Screenshot via YouTube
It’s one of the strangest discussions one could imagine. A retired American general-turned-CIA director-turned-ousted intelligence leaker interviewed a former insurgent under al-Qaeda-turned civil war commander-turned-President of Syria took the time out of their days to sit face to face for a brief but civil discussion about Middle Eastern geopolitics.
Late last month news broke that Gen. David Petraeus would interview Ahmed al-Sharaa at the Concordia Summit, a global affairs conference held as the United Nations General Assembly took place. al-Sharaa was there, less than a year after taking Damascus and ousting the Assad regime, as Syria’s interim president, looking to represent a former pariah state and regain international trust. When news of it hit social media, it got met with nervous laughs and disbelief. I didn’t think it was real until footage of the two men talking hit the Internet. It is just so strange.
I watched Concordia’s dubbed video — embedded below, the slightly stilted translation was where some of these quotes come from — because as an American who came of age during the Iraq War and and the Global War on Terror as a whole, this was a rare moment. Two former enemies, face to face, not even in negotiations, but to talk shop amid a diplomatic event.
The Iraq War essentially “made” both men, even if they quickly skipped past it in their panel. Before he was fighting in Syria, al-Sharaa was in Iraq. He spent five years imprisoned by American forces, who were at the time commanded by Petraeus. Petraeus was there as the coalition commander during the “surge,” paying off Sunni leaders for peace and arming and equipping groups linked to torture and death squads. As the late journalist Michael Hastings noted, Petraeus “pulled off what is perhaps the most impressive con job in recent American history. He convinced the entire Washington establishment that we won the war.” Petraeus later became Director of the CIA, on the rise in the post-George W. Bush world. Until he was revealed to have leaked classified intelligence to his biographer and mistress. He got two years probation.
Petraeus, hunching over slightly from age but with the stiff movements of a career military man, had well recovered from the scandal that derailed his career. Standing tall next to him was al-Sharaa, who 10 months ago did the impossible and ousted Syrian dictator and mass murderer Bashar al-Assad after more than a decade of civil war. Instead of the fatigue-wearing extremist militant, he was in a sharp suit looking seemingly at ease surrounded by the monied and influential class.
In his opening question, Petraeus acknowledged their history as battlefield enemies. He holds back a chuckle, smiling heavily as he asks about how the Syrian went from militant to president. For his part, al-Sharaa — who under the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani led the al-Nusra Front in Syria, split off from al-Qaeda and then took over Hayat Tahrir al-Sham which would defeat Assad — downplays his past, referring to “mistakes” while emphasizing the need to rebuild Syria. The United States only lifted a bounty on al-Sharaa’s head late last year.
If there’s animosity between them, neither shows it. Near the end of their short conversation, Petraeus even asks if al-Sharaa is getting enough sleep, given the pressures on him. It’s a discussion that feels less like old enemies from a destructive conflict meeting face to face and more like a boss meeting with a former employee turned peer. This is not to suggest there’s any underlying plan or conspiracy behind al-Sharaa’s rise to power — an unfortunate subset of the Internet gives the CIA too much credit in its effectiveness and has suggested that all protesters, especially the more religious extremists and militants of the Syrian Civil War, were all CIA plants or puppets. This is not an Assadist newsletter with a conspiracy slant. Assad was a mass murdering monster who had his cops and soldiers open fire on peaceful demonstrators during the start of the Arab Spring, opened up jails to sow chaos and bombed his own country for years. Syria should, from when protesters first rose up in March 2011 to now, be decided by Syrians alone.
It would be stupid to call this brief panel discussion a coda to the Global War on Terror or Iraq. Both continue in some form, with the fallout ongoing and hundreds of thousands of people dead. It’s not as if Petraeus or al-Sharaa seemed interested in discussing its complexities. But this was, in many ways, the highest profile chance to see two men who were shaped by the forever wars face off. It was so strange.