Conflicted - Enter Russia

Conflicted is back with the third episode of Season Two. This episode is a deep dive into Russian foreign policy after the end of the Cold War and the sometimes surprising ways it intersects with the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. 

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, and as always you can read the transcript below!

Read the full transcript here

Conflicted S2E3 transcript

THOMAS: Hello Aimen.

AIMEN: Hello, Thomas.

THOMAS: Today we're going to talk about Russia.

AIMEN: Can I just mention like, you know, my first, you know landing in Azerbaijan?

THOMAS: Well you will, but when it gets there, sure, absolutely.

AIMEN: Because it was so funny story about how, you know…

THOMAS: Not yet.

AIMEN: Yeah, okay.

[Laughter]

[THEME MUSIC]

THOMAS: We have a very complicated episode of Conflicted to record today.

AIMEN: Every episode is complicated, Thomas.

THOMAS: This one is going to prove perhaps the most complicated. We're going to talk, as we have been talking about, the New World Order – America's attempt to create an American-led global, if you like, regime of free market capitalism and perhaps even liberal democracy everywhere following the end of the Cold War. In the last episode, I suggested that America faced three primary challenges in order to achieve that ambition. We discussed how one of the challenges, sorting out the middle East, has failed. Another challenge, incorporating China into the world, we're going to discuss in the next episode. In this episode, we're talking about Russia and America's need to get Russia onside to create a new partnership with Russia if its New World Order ambitions were to be satisfied. So, let’s start with a rough historical sketch of the Soviet Union, its breakup, and Russia’s fortunes after the end of the Cold War. For the 45 years following the second world war, the Soviet Union, as it then was, was the big baddie of the world as far as the West was concerned. America and the Soviet Union were fighting. By 1991, the Soviet Union has collapsed. Its Eastern European satellite states are independent. Poland, Czechoslovakia as it then was, Romania, et cetera. The Warsaw pact, which was the communist equivalent of NATO, has broken down. Russia narrowly avoids civil war when Boris Yeltsin in, in what was considered at the time an act of heroism, saves the day, becomes the president of newly independent Russia, or the Commonwealth of Independent States, as it was called. Now at this point, what happens? A kind of… confused logic at the heart of America's New World Order played out as NATO expanded into these countries, extended its umbrella across them. That was very provocative to Russia. The EU and its ever-desperate attempt to expand its own pool of cheap labor moves into Eastern Europe as well. Uh, eventually even flirting with moving into the Ukraine, which was one of the reasons why the Ukrainian civil war would, would would break out in 2014. So, we did almost immediately see how incorporating Russia into the New World Order forming a new partnership with it, wasn't necessarily going to work. And it was disastrous for the economy as a whole. In the 90s the Russian economy was chaotic at best.

AIMEN: Remember 1998? The collapse? I mean, it was awful.

THOMAS: Overnight the Ruble collapsed and you know, any, any lingering dream that following the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian economy might boom and Russia might match, you know, match the, the prosperity of the West… was destroyed. But first of all, to start us off, what does Aimen Dean, former jihadist, have to tell us about Russia?

AIMEN: It seems for some reason, basically, that I always used to pop up in places where Russia, you know, had a beef or two with. I was in Bosnia, I was in Afghanistan and I was in the Caucuses. Um, you know, supporting the Chechen jihadists.

THOMAS: Chechnya, for the listener, is a tiny Muslim country—officially called the Chechen Republic and is a part of Russia. It’s located in the North Caucuses, that sliver of mountainous land between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Now, Russia’s relationship with Chechnya over the past thirty years is a great illustration of the way Russia responded and adapted to America’s New World Order. And Aimen, you were involved in the Chechen Jihad, were you? When did it all begin?

AIMEN: The first Chechen-Russian war really started in 1994, it was almost two years conflict. When Dzhokar Dudayev, uh, the president, the first declared, self-declared president of the Chechen Republic, declared independence from Russia.

THOMAS: Part of the wider trend following this collapse of the Soviet union for Russian satellite states, certainly in Eastern Europe but also within places like the Caucuses, to declare independence. To wrest independence away from the, the evil Russians who had dominated them for, in some cases, centuries.

AIMEN: Of course. I mean, basically the Chechen-Russian Wars, or I would say basically the Northern Caucuses-Russian Wars, you know, lasted since the days of Catherine the Great.

THOMAS: Yeah, they’re proverbial. And you know, the Caucasian peoples of the North Caucuses are famously warlike.

AIMEN: Very much so. Few in number in comparison to the numerous Russians. But nonetheless, I mean, they were really formidable foes, you know, to the Russians. And I was there, you know, witnessing the first conflict, um, evolving.

THOMAS: So how did you get there? After you left Bosnia, uh, in ‘95 would it have been?

AIMEN: Yes. I mean, by late ‘95 in, uh, the Bosnian war came to an end. And so, uh, before I went to Afghanistan, there was a detour where I went to Azerbaijan and then later Georgia in order to become what we, what I always used to term as an office jihadist.

THOMAS: But at that time you weren't actually a member of Al-Qaeda. You were a kind of freelance jihadist. Who arranged for you to go to Azerbaijan and then to Georgia in order to join the Chechen fight against, uh, against Russia?

AIMEN: Ah. Now in order for this story to make sense, we need to understand the life, or at least the name, of one single individual. He is known in the jihadist circles as Ibn Khattab.

THOMAS: Ibn Khattab.

AIMEN: Yes. Now, Ibn Khattab, you know he was assassinated by the Russians in the year 2002. You know, using a poisoned letter.

THOMAS: In Chechnya?

AIMEN: In Chechnya.

THOMAS: Is this man a Chechen?

AIMEN: No. He is from nowhere else except my hometown. Hubbard in Saudi Arabia.

THOMAS: Oh, what a marvelous city Hubbard is.

AIMEN: [Laughter] Hey, we gave the world Aramco! And we gave the world the list of famous terrorists

[Laughter]

THOMAS: None more famous than Aimen Dean.

AIMEN: Oh dear.

THOMAS: So, Ibn Khattab… Why did the Russians assassinate him in 2002 and what does he have to do with you?

AIMEN: Well. First of all, even Khattab was my hometown boy. In fact, he went to the same school I went to except he went… he went many years earlier. And then he went to the Afghan jihad in 1989. Then he made the detour into Chechnya in 1994 when they declared independence because he wanted to lead the first Arab jihadist or international jihadist contingent to fight the Russians there… in Chechnya. The war really was mainly anti-Russian as in the Russian, you know, state itself. So, it was about being pro-independence for Chechnya. Not only Chechnya, but also the other Muslim republics like the Dagestan…

THOMAS: All these places in the Caucuses.

AIMEN: Exactly. So, the whole idea was about an Islamic awakening in the Caucuses. It wasn't meant to be anti-Russian. If it was any other nationality there, it would have been anti that nationality, anti that ethnic, anti that state in order to start something, because… why? Chechnya is a mountainous country with warlike, devout Muslim people. But of course, Ibn Khattab, uh, being an international jihadist who spent years in Afghanistan, decided the Chechnya is the next Afghanistan. Because it's going to spread from there into the rest of the Caucuses. And it's a mountainous region. It's sandwiched between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. It's perfect.

THOMAS: And Ibn Khattab just called you up, you're in Bosnia, you get a call from Ibn Khattab, he said: “Come on over to Chechnya! Fight some Russians!”.

AIMEN: Well, I, I'm, I'm flattered you say that he called me, but no, he didn't. It was his financier from Saudi Arabia who said: “Well, we need you there, but you know, I have bad news for you. You are not going to the front straight away. You know, we need you basically to run some logistics in the office in Azerbaijan. And then later in Georgia.” So actually, I went there to become someone who basically add up sums, make sure basically that enough supply of mayonnaise and other materials basically made it into Chechnya.

THOMAS: An accountant and a grocery supply, uh, agent.

AIMEN: Exactly. Which actually, you know… was boring. But nonetheless, that was an eye opening. Because I started learning Russian, uh, because it's easier basically if you are going to cross many different, uh, Caucus states, whether it's Georgia, Osettia or Azerbaijan or Dagestan… I mean, they speak so many different local languages and learning one local language is a waste of time. Just learn Russian. Everyone speaks Russian there. So basically, that was the time when I started learning Russian.

THOMAS: So you never fought the Russians in Chechnya?

AIMEN: Well, I didn't fight them with bullets just with jars of mayonnaise.

THOMAS: Mayonnaise? What are you talking about?

AIMEN: Well you know, one of the requests, the frequent requests, I used to get from Ibn Khattab and his group of Jihadists in Chechnya was to keep sending them, you know, hundreds of jars of mayonnaise. Because in the mountains, mayonnaise was the source of protein that maintain, maintained them basically, maintain their levels of energy.

THOMAS: That is so weird. Are we talking about like Kraft mayonnaise? Jars of American made mayonnaise?

AIMEN: Yes.

THOMAS: But mayonnaise goes off so easily. It doesn't last long.

AIMEN: Not in the cold mountains of Chechnya.

THOMAS: So when that first Chechen war against Russia ended in ’96, why did it start again three years later?

AIMEN: That's when I can tell you the entire story as to why it all happened. It all come down to that man I mentioned, Ibn Khattab. And many of his deputies, who many of them come from my city again, Hubbard. I'm sorry about that. I, on behalf of all the good, decent people of Hubbard, I apologize to the world.

[Laughter]

AIMEN: Um, so what happened is that because these, you know, the Chechens follow a particular brand of Islam which is Sufism. You know, it's mythic, it's ritualistic. But Ibn Khattab and the mainly Saudi and Jordanian, uh, jihadists who arrived in Chechnya…

THOMAS: All of them Salafists really.

AIMEN: Salafist, Wahhabis as they are called, basically…

THOMAS: …and therefore anti-Sufi. In theory, they don't like Sufism at all.

AIMEN: Exactly. So Ibn Khattab realized that the Sufis are compromisers who compromised, um, on the goals, you know, basically off the Chechan uprising in 1996 when they negotiated with, uh, the Russian government in Moscow to achieve some sort of autonomy within elections and a referendum later, on full independence.

THOMAS: So in Ibn Khattab’s mind, the Chechen leadership sort of betrayed the jihad by signing a peace agreement with Boris Yeltsin and the Russian government.

AIMEN: Exactly. I mean, it was Alexander Lebed, you know, a famous Russian general and then later politician, uh, who brokered this deal, uh, with the then Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.

THOMAS: So how did, uh… what did Ibn Khattab do next?

AIMEN: As any good Jihadi Salafists, you know, on the same lines of Al Qaeda would do: establish a religious academy to graduate, uh, local Chechens and Dagestanis and other Caucuses minorities to become Salafi preachers.

THOMAS: He, he sort of educated them.

AIMEN: Oh he brought, you know, quite a few preachers from Saudi Arabia. Uh, of course, with the disapproval of the Saudi government. Many of them became, you know, wanted by the Saudi government because the Saudi government and Russia had a good relationship at the time. So, they were brought in order to teach a new generation of Chechens and Dagestanis other Caucuses minority people the principles of Salafism so they spread it and therefore dilute the Sufi character of the Caucus’s Muslims.

THOMAS: They must have worked very fast. If by 1999, only three years later, another war breaks out between Chechnya and Russia.

AIMEN: Indeed, and actually I go into quite, you know, in detail analysis of this in my book..

THOMAS: Ah! Aimen, so shameless plugging your book in the middle of our conversation.

AIMEN: I know I'm not being, you know, not trying to advertise anything here. But I talk about, you know, the reason why the second Russian-Chechan war started, which is the fact that they did not want to just remain confined within the borders of Chechnya. Because they had almost full independence by then! Although not recognized by the UN or anything, but they were on their way to have a full independence by 2002, 2003. But for Ibn Khattab and the Salafists and as you know, basically the Salafi jihadism do not believe in borders. For them borders, you know, they are just lines… you know, dotted on a map that has no meaning whatsoever. They wanted Dagestan The bigger… well, the biggest Republic within the…

THOMAS: Muslim Caucuses.

AIMEN: Yes, Muslim Caucauses to become independent and so they made more and more incursions, killed so many Russian soldiers, you know, Dagestani police who are cooperating with the Russians. And as a result, the Russians were threatening again and again that they will do something. But Yeltsin wanted to maintain the peace. However, something that the jihadists, did not, uh, take into account. Which is: while they were planning to launch massive attacks inside Russia, in Moscow itself, against the Russian army residential compounds, you know, which will kill at least 300 Russian soldiers and their families, uh, and wound another 600 in September and August of 1999, they did not count that Yeltsin who was changing prime ministers more than he was changing his socks, would appoint the head of the FSB, you know the…

THOMAS: The successor to the KGB.

AIMEN: Absolutely. I mean, the head of the Russian intelligence, Vladimir Putin, as his prime minister.

THOMAS: Ah! Vladimir Putin. I wondered when he’d come up.... Because Vladimir Putin is obviously an enormously important figure from recent history about which much has been written… much is said. He's played the role, something of the classic Russian bogeyman for the West and the world for the last 20 years now it's been a long time.

AIMEN: But who created him? Who made him into what he is right now?

THOMAS: And you're saying that the Chechnyan war has everything to do with his emergence as, as the new Russian strong man.

AIMEN: I can assure you that it almost the catalysts which propelled him into the leadership. And I tell you why. I met in 2013 with a senior Russian diplomat, slash spy most likely, and he's basically had a personal friendship with Putin. And he said that when he was appointed as prime minister he saw this as some sort of a destiny, fate calling him. And he basically, you know, as a devout Orthodox Christian, he saw that being a prime minister is a calling. But he needed a sign from God. That this is his destiny to fulfill.

THOMAS: Before you tell me what that sign was, I just want to press you on this. Putin a devout Orthodox Christian. I am, as it happens, an Orthodox Christian, because I, you know, I even lived in an Orthodox monastery for a while. I would question your description of Vladimir Putin as a devout Orthodox Christian. I admit to you that he definitely pretends to be an Orthodox Christian and invokes Orthodox Christian symbolism, uh, in, in the new Russia that he's building. Which, uh, which, you know, he's trying to kind of, he's trying, trying to bring back the glory days of the old Orthodox czarist empire. But a devout Orthodox Christian? Really?

AIMEN: Well, I have to take the word of the person who told me. Who basically is a senior diplomat and someone basically who knew Putin quite well.

THOMAS: Okay. So what was the sign from heaven that devout Orthodox Christian Vladimir Putin was looking for?

AIMEN: The bombings of the army barracks in Moscow.

THOMAS: Tell us that story. Tell us the story of the Chechen jihadists and your hometown boy Ibn al-Khattab’s attack on the barracks in Moscow.

AIMEN: Well, the jihadists for 19 months, and I go into great details of that, of that operation in my book, but the jihadist planned for 19 months to avenge massacres, took place in Dagestan and Chechnya by the OMON and the Alpha, uh, units of the Russian Special Forces. They located where these special forces live alongside their families in military compounds and they attacked them in the summer of, uh, 1999. Just weeks after Putin was sworn in as the prime minister of Russia.

THOMAS: What did Putin do?

AIMEN: Putin saw this is as ‘This is the Lord's calling’. That's what he basically, you know, interpreted these attacks. Russia is challenged and therefore we should not shy away from more. Until then, basically the Russians suffered major losses in the first Chechen war, and they were not organized and they didn't have a good leadership. Yeltsin was a drunk, you know, incompetent idiot. But Putin decided that he will take charge of this Russian war you know, using his exceptional skills as a spy in order to execute the, uh, war against these people. So, this is why I always say that it is ironic that as Russian bombs are falling on jihadists in Syria, I always used to say ‘You want to blame someone? Blame yourselves. You made this man when you bombed Moscow in 1999.’

THOMAS: How was that greeted in the West? Because I imagine at the time the West must have itself been shocked, uh, at such a heinous crime by jihadists in Moscow.

AIMEN: Well, actually the West believed that it was Putin who orchestrated the whole thing.

THOMAS: Why did they think that?

AIMEN: Well, first of all, basically, okay. There is this man, he is the head of the FSB, the Soviet intelligence. So now he is the head of the Russian Intelligence. Then he became a prime minister. And then suddenly there are these, there are these bombings which basically you know making him so angry that he basically invade Chechnya again. And surprisingly, drive away the jihadists way into the mountains and take back Grozny and other Chechen cities. Uh, so everyone was saying… ‘Oh, how convenient, the timing. You become prime minister, six weeks later, you know, the pretext for the war that will make you a war hero and Russia’s strong man to the point where Boris Yeltsin appoint you as his successor. I mean, how convenient!’

