams: It's mostly Al-Qaeda controlled area of Syria.
--:-- Jen Williams: It's not the part of Syria we've been talking about in previous episodes where the U.S. is.
--:-- Jen Williams: Is the United States looking for him this whole time?
--:-- Jen Williams: For the past, you know, five months or so, there's been this kind of effort to try to locate him.
--:-- Jen Williams: Starting this summer, basically, forces captured one of his wives and a courier.
--:-- Jen Williams: So we essentially arrest and interrogate one of his wives and a courier.
--:-- Jen Williams: We get some kind of more general information as to where he is.
--:-- Jen Williams: And then we had this disaffected ISIS member who basically turned on ISIS and started becoming an informant for the Kurds.
--:-- Jen Williams: And I was working with them for a couple of months.
--:-- Jen Williams: These are the Kurds who have been helping the United States fight ISIS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Exactly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Feel betrayed by the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, they basically ended up in the past couple weeks getting like a very pinpointed location as to where Baghdadi was, and they planned this raid on this compound.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the president described this raid in great detail yesterday during a press conference he gave.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What exactly happened as far as we know?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So as far as we know, there were basically some Delta Force members, so these are like the super elite fighting force.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We had eight helicopters, and we had many other ships and planes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was a military dog or two.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was a robot. Just in case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because we were afraid he had a suicide vest on, and if you get close to him and he blows it up, you're going to die.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was a really small force, like fewer than 100 soldiers on the ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These eight helicopters take off from a base in Iraq.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They land. It's this town called Berisha.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's in Idlib province in Syria.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's three miles south of the Turkish border.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: and they tried to call Baghdadi out first and said, hey, you know, do you want to come out and surrender?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He basically said no.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The U.S. forces blast open a side of the wall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They go in that way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Baghdadi escapes to these, like, tunnels.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's this, like, underground bunker tunnel system that ran underneath this house compound.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he apparently took a wrong turn and went to a dead end.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he had dragged three of his young children with him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They were led to certain death
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He reached the end of the tunnel as our dogs chased him down
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basically, soldiers end up having to dig through the rubble after the smoke clears and they find his remains.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They do a rapid DNA test within 15 minutes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Test results gave certain immediate and totally positive identification.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then finally, as they were lifting off, U.S. fighter jets fired six rockets at the compound and basically just detonated the whole place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right, I saw a photo of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's just like a crater now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, it's just like rubble.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of this is reminiscent of the raid on bin Laden and the execution of bin Laden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: with one glaring difference, which is, of course, we have a different president who handled the announcement a little differently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if you remember, and if you don't remember, I'll bring you back to it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When we found out that Osama bin Laden had been killed, Obama comes out to the podium.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He gives this very kind of tight, short speech.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Gives barely any details about what happened, just that there was this raid on this compound.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He talks about how we are not at war with Islam.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, we're at war with these very specific terrorists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then he leaves, and that's it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, Trump, on the other hand, comes out and gives a little bit of a statement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Last night, the United States brought the world's number one terrorist leader to justice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then proceeds to take questions for like the next 40 minutes in which he says all kinds of stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I got to watch it along with General Milley, Vice President Pence, others in the Situation Room.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we watched it so clearly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How did you watch this?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I don't want to say how, but we had absolutely perfect, as though you were watching a movie.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Called al-Baghdadi a dog, I don't know how many times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He died like a dog.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was intense.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, he describes him as like a coward and crying and whimpering and running down the tunnels and killing himself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it was basically what you would expect from Trump, but it's not what you would expect from a U.S. president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He thanks Russia, which people thought was kind of weird, but we actually had to fly over Russian military-controlled territory.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It actually makes sense.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, he divulges all these like really complicated details about the raid and like talking about the tunnels and the compound.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The tunnels were dead end for the most part.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was one we think that wasn't, but we had that covered too just in case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This was like he was, you know, he had just seen an action movie and he was super stoked and was like, oh, we totally killed this bad guy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: By my books.