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Miles Vining - Raqqa, ISIS and Conflict in the Middle East; Silah Report - The world is a complex and dangerous place and we're fortunate to have guys like Miles Vining willing to go out and understand it, provide aid through is work with the Free Burma Rangers. (FBR)
We need to take a moment to flesh out who Miles is, and what he does-While he talks about his experience with the FBR he's not an official spokesperson--so his stories are his own. He's also talking about the mid-east (Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq and Turkey) from the same vantage point. For you weapons folks...Miles' other work is the Silah Report which focuses on foreign weapons. If that sort of |
thing fascinates you...then head to their website or Instagram accounts for more on Miles.
Haiku
We need guys like Miles
Helping in the Middle East
He’s a ground truth pro
Similar episodes:
Bill Mankins
Robert Hunter & John McKay
Fred Burton
Join us in supporting Save the Brave by making a monthly donation.
Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
Writer: Bojan Spasovski
The best post, 5 episodes a week. New content, New episodes New podcast
Haiku
We need guys like Miles
Helping in the Middle East
He’s a ground truth pro
Similar episodes:
Bill Mankins
Robert Hunter & John McKay
Fred Burton
Join us in supporting Save the Brave by making a monthly donation.
Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
Writer: Bojan Spasovski
The best post, 5 episodes a week. New content, New episodes New podcast
Transcription
Pete Turner 0:00
Hey everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show recording our intro, man. Are we lucky to get this person you will not find him on any other channel and in the other place talking specifically from the ground truth level? Yes, we have ambassadors on the show. Yes, we have PhD people, but you also know my passion for the ground truth and bringing you folks who can bring their direct experience from the ground, real things that really happen. We have Myles vining who's a sort of a student I use, that's secondary. He also is a foreign weapons expert in particular from the Mideast and you can and should absolutely check out the Scylla report si l h. report you can find them on Instagram primarily.
Hey everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show recording our intro, man. Are we lucky to get this person you will not find him on any other channel and in the other place talking specifically from the ground truth level? Yes, we have ambassadors on the show. Yes, we have PhD people, but you also know my passion for the ground truth and bringing you folks who can bring their direct experience from the ground, real things that really happen. We have Myles vining who's a sort of a student I use, that's secondary. He also is a foreign weapons expert in particular from the Mideast and you can and should absolutely check out the Scylla report si l h. report you can find them on Instagram primarily.
Pete Turner 0:00
Hey everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show recording our intro, man. Are we lucky to get this person you will not find him on any other channel and in the other place talking specifically from the ground truth level? Yes, we have ambassadors on the show. Yes, we have PhD people, but you also know my passion for the ground truth and bringing you folks who can bring their direct experience from the ground, real things that really happen. We have Myles vining who's a sort of a student I use, that's secondary. He also is a foreign weapons expert in particular from the Mideast and you can and should absolutely check out the Scylla report si l h. report you can find them on Instagram primarily. But also you can go to their website and you can also find them on Twitter or just get me Pete at break it down show calm or at Pete a Turner anywhere and I will get you over there if you're into foreign weapons and knowledge there miles is an out now expert We don't get a whole lot into that in this episode just because we talked about the Mideast and the current state of affairs. And it's always fascinating when we do that. We'll definitely have miles back on for more talk. We recorded this episode, get this in Iraq and Syria, so I wasn't there but miles was there. And that's where he is. He does work with the free Burma Rangers now do a little bit of a caveat here. While Myles works with the free Burma Rangers, he is not a spokesperson for them. He doesn't speak for them, his comments are going to be from his own experience his own observations. So and one of those guys do go to free Burma Rangers, I think it's dot com or.org. And you can learn all about their charitable work. They provide aid in conflict zones, like at the very tip of the spear, you know, people around them are in significant life crisis, whether it's combat or anything else. Actually, just today. miles gave me an update about some Russian combat activity against Turkey in the area that he was in. That is how close he is to the front. Lying to the tip of the spear he is there as a free Burma Ranger providing aid to people so we're gonna break down Islam the region Why are we involved what happens what doesn't happen and I know you're gonna love this again not gonna find this anywhere else you're just not going to find it and I barely got miles to talk about it so big thanks to miles and you guys definitely let him know what you think of the episode so we can get more from him. super great guy also hat tip over to Bill Mankins who is a partner of mine and someone I absolutely love his work. He's one that turned me on to miles. And we got him on and I just I can't think Bill enough I'm going to see him soon. And I just can't think miles enough. It's a great episode. I'm going to skip all of my self promotional stuff. I will say this support us at save the brave.org All right, here comes get ready have your mind blown. Here comes Myles vining lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 2:57
This is Jay Morrison. This is Jordan Harbinger extra From the Osprey, Sebastian yo this is Stuart COPPA. This is Mitch Alexis handy.
Unknown Speaker 3:04
Somebody there's a skunk Baxter. Gabby Reese is Rob bell. Hey,
Pete Turner 3:07
this is john Leon gray. And this is Pete a Turner.
Miles Vining 3:12
Hi, I'm Miles vining, and this is the break it down show. Yeah, so just real quick. Yeah, I'd like to, I'd like to tone down if not leave out altogether my FBR involvement particularly because I don't like it when when Silla report is conflated with the free Burma Rangers because they're not related whatsoever. A few Burma Rangers volunteer and some of the stuff that I see well, Syria and Iraq ends up on Co Op report but is there's no Venn diagram between the two of them.
Pete Turner 3:45
Myles vining is calling in from Raka there. I handled it for you. First off, holy shit, man. You're in Syria and I pretty sure everybody now just was like, wait, what, what the hell's going on? So I bet miles through bill Mankins, who you all have heard from before, and we'll hear from again soon. Bill and I are combat buddies. We have done a lot of stuff outside of the wire. And that's sort of where miles exists is out in conflict zones, doing things that are oftentimes the lethal towards him and his group, but also extremely complex and it involves dexterity that is, is just First off, I admire what you're doing the passion and the heart and the service that goes into what you work on. Is just remarkable. I guess let's just start with what the heck are you doing and Raka right now.
Miles Vining 4:39
So I'm with the free Burma Rangers. We are a multi ethnic international relief group. We are originally started based doing a lot of humanitarian relief work in Burma, what is currently mimar and we've been in the Middle East for the past several years and recently We're going through Syria right now. And we're returning after a trip in October after the Turkish invasion in which we were providing relief supplies and casualty support to the tel, Tamar and Nisa fronts where the Turks invaded to the south administration forces in those areas, and particularly a lot of the IDPs that ran from Turkish invasion from that. So this trip we're back here, we're seeing what we're really trying to do here is talk to the people in town, so to speak, try to help with more of the humanitarian gap and try to get more relief supplies in where it is needed. There's a huge IDP situation right now, both from the Turkish invasion and also from what the current the ongoing situation and it lives where a lot of refugees are flowing out of there and are flowing into some of them are flowing into North Houston Syrians in what we can do for them
Pete Turner 6:02
there as well. Okay, let's, let's, let's make sure you slow down and say, IDP has internally displaced people give us an idea of what Yeah,
Miles Vining 6:11
so a refugee is someone who crosses international border, and you always flee in a conflict or other situation. Whereas an IDP and internally displaced person hasn't crossed an international border. It's a different. It's a different kind of problem for the government's involved. It's a lot easier to be an IDP than it is a refugee. But for what we're working with right now is IDPs. In Syria.
Pete Turner 6:38
What is the IDP situation look like for you know, and I know, look, I get it. It's complicated, you know, not one answer, but just give us an idea of what because most folks have never met anybody who's an IDP, and they don't realize that sometimes they live in junkyards because that's literally the place with the most shelter and stuff. But what does an IDP look like in a place like Syria?
Miles Vining 7:00
So right now, I mean, you've got the Syrian civil war it's been going on since 2012. Right now, due to the Turkish invasion, you have a lot of people and families, mostly families, women and children who ran away from the areas in which the Turks invaded, and they've ran to further population centers, villages where they're taking shelter. And right now, essentially, you know, they don't have jobs, they don't have income, they need food, they need supplies, and especially with the winter it's a lot colder. And the problem for the cities in the area are that they are taking up schools so you now you have the local education systems have an issue where the kids what they were formerly going to school and is now an IDP collection site for families that can't return to their town in Russia line or in Tel Aviv yet.
Pete Turner 7:55
What happens when a family's home is yes Rubble, and and they don't It's not like there's a central banking system and ATMs. You can you know, you have pretty much what you can carry. Is that correct?
Miles Vining 8:08
Yeah, whatever they could fit on their pickup trucks. In a lot of these cases, a lot of there. A lot of IDPs. Here, there. They are coming from sort of destroyed conflict areas. A lot of them are we're running away from the Turkish invasion because they didn't want to be. They didn't want to stick around to see what the Turks are what the Turkish supported Free Syrian Army or Syrian National Army would end up doing to them. In the case of an occupation, so a lot of them fled. So they're there. Yeah, they're living in a lot of schools, a lot of community areas and in terms of support, you have a lot of local organizations that are answering the call for bringing in medical supplies, bringing in doctors bringing in relief supplies, bringing in food, bringing in essential humanitarian stuff. So,
Pete Turner 9:01
when you guys do this kind of work, obviously there's a zillion problems to solve. Are these families typically complete? I mean, obviously anybody who's surviving from whatever kind of conflict they're in, but are we looking at like, you know, a mom, a dad or grandma a bunch of kids? Or are these fractions of a family, they're scattered to the wind?
Miles Vining 9:20
Yeah, more more like fractions more like immediate family members, because you got to remember the communities here, you know, pretty diverse. So you'll have maybe, you know, a family that's based in Sarah Connie might have more relatives and tell tougher, or some of the other cities around it. So it's just that one felt small family in Sierra County, for instance, that would run away to either those other family spots or back to places like hosaka or commercially where there's these larger schools and that's where the education system has kind of been interrupted. So what we've been seeing are, you know, a lot of mother and children pairs You know, you see some husbands involved. You see some grandparents but for the most part, it's a lot of sort of mothers and their children. Men sometimes as well, other times, the men aren't there, they've been killed.
Pete Turner 10:16
Is there okay? So you guys are getting these folks immediate help to try to get them from today until tomorrow today until next month or whatever. But is there another organization that goes in and kind of nurtures them from from Okay, we're no longer gonna live in whatever place it is they came from, because it just it doesn't exist or politically doesn't exist. But does someone help them get lodging and find jobs and all those kind of things? Or when does that case management stop for you guys?
Miles Vining 10:45
Well, there So for us, we're we're an extremely small organization. I mean, our team is about 20 or less, and and there's very little that we can actually do at sort of these behind. The behind the line sites that these IDP collection centers are our role is mostly in the frontline in the conflict zones where other organizations can't go to a won't go to or aren't able to go to. So really what we're seeing back here in some of these larger areas is sort of checking in on them. We have good life programs, or we run children's programs for some of these sites. And we're we're looking at what's happening and trying to send out reports about what's happening. So those bigger NGOs get to some of these sites in the rear, so to speak. Okay, okay. Yeah.
