July 23, 2025 • 15 mins
When an Israeli airstrike hit the gate of Syria’s Defence Ministry in central Damascus, the blast echoed far beyond the capital.
It was a warning shot in a growing fight over who controls Syria’s fractured south.
With sectarian tensions reigniting between Druze militias, Bedouin fighters and government troops, the country’s uneasy calm is close to breaking.
Today, Damascus‑based journalist Heidi Pett, on the latest in this conflict – and how it could redraw the map of Syria.
If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support.
Socials: Stay in touch with us on Instagram
Guest: Damascus-based journalist, Heidi Pett.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven am
when an Israeli air strike hit the gate of Syria's
Defense Ministry in central Damascus. The blast echoed far beyond
the capital. It was a warning shot in a growing
fight over who controls Syria's fractured south, where sectary intensions
(00:25):
have reignited between minority populations and the Syrian government. Today,
Damascus based journalist Heidi pet on the latest in this
conflict and how it could redraw the map of Syria.
It's Thursday, July twenty fourth, So Heidi, thank you for
(00:50):
talking with me.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Last week.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You were in Damascus when Israel launched air strikes on
the city. Tell me where you were when that happened
and what you saw.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So, in the midst of this violence that we've seen
in the south of the country, Israel began a series
of what we'd call warning strikes on Damascus.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Months after liberation from decades of tyranny. Syrians now have
this to worry about. He's read, the air strikes in
the heart of their capital.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And so in the middle of the morning they hit
the gate of the Defense Ministry, which is in central Damascus.
You know It's in this place called Amayad Square where
Syrians gather, you know, for huge celebrations when the regime fell,
for protests. You get families going down there in the
evening to kind of picnic and hang out. And I'd
(01:39):
gone down there because I wanted to take some photographs
of the damage so far, and so I was kind
of getting out of my car and then I heard
this scream of jets overhead, and then a series of
three or four enormous air strikes.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Mid afternoon in Damascus. It's the most famous square violated
and bombarded by Israeli.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Air power, and you know, just the immense kind of
sound wave and dust and debris flying through the air
as about one hundred and fifty meters away from where
I was standing. And when that smoke cleared, what you
could see is that the Ministry of Defense building, which
is a four or five story building in downtown Damascus,
had just been cleaved into.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
And so why did Israel launch this offensive in the
middle of Damascus? What was that message?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So Syria is still not a unified country. In the northeast,
the Kurds still maintained a lot of territorial control and
in the south, there's an ethnic minority, religious minority called
the Drus. There's about seven hundred thousand of them. But
there's also Druze communities in Lebanon, and a significant Druze
community inside Israel, mostly though that's in the north of
(02:52):
the Gollen Heights, which is actually Syrian territory that's been
occupied by Israel since nineteen sixty seven. Many of the
Drews inside Syria, they're quite suspicious of Ahmad al Shara's government,
and they control a lot of the southern province of
Sweda and the city that takes the same name. And
for a long time there's been this simmering conflict between
(03:14):
the Drus and Bedouin tribes and communities, and then over
the weekend really exploded into quite serious violence.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Localized dispute between Bedouin tribes and some Druz fighters escalated
into a battle over whether the region should integrate into
the new Syria.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
The Syrian government basically saw that as an opportunity, you know,
they intervened, they say, to restore calm, but it was
also a pretext or a reason for them to go
in with quite a lot of force and take control
of a province that up until now had remained outside
of their authority.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
The Arab fighters repeatedly insist to us they want a
unified Syria, but the Druze faction in Sweda, led by
cleric hekmat Alhadjari, does not. His group refuses to be
led by a government they accused of perpetrating killings against
Drus and.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
He is the one who called for Israeli intervention, and
so Israel then obliged. They launched this, you know, a
series of airstrikes on the Syrian government troops had had
gone into Sweda, killing hundreds of them apparently. So then
there was a sort of agreement for a ceasefire and
a withdrawal, and you know, various of these agreements inside
the city of Swedar.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
This was meant to be a cease fi but the
warring factions clearly weren't part of it. There's no electricity
in the city, Internet is cut, food and water is scarce,
and there are thousands of families still bunkered down in
their homes. Amongst all of this, the.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Israelis that's when they decided to bomb central Damascus, sending
a very very strong message to the Syrian regime, which
is basically, don't even think about sending your military back
into Sweden.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Tell me more about how the Syrian government has been reacting.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So it's interesting because up until now, the President Ahmedolshara
has been pretty conciliatory towards Israel, and as part of
the kind of agreement that has been made between ahmados
Shara and the US to get these crippling sanctions lifted
on Syria, it looks like there was a real path
towards normalizing relations with the Israel which would be historic.
