https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph44p4SMWBQ

Retired British Ambassador to Bahrain and Syria Peter Ford discusses the Syrian War and its latest developments, including attempts to try Bashar al-Assad at the ICC. He describes the "permanent government" of the U.S. which is a key driver of the war, as well as America's European counterparts such as France and Britain, who still cling to the coattails of their imperial past glory. Ambassador Ford believes Gulf unity is shattered and that Syria will remain weak, but will slowly rebuild in the coming years.

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Transcript

Podcast: This is the Geopolitics and Empire podcast, and we're talking to retired British diplomat and ambassador to Bahrain and Syria, Peter Ford. He is also the Director of the British Syrian Society. We will be discussing the war in Syria, the US and European foreign policy of regime change, the media propaganda that enables it, and what we can expect to see in the future.

Podcast: It's great to have you on, Ambassador Ford.

Peter Ford: Thank you for having me, I look forward to our dialogue. [spoiler]

Podcast: Yes. And let's get started with the different narratives that exist of the Syrian War. Because the prominent narrative is that it's a civil war, but you recently gave a speech in the House of Lords, which you sent me a copy, and you explained that in effect, the war is part of a multi-decade long war on Syria by the West. We know we have declassified files that go back to 1957, I believe, where the CIA had the plan to overthrow Syria. I believe in 1983, in the 80s there were other documents, and Wikileaks in the 2000s as well released such documents.

Podcast: So can you give us a frank explanation of what really the Syrian War was, or is, all about?

Peter Ford: Well, you'll recall in 2011, when everything kicked off in Syria, there had been a genuine popular uprising in some other Arab countries, beginning with Tunisia, and across North Africa, spreading through Libya and Egypt. And to a large extent, I believe those were genuine domestic uprisings. The case of Syria was always going to be different. While those countries in North Africa, the sectarian issue hardly applied, because the people were almost all Sunni Muslim. Syria is a social and religious mosaic. It was always likely that in the event of any uprising with religious factors, social factors would come into play.

Peter Ford: So Syria was always destined to be different. It was also destined to be different because the West, particularly the United States, has had this anti-Syrian agenda going back several decades, and has been constantly looking for opportunities to destabilize Syria and remove the Damascus regime, as they would call it. And such an opportunity arose in 2011, and the Western powers lost no time in piling in on the back of some limited local demonstrations, particularly in southern Syria, in Daraa, and in no time, for example, the US Ambassador was marching up with his French colleague to Hama to participate themselves in demonstrations there.

Peter Ford: So the die was cast from a very early stage, and what may have begun as local demonstrations quickly escalated. Islamist fighters began to appear. Very quickly they were armed by the United States, and other powers, particularly Gulf powers acting in cooperation with America. And in a very short time indeed, the conflict had become essentially another episode in the West's war against Syria.

Podcast: Since you brought up some of these fighters, these proxy fighters, I'm gonna jump ahead to one of my questions. Tell us a little bit of how this war was fought, so, you know, some people say they're proxy fighters, mercenaries, these moderate rebels, jihadists. We have declassified documents that say the US knew what it was doing.