Pete Turner 11:39
Why do this extremely quick. Let's just talk about how dangerous this is. I mean, if people aren't understanding this, you're desperate people everywhere. There's often open conflict. How dangerous is it?
Miles Vining 11:50
Um, it's extremely dangerous. last the last time we were in Syria, one of our members was actually killed. Xiao sang. He was a Kitchen Ranger from Northern Burma from the kitchen region of Northern Burma. And he was killed when a mortar landed next to one of our vehicles. So yeah, and it's extremely dangerous in that regard. A couple other guys were wounded in that attack. Before that. We've had a translator that was killed in Iraq, as well as multiple guys get wounded there as well, too. So yeah, it can it can be very dangerous, lethal day to day. Is it dangerous? Or is it dangerous, like and I'm trying to contextualize danger here behind so bear with me. You know, at any given point in time exploding things happen and and you know, if you're next to it, then that's it. That's your day, but day to day, is it dangerous? Do you always feel the tension of danger? Is your is your head on a swivel? How would you rate a level of danger? I'd say it's, you know, it's that typical combat ratio of 95% complete boredom and then 5% sure terror. And it's, you can't you can't you're not living in that 5% sheer terror all the time. It's only that 5%. So, either and again, like a lot of the stuff that we do is logistics, moving supplies and getting stuff in and doing supply runs to get more relief supplies and working with bringing casualties back and forth. I mean, so if you take the case of, you know, bringing a casualty from the front line to a rear hospital, the the the period that's the most dangerous is when you're picking up that casualty at that forward area. And the rest the rest of the trip back at the hospital into the rears, you know, relatively calm there's nothing to it. So
Pete Turner 13:45
yeah, wow. Okay. And then I guess the big question is why? Why I mean, obviously the service side of it this but this is extremely dangerous. Doesn't sound like it's well paid. It's got a wreck any kind of home life and routing situation. Why are you doing this?
Miles Vining 14:00
Yeah, it's actually not paid at all, perfect most of us. Most of us, the majority of us in the FUBAR ranges are unpaid volunteers. And we do it because it's meaningful. A lot of us have religion that motivates them, whether they're Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, or you have some agnostics as well, because it's important to them because they feel a calling to do it. And for a lot of us, we feel a sense of need, where a sense of need and meaning where no one else is providing it, where we, you know, you feel, you feel there's a great injustice done. I mean, for example, after when the Turks invaded, the United States left the Kurds to die in northeastern Syria. I mean, that was, you know, it was a horrible event and for us to be able to go in there and help and help people at the front and help some of these IDPs there as well. That was a very important feeling. side of any sort of government mandated thing. We're all we all have, we're all doing this because we really believe in the mission and we really believe in the people. And
Pete Turner 15:08
so when you say volunteers, I mean, are you paying for your own food and everything to or are they providing you? And I'm doing quoting fingers because I know these things are up in their food and housing, like are they providing life support? Or is this all on you?
Miles Vining 15:24
So while on mission, it's everything's provided as part of that mission, I mean, we're not you're not going to go hungry on a mission because because you don't have enough money to feed yourself in terms of stuff like getting there and you know, bring your own gear stuff like bags and, you know, cold weather gear and that kind of thing. That's definitely all on you. Hmm,
Pete Turner 15:45
okay. Okay, so so you're not going to starve, they're gonna provide you lodging and housing and everything, but you're gonna buy the plane ticket to whatever the The location is. And from there you guys take off as a team, where How else have you been in the world to do this kind of incredible work?
Miles Vining 16:00
For me, for me most of my work with FBR has been Syria. I've I've been tour I've been to our training camp in, in Burma. And but that I've been on one of our missions there. And that was a very low key conflict in current state, which right now there's a sensitive ceasefire between the Burmese Government and the Quran. And so that that is nothing that is very unlike the conflict in Syria right now.
Pete Turner 16:28
Right, but yeah, I still I guess the the human crisis is still just as important. They mean, there's people that don't have enough they're trying to live out of whatever kind of crap situation they're in.
Miles Vining 16:41
Oh, yeah. And I mean, in northern Burma, it's the complete Flipside and you have a complete full on civil war IDP situation going on in Kachin state and Shawn state going on there and not to mention the row hanga as well in erican. State Western Berlin.
Pete Turner 16:59
Why Do people stay internally? What is it that that keeps them? You know, they just move 200 miles away even though they have nothing, why don't they just walk to the border and go across and get international help?
Miles Vining 17:13
Um, I mean, you've got you've got your whole community, you've got your whole life, you know, is in some of these places, and it's, it's a quite, it's a balance, right? You could abandon that and run away to safety, or you could maintain that and live in someone and live in some fear and live and live under threat. But it's a very, it's a very hard thing, I think, for a lot of people to abandon, or to run away from, you know, everything in their lives that is working on this and is stable in that context. I mean, yeah, you know, there's a war on and stuff and there's also there's also a chance of it not affecting you and a lot of these conflict areas, for for unfortunately for a lot of civilians, they're getting killed and wounded all the time. But sometimes, you know, there's communities that are are able to sort of live through the conflict. If they stay low, they they have a chance of continuing.
Pete Turner 18:07
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. It's sort of like why would you shelter in place in Florida and during a hurricane because we know how to survive a hurricane, we know that we're over here. And, and a lot of these things, I mean, there's instability. So the instability may move away from from your location. And you just go back to your regular life in some slightly degraded form. But if you leave forever, you're not coming back.
Miles Vining 18:32
Exactly. And you know, for in some cases of these communities, you know, you you do leave forever. One you're probably not going to come back to even if you do come back, you don't know what you're coming back to. There could be somebody else living in your house at that point. And that's, that's certainly a problem right now with a lot of the people who fled the areas that the Turks invaded because you have the you have turkey interested in pushing hope, you know, almost 2 billion Syrian refugees. back into Syria into this area, this buffer zone the safe zone certainly calls it and occupying the areas where these previous IDPs have left.
Pete Turner 19:10
Yeah, there is that right there's the international political side of it where Turkey is trying to create a different reality in terms of what what is Turkey and what isn't. And what's what's a contested zone and when it mean that there is that like, if you live in that area, you are no control over who is coming down the road on a day to day basis.
Miles Vining 19:33
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Pete Turner 19:36
Give us some insight in terms of the Burma Ranger mission free Burma Ranger mission. Is it is it primarily like food and shelter? Are there other aspects? Is it medicine? What's his give us an idea of what the palette of of aid is?
Miles Vining 19:53
Well, so we're, we're extremely small, very small organization. We we can We do not see ourselves working in the sort of bigger IDP camps or the refugee camps. And we sort of follow you know what Dave Eubank has created since the 1990s. And, you know, brings it up into what it is today, we've tried to fill the humanitarian gap, which is that little space at the frontline at these at the tip of the spear, so to speak of these conflict zones, and these areas, where there are no of there are no big organizations there. There's no the UN the Red Cross these other big organizations or any organizations actually, that are committed to civilians who are trapped in these conflict zones in terms of medical aid in terms of basic food and supplies. They can't or they won't get there. And that's for a huge variety of reasons. And a lot of them. It's a good thing that they're not there. There's a lot of risk involved. There's people dying, there's all sorts of stuff that happens in war, which a lot of people would be very right to stay away from. And we and what FBR has done since its beginnings in, in Burma in the mid 1990s, is try to fill this humanitarian gap where these other groups can't and won't
Pete Turner 21:18
get too. Is this your primary job or I mean, obviously, it's not a job, but this is your primary effort or you do this in spurts. Talk about how you use your time,
Miles Vining 21:27
I would say this in spurts. I go for a couple months at a time with FBR. And I focus on other stuff, I come back to the US or I travel elsewhere. And my primary my primary gig outside of FBR is a group called SWAT report, which is a website slash, you know, community research group that I founded a couple years ago that focuses on small alarms from the Middle East and Central Asian and North African regions of the world.
Pete Turner 21:58
Okay, so this is a totally Different things. And so these things don't overlap at all the the free range of work is completely separate. Maybe you have some access shared, but other than that you're not. Those things don't cross over.
Miles Vining 22:11
Yeah, no, no, there's there's nothing in there is nothing in common between sub report and FBR. No.
Pete Turner 22:18
Okay, so what and do you monetize this off report? Or is this another project that's more passion based?
Miles Vining 22:25
Yeah, so CLR reports. We it is it is monetized we we pay our we pay authors to write articles for us. We sell patches, we sometimes bring in stuff from overseas and we sell it in the US. And then we get we try to get stuff out and magazines and other online editorials and that sort of deal. And we talk about it on other YouTube channels and that sort of thing. But ya know, we're primarily a research center looking at this stuff from from angles that haven't been looked at before. Within Within just within small arms within small arms research,
Pete Turner 23:05
okay, what the heck is small arms research?
Miles Vining 23:08
Yes, so, so you've heard, I don't know how to even break this down there is isn't really a small arms. Historical small arms research really isn't a academically recognized field as it is because it can be very technical in nature you get a lot. There's some folks that dig in more into forensics and that deals more into criminal investigation stuff. There's historians out there who are dwelve into this right and books about small arms about historical small arms about different, you know, technical variations of things. There's collectors who write about this stuff. But when I say a story in there, there really isn't a sort of PhD or masters track, you can go on and become a smaller story and most of the folks out there are sort of self made or Sort of fly between, you know, government agencies and stuff like that. And they, they do the public side of that, which comes out in books and articles and other things.
Pete Turner 24:11
So Bill tells me that you're a master of small arms, supposedly foreign, small arms. How did you end up on this path? And then when did you realize that you were going to be able to fill this hole like that? You know, obviously, with your passion, you must have said, holy cow. This is great. I would love to fill this historical, you know, research hole here?
Miles Vining 24:29
Yes. So it was it was really a convergence of the stuff I was interested in. Which coming back from Afghanistan, I was interested in furthering my language study of puffs to at Indiana University. And I was also interested in going back to Afghanistan in various capacities as a contractor. Later on, I did go back as a contractor and then as a YouTube director. But at the same time I had this interest in small arms, which I've had for Did you see YouTube director? Yeah, I ran a YouTube channel called Tia cobalt tfbtv is another YouTube channel I work with it's called tech TV Afghanistan.