(05:23):
You know, he when he talks about Israel, he even
refers to it as the Israeli state, rather than using
the language of a lot of people and leaders here
in this region, which is they would never say the
Israeli state. They call it the Israeli entity because they
don't recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli State. Ahmedolshara, you know,
he looks like he was on that path, but in
the last week, in the statements that he has made saying,
(05:44):
you know, this is a violation of our sovereignty. It's unacceptable,
it's you know, you're seeking to undermine and sow division.
He has now begun referring to it again as the
Israeli entity, which I think gives you some indication of
the direction of travel there.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So in that case, why do you think Israel is
seeking to undermine someone who could be in la.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I mean that is that is really a question for
Benjamin Nettan now, who who it seems has really gone
off the rails in the last week. You know, the
Americans are reportedly very very displeased.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
Donald Trump is getting fed up. One White House of
visual described net Yahoo is quote a madman the Axis,
claiming he bombs everything all the time and that it
could undermine the Trump White House's efforts in the region.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But on a larger level, it sort of suits them
to have a weakened neighbor in Syria. You know, they're
not interested in having a strong military of any kind
on their borders. And to that end, you know, in
December when the regimes fell, they spent a lot of
time launching hundreds of air strikes and destroying Syrian military capabilities.
(06:51):
And what that's done is it's put the Syrian president
Offmanol Shara in a really really difficult position. You know,
Israel just saying that the Syrian government isn't allowed to
have a presence in the south of its own country.
Is not tolerable for a lot of Syrians, and it's
also not really tolerable for a lot of the armed
groups and fighters that Shara relies upon to maintain security
(07:13):
and stability inside Syria. He already has quite a tenuous
hold on some parts of the country, and Israel risks
really inflaming these sectarian divisions. They're risk tipping Syria back
into serious violence or another civil war.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
After the break Hardi takes us to the edge of
Sweda and the center of the violence. So, Haidi, you've
spent the last few days traveling throughout the south of Syria.
You've been trained to get into Sweden, which is the
place at the center of this violence. Tell me about
(07:53):
what life is like there and what's been happening since
Israel attacked Tumscus.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So Sweda has essentially been under siege since then. So
you know, we had these Bedouin armed groups and also
elements of the Syrian military kind of rampaging through the
city and engaging in this really you know, serious fighting
with Drew's militias, but also violence against civilians, and after
the Israeli strikes, the Syrian military, you know, they did
(08:20):
withdraw and various agreements have been made for these Bedouin
fighters to also leave the city.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
To Syria now where residents in the southern city of
Sueda have told the BBC there is a tense calm
in the city following seven days of violent sectarian clashes,
but despite some reports of attacks, a ceasefire enforced by
the Syrian government largely appears to be holding.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But what has happened is it's meant there's this kind
of ring of Syrian government forces and Bedouin tribes around
the city of Sweda. People inside their running out of food,
they're running out of water, there's no electricity, the internet
keeps getting cut off. It's you know, it's essentially a
humanitarian disaster inside the city. And then in some of
these villages that ring the city, which were majority Bedouin.
(09:06):
What we've also seen is because of this fighting and
what has turned into this kind of sectarian revenge, some
of the Druze militias have been killing Bedouins civilians, They've
taken a large number of them hostage, and other ones
they've been displaced from their land and their villages. So
it's you know, it's an incredibly difficult situation in that
province for civilians right now.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, it sounds like a dire situation in Sweda and
incredibly difficult to actually get in and witness at firsthand.
Tell me about what that's been like trying to enter
and what you've seen on the outskirts of the city.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, So I've spent the last couple of days negotiating
with you know, armed men of various stripes trying to
get access to the city of Sweda. The Syrian government
has set up a checkpoint and they've told all of
these Bedouin fighters that they can go no further. And
so you've got hundreds of fighters who've come from all
over Syria massing at this point because they also don't
(10:04):
trust the Syrian government.
