episode-header-image

Dec 2024

21m 48s

Fear and euphoria in Damascus

Financial Times

About this episode

Gideon talks to FT Middle East correspondent Raya Jalabi about what she found when she drove from Beirut into Damascus shortly after the toppling of President Assad. What signs are there that the rebel group HTS will be able to manage a peaceful transition of power and end the country’s civil war? Clip: AFP

Free links to read more on this topic:

Netanyahu and Erdoğan compete to be the Middle East’s strongman

Assad dispatched $250mn of Syria’s cash to Moscow

Now Syria can dream of a future again

Justice for the victims of Assad’s atrocities in Syria

How the Assad family built an empire of fear in Syria

Subscribe to The Rachman Review wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribe.

Presented by Gideon Rachman. Produced by Fiona Symon. Sound design is by Breen Turner.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up next

Coming soon from Tech Tonic: Defying death

<p>Investors are spending billions of dollars on novel ways to extend human life through inventive treatments, therapies, and even manipulating our genes. And increasingly, it seems as though anti-ageing efforts have moved from the super rich to a mass market consumer industry. I ... Show More

Europe’s triple shock: Putin, Trump and Xi

<p>The French pioneer of European integration Jean Monnet believed that Europe would be ‘built in crisis’. The war in Ukraine is putting this theory to the test, once again. Gideon discusses with historian Timothy Garton Ash how European leaders are responding to this latest cris ... Show More

The battle for AI supremacy

Gideon Rachman sits down with the FT's innovation editor John Thornhill and Caiwei Chen, China reporter for the MIT Technology Review, to discuss the race between China and the US to become the 21st-century AI superpower. The west is used to hearing about the might of the Silicon ... Show More

Recommended Episodes

Syria: Can The Tyrant Assad Fall? With Razan Saffour

Become a member to get access to exclusive monthly calls: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/membershipIt’s been a spectacular week in Syria. The world had written off the rebellion that began in 2011, believing Assad, with the support of Russian air power and Iranian militias, had c ... Show More

The Syrian Civil War Reignites

EMERGENCY EPISODE In another hugely dramatic turn in the Middle East, the Syrian civil war has reignited. On November 27th 2024, Abu Mohammad al-Julani’s HTS reconquered huge swathes of the North West of the country, including the key city of Aleppo. Conflicted is here with an em ... Show More

Syrie : quel avenir pour les Kurdes ?

Depuis la chute de Bachar Al-Assad, le dialogue entre les Kurdes syriens et le gouvernement de transition semblait mal engagé. Et pourtant, <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/03/11/en-syrie-un-accord-historique-entre-damas-et-les-forces-kurdes_6578805_3210 ... Show More

Conflicted Community: Aaron Zelin – Assad’s Fall and the Future of Syria

ANOTHER EMERGENCY EPISODE Things are, as ever, moving at lightning speed in the Middle East, as last weekend on December 8th, Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian regime fell. After 13 years of civil war, and more than 50 years of his family’s rule, in an extraordinary turn of events r ... Show More

Syria's Minority Report: Sectarian attacks on Alawites and Druze threaten Syrian unity

The New Arab Voice is back!This week we look at the recent sectarian violence that engulfed the Syrian coast and targeted the country's Alawite community and the violence that hit in the south, which targeted the country's Druze community. We examine the causes of the violence, t ... Show More

Understanding HTS and the New Syria with Bilal Abdul Kareem

Become a member to ger access to exclusive monthly calls: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/membershipSyria is now free. But what does the future hold for a revolution that we believed had all but been decimated? The most recent spectacular offensive has given the rebel groups contr ... Show More

In the month since Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by a coalition of rebel forces, thousands of political prisoners have been released while many more remain missing, assumed lost to the regime. The most powerful group among the rebels, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ... Show More

The Middle East After Assad

After rebels took Syria’s capital, President Bashar Al-Assad fled Damascus for Russia, ending his brutal 24-year reign. His ouster marks the beginning of a new, uncertain phase for a country that’s been ravaged by 13 years of civil war. On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s ... Show More

Syrian Rebels Take Aleppo: Kalam Digest 16

The ripple effects of Israel's wars in the Middle East are spinning out of control. Just last week, the Islamist Syrian rebel group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) retook the city of Aleppo, the second-largest city in Syria. How did they manage to do so, and how does the severe weake ... Show More

372. Syria, al-Sharaa, and the future of the Middle East

What does al-Sharaa's rise to power mean for Syria? Given his surprise takeover, how will today’s CIA analysts be changing the way they think about the country and what happens next? Will Syria be the next Libya? Join Rory and Alastair as they discuss Syria’s rapidly shifting po ... Show More

Listen to millions of songs and podcasts on Anghami