THOMAS: But you're saying that's not true?

AIMEN: Not true. Because why? In Christmas of 1999 I just returned back from [Afghanistan. I was, you know, loaded with letters from Al Qaeda to say certain operatives here in London…

THOMAS: You're already a double agent at this time.

AIMEN: Exactly. I was already spying for MI6 and these letters actually were already opened, expertly scanned, and then put back again as if they were never opened. And then I have to deliver them myself without knowing the content. So… So basically I was supposed to deliver some of the letters to Abu Qatada, you know, famous, you know, Al Qaeda linked cleric who was based in London.

THOMAS: Abu Qatada… gosh, up takes me back.

AIMEN: Exactly. So I called him and he said “Come tonight.” It was Ramadan I remember. He said “Come tonight after the evening prayers. You will be hearing from an old friend of yours. So I said “Okay, fine. I'm coming.” So when I went to his house, we were sitting around, you know, like corporate managers, five of us. We were sitting around a speaker phone and from Tbilisi in Georgia, we were listening to Abu Sa‘id al-Khudri who I knew from Afghanistan years earlier. He was the head of the logistics for the Chechan jihadists.

THOMAS: Ah.

AIMEN: Including Ibn Khattab because he planned the whole thing. He told us when we asked him you know, “Was it disadvantageous to you?” Because even us thought that Putin did it.

THOMAS: You asked him about the, about the attack in Moscow.

AIMEN: Exactly. So you know, it's good basically that the whole thing was recorded. So, um, so basically I asked uou know “Was it disadvantageous that the war, you know, the, the timing of the war was determined by the Russians?” And so he asked “What do you mean, determined by the Russians?” “Uh, well, because Putin carried out, you know, these attacks in Moscow as a pretext”

THOMAS: A false flag. A false flag mission.

AIMEN: Exactly. False flag. I mean, it has all the hallmark of a false flag. And he said “No, we did it.” And he went on to explain the whole process, the reasoning, the pretext, and why they did it. It was damning evidence because he talked about details only the bombers would have known.

THOMAS: So, you have just been told from the horse's mouth as it were…

AIMEN: Yes.

THOMAS: …that what the whole West believed that Putin had launched a false flag operation killing his own soldiers in Moscow was not true. The jihadists had actually done it.

AIMEN: Yes.

THOMAS: And it was just amazingly convenient for him. A sign from God even.

AIMEN: A sign from God like in the later years, like you know, almost 15 years later I had a Russian diplomat who knew him told me that he viewed this as a sign from God. I, however, immediately called my MI6 handlers and told them, that “There is something that you need to know. And immediately.” So we met, I told them the information. It was a bombshell and it landed on Tony Blair's desk within days, basically. And as a result, he shared it with other world leaders and suddenly Putin was no longer treated as a pariah. Putin was treated as a victim of terrorism. And Tony Blair invited him to a pub a few weeks later where they shared the pint. They were wearing jeans and casual and everything, and suddenly everything seemed in a going Putin’s way.

THOMAS: But his reputation did not remain very high in the estimation of the West. What happened? Why? Why did the… People forget now because Putin is a big bad guy, but in the noughties, he wasn't a big bad guy. He sort of was playing along.

AIMEN: He was playing along, but then he was playing along, but then several things happened along the way. 9/ 11 happened. And not many people know but again, jihadists. Putin’s path was forged by jihadists. You know, if you want to blame, you know the rise of Putin on anyone, it's the bloody jihadists.

THOMAS: So why didn’t 9/11 have an impact on, on Putin?

AIMEN: Okay. So, he thought that 9 11 is a good thing in a sense that basically the Americans will realize finally that there is a serious war against terrorism.

THOMAS: He'd been fighting jihadists in Chechnya. And now he says, look, we're all fighting jihadists.

AIMEN: Absolutely. And he offered his help, you know, against the Taliban. Which he did actually. You know, the Russian military and intelligence provided, you know significant help to the US and the UK war efforts in Afghanistan.

THOMAS: And of course, they were experts on Afghanistan. They'd fought in Afghanistan for 11 years.

AIMEN: Exactly! And they have their own assets there, they have their own allies…

THOMAS: So Putin was an ally of the West in the war on terror.

AIMEN: Absolutely.

THOMAS: What happened to change that?

AIMEN: Iraq war….Because Putin was absolutely against it.

THOMAS: Because?

AIMEN: First, he believed that Saddam Hussein, just like Bashar al-Assad and others, they are the pillars of stability. They are, you know, the pillars of Arab nationalism because Arab nationalism protected Arab Christians. Because you know, look at who was Saddam's foreign minister? Tariq Aziz.

THOMAS: Yes, Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi deputy prime minister and foreign minister under Saddam Hussein.

AIMEN: He was a Christian. And there were many Christian officers in Saddam's army and in Saddam's government and in Saddam's Ba'ath Party.

THOMAS: Certainly in Syria, the Christian community are very close to the Assad regime.

AIMEN: Exactly. I mean, he viewed both Saddam and al-Assad as the pillars of Arab nationalism and Arab nationalism was an important buffer against Islamic extremism.

THOMAS: So Putin begins to realize that America's war on terror is not being prosecuted wisely.

AIMEN: No, he started to see that the war on terror had a more sinister ulterior motive. He started to doubt whether the neo-cons of Washington really wanted to fight terrorism or wanted to basically, you know, have an American hegemony in a project in the middle East. Which would then basically make America far more powerful because they will have access to the world natural resources. They can then flood the market with cheap, Iraqi oil, which would then undermine the Russian economy. Russia was a massive net exporter. So if you bring down the price of energy, both oil and gas, then the Russian economy would suffer significantly. So he saw that you know, with America being there, America will have its you know basically its foot on the hose like they can basically just press and cut, you know, the dollars to theRussian economy by manipulating oil prices.

THOMAS: This is very interesting because this is putting us into Putin's head. And often, you know, people aren't encouraged to see the world from Putin's point of view. Now….

AIMEN: By the way, I'm not the Putin apologist. I'm just basically stating facts. I don't like the man. I don't like what the Russians did in Syria whatsoever. I condemn it with the most, you know, you know, strongest way possible. I condemn it the strongest way possible. But we have to talk about facts. Here at Conflicted we are dissecting conflicts in order to come up with the right diagnostics.

THOMAS: So, from Putin's point of view, he's looking out at a certain foreign policy decisions that America is making and realizing ‘I'm not sure I really want to be a part of this new world order or I'm not sure if this new world order actually has my best interests in mind.’ Of course, there are other foreign policy decisions that America makes in this time. It expands NATO into former Warsaw pact countries.

AIMEN: Yep.

THOMAS: This is happening in conjunction with the EU which is trying to expand its influence into former Warsaw pact countries in Eastern Europe, which, which Russia considers to be something of a threat to its sphere of influence and this definitely includes the Ukraine as I mentioned before.

AIMEN: Thomas, remember… Kiev?

THOMAS: Well the Orange Revolution in Kiev... I mean, Ukraine would definitely come up in this conversation because we all know that, uh, that a civil war has been raging in Ukraine for six years now. Russia has covertly, sometimes overtly, intervened on the side of the Eastern Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists.

AIMEN: Yeah. And guess whose forces, whose irregular forces are fighting in Ukraine now alongside the Russians or alongside the pro-Russian separatists in order to keep K… you know, the Ukrainian forces at Bay.

THOMAS: Don't tell me the president of Chechnya is…

AIMEN: Yes. Ramzan Kadyrov…

THOMAS: Alrght, for the listener… Ramzan Kadyrov became president of Chechnya in 2007. His father was also president, though he was assassinated in 2004. Now Ramzan Kadyrov… the thing is he has this cherubic face. He looks like a little baby with his sort of soft, downy beard. But he’s a really fucking hard guy. He’s a real tough warlord.

AIMEN: He has a private army of many Caucuses Muslims, Sufis who are, you know, brave warriors. And…

THOMAS: A private army?

AIMEN: A private army…

THOMAS: You mean it's not the army of Chechnya?

AIMEN:

No, it is basically a private army you know, of Ramzan Kadyrov and they are deployed according to whatever they are needed. So in Syria they are deployed. They are between 4 and 5,000 of them. They are deployed as the Russian military police in order to, uh, police, newly liberated areas where I know… basically so-called liberated areas from the opposition. But because they are Sufi Sunni Muslims, they make it easy for the Syrian population to accept them.

THOMAS:

Uh, I mean, this is blowing my mind. A private army separate from the Chechnyan military. This, this is very much like…

AIMEN:

They are the Chechnyan military, but they are not a regular Russian military.

THOMAS:

This is, this is similar to the privatization of espionage you were talking about in the first episode. Are we seeing the privatization of the military completely?

AIMEN:

Not only that, Ramzan Kadyrov has his own mercenaries fighting alongside, you know, UAE and Saudi Arabia forces in Yemen. They are fighting alongside Haftar, General Haftar in Libya. You know, it's all for money. And he has actually a military Academy, uh, in Grozny where he is training…

THOMAS:

In Chechnya.

AIMEN:

In Chechnya. Where he is training, you know, soldiers from Saudi Arabia, from the UAE, from Nepal. You know, even Nepalis Gurkas in order to be deployed to war zones according to the whims of certain leaders in the middle East.

THOMAS:

War zones, including the war zone in Eastern Ukraine.

AIMEN:

In Eastern Ukraine and wherever Putin wants them to.

THOMAS:

This is amazing. So, Putin rises to power in 1999 on the back of Chechnyan separatism, he crushes Chechnyan separatism, installs in Chechnya a president that is basically his lapdog and now Chechnyan soldiers are everywhere fighting… jihadists, fighting anti-Russian forces, fighting whoever. They're the great mercenaries of the world?

AIMEN:

Yeah. And they are devout Muslims who believed, who believe that, you know, Russia is actually pushing back America's evil influence and therefore they are fighting Putin's jihad. I know it's, it's mind boggling.

THOMAS:

I'm actually speechless cause there's just such a conflation of everything we've talked about now for, you know, for almost a year… You know, Russia, it's not actually that Russia is simply geopolitically America's enemy. But Russia has actually allied itself with Islamists who think that America is the antichrist. And in a similar vein, before you brought up Russia’s presence in Syria today because it's an amazing thing. It's in fact one of the most amazing things about America's failure in the Middle East, that for so many decades, America did whatever it could to prevent Russia from, uh, having a untrammeled control of a swathe of the middle East. And yet now we have Russia, which can do more or less what it wants throughout Syria.

AIMEN:

Exactly.

THOMAS:

Now. They're there for many reasons. Why is Russia in Syria?

AIMEN:

Again, that diplomat who I spoke to… and… he said that there are multitude of reasons why the Russians felt confident enough that they can intervene in Syria. Because one, Obama is weak and wobbling and wasn't willing to intervene. And that even though Assad cross the red line, the chemical weapons red line, twice, Obama did not do anything.

THOMAS:

Obama's… Obama's lack of response emboldened Putin, fine. But that's not why he's there.

AIMEN:

The second reason we have an intervention in Russia, according to the diplomat is that again, it comes back to Putin's, you know, if it's not belief in the Christian Orthodox church at least it is, you know, acquiescing to the pleas by the Russian Orthodox church that the Czarist a treaty with the Ottomans, which basically granted the Syriac Orthodox Christians of Syria the protection of the czars of Russia. So, the idea is that since France was always viewed as the natural protector of the Catholics of the middle East…

THOMAS:

Like the Maronites in Lebanon…

AIMEN:

Exactly. It’s the same thing there. That the Russians are tasked since hundreds of years with the protection of the Orthodox Christians in Syria.

THOMAS:

Now for the listener, from well before the Russian Revolution made the Soviet Union an atheist state, Russia was the biggest Orthodox country. And as such it considered itself the protector of the Orthodox Christians of the Middle East. In the 18th century in fact, the Czarina, the Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great, who was in fact a German not a Russian, but she took to it like a duck takes to water, she was the first one to explicitly say that she was going to protect the Orthodox Christians of the Middle East. She had this idea and it, and a lot of Russians did at the time, that eventually the czar of Moscow, heir to the ancient Roman and Byzantines emperors would conquer Istanbul, Constantinople, and become the great leaders of the entire Middle East. Of the entire formerly Christian world. In fact, Catherine the great named her grandson, Constantine, the founder of Constantinople with this ambition in mind. Now, in January 2020 Vladimir Putin visited Syria. We all know the Russians are in Syria. The Russians are allied very closely with Bashar Al-Assad. But when he visited Damascus in January, he went along with the Orthodox Archbishop of the city, the Patriarch of Antioch, to the cathedral of the city, the Orthodox cathedral, to worship there alongside Bashar Al-Assad.

AIMEN:

Well… As you know, the czars of Russia has always been tasked with the protection of the Orthodox Christians of the Middle East. That's the first thing. The second thing is that Qasem Soleimani has just been killed. He is the major competitor to Russia's ambitions in Syria because he represents Iran's interests in Syria. He's dead - perfect. Putin is there to consolidate.

THOMAS:

Well, it's interesting. I was in Syria… I lived in Damascus in 2007, 2008.

AIMEN:

Lucky you. [Laughs]

THOMAS:

And I used to worship at that cathedral. I remember specifically, I'll never forget a Psalm Sunday, you know the Sunday before Easter…

AIMEN:

Yeah.

THOMAS:

…at the cathedral. You know, Arab Christians are a wonderful people… Quite bourgeois, very middle-class, but also slightly chaotic. So, I remember just at the end of the mass, outside of the cathedral an enormous ruckus began. A sort of din of brass band music. Because all of the young Christians of the old city of Damascus had organized themselves into a brass band. And then they spent the next several hours just wandering around the city playing this sort of brass marching music. It was very strange, but it was a tremendous sign of the depth of Orthodox Christian penetration in an old Middle Eastern city like Syria which, which we often forget about.

AIMEN:

Exactly that they predate Islam. We forget basically that they've been there since before the Muslims actually arrived in Damascus.

THOMAS:

And Vladimir Putin considers himself their protector. Clearly he has cultivated very close relations with Orthodox Christian communities in Syria and elsewhere.

AIMEN:

Absolutely.

THOMAS:

But how does that support his wider strategic vision?

AIMEN:

Because then we come to the third issue. You remember we talked about the Chechen war before and how that lasted years and years? Now you remember I talked about the friction between the Sufis and the Salafists in the Chechen war?

THOMAS:

Yeah. You can take it for granted that I remember what you say.

AIMEN:

Yeah. Putin decided that he will split the jihadists from each other. The Sufi jihadists he will court. And he will court them in order to cultivate their enmity against the Salafists to use it to beat the Salafists.

THOMAS:

To divide and conquer?

AIMEN:

Absolutely. So he showered Ramzan Kadyrov and his father before him, Akhmad Kadyrov.

THOMAS:

Who is, who are these Kadyrovs?

AIMEN:

Basically, they are members of a prominent Sufi clan in Chechnya. Uh, they were promised the presidency of Chechnya afterwards within the Russian Federation. And that they will be having the backing of the Kremlin, the backing of the Russian armed forces if they just basically turned their back on the Salafists, the Wahhabis basically, who are trying to ignite a never ending war in the Caucuses against Russia and against other ethnicities in the region.

THOMAS:

So Putin gave the Kadyrov family the control of Chechnya in exchange for turning against the Salafists?

AIMEN:

Exactly. So a war raged between the Kadyrovs and the Salafists, including Shamil Basayev and other people who were the leaders of that Salafist movement along with the successors of Ibn Khattab there. But you know, as the war raged and it claimed actually Kadyrov’s father, Ramzan Kadyrov, his father Akhmad Kadyrov was killed actually by a IED place under his podium by the jihadists. So what happened is: the Arab spring happened. Syria happened. And suddenly Syria became the magnet of jihadism. And what Kadyrov did? He opened the Southern border towards Georgia and allowed all of these people to exit.

THOMAS:

Bye, bye.

AIMEN:

Bye, bye. Go to Syria, wage your jihad there, go establish your califate there. So they went there and then what happened is – when they were all there, between five and 6,000 of them, then this is basically when the Russians thought ‘That's it. We have emptied the Caucuses from them, let us now pound them there.’