Speaker 7 (10:06):
This here is the last government checkpoint before Sawada. But
all afternoon Bedwin government have been massive on this road.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Now.
Speaker 7 (10:14):
They say that they have stuck to the ceasfide ideal,
but they say they don't get their hostages out, get
the sick they injured out, then they're gonna go back in.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
You've got men in cars that are covered in mud
in order to kind of disguise them from the air
from you know, from Israeli drone and air strikes. Masked
men on motorbikes. They're all incredibly heavily armed with Klashnikov's
heavy weaponry.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I saw one guy go past on the back of
a motorbike with a sort of portable anti aircraft weapons
strapped to his back. And when you talk to these guys,
you really get a sense that this is not a
group that the Syrian government has a great deal of
control over it all.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I spoke to one of the field leaders for one
of the tribes and he said, you know, we're Bedouins,
We're independent, We're not taking our orders from the government.
And if we don't see these Bedouin civilians in these
surrounding villages released, we're going to go back in and
nobody can stop us.
Speaker 7 (11:14):
Jadha and this Bedwin leader told me it wasn't over
and Adola. If the Drews don't commit to the deal,
we will re enter Sawaiter again, he said.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So it's quite a tense scene there, and some of
these Druze villages on the outskirts you can see that
really really serious violence has happened. You know, every single
building had been burned. We also saw some of the looting,
you know, washing machines and household belongings sort of left
by the side of the road. And then I met
this woman. She was, you know, an elderly Drew's civilian
(11:48):
who'd been displaced from that neighborhood. She'd been hiding in
her house because she didn't want to leave actually, but
you know, her house had been burned, her hands were
covered in soot. You know, they've got nothing to go
back to, and it's incredibly sad.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
There was one family that I spoke to and they
were saying, you know, we have no problem with the
Drew civilians. We only have a problem with the militia.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
We had to leave my mother in law inside Sweden
because she's injured. She couldn't move, and she's you know,
she's in there. She's being taken care of by Drew's family.
And so even though they have these these sort of
personal connections that you know that many Syrians have with
their neighbors, you know, I asked him, you know, what
would it take for you to go back? And he said,
even if the government gave me all of Sweden, I
wouldn't go back. You know what I've seen in there.
(12:33):
You know, I've never seen anything like it in my
whole life. And as far as he's concerned, it's you know,
his home's gone. He'll never go back.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And so this violence, the shooting, the burning, the looting,
people push to the point where they don't think they
can ever go back to their homes. What does all
of it say to you, Hardie about the challenge for
the Syrian government right now?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I mean, it shows you how how easily fractured this
society is after the you know, years and years of
dictatorship and then war. It shows you the challenges for
the Syrian government, I think, in maintaining control over their
own troops and over the various other armed groups which
are you know, nominally on their side, these sunny Vedouin tribes,
(13:19):
you know, they say that they're on the side of
or allied to the government, but it looks like when
push comes to shove, they don't necessarily respect their authority.
But the bigger picture is that it shows other groups
across Syria, and most notably the Kurds who in the
northeast still have about twenty percent of Syrian territory. That this,
you know, this kind of experiment or this opportunity that
(13:39):
the Syrian government sought to take to go in and
establish control over a whole province, so they you know,
that they didn't have any authority over it shows them
that that failed, and so we've got this kind of
looming deadline in these negotiations between the Kurds, who've traditionally
been backed by the US and France and you know
a lot of Western governments in their fight against not
(14:02):
just the assid regime but also against Isis. You know,
there's a lot of pressure being put on them to unify,
to fold in, to come under the authority of the
Syrian state. And I think the message that they've taken
from this is that actually, you know, they are in
quite a strong negotiating position because this attempt by the
Syrian government, this show of force, it hasn't worked. I
(14:23):
think what it means is that there's a possibility for
continued violence on a larger scale and fracturing, you know,
and potentially the tipping into another civil war.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Heidi, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Also in the news today, Labor has introduced legislation in
federal Parliament to cut existing student debt by twenty percent.