Pete Turner 25:12
Wow. Was Yeah. Dude, you are an interesting cat, you do a lot of interesting things. Does that kind of work pay the bills that is YouTube paying you? Or is the organization paying you who's funding that kind of effort
Miles Vining 25:29
for for tfbtv It's a paid basis. You know, we make videos and we have monetary income from YouTube. And with Patreon that helps supports us on getting gear and stuff like that. For the tech TV, Afghanistan, I'm no longer a part of it. When I left, you know, I had to, I had to hand it over. That was a paid venture as well. I was working for another company, a tech company in COBOL. That general worker that paid me to set up a YouTube channel for them for the firearm blog. I also write for there and for other magazines and stuff like that, where those are all paid articles as well. So essentially making a living as a freelance writer. Okay,
Pete Turner 26:10
okay. Wow, that's good work if you can get it. Are you a veteran?
Miles Vining 26:17
I am.
Pete Turner 26:18
Okay. Okay. So there's some sanity in this plan like you found yourself comfortable outside the wire. What was your jobs, job code or job specification?
Miles Vining 26:27
I was in Oh 311. Okay, riflemen,
Pete Turner 26:29
that makes no sense. I
Miles Vining 26:34
was in. I was in the Marine Corps infantry for four years, enlistment contracted, deployed to Afghanistan, two times in 2011. And then 13 to 14. The first deployment was mostly a lot of walking. A lot of patrolling the second deployment was mostly mounted patrols and Halo borne operations out of Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province.
Pete Turner 26:58
Yeah, I mean, the weapons department Since with you being an 11th everybody's infantry men so basically he is a grunt and that's, that's that's not derogatory it's just those guys do one thing so obviously weapons but you have a passion for the actual people the culture, the language. When did you discover that
Miles Vining 27:16
I kind of growing up was it became a part of me in that you know I grew up in Thailand I grew up in Burma, I grew up in Malaysia, and things like languages and foreign cultures and odd food and diarrhea and school trips. All became very, very normal to me it was it. I didn't think of any I actually didn't think of I didn't think there was anything other than that. So when it came time to, you know, when I deployed to Afghanistan, became fascinated and interested by the Afghan people and the language and the culture and the Pashtuns south. I wanted to further that and I did that at Indiana University. And so sort of my but they extend You know, my childhood was, you know, continuing where I left off and further in this stuff.
Pete Turner 28:07
Do you like being in the US? Or is that not your comfortable safe place?
Miles Vining 28:13
Not really. I like being from the US. It's great having a US passport. And it's not. I don't find myself challenged or fascinated by living in the United States. I am happy for the United States. I love I love America. I, you know, I put my life on the line for this country. Right. But I would not I would rather not spend my time in the US. I find, I find that I would rather be close to my primary sources.
Pete Turner 28:42
overseas. One of the things that I always say is when we talk about our desire to intervene in conflict, what good or bad like our intention is always to try to help I mean, obviously, there's other intentions, but we're trying to help and you know, the long wars like do we pull out of Curt, you know, Kurdistan, do We pull back in Kurdistan, all of these things come at the cost. Like if you stay, you're there, you're in the fight, you're before projecting people spending a ton of money. And if you pull back, you have to stomach the fact that there's going to be human crisis and atrocity there. Do you have a sense? Like, do we intervene too much? Do we, you know, it's our desire to try to solve every problem to great or I don't know, what are your thoughts
Miles Vining 29:28
on it? This is extremely complicated question in terms of Iraq and Afghanistan, which, you know, on Afghanistan, I was personally a part of that endeavor. Good, you know, good or bad as you as you call it, that viewers? Well, it's I don't know how to answer that question for those two countries and for the peoples of those two countries More importantly, but I do know how to answer for the involvement in Syria in that our decision to leave the Kurds hi and Dry on October 12 of last year was probably the worst foreign policy decision the United States has ever made last decade. Why?
Pete Turner 30:11
Because this
Miles Vining 30:14
for a multitude of reasons. Most importantly, it was because we left we left these people that gave everything to to defeat an enemy that we all agreed was possibly one of the worst enemies we could face. I mean, outside of some of the really horrible regimes that are out there in the world today. This was something that we all agreed needed to be putting the dirt and these were our allies. That did it for us. I mean, the current the the Syrian Kurds Syrians, the Syrian Kurds that started the replica and yet the job for you saying
Pete Turner 30:49
Iran would say it again.
Miles Vining 30:52
Syrian superiors okay. Yeah. No, the Syrian Kurds that form the Yep, a gun. Yep, that's Later turns into Arab forces and Christian forces that join the SDF. You know, this was a force that lost over 10,000 killed in action to do this for us on the count of the United States and European allies, which essentially, really only paid a price in ordinance and defense expenditures, right. And this, this is just this is just what is so morally wrong about this whole thing is this is, you know, a force that, you know, stands for democracy and stands for freedom and stands for freedom of religion stands for freedom of expression in northeastern Syria. And we threw that all the way when we allowed air Dhawan to,
Pete Turner 31:44
hey, this is Pete Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear the best plan and show you how to pick a podcast that makes sense for you that sustained Double that scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at break it down show calm. Let me help I want to hear about
Miles Vining 32:06
it. We threw that all the way when we allowed air Dhawan to date and that's the morally wrong. That's that just morally repulsive repulsiveness of it. Yeah, fair
Pete Turner 32:18
enough. I mean, it's it's it's one thing to say that if you can't even point to where rocket is on the map, or, or Beale, you know, but it's another thing if you've been to those places and talk to those people and understand it, how do the curves if you were to guess how did the Kurds view our because all of this stuff is undergirded by by betrayal. I mean, there's no president, there's no candidate for president who's going to circle Kurdistan on the map and say, I've dare motherfucker to say it's not Kurdistan. That's just that's not happening. Right? So betrayal is always at the root of this. I mean, the courage deserved or stayed a long time ago and it just hasn't come to pass. How do they see us as a partner? I mean, obviously, we have no problem stepping away from them or Iraq as a whole. And going, Hey, you're on your own. I'll see you later, you know, but what do you think? What's your sense? I think, well, we're all obviously still
Miles Vining 33:12
involved to protect the oil fields at this point. And the thing is, I think, the sense that we got from a lot of the that I got from Kurds and northeastern Syria, they'd rather be betrayed by the United States than be betrayed by the Russians. That would probably be a far worse betrayal, because at least the United States there's some sort of approachment right, but with the Russians and Putin, it's like, there's no, you're playing hard and fast with everything you have there. Yeah, that's that's an important sense for Syrian Kurdish feeling against the United States right now. And, I mean, in some places the United States has returned in places that either the US withdrew from the US has pushed forward but not for the right reasons, the reasons why the US is pushing forward is to confront Russian interference and in the region, it's not for the reasons of protecting the people and and trying to destroy and to stabilize. What is working to this conflict now,
Pete Turner 34:11
is that Syrian conflict in any way? Pete? Is it improving? Has it reached its bottom? Like, where do you think it's that?
Miles Vining 34:19
I think it's not over. I think I think we're still going to see several more years of the Syrian civil war. Unfortunately, for the people of Syria, there's, there's still a lot of, there's still a lot of unfinished business in terms of how people want to be governed and how and how they want the war to be conducted and how, who's going to be in charge of what that is that conclusion is still several years away from now.
Pete Turner 34:53
Like any you know, heck like their neighbors and some of them are them. You know, the Kurds you can't get them agree on to on what They want, you can't get Puerto Ricans to agree on status quo statehood or their own country. How are the Syrians aligned? I mean, is there a obviously there's a civil war. So there's definitely these two sides. But is it more complex than that?
Miles Vining 35:17
Oh, yeah, it's it's, it's more complex than, I don't know, tangled spider web. Right? You, you've got different factions that are changing flipping signs with one another, you know, the Turkish incursion was just the latest fronts in this war, many fronts. The area and it lip is the biggest deal going on right now. A word between the Russians and Syrian forces pushing up against that little pocket that's up there. And then you have the sort of SDF for the self administered areas which is holding on and, but only tacitly, you know, working with the Russians and without Assad only because they've got no other choice because the United States
Pete Turner 36:04
withdrew. Why do we need to care about Syria, especially some self administrated strip of land, like why? So let me let me give you some context. as a as a naval EOD tech that walked into a building and Raka and got his life didn't die, but lost. He's quadriplegic, lost his voicebox lost an eye and now has to live his life as a quadriplegic. With a bunch of kids by the way, one of his kids needs as much care as he does on a day to day basis because he's also special needs. Why are we sending people to Syria to go deal with that at the cost of Kenton Stacy's? You know, well being
Miles Vining 36:50
why. The first and most important reason is that you had the birth of ISIS here, this is where ISIS gained hold. This is a this is a movement that began here and ignited and allied with movements across the world. And this was where they got stomped out. And if we aren't here, and if we aren't fighting them, and if we aren't working to try to bring a peaceful Syria and try to bring a peaceful resolution, you'll get another ISIS you'll get an ISIS 2.0. And we're already seeing, you know, sales pop up and sleeper cells, and there's still a lot of issues and there's the war with ISIS support and stuff like that. I mean, the movement hasn't gone away at all, though, in the idea that we vanquished ISIS in March of 2019. In the small hamlet of goose is absolutely absurd. ISIS is vanquished youth. There's still there's still plethora of an ISIS population out there that wants to see the return of the caliphate. This is what this is what ISIS widows were telling us outside of a goose when we were handing them food and water. Given the metrically they were saying that, you know, God's testing us that we didn't just come to Syria to join ISIS for you know, for the kicks of it. No, God is putting us through a great test right now we're gonna we're gonna come back we're gonna rise greater than before. And, you know, that's that is what that is why we need to be involved in this stuff. And you can talk about involvement in Iraq or talk about involvement in Afghanistan, but he's Syria is that especially the self administered portion of Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, that is a completely different ballgame than the NA than the A up then the Iraqi army as well.
Pete Turner 38:40
Yeah. And by the way, I'm asking myself some extremely complicated, powerful questions, and I appreciate you hanging with me on those because those are not easy questions, and I, you know, but they're ones that people. Look, you can't get that straight answer here in the States, as you might imagine, and whatever answer you do get you don't get it from someone who's who's grounded. Truth centered. So I appreciate you doing that. Are we partnered in this at all? I mean, obviously, we're partnered a little bit with the Syrian rebels and, you know, the Kurds and maybe the Rockies and stuff. But in this area, are there European countries is Turkey, obviously European country and Asian country? But are they cooperating in some kind of way? That makes sense. I mean, they're, they're actually an ally, you know, Kurds, the Kurds are friends. We actually have to deal with the fact that Turkey lets us use their airspace. We have bases there. Talk a little bit about that collaboration.
Miles Vining 39:35
I mean, the Turkish collaborations strategic one that the United States wants to keep with as you mentioned, the basis the NATO's southern flank, so to speak, you know, that's in the strategic level. On the European level, the in the the a lot of European forces are joined in this fight as well. In ba goose, you had French one five fives that were supporting American in SF teams that were, you know, hammering the city of the goose every day. So you had a you had a coalition that did come in and join in, in the fight against ISIS. Turkey is a much more complicated situation though. What is it? 155 it's our tip. It's artillery shell. I think the max effect of Arno 15 kilometers or 15 or 20 kilometers, just a big artillery piece that lands with destruction.
