Putschcast
A global podcast about Riots, Rebellions and Revolutions. Putschcast explores how power changes hands, whether through internal social and political decay, external pressure, popular resistance or a pure stroke of luck.
Featuring experts in their field, every episode explores a unique moment in history that led to profound changes in the lives of the people affected by it.
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Putschcast
#4 Syria - Face to Face with Assad
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Initially predicted to fall during the 2011 Arab Spring, Bashar al-Assad clung to power through a devastating civil war, surviving only after critical military intervention from Russia and Iran. It was in the midst of this conflict that Australian journalist Luke Waters secured a rare one-on-one interview with the President in Damascus.
On this episode of Putschcast, Luke reflects on that historic meeting. Assad insisted he was merely fighting terrorists, believing history would vindicate him as Syria's saviour. But did he truly believe his own rhetoric? How do you even secure a sit-down with a leader accused of war crimes? And what was going on behind the scenes? We uncover the story behind the interview.
To find out how Assad's regime actually fell, listen to Putschcast episode 1.
To watch Luke's TV interview with Assad from 2016, click here.
Check out Putschcast as video on our new Youtube channel. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and share with your friends and foes.
Send us an email to putschcast@gmail.com and visit our website.
Welcome to a somewhat special episode of Podcast that some of you have been waiting for for Kumba Walmart. In our first episode of Podcast, we talked about the sudden and unexpected remise of Ahmed Al-Sharma, now president of Syria. You might have seen him talking at the United Nations and now friends with Trump, the very, very famous Donald Trump. But for him to remise, someone else had to step down, or better, fall. The name is, of course, Basham al-Assad. As far as we know, he now lives somewhere in hiding in Russia, presumably in an apartment in uh in Moscow. There have been rumors about him being poisoned. There's rumours of him being divorced as well from his uh well-known English wife. But um, last time we've heard from Jaron Sutton, who spent quite a bit of time in Syria before the war, he described it as a safe haven for Westerners, as a good place to learn and study Arabic, which he did. However, as we all know, the Arabic Spring broke out. Syria got caught up in the tail end of that, and what followed was more than a decade of civil war, 500,000 people dead. And I'm I'm very glad today to have on the call of putchcast Luke Waters. And Luke is a former war correspondent, and he visited Syria during the war, and he also had an encounter with Pasha al-Assad in person. Hey Luke.
SPEAKER_04Oliver, uh thanks very much for having me.
SPEAKER_01And uh we get to that famous interview of yours in a moment. But just to kick off uh the interview today with you, and I know you weren't too comfortable because you told me what's the story, and I think for anyone who hasn't worked as a correspondent, it's quite a story to tell and to share. So thank you very much in advance. But what is your connection personally but mainly professional to Syria? Obviously, the conflict, but also beforehand.
SPEAKER_04I was working uh, as you well know, as a journalist at SBS World News, and part of our job was to look at the context of international issues and things that were taking place and try and get an angle from locally. Uh and and I guess the Arab Spring around 2010 was was pretty big. And um, you know, obviously we were working. Essentially, what you would do would be to get uh Reuters feeds, one of our um uh affiliates or CNN or something like that, and then obviously you would have all the vision and interviews from overseas, and you go and try and speak to someone in the community, um, uh so say the Egyptian or Libyan community at the time of the Arab Spring and get some context locally. And so the Arab Spring was ticking along, and there seemed this inevitability, I guess, that Syria was going to be next. I was fortunate enough to go to do a um journalism fellowship at CNN in Atlanta in Georgia, and you had to sort of select a topic that was going on in world events and sort of follow it through your fellowship, which went for I think it was three weeks from memory. And I selected the Syrian war because I found it was quite interesting the way um these different levels of complexity were coming about, both from um uh the government side, but then also the emergence of the various militias and the emergence of ISIS and al-Nusra and these other uh militias that were um emerging in Syria. So I I you know got to sort of see it through the lens of how CNN covered it. And they'd had a correspondent who'd been on the ground over there embedded with rebel groups. And so when I came back to Australia, I was still had this uh fascination, I guess, with the the country and with the crisis and the way it was unfolding. And so set about trying to um work out if there was a way I might be able to become more directly involved and started establishing communication, sorry, uh, relationships in the uh Syrian community in Australia to see if there was any way I could find a link and a way perhaps to get closer and cover it from a personal point of view.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, working with the diaspora is always very important as a journalist, especially during conflict times. Did people that you spoke to confirm this image of Syria? Because I find what we've learned now is the sheer brutality of the regime in hindsight. I mean, we all knew it was a dictatorship, we all knew there were human rights violations before the war, after all the Assads have been in power for over 40, even 50 years. It's not quite sure how to pinpoint when they actually took power. But but when you spoke to people in exile, so to speak, or emigres, did they confirm the brutality or did they also have that view it was actually it was a stable dictatorship, you could make a living there, because also we never saw streams of refugees before the Civil War. That only all happened during the war.
