Navid Nasr: Listen to this self-satisfied jerkoff, having the time of his life while all these nations are burning down all around him thanks to the proxy death squads that he embeds with and valorizes in all his reporting: Of the surreal moments Aris Roussinos recalls from his time reporting in Syria this summer, the weirdest is being invited for tea & a jacuzzi with al Qaeda. They were like, Come round to our place, he says. Theyd taken over a boutique hotel. They showed us the guest book, and brochures of how beautiful it used to be. There was a teenage fighter watching Mickey Mouse — but he quickly switched to news. They had the largest jacuzzi in Syria. We were going to get in but then we realised that we didnt have any shorts long enough. Later one of them friend-requested him on Facebook. I put him under acquaintances, he adds. He keeps liking all my posts. At the time Roussinos, 33, was embedded with the Islamic Front making The Ghosts of Aleppo, a five-part video series made in the ruins of the ancient city for Vice News. [...] Heres his style: The hidden awful truth about war is how much fun it is, is his first line on Libya. Later, Im standing on a rooftop, stoned, watching a city burn around me. Libya is Mad Max, Syria post-apocalyptic, a group of Kurdish girls on the Turkish border impossibly hot. Theres black humour — he twigs late that his Kurdish driver is telling checkpoints that hes an Israeli travelling on a fake British passport (for a laugh) — as well as moments of uncomfortable confession. In Misrata, he watches a man collapse to his knees shrieking, having seen his rebel brother shot dead. Did you get all that? Roussinos asks his cameraman. F***ing great sequence. Later he reflects that he had felt no emotion. If anything I was mildly bored. [...] Hed been living in a safe house with Islamic Front but shortly before he left Aleppo they moved. Some guy gave them keys to another safe house, down winding alleyways to a huge studded door. Inside there was a courtyard with a fountain & lemon trees. It was like an 18th-century palace. There were books in French & Greek, antiques, paintings, music. They were discussing operations against Islamic State sitting on these antique divans on marble-tiled floors being served cheap sugary orange juice & cigarettes. [...] His experience of al Qaeda (the Syrian branch is Jabhat al Nusra) was that they hated IS. The guy who added me on Facebook said IS had abducted his mother & sisters & held them in prison for a week, looted their house & stole their valuables. They hate the regime but they told me theyd rather make peace with the regime than IS. He laughs at the notion that the West is supporting secularists. We are arming semi-moderates in the Free Syrian Army or Syrian Revolutionaries Front yet keeping a distance from Islamist groups. Some Islamist groups are less Islamist than elements in the purportedly secular groups. There are basically no secularists in Syria. Everyone is a conservative Sunni Islamist of some kind. Or an opportunist.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 22:27:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015