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, if you read my book, there was a book just before the World Trade Center came down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And by my books.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think I wrote 12 books.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All did very well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you also have to remember that, like, the name of the raid, it was named for Kayla Mueller, the U.S. aid worker who was abducted and repeatedly raped by Baghdadi himself before she was killed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they named the raid after her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you would hope at least the president would have a little bit more kind of understanding of the tone and the somber nature of the moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What does this actually mean for ISIS?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is the death of al-Baghdadi a big blow to the organization?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So yes and no.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was the figurehead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was the founder of ISIS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So symbolically, yes, it's a big deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Operationally, not so much.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because the way terrorist organizations, in particular ISIS, operate is that they devolve power significantly to different cells and different branches.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So by that measure, the organization is still able to operate without him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then you have to talk about the U.S. forces, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're still leaving Syria.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This doesn't change that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're going to be keeping some troops to protect the oil from ISIS, but we're not going to have, like, an active force on the ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're not going to be working with the Kurds to fight ISIS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think that actually even more than Baghdadi is probably the impact that we're going to see on ISIS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The withdrawal of U.S. troops is a net gain for ISIS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Whereas, you know, this, the killing of Baghdadi, yeah, it's a setback, but it's not necessarily something that is going to cripple the organization.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Can I just get your name and how you would like us to identify you for the record?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: My name is Mona Yakubian.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: I'm a senior advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what does that mean, Mona, specifically with regard to Syria?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: So I joined the Institute a few years ago, having had extensive experience working on Syria, both in government and then before in the think tank world.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Well before that, I was a Fulbright in Syria back in the mid 80s.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: So I focus largely on Syria in terms of my analysis, but I also provide a lot of strategic advice and consulting to the vice president who's in charge of the Middle East and Africa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, no.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow That would be interesting
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No the vice president of the United States.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: No, no.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Wow That would be interesting
--:-- Mona Yakubian: No the vice president of the U Institute of Peace a vice president
--:-- Mona Yakubian: There are several
--:-- Mona Yakubian: My formal title is actually senior advisor to the vice president for Middle East and Africa
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so we've been talking a lot about Syria in the past few weeks, but we haven't asked a vital question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm wondering if we can start with that, which is up until President Trump made this decision with the president of Turkey a few weeks ago to pull out United States troops, who was in control of Syria?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Well, that's a complicated question because Syria has been, since the onset of this conflict now, almost nine years ago, it's been fragmented with the regime of Bashar al-Assad gaining increasing control over the western part of Syria.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: So up to three weeks ago, the regime had controlled about two-thirds of the country, close to.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Then there was a portion of the country that remains under the control of extremists that are somehow connected to al-Qaeda.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Then in the Far East, about 30% of the country was under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is a Kurdish-controlled armed group that has been the partner of the United States on the ground.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And in addition, you also had a portion of northwestern Syria controlled by Turkey and some of its Syrian proxies on the ground inside Syria.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, Syria, al-Qaeda, Syrian Kurds, and Turkey.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we know Turkey's presence there grows significantly once the U.S. troops pull out.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Are there any other big changes in the past few weeks?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Well, yeah, a big change was that when the U.S. announced its decision to withdraw from northeast Syria, the Russians, who have been a strong supporter and ally of the Assad regime, began to almost immediately fill the vacuum left by U.S. troops withdrawing, so much so that you had even Russian journalists videoing themselves at abandoned U.S. outposts just a matter of day or two after the U.S. had left.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And behind the Russians, of course, are also the forces of the Syrian regime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this killing of al-Baghdadi over the weekend in northwestern Syria, a portion of Syria that's controlled by al-Qaeda, does that change anything about the power balance in that country?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: You know, it doesn't affect the power balance directly.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Obviously, it's a huge setback for ISIS, and ISIS is an actor on the ground in Syria.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: They no longer control territory, but there has been and continues to be concern about an ISIS resurgence.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: The organization has been quite decentralized.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And so in a lot of ways, it won't have a direct effect on the balance of power in northern Syria or northeastern Syria.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: There, I think the real issue is going to be the extent to which Turkey and Russia are able to fulfill an agreement that they had negotiated that will allow for joint patrols between Turkey and Russia along a good portion of the border.