SPEAKER_04The majority of people that I spoke to painted a picture uh uh along the lines of the one that you described at the start of the introduction to this interview was you know an incredibly safe and constructive place for people to go. I think education, cultural enrichment and learning and that sort of thing. I spoke to, I remember speaking to a lady who um went and embedded herself with a family um who lived quite traditionally. Um, and and everybody that I spoke to has spoken you know really highly of the country. And I guess it was a version of Syria that um that you know I would love to have seen, you know, having having obviously seen it not at its best, but definitely though, overlaid by the fact that, yeah, it was a dictatorship and um people knew essentially where they stood, and and there were certain things you did and didn't do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we talked about that in the first episode as well, where our guest said a simple question from a fellow Westerner about how come you haven't sat sticker on the back of your car led to a quick withdrawal from the conversation by the Syrian and say, Can't tell you, we'll just put it on the car. But back to you. So you've done your time obviously working as a journalist, uh, you know, from from afar, you've you've done the special training in Atlanta, you make connections here. Uh, the war broke out, and then in 2016, you got really close to what happened uh on the ground. In early 2016, you had your first opportunity to go and cover what's happening there.
SPEAKER_04I was sitting in my apartment and a um an email came through. It was reasonably late at night, and it said that my um application and request to uh cover the crisis had been approved by the Ministry for Information and um to reach out as soon as I possibly could. And I obviously, when I woke up the next morning, had to check my phone again to make sure it was it was true, it was a um a terrific opportunity. But then I guess started the um, you know, the logistics, the security checks, the whole process of how we were going to manage going over there and uh what actually was going to take place on the ground, how it was going to play out. But essentially, after establishing lots of different relationships, the one which I think was pivotal was it was an honorary consul based in Sydney, and he was the one that was, I suppose, able to uh open up a direct path for me in the Ministry of Information, which is the one that um that manages media requests and that sort of thing. And then I was there for a bit over a week, I think, and and did a suite of different stories. Obviously, it was very much from the government's perspective or uh from what I was allowed to see from the government. You know, I was taken to the front line of the war, I was um observed refugee camps and settlements, went to schools and looked at a range of different different aspects of life in Syria at the time.
SPEAKER_01And this is um five years into the war. Five years, like what was the country like at that time?
SPEAKER_04I think it was a different country around 12 months beforehand. It was um in the aftermath of of the Russian aerial invasions, which really did turn the tide of of the conflict and um really reduced the effectiveness of a lot of the um so-called rebel militias um and their impact on the ground. So as a journalist embedding with um with the government of the time, I think it was a it was a safer bet than it would have been 12 months beforehand when these militias had a lot more power. You know, Damascus always managed not to become overly impacted when you look at the the the impact of Homs and Aleppo and some of the other City Lib and these other cities and and what took place there, um there were pockets of fighting in Damascus, but the city itself functioned reasonably um effectively throughout most of the war.
SPEAKER_01And even now you see images uh out of Damascus after the fall of Assad where people sit in cafes and it looks quite normal, but it must really be isolated, I think. And we'd probably do another episode on that. But the army we've heard so much about the Syrian army, so we've heard about corruption, people getting paid $30 a month, and you know, officers selling fuel out of their tanks just to uh support their families. What was the state of the army when you were there? Because you were embedded with them, were they quite functioning and well organized? What was your impression?
SPEAKER_04It was it was interesting that I was taken to a place called Jobar, which I think is east eastern Damascus. From memory, it was 15 or 20 minutes from central Damascus, and there was um Jech al Islam, which is the army of Islam, uh, was the was the um opposing force uh where we went. There was some curious characters, including the um the the general that that sort of welcomed me. He was very suspicious at first, didn't speak English, but through a translator we established a bit of a relationship and he went from being a bit standoffish and then he he couldn't be more helpful for whatever reason. The the whole thing flipped. I don't know what the um translator said, but we're in the back of the truck and going along, and he'd take us to where the basically where the battle was taking place and um explaining about how a lot of the issues were taking place underground. There was a whole um where the tunnels underground, which is where a lot of the fighting was taking place. I think it was some statistic like he'd spent two days at home in the last couple of years, and he had a relatively young family. Obviously, he was singing very much from Assad's soul sheet and the narrative around you know freeing the Syrian people of the rebels and and what have you, and and he was not going to go home until that job was done. You know, the other thing was he had a had a really quirky experience where after we'd gone and I'd done my filming and interviews and everything, I was about to get out of there, pretty happy to go. You know, there was a few mortars thudding around the place and that sort of thing, and then he invited me in for a meal, and I and I said, Oh, God, don't I don't know that we can do that. And next thing we're in this bunker, and there's a 12-plate Middle Eastern piece in front of us, and he's sitting down, there's an AK-47 leaning up against the wall, and you can hear the mortars in the background. And he reaches under the table, pulls out a bottle of white wine, plonks it on the table, and the translator said, You've got to stay. You can't you can't go, you've got to stay. So I sat there and uh had a meal with the Colonel, which was funny and awkward. I didn't speak Arabic, he didn't speak English, and um yeah, we sat there, but that was um one of my experiences from the front line.
