ABC News / Lateline Interview with Dr Bouthaina Shaaban (17 Spetember 2015)
One amazing demolition job that I’ve seen recently is this ABC News / Lateline interview with Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, the political and media advisor to Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Here Dr Shaaban consistently rebuts the prejudiced viewpoint implied in the questions asked of her and then goes on a sustained offensive against interviewer Tony Jones who ends up looking helpless against her subversion of his statements and the bias in his questioning. The interview can be seen and heard at this link, and the transcript of the interview can be read at the same link.
The first third of the interview focuses on Australia’s involvement in Syria’s war against ISIS and the nature of Western participation generally in that war. Dr Shaaban states that the West should help Syria not only in combating ISIS and terrorism in its territory but also in fighting terrorism overall, wherever in the world it occurs, and to co-operate with countries like Syria, Russia and Iran. She says that the US and its allies have been half-hearted in fighting ISIS and eradicating its baleful influence in the Middle East.
The middle third of the interview concerns Russia’s support for Syria in the form of supplying jets and other military hardware. The narrative implied in Jones’ questioning of Dr Shaaban is that Russia is taking the side of President Assad and soon will actively intervene in the civil war by sending in soldiers and airforce jets. Dr Shaaban points out that Russia and Syria have always had good relations and that the Russians are honouring contracts to supply military equipment and hardware which Syria paid for years ago. Syria only expects Russia to provide the support both countries have already agreed on. Dr Shaaban then starts pounding her view that Syria is being targeted for regime change by the West, and that its institutions, history and culture are being systematically destroyed and erased by the West, in the much the same that Iraq and Libya’s institutions and culture were destroyed by a coalition of countries led by the US and by NATO respectively.
Later in the interview, Jones turns his attention to President Assad and suggests that he and his government are war criminals for allowing the torture, starvation and murder of thousands of people detained by Syrian security agencies, on the basis of a report written by lawyers of the British law firm Carter Ruck for its client the government of Qatar (which has an interest in seeing President Assad deposed). Although Jones says the evidence in the report is “credible”, the fact is that many if not most of the photographs cannot be verified as authentic: all 55,000 ph0tographs, most of them with unclear date stamps and locations, were apparently taken by the one person who is only known by a codename, and the entire report is based on that mystery person’s evidence. That just one person’s evidence can be accepted as gospel defies the principles of proper forensic investigation. Dr Shaaban turns the tables on Jones by calling out the report as fabricated and saying that the Qatari government paid for it. She then recommences her attack and reiterates that Syria is capable of choosing its own leaders and determining its own direction, and refuses to submit to Western-initiated regime change.
Jones quickly retreats from the ear-bashing with the excuse that the time allocated to the interview has run out. This is not before Dr Shaaban has the satisfaction of realising that Jones may be out of his depth in his questioning, as demonstrated by the amused expression she wears as soon as he mentions the Carter Ruck report which as she later says she is familiar with.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s website states that Dr Shaaban denies that the Assad government has committed crimes against humanity, when she has done no such thing: she has only said that the evidence of war crimes Jones referred to was fabricated. The transcript of the interview also twists (perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not) Dr Shaaban’s words by stating that the Carter Ruck report was paid for by a “cattery company”, not a Qatari company.
Unfortunately viewers will come away knowing no more about the situation in Syria than they would known before seeing and hearing the interview: Dr Shaaban does not go into the details of the Carter Ruck report but instead retreats to her tirade of insisting that Syria is and should be in charge of its own direction in the world. This is understandable, given that Jones has an insufferable smirk on his face the whole time while he poses questions that appear bland and impartial but whose implied meaning is biased against Syria. Dr Shaaban’s strategy is then to go on the attack and to maintain that stand, but this may result in her looking like a propagandist for the Syrian government. So while she smashes Jones, and he is forced to retreat, when the dust later settles viewers may end up with a blinkered view of Dr Shaaban.