You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. The fall of the House of Assad in Syria and now it's under new management. We've got a bunch of Jiehattists, former perhaps who are running this country, which is in a very strategic geo political location. What's going to happen in Syria? What does it mean for us? What does it mean for the
broader Mideast. We'll talk to our friend Bill Roggio about this. He is a senior editor at Long War Journal. Bill, first of all, we haven't really heard much about these rebels or whatever we're calling them today, in a while. And then all of a sudden, they take a Leppo and it's like, oh, yeah, these guys just took the second biggest city, second most important city in Syria. And then they took Damascus just a few days after that with it felt like barely a fight. Did anyone see
this coming? How'd this happen?
Hey, Buck, thanks for having me on. Yeah, this caught everyone by surprise. There was a ceasefire between the brutal Assad regime. That's you know, it's hard to not be happy that they're gone. And various so called rebel groups, one of them is fully inundated with jahattest organizations, another back by Turkey. They you know, we just had this law, and lo and behold. On November twenty seventh, the group hyatihirol Sham and the Syrian National Army, they coordinate in operation.
They go against Assad's forces and within ten days they take Damascus. Assad flees to Russia. Why does this happen? Why did no one see this coming? It's a great question, Buck, and I don't have the answer. I think everybody was looking at a lot of different problems Russia, Ukraine, and
then right in the region. You know, you have Israel and Hezbolah, Israel and Gaza against Hamas and is Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Israel and Iran trading blows, the houthis dominating the Red Sea, shutting down US shipping, international shipping, and I think a lot of intelligence agencies got stretched. I think the Turks saw an advantage here and they organized
this offensive. They have their motivations, one of them, for one, anti Assad, and two the Kurdish groups that are control of large areas of northern and eastern Syria are their sworn enemies. So the Turks they saw an opportunity. They mustered their forces and they struck, and the Assad again collapsed like a house of card. Clearly Asad did nothing to improve his security forces. And then I would also
argue that Iran has been distracted. It's been mired in a war in Lebanon and supporting Hezbolah and supporting the Houthis and the Red Sea and trying to get support to Gaza in exchanging blows with Israel. So I think you had Iran's focus taken away. Russia also deal you know, with a skeleton crew in Syria, dealing with its fighting in Ukraine. And you know, I think it's a masterful stroke by the Turks, and by no means, you know, I think we just exchanged one horrible regime for probably
several horrible regimes. I don't think anyone's going to take full control of Syria.
This well, let's let's get into some of this. This guy, Ahmed al Shara, who was formerly called Abu Muhammad al Jelani, that was his U nom Daguerre right, he is the head of Hayat Tarier al sham hts. He is for now de facto in charge, at least that's how it's being reported. They say that he was formerly affiliated with al Qaeda. Uh that feels, you know, when they're using the al Qaeda term here for somebody, it's really hard, I think, as in America not to say what the hell is going on here?
So but what are we supposed to think about this guy?
Yeah, we should think nothing that other than once a tarist, always a tarrist. I think a little background. I referred to him as the albumhamal Jilani or Jilani is all referred to him here. He went into Iraq after the US invasion, joined the ranks of al Qaeda. If he was not a member of al Qaeda even before the hand He's a Syrian and al Qaida had a significant network there it still does. He detained by the US and put in the Buka prison system, which is known
as the University of Jihad in Iraq. Al Qaeda controlled those camps. Those prison camps, they indoctrinated, they trained, they recruited its leaders, and it's as well as its rank
and file. What the Iraqi government freed him and sometime in twenty ten or eleven for reasons unknown, and he return come to Syria and he immediately took control of al Qaeda's branch there, and once the Arab spring began, he you know, became a major leader within the resistance or I won't call them resistance with the jahadist fighting the Issad regime. And he had a now he get this, but he was, yeah, go ahead, No, you go ahead.
I don't want to jump in there, you said. He supported what.
He reported to none other than Abu Baker al Baghdaddy, the Emir of the Islamic State. Abu Baker Our Baghdaddy was the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, which became known as the Islamic State in Iraq, and Bagdaddy wanted to control the Jahad in both Iraq and Syria. Jilani wanted to control the Jahad in Syria and leave Iraq to Bagdaddy. He took his Jilani took and Bagdaddy took the dispute to al Qaeda Amir, i'm in Ozawahiri, who's
ok Osama bin Laden? Jilani won, He gained control of the Jahad and Syria created a group called Jabat al Nusra, the Ilnuser front that was Al Kaita's official branch in Syria. So it's quite a pedigree. You know, how are you a what you know, a former jihadis when you reported to Abu Baker al Baghdadi, the first emir in paliff of the Islamic stage.