SPEAKER_01Arabic hospitality in a very weird context, there.
SPEAKER_04Exactly, yeah, true enough.
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SPEAKER_01The the army you just talked about, so they were they were supported heavily by the Russians on the ground. Um, did you see that? Did you was there any reference to Russian involvement?
SPEAKER_04I think the majority of the support, the meaningful support that they got from the Russians was from the air. I think um the the Iranian support and the support from Hezbollah was more from ground forces. Again, it wasn't something I observed, but my understanding is that that's the way it worked. I mean, I think um places like Latakia and and uh and that there was more of a Russian, an obvious Russian presence, but certainly not in Damascus, it wasn't one I saw. They were passionate, they had headcounts around how many opposition fighters they'd killed. They um what they these guys meant business, there's no doubt about it. And you know, they would separate their their camp in rebels, and then they would say how many were ISIS. ISIS was definitely the um the one they cared about the most at the time.
SPEAKER_01And again, we're in the mid-2010s, ISIS was the biggest threat in the Middle East. Remember um the advance um they pursued in in Iraq and in Syria as well, making Raqqa their capital for quite a while. The interaction with the soldiers you've just spoken about, great anecdote about the general um Russians were really nowhere to be seen except through um constant bombing from the air. The civilians, did you have any exposure to non-military affiliated people, just uh random families that you met or other people on the street?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, I certainly um on the street. I was I had the freedom to speak to anyone that I wanted to. That's what I was I was told. Uh some of the people I interviewed were people who had lost family members. So I suppose that my objective was to try and humanize the impact of of the war and what have you. When I spoke to people, um, you know, they they wanted their their Syria back was the main understandable thrust of what people would say. We just want it to return to what it was. We want our family members to come back. Because you've got to remember it's not just the people that were killed, but literally in their millions that people were fleeing um for safety, getting over into Lebanon, getting into uh wherever they could just to free themselves from the fighting.
SPEAKER_01The horrible injury inflicted on people, especially for the barrel bombs and other ways of um decimating entire suburbs there. The thing to take into consideration as well, which is different to other conflicts, is that it is a civil war, right? So it it rips families apart, it rips entire communities, townships, villages apart because one brother stands on this side, the other brother stands on on the other side. How's that different to other conflicts where you know uh it just like we had in Yugoslavia in the 90s, people were just asked to take a side from one day to the next? Did you have any interviews around that?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, one thing that uh I was told by a few different people was that before the war, they didn't know whether their neighbor or the people over the road or the people with whom they associated were Sunni or Shia. They didn't know. And it was really, you know, the emergence of ISIS that that had driven this wedge, this sectarian wedge between families and friends and people and and what have you. And really there was little awareness of that divide before um really the the the crisis started to emerge, and that that was that was something that came from quite a few different people. It just wasn't really a factor. I mean, obviously it's something people were aware of and uh uh to it to to a certain extent, but people wouldn't go and ask or necessarily even know.
SPEAKER_01Especially in metropolitan areas like the ones you've visited, I guess. And and that's an angle I never thought of that because you always hear you know the Arabic Spring sweeping in from the west, you know, really starting in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, where ISIS obviously came off from Iraq, and that pressure that people and also maybe the government was under. Assad always claimed, as so many dictators under threat to, that you know, it's all foreign influence and we're trying to um sweep that out again out of our country, i.e. ISIS, but he also obviously wasn't too fond of Western leaders at the time either. How were you treated as a Westerner by um by the local people? Were they suspicious or were they welcoming and hoping to share their story?
SPEAKER_04Uh the majority was welcoming, um, both you know from the from the government people, but also from general people that I would introduce myself to or ask the translator to introduce me to. Um, most people were welcoming over the fact that I had expressed an interest in their country and and what have you. Obviously, when it came to people who were physically suffering at the time, say in in refugee shelters and um people who had been displaced from their homes and things like that that were living through it. Um, you know, it was important to be pretty careful of their space and the extent to which they wanted to share vision and yeah, be filmed and be interviewed and that sort of thing. And there were a couple of occasions where people took exception to that, and some of the time it was purely fear, they just did not want anyone to know where they were because of the potential for reprisals. So obviously that's something that you had to respect.
SPEAKER_01We're speaking to Luke Waters, uh former war correspondent talking to us here on Putschcast about his experience covering the civil war in Syria, but also his experience meeting the president face to face. President at the time, Basha Al-Assad. Uh, you've mentioned before in 2016, at the start of the year, you got to go and cover the stories we just talked about, but then there was the next level. So you got back to your home base. Was there another email coming from the foreign ministry? Um, how did that famous interview come about?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, it was still through the same line of communication, the Ministry for Information, initially via the Honorary Consul. So it was a phone call this time, notifying me that formal requests to interview the president had been approved and that um we would start the conversation around logistics the next day quite deliberately. Um they put a pretty short timeline on the time from being told to the time that we were going to get there and and and get things done. Um so I think we had about three days to get our stuff organized and again, you know, do security checks and all the um the things that we needed to to then again go into Syria. So via Beirut, go flying into Lebanon, Beirut, and then uh by car into Damascus.
