What Happened to Syria?

This episode was originally recorded in 2024, shortly after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, and released on our Patreon that Christmas. https://www.patreon.com/c/whathappenedtosyria?vanity=user     Apologies for the terrible audio quality on my end, I'm having a lot of issues with my computer and my mic, right now. Turning up the volume will probably help. Will try to have these tech issues...

Milad majid! Did you know that Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7th? This episode examines the millennia-long history of Christianity in Syria, the ways that Christians have participated in both the Syrian Revolution and Syrian Civil War, and ending with an overview of the country's Christmas traditions. This one's got everything from empires and caliphates to revolutionaries pro...

Merry Christmas! Sadly, the World Food Program has had their funding cut by 60 percent. Also, we are currently listed among the Top Five Syria-related podcasts on Feedspot.com ( https://podcasts.feedspot.com/syria_podcasts/ ). Check us out there and help us get up to the #1 spot.  Sources / Quotes:   https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-forced-scale-down-operations-syria-donors-gather-brussels-ahead-major...

The Assad regime starts to crack under the pressure of increasingly large, passionate, cross-sectarian protests. Millions of people are taking to the streets and voicing dissent for the first time in their lives, putting the regime's legitimacy in doubt for the first time in decades. This prompts Bashar al-Assad to authorize a campaign of repression across Syria, among the earliest of his crimes a...

We're breaking up Episode 15 - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011) into four smaller episodes before putting out the full thing. The Assad regime starts to crack under the pressure of increasingly large, passionate, cross-sectarian protests. Millions of people are taking to the streets and voicing dissent for the first time in their lives, putting the regime's legitimacy in doubt fo...

We're breaking up Episode 15 - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011) into four smaller episodes before putting out the full thing. The Assad regime starts to crack under the pressure of increasingly large, passionate, cross-sectarian protests. Millions of people are taking to the streets and voicing dissent for the first time in their lives, putting the regime's legitimacy in doubt fo...

We're breaking up Episode 15 - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011) into four smaller episodes before putting out the full thing.   The Assad regime starts to crack under the pressure of increasingly large, passionate, cross-sectarian protests. Millions of people are taking to the streets and voicing dissent for the first time in their lives, putting the regime's legitimacy in doubt...

We're breaking up Episode 15 - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011) into four smaller episodes before putting out the full thing.   The Assad regime starts to crack under the pressure of increasingly large, passionate, cross-sectarian protests. Millions of people are taking to the streets and voicing dissent for the first time in their lives, putting the regime's legitimacy in doubt...

Explaining the absence and examining the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as the situation for refugees across the world in 2022. Sources / Quotes: “Boat carrying Syrian refugees lands in Southern Italy,” Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-italy-boat-idUSBRE8780L720120809     “Syria Refugee Crisis Explained,” The UN Refugee Agency https://www.unrefugees.org/news/syria-refugee-cr...

Bernd Debusmann was a young Reuters bureau chief when Lebanon imploded into civil war and anarchy in the 1970s, during which Syria and Hafez al-Assad became intimately involved the conflict.   This talented and daring journalist took to war-torn Beirut like a duck to water, risking his life to interview combatants on all sides and civilians caught in the cross-fire, eventually running afoul of the...

We're starting a new holiday tradition, an episode focused on refugees and other humanitarian issues in Syria.   As early as 2011, tens of thousands of people were forced to flee the country. Today, more than six million displaced Syrians are demonized by hateful individuals and political movements all over the world.   Mesud (@MaybeMesud on Twitter) describes how he and his family were forced to...

How do you organize a leaderless movement?   The Syrian Revolution was a decentralized movement of localized cells, but enterprising activists still managed to coordinate with each other and reach out to the outside world.   We examine how the Local Coordination Committees attempted to create a post-Assad government before speaking to a civil society activist who still resides in Syria. We also sp...

Supporters and opponents of the Assad regime are becoming irrevocably alienated from one another, sowing the seeds for a future war between Assad's Syria versus Free Syria.   Sources A Woman in the Crossfire by Samar Yazbek Assad or We Burn the Country by Sam Dagher The Impossible Revolution by Yassin al-Haj Saleh The Syrian Revolution by Dr. Yasser Munif Civil War in Syria by Bakzo, et. al The Ho...

