From al-Qaeda to the White House

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0:32Where are we? Who are you? I'm Susanna George. I'm a correspondent on the international desk. And we are in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C. We just went through security, had all of our bags checked and wanded down. And we're kind of waiting by the elevators here. What's going on? Why are we here? We are interviewing the president of Syria, Ahmad al-Shara.

1:04This is Susanna George. She's talking with Post Reports producer Alana Gordon. On Monday evening, they and several other journalists from The Post sat down with Ahmed al-Shara, the president of Syria. They met with him after his visit with President Trump at the White House. Why is this such a notable thing right now? It's the first visit by a Syrian president, And what's interesting about him specifically visiting is, you know, it wasn't too long ago that he was a prisoner in a U.S. detention facility in Iraq when he was a fighter against American forces there. Ahmed al-Shara has long been designated by the U.S.

1:46as a terrorist. Then last year, he led the stunning ouster of the authoritarian Assad regime. Now this week, he became the first Syrian head of state to meet with a U.S. president in the White House.

2:03Okay.

2:11From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Kolbe Ickowitz. It's Wednesday, November 12th. Today, from al-Qaeda to the White House. We take you inside our meeting with the new Syrian president.

2:32Susanna, hello. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks. Thanks for having me. So, Susanna, you actually got to sit down and meet President Ahmed al-Shirrah earlier this week. What was that like? What was he like? So we arrive in this suite and we all sit around these cream couches and chairs. There's a coffee table in the middle, a chair at the front with the Syrian flag, two Syrian flags on either side. There was an interpreter who had, you know, been working with him all day, I think. And then Shara enters. Assalamu alaikum. Assalamu alaikum. My name is Peter Spiegel, and I am managing editor of The Washington Post.

3:18First of all, Mr. President, welcome to Washington. So all of you are from The Washington Post. He sits down, and we start asking questions.

3:40The most important objective is starting on building the relationship between Syria and the United States because in the past 100 years, it wasn't a very good relationship. You know, he was engaging, direct. He told jokes. He came across very comfortable in the room. And he was wearing a suit and tie. You know, this is what we see him wear when he's out meeting world leaders. It's a very different look from the camouflage fatigues that he was wearing when his forces rolled into Damascus last December. I want to ask you about Ahmed Alshara specifically, because there's this like improbable path that would bring him to Washington, D.C., meeting with the United States president in the White House.

4:31Walk me through that trajectory, where he started and how he got to where he is now. So al-Shara comes from an educated family, middle class family. He was born in Saudi Arabia, but he grew up in Syria. And he describes himself being really influenced by the events in the region. When he was a teenager, he talks about the Palestinian Intifada. This was the uprising against Israeli forces. There was a huge surge in violence in the Palestinian territories during that time. And he also talks about the impact of the Iraq War on him and the Iraq War following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces.

5:19He says that he became very interested in learning how to fight and being involved in that struggle. And so he eventually decided to go into Iraq from Syria and join the insurgency there. This is the Iraq War after September 11th, 2001. Yes, the Iraq War that began in 2003. And so he joins the insurgency fighting against the United States in Iraq. What happens to him when he's there? He was captured pretty quickly and imprisoned. He spent some time in Abu Ghraib. He spent some time in Taji and in Bukha, all really notorious U.S. prisons in Iraq at the time. And he was held in those prisons for a number of years.

6:08And he says that it was actually his time in prison where he really learned about, you know, the insurgency, all the different groups that were operating in Iraq, how they interacted with each other. And he learned a lot about political Islam there as well. He was then released from prison in 2011. And that was right when the Syrian civil war was beginning. So he decided to go back to Syria, to his homeland, and establish an al-Qaeda affiliate there, Jabhat al-Nusra. And what this group was fighting for was for the overthrow of the Assad regime. You know, for most Americans, when you hear al-Qaeda, you think of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

6:52That's the connection. Would he have been labeled a terrorist by, like, U.S. standards? He was. He was also officially designated a terrorist by the United Nations and the United States. And so was his group, HTS, the group that he eventually formed in Syria. He broke from al-Qaeda eventually after fighting for many years alongside them. And he decided he wanted to form an umbrella group. This was a time when the rebel forces that were against Assad in Syria were heavily divided. And he was trying to kind of gather as many of these rebel groups together and try to unite them against Assad. And that was how HDS was formed.