Pete Turner 40:29
It's just for the audience. So you know, like if you think about roughly a coffee can made out of metal, that shreds and tears and flies on three axes was shards of metal. It's a terrifying thing to have thrown at you, and it's no fun at all. Okay, so French forces and and lots of other support in the area as everybody tries to stamp out the ISIS thing I have to ask you in general what Your thoughts on Islam because obviously the Islam is not the you know? Okay, let me see if I can ask the questions even hard to ask my house. So there are millions of maybe even a billion peaceful Islamic folk who want no part of any kind of conflict like that. But there are also over a billion people that would like to have a caliphate. So how do we how do you sort out Islam? Because it is it is a challenging thing. I mean, Arabs and Islam, they struggle with each other. This is the thing I found out the other day from Dr. from Tim Timothy McIntosh, Smith, he wrote a fantastic book. It's a it's called Arabs, the 3000 year history of people, tribes and culture or something like that. And he said that Islam doesn't require faith, it requires submission. Whoa, totally different way to approach the thing. So I'm not asking you to disparage their their religion at all, but how do you sort through the complexities of the Arab people of Islam of a caliphate, all of these things that sort of drive the area that you're in towards, at least right now towards instability. Oh, in terms of,
Miles Vining 42:13
in terms of my views on Islam, I am Muslim for myself. So it becomes much more personal at that level. And looking at this area from that perspective is interesting as well. But in terms of your questions of you know, this factions and the sort of Islam question, right. Okay, what's, what's the violence come from? I think you you've got, you've got different you've got, you've got so many different layers of what's happening. And you it's you cannot, I don't think you can look at all in a singular religious flavor or religious phrase. You have politics, it's happening. You have economic, economic, you know, common economic That's happening you have, you know, harassment on different levels you have, you just have so many different factors that come into play. It's never one thing driven by solely by religion. It may be a motivating thing in terms of, you know, maybe a group's messaging or propaganda, but on an individual level and on smaller stuff, that there's so much more that's happening, that has to be taken into account. I mean, we can look at in Afghanistan, we can look at motive what motivates our students to join the Taliban. And what you'll come up with isn't an Islamic messaging tool, which you'll come up with is a you'll come up with, you know, a Pashtun nationalist movement that wants to be in charge of the country. And this is a rallying cry for questions to join that you'll look at issues and you know, rural villages with men who want to you know, even at the smaller complex level, many want to they want another woman's hand in marriage, but that that father won't Let them so they joined the Taliban, this big bad force and they're able to sort of course the father into allowing that kind of thing to happen. And that's the kind of thing that you're seeing in terms of ISIS, in particular, ISIS, the monster that became ISIS? Well, first of all, I've never met another Muslim that would ever agree with anything that ISIS has or anything in their rhetoric. And there's also a lot of different perspectives that you can look at with ISIS and a lot of different blends of what has become ISIS and what separates ISIS from Al Qaeda and everything examples, examples of that is examples of that. Some some of that actually lie in, you have a lot of these immigrant populations living in Europe, living in North America as well. And ISIS part of ISIS is actually a reaction to Europe and the United States in these areas. Whereas if you look at sort of al Qaeda, and how Okay, does messaging sort of went along have lines of, you know, going after Israel being the root cause of all evil and then the United States supporting Israel dead. That's why al Qaeda is looking at the United States in that perspective, or in, you know, Osama bin Laden's initial gripe with the United States was stationed troops in the Arabian Peninsula. And you know, the Saudi King not doing not going against it and no sama wanted to, you know, lead an army into Iraq to take over quick Islamic army of Mujahideen veterans, etc. Whereas with ISIS, you don't see this. You don't see this concentration on Israel. And if anything, Israel and ISIS actually have very little beef with each other. And so far as where ISIS has directed its messaging and directed its attacks to and especially, you look at the beginnings of ISIS coming from the Islamic State in Iraq, under like Daddy, where you sort of injected ISIS into Syria. And you see ISIS as a particular Turn to Iraq, the hardest battles that were fought over with ISIS. You know, we're in Mosul. We're fighting over Fallujah, Ramadi, and all these other cities. These are rocky cities, these aren't Syrian cities. And so you see ISIS as a as a return to Iraq instead of a manifestation in Syria, which it wasn't manifestation Syria. Um, it definitely became that. But so that's another part of looking at it. I mean, you see me see this on the individual level, too. You see a lot of ISIS widows that we've had they, you know, it was it was almost an honor as almost an honorary thing to have a husband from Fallujah or from Iraq, the Iraqi dialect is a lot deeper, is a lot nicer to listen to men from Fallujah, or fight like lines or whatever, whatever reason they come up with, but you see this that level two, so there is there's no singular sort of religious thing on this. It's you have to look far more than religion. There's this plays into economics and job security and Conflict instability and instability and you know who's gonna who's gonna provide money to whom and stuff like that you look at local actors on the ground and you know why why do they do business with ISIS or this or that you know, some of them it's because things make a buck and they need to make you don't need to continue their business and this isn't like an ideological thing at that point. This is an economic thing that's solid my questioning credit
Pete Turner 47:26
What if we just said hey, we support an Islamic see, you know, just like the Vatican and we're going to say you know, what, you guys in the job Okay, great. We're going to draw a circle around the trough make it its own microstate and, and that, or maybe it's Medina and Mecca, and you just draw a circle around the two of those and you tell the Saudis you get a lot of help from us. This is gonna happen and and we give we give some kind of a caliphate, and let that happen. I know that's crazy. But I want to just ask that question because it's a valid Point two for a lot of people to understand like, the Catholics have it, you know, they're not causing a problem.
Miles Vining 48:06
Do these things go together at all? Well, the idea well, first of all the idea of the caliphates, you know, the Ottomans, the Ottomans sort of took it in and made it their own little thing. But they deal with a caliphate goes back to after the Prophet Muhammad died. And you have, you know, the first for a caliphate, Russia doing the rightly guided caliphs. And the whole idea of that was that I think it was Omar who was the first Kalos and he has this famous speech where he actually says, You know, I roll I roll with the with your consent I roll because I owe the masses something because I owe the masses you know, that that I owe the masses by allegiance. And so idea of that is sort of the doubt a democratically elected, not not democratically elected body, but democratic a majority consented governance for people to be ruled under. And the problem with ISIS is that nobody in the Muslim world agreed with agreed with them read with anybody being under ISIS, the people who did move to Syria, and that was the that was the point of that. And then the Bourne important aspect of that is that the the sex in Islam with between Sunni and Shia and the different schools within Sunni and then you also have Sufi as well. And you have it to the point where a lot of these different divisions are actually looking at each other and calling each other unbelievers just as much as they would be calling, you know, a Western, you know, Christian background or Western, whatever background it doesn't matter. Take your pick. And meaning mean to that point you have, you know, you look at the Taliban in the 1990s And you see accounts of Taleban you know scholars or your mom's going into Shia areas, and then being told that these are heretics. These are unbelievers and everything. And, you know, that is a completely true thing. It you can't look at this as Islam against the West. This is, you know, this is Al Qaeda has messed up view and messed up extremism of Islam going against everybody who isn't them and the west or this is maybe the ayatollah is this or maybe this is a an ISIS viewer. They think this is, you know, a Boko Haram thing. It's it's not Islam versus the West. It's these segments within these areas that go against everybody else and the West.
Pete Turner 50:52
So it's simple to solve. Love it. I love it. I mean, the sooner you have your hands wrapped around these problems, they're just they're so there, you can't you can encompass them. That's the whole thing. And what I love about the points that you're making is, when you take this with the other experts that we've had on the show, and we talk about these problems, they're not simple solutions, is the only way to deal with these things, if we choose to deal with them is to have 1000 of you to go out there who's, you know, language qualified, the religion thing, obviously, you have to have a capacity for Islam, if you're going to go work in this does not mean you have to be Islamic. But that's what these things get guided through. You can't just say, Hey, we're going to send 400 Marines and it's going to be Problem solved. None of them are that simple. These are big, hairy, scary, complex problems that require not just an international force, but but you know, an NGO force and all these other things combined together. It's a extraordinarily complex to stabilize these regions. Let me let me ask you one last question. Are we going to be able to stabilize the Gosh, I hate to say the whole orient, you know, but let's just say the the series like Jordan is a stable country, it has its problems, but it's okay. Even Lebanon, you know, kind of spikes up and it gets a little crazy every now and then, but it's for the most part, a fairly stable place. Well, we see that for Iraq and Syria in your lifetime.
Miles Vining 52:28
Well, I mean, there's some parts of Iraq that are a lot safer than anywhere in the United States. You take what the Kurds have in Kurdistan and the north, the care D region. That's one of the that's one of the that's one of the safest parts in Iraq right now. And the Kurds have the Iraqi Kurds have the little slice of heaven up there and they like what they got. So in terms of Kurdistan Kurdistan is relatively stabilized to answer that question, Jordan. Interestingly enough, I was in Jordan recently and tour days Jordanians have a view that as you said, you know, they've got these issues with whether their system governance or king is really in charge and stuff like that. But they don't really want to rock the boat because they see how rock the boat works all around. And they're like, well keep what we have here. It's not really not that bad in terms of ending up like Syria when a decade long Civil War, I think, and I think all these I think all these places happen with all these locations that you mentioned, are very unique in their, in their composition and mixture and how they and the demographics of the people involved. And another thing that you have to look at, as well as things like natural resources, and you look at you look at things like water, and you look at food supply and governance and stuff like that, and you can see that, you know, somewhere in Iraq, it's hard. You know, it's this is a very arid, desert country. Yeah, there's things at the micro level. That work their way up for why these conflicts sort of Ignite. And then why economy like local economy will spur a lack of jobs or a lack of right ingenuity to go into that. But yeah,
Pete Turner 54:13
so you're saying who knows what your answer that question is a lot of factors to go in there. I mean, it's not just about having access to oil, and and other resources. I mean, a rock can feed the entire the entire region, you know, they're so rich agriculturally, but they got to be calm down first, and, and get some electricity and some stability to really move forward. It would be really something to see iraq emerge, like, you know, like South Korea did over the past 60 years, where it really becomes, you know, this place where even if they're surrounded by crazy neighbors, they, they really can be the place that they've always been throughout human civilization, you know, a place of intellect and farming and all these things. They really have all the tools, if they can just kind of get a couple of wins stacked together.
