More Podcasts on the Syrian Civil War

A few days ago, I posted about my intention to listen to every NPR interview with Syria expert Dr. Joshua Landis that was available for download. I ended up doing it last Wednesday, and it totalled between five and six hours. It was an interesting experience to listen to a review of Syrian history from 2009 to 2017 (with a blip in 2005), and to hear which of Dr. Landis' divinations were correct or incorrect (for example, he predicted around 2012 that the Assad regime would not use chemical weapons), and also to hear him defending the 2013 chemical weapons deal that most serious analysts now malign.

I mentioned in that prior post that I might listen to another old podcast. Well... Do I ever just leave well enough alone? Of course not. So, I ended up putting together a larger podcast list that I'll spend the next week or so chewing through. I figured I'd share in case anyone wanted to give themselves a crash course on the Syrian civil war. As with the Landis podcasts, these are listed in chronological order (and I've date-stamped these ones).

20141112 // FRONTLINE: Understanding The Rise of ISIS

20150415 // War on the Rocks: PODCAST: The Islamic State’s War in Iraq and Syria

20150608 // FRONTLINE: Obama at War

20150608 // FRONTLINE: The Rise of ISIS

20150924 // War on the Rocks: Navigating the Islamic State Challenge

20150928 // The Guardian: Why Isis fights - podcast

20150929 // Middle East Week: Syrian Diaspora in the Gulf

20151026 // The Guardian: ‘They were torturing to kill’: inside Syria’s death machine - Podcast

20151204 // The Guardian: How Isis crippled al-Qaida - Podcast

20160218 // Reuters War College: Is the Syrian war partly an ad for Russian arms sales?

20160520 // FRONTLINE: The Secret History of ISIS

I also want to do some remedial Syria reading in the next week or two. The big challenge with reading about Syria in English is that most of the reporting since 2014 focuses on ISIS/DAESH, or maybe the siege of Aleppo, rather than conflict's wider context. C'est la vie. At any rate, here are a few articles focusing specifically on the role of former Iraqi Baathists on the formation and administration of ISIS/DAESH.

The Intercept: ISIS Forces That Now Control Ramadi Are Ex-Baathist Saddam Loyalists

Reuters: How Saddam's fighters help Islamic State rule

New York Times: How Saddam Hussein Gave Us ISIS

Washington Post: The hidden hand behind the Islamic State militants? Saddam Hussein’s.

Der Spiegel: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State

I probably should have saved this for April through June, when I'm slated to spend part of my life focused on Middle Eastern security... But, again, c'est la vie.