Assad Was a Tyrant, Not an Anti-Imperialist with Moazzam Begg

The Thinking Muslim

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This episode was filmed on Saturday, before Damascus fell.

The Syrian revolution began in 2011 as a grassroots, civil society uprising against one of the most tyrannical rulers in the Muslim World. Bashar al-Assad like his father before him, presided over a state of terror, with disappearances, secret police repression and a punitive state machinery that governed through fear. Assad styled himself as an anti-imperialist when in reality he had colluded with the West in past conflicts and after 9/11 Syria became a favourite place for the Americans to render suspects for horrific torture.

Today we have Moazzam Begg who is the senior director of CAGE and author of enemy combatant – a book about his time as a detainee first in Bagram and then in Guantanamo. He also spent time in Syria during the revolution, as part of his investigation into the Assad regimes complicity in the CIA torture programme.

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Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction

1:41 – Assad anti-imperialist?

7:07 – Syria’s torture campaign

12:42 – The Left on Syria

16:24 – Why dismiss Syrians?

19:05 – Russia

22:48 – The opposition

27:33 – ISIS vs Opposition

31:59 – Post-Assad Syria

34:36 – Minorities

36:40 – Assad against Israel?

39:17 – Palestinian resistance on Syria

42:48 – Islamic activism

45:26 – Will we be able to visit Syria

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