SPEAKER_01You've had three days' notice. How do you prepare for this? This is uh clearly a highlight of your career, I would uh assume.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, definitely, um, you know, and so many considerations as the editorial side of things along the line, like what questions are we going to ask? How are we going to approach this um particular interview? And um, there was an international editor at the time whose suggestion was okay, our point of difference is that we're an Australian news organisation interviewing Assad. So let's speak some of the communities in Australia that have been impacted by the conflict from all sides and see what questions they would like asked of Assad. Assad people, so his information ministry again said that we had to provide five kinds of themes or topics so the president could be prepared for the interview, which some people didn't like, but one of the ones that we put in there was the conflict or the crisis, the Syrian crisis. So I think that was broad enough to capture pretty much any question that we really wanted to ask. Um, and then the other side of it was the logistics again and the reality of okay, where is security and safety on the ground? Don't be fooled by the thought that just because we've been asked by them that that guarantees safety, it's not the case. And there are lots of examples of that not being the case. So again, the logistics, the security, the safety, the editorial side, it was a busy few days.
SPEAKER_01The good thing is you've done it before, you've been there before, so you're probably a bit calmer than the first time around.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_01Why the timing? What was uh Sad's intention around that charm offensive with Western media?
SPEAKER_04There was a lot of civilian casualties from the Russian aerial assaults that took place the year before. So if you were to guess, you might say that they put uh it was very considered and very strategic the way they they managed information and media and that sort of thing, um, which should come as no surprise. But perhaps it was that enough space had been, you know, for as far as they were concerned, between the aerial assaults, which claimed a lot of civilian lives, but swung the wall back in the regime of the government's favour. And at that point, you know, it was probably a worthwhile time to get out on the front foot. So um I've often um pondered that question myself.
SPEAKER_01And in English as well. Did you expect that?
SPEAKER_04Well, I did know that he's he he trained as an ophthalmologist in London, and he's so his English was pretty good. So yeah, he he he he spoke um good. One of the weird things he said to me, we had a short discussion where it was just he and I and I in the room beforehand, which apparently is for us to establish some sort of rapport. And he said he he said, I I've done my research. He said I've Australian is what did he say? He said it's eastern in location but western in values, um, and I think your government is very aligned with the United States, um, which for me at the moment is a problem. He said, But I've never met an Australian before. And I thought that's pretty weird. If you were trained in London, which is crawling with Aussies, um, I find that pretty odd, but perhaps he just never paid attention to them or um or whatever. So from his perspective, Australia was totally new, and he had to do a little bit of studying in that as well.
SPEAKER_01Now walk us through um the lead up to this. So you just talked about how you met him in person. I assume you were picked up at the airport by did you have a convoy or something? I mean, it's still a country at war, and you had to go to the presidential palace.
SPEAKER_04Well, yeah, and so the way it works was I used the driver that that I'd used on the previous trip because he you know proved to be trustworthy and and reliable and what have you. And so he had a car that had uh um was allowed to go both into Lebanon and Syria. So he picked me up at the um at the airport, same car, same thing, through the um border control, then lots of checkpoints, so probably three or four checkpoints, a couple of which we got waived through, and a couple of which we had to stop. They checked my equipment, my gear, went through that pretty carefully. So these guys uh they're soldiers, they're in the army, but some of them are wearing full uniforms, some have you know Nike boots and um and and sort of half uniforms and that sort of thing. They're smoking. So there's sort of the the training and that, you know, the difference between the you know frontline sort of soldiers and that sort of thing sort of diminishes. And then the next thing I had the next day was uh an appointment with his head of uh media and information actually at the palace. Um, and so I had to go in there with the producer that was with me, and we um traveled to the palace and had to be interviewed by her, the head of um media, around the interview, what the protocols would be, how we had to address the president, all this sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what were the protocols? So you said before you had to submit five uh topics beforehand. Was there any no-go areas for the interview? Anything you couldn't talk about, or any other.
SPEAKER_04They said there's nothing you can't talk about. We just want to be prepared. And look, to be honest, we never paid that much attention to it. We gave them the five, but because the crisis was in there, pretty much captured anything. Um, my intention was never to be rude or make it the toughest interview anyone had ever done or anything like that, because I wanted to get home. And and you know, there's a reality when you do those things. So, um, but certainly it was to find out you know the perspectives from him. So that all she said was, you know, please refer to him, uh be polite, don't interrupt. Um, and I said, look, if responses are going too long or responses are um not direct to the question, I would reserve the right to redirect the president back. And she said, Yep, that's fine, that's within reason. Um, but she just asked me to be polite, which I thought they're asking me to their country to speak to their president. I'm happy to be polite, but I'll still ask the questions that we as a collective at SBS thought were the right ones to ask.