7:38So how do we get from his group, him, being designated a terrorist to where we found ourselves this week? He's at the White House. He's being welcomed by President Trump. He's meeting with Washington Post journalists. How does he get from there to there? I mean, the way he ended up as the leader of Syria is that the group that he commanded overthrew the leader of Syria. Before Shara forces rolled into Damascus, Syria was ruled by a dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and his father, Hafez al-Assad, before him. And the Assad family rule was highly repressive. Media was heavily censored. People were subjected to extensive surveillance.

8:22It was one of these deep cultures of fear where you just never really know who might inform on you. And if you are informed on, if you do run afoul of the security forces, you could very easily be disappeared. There were over 100 ,000 people estimated to have been disappeared into these extensive secret prison networks that the Assad regime ran. I mean, so there's just a very deep culture of fear in that country. And then Assad is overthrown. What happens after that to Syria? Well, it was Ahmed al-Shara and these fighters that he had formed in Syria. They're the ones who rolled into Damascus and overthrew the Assad regime after all this time.

9:15We have video of citizens filling the streets, celebrating, taking down statues, as you see there, of the Assad family. And shortly after arriving in the capital, Shara spoke from Damascus, from the landmark Umayyad mosque. He declared Assad's fall a victory for the Islamic nation.

9:40Syrian state television reported that tens of thousands of people detained in the prisons have been freed over the past 10 days. And shortly after that, in January, he installed himself as president.

9:55You know, when this major shift happens, what were some of the maybe concerns, but also the hopes? I talked a little bit before about, you know, this culture of fear and the repressive nature of this regime that lasted for decades. So when it kind of fell almost overnight to the surprise of the entire world, it was this moment of immense hope. But people were also very nervous. You know, it was a lot of change very quickly. And there was a lot of uncertainty, especially in those early days, about what was going to come next. So people were very hopeful, but also wary about, you know, what the new regime would bring.

10:38And there were also some serious security concerns inside Syria. The Islamic State group is still active in the country. And regionally, people were worried if after Assad, if there was even more instability in Syria, what the impact of that would be. And you said he installed himself as president. So how should we understand what kind of leader he's going to be? So Shara installed himself as president, and this is all intended to be temporary, to kind of stabilize the country, start rebuilding so that elections can be held in the future. He has appointed a cabinet for himself and his HTS fighters, those rebel fighters that ousted Assad, they make up the backbone of the country's security forces.

11:26And what will it take for the nation to be stabilized? Like what are some of the things that Syria is facing right now? Shara's challenges at home in Syria are enormous. I think one of his main priorities is getting funding investment to rebuild after years of devastating war. There's a real fear that the country could slip back into violence. There have been some really horrific instances of sectarian violence in the country's Druze and Alawite communities. And, you know, some world leaders are calling on Shara to do more, that he has to reform the security forces faster in order to protect these vulnerable communities in Syria.

12:14And what he says is that he's moving as fast as he can. What he said in the interview...

12:29The stability of Syria will impact the entire region, and the instability of Syria as well will impact the region, as the case was in the past. Syria was a source of instability in the region under Assad. And now that underlines the importance of turning things around. I think that there is a strong desire for him to succeed. You know, the instability in Syria when the country was at war affected, you know, not only countries in the region, but it affected Europe with the migration crisis. It affected the United States with, you know, attacks against U.S. interests. So I think that there's a lot of reasons why U.S.

13:17officials, European officials, other officials in the Middle East would like to see Shahraa succeed.

13:30All the world is looking for the stability of Syria, but the stability is linked with the economy, and the economy or economic development is linked with the lifting of sanctions. I mean, why should people in the United States suddenly be comfortable with lifting sanctions for trusting this person, given his past affiliation with al-Qaeda, his past fighting U.S. troops? What did he say about that? We asked him about his past as a member of an affiliate of al-Qaeda and how he would respond to concerns that that past would maybe make him not an ideal partner for the United States now. Peter Spiegel, the Post's managing editor, specifically asked about this and this idea that the U.S.

14:24would lift sanctions on Syria, which is what Shara was here in Washington to lobby for. And I ask you, you mentioned the seven years where you were missing. It does talk a bit about your background and obviously your relationship with the United States. It's been complicated over the last 20 years. What would you say to an average American who talks to their congressman and is debating these sanctions and says, why are we lifting sanctions on a man who was a soldier against the United States back a long time ago? And what he said is that he's not ashamed of his past and that participating in armed struggle is a noble calling.

15:12To start with, fighting is not something shameful if it's done for noble objectives.

15:26Especially if you are defending your own land and the people who are suffering from injustice. I believe this is something good that people should be commended for.

