Shame on Rory Stewart and Alistair Cambell
They whitewashed a jihadi and history won't like it. So did Jeremy Bowen...
Last month, when intrepid podcasters Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell bravely made their way to newly liberated Syria to interview Abu Mohammed al-Jolani — who had exchanged his combat fatigues for a golden tie and jacket for the occasion — it all felt a bit rum.
On X, Campbell posted: “This is why we were in Syria. Long interview with fighter turned President Ahmed al-Sharaa. We discuss on RestIsPolitics tomorrow and the full interview out on LEADING Monday. Fascinating on so many levels.” To which I responded at the time: “‘Fighter turned president’? You mean former Al Qaeda and Isis terrorist turned warlord? Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell chat to Jolani… this is so 2025, my head is exploding.” Campbell later bragged about it in an article for the New European.
Just one month later, they are already looking rather stupid. Not just stupid, but morally questionable. In an appalling humanitarian insult that has largely been ignored by the media, Jolani’s jihadis have rampaged though southern Syria, rounding up Alawites, Christians and Druze civilians, subjecting them to humiliation and torture, then butchering them en masse. I won’t post any of the disturbing images.
This was entirely predictable. As we joked at the time, despite the dewy-eyed coverage he received, Jolani is not a liberal democrat. All Stewart and Campbell needed to do was look at his CV, which included the worst jihadi groups on Earth. All they needed to do was to take advice from anybody with any knowledge of the region, if their own knowledge was insufficient. Personally, I messaged a member of the British diplomatic delegation who met him after he took over. “Truly reformed?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. “Definitely not!” Came the reply.
Why did our merry centrist dads gamble their reputations so recklessly on the whitewashing of a jihadi? I have a theory. But first let us consider some of the other supposedly well-informed professionals who did the same.
First, Jeremy Bowen. When he interviewed Jolani a few weeks back, I couldn’t help but write a furious post about it. Here’s a flavour: “The body language! There was the murderous Jolani – an erstwhile jihadi who bounced between the group that committed the 9/11 atrocities and the one that beheaded James Foley – swaggering along the cavernous corridors of Assad’s presidential palace. And beside him scurried the BBC’s International Editor, all starry-eyed and smiley, like a little boy with his big brother.” You can read the full post here. Like Stewart and Campbell, Bowen was unable to stop himself fawning over a murderous warlord because the man had put on a suit. For shame.
Then there was Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, notable for spearheading the politically-motivated prosecution of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and erstwhile defence minister Yoav Gallant, leading to warrants for their arrest. (He also faces sexual assault allegations. This morning, the Mail on Sunday revealed that he bombarded his alleged victim with calls urging her to deny the claims she had made against him. He says it is a smear campaign.) Yet while he was busy pursuing that shameful act of lawfare, he managed to find time in his busy schedule to grasp the blood-soaked palm of Jolani and pose for a photograph. Did his instincts for humanitarian law fail him on this occasion? Why, yes. Yes they did.
Incidentally, when the international human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky surfaced the photograph on social media, Khan blocked him. Yup. Obviously an uncomfortable memory.
And let’s not forget António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Did he really need to go out of his way for a meet-and-greet with Jolani? In the weeks after October 7, this man told the Security Council that it was “important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum”, adding: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Did the tribal massacres that we have seen in Syria in recent days “happen in a vacuum”, Mr Guterres? Last week, the esteemed Secretary-General tweeted once to mark Ramadan, once about the environment, twice about women’s rights and four times about Gaza. Did he find time to mention the depraved violence in Syria? No. No, he did not. Perhaps he’s hoping it will just go away.
What are the common denominators between all these men? There are several if you think about it, but most significant is their antipathy towards Israel. Time and again, we find that the same people who take a sneering attitude towards the Jewish state — particularly when it takes steps to defend itself against men like Jolani — harbour an unfortunate soft spot, or at least a blind spot, when it comes to jihadis.
The same is true of the mob. Have there been protests on the streets of London and New York in response to the latest stomach-churning butchery of Muslims? No. No, there have not. Is the chap who climbed Big Ben yesterday with a Palestinian flag going to repeat the stunt for the Alawites? I doubt it, somehow. As ever, it isn’t the suffering of the victims that matters, its the Jewishness — or otherwise — of the finger that pulls the trigger.
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