THOMAS:

So Russia has been fighting its own enemies in Syria.

AIMEN:

Exactly.

THOMAS:

Why doesn't anyone know about this? That's fascinating.

AIMEN:

Well, you need to be quite intimate with the events as I did when I was in Azerbaijan and Georgia in these days.

THOMAS:

We should all be more intimate with jihadists.

AIMEN:

[Laughs]

THOMAS:

You should create a dating app for jihadists. ‘Get intimate with jihadists’.

AIMEN:

Yeah, except basically I mean, it will entail some sort of slavery contract. [Laughs]

THOMAS:

But let’s get back to this. Russia. And Russia’s role in the formation, or perhaps subversion, of George H. Bush’s New World Order. The economic collapse in Russia that happened at the end of the 90s followed several years where Russia really did dance to the beat of America's drum. Americans insisted on radical economic surgery. The IMF, which along with the World Bank, tries to manage the global economy as it fitfully lurches towards free markets and liberal democracy, and America more or less insist on radical economic and financial surgery to what was a completely sclerotic post-communist economy. And very quickly it caused all sorts of economic problems. The ruble collapsed in value in 1998 I think quite famously, state assets were sold to the highest quote unquote bidder but actually that meant…

AIMEN:

The oligarchs…

THOMAS:

Insiders within who had influence within the government there, and most of them actually seem to live just down the street here in London but…

AIMEN:

Indeed.

[Laughter]

THOMAS:

That’s another story. Um. So initially, Russia did dance to the beat of America's drum. ‘98 the ruble collapses and from then on Russia really stops playing along. That decision, to go its own way again, is largely the result of Vladimir Putin who came to power at that time.

THOMAS:

There's obviously a lot more we could have talked about in this extremely complex episode of Conflicted. I mean, 20 years of Russian history is not easy to summarize. We could've gone into greater detail about the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Or we could've talked about the war in Georgia, Russia’s war in Georgia, in 2008. And, of course, the ongoing Ukrainian civil war which we did touch on. But as we’ve seen through the story of Russia’s relationship with Chechnya, America’s strategy toward Russia at the dawn of the New World Order was a bit of a roller-coaster. And it was, once again, jihadists, this time in Chechnya, who played such a huge role in undermining that strategy by creating the conditions for the rise of Vladimir Putin. A man who, you know love him or hate him, began to look around and realize that America’s global ambitions weren’t necessarily in the interests of Russia. In the end in a sort of twist, Putin partnered with the Sufi Muslims of Chechnya and gave them independence of a sort in exchange for becoming his vassals. Which is why we now see Chechen mercenaries in every Middle Eastern hot zone fighting for Russia and ironically enabling Russia to regain its age-old role of protector of Orthodox Christians everywhere. An unexpected dimension of Russia’s power struggle with America in the Middle East. So we see that despite efforts on both America’s and Russia’s parts to forge a new partnership following the collapse of the Soviet Union, that relationship soured over the course of the noughties leading us to where we are now. Russia with a strong foothold in the Middle East. Russia becoming an opposing force to America, definitely not their partners. Russia allied with Muslim warriors of the Caucuses who are in almost every war zone in the region and beyond supporting and projecting Russian power. It was certainly not what George H W Bush had in mind when he first invoked his New World Order.

[THEME MUSIC]

THOMAS:

Conflicted is a Message Head production. It’s produced by Sandra Ferrari and Jake Otajovic. Edited by Sandra Ferrari. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.

This week we’ve got another book to giveaway to one of our lucky listeners. Our recommended reading for this episode is: ‘A Dirty War. A Russian Reporter In Chechnya’ by Anna… let’s see if I can get this right… Politkovskaya. Anna Politkovskaya is a hero among journalists and an early victim of Putin’s crackdown on independent journalism. Assassinated in 2006 for exposing the dark side of the new Russia. In this brutally honest book, Politkovskaya courageously documents the Chechnyan War from the ground. To be in with a chance of winning a copy, join our Facebook group before Wednesday 18th March when we announce the winner. The link to the group is in the show notes or search ‘Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group’ on Facebook. You can also find the show on social media – Twitter and Facebook at MHConflicted. And if you’re a fan of the show, please subscribe to Conflicted in your podcast app and leave us a rating and a review. It will really help us to spread the word.

You’ve been listening to Conflicted with me, Thomas Small, and my good friend Aimen Dean. See you again in two weeks!

Conflicted - New World Order

In 1990, George Bush proclaimed the dawning of a New World Order. The Cold War was over, the nation-state and capitalism had won, and the US was ready to deliver their strategy for global governance of the world. Aimen and Thomas discuss how this played out in the Middle East and where the grand vision fell short.

You can now listen now wherever you get your podcasts — and we’re also publishing our transcripts this season, so check it out below!

Read the full transcript here

Conflicted S2Ep1 New World Order

THOMAS: Hello Aimen

AIMEN: Hello Thomas.

THOMAS: Nice to see you again.

AIMEN: Nice to see you too.

THOMAS: And hello to you, dear listener. Thanks for tuning in to the second episode of the second series of Conflicted. A podcast where we try to take you through the history of the last 30 years. The history of America's attempt from out of the ashes of the Cold War to build a new, and the glorious world, where freedom, liberal democracy and capitalism would thrive everywhere.

AIMEN: And unicorns flying everywhere [Laughs]

THOMAS: [Laughs] [Overlapping] And unicorns as well.

[THEME MUSIC]

THOMAS: In the last season, we started our story on 9/11. The infamous day when Al-Qaeda attacked New York City and Washington D.C. In this season, we're also going to start on September 11th, but not in 2001, in 1990. When George H. W. Bush, that is to say, George Bush Senior, the first President Bush, delivered a speech to Congress in which he said this:

[ARCHIVAL CLIP STARTS]

GEORGE BUSH: We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. Out of these troubled times, a new world order can emerge. A new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor, and today that new world is struggling to be born. A world quite different from the one we've known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice.

[ARCHIVAL CLIP ENDS]

THOMAS: So there you've just heard President Bush Senior invoke the New World Order, which he hoped to establish following the Cold War. What was the New World Order? Well, I think we can define it like this. America, now unopposed, a global hegemon with no Soviet Union to oppose it, uses its military to police the world, prevent one nation state from invading another… with the exception of America itself of course but that's another issue. [Laughs]

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: And in general support the establishment and the strengthening of nation states everywhere in order to allow international organisations like what became the World Trade organization, to spread neoliberal capitalism everywhere, which they believed would spur global trade and lead to economic growth.

When President Bush Senior delivered that speech to Congress, Saddam Hussein had recently invaded Kuwait. You Aimen were living not so far away at the time down in Khobar on the Eastern coast of Saudi Arabia. Uh, and in the first season you told us about your memories of that time of having American troops come to Saudi to help rescue Kuwait and prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia.

We don't want to go over that story again, but what I'd like to know from you is: do you remember the first time you heard this expression, New World Order and heard about America's ambitions following the cold war to create a new and prosperous world for everyone?

AIMEN: You know what, Thomas, you will be surprised to know that I did hear that expression in the run up to the first Gulf War between, you know, Saddam invading Kuwait and the launch of the war to expel him from it. Why? Because the listeners might not think of it like this right now, but actually at the time, we were afraid, and we were genuinely afraid, that the Gulf could become the battlefield of the Third World War. Because there was that general belief that Baghdad was part of the Soviet access. That… Baghdad was part of Moscow's Alliance.

THOMAS: If Saddam Hussein had been allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, at least on and off let’s say…

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Indeed.

THOMAS: He was a bit of a wily character.

AIMEN: Absolutely. So many people thought that Moscow wouldn't allow the Americans to launch an all-out war against Iraq to expel them from Kuwait, and that Moscow would, uh, push for a status quo. And I think even Saddam might have thought this way.

THOMAS: And that's how it always had been during the Cold War. In general, America had not been able to project its power militarily very directly with some exceptions of course, because Moscow would counter their power, so the world was held in a kind of stalemate.

So you're saying that Saddam Hussein thought he could take advantage of that Cold War scenario to… to press his advantage in, in Kuwait.

AIMEN: Indeed. But what happened is suddenly, we started to see that, you know, there is, there is a new shift. First of all, Moscow wasn't exactly very supportive of Saddam's move. That's the first thing. And Moscow was already weak, beyond weak. I think we didn't know how weak it was until Saddam invaded Kuwait.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Well the Berlin wall had fallen...

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Yup.

THOMAS: …the previous November and you know, communism was unravelling.

AIMEN: Exactly, so Moscow was in a weak position, but what actually made this seem like a new world order is that another of Moscow's allies, Damascus – Syria – sent 27,000 troops to protect Saudi border against possible Iraqi invasion.

THOMAS: So even you, a young, well young, 13 year old, 12 year old boy in Saudi Arabia could tell that things had changed. Did you see President Bush give this speech? Were you watching it on TV? Were Saudis watching it?

AIMEN: Of course, because we were living with the idea that, you know, my house was only 800 meters away from the fence of the largest air base, you know, in the entire Middle East, King Abdulaziz Air Base. And you know, not far away to… two kilometres away is the gate to Aramco, which is the largest oil company in the world. Where, you know, two of my brothers were working, my two uncles were working there, and so of course we knew that we will be the next target, you know, Iraqi tanks could be in our town within four hours.

THOMAS: So you're watching television with your family and Bush introduces this idea, the New World Order that he wants to create. What was your family's response to this?

AIMEN: We deduced really three things. One, Moscow is not coming to the aid of Saddam, so brilliant. It means there is no new world war, there will be no World War Three. That's the first thing. Second thing is that the Americans are building the coalition, which means basically that they are going to overwhelm Saddam, and by extension Moscow, with so many countries coming side-by-side together. It means that there will be no two sides fighting this war. Saddam will be alone, which means that Moscow is going to abandon one of her allies in the region. And the third thing is that, well perfect. It means there is no invasion, it’s going to be a simple war later basically to expel Saddam out of Kuwait. The question is, are we going to witness chemical war or whatever? That's what we were worried about.

THOMAS: What did you think the new world that America was now going to lead would be like?

AIMEN: We didn't think that America is going to lead yet because they haven't been yet tested in the battlefield. Yet, all of us in, you know, my family, the extended friends circle, we were worried about America's previous performance in Vietnam. I'm not kidding. Seriously. We were really worried that yes, the Americans are coming, but can they really expel Saddam out of Kuwait and is it going to be short or long, protracted war? We were worried about that.

THOMAS: It was certainly a short war, very quick. I think within a hundred days, Iraq was destroyed.

AIMEN: Yeah.

THOMAS: And then on the 6th of March 1991 again, George H.W. Bush gave a speech in which he again, invoked the New World Order.

AIMEN: That is the speech in which we believed that there is a new world.

THOMAS: And what, how did you imagine it? What did you think it meant?

AIMEN: I liked what my brother said. You know, my brother spent years in America studying for his degree and his masters degree, and he said something interesting, you know, he said: “What this means is that McDonald's is coming to Saudi Arabia.”

THOMAS: McDonald's.

AIMEN: That's what he said.

THOMAS: You didn't have McDonald's yet?

AIMEN: We didn't have McDonald's yet, but he, he said what this new world order means is that we would become similar culturally, economically, to the Americans.

THOMAS: And was he saying that in a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of excitement?

AIMEN: Uh, no, more disappointment actually. [Laughs]

THOMAS: Oh, so people weren't looking forward to this New World Order where they could have McDonald's at every waking hour of the day and night.

AIMEN: Some were, some weren’t, so it all depends on who you speak to. Do you speak basically to liberal Saudis, or do you speak to conservative Saudis? Conservative Saudis especially… Don't forget, many conservative and liberal Saudis studied where? In the US. Aramco used to send so many people to study in America and then they come back and, you know, some have the opposite, you know, view of the U.S as you know, being a hegemonic, uh, culturally encroaching…

THOMAS: Great Satan.

AIMEN: Great Satan, but others basically have more positive view of the U.S and its influence in the world. But I think his words stuck with me when he saw that speech after the defeat of Iraq.

THOMAS: Well, that's very interesting. It shows your brother's prescience because about eight years later a book came out, a very famous book at the time, by Thomas Friedman, still a highly regarded New York Times columnist called The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which sort of became for the liberal intelligentsia, for the metropolitan elite if you like, the kind of Bible of globalisation. I mean, globalization is a word that sort of grew in precedence, but it’s expressing the same thing. This New World Order, where the globe is knitted together, united under American military, economic and cultural supremacy around the ideals and principles first of capitalism, let's be honest. And second, of liberal democracy.

AIMEN: When possible.

THOMAS: When possible. Um, and Thomas Friedman's book, the Lexus and the Olive Tree actually introduced a principle, which became quite famous, in which he said that two countries, each of which have a McDonald's in them, would never go to war with each other. In the end, this proved to be untrue. In fact, the very year the book came out in Kosovo, there were McDonald's there. [Laughs]

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: And Siberia had McDonald's, but it expresses a sort of idea that thanks to American led global capitalism, peace and prosperity would rain and your brother thought that would happen immediately. He thought McDonald's is coming.

AIMEN: Exactly. That's how he saw it. And funny enough, when the Soviet Union collapsed months later-

THOMAS: The Soviet Union collapsed about nine months later.

AIMEN: Exactly. Yeah. So, months later, we saw the first McDonald's open in Moscow and we saw lines and lines stretching a kilometre. And he told me, basically: “Do you remember when I told you it would be McDonald’s?” You know, that McDonald’s represented both the cultural and the economic hegemonic arm of the United States.

THOMAS: It's funny that you say that in Saudi Arabia, people, uh, greeted the New World Order differently depending on whether they were liberals or conservatives. Because certainly I, in America at the time, growing up in a kind of quite right wing, fundamentalist evangelical environment, I was given to believe that the New World Order was absolutely terrifyingly, apocalyptically, horrible that it was the reign of antichrist about to arrive on earth. And in fact, the same year that Bush gave his first speech on the New World Order, a famous American Evangelical Preacher and Broadcaster called Pat Robertson, he published a book called The New World Order, in which he said: “It may well be that men of Goodwill, like George Bush, who sincerely want a larger community of nations living at peace in our world, are in reality unknowingly and unwittingly carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers.

AIMEN: Wow.

[Laughter]

THOMAS: So, amongst the right wingers of America, there was a lot of consternation about this New World Order and what it could mean. Of course, they thought it was going to undermine American national sovereignty as America's political class pursues something like an international global order, which would dilute national sovereignty in pursuit of international goals. Inside Saudi Arabia amongst, say, the conservative preachers and conservative teachers that you were socializing with on your way to becoming a Jihadist Terrorist a few years later, was there a similar, almost paranoia about this, this New World Order?

AIMEN: Let me tell you something, Thomas.

THOMAS: Please do, Aimen.

AIMEN: You will be surprised to know that the three months that followed the American victory in the Gulf War against Saddam, these three months were incredibly weird and surreal. And of course, when Bush spoke about a new world and a New World Order, it was almost visible above our heads. Why? Because before Saddam left Kuwait, he blew up all the oil wells, and so the smoke, the heavy dark smoke from the oil wells, covered all of our region. You know, the tri-city area of Dammam, Dhahran, and Khobar, my city, were covered in dark clouds for three months.

THOMAS: So you must have thought the apocalypse had arrived.

AIMEN: [Laughs] Indeed. And what happened is, you know, basically we wear white robes, they’re called thawb.

THOMAS: Yes, the white thawbs of the Saudis.

AIMEN: Yeah, so I go to the Mosque, or the school, whatever, basically like, I mean, and they closed the schools actually at the time, because of the health hazard. So whenever I go to the Mosque or to the shop or whatever, I, come back. And when it rains, it becomes black you know, basically it becomes so grey, you know, because of the rain that comes with oil in it. So, it was and smells, really smells awful. So, in this environment we were forming our opinion of what the world will be after the defeat of Saddam, the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet access, Communism is defeated in Afghanistan. Remember, it was collapsing in Afghanistan also. It was collapsing in East Europe and Arab nationalism was defeated by Bush when he expelled Saddam out of Kuwait. So, we were thinking, yes, you know, the world is changing around us. And is it for the better? Well, you know, the dark clouds, literally, were hovering above us.

THOMAS: Take us into the minds of the conservative religious Saudis at the time, like my religious contemporaries in America. Were you afraid that the reign of Antichrist had arrived?