Jeff Butler's multifaceted career made him the perfect guest for THE TERROR. A warfighter, a CIA counterterrorism specialist, and now a first responder. His perspective is truly one-of-a-kind.    You can find Mr. Butler on Twitter at @SOFFru1   "Deliverance" by Aliaksei Yukhenevich https://tunetank.com/tracks/3960-deliverance/  

There are too many amazing heroes among the Syrians who protested in 2011 to fit into a single episode. This is our second attempt at an ongoing effort to commemorate the heroes of the Syrian Revolution.   Ghiath Matar, Fadwa Soleiman, Bassel Shehadeh, a certain iconic goalkeeper-turned-singer from Homs, and other incredible individuals make appearances in this tribute to people whose bravery and...

DISTURBING CONTENT WARNING   There is no turning back for Syria after this episode.   The Syrian Opposition is nearing its breaking point after months of being massacred, mass-arrested, and mass-tortured by the Assad regime.   But all hell breaks loose when the public discovers the torture and murder of 13-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, leading to the largest protests to take place thus far as wel...

Episode 11 - The Last Straw is taking longer than expected to edit. Here's an excerpt to tide everyone over until the full episode is done.   Sources Cited: "We've Never Seen Such Horror" by Human Rights Watch   Music Licensing Genocide by Silent Carrion Creative Commons - attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international (cc by-nc-nd 4.0) https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Silent_Carrion/...

This might be our most controversial episode, yet.   What is the relationship between the Assad regime and Syrian Kurds? How did Kurds react to the Syrian revolution? Why is it that a majority of Syrian Kurds came to prefer the YPG over the Free Syrian Army?   A lot of it has to do with societal attitudes that go back decades before the Syrian Revolution.   Peshmerge is a Syrian Kurd from Aleppo w...

Yusuf was born in Manbij and gave up his job in Latakia to organize protests during the Syrian Revolution.   The events of 2011 changed his life forever, resulting in the loss of his freedom (detained twice by the regime, plus once by ISIS) and eventually forcing him to leave Syria in 2015.   Music licensing Fire Away by Forget the Whale Creative Commons - Attribution-Non Comercial 4.0 Internation...

Twenty years ago, the world changed.   The Terror is a 12-episode miniseries about 9/11, what led up to it, and it's aftermath. It's the story about how the Cold War led to 9/11 and the War on Terror.   Aram Shabanian (@ShabanianAram on Twitter) has extensively researched the events of September 11, 2001 for two decades. He is currently a Non-State Actors Researcher at the Newlines Institute for S...

Hey y'all, we're going to put out one or two more episodes before we take a month off.  In the meantime, keep an eye out for The Terror, a 12-part miniseries about al-Qaeda, 9/11, and its aftermath due for release on September 11, 2021.    

This week, the Syrian Revolution takes a bloody and tragic turn when the Assad regime begins to put restive towns and cities under military siege. Starvation, indiscriminate bombings, and other horrors associated with the Syrian Civil War (a label that many Syrians see as a misnomer) begin to be seen in mid-2011.   Sources cited:   Syria by Samer N. Abboud   Civil War in Syria by Baczko, et al   T...

How did the Assad family seize power in Syria? The answer lies in a man named Hafez al-Assad (basically, imagine an alternate version of Bashar al-Assad with confidence and a modicum of masculinity).   Hafez rises from a poor country boy from the Alawite heartland, the bottom rung of the Syrian socioeconomic power, to becoming the most powerful man in the country over the first forty years of his...

The regime and its opponents both dig in their heels while each tries to convince the other to give up. Appeasement, brutality, and other mix-messaging dominate the regime's approach to increasing unrest while protestors continue to put their lives on the line to voice their grievances.    This culminates in the Great Friday, where Syria sees its largest protests and highest death toll thus far.  ...

Fadil al-Mhameed lived right next to the Omari mosque in 2011, when Daraa became the epicenter of the Syrian Revolution. He witnessed, participated, and documented the uprising and crackdown by the regime, at grave personal cost.   Fadil sustained a gunshot wound to the hand in 2011 before he was badly injured a barrel bombing in 2014. He and his family have since resettled in the United States.  ...