See, this is what I want to ask, is is this guy Jilani? I mean was he was he ordering you know, suicide bombings, captives to be you know, uh, mutilated and executed. I mean all the horrible stuff that we know Jihatis in Syria were doing some people.
Yeah, by no means was he as public and as brutal as Bagdadi's crew in Iraq and Syria. But he did order suicide bombings, he did order the of the slaughter of civilians and captured Syrian troops. So he's you know, he is someone who is not to be trusted. You know, look, Buck, I don't think you know the former leader of the kk If you have the leader of the KKK, if he turned around tomorrow here in the United States and just said, you know, I'm not KKK anymore, you think
he would really be accepted in the political fold. But somehow you could be a jihadis that orders suicide attacks and the murder of civilians, and here in the United States we could say he's okay, is he We could this is a guy we could work.
It's just amazing to me that we're at this point where there's all this celebration over the ouster of Asad and then it's like, yeah, we've got this former al Qaida guy who's in charge. So let's come back to this in a second, because I'm wondering what you think is going to happen. Now you mentioned that there'll be kind of a few different governments, But we'll get to
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Now? What does this look like?
Yeah? I think what you're going to see that Jilawni and his Hiati hero Sham they're going to consolidate control in that corridor, the M five Highway, which is you know, goes fronts from Damascus through Hums up to Aleppo and Idlib's the that's going to be the strong point of for the Hyatt to hero shamp the Syrian National Army very likely it cooperates with hyatihiro Sham, that's right, And it's taking the fight to the Kurds, which really are the PKK or the Kurdistan Workers Party by the way,
which the US supports in this fight. But when I there's just no good guys here to support, this is the real problem. It's just a series of bad to worse. The PKK is a designated tourist organization for killing over fifty thousand people in Turkey. That's why the Turks have a dog in this fight, and they back jihadis to fight Marxist terrorists. So that the Syrian National Army, they're taking the fight to the to the PKK, what we call the Syrian Democratic.
Are they up in the like bottled up in the north in the northeast? Is that basically where the PKK is operating still Okay, yes.
They're operating out of the north and the northeast. That's where the Syrian National Army is strongest as well, so I can and then you have a couple of other independent rebel groups in the South. Some of them that do work coordinate with Hyati hero Sham. So I think you're gonna see these fiefdoms or the Balkanization of Syria, and so.
It's a failed I mean, it's becomes a failed state, right, I mean, this is kind of like Libya post Kadafi then, which just turned into Militiaville.
Yeah, Syria was already a failed state. You already had this Balkanization. You're just replacing a sad with Hyatai, hirol Sham and Jiulani, so they get an expanded Hyatti Ero Sham was confined to this northeastern quarter corridor or corner of the of northeastern Syria, and the Turks gave them protection. So if you think the Turks are the good guys in this one for going after the PKK again, it's hard to pick a winner in Syria. We shouldn't even try.
Where are the nine hundred Americans that, as I understand it, are still in Syria US soldiers and talking about here, we're still in Syria and what is their mission set?
Right now?
They are primarily along the border of Iraq and in northeastern Syria. So there's a I'm on this one area in the tanif these are actually Orab militias that we coordinate with, and then they're working with the PKK or the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria, so they're at a smattering of bases in that area, they primarily primarily rely on the SDF for their ground security. I'm very concerned. I have been. The Iraqi militias have
been attacking them. What happens when these Turkish back, if they start advancing on the areas where American bases are, are they going to give them wide birth? You know, I don't know, and I don't want to find out. We've had American soldiers killed, a couple killed, and several wounded in a variety of attacks from from the Iraqi militias. Well, the Iraqi militias, these are Iranian backed, they're Iraqi militias. Are they going to reinitiate attacks? That's it. It's it's just an option.
At let me sketch this because I think a lot of people that are watching or listening, this is the thing that they would want you to you to wrestle with right now. I mean, should we just pull out whatever American presence we have just say you know, audios, we're done here and just let the chips fall where they may. Is that is that the best option for the incoming Trump administration.
I think it's one of the two best options. The first option is that leave and let the chips fall as it may. We may be forced to leave if the Syrian National Army continue is successful against the Syrian Democratic Forces. If we are to stay. Now, the purpose of that mission of those troops there primarily is to fight the Islamic State, and what happens if we leave. We saw what happened when the Islamic State took over large areas of Syria. That didn't work out well for you.