AIMEN: Well, I tell you something. You know, you remember there is a preacher. Not many listeners would have heard about, but of course, many, many, many within the Arab world and Muslim world heard about, his name is Safar Al-Hawali. Safar Al-Hawali, you know, you know, he has a PhD in Islamic studies--

THOMAS: He’s a part of a movement in Saudi Arabia called the Sahwah movement or the Awakening movement.

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Absolutely. Thomas, you always impress me.

THOMAS: Which was a movement of primarily Saudi clerics who it is alleged were to some extent allied to, or at least sympathetic with, Muslim Brotherhood ideas. And they petitioned the Saudi government over a series of years to increase the government's Islamic credentials, if you like, or-

AIMEN: Basically, to have a stricter introduction of Sharia into everyday life. To fight off the westernizing influence of globalization, culturally, economically, and all of that. And they wanted to ban interest-based lending. You know, in the kingdom. They wanted to ban conventional banking. Uh, you know, they wanted to go as far as Saudis condemning the new peace process started in 1992 in Madrid between the Palestinians and Israelis.

THOMAS: We'll get to that shortly.

AIMEN: So basically, there were so many things they wanted-

THOMAS: They were… They were, to some extent, successful in shifting attitudes within the government and certainly outside the government towards a more hard-line Islamic direction.

AIMEN: To an extent. But Safar Al-Hawali, he basically was looking at the American arrival to the Middle East, especially in the Arabian Peninsula as they used to call it, to push away Saddam and to safeguard the energy supplies in the world. He saw it as another episode of the crusades. He said that this is not because people wanted to save God, the sovereignty of one small little country like Kuwait. This is bigger than Kuwait. This is bigger than Saudi Arabia. This is bigger than anything else. This is about American Christian crusading hegemony that is in the service of the Zionist project in Israel.

THOMAS: Of course, we know that another person who was around at that time, Osama bin Laden, interpreted, uh, America's arrival in the Middle East in the same way.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: Which led to Al-Qaeda. Which led to 9/11 and everything we talked about in season one. But I think it's interesting that within Saudi Arabia there was almost immediately, in response to the New World Order, in response to America's new unopposed role in the world, that within Saudi Arabia people responded to this. Some people at least, with a call for a more Islamic order. Because the year after Bush’s speech, an extremely famous and influential book was then released by someone called Samuel Huntington. It's a book called The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. It started in ‘92 as a lecture, in ‘93 an article, and then finally in ‘96 a book. And in this book, Samuel Huntington quite infamously says that America's dream of a New World Order is not going to happen because actually, though, perhaps capitalism has defeated communism, in a new world it's not a clash of political ideologies anymore. It's a clash of culture. And he specified two cultures in particular that were not gonna play game. One was China, and we'll get to that in another episode, and the other was Islam. And as we saw to some extent, Samuel Huntington was proved correct. That to some extent, and in some ways, the Islamic world was not easily or successfully integrated into this New World Order.

AIMEN: Some more than others. You know, the problem is it's not so much basically that Islam in itself did not play a part because Islam is absent to be honest. Because of the fact that it's the Muslims who did not successfully integrate into this New World Order or into this you know, global economic model that the Americans wanted to install. And I tell you why. Because while Egypt, Algeria, you know, Iran, Pakistan – these countries failed to embrace, you know, these principles.

THOMAS: The principles of capitalism, liberalism, et cetera.

AIMEN: Well, capitalism, not so much liberalism. But I would say basically in a free market, economic liberalism. Those were embraced by countries like Malaysia, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. These countries embraced it, and as a result, basically the living standards in these countries basically are far better. Of course, oil helped. But in the case of, for example, Malaysia, you know – hardly any oil. And in the case of Turkey, you know, in 2003 onwards, basically when they embraced, um, free market capitalism, thanks to Ahmet Davutoğlu. Also, there was unprecedented levels of prosperity there. So, there are some countries that successfully embraced you know, free market liberalism. And other countries who did not embrace… They did not embrace, or they failed, because of the excessive dictatorship and autocracy that was implemented there.

THOMAS: Well, eventually, George W. Bush and his advisers would, would, uh, come to the same conclusion and thought that they would have to remove a dictatorship from the Middle East in order to see the New World Order through – with fabulously catastrophic results, as we saw in again, in season one.

Now, initially you're America. It's 1991, you've decided we won the Cold War. We have this unbelievable opportunity to erect a New World Order. You're basically going to have three objectives in mind. First, you need to establish a new partnership with Russia going forward. You've been their enemy for the last 50 years, but you've won and now you have to establish a new partnership with them. You need to incorporate China, this incredibly enormous and rising economic and, indeed, military power. You need to incorporate China into the world economy thinking that by doing so you will encourage the spread of liberal democracy there, and you will finally have to sort out the Middle East, a strange collection of monarchs and dictators and Islamists and post-Ottoman failed states. You finally have to sort out the problem. I would like us now to talk about that third objective, the Middle East, because immediately things started to happen. You mentioned before the Israel Palestinian peace plan that was relaunched in Madrid in 1992 by George Bush Senior, and then it was taken forward by President Bill Clinton. At the time, Yasser Arafat was the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Palestinian authority hadn't yet been set up. It would be set up as part of this peace plan. And on the Israeli side, most famously, Yitzhak Rabin, who was eventually assassinated by a hard-line Jewish Israeli who felt that he had conceded too much to the Muslims. That peace plan didn't succeed. Why?

AIMEN: Well, it didn't succeed because, you know a multitude of reasons.

THOMAS: Well, first of all, let's talk about the plan. What was that plan? The Madrid peace plan which was supposed to sort out the Israel Palestine problem, finally. What was the plan?

AIMEN: I love the fact that the plan was a slogan. The slogan for the, [laughs] for the conference was also the plan. Land for peace.

THOMAS: Land for peace.

AIMEN: Yeah.

THOMAS: Meaning?

AIMEN: Meaning, give the Palestinians lands. And they give the Israeli's peace.

THOMAS: So they'll stop attacking Israel if Israel gives back lands, basically.

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Yes.

THOMAS: That's the idea.

AIMEN: That's the idea. The 1967, you know, lands in return for peace...

THOMAS: In 1967 there was a war between Israel and Egypt.

AIMEN: [Overlapping] And Serbia and Jordan

THOMAS: And Serbia and Jordan, [Laughs] and in the course of that war, Israel conquered huge amounts of land in the West Bank and in Gaza.

AIMEN: Yep.

THOMAS: And so, it became a sticking point of the Palestinians that in order to have a peace plan put in place, they needed to get those lands back.

AIMEN: Exactly, because there was a precedent for that which is in that war also, Israel conquered the entire Sinai Peninsula but they returned that to Egypt when Sadat, who was way ahead of his time in reading events, went to Jerusalem, reached peace with the Israelis unilaterally, and got most of the Sinai back. And piece by piece, basically it was returned. Until finally, in 1986, the last small drop called Taba you know, was given back to Hosni Mubarak.

THOMAS: So Egypt got the Sinai back and now the Palestinians say: “Well, we want all of the Westbank back, please.”

AIMEN: Indeed. And Gaza. Um, however, here, there is a problem. You know, this is where we have to tread carefully because we don't want to be, you know, siding with one side, Thomas, here.

THOMAS: No, I hate siding with one side. [Laughs]

AIMEN: Exactly. So, so on one side, the Israelis are saying that, you know, this is the land of Judea and Samaria, and this is our ancestral homeland. You know, basically, we came all the way from all over the world, basically not because of Tel Aviv or Haifa or Acre. We came actually for this particular piece of land, Judea and Samaria. So now that we have them by right of conquest… But you know, still don't, don't forget. Many people basically think that the Israelis are Europeans or enlightened or whatever. No, they are Middle Easterners. [Laughter] Like everyone else, they behave like such. I've been to Israel before basically, and you know, it was so refreshing to see the way they talk, they behave and everything. It's exactly like we talk and behave.

THOMAS: And so, they say we've conquered the land. We're not giving it back. And the Palestinians?

AIMEN: And the Palestinians say basically: “Excuse me, we are living here.”

THOMAS: Okay, so to explore America's perspective in the early nineties as they're creating the New World Order, why was it important for the Americans to solve this problem and what was the Madrid Peace Plan? How was it going to solve it, and how did it come unstuck?

AIMEN: Well, the Americans thought, and rightly so, that the Palestinian issue is the cause of you know, radicalization. Is the cause to which Arab Dictators use as a stick to beat, you know, their people into submission. Look at Syria, for example. Look at Aleppo. So, Saddam used it to say: “I'm pro-Palestinian and that's why the West is hating me and that's why we have sanctions”. And Hafez Al-Assad, you know, Bashar’s father in Syria, always use the Palestinian issue as a way to say: “If you are not with me, you are with the Israelis.” You know, to be honest I mean…

THOMAS: [Overlapping] They still invoked the Palestinians when it served them.

AIMEN: When it served them. [Overlapping]

THOMAS: As all Arab leaders and Muslim leaders did. [Overlapping]

AIMEN: All of them yes, indeed. So here is the issue, you know, is that one of the things that was really stark for me is that I visited a Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus.

THOMAS: I've been there too.

AIMEN: Yeah. I visited the Ain al-Hilweh in Southern Lebanon. It's a refugee camp. It's a thousand meter by a thousand meter, but inside it there are a 140,000 Palestinians living. So you can imagine basically the awful living standards there. I visited The Baqa’a camp in Amman, in Jordan, and then I visited the West Bank, you know, in 2018 and what a contrast.

THOMAS: A positive contrast?

AIMEN: A positive contrast. The living standards of the Palestinians in the West Bank, far, far better than the living standards in Lebanon, in Syria, and Jordan. I was thinking, what is going on here?

THOMAS: Well, that that is actually a sad and tragic fact that most visitors to Lebanon and Syria and Jordan learn, you know, that ultimately the Palestinians who are not granted citizenship of those countries, even though they've been living there for decades, up to 50 years, 60 years in some cases, and they're not provided with the level of public service that the normal citizens are provided…

AIMEN: Yeah in Lebanon [Overlapping]

THOMAS: …In order to maintain this idea that the Palestinians are victims and need our help.

AIMEN: Exactly. I mean, the hypocrisy over in Lebanon – they are barred from 84 jobs. 84 jobs they can't even do. They are barred from education. They are barred from so many things. They can't go to university in Lebanon. So, you know… And when I visited the West Bank, you know, you notice basically that they had the places that were destroyed in the 2004 Intifada. Intifada, which means uprising in Arabic. You know, when you look at Jenin, for example, they have a brand new university now there and you drive around and you find BMWs and Mercedes and you know, the levels of prosperity is far better. I'm not saying basically they are living the life...

THOMAS: No, I mean Palestinians suffer a lot injustice in the West bank.

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Exactly.

THOMAS: There's no question. And in Gaza strip, no question. But what is often not pointed out is that they suffer sometimes similar or even worse forms of injustice in their fellow Arab countries. [Laughs]

AIMEN: It’s worse in the Arab countries than in Israel. It's worse. Much worse. The hypocrisy of it, you know, is astounding. And I think that's one of the reasons why the Americans wanted to solve this issue, is to make sure that it cannot be ever used again to beat the Arab people into submission.

THOMAS: So, the Americans want to neutralize their opponents within the Arab world's ability to do that.

AIMEN: Exactly. And the Islamist… And don't forget the Iranians. The Iranians already created the IRGC, Al Quds Force. We talked about Al Quds force in the last episode. What does the word Quds force mean?

THOMAS: It means Jerusalem.

AIMEN: Exactly. So, you know, when you have an entire, you know, army in Iran called Jerusalem Army [laughs] Al Quds force. You know, so basically for the Americans, they looked at all of this in 1992 and said “Only when there is a viable peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis that we can tell the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Iranians, and the Islamists of the region – that's it. Put up or shut up. The Palestinians have signed up to this peace. You can't be more Palestinians than the Palestinians themselves.”

THOMAS: But they didn't sign up to the peace. Why?

AIMEN: Aha. Again, you know, peace require compromise. And both sides, in a way, were not willing to compromise enough for each other, basically, to accept. For the Israelis, who remember, basically, they are people who, you know, just a generation earlier, you remember this is 1990, a generation or two generations earlier, suffered one of the largest, you know, ethnic cleansing and genocide that ever happened in the world.

THOMAS: The Holocaust.

AIMEN: The Holocaust. And they'd been attacked again and again by multiple countries. 1948, 1967, and 1973, so they always basically, have above anything else, a worry called Security.

THOMAS: Absolutely.

AIMEN: And the country is so tiny. You know, basically, if you drive from Tel Aviv to the Hills of Sumaria and Judea, basically it's only like in a 12 kilometers or 12 miles, I think. I can't remember. But you know, we're talking about a small stretch of land, which means any opposing force can cut Israel in half and basically just divide the country very quickly and swallow it. So, they always have this, you know, unbelievable, irrational almost, obsession with security.

THOMAS: So they don't want to compromise their security and the Palestinians, they want their land back and Israel said we’re not giving it to you.

AIMEN: Well, you know, this is where things get really complicated. The headline is the Palestinians basically would like to have yes for an answer, or no for an answer. They take either yes or no. For the Israelis, they don't like answers. They like questions. They like hundreds of questions to be raised. You know, okay, well, the sovereignty over the airspace, the sovereignty, where is the airspace defined? Is it like in 200 meters above the sea level? 300 meters above sea level? Okay. What about the water underneath? Does it belong to Israel or the Palestinians? What about the settlements that already been built there? What do we do with them? Do we annex them, but, okay...? What about the roads between them? Basically, are they still a part of Israel or not? Can you believe these issues took years and years and years to just basically, you know, being hashed out and then in the end they were never agreed.

THOMAS: But why not?

AIMEN: Because, while these talks were continuing, the Israelis continued to build more settlements.

THOMAS: I see. So, they were antagonizing the Palestinians more.

AIMEN: And this is where we are stuck now.

THOMAS: So, America's goal of solving the Middle Eastern problem failed at the first hurdle. But, very soon, there was a second hurdle in the Middle East, or let's say the Muslim world which was in Somalia. Briefly because Somalia is goddamned complicated, tell us Aimen – what happened in ‘92, ‘93 around Somalia?

AIMEN: What happened is that what was put together, post-colonialism by force, ended up basically separating by force. Remember that Somalia was a socialist, planned economy, kind of a country.

THOMAS: Allied with the Soviet Union?

AIMEN: To an extent, it was, you know, kind of didn’t know what it wants. And so basically with the weakening of the Soviet Bloc, add to this basically the fact that Siad Barre was a dictator who ruled the country with an iron fist. Somalia is a tribal country and its borders were a construct of post-colonialism. It was bound to break. The question is when. In 1990…

THOMAS: [Overlapping] In 1991

AIMEN: Finally, the breaking point was reached. Siad Barre after ruling the country for 20 years with an iron fist, faced an armed uprising against him by some of his generals. And that led to the tribal powder keg to finally explode and the country to this day, 30 years on, still divided. If you want my opinion, you want to solve the problem, partition the country into three or four countries.

THOMAS: That may be the final solution, but at the time, the United Nations, uh, decided to get involved. A number of security council resolutions were drawn up and ratified to keep the peace in the country. Peacekeepers were sent, led by the United States, of course. Um, and that attempt by the United States to police these United Nations security council resolutions failed. Perhaps the listener will have seen that excellent Ridley Scott film, Black Hawk Down, which tells the story of some American peacekeepers there. When their Black Hawk helicopter was taken down and they were subjected to a prolonged assault from Somalians, which became infamous and ultimately led or helped lead to the withdrawal of America from Somalia. And the country's continual collapse into a state of total misery. So, America failed with Israel, Palestine. They failed with Somalia, and then they were forced to turn their attention to another part of the world. Not exactly part of the Muslim world, but slightly part of the Muslim world. The Balkans, specifically Yugoslavia. Ah, the Balkans, Homeland of war and… [Laughs]

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: …and ethnic strife. Um, so people may know Yugoslavia was a member of the Eastern Bloc, although quite a, uh, independent member. It's long, uh, living, Communist dictator Tito did not get along with Stalin and the Soviets so well. So he kind of forged his own path and Yugoslavia was a relatively prosperous and peaceful place.

Uh, he died in the 80s, and a man called Slo.. Slo.. Slo-

AIMEN: Slobodan.