The legislation, which is likely to pass with the support
of the Coalition and the Greens, will see three million
Australians receive an automatic reduction to loans offered under the
Higher Education Loan Program or Help. And legendary singer of
(15:12):
Black Sabbath Ozzy Osborne, has died aged seventy six. Diagnosed
with Parkinson's in twenty nineteen, Osborne was a pioneering figure
in heavy metal. In a statement, his family said he
was surrounded by loved ones in his final moments. I'm
Ruby Jones. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven am
when an Israeli air strike hit the gate of Syria's
Defense Ministry in central Damascus. The blast echoed far beyond
the capital. It was a warning shot in a growing
fight over who controls Syria's fractured south, where sectary intensions
(00:25):
have reignited between minority populations and the Syrian government. Today,
Damascus based journalist Heidi pet on the latest in this
conflict and how it could redraw the map of Syria.
It's Thursday, July twenty fourth, So Heidi, thank you for
(00:50):
talking with me.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Last week.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You were in Damascus when Israel launched air strikes on
the city. Tell me where you were when that happened
and what you saw.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So, in the midst of this violence that we've seen
in the south of the country, Israel began a series
of what we'd call warning strikes on Damascus.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Months after liberation from decades of tyranny. Syrians now have
this to worry about. He's read, the air strikes in
the heart of their capital.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And so in the middle of the morning they hit
the gate of the Defense Ministry, which is in central Damascus.
You know It's in this place called Amayad Square where
Syrians gather, you know, for huge celebrations when the regime fell,
for protests. You get families going down there in the
evening to kind of picnic and hang out. And I'd
(01:39):
gone down there because I wanted to take some photographs
of the damage so far, and so I was kind
of getting out of my car and then I heard
this scream of jets overhead, and then a series of
three or four enormous air strikes.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Mid afternoon in Damascus. It's the most famous square violated
and bombarded by Israeli.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Air power, and you know, just the immense kind of
sound wave and dust and debris flying through the air
as about one hundred and fifty meters away from where
I was standing. And when that smoke cleared, what you
could see is that the Ministry of Defense building, which
is a four or five story building in downtown Damascus,
had just been cleaved into.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
And so why did Israel launch this offensive in the
middle of Damascus? What was that message?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So Syria is still not a unified country. In the northeast,
the Kurds still maintained a lot of territorial control and
in the south, there's an ethnic minority, religious minority called
the Drus. There's about seven hundred thousand of them. But
there's also Druze communities in Lebanon, and a significant Druze
community inside Israel, mostly though that's in the north of
(02:52):
the Gollen Heights, which is actually Syrian territory that's been
occupied by Israel since nineteen sixty seven. Many of the
Drews inside Syria, they're quite suspicious of Ahmad al Shara's government,
and they control a lot of the southern province of
Sweda and the city that takes the same name. And
for a long time there's been this simmering conflict between
(03:14):
the Drus and Bedouin tribes and communities, and then over
the weekend really exploded into quite serious violence.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Localized dispute between Bedouin tribes and some Druz fighters escalated
into a battle over whether the region should integrate into
the new Syria.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
The Syrian government basically saw that as an opportunity, you know,
they intervened, they say, to restore calm, but it was
also a pretext or a reason for them to go
in with quite a lot of force and take control
of a province that up until now had remained outside
of their authority.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
The Arab fighters repeatedly insist to us they want a
unified Syria, but the Druze faction in Sweda, led by
cleric hekmat Alhadjari, does not. His group refuses to be
led by a government they accused of perpetrating killings against
Drus and.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
He is the one who called for Israeli intervention, and
so Israel then obliged. They launched this, you know, a
series of airstrikes on the Syrian government troops had had
gone into Sweda, killing hundreds of them apparently. So then
there was a sort of agreement for a ceasefire and
a withdrawal, and you know, various of these agreements inside
the city of Swedar.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
This was meant to be a cease fi but the
warring factions clearly weren't part of it. There's no electricity
in the city, Internet is cut, food and water is scarce,
and there are thousands of families still bunkered down in
their homes. Amongst all of this, the.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Israelis that's when they decided to bomb central Damascus, sending
a very very strong message to the Syrian regime, which
is basically, don't even think about sending your military back
into Sweden.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Tell me more about how the Syrian government has been reacting.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So it's interesting because up until now, the President Ahmedolshara
has been pretty conciliatory towards Israel, and as part of
the kind of agreement that has been made between ahmados
Shara and the US to get these crippling sanctions lifted
on Syria, it looks like there was a real path
towards normalizing relations with the Israel which would be historic.