SPEAKER_01Which you did. We we talk about those in a second, but the scenery itself, so presidential palace, is it as uh glamorous as you imagined it to be? Was it was there already signs of war at that stage, or was it like an an oasis of um of peace and uh tranquility?
SPEAKER_04It was barren, it was like these pillars in the ground that come down and the car drives over it, and there was no one around at all. When we got in there, there was a few security guards. Um, we went through the security process to meet this head of media, but really it was it was barren. It's like a big, stark, um, kind of concrete building, not much vegetation or anything like that. And and um yeah, and hardly any people around at all. It was just just barren and like no real even cars parked outside or anything like that. And then yeah, we had the meeting with her, and then the the actual interview the next day was at a different place. It wasn't actually at the um the palace, it was at a like a an office complex um in Damascus itself, whereas the palace from memory seemed a little bit on the outskirts, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So just representational building um that for us is alienating, but I guess for someone like Asad it's representative.
SPEAKER_04Perhaps, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so no sign of his family or children, women, was it all just military and the president, really?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, we we put in a request as well to as you um referenced, you know, his his wife as quite an intriguing figure in her own right, and we put in a request to um to have her involvement as well, uh perhaps to do as a side story um and that sort of thing, that was declined. That was before we actually went. That was declined. The only um, my understanding was the only family members we observed and met were when we went for the interview the next day, the security detail at that premises where the interview actually took place, there's no uniformed soldiers. These were these were all guys with leather jackets and automatic weapons. And um I was told by someone that that's all his family. So they do the immediate security detail as distinct from the you know checkpoints and things like that that are manned by um soldiers.
SPEAKER_01The Assad clan. Now you described a moment before before the interview, you actually had a one-on-one, no cameras, no one else around, just you and Basha Al-Assad. What goes through your head? Do you think like I'm standing opposite this war criminal, this person who's responsible for the deaths of thousands, or do you just focus on your questions and how to get the best information out of him? What's your approach? What's what's happening inside of you?
SPEAKER_04I suppose I was I was nervous, of course, because it was the first time I'd done something like that. And from his point of view, it's just another foreign journalist coming over to ask um a slightly different version of the same question. So he's quite accustomed to it, he was quite charming, quite pleasant. Um, but yep, the producer and I were sat down and then um he came out of the lift and he and I went into the room by ourselves, had the chat for I don't even think it was 10 minutes, it might have been five, but it was just a I think he was uh you know asserting himself a little bit by making those comments about Australia and and all that sort of thing. I said, Oh, that's a fair observation. And oh the other thing he said to me during that was he said, so you don't understand what the impact is of of these terrorists, and this is the problem with the West. They don't understand. And and I said, I with respect, Mr. President, because I've been doing a lot of stories at the time on you know, young Australians uh going over to fight in Syria and Iraq for ISIS and other groups and that sort of thing. And I explained that to him, and I also explained um, you know, the fact that we'd had terror attempts and um plots at you know, football games and Anzac Day and and that sort of thing. And um so I said it's you know very much something we do understand, even though of course we haven't been touched to the same extent as other countries, um, you know, where the where the presence is more physically felt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, plus the the West was fighting ISIS already indirectly through the Kurds, but there was action taken. So you're sitting down, they're obviously controlling the lighting, making sure the president looks good and all that. And then you you start your questions, and let's just tune in to the interview and just have a quick listen.
SPEAKER_03Mr. President, thank you for speaking with SBS Australia. It's now more than five years since the Syrian crisis began. It's estimated somewhere around a quarter of a million people have been killed, many, many of them civilians. Um there's an undeniable human humanitarian disaster. How far into the crisis do you think you are? And is there an end insight?
SPEAKER_02Uh of course there is uh insight, and uh the solution is very uh clearly it's uh uh simple yet impossible. It's a simple because the solution is very clear. How to make it uh discussion between the Syrian dialogue between the Syrians about uh the uh the political process, but at the same time uh fighting the terrorism and the terrorists in Syria. Without fighting terrorists, you cannot have any real uh solution.
SPEAKER_01Your your first opening question uh to Assad, do you think he was nervous?
SPEAKER_04No. No, I don't. I don't think he he was nervous, I don't think he saw um significant consequences. He I think he saw the interview as an opportunity to um continue to double down on his message, which essentially is that Syria was at the behest of a whole range of um terrorists, and anybody, you know, it was a he despised it being called a regime. As far as he's concerned, it was a democratically elected government uh in a democratic country, and anybody that took up arms against it was a terrorist, and um he would treat them accordingly. So his message was just consistently that pretty much to any question, he would eventually that's where he would arrive back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because it is unusual um, you know, that uh a president under threat during civil war actually s bothers to sit down and give interviews. If you think of others, they're just sitting out in their bunker. I'm quite impressed to have to say that you got to ask any question, you know, that there was no sanctioning or any any pressure on you to get his message out there.