Miles Vining 55:07
Yeah. And I mean, you know, these things come in waves throughout history. I mean, the United States isn't always going to be on top of this wave. What there was a time when? Yeah, but you mean, yeah, like, as he said, you know, look at Baghdad, and, you know, some of the earlier parts, especially in the golden age of Islam as an example, of history, I mean, this was center of the arts and literature and technology and advancement and all that and everything. And, you know, that's kind of fallen by the wayside. So you don't know how that's gonna return or in what form
Pete Turner 55:36
though? Fair enough. Okay. So let me just wrap it up, then, hey, I appreciate you answering those questions. It's a whole lot of hard questions to answer. And it'll probably turn out that you're wrong on all of them. Because that's what happens to me all the time. When I talk about that region of the world. It's like, I know what's going on. You're like, actually, it was different than I thought. But yeah, the point is, is that you're there you have experienced, you're talking in the moment about things Things that are very, very, very hard. But I know they're questions that people will be able to get. They'll have these questions and they've got a decent decent answer. And you're not screaming about the president, you're not screaming about Nancy Pelosi and all this other nonsense. You're just talking about a complex place with real people that have real issues. And and a lot of times those issues and goals are cross purpose to the person across the street from them. So I appreciate what you do, the time that you spent to go overseas to try to make the world least a little better place from the ground level because we need more folks like you and I really, I really appreciate you doing what you do.
Miles Vining 56:37
Well, thank you. I enjoy doing it and it's an honor to be here.
Hey everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show recording our intro, man. Are we lucky to get this person you will not find him on any other channel and in the other place talking specifically from the ground truth level? Yes, we have ambassadors on the show. Yes, we have PhD people, but you also know my passion for the ground truth and bringing you folks who can bring their direct experience from the ground, real things that really happen. We have Myles vining who's a sort of a student I use, that's secondary. He also is a foreign weapons expert in particular from the Mideast and you can and should absolutely check out the Scylla report si l h. report you can find them on Instagram primarily. But also you can go to their website and you can also find them on Twitter or just get me Pete at break it down show calm or at Pete a Turner anywhere and I will get you over there if you're into foreign weapons and knowledge there miles is an out now expert We don't get a whole lot into that in this episode just because we talked about the Mideast and the current state of affairs. And it's always fascinating when we do that. We'll definitely have miles back on for more talk. We recorded this episode, get this in Iraq and Syria, so I wasn't there but miles was there. And that's where he is. He does work with the free Burma Rangers now do a little bit of a caveat here. While Myles works with the free Burma Rangers, he is not a spokesperson for them. He doesn't speak for them, his comments are going to be from his own experience his own observations. So and one of those guys do go to free Burma Rangers, I think it's dot com or.org. And you can learn all about their charitable work. They provide aid in conflict zones, like at the very tip of the spear, you know, people around them are in significant life crisis, whether it's combat or anything else. Actually, just today. miles gave me an update about some Russian combat activity against Turkey in the area that he was in. That is how close he is to the front. Lying to the tip of the spear he is there as a free Burma Ranger providing aid to people so we're gonna break down Islam the region Why are we involved what happens what doesn't happen and I know you're gonna love this again not gonna find this anywhere else you're just not going to find it and I barely got miles to talk about it so big thanks to miles and you guys definitely let him know what you think of the episode so we can get more from him. super great guy also hat tip over to Bill Mankins who is a partner of mine and someone I absolutely love his work. He's one that turned me on to miles. And we got him on and I just I can't think Bill enough I'm going to see him soon. And I just can't think miles enough. It's a great episode. I'm going to skip all of my self promotional stuff. I will say this support us at save the brave.org All right, here comes get ready have your mind blown. Here comes Myles vining lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 2:57
This is Jay Morrison. This is Jordan Harbinger extra From the Osprey, Sebastian yo this is Stuart COPPA. This is Mitch Alexis handy.
Unknown Speaker 3:04
Somebody there's a skunk Baxter. Gabby Reese is Rob bell. Hey,
Pete Turner 3:07
this is john Leon gray. And this is Pete a Turner.
Miles Vining 3:12
Hi, I'm Miles vining, and this is the break it down show. Yeah, so just real quick. Yeah, I'd like to, I'd like to tone down if not leave out altogether my FBR involvement particularly because I don't like it when when Silla report is conflated with the free Burma Rangers because they're not related whatsoever. A few Burma Rangers volunteer and some of the stuff that I see well, Syria and Iraq ends up on Co Op report but is there's no Venn diagram between the two of them.
Pete Turner 3:45
Myles vining is calling in from Raka there. I handled it for you. First off, holy shit, man. You're in Syria and I pretty sure everybody now just was like, wait, what, what the hell's going on? So I bet miles through bill Mankins, who you all have heard from before, and we'll hear from again soon. Bill and I are combat buddies. We have done a lot of stuff outside of the wire. And that's sort of where miles exists is out in conflict zones, doing things that are oftentimes the lethal towards him and his group, but also extremely complex and it involves dexterity that is, is just First off, I admire what you're doing the passion and the heart and the service that goes into what you work on. Is just remarkable. I guess let's just start with what the heck are you doing and Raka right now.
Miles Vining 4:39
So I'm with the free Burma Rangers. We are a multi ethnic international relief group. We are originally started based doing a lot of humanitarian relief work in Burma, what is currently mimar and we've been in the Middle East for the past several years and recently We're going through Syria right now. And we're returning after a trip in October after the Turkish invasion in which we were providing relief supplies and casualty support to the tel, Tamar and Nisa fronts where the Turks invaded to the south administration forces in those areas, and particularly a lot of the IDPs that ran from Turkish invasion from that. So this trip we're back here, we're seeing what we're really trying to do here is talk to the people in town, so to speak, try to help with more of the humanitarian gap and try to get more relief supplies in where it is needed. There's a huge IDP situation right now, both from the Turkish invasion and also from what the current the ongoing situation and it lives where a lot of refugees are flowing out of there and are flowing into some of them are flowing into North Houston Syrians in what we can do for them
Pete Turner 6:02
there as well. Okay, let's, let's, let's make sure you slow down and say, IDP has internally displaced people give us an idea of what Yeah,
Miles Vining 6:11
so a refugee is someone who crosses international border, and you always flee in a conflict or other situation. Whereas an IDP and internally displaced person hasn't crossed an international border. It's a different. It's a different kind of problem for the government's involved. It's a lot easier to be an IDP than it is a refugee. But for what we're working with right now is IDPs. In Syria.
Pete Turner 6:38
What is the IDP situation look like for you know, and I know, look, I get it. It's complicated, you know, not one answer, but just give us an idea of what because most folks have never met anybody who's an IDP, and they don't realize that sometimes they live in junkyards because that's literally the place with the most shelter and stuff. But what does an IDP look like in a place like Syria?
Miles Vining 7:00
So right now, I mean, you've got the Syrian civil war it's been going on since 2012. Right now, due to the Turkish invasion, you have a lot of people and families, mostly families, women and children who ran away from the areas in which the Turks invaded, and they've ran to further population centers, villages where they're taking shelter. And right now, essentially, you know, they don't have jobs, they don't have income, they need food, they need supplies, and especially with the winter it's a lot colder. And the problem for the cities in the area are that they are taking up schools so you now you have the local education systems have an issue where the kids what they were formerly going to school and is now an IDP collection site for families that can't return to their town in Russia line or in Tel Aviv yet.
Pete Turner 7:55
What happens when a family's home is yes Rubble, and and they don't It's not like there's a central banking system and ATMs. You can you know, you have pretty much what you can carry. Is that correct?
Miles Vining 8:08
Yeah, whatever they could fit on their pickup trucks. In a lot of these cases, a lot of there. A lot of IDPs. Here, there. They are coming from sort of destroyed conflict areas. A lot of them are we're running away from the Turkish invasion because they didn't want to be. They didn't want to stick around to see what the Turks are what the Turkish supported Free Syrian Army or Syrian National Army would end up doing to them. In the case of an occupation, so a lot of them fled. So they're there. Yeah, they're living in a lot of schools, a lot of community areas and in terms of support, you have a lot of local organizations that are answering the call for bringing in medical supplies, bringing in doctors bringing in relief supplies, bringing in food, bringing in essential humanitarian stuff. So,
Pete Turner 9:01
when you guys do this kind of work, obviously there's a zillion problems to solve. Are these families typically complete? I mean, obviously anybody who's surviving from whatever kind of conflict they're in, but are we looking at like, you know, a mom, a dad or grandma a bunch of kids? Or are these fractions of a family, they're scattered to the wind?
Miles Vining 9:20
Yeah, more more like fractions more like immediate family members, because you got to remember the communities here, you know, pretty diverse. So you'll have maybe, you know, a family that's based in Sarah Connie might have more relatives and tell tougher, or some of the other cities around it. So it's just that one felt small family in Sierra County, for instance, that would run away to either those other family spots or back to places like hosaka or commercially where there's these larger schools and that's where the education system has kind of been interrupted. So what we've been seeing are, you know, a lot of mother and children pairs You know, you see some husbands involved. You see some grandparents but for the most part, it's a lot of sort of mothers and their children. Men sometimes as well, other times, the men aren't there, they've been killed.
Pete Turner 10:16
Is there okay? So you guys are getting these folks immediate help to try to get them from today until tomorrow today until next month or whatever. But is there another organization that goes in and kind of nurtures them from from Okay, we're no longer gonna live in whatever place it is they came from, because it just it doesn't exist or politically doesn't exist. But does someone help them get lodging and find jobs and all those kind of things? Or when does that case management stop for you guys?
Miles Vining 10:45
Well, there So for us, we're we're an extremely small organization. I mean, our team is about 20 or less, and and there's very little that we can actually do at sort of these behind. The behind the line sites that these IDP collection centers are our role is mostly in the frontline in the conflict zones where other organizations can't go to a won't go to or aren't able to go to. So really what we're seeing back here in some of these larger areas is sort of checking in on them. We have good life programs, or we run children's programs for some of these sites. And we're we're looking at what's happening and trying to send out reports about what's happening. So those bigger NGOs get to some of these sites in the rear, so to speak. Okay, okay. Yeah.
Pete Turner 11:39
Why do this extremely quick. Let's just talk about how dangerous this is. I mean, if people aren't understanding this, you're desperate people everywhere. There's often open conflict. How dangerous is it?