So we do have a legitimate and national security need there. But there's another part of this too, So if we are going to stay, we need to beef it up these bases. They maybe should be consolidated, and I would want a significant ground from maybe a battalion of troops at each base in order to protect our forces there. But they've been they've been strung out across Syria. I think it's very dangerous if we're not willing to reinforce them. Bucket's really difficult for me to argue to keep those
troops in Syria. There's one more thing. The US is talking about leaving Iraq. By twenty twenty six the Biden administration signed an agreement with the Iraqi government, and if that is the Trump administration follows ruin that there's no way. They may just have to leave by default because they can't be supported without the US presence. Interac.
Let's come back into I want to know to the degree we can describe it, the differences between the Islamic state and the people that comprised it, which Trump helped smash US military back in twenty sixteen, and the people who have now taken over in Syria and have taken over Damascus. We'll get there in a second. At first, our sponsor here is IFCJ, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
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and the Jewish people. Go to support I f CJ dot org to make a gift now that support I f c J dot org or give at eight eight eight four eight eight I f c J. That's eight eight eight four eight eight I f c J. All right, Bill, So is can we even tell what the difference between ISIS remnants, Nusra Front u HTS, you know, is are there people that have fought in all of these and and what do they really want other than control of Syria? Well that do we do we have some reason to
believe that's sufficient. Do they want to become some kind of a you know, platform for the global jihad? I mean, what are the what are the risk factors as you see it. As you see it, there's.
Only degrees of difference between the Hiati heral Sham and the Islamic State. They share the same call as fuck. They want to establish their first or Islamic emirate in Syria and then create a global caliphate. Look, the Jilani and crew don't cast this aside just because he gets cast as being a pragmatic leader. When Jilani supposedly broke with al Qaeda, he did it with the senior al Qaeda leaders sitting at its side. He had the approval
of al Qaeda. So al Kita viewed this as a pragmatic move to soften the groups that it could receive foreign support. Remember the Taliban, how we fell for it, buck right, Not you and I and not I'm sure not your listeners, but the Biden administration, even the Trump administration and cutting the deal with the Taliban. It was a bad deal. It was a mistake, and we thought they were moderate. We thought that that was a group we can work with if we couldn't figure it out
that the Taliban were bad. To me, it's no surprise that someone like Jilani is going to dupe us. But make no mistake, he's a hardcore Jahatis. There are foreign fight he claims there's no foreign fighters and he has no connections. That's what he said during the break. We don't don't have any links to external groups. He didn't say I did announce al Kaeda, I renounced my oath
of allegiance. He said, we just don't have external links. Meanwhile, there are al Qaeda groups that are fighting both within Jilani's rank and file as well as alongside them in Syria. This is this is the same playbook that that's basically the same playbook that the Taliban used to convince us that we could leave Afghanistan and everything will be fine. We now know there's al Qaeda training camps and a whole host of infrastructure which I've documented in Afghanistan.
I guess thing is a good place to ask you about how things are going in Afghanistan. Sounds like not so good.
Not so good. Yeah, the last the UN should issue another report. The last report issued over the summer, al Qaeda was operating training camps in twelve provinces. So that's not twelve trading camps. But I know at least one province has four training camps. Things are so much worse than they wear pre nine to eleven.
What are they I know this is going to sound to people like a dumb question, but I think it's an important question to just sort of get us back.
What are they training for? Bill?
They're training for global Jahad fighters from Afghanistan. Groups like the Turkistan Islama Party, which is an El Qaeda affiliate. It's leader, Abdulahak al Turkistani, sits on Al Kaita's central shore or it's central governing committee. He sends fighters, and there's a whole Turkistan Islamic Party contingent that fights in Syria. They use it to train, to refit and to plan their operations. Now what you'll hear from people to bomb administration, Well,
they haven't launched, we haven't detected any plots. They haven't launched.
Assume you mean the Biden administration, right, although probably a lot a lot of cross over there too, But anyway, go ahead, Yeah.
My bad. They would have said the same thing if they would have withdrew from Afghanistan. They're telling us that they're not a problem because they haven't detected any plots. I don't just remind people that between the first World Trade Center attack and the second World Trade Center attack was eight years.
So do you I mean, look, you study these guys. You study these guys every day. I used to Bill as you know, but I'm out of the game now, right Like I'm like a I'm like a guy who did his time as a patrolman on the streets and now you know, I don't know what's going on in these mean streets. I'm sort of in retirement from the
CT world. Do you really think, I mean, honestly, do you really think that they're gearing up to start another war with you know, the West and America and her allies and everything else, given what the last twenty years have.