SPEAKER_04Bits were not cut out or edited. It was it was the interview as it as it happened. Okay. Okay. But there was nothing was cut out. If that's sort of just some people have asked that in the past, that's also that wasn't the case. Um and they managed that process, obviously, because they had all the um editing equipment and all that sort of thing, and they provided us with a file. And I think we had, I don't know, I think it went to air about two or three days after it actually took place, it went to air in Australia.
SPEAKER_01Which uh which was important at the time because events were unfolding so quickly that you know we got too down the track. Um situation might have changed completely. Now, um, there are two moments in the interview that I want to reflect on is uh one where you ask him about his vision, which is so important as a leader to have, no matter if you're a you know business leader or a dictator in a Middle Eastern country, and he he responded uh about Syria becoming a safe country again, what we referenced earlier of you know the good old days before the civil war. Was that convincing for you? Because sometimes I just wonder, is he just being cynical there? Is or does he live in a bubble? Like what was your understanding? Does he actually believe what he's saying?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a good question. I I don't really know. I mean, I know um that he does. I think he's calculated and he's cunning, and I and I think that was proven. You know, his response to that was, well, I'll let the Syrian people judge me in time, you know, in the fullness of time. And I guess judge him they have, and you know, they now know that he had a an escape plan, a very elaborate getaway plan, which he executed. Um, so I think to think that he a hundred percent believed everything and was honest in his thoughts, I think um, yeah, I know I don't. I I think he was um well schooled by his father, would be my assessment, and I think he he was very strategic in the way that he he managed the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01Let's have a quick listen.
SPEAKER_03What's your vision for Syria? How do you see things in two to three years?
SPEAKER_02After the crisis, or so the first thing we we would like to see is to have Syria stable as it used to be before, because it was one of the most stable country and secure country around the world, not only in our region. So this is the first thing. If you have this, you can you can have other ambitions. Without it, you you cannot.
SPEAKER_01So that was Assad speaking to Luke Waters um in 2016. You just mentioned his his training, but but the the interesting part about him is that he wasn't meant to be the president, right? That's why he was in London, he graduated, and then his brother died, and uh all of a sudden he became the heir to the throne. Did that come up at all? Was there any any in your research, or did that influence the way you phrased your question to make it more personal, not just about the conflict, but about him as a person?
SPEAKER_04It is fascinating that his his brother Basil was um always the one, the anointed one that was going to succeed Hafez. And um, he'd done significant military training. Um understanding of him is that he was uh a bit of a maverick as well. Um, and he was, I think, going to be going for a skiing trip or something in Europe and was speeding to the airport and was killed in a in a car accident, and pretty much straight away um Bashar was summoned back from from the UK where he's starting to be a doctor.
SPEAKER_01You've got to see this in the context of the region, right? So we all know what happened to Saddam. Um, we we also saw what happened to Gaddafi. And I think the differences with those two that obviously they were in power for decades. I mean, he was there for quite a long time in the end as well. But I I do think, after reading a few books about them, they actually believed in what they were saying, they actually believed their own myth and lies so much as some dictators do because they surround themselves with yes men and a fabricated version of reality. But I think sad, especially through his wife and his western upbringing and spending so much time there, which none of the other dictators in the regions had done, he must have he must have known what was happening and what his role was and what would happen to him, as you said, escape plan. Um what what would happen to him if things go wrong, which they did in the end?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, absolutely. Um look, it is it is um fascinating. I mean, I think he was seen as a breath of fresh air for um Syria when he took over, and he was going to open the country up and become more um uh you know open to people from other cultures, and and there was a level of optimism, as I understand from what I've read around uh when he did take over power. Um, but obviously he regressed to being um very similar and some would argue worse than his father in terms of being repressive to his own people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because in the end the civil war was all about preserving power, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_04Like well, that's how it ended up, yeah. I mean, uh it was, you know, again, there was this momentum and this so-called inevitability that um his regime was going to be the next to topple as part of the Arab Spring, but he wasn't gonna have a bar of that, and he saw it coming and um circled the wagons and um put up fight.
SPEAKER_01And the big difference is obviously compared to others to support uh through the Russians, which if that wasn't the case, he might have been toppled and it would have been Iran and Hezbollah as well.
SPEAKER_04I think it's important to point out on the ground.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it would have been a a a much sooner ending of his reign, I think, if it wasn't for the foreign support there. Just uh let's just have a last um listen to the last bit of the interview where um Assad answers your question of how history will judge him.
SPEAKER_02What I wish is to be to say that this is the one who saved his country from the terrorists and from the external intervention. That's what I wish about. Anything else would be left to the judgment of the Syrian people, but this is my only wish.