Miles Vining 11:50
Um, it's extremely dangerous. last the last time we were in Syria, one of our members was actually killed. Xiao sang. He was a Kitchen Ranger from Northern Burma from the kitchen region of Northern Burma. And he was killed when a mortar landed next to one of our vehicles. So yeah, and it's extremely dangerous in that regard. A couple other guys were wounded in that attack. Before that. We've had a translator that was killed in Iraq, as well as multiple guys get wounded there as well, too. So yeah, it can it can be very dangerous, lethal day to day. Is it dangerous? Or is it dangerous, like and I'm trying to contextualize danger here behind so bear with me. You know, at any given point in time exploding things happen and and you know, if you're next to it, then that's it. That's your day, but day to day, is it dangerous? Do you always feel the tension of danger? Is your is your head on a swivel? How would you rate a level of danger? I'd say it's, you know, it's that typical combat ratio of 95% complete boredom and then 5% sure terror. And it's, you can't you can't you're not living in that 5% sheer terror all the time. It's only that 5%. So, either and again, like a lot of the stuff that we do is logistics, moving supplies and getting stuff in and doing supply runs to get more relief supplies and working with bringing casualties back and forth. I mean, so if you take the case of, you know, bringing a casualty from the front line to a rear hospital, the the the period that's the most dangerous is when you're picking up that casualty at that forward area. And the rest the rest of the trip back at the hospital into the rears, you know, relatively calm there's nothing to it. So
Pete Turner 13:45
yeah, wow. Okay. And then I guess the big question is why? Why I mean, obviously the service side of it this but this is extremely dangerous. Doesn't sound like it's well paid. It's got a wreck any kind of home life and routing situation. Why are you doing this?
Miles Vining 14:00
Yeah, it's actually not paid at all, perfect most of us. Most of us, the majority of us in the FUBAR ranges are unpaid volunteers. And we do it because it's meaningful. A lot of us have religion that motivates them, whether they're Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, or you have some agnostics as well, because it's important to them because they feel a calling to do it. And for a lot of us, we feel a sense of need, where a sense of need and meaning where no one else is providing it, where we, you know, you feel, you feel there's a great injustice done. I mean, for example, after when the Turks invaded, the United States left the Kurds to die in northeastern Syria. I mean, that was, you know, it was a horrible event and for us to be able to go in there and help and help people at the front and help some of these IDPs there as well. That was a very important feeling. side of any sort of government mandated thing. We're all we all have, we're all doing this because we really believe in the mission and we really believe in the people. And
Pete Turner 15:08
so when you say volunteers, I mean, are you paying for your own food and everything to or are they providing you? And I'm doing quoting fingers because I know these things are up in their food and housing, like are they providing life support? Or is this all on you?
Miles Vining 15:24
So while on mission, it's everything's provided as part of that mission, I mean, we're not you're not going to go hungry on a mission because because you don't have enough money to feed yourself in terms of stuff like getting there and you know, bring your own gear stuff like bags and, you know, cold weather gear and that kind of thing. That's definitely all on you. Hmm,
Pete Turner 15:45
okay. Okay, so so you're not going to starve, they're gonna provide you lodging and housing and everything, but you're gonna buy the plane ticket to whatever the The location is. And from there you guys take off as a team, where How else have you been in the world to do this kind of incredible work?
Miles Vining 16:00
For me, for me most of my work with FBR has been Syria. I've I've been tour I've been to our training camp in, in Burma. And but that I've been on one of our missions there. And that was a very low key conflict in current state, which right now there's a sensitive ceasefire between the Burmese Government and the Quran. And so that that is nothing that is very unlike the conflict in Syria right now.
Pete Turner 16:28
Right, but yeah, I still I guess the the human crisis is still just as important. They mean, there's people that don't have enough they're trying to live out of whatever kind of crap situation they're in.
Miles Vining 16:41
Oh, yeah. And I mean, in northern Burma, it's the complete Flipside and you have a complete full on civil war IDP situation going on in Kachin state and Shawn state going on there and not to mention the row hanga as well in erican. State Western Berlin.
Pete Turner 16:59
Why Do people stay internally? What is it that that keeps them? You know, they just move 200 miles away even though they have nothing, why don't they just walk to the border and go across and get international help?
Miles Vining 17:13
Um, I mean, you've got you've got your whole community, you've got your whole life, you know, is in some of these places, and it's, it's a quite, it's a balance, right? You could abandon that and run away to safety, or you could maintain that and live in someone and live in some fear and live and live under threat. But it's a very, it's a very hard thing, I think, for a lot of people to abandon, or to run away from, you know, everything in their lives that is working on this and is stable in that context. I mean, yeah, you know, there's a war on and stuff and there's also there's also a chance of it not affecting you and a lot of these conflict areas, for for unfortunately for a lot of civilians, they're getting killed and wounded all the time. But sometimes, you know, there's communities that are are able to sort of live through the conflict. If they stay low, they they have a chance of continuing.
Pete Turner 18:07
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. It's sort of like why would you shelter in place in Florida and during a hurricane because we know how to survive a hurricane, we know that we're over here. And, and a lot of these things, I mean, there's instability. So the instability may move away from from your location. And you just go back to your regular life in some slightly degraded form. But if you leave forever, you're not coming back.
Miles Vining 18:32
Exactly. And you know, for in some cases of these communities, you know, you you do leave forever. One you're probably not going to come back to even if you do come back, you don't know what you're coming back to. There could be somebody else living in your house at that point. And that's, that's certainly a problem right now with a lot of the people who fled the areas that the Turks invaded because you have the you have turkey interested in pushing hope, you know, almost 2 billion Syrian refugees. back into Syria into this area, this buffer zone the safe zone certainly calls it and occupying the areas where these previous IDPs have left.
Pete Turner 19:10
Yeah, there is that right there's the international political side of it where Turkey is trying to create a different reality in terms of what what is Turkey and what isn't. And what's what's a contested zone and when it mean that there is that like, if you live in that area, you are no control over who is coming down the road on a day to day basis.
Miles Vining 19:33
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Pete Turner 19:36
Give us some insight in terms of the Burma Ranger mission free Burma Ranger mission. Is it is it primarily like food and shelter? Are there other aspects? Is it medicine? What's his give us an idea of what the palette of of aid is?
Miles Vining 19:53
Well, so we're, we're extremely small, very small organization. We we can We do not see ourselves working in the sort of bigger IDP camps or the refugee camps. And we sort of follow you know what Dave Eubank has created since the 1990s. And, you know, brings it up into what it is today, we've tried to fill the humanitarian gap, which is that little space at the frontline at these at the tip of the spear, so to speak of these conflict zones, and these areas, where there are no of there are no big organizations there. There's no the UN the Red Cross these other big organizations or any organizations actually, that are committed to civilians who are trapped in these conflict zones in terms of medical aid in terms of basic food and supplies. They can't or they won't get there. And that's for a huge variety of reasons. And a lot of them. It's a good thing that they're not there. There's a lot of risk involved. There's people dying, there's all sorts of stuff that happens in war, which a lot of people would be very right to stay away from. And we and what FBR has done since its beginnings in, in Burma in the mid 1990s, is try to fill this humanitarian gap where these other groups can't and won't
Pete Turner 21:18
get too. Is this your primary job or I mean, obviously, it's not a job, but this is your primary effort or you do this in spurts. Talk about how you use your time,
Miles Vining 21:27
I would say this in spurts. I go for a couple months at a time with FBR. And I focus on other stuff, I come back to the US or I travel elsewhere. And my primary my primary gig outside of FBR is a group called SWAT report, which is a website slash, you know, community research group that I founded a couple years ago that focuses on small alarms from the Middle East and Central Asian and North African regions of the world.
Pete Turner 21:58
Okay, so this is a totally Different things. And so these things don't overlap at all the the free range of work is completely separate. Maybe you have some access shared, but other than that you're not. Those things don't cross over.
Miles Vining 22:11
Yeah, no, no, there's there's nothing in there is nothing in common between sub report and FBR. No.
Pete Turner 22:18
Okay, so what and do you monetize this off report? Or is this another project that's more passion based?
Miles Vining 22:25
Yeah, so CLR reports. We it is it is monetized we we pay our we pay authors to write articles for us. We sell patches, we sometimes bring in stuff from overseas and we sell it in the US. And then we get we try to get stuff out and magazines and other online editorials and that sort of deal. And we talk about it on other YouTube channels and that sort of thing. But ya know, we're primarily a research center looking at this stuff from from angles that haven't been looked at before. Within Within just within small arms within small arms research,
Pete Turner 23:05
okay, what the heck is small arms research?
Miles Vining 23:08
Yes, so, so you've heard, I don't know how to even break this down there is isn't really a small arms. Historical small arms research really isn't a academically recognized field as it is because it can be very technical in nature you get a lot. There's some folks that dig in more into forensics and that deals more into criminal investigation stuff. There's historians out there who are dwelve into this right and books about small arms about historical small arms about different, you know, technical variations of things. There's collectors who write about this stuff. But when I say a story in there, there really isn't a sort of PhD or masters track, you can go on and become a smaller story and most of the folks out there are sort of self made or Sort of fly between, you know, government agencies and stuff like that. And they, they do the public side of that, which comes out in books and articles and other things.
Pete Turner 24:11
So Bill tells me that you're a master of small arms, supposedly foreign, small arms. How did you end up on this path? And then when did you realize that you were going to be able to fill this hole like that? You know, obviously, with your passion, you must have said, holy cow. This is great. I would love to fill this historical, you know, research hole here?
Miles Vining 24:29
Yes. So it was it was really a convergence of the stuff I was interested in. Which coming back from Afghanistan, I was interested in furthering my language study of puffs to at Indiana University. And I was also interested in going back to Afghanistan in various capacities as a contractor. Later on, I did go back as a contractor and then as a YouTube director. But at the same time I had this interest in small arms, which I've had for Did you see YouTube director? Yeah, I ran a YouTube channel called Tia cobalt tfbtv is another YouTube channel I work with it's called tech TV Afghanistan.
Pete Turner 25:12
Wow. Was Yeah. Dude, you are an interesting cat, you do a lot of interesting things. Does that kind of work pay the bills that is YouTube paying you? Or is the organization paying you who's funding that kind of effort
Miles Vining 25:29
for for tfbtv It's a paid basis. You know, we make videos and we have monetary income from YouTube. And with Patreon that helps supports us on getting gear and stuff like that. For the tech TV, Afghanistan, I'm no longer a part of it. When I left, you know, I had to, I had to hand it over. That was a paid venture as well. I was working for another company, a tech company in COBOL. That general worker that paid me to set up a YouTube channel for them for the firearm blog. I also write for there and for other magazines and stuff like that, where those are all paid articles as well. So essentially making a living as a freelance writer. Okay,
Pete Turner 26:10
okay. Wow, that's good work if you can get it. Are you a veteran?
Miles Vining 26:17
I am.
Pete Turner 26:18
Okay. Okay. So there's some sanity in this plan like you found yourself comfortable outside the wire. What was your jobs, job code or job specification?
Miles Vining 26:27
I was in Oh 311. Okay, riflemen,
Pete Turner 26:29
that makes no sense. I
Miles Vining 26:34
was in. I was in the Marine Corps infantry for four years, enlistment contracted, deployed to Afghanistan, two times in 2011. And then 13 to 14. The first deployment was mostly a lot of walking. A lot of patrolling the second deployment was mostly mounted patrols and Halo borne operations out of Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province.