THOMAS: Slobodan Milosevic came to power there, who as the Eastern Blocc and as communism began to fall apart everywhere, decided that the best way to move forward was to become a, perhaps even a Trump style, let's say, [laughs] a nationalist, a dictator. So he leaned heavily on the Serbian rhetoric on supporting Serbian ambitions. That Serbs are the greatest people in this part of the world, and they need their rights to be protected. Uh, which was seen to be very threatening by the other peoples of Yugoslavia, the Bosnians, the Croatians, although they're actually all the same people. What really divides them is religion.

AIMEN: Exactly. I mean, the Slovenians and the Croats are Catholics and the Bosnians are Muslims and the Serbs are-

THOMAS: [overlapping] Are Orthodox

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Orthodox Christians.

THOMAS: That's right. Uh, and this led to a lot of suffering. Especially in the Muslim area of Bosnia where, not just from the Serbs, but from the Croats as well the Muslims were subjected to extremely harsh treatment. And as the the two larger partners, if you like, wanted to prevent their own ambitions for national sovereignty and statehood, again, in a way, addressing this larger question of the Muslim world and sorting it out. Yugoslavia and the descent there into sectarian warfare, which targeted the Bosnians particularly badly. Of course, this is where your own journey through life really starts because you signed up as a young man to join the jihad in Bosnia. What, at the time amongst your jihadist comrades in Bosnia was the attitude towards America's, let's say, hegemonic leadership? By this time, you're, you're, you're, you're not a member of Al-Qaeda, so let's say you're not a jihadist maniac yet. You're just defending Bosnians who are being targeted mercilessly by Serbs and Croats. But nonetheless, what was the attitude towards America at the time?

AIMEN: You know, when I, when I decided to go to Bosnia I didn't wake up that morning and say to myself, I'm going to join a terrorist group. I'm going to become a terrorist. No, of course not. I mean, it wasn't viewed this way. It was viewed that you want to go and join the defence efforts of the Bosnian people against the Serbian genocide. You will be surprised to know that there wasn't so much anti-American feelings within the jihadist movement at that time. It was more of anti-European feeling mainly Britain, France, and Germany…

THOMAS: That were failing to intervene.

AIMEN: Exactly. You know, their failure to intervene. Although there was some interventions by the Americans and the French, you know, forbidding the Serbs from placing heavy artillery weapons around Sarajevo during the siege of the city. But all of these basically were viewed as too little, too late, a window dressing. You know, it's not going to solve the problem. The slaughter is still taking place. Again, it's the obsession with heavy weapon, but in fact, basically in those small mortars and sniper rifles killed more people than heavy weapons in Sarajevo.

THOMAS: And the slaughter definitely took place. I mean, you must have witnessed this with your own eyes.

AIMEN: The discovery of mass graves was something that was happening all the time. So for me, basically I've seen the effects of the war, the, you know, I've seen the suffering. I've seen the mass graves being discovered and dug up. So of course, you know, there is no question that genocide took place there in Bosnia. The problem was that the European powers were just so unwilling to intervene. And I think, because don't forget, basically, you know, the European powers, you know, just also two generations ago, experienced a world, very destructive world war in their continent. Um, you know, but the question is…Russia was so weak to intervene in the side of the Serbs if they even wanted to. Boris Yeltsin was still basically begging DC and the Europeans basically for cash. So they could have intervened militarily and put an end to it, but they did not. And I think basically this is the lesson that Blair and Clinton learned later. Uh, when Kosovo, you know, uh, genocide was about to start…

THOMAS: In 1999 that they did intervene early in Kosovo.

AIMEN: Exactly. However, in this case here…

THOMAS: [overlapping] In the Bosnian case, so this is where? ‘92, ‘93, ’94?

AIMEN: ‘95. ‘95 was the end of it with the Dayton Accord which again, the Americans are the ones who basically intervened um in this case.

THOMAS: So in this case, in the, in the case of Bosnia and the, in the collapse of Yugoslavia in general, America's leadership in initiating this New World Order succeeded would you say?

AIMEN: Succeeded in putting an end to a war. Uh, that's for sure. But, in the words of another person, another man who will have a very profound effect on America, you know, when he sat down next to me, knee to knee, uh, in a wedding in Bosnia in October of 1995.

THOMAS: You're talking about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

AIMEN: Indeed.

THOMAS: He was the architect of the 9/11 attack.

AIMEN: Exactly. He viewed it differently. He said the Americans, you know, are not trying to put an end to the war, but what they are doing is that they are going to reward the Serbs, who are only 35% of the population, they’re going to give them half the republic. Half the Bosnian Republic is under a Serbian - Bosnian control. And the, and the rest which is, you know, the Bosnians, who are about half the country and the 15% of the Croats basically, they are going to share the other half. So, he was saying they intervened but he actually twisted it. He said on the side of the Serbs. They came here to ensure that there will be no Muslim Republic in Europe. And they ensured that by making the Muslims half diluted with the 15% Croat who are going to be there.

THOMAS: But that's not really true. That was his paranoid conspiracy theory.

AIMEN: Of course, but what do you expect from someone who hated the Americans so much that in six years’ time he's going to launch 9/11 on them? Another thing is that of course, the Americans also had to convince the Serbs. They, they needed to persuade the Serbs…

THOMAS: To come to the table by bombing them.

AIMEN: Yes, by bombing them. They, they used in a force to bomb certain sites in order to tell the Serbs we are willing to do it. So, I think Slobodan Milosevic and Franja Tudjman, you know, Slobodan Milosevic was the…

THOMAS: [Overlapping] President of Serbia.

AIMEN: [Overlapping] President of Serbia. Franja Tudjman who was the President of Croatia. You know, both of them in the end basically decided, you know, it's time for the war to end. And Alija Izetbegović who was the president of Bosnia, who wasn't exactly happy with the terms – the Muslims had to give up so many lands basically. But in the end, he thought that the alternative to this is an ongoing war for another five years. Can the Bosnian people take it? And, um credit goes to him basically. I mean, he, in the end agreed.

THOMAS: Imagine if Yasser Arafat representing the Palestinians had come to the same conclusion in the 90s when the peace between those two countries was being ironed out.

AIMEN: You know, in Alija Izetbegović you have a politician-philosopher. Um, in Yasser Arafat, you have a flamboyant revolutionary. So, these are the two differences between you know, Arafat and Alija Izetbegović. Izetbegović showed leadership.

THOMAS: As I said earlier, America faced three main challenges in its pursuit of the New World Order. The first was sorting out the Muslim world, which as we've seen today largely failed. The other two: incorporating China into the international community and establishing a new partnership with Russia following decades of antagonism during the Soviet period. These two challenges we will discuss in upcoming episodes as we focus, in general in this series, on unpacking the story of the New World Order. First up in the next episode, Russia.

AIMEN: You know, Russia was for everyone to see, was about to fail. Was about to disintegrate.

THOMAS: Aimen You're giving away- you’re giving away the game. In two weeks, everyone!

AIMEN: Yeah. [Laughs]

[OUTRO MUSIC]

THOMAS: Conflicted is a Message Heard production. It's produced by Sandra Ferrari, Jake Warren and Jake Otajovic, edited by Sandra Ferrari. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.

Now, as we mentioned last episode, we are going to be running giveaways for our listeners this season. This week, a recommended reading is a book I didn't mention during the podcast, but which is equally fascinating and extremely groundbreaking, very important when it comes to explaining the New World Order.

Francis Fukuyama's classic ‘The End of History and the Last Man’. This hugely influential book appeared the year after the Cold War ended and set out to explain why now that the Soviet union was gone, mankind had reached its predestined endpoint in the American-led global order of Western liberal democracy.

A controversial book, indeed. For a chance of winning your very own copy, join our Facebook group before Wednesday the 4th of March when we announce our winner. A link to the group is in the show notes, or you can search Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group on Facebook. You can also find us, of course, on social media at MHconflicted on Twitter and Facebook.

And if you enjoy the show, please subscribe to Conflicted in your podcast app and leave us a rating and a review. It will help the show to grow.

You've been listening to conflicted with me, Thomas Small, and my good friend Aimen Dean. We will be back in two weeks’ time.

Conflicted - World War Iran

With the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the world found itself teetering on the edge of a conflict, the scale of which has only been threatened a few times since 1945.

Aimen and Thomas kick off Season 2 looking at who Soleimani was, his role in defeating ISIS, as well as the place of privatised espionage and drone technology in modern warfare.

You can now listen now wherever you get your podcasts — and we’re also publishing our transcripts this season, so check it out below!

Read the whole transcript here:

THOMAS: Well, hello! Dear listener, we're back. I'm Thomas Small, your co-host, with me as ever is… Aimen Dean. If you’re new to the show go ahead and binge listen to every episode of Season One right now. It'll give you a lot more about Aimen’s amazing backstory and my… my less amazing one. [Laughs]

AIMEN: Excuse me! [Laughs]

THOMAS: [Laughs] And you'll also hear us tell the whole story of the War on Terror, from behind the scenes. And discuss the issues involved in that war in a different way, really, from how you usually hear them discussed. Or… You could just start right here.

[THEME MUSIC]

THOMAS: Hi Aimen, how are ya?

AIMEN: Hi Thomas. I'm still alive.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Still alive!

AIMEN: [Overlapping] I’m still alive.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Oh! I’m so glad to hear it. Not only alive, but in fact celebrating a new birth. I believe you have a son now.

AIMEN: Indeed. Now I have one of each…

THOMAS: Aw!

AIMEN: [Overlapping] …and they are delightful. But also, they come with the usual tax of sleepless nights.

THOMAS: [Laughs] Well, I imagine that your life as a spy also led to several sleepless nights.

AIMEN: [Laughs] Indeed.

THOMAS: In fact, frankly given the threat that you constantly live under of assassination and other such things, have you really ever had a good night's sleep?

AIMEN: Before the kids? Yes. I always had good night's sleep.

THOMAS: That’s not true. You’re lying. You once told me that you couldn’t sleep until you had endless audiobooks playing in your…

AIMEN: Exactly! That’s the source of my, you know, wonderful sleep. [Laughs]

THOMAS: [Laughs] So Aimen you know, here we are, series two, season two of Conflicted… Season one, it seems, was rather appreciated. In fact, we have been nominated for Best Independent Podcast at the ARIA awards – the Audio and Radio Industry Awards. Can you believe it?

AIMEN: I was… I was surprised, to be honest.

THOMAS: I'm sure that we owe any, any adulation we are receiving… we owe to you, dear listener, for sticking with us through these extremely complicated stories which we will now continue with a whole new series of Conflicted.

[PAUSE]

THOMAS: If you are starting here, then I’ll do a quick recap. In season 1, we told you the story of The War on Terror from 9/11 onwards. And we did it through the prism of Aimen’s life story. Aimen joined Jihad as a young man. He fought in Bosnia. He fought in the Philippines. He ended up in Afghanistan where he swore allegiance to Osama Bin Laden, becoming an Al-Qaeda terrorist. Couple of years later, he decided terrorism wasn’t really his thing. So ,he left and was given an option: you go to prison or you join MI6. He joined MI6, they trained him up and sent him right back to Afghanistan as a double agent inside Al-Qaeda. Which he was for eight years until Dick Cheney outed him [Laughs] and he had to flee the embrace of MI6 and go into the banking sector. One form of terrorism for another.

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: Was that fair?

AIMEN: Oh yeah. [Laughs]

THOMAS: [Laughs] This season we'll be looking at another swathe of history. But before we go back in time, we want to start with a bang in the present.

[NEWS CLIP STARTS]

BBC NEWS PRESENTER: Iran says it will take revenge for the US killing of its most powerful military commander. General Qasem Soleimani died when his convoy was hit with a US drone at Baghdad airport.

[NEWS CLIP ENDS]

THOMAS: So Aimen… who was Qasem Soleimani?

AIMEN: Well, sometime if you ask this question in Iran, people will tell you, well, you should say, or you should ask, who Qasem Soleimani wasn't, because he was so many things. He was the leader of the Quds force.

THOMAS: So, the Quds force is part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And I think it's important – it's, it's usually known in the press as the IRGC. And people think that the ‘I’ stands for Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's not true. It is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Which I think indicates what its purpose is. And the Quds force within that corps is an elite group of fighters who are devoted to spreading the Islamic Revolution beyond the borders of Iran.

AIMEN: Well, if you remember, we talked in the previous season about the civil war within Islam. And we talked about the fact that, you know, the entire Islamic world is divided between those who believe in the modern nation-state and those who don't. Whether they are on the Shia side or the Sunni side. So, on the Shia side, you have the Iranian nation-state. But people always forget that Iran is actually two Irans. One Iran is the nation-state and one Iran is the revolution.

THOMAS: So Qasem Soleimani was devoted to spreading the second Iran, the revolutionary Iran.

AIMEN: Exactly, because the Quds Force transcended borders and national identities. They didn't believe in the modern nation-state.

THOMAS: And so, what are some of the things that Quds force did to project Iranian power and the revolution?

AIMEN: Let's put it this way: The Al Quds force, you know, might be 20 or 30,000 Iranians, but there are 280,000 non-Iranians who actually are fighting under the banner of the Al Quds force.

THOMAS: Afghan mercenaries, other sort of other mercenaries. All Shia, some Sunni?

AIMEN: No, no, all Shia. And we are talking here about bigger than just Afghan mercenaries and Pakistani mercenaries. We're talking here about all of the Iraqi militias like Asa'ib Ahl Al Haq and Hezbollah Iraq. And then you have Hezbollah in Lebanon. You have the Houthis in Yemen.

THOMAS: All of these proxies around the region, they're sort of, in a way, they're members of the Quds force. And Qasem Soleimani was their commander.

AIMEN: To put this into perspective, 280,000 active troops fighting for Iran in the region. That's more than the standing armies of the UK, Sweden, and Netherlands combined.

THOMAS: So why was Qasem Soleimani assassinated by the Americans and why now?

AIMEN: Okay.

THOMAS: And he's been, he's been in the IRGC for decades, I guess, and the commander of the Quds Force since 1998. So why now?

AIMEN: Well. You know, ironically, I did encounter, not Qasem Soleimani personally, but I did encounter his influence when I was, you know, basically spying for the British intelligence services. So, when I was stationed within the Gulf after the 9/11 attacks and the movement of Al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Iran, especially many of his leaders relocated to Iran. So, I did encounter Al Quds Force influence when they hosted the commanders that were giving us instructions. The Al Qaeda commanders who are giving us instructions in Saudi and Bahrain and Kuwait and other places to attack American and Saudi interests.

THOMAS: You mean these commanders were in Iran at the time …

AIMEN: Yeah

THOMAS: … or they were with you in the Gulf?

AIMEN: No, no. They were in Iran. They were hosted in Iran. Abu Hamza Rabia who was the head of the external operations for Al Qaeda he's quite famous. He's the one who masterminded the assassination attempt against Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt at the time, in Addis Ababa in 1995. And he is the one who actually was responsible for planning the 7/7 attacks in London.

THOMAS: So, he was being held under house arrest in Iran with someone like Qasem Soleimani’s knowledge, and coordination even.

AIMEN: Total coordination. Because Qasem Soleimani saw these people as perfect, useful people. They want to attack Saudi Arabia, they want to attack America. How about basically we give them safe haven? They’re in Iran, and let them, let them do whatever they want to do. Let them wreak havoc in the region.

THOMAS: Just so… what I want to know, actually Aimen is: what, you know, what has the assassination of Qasem Soleimani achieved?

AIMEN: A former senior US intelligence official just told me that killing Soleimani is the equivalent of hacking into the military service of a belligerent nation and disabling them and, you know, wiping them out completely. Soleimani was always electro-phobic or electronic phobic. He believed the Israelis and the Americans were trailing him. So he never wrote any phone numbers. He never wrote any plans. He never basically, you know, put his plans together in written form, whether paper or online. And…

THOMAS: He was a walking hard drive, this guy.

AIMEN: Exactly. He was the ultimate hard drive, the ultimate brain, of Iran’s external operations.

THOMAS: So...

AIMEN: Iran’s revolution.

THOMAS: So, by wiping him out, basically, America has just formatted the hard drive of the Quds Force.

AIMEN: They have set them back 10 years.

THOMAS: Hmmm.