SPEAKER_03Mr. President, thank you very much for speaking with SBS Australia. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01That was Assad, that was the interview. Interesting point of view there from him. Luke now, do you get up, shake hands? Thank you very much. Out you go. What happened after the interview?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he's pretty gone pretty quickly. Yeah, quick shake of the hands, and uh and that's it. He's gone. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Do you know if you watched it?
SPEAKER_04No, I don't know. I I never had any further um dealings with the uh information ministry. Um, the producer, I think the um the kind of liaison around getting the file of the interview to SPS was handled by someone else because I was went straight into Lebanon um the next day and was covering stories in in in Lebanon.
SPEAKER_01There were some events uh in Lebanon that were more challenging than the actual Assad interview, I believe.
SPEAKER_04Within 48 hours of interviewing Assad, um, I was interviewing, I worked pretty closely with a Lebanese journalist, and um we uh had some links into an ISIS cell and some uh guys that said they were former ISIS um operators, and uh so we're interviewing them, and uh obviously didn't mention the fact that we were sitting down with Assad 48 hours beforehand, but that was um at about three in the morning in Beirut in a pretty dodgy part of the town, and it was it was yeah, definitely a scary experience. But um, they spoke of their time in ISIS and how they felt about ISIS and how pure it was religiously, they weren't allowed to smoke, they weren't, but then it turned out that so many of these people were attracted to ISIS because of their vulnerability and that sort of thing. And these guys had been drug dealers dealing in the Bacar Valley, and um ultimately they joined ISIS in the start for more money, and they were going around filming so-called filming the battlefield beheadings um and that sort of thing, and uploading them for the ISIS site, and they explained um that whole process in pretty grotesque detail.
SPEAKER_01How as a journalist, how do you prepare yourself to not be taken advantage of?
SPEAKER_04Well, I was working with a journalist, um a fellow who I'd worked with before in Lebanon, um, and had a great deal of respect and trust for, and we'd spoken at length about how this was going to unfold and and where the risks sat and um what our potential responses would be and and that sort of thing. But yeah, there was there was still a level of risk, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um but it was something that we wanted to do, and particularly after having spoken at um one side.
SPEAKER_01Because the issue is with Assad and and dictators like that, I imagine they have a clear interest in your being there, they want their story to be told, it's very strategic by them. Um at the time it was still a functioning regime. Um, he was still uh, you know, uh had the city under control and wherever you were traveling. But with those sort of rebels, terrorists, whatever you want to call them, ISIS, etc., sometimes they have nothing to lose and they have very, very scary backgrounds, like you just mentioned. And how do you feel? And can I also ask how your wife felt at the time?
SPEAKER_04That's a good question. I've I I was certainly scared, but I think it's the same, a little bit the same as with the interview with Assad, you know, over the you let the moment control you or you control a moment, and that's a little bit the same when you're going into one of those environments. There's things you can do to reduce risk and what have you. And that were they were things that we were focusing on, certainly, in terms of where we met, how we met, um, and and and and a whole range of things. When it comes to family, yeah, they were they were concerned. Um, but I've subsequently become a father, and that's why I I wouldn't do that sort of work anymore. That said, I was very aware of the risk and put in as many um safeguards as I possibly could throughout the whole process.
SPEAKER_01And you made it home, and I'm glad that we get to talk today, Luke. Another question I have about this: there's the research side, there is the journalistic side, um, you know, to make sure that you are as unbiased as you can be. But also there's a mental side to this, which obviously today there's a much bigger focus on there than there was even 10 years ago, and your interview is it's almost 10 years old now. Um, and did you have any prep work, any meetings with um with a counselor or someone like this beforehand to prepare you for this job in the field? Because we come from a very protected Western environment going into a space that is very, very challenging for most of us.
SPEAKER_04So a lot of the preparation, so I I'd I'd been through uh four separate iterations of what we call hostile environment training, which is preparing journalists to go into hostile environments, whether they're natural disasters, protests, conflict zones, that sort of thing. And um there are there is uh there's a there's a fair spectrum of that training. Some of it is uh what I would describe as junk training, and some of it is incredibly effective. And so taking the um you know the the effective um training and putting that into play is is really important when it comes to the psychological side of it. From memory, there was no pre-briefing, um, but there was a debrief that you had access to. Um, and to be honest, I think it happened as soon as I got back. Um, and I don't think I engaged in it as meaningfully as I should have. You know, it's certainly there for you. Um, yeah, your focus at that time is to get the stories done, make sure they go to air and make sure they're all okay. But um certainly it's something that's available to you, yeah, and made available by SBS, who was my employer at the time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and so so personally, in 10 years later, uh reflection, did it affect you in any way, your your work on the ground?
SPEAKER_04Oh, you can't not. I mean, some of the stuff you you're seeing that you're exposed to, if you're you'd be pretty, you wouldn't be human if it didn't infect it impact you in some way. I think um having become a parent subsequently, I think it would have impacted me differently and more um if I was a parent at the time. Don't think you can go through that and not be touched or impacted, you know, in some way, definitely.