Looked like for them?
Or you know what, what's your real feeling on that, because it just feels like, wow, you.
Guys really want to do this again? You really want to do this again?
Well, we look, we operate in terms of election cycles of two and four years. They operate in terms of decades and generations. They're keeping their goal ultimate goal is to establish a global califate to impose its first harsh version of Sharia or Islamic law, and on all how they do that, they do it by forming emirates. What is Afghanistan today, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. What did
Jilani declare and his fighters declare in Syria? The Islamic Emirate in Syria Right now, they're focusing on the near They put aside the far enemy, right, the near enemy, build those build those calphits. They're not directly. Al Qaeda is far more clever and far more patient. The Islamic State's mistake and its demise came because it came out the gates swinging and it decided to take It was an easy target. It was a lightning rod for us.
Al Kaeda has taken a more patient and more clever approach. Just because they're not plotting or executing an attack here in the United States today or attacking an embassy today doesn't mean that what next week, next month, or next year that isn't going to happen. They didn't stop being our enemies just because we disengage from Afghanistan, because we disengage from Iraq, just because we're seeking to and the
so called endless wars. You know, it takes two to fight a war, and al Qaeda hasn't stopped, They've just they've changed their tactics. It actually, they've never really changed. They've always focused on the near enemy first. That's where they've always focused ninety five percent of their effort. And I think that's something that's really misunderstood by tenth counter terrorism analysts.
It's not feeling like it's going so well in the Middle East as the Trump administration is about to take hold of though there are some bright spots, right, I mean, the the diminishing of Hesbola and Hamas military capability very strong.
Iran is far less of a.
Of a sort of a proxy, you know, the terror proxies are whatever you want to call them. I mean, they're not able to do what they were before. So do you feel like overall the Middle East as we're coming into this new administration speaking of administration cycles, is it is it more opportunity and more destabilization? As you say, where's the overall trend?
Yeah, if you would ask me this question six months ago, I would have said been very negative. Right now, I describe it as a push. I mean, look, Syria certainly has thrown a wrench into the whole works, but on the Iran side of the Shia side of the coin.
The Iranian backed access to resistance. The loss of Syria, that was the lynchpin for the Iranians to build its land bridge, or it's that she A crescent where they fund funnel weapons and munitions and fighters from Iran through Iraq, through Syria in the Lebanon to to to supply Hesbla in its fight against Israel. They've lost that. That is gone. Unfortunately, what's replaced it is far work. It maybe a greater threat to the West in the long term, not maybe
not so much in the short term. But so look, I think Israel has a unique opportunity. Iran on its back foot, as you noted they are. They have taken significant blows. Hamases, you know, has had significant losses. Israel decimated Hamas or Hezbolah's leadership and rank and file up
until the signing of that ill time cease fire. The Israelis, if they went on the offensive against Heswall, they could break them, I mean not to fully defeat them, but beat them back so that there may be a minor player in the Middle East instead of a dominant force. So looking at this, the Iran axis looks to be significantly hurt if the Trump administration was willing to break
the Houthis and their stranglehold on the Red Sea. It's another Iran back group that is in Yemen that is just a stain on the Biden administration and on the US armor honor for a third rate militia to dominate international shipping in the United States needs the lead of coalition to destroy the Houthis. That would really set the Iranians back. This Al Qaeda Islamic state problem, it's a
persistent threat. It's one that needs to be managed. When never going to muster the troops to go in like we did in Iraq in two thousand and three or Afghanistan in two thousand and one after nine to eleven, that's just not on the horizon apps in a massive attack. But it's a problem that does need to be dealt with.
It's when we can't take our eye off Look, the people took the eye off the ball in Syria and now you have a jah hottest regime that is in charge of us of a significant portion of the country.
Bill Roji, everybody go check out his latest on at Long War Journal and our sponsor here is Wide Mode Research. If you're an occasional investor or an every day investor, finding good advice is tough. But Brad Thomas is a really smart guy with a long and proven track record. He's an expert in the world's largest asset, which is
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What do you say yeah, I hope.
So I'd like to see him take the shackles off the Israelis, let them finish off hes blood, and deal a blow to Iran. And you know, man just manages prompt take the fight to the hooties, and I think it's a quick win for the Trump administration. And just don't take the buy off the ball, particularly in Afghanistan.
It's very dangerous, Bill Rogio, thanks so much, my friend.
Thanks for having me Buck, Always a pleasure.