AIMEN: They have set them back 10 years. So, taking him out was a shock. You know, just look at the Iranians to this day, they are still in shock that the Americans were so bold to do it. And that's why when people say, you know… You remember the “World War Three” trending.

THOMAS: Yeah.

AIMEN: And I was thinking ‘guys, come on, world war three…’

THOMAS: This isn't going to lead to world war three?

AIMEN: No, it’s simple. Because the Iranians, they do not want to war, especially a direct war with the Americans, because they know it will only take 72 hours for all of their military hardware to be destroyed.

THOMAS: Yeah. I mean, everyone has to remember that even though it seems these days, with good reason, that American power is in decline, when push comes to shove, the American military can pretty much destroy any country, especially a second-tier country.

AIMEN: Exactly… And that's why wiping him out… This is important because he was the engine of Iranian aggressive expansionism in the region in Iraq, and Syria, and Yemen, and Lebanon, in Bahrain.

THOMAS: Not only that, a lot of analysts have suggested that he was actually being groomed to replace the Supreme leader Khamanei when the Supreme leader dies.

AIMEN: Not only that… he was actually groomed to become the newly elected president of Iran. You know, once Rouhani is, you know, the current one, basically finishes his term. [Overlapping]

THOMAS: So, this assassination has some serious consequences for Iran… politically, militarily, geopolitically. [Overlapping]

AIMEN: Exactly. It is their Chernobyl moment.

THOMAS: As we know, there have been these protests rocking Iran since early October with a sort of ferocity and an extent that has never been witnessed before. The regime has been cracking down, killing people in the street. We haven't heard much about it because they've done a good job of silencing the media and shutting off social media, but it is happening. Instead of World War Three are we perhaps seeing the second Iranian Revolution in as so many as 50 years?

AIMEN: I don't think if… This is my analysis: that if Iran descends into chaos, it's not going to be a revolution or an overthrow of the regime because they have the IRGC. It’s going to be another Syria… it’s going to be a civil war.

THOMAS: Oh God.

AIMEN: You know… As much as many people basically wish for a toppling of the regime, the regime will not topple because it’s an ideologically committed, driven regime. It’s going to be a civil war. Another point I want to make: many people objected, especially in the West, objected to what's happened based on two reasons. First, it was Trump, and they say: ‘Oh, Trump, the idiot. He's starting another war.’ They don't understand that the killing of Soleimani was engineered by none other than Mike Pompeo.

THOMAS: This is the American Secretary of State. But since when two secretaries of state organize the assassination of foreign generals? That's very odd.

AIMEN: Well, he is not organizing the assassination… He is actually putting it as a policy forward. And remember, he was the former head of the CIA.

THOMAS: [Laughs]

AIMEN: So, Mike Pompeo has a beef with the Iranians – that's well known in DC. And also, basically he believes that Iran's aggression in the region needs to be checked. For him, the killing of Soleimani is pushing back against aggression. [Overlapping]

THOMAS: I.e. It's not causing the third world war, it's preventing it.

AIMEN: It's preventing it because, you know, the two forces in the region, the Sunni and the Shia forces, basically are colliding. And therefore, to rebalance the conflict, you have to push back against Iran because they were being aggressive the six months prior with the oil tankers and the attacks and the ballistic missiles and you know, arming of the Houthis and the, you know, blockading the Strait of Hormuz, you know, or threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. So therefore, it was important. So, when people were saying: ‘This is Trump, he's the idiot, how could he have a strategy? He doesn't know anything.’ It wasn't Trump. It was Mike Pompeo.

THOMAS: Former head of the CIA, who we assume knows one or two things about the way the world works.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: So, I return to my original question. Why now? If, if Soleimani has been involved in this kind of activity, anti-American activity, for 15 years, 16 years, 17 years, why on January, 2020 did the president say ‘okay, take this, this guy down’?

AIMEN: So many things happened during that time that really led to that moment. Because first, Qasem Soleimani had a low profile in 2003, 2004. But then it's the American invasion of Iraq that really propelled Al Quds force into prominence. So in 2006, was a pivotal year for Qasem Soleimani. First, there was a decision taken by the Iranian leadership that the Americans have overstayed their welcome in Iraq and they need to leave in order to make place for Iran’s hegemony in Iraq. The second thing is the Israeli war with Hezbollah in 2006, in Lebanon.

THOMAS: So, Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy allied with the Quds Force overseen by Qasem Soleimani. And in 2006, it initiated a fighting war with Israel which lasted about a month I think… in the summer. [Overlapping]

AIMEN: 33 days.

THOMAS: Yeah, 33 days in the summer.

AIMEN: So… So, for Qasem Soleimani his involvement in first of all instigating the beginning of the Shiad resistance to the American presence in Iraq in 2006 by supplying… First of all, by establishing Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq which is the foundation of the PMUs or the Popular Mobilization Units.

THOMAS: So, these are Shia militia groups armed by Iran, coordinated by Iran that are within Iraq, agents of Iranian foreign policy?

AIMEN: Absolutely, they are the IRGC of Iraq. They are the Hezbollah of Iraq.

THOMAS: I see.

AIMEN: Basically. So, when, you know, he established that and then gave them sophisticated IEDs that were targeting American armoured personnel carriers and American tanks, which basically led to the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers and the maiming of thousands of them.

THOMAS: I think most people remember, who were around then, remember these IEDs that were targeting American soldiers in Iraq, or British as well… you know, coalition soldiers in Iraq. But I'm not sure people then realised that they were being directly funded and coordinated by Iran.

AIMEN: Manufactured in Iran. Because they were so sophisticated, you know, they worked basically with infrared sensors and you know, a video imaging targeting. So, they were absolutely amazing in their own sophistication.

THOMAS: Okay. But you've taken us back to 2006. I'd like you to answer the question: why now? Why in 2020 has Qasem Soleimani been assassinated?

AIMEN: Because there are milestones. So, 2006 was a milestone here.

THOMAS: What was the next milestone?

AIMEN: The next milestone is 2011.

THOMAS: 2011 with the Arab spring and Syria?

AIMEN: Absolutely.

THOMAS: There is now evidence, hard and fast evidence, that Qasem Soleimani, as representing the Quds Force, was on the ground in Syria at the outbreak of the conflict there. Really moving it towards civil war from the very beginning.

AIMEN: Absolutely. I mean, the defence… The Syrian defence minister himself, Ali Ayyoub, was talking and giving an interview. He said: ‘I knew Qasem Soleimani. I met him and from the beginning in 2011 we planned to counter the uprising of the Syrian people.’ And the first battle was the battle of Baba Amur in Helms in 2011. Which basically was the first armed clash, you know, of the Syrian Civil War. So, you know, after six months it was peaceful. But then of course, basically the Assad regime you know, during the peaceful period killed more than 8,000 protestors. So of course, basically it was inevitable that it will turn into a civil war.

THOMAS: So, 2011 Qasem Soleimani plays a role in the destruction of Syria. So why 2020?

AIMEN: Again, another milestone is 2015. [Overlapping]

THOMAS: 2015.

AIMEN: Yeah, the outbreak of the Yemen War, which we talked about extensively as well as the Syrian conflict.

THOMAS: It does seem that Qasem Soleimani has been behind the scenes of Series One of Conflicted the whole time. [Laughs]

AIMEN: [Laughs] He was behind Al Qaeda’s relocation to Iran, he was behind, you know… [Overlapping]

THOMAS: In every great sequel at one point, you know, someone rips off the mask and says ‘I was there the whole time.’

AIMEN: Exactly. I mean, the man was really a pivotal, you know… He was a pillar of the terror in the region. Because, you remember when we said, basically there are three tectonic plates moving on in the region, moving in in the region, basically, colliding. So, you have the modern nation state, and you have the Shia political and militant Islam, and you have the Sunni political, and militant Islam – all of these plates basically joining together. So when you have three plates, tectonic plates colliding, what's going to happen?

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Earthquakes.

AIMEN: Volcanoes, and earthquakes, and seismic shifts. So, Soleimani, you know, was basically moving between the three plates, basically organising this chaos.

THOMAS: So, Aimen, why 2020?

AIMEN: Because he overstepped. That's really… That's it. Because in the six months prior to his death, he escalated so much.

THOMAS: What did he do? [Overlapping]

AIMEN: Beyond America's endurance. And beyond the region’s endurance. One, he escalated by attacking oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz several times, you know, in May and June and June, you know, so he continued to attack and seize oil tankers.

THOMAS: And then there was that famous drone strike of the oil facility in Saudi Arabia. People probably heard about that.

AIMEN: Not only that, like you're talking about the largest producer of oil in the world. You know, you're talking about a country that produced 12% of the world’s oil every day. So, when you attack it with 26 cruise missiles and drones [Overlapping] ...

THOMAS: 26 cruise missiles, I don't think that's what was reported?

AIMEN: It was 26, a combination of cruise missiles and drones.

THOMAS: That is, that's an enormous strike

AIMEN: In one facility alone, 17 explosions. 17 explosions and actually it was so accurate, it was because there was an insider job. Someone placed tracker beams from members of staff who are actually Shia and belong to the IRGC in secret. They are [Overlap] ...

THOMAS: Working for Aramco in Saudi?

AIMEN: Working for Aramco in Saudi.

THOMAS: It's really cold war stuff. My God.

AIMEN: Exactly. They placed tracker beams basically to guide the drones and the cruise muscles to hit their targets with precision accuracy.

THOMAS: I'm very glad that you brought this up because I want to move away from the politics…

AIMEN: Yeah.

THOMAS: … and just go to the nuts and bolts of how someone is assassinated in this way. So obviously as, as you've established, he escalated beyond America's endurance. So, Trump said: “go”. Probably a long-planned assassination strategy was put into effect and a missile from a drone just came out of the sky and obliterated him. But how does that happen? Literally take us into your knowledge of how that kind of thing happens on the ground. What would have America had to do to kill Soleimani, in that way when they said “go”.

AIMEN: Well, when you have targeted assassination, we have to go back into the beginning of the decision. So basically, the decision was taken that Bin Laden must go, Baghdadi must go, you know, Imad Mughniyeh who was the military commander of the Hezbollah during the 2006 war where he was killed

THOMAS: In Damascus. I was there when that happened.

AIMEN: Exactly. In 2008, that was a very sophisticated attack by the Mossad and where they placed a bomb basically in his car seat. You know, obliterated him. So, it was very sophisticated.

THOMAS: So, someone decides this guy needs to go.

AIMEN: Exactly. So, the process is like this: you decide this person is the person I want to get rid of. So, this is your strategy. So how do you go about it? First of all, you have to establish pattern. You have to establish…

THOMAS: But how do you do that? I mean, you literally have to tail them so that you follow their life. You find what? He wakes up at six, he has a boiled egg for breakfast. He shags his wife at seven, he has a shower.

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: How is that? How does that who, who's doing this?

AIMEN: Well, when you are a country like America or Israel, you have an army, of intelligence assets on the ground, and in every single country.

THOMAS: You mean CIA agents?

AIMEN: More than that. CIA agents, defence, military intelligence agents, for the Pentagon, the Pentagon have their own intelligence capability: the DIA. Not many people know about it, but it exists.

THOMAS: The DIA is the defence intelligence agency, which is American military intelligence. It's like a CIA inside the Pentagon.

AIMEN: Indeed. Then you'll have the Mossad, and then you have a network of regional assets that helps you. We will talk about that later, what I call basically the privatization of intelligence. This will be another episode. We will talk about how [overlapping]

THOMAS: It's actually this episode, and we're going to get there in a second. [Laughing] So I'll... Let me, I'm in charge of what episode.

AIMEN: Okay. So, so basically you have a a network of privateers, you know, private intelligence.

THOMAS: They’re freelancers, mercenaries. This is Star Wars stuff. This is Han Solo and Greedo shooting out in the Mos Eisley Cantina.

AIMEN: Exactly. The Mossad, the CIA, you know, MI6, the French intelligence, even countries from far away, China, Russia, all of these organizations have networks of people who cooperate, and these people are privateers, intelligence collectors who sell information to those who pay.

THOMAS: They do sound like pretty shady individuals. How are they trustworthy? For example, I can imagine one of these privateers being hired by one government to get some intelligence, but then just selling that intelligence to a rival government. Do they work for rival governments and are they trustworthy?

AIMEN: I work with teams that sometime basically work for competing governments. You know, these are teams in Syria.

THOMAS: They're not your employees. They have other people they work for.

AIMEN: Exactly. I just hired them between now and then for whatever project that, you know, comes across my way from whatever government around the world basically that asked the question, you know, or, you know, have the inquiry. So, the problem here is that: you can't control these people on the ground so much because basically they are living in hellish circumstances. They are living in a war zone, man. I mean, it's a war zone. They don't know if they will survive to the next day and if they are found out in Syria, they will be, you know, a head shorter and six feet underground.

THOMAS: Have you ever, ever lost one of your contractors? Have you ever had to face that rather tragic reality?

AIMEN: Not while on the job, but basically over the years I always, you know, almost like I know three or four times a year, we hear about the deaths of these people due to … It’s collateral damage basically, I mean, bombs falling from Russian airplanes, you know, the regime basically shelling of the villages where they are based. Sometimes they lose family members and many of them end up making good money from the work we give them, that they end up basically moving on to Turkey and from there, possibly to other European countries.

THOMAS: I see. So, America has lots of these in Iraq, the American government says to one or two of them: trail Soleimani or maybe even infiltrate within the, within his bodyguards … [Overlapping]

AIMEN: It’s more than that.

THOMAS: … Become a bodyguard

AIMEN: Soleimani because of his constant movements across Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, other places. So, what happened is you don't tell him in the classic way, get someone and that's it. No. So basically what you have is that you have what we call basically points on the map where whenever he appears, someone would alert you. So basically, you know, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, these are the three weak points in Soleimani’s itinerary. So, you have assets in Beirut who can alert you. They are working in the airport that Iranian VIP is coming and based on the protocol, who picks them up? What car comes? All of these things you can deduce from that, from the repeated nature of that, that this must be Soleimani.

THOMAS: Okay, fine. So, on the morning of the assassination, you know, how does the reaper drone operator who's probably sitting in Utah or something, how does he know that when he pushes the button, the missile is going to get Soleimani?

AIMEN: Several things. First, the American intelligence just learned that he is on a flight from Damascus. Coming to Baghdad. It is a commercial flight so they can shoot it down.

THOMAS: But that's about a 45-minute flight, 50-minute flight.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: So, you can imagine like, you know, red klaxons are going [Thomas making siren sounds].

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: The countdown starts.

AIMEN: Exactly.

AIMEN: But remember, the decision has been taken that he will be killed. And remember that for the several months before that, they would have known about his movements too, but there was no decision to kill yet. There was the planning to kill, the decision has been taken that if certain escalation happened, we will kill him. But until then, the trigger never took place. There was no trigger yet, but the attack against the US Embassy, the attack that killed an American contractor in Kirkuk in Iraq just a few days prior. So, when they happened, now they are going to wait for the next time they know his movement and then take him out. So now they are aware of his movements. He is leaving Damascus airport coming to Baghdad and therefore the Reaper was just waiting. And what the Reaper does is that it has a facial recognition software in it.

THOMAS: This is like stuff out of a Marvel movie. They're just looking at our faces and sort of Thomas' and Waitrose, Thomas's and going into the pub. [Laughs]

AIMEN: Yeah, I think they can't see inside the small buildings, but no, I mean, of course if Soleimani is stepping out of the airplane and then he is moving into a car and while he is on the tarmac, the drone can actually just look at his face, detect his facial features and …

THOMAS: I thought that there needed to be something on the ground, either near him or attached to the car or something. Some, some electronic device that tells the drone where he is. That's not the case?

AIMEN: That's not the case. In this case, basically, they made it easy for the drone because he was a VIP who was taken immediately from the plane stairs into a car and being driven. So, this protocol has been done many times before, so the Americans already knew his protocol. So that's why it was easy for them to recognize that it's him, and then to target him and kill him.

THOMAS: So, what kind of missile was it?

AIMEN: Hellfire.

THOMAS: And a Hellfire missile, what kind of damage does that missile do?

AIMEN: Oh wow. It obliterate a car, easily.

THOMAS: So, I mean, something like: how many people died in that attack?

AIMEN: I think there were about nine people because, you know… [Overlapping]

THOMAS: We’re talking about vaporisation here.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: I mean, I saw a picture of his maimed, mangled body after that, basically. I mean…

AIMEN: Why didn't you share it on social media, Aimen?