Pete Turner 26:58
Yeah, I mean, the weapons department Since with you being an 11th everybody's infantry men so basically he is a grunt and that's, that's that's not derogatory it's just those guys do one thing so obviously weapons but you have a passion for the actual people the culture, the language. When did you discover that
Miles Vining 27:16
I kind of growing up was it became a part of me in that you know I grew up in Thailand I grew up in Burma, I grew up in Malaysia, and things like languages and foreign cultures and odd food and diarrhea and school trips. All became very, very normal to me it was it. I didn't think of any I actually didn't think of I didn't think there was anything other than that. So when it came time to, you know, when I deployed to Afghanistan, became fascinated and interested by the Afghan people and the language and the culture and the Pashtuns south. I wanted to further that and I did that at Indiana University. And so sort of my but they extend You know, my childhood was, you know, continuing where I left off and further in this stuff.
Pete Turner 28:07
Do you like being in the US? Or is that not your comfortable safe place?
Miles Vining 28:13
Not really. I like being from the US. It's great having a US passport. And it's not. I don't find myself challenged or fascinated by living in the United States. I am happy for the United States. I love I love America. I, you know, I put my life on the line for this country. Right. But I would not I would rather not spend my time in the US. I find, I find that I would rather be close to my primary sources.
Pete Turner 28:42
overseas. One of the things that I always say is when we talk about our desire to intervene in conflict, what good or bad like our intention is always to try to help I mean, obviously, there's other intentions, but we're trying to help and you know, the long wars like do we pull out of Curt, you know, Kurdistan, do We pull back in Kurdistan, all of these things come at the cost. Like if you stay, you're there, you're in the fight, you're before projecting people spending a ton of money. And if you pull back, you have to stomach the fact that there's going to be human crisis and atrocity there. Do you have a sense? Like, do we intervene too much? Do we, you know, it's our desire to try to solve every problem to great or I don't know, what are your thoughts
Miles Vining 29:28
on it? This is extremely complicated question in terms of Iraq and Afghanistan, which, you know, on Afghanistan, I was personally a part of that endeavor. Good, you know, good or bad as you as you call it, that viewers? Well, it's I don't know how to answer that question for those two countries and for the peoples of those two countries More importantly, but I do know how to answer for the involvement in Syria in that our decision to leave the Kurds hi and Dry on October 12 of last year was probably the worst foreign policy decision the United States has ever made last decade. Why?
Pete Turner 30:11
Because this
Miles Vining 30:14
for a multitude of reasons. Most importantly, it was because we left we left these people that gave everything to to defeat an enemy that we all agreed was possibly one of the worst enemies we could face. I mean, outside of some of the really horrible regimes that are out there in the world today. This was something that we all agreed needed to be putting the dirt and these were our allies. That did it for us. I mean, the current the the Syrian Kurds Syrians, the Syrian Kurds that started the replica and yet the job for you saying
Pete Turner 30:49
Iran would say it again.
Miles Vining 30:52
Syrian superiors okay. Yeah. No, the Syrian Kurds that form the Yep, a gun. Yep, that's Later turns into Arab forces and Christian forces that join the SDF. You know, this was a force that lost over 10,000 killed in action to do this for us on the count of the United States and European allies, which essentially, really only paid a price in ordinance and defense expenditures, right. And this, this is just this is just what is so morally wrong about this whole thing is this is, you know, a force that, you know, stands for democracy and stands for freedom and stands for freedom of religion stands for freedom of expression in northeastern Syria. And we threw that all the way when we allowed air Dhawan to,
Pete Turner 31:44
hey, this is Pete Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear the best plan and show you how to pick a podcast that makes sense for you that sustained Double that scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at break it down show calm. Let me help I want to hear about
Miles Vining 32:06
it. We threw that all the way when we allowed air Dhawan to date and that's the morally wrong. That's that just morally repulsive repulsiveness of it. Yeah, fair
Pete Turner 32:18
enough. I mean, it's it's it's one thing to say that if you can't even point to where rocket is on the map, or, or Beale, you know, but it's another thing if you've been to those places and talk to those people and understand it, how do the curves if you were to guess how did the Kurds view our because all of this stuff is undergirded by by betrayal. I mean, there's no president, there's no candidate for president who's going to circle Kurdistan on the map and say, I've dare motherfucker to say it's not Kurdistan. That's just that's not happening. Right? So betrayal is always at the root of this. I mean, the courage deserved or stayed a long time ago and it just hasn't come to pass. How do they see us as a partner? I mean, obviously, we have no problem stepping away from them or Iraq as a whole. And going, Hey, you're on your own. I'll see you later, you know, but what do you think? What's your sense? I think, well, we're all obviously still
Miles Vining 33:12
involved to protect the oil fields at this point. And the thing is, I think, the sense that we got from a lot of the that I got from Kurds and northeastern Syria, they'd rather be betrayed by the United States than be betrayed by the Russians. That would probably be a far worse betrayal, because at least the United States there's some sort of approachment right, but with the Russians and Putin, it's like, there's no, you're playing hard and fast with everything you have there. Yeah, that's that's an important sense for Syrian Kurdish feeling against the United States right now. And, I mean, in some places the United States has returned in places that either the US withdrew from the US has pushed forward but not for the right reasons, the reasons why the US is pushing forward is to confront Russian interference and in the region, it's not for the reasons of protecting the people and and trying to destroy and to stabilize. What is working to this conflict now,
Pete Turner 34:11
is that Syrian conflict in any way? Pete? Is it improving? Has it reached its bottom? Like, where do you think it's that?
Miles Vining 34:19
I think it's not over. I think I think we're still going to see several more years of the Syrian civil war. Unfortunately, for the people of Syria, there's, there's still a lot of, there's still a lot of unfinished business in terms of how people want to be governed and how and how they want the war to be conducted and how, who's going to be in charge of what that is that conclusion is still several years away from now.
Pete Turner 34:53
Like any you know, heck like their neighbors and some of them are them. You know, the Kurds you can't get them agree on to on what They want, you can't get Puerto Ricans to agree on status quo statehood or their own country. How are the Syrians aligned? I mean, is there a obviously there's a civil war. So there's definitely these two sides. But is it more complex than that?
Miles Vining 35:17
Oh, yeah, it's it's, it's more complex than, I don't know, tangled spider web. Right? You, you've got different factions that are changing flipping signs with one another, you know, the Turkish incursion was just the latest fronts in this war, many fronts. The area and it lip is the biggest deal going on right now. A word between the Russians and Syrian forces pushing up against that little pocket that's up there. And then you have the sort of SDF for the self administered areas which is holding on and, but only tacitly, you know, working with the Russians and without Assad only because they've got no other choice because the United States
Pete Turner 36:04
withdrew. Why do we need to care about Syria, especially some self administrated strip of land, like why? So let me let me give you some context. as a as a naval EOD tech that walked into a building and Raka and got his life didn't die, but lost. He's quadriplegic, lost his voicebox lost an eye and now has to live his life as a quadriplegic. With a bunch of kids by the way, one of his kids needs as much care as he does on a day to day basis because he's also special needs. Why are we sending people to Syria to go deal with that at the cost of Kenton Stacy's? You know, well being
Miles Vining 36:50
why. The first and most important reason is that you had the birth of ISIS here, this is where ISIS gained hold. This is a this is a movement that began here and ignited and allied with movements across the world. And this was where they got stomped out. And if we aren't here, and if we aren't fighting them, and if we aren't working to try to bring a peaceful Syria and try to bring a peaceful resolution, you'll get another ISIS you'll get an ISIS 2.0. And we're already seeing, you know, sales pop up and sleeper cells, and there's still a lot of issues and there's the war with ISIS support and stuff like that. I mean, the movement hasn't gone away at all, though, in the idea that we vanquished ISIS in March of 2019. In the small hamlet of goose is absolutely absurd. ISIS is vanquished youth. There's still there's still plethora of an ISIS population out there that wants to see the return of the caliphate. This is what this is what ISIS widows were telling us outside of a goose when we were handing them food and water. Given the metrically they were saying that, you know, God's testing us that we didn't just come to Syria to join ISIS for you know, for the kicks of it. No, God is putting us through a great test right now we're gonna we're gonna come back we're gonna rise greater than before. And, you know, that's that is what that is why we need to be involved in this stuff. And you can talk about involvement in Iraq or talk about involvement in Afghanistan, but he's Syria is that especially the self administered portion of Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, that is a completely different ballgame than the NA than the A up then the Iraqi army as well.
Pete Turner 38:40
Yeah. And by the way, I'm asking myself some extremely complicated, powerful questions, and I appreciate you hanging with me on those because those are not easy questions, and I, you know, but they're ones that people. Look, you can't get that straight answer here in the States, as you might imagine, and whatever answer you do get you don't get it from someone who's who's grounded. Truth centered. So I appreciate you doing that. Are we partnered in this at all? I mean, obviously, we're partnered a little bit with the Syrian rebels and, you know, the Kurds and maybe the Rockies and stuff. But in this area, are there European countries is Turkey, obviously European country and Asian country? But are they cooperating in some kind of way? That makes sense. I mean, they're, they're actually an ally, you know, Kurds, the Kurds are friends. We actually have to deal with the fact that Turkey lets us use their airspace. We have bases there. Talk a little bit about that collaboration.
Miles Vining 39:35
I mean, the Turkish collaborations strategic one that the United States wants to keep with as you mentioned, the basis the NATO's southern flank, so to speak, you know, that's in the strategic level. On the European level, the in the the a lot of European forces are joined in this fight as well. In ba goose, you had French one five fives that were supporting American in SF teams that were, you know, hammering the city of the goose every day. So you had a you had a coalition that did come in and join in, in the fight against ISIS. Turkey is a much more complicated situation though. What is it? 155 it's our tip. It's artillery shell. I think the max effect of Arno 15 kilometers or 15 or 20 kilometers, just a big artillery piece that lands with destruction.