(05:23):
You know, he when he talks about Israel, he even
refers to it as the Israeli state, rather than using
the language of a lot of people and leaders here
in this region, which is they would never say the
Israeli state. They call it the Israeli entity because they
don't recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli State. Ahmedolshara, you know,
he looks like he was on that path, but in
the last week, in the statements that he has made saying,
(05:44):
you know, this is a violation of our sovereignty. It's unacceptable,
it's you know, you're seeking to undermine and sow division.
He has now begun referring to it again as the
Israeli entity, which I think gives you some indication of
the direction of travel there.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So in that case, why do you think Israel is
seeking to undermine someone who could be in la.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I mean that is that is really a question for
Benjamin Nettan now, who who it seems has really gone
off the rails in the last week. You know, the
Americans are reportedly very very displeased.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
Donald Trump is getting fed up. One White House of
visual described net Yahoo is quote a madman the Axis,
claiming he bombs everything all the time and that it
could undermine the Trump White House's efforts in the region.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But on a larger level, it sort of suits them
to have a weakened neighbor in Syria. You know, they're
not interested in having a strong military of any kind
on their borders. And to that end, you know, in
December when the regimes fell, they spent a lot of
time launching hundreds of air strikes and destroying Syrian military capabilities.
(06:51):
And what that's done is it's put the Syrian president
Offmanol Shara in a really really difficult position. You know,
Israel just saying that the Syrian government isn't allowed to
have a presence in the south of its own country.
Is not tolerable for a lot of Syrians, and it's
also not really tolerable for a lot of the armed
groups and fighters that Shara relies upon to maintain security
(07:13):
and stability inside Syria. He already has quite a tenuous
hold on some parts of the country, and Israel risks
really inflaming these sectarian divisions. They're risk tipping Syria back
into serious violence or another civil war.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
After the break Hardi takes us to the edge of
Sweda and the center of the violence. So, Haidi, you've
spent the last few days traveling throughout the south of Syria.
You've been trained to get into Sweden, which is the
place at the center of this violence. Tell me about
(07:53):
what life is like there and what's been happening since
Israel attacked Tumscus.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So Sweda has essentially been under siege since then. So
you know, we had these Bedouin armed groups and also
elements of the Syrian military kind of rampaging through the
city and engaging in this really you know, serious fighting
with Drew's militias, but also violence against civilians, and after
the Israeli strikes, the Syrian military, you know, they did
(08:20):
withdraw and various agreements have been made for these Bedouin
fighters to also leave the city.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
To Syria now where residents in the southern city of
Sueda have told the BBC there is a tense calm
in the city following seven days of violent sectarian clashes,
but despite some reports of attacks, a ceasefire enforced by
the Syrian government largely appears to be holding.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But what has happened is it's meant there's this kind
of ring of Syrian government forces and Bedouin tribes around
the city of Sweda. People inside their running out of food,
they're running out of water, there's no electricity, the internet
keeps getting cut off. It's you know, it's essentially a
humanitarian disaster inside the city. And then in some of
these villages that ring the city, which were majority Bedouin.
(09:06):
What we've also seen is because of this fighting and
what has turned into this kind of sectarian revenge, some
of the Druze militias have been killing Bedouins civilians, They've
taken a large number of them hostage, and other ones
they've been displaced from their land and their villages. So
it's you know, it's an incredibly difficult situation in that
province for civilians right now.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, it sounds like a dire situation in Sweda and
incredibly difficult to actually get in and witness at firsthand.
Tell me about what that's been like trying to enter
and what you've seen on the outskirts of the city.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, So I've spent the last couple of days negotiating
with you know, armed men of various stripes trying to
get access to the city of Sweda. The Syrian government
has set up a checkpoint and they've told all of
these Bedouin fighters that they can go no further. And
so you've got hundreds of fighters who've come from all
over Syria massing at this point because they also don't
(10:04):
trust the Syrian government.
Speaker 7 (10:06):
This here is the last government checkpoint before Sawada. But
all afternoon Bedwin government have been massive on this road.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Now.