THOMAS: [Laughs] Well, I mean, it's out there. But you know when I saw this, the first thing that came to my mind is that he died when his car was targeted the same way when he planned and orchestrated and gave the order 15 years earlier, almost to the day, 15 years earlier in February of 2005, to kill the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. While he was in a car, his body was thrown out of the car, he was maimed. So it felt as if karma, it looked, you know, when they say karma is a bitch, and looking at that in a photo of him mangled like this because his car was attacked and the same way that he ordered another decent, good human being like Rafic Hariri to be killed this way, and I was thinking, you know, that's it. You live by the sword. You die by the sword, you live by the bomb, we die by the bomb. [Laughs]

THOMAS: Well, Aimen. It's always fascinating to hear your insightful comments about these things and you know, just to veer towards a different topic now, the reason you know about these things is because you actually are, to some extent, one of those private practitioners of espionage in the 21st century.

AIMEN: Indeed. To some extent, yes.

THOMAS: So, tell us about this world.

AIMEN: I know we're talking here about, you know, an exceptionally, not just, I'm not going to say secretive, but I would say a fascinating world where you have a lot of former spies continue to be spies, but in a very different manner. They are no longer basically answerable to one single government. Sometimes they are answerable to several governments, because basically they sell their services.

THOMAS: It's a private sector job.

AIMEN: It's a private sector job. What's happened is of course, when you are working in espionage and then you move into working for the banking sector, which basically when I was there, I was a financial investigator into the, you know, the money-laundering and terrorism finance world. As well as security. So then when you are in these jobs, you create a, a network of contacts. You see, espionage is not just only about what you know; it’s who you know. And when you have a massive network of people, friends all over the world, basically, especially in the hotspots centre…

THOMAS: [Interrupting] And to be blunt, these are all bad guys. You have a big Rolodex full of bad guys that you can call.

AIMEN: Oh no. Basically every manner. Bad guys, good guys. You know, neutral guys. People talk about sometimes people who are, even some of them, royalty. You know, you have people basically sometime who are teachers, people basically who are taxi drivers.

THOMAS: And what unites them all is a thirst for money.

AIMEN: Yeah, the desire. You know, why we don't call it the thirst for money. We call it the desire for a better life.

THOMAS: I see.

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: So, they're all mercenaries to some extent.

AIMEN: Yes.

THOMAS: Intelligence, mercenaries.

AIMEN: You see, what does intelligence, I mean, just just to give you an idea…

THOMAS: Frankly, I know so little about it. I don't know. [Laughter]

AIMEN: Just to give you an idea and I give the listener an idea. You know, one of the best sources, if you are landing in a city, and you want to know a lot about the city that you landed in, for example, basically I remember I landed in Sao Paulo and I was there investigating Hezbollah finances because Sao Paulo is an important financial hub for Hezbollah. Not many people know that, but it is the case. So, when I land there, you know the most important thing is to find a taxi driver who speaks English. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that when you sit down and talk to them, the taxi drivers know more about the locations of people in the city than anyone else.

So, he will tell you all, “yeah, Shia Lebanese people basically they have, you know, a mosque. They are in this particular neighbourhood. Oh yes. They, you know, they do have a particular get together, you know, in this area or this area. I heard about them.”

THOMAS: Taxi drivers are great sources of information.

AIMEN: Exactly. And actually, even terrorists use them as a source of information. For example, the Bali bombers, when they landed …

THOMAS: The Bali bombers, yes. They landed in 2002. [Overlapping]

AIMEN: Yeah. In 2002. So, when they landed there, it was a taxi driver who told them where the Americans and the Australians go for parties. So basically, taxi drivers are a great source of information. Do not discount them, basically as just people who talk nonsense all the time. No, they see things the average people don't. And as a result, we and the terrorists basically utilize them without them knowing, poor things, for information.

THOMAS: What I want to know is, why would a government need to hire you? I mean, governments have James Bonds, you know, they have guys they can call up and say, leave the girl, put on your tuxedo…

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: … You know, fly to Baghdad and assassinate that guy, or find out this or that. You know, and HQ gives some magic watches and amazing Aston Martin cars with ejector seats. I mean, governments have these sort of guys, so why do they need you? I mean. No offense, but you know …

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: That's not your lifestyle. I know you very well. You're a good boy.

AIMEN: Okay? What does intelligence, but really, most of the intelligence gathered around the world, I'm talking about the human intelligence here rather than the, we talked about it before and season one, signal intelligence and other forms of intelligence, basically, you know, eavesdropping and all of that and electronic, and surveillance. But if you look at the human intelligence, most of it has gathered, really, in restaurants and hotels. Really.

THOMAS: But by freelancers like you, not ... I mean, why would a government hire you or someone like you?

AIMEN: Okay, so let's take an example like Syria. What do you think the survivability is of a white blonde agent going in for the first time into Syria without that much support from local people?

THOMAS: So, Daniel Craig touches down, he walks off the tarmac, everyone says, “I think that guy might be a British spy.”

AIMEN: Exactly. His life expectancy would be measured in minutes. Let's put it this way. So, so what you need then is a local, because you can't put your own people at a stupid risk like this because they will be known immediately. I mean you can't just land in, in a tuxedo.

THOMAS: I'm actually always wondered when I'm watching James Bond movies, look out for the guy in the tuxedo.

AIMEN: Exactly. So, you can't just land in, and even basically if you were, you know, very normal clothes. It's still, casual or whatever. Still you are recognizable as foreigner, so therefore, and even if you send people who are of Syrian origin or Arab origin from your own, but you have to send them slowly, you have to send them gradually and you have to integrate them into society. It takes months.

THOMAS: So...

AIMEN: But what if you need something now?

THOMAS: What if you need something now?

AIMEN: Yes. Therefore, basically you look for people basically who run networks, these privateers and there are quite few of them. I know these private intelligence companies and sometimes they must create as research groups, or research offices. What they do for you, you come to them, you know, let's say basically they have an office in Beirut, or Amman, or Istanbul, and you go to them and you say, “Oh, okay. These are pictures of individuals we are interested in Syria. We want to know where they live. We want to get the exact coordinates. We want you to get close to them, so switch on your wifi and basically find out their IP addresses and all of that.” So, you know, I want to know what caused the drive. Take a video, take a photo. So I would say, “okay, no problem at all. I'm in that office in Beirut.” So basically, I call my, you know, friends, let's say in Adlib or in Raqqa in the past, or in Deir ez-Zor, or in Damascus.

THOMAS: All Syrian cities.

AIMEN: Yup, exactly. So, I called and I say, you know, my friend inside Syria, “who do we have? Let's say in the city of Deir ez-Zor in Idlib, and he would say basically why we have quite few. I have this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy. Do they have motorcycles or cars? Motorcycles. Okay, perfect. I need motorcycles. Okay, fine. I need…”

THOMAS: Just ordering up, a kind of a menu.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: Of intelligence. [Laughs]

AIMEN: I'm going to send you by either Threema or other, you know, I'm not going to mention other apps, but in certain apps, I’m going to send you basically four pictures of four individuals who are seen in that vicinity. You know, these are what they are known by. This is their Kunya, or the aliases. I want information on them within two weeks. So, within two weeks I would receive full information with fresh photos, fresh videos. I know the exact coordinates of their houses, who they're married to, if they're married, where do they go to pray, what cars they're driving. So perfect. And then I hand over this. Now, if that government wanted to do it on their own, they would have to send someone to find them fast and basically that someone would be at risk. But because the individuals we tasked for this are locals who wanted to do it for money and they have no idea actually, who is the ultimate Tasker,

THOMAS: [Interrupts]

AIMEN: Who is the one who actually, they have no idea. They just know that this is the target. This is what you need to collect. Need-to-know basis. So, then we'll collect all the information and then based on the information, that government will decide either to liquidate…

THOMAS: [Laughs]

AIMEN: ... or to extract. I mean, there are certain, even EU governments did it.

THOMAS: Liquidation. Woah.

AIMEN: Liquidation even. I know, governments did this.

THOMAS: I should really press you on which governments, but I don't think you'll tell me.

AIMEN: No, but I know sometimes what happened is, you know, some governments even installed live feed cameras. For example, one of the secrets not known actually is that these privateers, these individuals inside Syria placed a live feed camera for more than 16 months outside of the main ISIS court in Raqqa photographing everyone going and coming, and that live feed was in a 24 hours basically beaming into one of the European capitals.

THOMAS: For what purpose?

AIMEN: For basically facial recognition. Just going and coming. People basically going into the court and to ISIS court. So, they identified the judges, their commanders just …

THOMAS: But I don't understand. I can understand, you go into an ISIS court, you can see your face, but you know, you don't come out with your head so …

AIMEN: [Laughs] Well you start to come out with your head, but the execution happened in the public square…

THOMAS: Very pleasant. So, this privatization of espionage that you're talking about, to some extent, you know, I've seen Casablanca, I've seen these movies. I mean, to some extent, governments have always employed freelancers on the ground. But would you say in recent years, decades, even the privatization of espionage has gone up in a way like governments in general outsource to the private sector these days. Are they outsourcing to the private sector in this regard as well?

AIMEN: Yeah, I mean, basically. [Overlapping]

THOMAS: Why? Why did it change?

AIMEN: First in Iraq, we started to see the privatization of armies. You know, we have Black Water. We had EGIS, we had G4S.

THOMAS: These are American security consultants. [Overlapping]

AIMEN: American, British, everything you can imagine.

THOMAS: They’re providing mercenaries on the ground.

AIMEN: South African even, the Maltese. I mean basically, you know, registered in Malta but they are private companies, even basically people from Nepal basically being recruited to go and fight in other Wars. So that's already happened. But the privatisation of intelligence, I’ve never seen it like this before. In the past, it used to be like this: you want to spy on a certain country. You have your own embassy staff in that country. You form really good relationship with businessmen, civil servants, military officers, law enforcement agencies. So, they cultivate all of this and they get the intelligence. However, these days, because the source of the greatest and the gravest security threats happen in places where there are no embassies anymore.

THOMAS: This is a consequence of really the Arab Spring, the War on Terror in general, the nation-state has been weakened throughout the region, and therefore nation-states and the embassies that are meant to dialogue with those nation-states just aren't where the real power lies, in many cases.

AIMEN: I mean down to war zones. I mean, basically this is the problem with gathering information in a war zone for example…

THOMAS: Not just war zones. I think it's important they’re civil war zones.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: It’s not that it's a nation-state fighting a nation-state. These are non-state actors within governments, within states, transcending state borders moving. You can't just anymore throw some swanky embassy party, don your tux, handout some champagne, and talk to your Soviet counterpart. You can't do that anymore.

AIMEN: So, places like Afghanistan, Syria, Libya. You are basically at the mercy of people who have strong connections inside.

THOMAS: … these non-state actors.

AIMEN: Non-state actors, basically people basically who have, you know, a small company with a title, or managing director or CEO, or whatever. Basically, I'm a private individual, but I'm a private individual with a massive phone book. And this phone book includes lots of people on the ground there who will do anything for a buck or two because basically they are desperate. They are in a war zone.

THOMAS: So, you say that we started to see this developing in Iraq.

AIMEN: First, and then Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan. These are the places now where a lot of intelligence, especially Syria, a lot of intelligence is gathered by private individuals. Well, private groups together basically forming these intelligence gathering networks. I mean, basically, when people say data in the West, what Mark Zuckerberg and you know, the owner of Google is doing, you know, data is the new oil. Data is the new wealth. That's in a very crude way what is happening on the ground in Syria and Yemen and Libya. And to some extent, even in Turkey, among the refugee communities. That's what's happening. Data information is so important. And this happened and I've seen it myself. People sometime risk their lives to go and collect the mobile phones and the laptops off a bomb site in Syria. If a site is bombed and this site belonged to either Al Qaeda [Insert Group Here] or any of their affiliates or ISIS, they will go and collect all of these because this can be sold for two thousand, three thousand dollars. Because they contain addresses, phone numbers, email addresses of people within Syria, in Turkey, outside, in Europe, in the Gulf, in the Arab world, which means that every phone have a treasure trove of intelligence. So young city people go collect them very quickly.

THOMAS: It's like mining. They're mining for the gold of post-terrorism atrocities. [Overlap]

AIMEN: Exactly. Then these phones and devices, they make it into Turkey where then they are sold to brokers. And these brokers, people like myself and others.

THOMAS: These espionage privateers, aren't they criminals? Isn't this illegal?

AIMEN: Are you saying I’m a criminal?

THOMAS: Far be it for me to say that a former Al-Qaeda bomb maker might be a criminal …

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: But I don't understand. Surely this isn't legal. Is it that governments turn a blind eye to this stuff because it's so useful to them?

AIMEN: No, it is perfectly legal because basically, first of all, you know. Imagine. Let's say you, Thomas Small, you have friends in Syria, don't you? Yes. Okay. So basically if I come to you, I’m government, I come to you, Thomas, and I say, Thomas, I know we have heard a rumour of know, basically a coup in Damascus or something like that, you know, there was a coup within the intelligence, and we are trying basically to ascertain is it true or not? Can you tap into your local people that are basically and see what they have heard? And I mean, basically you say yes, of course. And we would say, okay, we want detailed report and you know, then I push an envelope to you basically with five, $6,000. And I say, this is for your trouble. And also, you can basically send gifts, your friends there in Damascus, but we need, really good, juicy information.

THOMAS: So, you…

AIMEN: Come back to me and you say, yes, we found out this, this, this

THOMAS: Ok, that doesn't sound so illegal. But you know, come on. Sometimes you're going to be asked maybe to do something illegal or certainly immoral. How do you navigate the thorny moral swamp of private espionage?

AIMEN: That is where you have layers and layers of different levels of commitments. So basically, for example, you know, I wouldn't do any, how can I say assassination, engineer any extraction.

THOMAS: Why now?

AIMEN: Because basically, there is so much, you know, legality issues behind this. You're right, in a sense, because you know, if you just kind of, my work, my work is information gathering. That's it.

THOMAS: [Laughs]

AIMEN: You know? So, what they do with that, what the governments do with that after that, I mean, that's their own business.

THOMAS: Have you ever been in a position where you, you heard, saw on the news or heard through your, through your networks, of a strike against a facility or a strike against a person and you thought to yourself, “Hmm. I know how they knew where that guy was.”

AIMEN: Well, to some extent, yes. I'm not going to say no. It does happen, but sometime you're wondering. Because sometime you pass this intelligence basically to a particular government, but then the Russians come and destroy it, and then that's when you know that definitely it wasn't the government that supplied the Russians with it. Why? Because they are enemies. They are not talking to each other whatsoever. So then how did the Russians know about that? Because if I knew about it. If I knew about it, if my sources on the ground confirmed that this is a weapons storage facility for Al-Nusra…

THOMAS: Al-Qaeda

AIMEN: Yeah, Al-Qaeda. Then basically the Russians would have their own privateers, possibly the same privateers who I have, might have been tasked by the Russians.

THOMAS: Hmm.

AIMEN: It's a murky world.

THOMAS: Very murky. So back to Qasem Soleimani then. He is often credited. Let's play devil's advocate here. So obviously, you know, you weren't a huge fan of Qasem Soleimani. You probably smiled to yourself when you found out that he had been assassinated.

AIMEN: Smiled? I danced in the house!

THOMAS: Danced in the house. Let's imagine, I mean, there are some people who say that Qasem Soleimani is a hero because he played such a vital role in the destruction of ISIS.

AIMEN: Well, first of all. Okay. Soleimani did not defeat ISIS. Let's put this a myth to rest. It was the American firepower, from the sky raining on ISIS that ended them. Because the Iranians and the Iraqi militias did not have the capability to just take cities and then hold them because they couldn't. Because only the American precision firepower, massive overwhelming firepower that did that for them. So, you know, what Soleimani provided is boots on the ground.

THOMAS: Shia militia men.

AIMEN: Exactly. But Soleimani wasn't doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He was taking advantage that, “Oh, this is the chaos through which I can create a massive unregulated army.” He wasn't recruiting men to join the Iraq army. He was recruiting men to join a revolutionary Iranian-backed army.

THOMAS: And he recruited tens of thousands.

AIMEN: Hundreds of thousands.

