Mother Jones’ New Podcast Series Explores the Hidden War in Syria

Listen as Shane Bauer goes behind the lines of one of this century’s greatest tragedies.

Introducing “Behind the Lines,” a Mother Jones Podcast series featuring senior reporter Shane Bauer’s exclusive, on-the-ground reporting in Syria. A year in the making, these episodes follow Bauer as he explores an abandoned prison in the former capital of the Islamic State, hunts for clues about the devastating US-led bombing of Raqqa, and travels to a battlefront where a proxy battle between the United States and Russia is fueled by oil and gas fields. Bauer’s special investigation provides a new look at a civil war that has drawn American jihadists, anarchists, CIA agents, and special forces to a battlefield of shifting allegiances and horrific civilian casualties.

The podcast is part of a special package that includes Bauer’s in-depth report and riveting videos shot inside Syria.

Episode One: Burying Syria’s Forgotten Dead

In the bombed-out city of Raqqa, a former ISIS stronghold, forensics teams conduct the harrowing work of uncovering thousands of bodies from the rubble. The city was liberated in 2017 following an intensive four-month siege and bombardment by US-led forces that was part of President Donald Trump’s aggressive escalation of the war against ISIS in Syria. By early 2018, when Bauer visited, as much as 80 percent of the city’s buildings had been destroyed or damaged; Amnesty International called it “the most destroyed city in modern times.” Bauer follows the heartbreaking daily routine of 16 rescuers with no more lives to save. In this episode, Bauer also talks about why he embarked on this risky trip into Syria and discusses the shifting web of combatants that makes the war so difficult to comprehend.

Episode Two: Inside an ISIS Prison

Beneath a crumbling soccer stadium in Raqqa, in northeast Syria, is a maze of narrow corridors and underground cells where ISIS once held its prisoners. In this installment, Mother Jones senior reporter Shane Bauer tours these abandoned tunnels with a former prisoner who recounts the atrocities that happened beneath the stands where he’d watched soccer matches as a boy. Pro-ISIS graffiti still covers the walls of the cramped rooms were prisoners were kept in darkness, released only to be interrogated, tortured, and fed ISIS propaganda. While some prisoners made false confessions and were beheaded, others tried to save their lives by accepting their captors’ religious message; some escaped by joining ISIS. In this episode, Bauer provides an inside look at the place where ISIS held its captives and created new recruits.

Episode Three: Betrayal. Torture. Escape. An American ISIS Wife’s Exclusive Tell-All.

An American woman says she was tortured by ISIS, survived the US-led assault on Raqqa, escaped the Islamic State, and now wants to go home. Bauer meets Samantha Elhassani at a sprawling refugee camp in northeastern Syria. But two months later, she is sent to the United States on a military cargo plane and brought before a federal judge, becoming the first American woman to be charged with terrorism-related crimes after living inside ISIS territory. Bauer traces her story back to Indiana and looks at the events leading to her husband’s decision to take her and their young family to Syria’s front lines. Bauer investigates Elhassani’s role in her husband’s enslavement of three Yazidi children, and studies how her and the government’s competing claims may play out in her upcoming trial.

Listen the entire story read aloud

You can also listen to Shane Bauer’s story read aloud:

For more articles read aloud: download the Audm iPhone app.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

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Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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Qamishli

Tigris River

TURKEY

Rojava

Raqqa

Aleppo

DEMOCRATIC
FEDERATION OF
NORTHERN SYRIA

Deir Ezzor

Conoco gas field

SYRIA

Euphrates River

Homs

Gas and Oil fields

LEBANON

Damascus

IRAQ

ISRAEL

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