Speaker 7 (10:14):
They say that they have stuck to the ceasfide ideal,
but they say they don't get their hostages out, get
the sick they injured out, then they're gonna go back in.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
You've got men in cars that are covered in mud
in order to kind of disguise them from the air
from you know, from Israeli drone and air strikes. Masked
men on motorbikes. They're all incredibly heavily armed with Klashnikov's
heavy weaponry.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I saw one guy go past on the back of
a motorbike with a sort of portable anti aircraft weapons
strapped to his back. And when you talk to these guys,
you really get a sense that this is not a
group that the Syrian government has a great deal of
control over it all.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I spoke to one of the field leaders for one
of the tribes and he said, you know, we're Bedouins,
We're independent, We're not taking our orders from the government.
And if we don't see these Bedouin civilians in these
surrounding villages released, we're going to go back in and
nobody can stop us.
Speaker 7 (11:14):
Jadha and this Bedwin leader told me it wasn't over
and Adola. If the Drews don't commit to the deal,
we will re enter Sawaiter again, he said.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So it's quite a tense scene there, and some of
these Druze villages on the outskirts you can see that
really really serious violence has happened. You know, every single
building had been burned. We also saw some of the looting,
you know, washing machines and household belongings sort of left
by the side of the road. And then I met
this woman. She was, you know, an elderly Drew's civilian
(11:48):
who'd been displaced from that neighborhood. She'd been hiding in
her house because she didn't want to leave actually, but
you know, her house had been burned, her hands were
covered in soot. You know, they've got nothing to go
back to, and it's incredibly sad.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
There was one family that I spoke to and they
were saying, you know, we have no problem with the
Drew civilians. We only have a problem with the militia.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
We had to leave my mother in law inside Sweden
because she's injured. She couldn't move, and she's you know,
she's in there. She's being taken care of by Drew's family.
And so even though they have these these sort of
personal connections that you know that many Syrians have with
their neighbors, you know, I asked him, you know, what
would it take for you to go back? And he said,
even if the government gave me all of Sweden, I
wouldn't go back. You know what I've seen in there.
(12:33):
You know, I've never seen anything like it in my
whole life. And as far as he's concerned, it's you know,
his home's gone. He'll never go back.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And so this violence, the shooting, the burning, the looting,
people push to the point where they don't think they
can ever go back to their homes. What does all
of it say to you, Hardie about the challenge for
the Syrian government right now?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I mean, it shows you how how easily fractured this
society is after the you know, years and years of
dictatorship and then war. It shows you the challenges for
the Syrian government, I think, in maintaining control over their
own troops and over the various other armed groups which
are you know, nominally on their side, these sunny Vedouin tribes,
(13:19):
you know, they say that they're on the side of
or allied to the government, but it looks like when
push comes to shove, they don't necessarily respect their authority.
But the bigger picture is that it shows other groups
across Syria, and most notably the Kurds who in the
northeast still have about twenty percent of Syrian territory. That this,
you know, this kind of experiment or this opportunity that
(13:39):
the Syrian government sought to take to go in and
establish control over a whole province, so they you know,
that they didn't have any authority over it shows them
that that failed, and so we've got this kind of
looming deadline in these negotiations between the Kurds, who've traditionally
been backed by the US and France and you know
a lot of Western governments in their fight against not
(14:02):
just the assid regime but also against Isis. You know,
there's a lot of pressure being put on them to unify,
to fold in, to come under the authority of the
Syrian state. And I think the message that they've taken
from this is that actually, you know, they are in
quite a strong negotiating position because this attempt by the
Syrian government, this show of force, it hasn't worked. I
(14:23):
think what it means is that there's a possibility for
continued violence on a larger scale and fracturing, you know,
and potentially the tipping into another civil war.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Heidi, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Also in the news today, Labor has introduced legislation in
federal Parliament to cut existing student debt by twenty percent.
The legislation, which is likely to pass with the support
of the Coalition and the Greens, will see three million
Australians receive an automatic reduction to loans offered under the
Higher Education Loan Program or Help. And legendary singer of
(15:12):
Black Sabbath Ozzy Osborne, has died aged seventy six. Diagnosed
with Parkinson's in twenty nineteen, Osborne was a pioneering figure
in heavy metal. In a statement, his family said he
was surrounded by loved ones in his final moments. I'm
Ruby Jones. Thanks for listening.
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