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And that also allows Turkey to retain control of a portion of the Northeast that its forces had invaded now almost three weeks ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's sort of curious to talk about who controls this country in terms of the United States and Turkey and Russia, when so much of our discussions about Syria used to have to do with Bashar al-Assad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How is his power over the country viewed right now?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Well, I mean, if anything, the events over the last few weeks have actually redounded to his benefit.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: With the decision for the U.S. to withdraw, he now, without really having to fire a shot, his regime is able to begin to assume control in eastern Syria.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And this begins to fulfill his vow that he would retake, you know, every square kilometer of the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does that mean that he essentially won this war?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Well, it really depends on how you define win.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: He's won in the sense that his hold on power, at least for the short to medium term, is no longer really contested.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And if anything, he has continued, as I said, to consolidate control, to gain access to more territory.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: But what kind of Syria is he going to be ruling over is a whole other question.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: It is a highly fractured, violent, broken country.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: The international community remains arrayed against him.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: There's a vow not to provide any sort of reconstruction funding to this country that's been badly damaged by nearly a decade of war.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And he contending with sort of creeping insurgency and violence even in areas that he already regained control over which suggests that while he does sit firmly in Damascus his hold on power over the long term Syria stability is very much in question
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What does that mean for the Syrians who remain in the country?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Unfortunately, I think it means that the Syrians who live in Syria continue to live a life of great suffering.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: A large number of Syrians require humanitarian assistance.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Much of the country has been destroyed, many of their homes and schools.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: There's no economy to speak of, no jobs.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: This is really quite stunning when one thinks about the fact that prior to this conflict, this was a solidly middle-income country.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And now there's really no hope or prospect of any sort of peaceful reconciliation in the near term.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you have any idea how many people have fled the country at this point and how much of the population remains as a percentage?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Over half of the country has been displaced.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: So it's about 13 million people have been displaced over the course of this war.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Of those, about 6.5 million are refugees outside of the country.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And then the rest have been displaced internally.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Some of those people actually displaced multiple times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we're finding increasingly that host countries, whether it's Turkey or Lebanon, are becoming increasingly impatient with hosting large numbers of Syrian refugees.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And indeed, that's what Turkish President Erdogan said was one of the reasons that he insisted on invading northeastern Syria and creating what he's calling a safe zone was in order to return one to two million Syrian refugees from Turkey back into Syria.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But with Turkey and Russia and al-Assad in control here, what does the future of Syria look like for these people who are still there or might be coming back?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Well, I think, you know, in particular, this question of returning Syrian refugees who live in Turkey right now back to this part of Syria, that's very problematic because many of them are not from that part of Syria.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And there are portions of this area in Syria that are predominantly Kurd, while the Syrian refugees in Turkey are predominantly Arab.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So forcing them back into this part of Syria, some people are saying this could lead to a scenario of mass displacement and even ethnic cleansing of Kurds that live in that area.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: What's clear is that, you know, it's unlikely that this will be a stable area and that if Syrians are in fact forced back from Turkey into this part of Syria, unfortunately, they may find that they are confronting, you know, yet more conflict, more instability.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so, I mean, Mona, you've studied Syria for like decades, it sounds like.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Well, my experience goes back to the mid-80s when I was a Fulbright student there.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: So yes, I've had a long, sort of long-standing experience and understanding of the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I guess in your 30 years of experience, where does this country stand right now?
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Well, again, I think, unfortunately, the prospects for peace or stability in Syria remain very distant.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: It's a country in which the issues that first started as basically a peaceful protest by Syrians as part of what was once called the Arab Spring.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: Those drivers of conflict have not been addressed.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And in fact, what's happened is the conflict has evolved now into something that is multiplayer, regional, even global conflict.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: And so we have many now overlapping conflicts in Syria.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: The one that we've seen most dramatically in the last few weeks is a conflict between Turkey and the Kurds.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: But there's also conflict between Israel and Iran that's being played out in Syria.
--:-- Mona Yakubian: There's a tension between the United States and Russia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so what started as sort of peaceful protests in 2011 has now evolved into a multifaceted, multilayered, complex conflict that unfortunately really shows little sign of being resolved anytime soon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mona Yakubian is a senior advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace here in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She advises a vice president, but not the vice president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