15:44I have fought so many wars, but I've never caused the death of an innocent person. Yeah, and in this part, he really stressed that while he was a fighter, he wasn't launching these attacks on American soil. But he said that it was U.S. policies in the region that motivated him to engage in the fight. And today we have so many Americans who agree with us that some of these policies were mistaken, that they caused so many wars that were pointless.

16:21So I didn't fight on U.S. soil. I fought in our region.

16:31After the break, we'll hear more from the Syrian president and what his leadership means for the relationship between the U.S. and Syria. We'll be right back.

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17:19So, Susanna, why was he in Washington? What was he hoping to achieve here? Shara spent a lot of this, his first year in power, traveling all over the world, meeting with world leaders. And one of the reasons that he's doing that is because under Assad, Syria was incredibly isolated. The country had all these sanctions imposed on it. It was a pariah state. and is only two real backers. Toward the end of his rule were Iran and Russia, two countries that have been in conflict with the United States. Now that Shara is in charge, in order for him to rebuild the country after a war, a devastating war, he's got to get these sanctions removed.

18:07And so he was in D.C. to largely push for that. Interesting. So he was asking Trump basically to lift these sanctions that still exist. A lot of the sanctions have been temporarily lifted, but what he was looking for was a permanent lifting of the sanctions. This would require congressional approval, and that's what he was asking Trump for. The first thing that we asked him about after he sat down was about his efforts to get these sanctions removed and his conversations with members of Congress and President Trump. So were you able to make progress asking for those sanctions to be lifted?

18:51This discussion has been going on for months now, and I believe that we reached good results, but we are still waiting for the final decision.

19:04The natural or the normal thing is for the sanctions to be lifted. He said that talks were going well, that he didn't get the definitive answers that he was looking for, but he felt like he has the support of the Trump administration. One of his other big asks. I believe that in the world, the United States is the only country that can put the Israeli conduct under check. was to try to get the U.S. president to agree to pressure Israel to stop launching attacks on Syrian territory and to eventually agree to withdraw from Syrian territory. Basically, to try to get Trump's support for terms to a security agreement with Israel that would be favorable to Syria.

20:07Right now, these attacks that Israel is launching on Syrian territory are the most significant threat to Syria's sovereignty at the moment. And as Shara is trying to consolidate his control, trying to rebuild the country from devastating war, he's got to get these to stop. And he's hoping that Trump can help him do that. But when we asked if he thought a security agreement with Israel could come soon, he kind of dodged the question. So there is an Iraqi proverb that I, as an interpreter, might not understand, and you will not understand. It doesn't translate. But I don't know.

20:54So the meaning of that proverb is that you can't say that you have a fish until you actually catch the fish. So you and the other post-journalists, you met with Alshara after his meeting with Trump. What do we actually know about how that meeting went? Well, the meeting at the White House was closed press, so we didn't get to see Trump and Shara interact. But from the official photos we saw, it looked very warm. The president spoke about the meeting afterwards. He had positive things to say about Shara. He's a very strong leader. He comes from a very tough place and he's a tough guy. I liked him.

21:38I get along with him, the president, the new president of Syria. And we'll do everything we can to make Syria successful because that's part of the Middle East. It seems like Trump and Shara get along. Had they met before? They had met in Saudi Arabia in May. That was when Trump first agreed to lift sanctions on Syria. It was a really big moment in the Arab world. And he met Shara shortly after making that announcement. So I was wondering, when you guys spoke with him, did you ask him about some of the big questions that I think about when it comes to Syria and Syria's future, like the human rights concerns and the potential for more sectarian violence?

22:17Yeah, we asked him about concerns around sectarian violence and the rights of minorities in Syria. And to that, he essentially said that it takes a long time for a country to recover from war and that, you know, it's been less than a year since Assad's fall and country needs more time to fully stabilize. You know, Susanna, with the fall of Assad and the release of prisoners who'd gone missing, a lot of people were hopeful about Washington Post reporter Austin Tice, who's now been missing in Syria since 2012. Did we ask him about this? And for those who don't know, remind us about Tice's situation.

22:57Austin Tice was a freelance writer with The Washington Post. He was covering Syria's civil war when he was abducted around August of 2012. And since then, numerous U.S. officials have said the search for Tice has yielded very little credible, verifiable information, and he remains missing and unaccounted for. And so then what did Shara say about the search for Tice, the hopes of finding Tice? What he said is that he met with Austin Tice's mother when she came to Damascus, and he actually introduced her to his own mother, who had been through a similar ordeal.