SPEAKER_01So we've heard about yes, I'd interview, you've met um people from ISIS, um, and we'd definitely do an episode on that separately. Uh ISIS, there's so much to talk about there. But you've always in your work also tried to have a positive angle as well, and like you mentioned before, capture human stories and glimmers of hope in in fields of conflict like that. Is there any story you remember from your time that you captured that might have made a difference?
SPEAKER_04I mean, I think wherever um kids are involved, there's a there's a level of optimism, and especially when it's kids being kids, and in a war zone they'll play with discarded bullets and shells and that sort of thing. Their drawings are pretty reflective of what they see. You know, they're drawing uh rockets and um guns and things like that. Um, there was one school I went to uh in Damascus where there was a a guy, I can't remember his name, but he was he was basically teaching them music, and he just wanted Syria again, one of these people that just wanted Syria back to how it was beforehand. But he was um making sure the kids understood the power of music, and and for him, that was a way of them having some escapism from the reality of their lives, and that was great. They they sang songs and and you could see them being kids for just that that time while they were singing, because you know, there's no way you can ignore what's outside and that sort of thing, but just that small amount of time where they were able to sing and smile and and that sort of thing, because there was always a funny sort of angle to these songs. The guy was quite clever, um, he had a guitar and engaged all the kids and that sort of thing, but you know, you could never really escape, you know, there were photos of Assad in the in the classroom, and then outside, you know, not far away, there were sort of shells of kind of trucks and things like that. So yeah, but that was probably the one for me. Um, always the kids was the was the sort of the little bit of optimism, but particularly that day, because you just see how how joyous they were, and there's no way they could be faking that. It was it was just a good experience.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is that that glimmer of hope um that that children, the next generation, hopefully have a better start. They obviously don't have a good start to life, but a better future in their lives. Have you followed the conflict since? So obviously, there's been a massive change in the political landscape in Syria over the last 12 months. No one could foresee what happened there. Um, what was your response to Al-Shara taking over? You know, a man who ran this little mini state in Idlib and then all of a sudden took the almost, I think it's 70, 80% of the country now.
SPEAKER_04So incredible. The sequence of events, which I think is about a year now, um, since uh the fall of Assad. The thing that struck me was just how quickly it took place. And um people said, Oh, Aleppo's fallen, that's one thing that they'll never get Damascus that's been uh fortified, and and Assad will never let that happen. And that happened just about as quickly. And obviously, we know now that he was uh arranging plan B, he wasn't all that concerned about um about it. He just wanted to look after number one and and get to Russia and do whatever he's doing over there. So yeah, I think the thing that struck me about it was how quickly it happened and uh um how there was no meaningful fight or um or defense of it after all that had happened over that previous um however long it was, you know, since 2011. And and then it just finished.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. World history. That's how it is, isn't it? Sometimes within a few seconds um or minutes, things can change. People get on a plane, get out in the 11 years of civil war for nothing. Yeah, um, it could have stepped down in 2011 and might have been a different outcome. That's what we talk about here on Putschcast. And uh Luke, uh you've mentioned before you've become a father, you are no longer a war correspondent, and you're no longer a journalist either. Why did you leave the profession? What do you do now?
SPEAKER_04Well, now I run a um a communications consultancy, so helping um individuals and organizations with their media strategy and their spokespeople, helping prepare them for interviews, incident management and uh stakeholder engagement and those um those sorts of things. Crisis communications also is a is a big part of it. So uh I do that now. I guess the you know, the enjoyment and the thrill of journalism for me a lot of the time was um through some of the hostile environments that we were able to see and experience. And I think that was a reasonable thing to do, you know, when there wasn't someone else who's relying on me. So um, you know, I knew I had to make a change, and that was the direction I went in. And um I I don't regret it. I, you know, remember fondly all of the experiences that I've had, but um equally I'm engaged in what I do now and move on that way.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, uh Luke. Um it's only pesty people like me who make you dig out your old stories, but I think it's such a good story to tell. And you gave us really a good insight into the behind-the-scenes work of a foreign correspondent who has shaped um the way we in the West understand and see the conflict in Syria and also the the crisis in Lebanon, and obviously it's still going on. There's no solution to either of them. There anything else you want to share with us?
SPEAKER_04No, just to say thanks for taking the interest, Oliver, and um yeah, wish you well with your podcast. I think it's going to be uh a really interesting one, and I think um you know they're the sorts of things again that people can consume and learn, and it's a it's a great thing.
SPEAKER_01And if you want to follow up and uh see more of that interview of Luke Waters with Basha al-Assad, you just have to go on uh YouTube, it's been re-uploaded and just Google SPS Dateline Assad interview, and that's you there. Luke, historic document, and I'm sure um people in decades to come will look back at it and and see um what was said and done. Thank you so much for your time, Luke.
SPEAKER_04Thanks to all of those great to be with you.
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