Pete Turner 40:29
It's just for the audience. So you know, like if you think about roughly a coffee can made out of metal, that shreds and tears and flies on three axes was shards of metal. It's a terrifying thing to have thrown at you, and it's no fun at all. Okay, so French forces and and lots of other support in the area as everybody tries to stamp out the ISIS thing I have to ask you in general what Your thoughts on Islam because obviously the Islam is not the you know? Okay, let me see if I can ask the questions even hard to ask my house. So there are millions of maybe even a billion peaceful Islamic folk who want no part of any kind of conflict like that. But there are also over a billion people that would like to have a caliphate. So how do we how do you sort out Islam? Because it is it is a challenging thing. I mean, Arabs and Islam, they struggle with each other. This is the thing I found out the other day from Dr. from Tim Timothy McIntosh, Smith, he wrote a fantastic book. It's a it's called Arabs, the 3000 year history of people, tribes and culture or something like that. And he said that Islam doesn't require faith, it requires submission. Whoa, totally different way to approach the thing. So I'm not asking you to disparage their their religion at all, but how do you sort through the complexities of the Arab people of Islam of a caliphate, all of these things that sort of drive the area that you're in towards, at least right now towards instability. Oh, in terms of,
Miles Vining 42:13
in terms of my views on Islam, I am Muslim for myself. So it becomes much more personal at that level. And looking at this area from that perspective is interesting as well. But in terms of your questions of you know, this factions and the sort of Islam question, right. Okay, what's, what's the violence come from? I think you you've got, you've got different you've got, you've got so many different layers of what's happening. And you it's you cannot, I don't think you can look at all in a singular religious flavor or religious phrase. You have politics, it's happening. You have economic, economic, you know, common economic That's happening you have, you know, harassment on different levels you have, you just have so many different factors that come into play. It's never one thing driven by solely by religion. It may be a motivating thing in terms of, you know, maybe a group's messaging or propaganda, but on an individual level and on smaller stuff, that there's so much more that's happening, that has to be taken into account. I mean, we can look at in Afghanistan, we can look at motive what motivates our students to join the Taliban. And what you'll come up with isn't an Islamic messaging tool, which you'll come up with is a you'll come up with, you know, a Pashtun nationalist movement that wants to be in charge of the country. And this is a rallying cry for questions to join that you'll look at issues and you know, rural villages with men who want to you know, even at the smaller complex level, many want to they want another woman's hand in marriage, but that that father won't Let them so they joined the Taliban, this big bad force and they're able to sort of course the father into allowing that kind of thing to happen. And that's the kind of thing that you're seeing in terms of ISIS, in particular, ISIS, the monster that became ISIS? Well, first of all, I've never met another Muslim that would ever agree with anything that ISIS has or anything in their rhetoric. And there's also a lot of different perspectives that you can look at with ISIS and a lot of different blends of what has become ISIS and what separates ISIS from Al Qaeda and everything examples, examples of that is examples of that. Some some of that actually lie in, you have a lot of these immigrant populations living in Europe, living in North America as well. And ISIS part of ISIS is actually a reaction to Europe and the United States in these areas. Whereas if you look at sort of al Qaeda, and how Okay, does messaging sort of went along have lines of, you know, going after Israel being the root cause of all evil and then the United States supporting Israel dead. That's why al Qaeda is looking at the United States in that perspective, or in, you know, Osama bin Laden's initial gripe with the United States was stationed troops in the Arabian Peninsula. And you know, the Saudi King not doing not going against it and no sama wanted to, you know, lead an army into Iraq to take over quick Islamic army of Mujahideen veterans, etc. Whereas with ISIS, you don't see this. You don't see this concentration on Israel. And if anything, Israel and ISIS actually have very little beef with each other. And so far as where ISIS has directed its messaging and directed its attacks to and especially, you look at the beginnings of ISIS coming from the Islamic State in Iraq, under like Daddy, where you sort of injected ISIS into Syria. And you see ISIS as a particular Turn to Iraq, the hardest battles that were fought over with ISIS. You know, we're in Mosul. We're fighting over Fallujah, Ramadi, and all these other cities. These are rocky cities, these aren't Syrian cities. And so you see ISIS as a as a return to Iraq instead of a manifestation in Syria, which it wasn't manifestation Syria. Um, it definitely became that. But so that's another part of looking at it. I mean, you see me see this on the individual level, too. You see a lot of ISIS widows that we've had they, you know, it was it was almost an honor as almost an honorary thing to have a husband from Fallujah or from Iraq, the Iraqi dialect is a lot deeper, is a lot nicer to listen to men from Fallujah, or fight like lines or whatever, whatever reason they come up with, but you see this that level two, so there is there's no singular sort of religious thing on this. It's you have to look far more than religion. There's this plays into economics and job security and Conflict instability and instability and you know who's gonna who's gonna provide money to whom and stuff like that you look at local actors on the ground and you know why why do they do business with ISIS or this or that you know, some of them it's because things make a buck and they need to make you don't need to continue their business and this isn't like an ideological thing at that point. This is an economic thing that's solid my questioning credit
Pete Turner 47:26
What if we just said hey, we support an Islamic see, you know, just like the Vatican and we're going to say you know, what, you guys in the job Okay, great. We're going to draw a circle around the trough make it its own microstate and, and that, or maybe it's Medina and Mecca, and you just draw a circle around the two of those and you tell the Saudis you get a lot of help from us. This is gonna happen and and we give we give some kind of a caliphate, and let that happen. I know that's crazy. But I want to just ask that question because it's a valid Point two for a lot of people to understand like, the Catholics have it, you know, they're not causing a problem.
Miles Vining 48:06
Do these things go together at all? Well, the idea well, first of all the idea of the caliphates, you know, the Ottomans, the Ottomans sort of took it in and made it their own little thing. But they deal with a caliphate goes back to after the Prophet Muhammad died. And you have, you know, the first for a caliphate, Russia doing the rightly guided caliphs. And the whole idea of that was that I think it was Omar who was the first Kalos and he has this famous speech where he actually says, You know, I roll I roll with the with your consent I roll because I owe the masses something because I owe the masses you know, that that I owe the masses by allegiance. And so idea of that is sort of the doubt a democratically elected, not not democratically elected body, but democratic a majority consented governance for people to be ruled under. And the problem with ISIS is that nobody in the Muslim world agreed with agreed with them read with anybody being under ISIS, the people who did move to Syria, and that was the that was the point of that. And then the Bourne important aspect of that is that the the sex in Islam with between Sunni and Shia and the different schools within Sunni and then you also have Sufi as well. And you have it to the point where a lot of these different divisions are actually looking at each other and calling each other unbelievers just as much as they would be calling, you know, a Western, you know, Christian background or Western, whatever background it doesn't matter. Take your pick. And meaning mean to that point you have, you know, you look at the Taliban in the 1990s And you see accounts of Taleban you know scholars or your mom's going into Shia areas, and then being told that these are heretics. These are unbelievers and everything. And, you know, that is a completely true thing. It you can't look at this as Islam against the West. This is, you know, this is Al Qaeda has messed up view and messed up extremism of Islam going against everybody who isn't them and the west or this is maybe the ayatollah is this or maybe this is a an ISIS viewer. They think this is, you know, a Boko Haram thing. It's it's not Islam versus the West. It's these segments within these areas that go against everybody else and the West.
Pete Turner 50:52
So it's simple to solve. Love it. I love it. I mean, the sooner you have your hands wrapped around these problems, they're just they're so there, you can't you can encompass them. That's the whole thing. And what I love about the points that you're making is, when you take this with the other experts that we've had on the show, and we talk about these problems, they're not simple solutions, is the only way to deal with these things, if we choose to deal with them is to have 1000 of you to go out there who's, you know, language qualified, the religion thing, obviously, you have to have a capacity for Islam, if you're going to go work in this does not mean you have to be Islamic. But that's what these things get guided through. You can't just say, Hey, we're going to send 400 Marines and it's going to be Problem solved. None of them are that simple. These are big, hairy, scary, complex problems that require not just an international force, but but you know, an NGO force and all these other things combined together. It's a extraordinarily complex to stabilize these regions. Let me let me ask you one last question. Are we going to be able to stabilize the Gosh, I hate to say the whole orient, you know, but let's just say the the series like Jordan is a stable country, it has its problems, but it's okay. Even Lebanon, you know, kind of spikes up and it gets a little crazy every now and then, but it's for the most part, a fairly stable place. Well, we see that for Iraq and Syria in your lifetime.
Miles Vining 52:28
Well, I mean, there's some parts of Iraq that are a lot safer than anywhere in the United States. You take what the Kurds have in Kurdistan and the north, the care D region. That's one of the that's one of the that's one of the safest parts in Iraq right now. And the Kurds have the Iraqi Kurds have the little slice of heaven up there and they like what they got. So in terms of Kurdistan Kurdistan is relatively stabilized to answer that question, Jordan. Interestingly enough, I was in Jordan recently and tour days Jordanians have a view that as you said, you know, they've got these issues with whether their system governance or king is really in charge and stuff like that. But they don't really want to rock the boat because they see how rock the boat works all around. And they're like, well keep what we have here. It's not really not that bad in terms of ending up like Syria when a decade long Civil War, I think, and I think all these I think all these places happen with all these locations that you mentioned, are very unique in their, in their composition and mixture and how they and the demographics of the people involved. And another thing that you have to look at, as well as things like natural resources, and you look at you look at things like water, and you look at food supply and governance and stuff like that, and you can see that, you know, somewhere in Iraq, it's hard. You know, it's this is a very arid, desert country. Yeah, there's things at the micro level. That work their way up for why these conflicts sort of Ignite. And then why economy like local economy will spur a lack of jobs or a lack of right ingenuity to go into that. But yeah,
Pete Turner 54:13
so you're saying who knows what your answer that question is a lot of factors to go in there. I mean, it's not just about having access to oil, and and other resources. I mean, a rock can feed the entire the entire region, you know, they're so rich agriculturally, but they got to be calm down first, and, and get some electricity and some stability to really move forward. It would be really something to see iraq emerge, like, you know, like South Korea did over the past 60 years, where it really becomes, you know, this place where even if they're surrounded by crazy neighbors, they, they really can be the place that they've always been throughout human civilization, you know, a place of intellect and farming and all these things. They really have all the tools, if they can just kind of get a couple of wins stacked together.
Miles Vining 55:07
Yeah. And I mean, you know, these things come in waves throughout history. I mean, the United States isn't always going to be on top of this wave. What there was a time when? Yeah, but you mean, yeah, like, as he said, you know, look at Baghdad, and, you know, some of the earlier parts, especially in the golden age of Islam as an example, of history, I mean, this was center of the arts and literature and technology and advancement and all that and everything. And, you know, that's kind of fallen by the wayside. So you don't know how that's gonna return or in what form
Pete Turner 55:36
though? Fair enough. Okay. So let me just wrap it up, then, hey, I appreciate you answering those questions. It's a whole lot of hard questions to answer. And it'll probably turn out that you're wrong on all of them. Because that's what happens to me all the time. When I talk about that region of the world. It's like, I know what's going on. You're like, actually, it was different than I thought. But yeah, the point is, is that you're there you have experienced, you're talking in the moment about things Things that are very, very, very hard. But I know they're questions that people will be able to get. They'll have these questions and they've got a decent decent answer. And you're not screaming about the president, you're not screaming about Nancy Pelosi and all this other nonsense. You're just talking about a complex place with real people that have real issues. And and a lot of times those issues and goals are cross purpose to the person across the street from them. So I appreciate what you do, the time that you spent to go overseas to try to make the world least a little better place from the ground level because we need more folks like you and I really, I really appreciate you doing what you do.
Miles Vining 56:37
Well, thank you. I enjoy doing it and it's an honor to be here.