THOMAS: And they still exist. I mean, even though Soleimani might be dead, but they exist –– what's going to happen to these Shia militia who, who actually feel perhaps, more allegiance to Iran than Iraq?

AIMEN: Well, that is what the protests happening right now in Iraq is about. Is Iraq going to end up like Lebanon, having a state within a state. I mean, Hezbollah in Lebanon being a state within a state, having a private army, private welfare network, private finance, private everything.

THOMAS: Which would suit the Iranians very well.

AIMEN: Exactly. So, in other words, it is a very weak nation-state. So, the protest in Iraq right now, gathering momentum and not only Sudanese. But also, many, many Shia Arabs who do not like the idea of Iraq becoming just another province for Iran.

THOMAS: But we can understand why the Shia of Iraq think that caused Qasem Soleimani was their saviour. Because ultimately ISIS is coming, you know, down the road. And anyone who's going to fight ISIS is probably your friend.

AIMEN: And we can say the same thing about Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Yemenis in the South will view them basically as the saviours against the Houthis. At the end of the day, we cannot basically just sit there and cheer packs of wolves fighting each other. And ignore the fact that lambs need to be saved. So, because they are fighting each other over who will eat the pack of lambs.

THOMAS: So, who is the shepherd here? Is it, with this newly muscular America and President Trump is America once again, playing the role of the shepherd, trying to fight the wolves off the sheep, the lambs, whatever? I'm screwing up your metaphor.

AIMEN: I mean, I just had to have a very difficult time picturing Trump as a shepherd, basically with his stick and a turban over his head. [Laughs]

THOMAS: I've heard some of these Jeffrey Epstein revelations.

AIMEN: [Laughs]

THOMAS: I don't have a hard time imagining that.

AIMEN: But, can I tell you something? Yes. America is playing to some extent, basically, the role of the shepherd. But the role of the shepherd as a whole is played by the nation-states. We come back again, Thomas into the question of what do we want? Do we want the modern nation-state to prevail because they are the best guarantors of safety, security, stability, prosperity in the region, or do we want trans-national ideology built on revolutionary ideas, perpetual revolution that will keep shedding blood on, and on, and on, until they build their empires on mountains of skulls and oceans of blood.

THOMAS: Well, I think we know how America would answer that question. It sides with the nation-state. As long as the nation-state buys into America's hegemonic role as chief shepherd of the sheep. Now, that really brings us to what series two of Conflicted is going to be all about. In the first series, we focused more narrowly on the War on Terror and the modern history of the Middle East. In this series, we're going to widen the scope of our investigation out a bit. And we're going to tell a slightly larger historical story. It's what has been called and indeed was called by George Bush Senior, just at the end of the Cold War, America's new world order. America's attempt to create an everlasting, prosperous and peaceful world and really lies behind so much of what we see in the headlines today.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

THOMAS: you've been listening to Conflicted with me. Thomas Small and my good friend, Aimen Dean. Conflicted is a Message Heard production. It's produced by Sandra Ferrari, Jake Warren and Jake Otajovic, edited by Sandra Ferrari. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley. New episodes of season two of Conflicted will come out every other week on Wednesday, so tune in.

This season, we're trying something a little bit different. We want to hear more from you. Dear listener, what did we get right? What did we get wrong? What topics do you want to hear us chat about in future episodes? We've set up a Facebook discussion group. You can find the link in the show notes or search “Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group” on Facebook to join in the group. We'll post early access to episode teasers, recommend further reading for people, looking to go deeper into episode topics as well as running exclusive giveaways. Each week we'll be giving away some recommended reading to one lucky listener. All you have to do is join the group. This week's book is The Twilight War: the secret history of America's 30-year conflict with Iran, an excellently written and researched account of US-Iranian relations from the 1979 Iranian revolution onward. Join our Facebook group before the 19th of February and you might just win. You'll hear from us soon in two weeks’ tim

Launching NatWest's New Branded Podcast

With developments in technology moving so fast, it's important to take stock of the new issues that change inevitability bring - before it’s too late. We worked with NatWest to produce their brand new podcast series, Technically Speaking, which does precisely that.

Each episode, Digital Strategist, Wincie Wong and Tech Engineer, Burcu Karabork, tackle issues sparked by tech - covering questions around ethics, education and elitism. Across the four episodes, listeners can expect high-stakes discussions, broken down by expert guests told in a refreshingly digestible format.

Going straight in at the deep end, the first episode asks: is it profitable to be ethical?

The global tech industry is worth trillions of dollars and, as it continues to grow, there is little optimism as to whether for-profit companies will self-regulate in the wake of a series of high-profile scandals at the likes of Google, Facebook, and Uber.

Joined by guests from Oxford’s Digital Ethics Lab and Credit Kudos, a company leading the open banking charge, the hosts will explore if there is a business case for ethics.

Like what you hear? Get in touch to talk about how podcasting can work for your business - jake@messageheard.com.

Why Sound Quality in Essential for Making a Successful Podcast

A new study shows poor audio quality effects enjoyment and credibility.

Videos spliced together with the images and audio ever-so-slightly out of sync. Echoey, hard to decipher podcasts. Grainy pictures. We all know bad quality content is a turn-off for audiences, but a recent study shows that in the case of poor audio quality, it doesn’t just affect the audiences enjoyment, it also lowers your personal credibility and that of your brand.

In a study conducted by scientists from the University of Southern California and Australian National University, two versions of an NPR podcast were shared with participants - one which sounded perfect and the other distorted to sound bad. They found that poor sound quality not only negatively impacted the ease with which the content was understood but also greatly diminished the perceived reliability of the source itself. 

The key takeaway for the researchers? “Next time you are recorded, make sure you have good sound quality,” they wrote “Your credibility depends on it.”

So, what does this mean for podcast production? What you’re saying might be really interesting and well-researched - but if the sound quality is bad, it will be detrimental to both your personal credibility and that of your brand.

We wanted to dig a bit deeper into why this can be such a critical factor, so here are three key reasons to prioritise sound quality from the very beginning of your podcasting journey:

1. No distractions for your audience - your listeners need to focus on your message, rather than trying to work out what that annoying noise is in the background… Is that an air conditioner I can hear? Are those emails pinging in? Are these people being held against their will in a lead-lined cellar….?

2. Effective sound design - music beds, sound effects and jingles need to be purposeful and impactful rather than adding sonic confusion. A recent episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour is a good example of this - it contrasted recordings taken in Madame Tussauds with the voice over from the studio to create a purposefully textured recording. 

3. User reviews - the tricky thing about audio quality is you don’t always notice it when it’s there but you sure do notice when it’s missing. User reviews can often reveal this all too late - which is why you need to be thinking about sound quality before you even go into production and especially before you start to ship episodes. In the anonymity of the internet, your listeners will not be forgiving. 

If you’re interested in understanding a bit more about what good audio quality actually sounds like, check out this mini-podcast. And, if you want to talk about improving the credibility of your audio content, get in touch jake@messageheard.com. 

Benched - Cat Hulbert on Gambling

From getting her first job in a Las Vegas casino to earning her place in an elite card counting gang, Cat Hulbert faced chauvinism at every turn during her professional gambling career. Overcoming the odds, she has now been called, the ‘best female gambler on earth’. This week on Benched, we found out how she broke the glass ceiling in this notoriously male-dominated arena.

Cat started her career as a dealer behind the table, rather than playing at it - which is where she first noticed a ‘strategy’ being used behind some of the most successful blackjack players. As she dealt, she tried to figure out what it was they were doing. After finally asking one of the players, she was introduced to card counting.

She went on to successfully master the skills herself, become a top blackjack player and join notorious card counting gang, The Czechoslovakians. But it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. It was originally thought that having a woman in the gang would be so unexpected that she would go under the radar, and the whole group would reap the rewards. The reality was very different, “No woman bet up to the stakes I did. It drew a lot of attention,” says Cat” As a result, she was arrested, back-roomed and barred from casinos many times - even making it into the notorious Griffith Book.

After blackjack, she went on to play poker at a similarly high-level, but the transition wasn’t easy. Not only did she have to master new tactics, but she also had to learn to keep her own emotions in check noting that, “Poker has an emotional quality that almost occupies 50-60% of the game … And because I’m bipolar, I’ve always fought with that.”

Today, retired from the professional game after a stint player virtual poker, she tells us the story of how she worked her way up to the top and what she makes of her life’s work looking back. Listen to Benched to hear the full story.

5 Podcasts That Go Beyond The Headlines

Podcasts for when you want to take a deeper look at the stories passing through the news cycle. 

The news cycle can get a bit overwhelming. Brexit, Trump, we’re destroying the planet and then Brexit and Trump again, just in case we forgot about them…

It’s a lot to take in - and no-one can blame you if you just want to switch off sometimes. There is a way to get around it, though. Podcasts that keep you in the know and do so in an entertaining, and often deeper, way.

Here are five that I love and would recommend to anyone. Some of them talk about current events and others go back and dissect things that have already happened. They all have one thing in common – they go beyond the headlines and give you a lot more of the detail and backstory that you’d never get in traditional news.

1. Undone

This 7-episode series by Gimlet went back through big events and headlines in history and looked at what really happened beyond what was reported at the time. While the stories are US-centric, all of them are fascinating no matter where you’re from.

2. Slow Burn

This show from Slate is a serialised political documentary. It is gripping in a way that makes you want to instantly go into politics and be part of all the shady goings on (or maybe that’s just me... ). So far, it has only focused on American politics but there are big events that you will definitely want to find out more about. Season 1 went deep into Watergate and the second talks all about Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct scandals. Yes, that’s scandals plural.

 3. This American Life – ep. 669 ‘Scrambling to get off the ice’

This American Life have always produced political stories, but in recent years, in the hands of producer Zoe Chace, their political reporting has reached a new level. She has inside access to many Republicans and Democrats and she is able to pull back the curtain on dull backroom processes and machinations in a way that makes them actually interesting - and funny. Episode 669 features, amongst other stories, one about the Democrats’ newfound political power and how they’re learning to use it again.

4. Criminal – Hostage

There are so many true crime podcasts - too many some might say. Criminal is different, though. The stories focus on the human aspect and are never sensationalised. The show doesn’t linger on the obvious and goes a step further to explore new and surprising sides to the stories. The episode ‘Hostage’ does that with the crime that inspired the term ‘Stockholm syndrome’ and features the people who were actually people involved.

5. Today in Focus

What The Guardian’s daily news podcast does so well is that it doesn’t give you the daily news – you can read the newspaper for that. Today in Focus dissects two topics each day that you may have missed or which need a closer look. Through its sound design and Anushka Asthana’s great voice and style, you find yourselves being interested in stories you’d never choose to read in the newspaper.

…Oh, and one more. If you’re a fan of these shows, we would love to hear what you think of Undiscovered - our podcast which tells stories that haven’t received much attention in mainstream news (but that definitely deserved it). In season one, we did a deep dive into the human experiments conducted by the Japanese army in WW2, explored all sides of the assisted dying debate and more. Give it a listen!

Benched - Liam Davis on Homosexuality and Football

Football had silently ignored homosexuality - and homophobia - for decades. Then in 1990, Justin Fashanu came out. But after facing years of abuse on and off the pitch, Fashanu committed suicide in 1998.

After that, there was silence again until 2013 when, then Leeds United player, Robbie Rogers, came out as gay and retired from professional football. Robbie’s coming out started an international discussion about the toxic environment football has created for gay players.

After him, two more footballers who played in England came out. In January 2014, the former Aston Villa, West Ham and Everton player, Thomas Hitzlsperger, came out in an interview shortly after he retired from the professional game. Shortly afterward, Liam Davis, a semi-professional for Cleethorpes Town FC, was outed by his local newspaper based on a series of supportive tweets he sent about Hitzlsperger.

With the media storm that surrounded these men - teams, fans and other players were presented with an opportunity to reckon with the reality of gay players and address homophobic culture on the pitch and in the stands. However, it’s been five years since, and no other male players in England have come out, and the conversation that Justin Fashanu and Robbie Rogers has started faded away once again.

Today on Benched, we will reopen that conversation with our guest, Liam Davis, who was for a time England’s only active out player. He is interviewed by guest host and queer journalist Jasmine Andersson. Listen now.

Pods are Powerful: Why Your Company Needs a Branded Podcasts

If you’re on the go, listen to an audio version of the article here:

In our oversubscribed, over-saturated, on-demand world, getting peoples’ attention has never been more challenging.

As the cut through of written content has declined, brands have increasingly turned to video. Video is great, however it is limited in scope, reach and can prove to be quite costly. For these reasons - and others we will explore - we’re seeing more brands embrace podcasts. And, thanks in part to the wider podcasting boom, there is a growing listening audience ready and waiting to embrace their content.

Increasingly, brands are recognising the value of professionally produced, editorial-style podcasts - using them as effective marketing mechanisms to enrich their brand and build their audiences, sophisticated sales tools for high value customers, or as beguiling instruments for employee engagement.

Since 2016, market giants such as eBay, Mastercard, McDonalds, MailChimp, General Electric and Netflix have all invested in producing their own podcasts. They have grown significant listenership, and reached the top of the podcast charts by blurring the lines between editorial and advertorial. Dell Technologies podcast, Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson, reached 1 million downloads in six months, with 50,000 subscribers awaiting new episodes.

Why branded podcasts work

In our engagement economy, it’s not hard to see why brands are turning to podcasts. 80% of all podcast episodes are listened to in their entirety, which is arguably the best consumption rate of any digital medium.

Additionally, research from Acast shows 76% of UK listeners have followed up on an ad or sponsor’s message that they heard on a podcast. These extraordinary rates of engagement speak to the intimate quality of audio content - where you have an unprecedented opportunity to speak directly and personally to an attentive, curious audience.

With 18.7% of young adults listening to podcasts on a weekly basis, there is also a unique opportunity for brands to tap into the cultural zeitgeist. The most successful shows aren’t vintage content marketing repackaged as an MP3 - they are editorial, human-centered stories that give intimate insight into your brand. As the Senior Vice President of Corporate Relations at McDonald’s put it “If you want to be a beloved brand, you need to start with what people love.”

Put simply, podcasting is a golden opportunity for brands to convene and take ownership of the most interesting stories and conversations happening in their industry.

McDonald’s cashed in on a pop culture phenomenon, fuelling the cult following of their discontinued Szechuan sauce - all told through true-crime style reporting. eBay told stories that appealed to small businesses, and in so doing made this target audience aware of a whole range of business tools that they offered. Meanwhile, General Electric went completely off-piste and made a fictional science-fiction podcast which happens to be one of the most successful branded podcasts ever, with more than 8 million downloads since its release.

The impact of podcasts for ‘I Can Be’

By adopting a conversational style, cutting out corporate-speak and opting for content that starts conversations rather than push-sells in an overt manner, you can get your message across to a targeted audience which is ready and willing to listen.

At Message Heard, we’ve worked with clients to deliver advertorial content for brands like Jungle Creations and I Can Be, an educational charity. Lamorna Byford, Project Director at I Can Be, shares the value of podcasts as a marketing tool: ‘The podcast brings to life the ethos of I Can Be in that it shows the energy and enthusiasm that each of our sessions have. It can be hard to communicate that in a photo or an email.

This is the first of a three part series on The Power of Pods. Keep an eye out for our next post about the most common audio content mistakes that companies make (other than not having a podcast at all!) - and three different forms of engagement that podcasting can drive.

If you’re interested in learning more we are also hosting an event in London, sign up here.

Benched - Kelly Naqi on the legend of Ali Dia

This week on Benched, we dig into what’s been called the biggest scam in British Premier League’s history - the swift rise, and even swifter fall, of Ali Dia.

The popular legend goes a bit like this: in 1996, Southampton’s manager, Graeme Souness, received a phone call from someone claiming to be footballing superstar George Weah recommending the signing of his cousin, Ali Dia.

After being subbed in on a game against Leeds, Dia lived out the fantasy of millions by playing Premiership football, albeit not very well, for 43 minutes - before vanishing for decades.

In today’s episode of Benched, guest host Robbie Knox (Soccer AM) gets the story from Kelly Naqi, the journalist responsible for finally tracking Dia down twenty years after his Southampton debut (...and farewell).

Naqi is quick to point out it’s still not clear if this infamous, chant-inspiring event was a scam - or something much more innocent. She details how she finally found him due to an investigation that took her all the way to Sudan, only to end up back in London. Listen to the whole episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts.