The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 12, 2026


PREVIEW： Realpolitik #29 ｜ The Syrian Crisis with Kevork Almassian

Topics
Alawite massacres and ethnic cleansing economic liberalization
Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Mentioned
Assad Alawite Jolani Druze Syrians Bashar Assad Firas Maudad Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal Abdullah Derdari Anwar Sadat Salafi Aar'ud Hafez Youssef Al-Qaradawi Kivork Al-Masyan Colin Powell Walu Jumblat Mehdi Hassan Seqib Moore Netanyahu Clinton and 6 more
PREVIEW： Epochs #245 ｜ The Gran Sasso Raid Breakfast With Beau ｜ Tuesday 13th January 2026

Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

151.47

Word count

3,947

Sentence count

228

Harmful content

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

40

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Firas Maadad is joined by Kavork al-Masyan, a Syrian-Armenian born in Aleppo, now living in Turkey. They discuss the situation in Syria after the regime change and how the new regime is dealing with the minorities in Syria.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to a new episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Maadad, and I'm joined today
00:00:06.400 by Kivork al-Masyan, who is a Syrian-Armenian from Aleppo, now obviously no longer living in
00:00:14.220 Syria for obvious reasons. And he has exceptional insights on what is happening within Syria,
00:00:21.380 how the country has been changing, what to expect in the future, and we're going to cover all of
00:00:27.280 that with him. Kivork, welcome. Thank you very much for joining me.
00:00:31.860 Firas, thank you very much for the invitation. I learned personally a lot from you from your
00:00:37.680 recent podcasts. We agree on many things and we disagree on other things, and I find that you
00:00:42.880 have fascinating insights on the region as well. Thank you, man. Thank you. Thank you. Let's just
00:00:49.060 get right into it and start with the situation in Syria now. As I know you know, we're seeing protests
00:00:56.260 protests in Sueda. We're seeing protests along the Alawite coast. What is going on and how is
00:01:03.140 the new regime dealing with the minorities in Syria? Once the regime change happened on the 8th of
00:01:12.020 December 2024, the situation in Syria was the following. The Druze community in Sueda, they were
00:01:19.240 already de facto managing their own affairs in Sueda, even under the Assad government. I mean,
00:01:25.080 the supplies of food and fuel and other basic necessities were coming through the government
00:01:31.560 routes into Sueda. But all in all, the situation in the city was out of the control of the government,
00:01:37.500 and there were weekly demonstrations against Assad, calling him illegitimate, and they don't want for
00:01:43.140 Assad to stay in power. But the situation in Sueda, let's say this de facto self-ruling situation in 0.58
00:01:52.040 Sueda was possible because they had their own armed groups. They had their own militias. They were
00:01:58.140 protecting their cities, their neighborhoods, and the Assad government didn't want to clash against
00:02:02.920 the Druze. So they let them in Sueda. So what happened after the regime changed that these weapons 0.94
00:02:08.120 were still in the hands of the Druze, and they relatively kept this relative autonomy, let's say,
00:02:14.460 in Sueda. And the same thing goes with the Kurds. The Kurds were even better equipped and better armed
00:02:20.200 and better trained, especially by the U.S. Special Forces. They have tens of thousands of forces,
00:02:25.580 mostly from the Kurds, but also you have Assyrians, Armenians, and also some of the Arab clans alongside
00:02:32.480 the SDF. So these two components of the Syrian society, let's say, they were able to preserve their
00:02:40.160 presence in their own regions and also push back against Jolani when it was necessary, because Jolani
00:02:46.400 tried to recapture some of these regions from these communities. And thanks to the weapons they had, 0.97
00:02:52.920 they defended themselves. But the situation with the Alawites was completely different,
00:02:56.520 because when the regime change happened, an order has been given to the Syrian army soldiers,
00:03:03.560 and most of these Alawites were serving in the Syrian Arab army because they didn't have their
00:03:09.520 separate militias. So they handed over their weapons voluntarily to the Jolani regime,
00:03:15.660 thinking that this will lead into some sort of reconciliation and that we could accept the
00:03:21.200 new regime and you don't target us. But what happened is, unfortunately, that even if, I would
00:03:27.340 argue, Jolani wants to stabilize the country, let's just give him the benefit of a doubt, his army,
00:03:34.300 basically, those who fought for him, mostly were al-Nusra fund. And al-Nusra is the franchise of
00:03:39.140 al-Qaeda. And the mentality of these people that when they see an Alawite, they try to humiliate him,
00:03:44.980 they try to, for example, do things that are so provocative, like stopping people on the
00:03:51.360 checkpoints, forcing them to bark. Like if you don't bark, you get killed, you know? So in my opinion,
00:03:57.140 the massacres of the Alawites happened last March because they handed over these weapons.
00:04:03.400 And the same attempt happened against the Druze in Sueda. Of course, Jolani's terror army managed to
00:04:09.400 kill hundreds of Druze Syrians. But now that the situation is different in Sueda compared to other
00:04:16.500 regions, for example, Atakya, Tartus, Jabli, Homs, Hama, there are towns and small villages in Homs and
00:04:23.080 Hama completely ethnically cleansed from the Alawites. So that is the situation overall. 0.99
00:04:28.120 After the recent attack against Alawite neighborhoods in Homs, Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal,
00:04:33.140 who is the supreme leader of the Alawites in the abroad and also inside Syria, he called for the
00:04:39.420 people to go for peaceful demonstrations. And it was peaceful. There was not a single,
00:04:45.360 not even vandalizing one tree, but they were forced to, they were faced by a big persecution
00:04:53.900 and oppression by the Jolani talks, in my opinion, which forced them to go home. But this is a positive
00:04:59.700 development in Syria that there was this wall of fear, you know, being established against
00:05:05.520 by the Jolani regime. And now that the Alawites also dare to challenge the Jolani regime, things
00:05:10.400 are changing, and this is, will have a snowball effect in the country.
00:05:16.020 Do you think it'll have a snowball effect? Or do you think that the regime will crack down harder
00:05:19.400 using sort of intelligence tactics, kidnapping leaders, arresting people who are suspected of
00:05:26.260 leading protests, killing people who are, you know, prominent in any new protest movement? Which one do
00:05:32.780 you think it's going to be?
00:05:34.240 So the Jolani regime is already arresting the people who organized these demonstrations. And
00:05:41.300 there are people playing now, especially on Facebook, from Latakia, Tartus, Jablé, and other
00:05:46.560 places, that their sons and their cousins and their fathers are being kidnapped by the Jolani regime
00:05:52.520 because they arranged these demonstrations. But if I'm saying for, if in the near future,
00:05:58.360 the Jolani regime spills blood of the Alawites again, when I listened to the last video statement 1.00
00:06:06.360 of Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal, he stopped short, like he was on the verge of calling armed rebellion against
00:06:13.640 the Jolani regime. He didn't call for an armed rebellion, but he said that our blood will burn
00:06:20.360 the ground under your feet. If you continue killing us, then there will be other options. But in this case,
00:06:27.240 the situation of the Alawites is very volatile compared to other communities, because nobody
00:06:33.400 is willing to give weapons to the Alawites. And I'm not calling for giving weapons to anyone, 0.97
00:06:38.200 because I don't know if this could lead into positive impact now if there is an armed rebellion
00:06:43.640 in the country. But I do believe that neither the Russians, nor the Iranians, nor the Americans,
00:06:50.200 nor the Israelis at the current moment are interested in giving the Alawites weapons to defend themselves.
00:06:55.160 The Alawites were one of the backbones, let's say, of the former regime. And unless there is 1.00
00:07:02.360 institutional and societal change in the Alawite community, which means that the leadership of the
00:07:09.080 Alawites say clearly, like the leadership of the Kurds and the Druze, that we are open to Israel,
00:07:15.960 we are open to America, and we no longer want to antagonize them. I think that's what they're expecting
00:07:21.160 from the Alawites before trying to support them, assist them, let's say, a tangible support. Because
00:07:28.120 for now, the Alawites are completely abandoned in the country. 1.00
00:07:31.800 No, they don't have any external allies right now. And if you want to have a military uprising,
00:07:39.240 well, you need an external patron in a country like Syria, because the Alawite community is one of the
00:07:44.520 poorer communities in Syria. It doesn't have the rich Sunni merchant class, for example.
00:07:50.360 And without significant external backing, they're not going to be able to do very much.
00:07:55.800 Indeed. This is very important, what you mentioned, Firas, that the Alawite community
00:08:04.760 is an impoverished community. And this is something, there's a big misconception about the Alawites,
00:08:10.440 especially among the people who rose against Assad, and more especially among the people who
00:08:18.760 are ruling nowadays Damascus, and the mentality. Like an Alawite for them is someone who benefited from 1.00
00:08:23.720 the Assad regime. And Alawite is someone who was leading all the aspects of life under the Assad 0.98
00:08:31.000 regime. So therefore, they have to be persecuted, right? But the Alawites were, for obvious reasons, 1.00
00:08:39.240 were forced to serve in the state, in the Syrian state, because in their regions, the economy was based
00:08:47.080 on agriculture, mostly, and services. They didn't have any factories, manufacturing, powerhouse, or
00:08:55.080 industrial zones, just like the case in Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. They were industrial zones everywhere,
00:09:01.320 except in the coastal cities. So you had, as an Alawite, you had the opportunity to work as a farmer,
00:09:11.080 or go to teaching, or go into the state. And many men chose to go into the army, for obvious reasons,
00:09:18.840 because there were some privileges and also status. I mean, men like status as well, so they go to the
00:09:23.720 military. But I would argue and say that they didn't, they didn't rule, like when they were in the army,
00:09:30.840 they didn't rule with an Alawite sect or ideology against the rest. Like all my friends served in
00:09:39.800 the military, my father served in the Syrian army. And the Sunnis, unlike what they claim nowadays, 1.00
00:09:46.600 that they were not allowed to practice their religion and all these things, those are all
00:09:50.360 misconceptions. And the Alawites didn't come and suppress the Sunni sect, saying that you cannot
00:09:56.680 practice your religion, you cannot cover your head, and you're not allowed to practice your rituals.
00:10:01.560 In the contrary, the Assad government regime, after the first uprising in the 80s of the Muslim
00:10:08.520 Brotherhood, they tried to cozy up with the Muslim Brotherhood. And they allowed them to come into the 1.00
00:10:13.240 Ba'ath Party, to the extent that we couldn't be efficient any longer in 2024, if the Ba'ath Party is
00:10:19.480 now a socialist, secular party, or it's a party for the Muslim Brotherhood. Because many, many people
00:10:27.080 joined the Ba'ath Party, they infiltrated the, let's say, the Ba'ath Party. It was a soft penetration
00:10:32.360 of the Ba'ath Party. And they changed the nature of the rule, that we reached to a point where in 2023 or
00:10:38.920 2022, Assad kicked out the Grand Mufti of Syria, Hassoun, back then, because he was not aligned with the
00:10:48.600 Muslim Brotherhood mentality. And he replaced all the authorities of the Grand Mufti and give it, 0.98
00:10:54.840 give them to the Minister of Endowment, Alaw Qaf. And he's a big time Muslim Brotherhood, 0.97
00:11:01.480 he and his son, and they opened to Saudi Arabia and to Qatar. So I think Assad played with fire, 0.69
00:11:08.840 basically, allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to entrench inside the state institution, especially
00:11:13.720 in the Ba'ath Party. And the end result was now quite clear for everyone.
00:11:18.040 No, I don't know the details of this as well as you do. But I agree that throughout his rule,
00:11:29.720 Assad's father and son made sure that there was a special place for Sunni Islam in Syria, and that they
00:11:38.280 did their best never to offend Sunni Muslim sensibilities, and that they made sure that
00:11:44.840 there were credible clerics like Bhuti, who would be able to argue from a Salafi perspective in defense
00:11:52.840 of the Syrian state. So they did make sure that Sunni Islam had a special status, and that the Constitution
00:12:02.360 in part reflected this and mentioned Islam as a religion informing state regulations. So it wasn't,
00:12:13.080 you know, they didn't try to suppress Sunni Islam. They did favor the Alawites in security appointments,
00:12:21.480 but a lot of the very senior officials were Christian and Sunni. And they played a huge role in the regime.
00:12:28.360 So the narrative that this was only an Alawite regime was always an oversimplification.
00:12:37.080 And, you know, there was still no compromise accepted by the masses who today sort of support the
00:12:46.520 the new government, which is still in its ideology fundamentally jihadi. And that's not going to change. 0.96
00:12:53.480 Yeah, if you allow me, if you allow me, I would characterize the both of the Assad 1.00
00:13:00.920 father and the son political system by political authoritarianism. And it was based on political
00:13:07.400 loyalty. If you are a Sunni Alawite Christian, and you're loyal to the regime, and you're helping the
00:13:13.160 regime, you will ascend in the hierarchy of the of the bars and the military and the security
00:13:19.240 apparatuses. But if you seriously challenged the Assad regime, you would end up in jail. Like if
00:13:26.760 I as a Christian, Armenian, Syrian, let's say challenge the Assad regime enough, they would throw
00:13:33.480 me in a dungeon. There was no exceptions. If you are an Alawite or not an Alawite, those were all, 0.99
00:13:40.840 let's say, let's put it on the side. And the economic powerhouse of Syria, this is the most important
00:13:46.360 thing that the Sunnis had the, it's not a privilege, but it was a preference. Like the Assad, both 1.00
00:13:53.880 both Assad, Assads knew that the merchants of Damascus are very important. And the industrialists
00:14:00.840 of Aleppo are even more important, right? So they supported these industrial zones and the business class,
00:14:08.040 to the extent that they had influence in the Assad government changing economic policies to serve their
00:14:15.880 interests. And the evidence for it is, 2005, Assad started opening up the markets, he started changing
00:14:23.000 from socialism into an open market country. And the guy who led this, this change was Abdullah Derdari.
00:14:32.520 Abdullah Derdari is one of the most, let's say, non-Sunni families in Syria, and he was in the UN.
00:14:41.480 Yes. And he brought it especially to lead this transition in the country, thinking that if he
00:14:48.120 enriches more, let's say, the business and the industrial class, he will gain more loyalty.
00:14:53.080 But what he did basically, the loyal base of Hafez and then at the beginning of Bashar were in the rural
00:15:00.040 areas, because under the socialist rule, they were supporting the rural areas and the suburbs and uplifting
00:15:07.480 their social status and supporting the peasants, the farmers, and also the small businesses.
00:15:13.800 And then Bashar came and started changing that into an open market society. And all the grievances 0.83
00:15:19.800 happened now in the rural areas where the most loyal Baas party members were. That's why the revolt,
00:15:27.000 the under-armed insurgency, started mostly in the rural areas because of this, because people didn't have
00:15:34.120 any longer job opportunities in the rural areas as they were coming to the cities. If you don't study
00:15:39.720 banking, if you don't study marketing, if you don't work in the PR, human resources, and all these
00:15:46.440 things that nowadays we think those are the major jobs, let's say, in the West, then you wouldn't find
00:15:53.080 a working opportunity in the rural areas. And what happens to the sons and the grandsons of the farmers?
00:15:59.720 They are neglected. And that's why many of the outside forces, let's say, they knew the situation
00:16:05.960 very well in Syria. They capitalized on it and they injected these sectarian sentiments instead of
00:16:11.800 telling them he impoverished you because of the economic policies. No, they told them he impoverished
00:16:17.800 you because you're a Sunni. Now you have to fight for your survival. And that's the easiest way to provoke 1.00
00:16:23.080 the people to carry arms, unfortunately, in our region.
00:16:25.720 Yes, no, absolutely correct. And I think the point that you made that Bashar al-Assad came with an
00:16:33.640 economic liberalization plan. I mean, first there was a political liberalization plan and the Damascus
00:16:39.000 Spring. And this pretty much ended as the planning for the Iraq invasion became more serious. And as Colin
00:16:48.360 Powell went to Damascus, the American Secretary of State at the time went to Damascus and threatened Bashar
00:16:55.320 that they would overthrow him next, essentially. So this killed the political liberalization.
00:17:00.680 But the economic liberalization continued.
00:17:03.880 And it was done in partnership with Sunni economic forces, largely.
00:17:09.480 Because Hafez had favored the Sunni economic forces. And after the initial land reforms and changes of
00:17:18.920 that nature that happened under the Ba'ath, he reconciled with the Sunni merchant class and partnered
00:17:24.360 with them. There was corruption involved in that if your business grew, you had to involve the security
00:17:30.680 forces or people high up in the regime in your business and make sure that they took a cut.
00:17:37.240 But this is sort of the standard in all of the Middle East. This wasn't because he was an Alawite. 0.94
00:17:42.440 This is what happens all over the Middle East. In Lebanon, if you want to do business in the
00:17:47.560 Druze areas, you have to pay Walu Jumblat. In the Christian areas, you have to pay so-and-so. 0.99
00:17:51.560 In the Shia areas, you have to pay Birri, etc., etc. So this is the standard operating procedure for the 1.00
00:17:58.520 region. Assad implemented this, but he worked with the Sunni economic forces. And he didn't, in fact,
00:18:07.160 exclude them or was hostile to them. But then the sectarianism is sort of baked into our culture to
00:18:13.080 a large extent. But then you saw everybody in the Middle East sending their most effective radicals 0.98
00:18:20.520 into Syria to radicalize the uprising further. And you remember when the brigades, the military
00:18:30.840 brigades began forming. The first one was called the Farooq Brigade, referring to Omar ibn al-Khattab,
00:18:38.040 the most hated figure in Shia Islam, or one of the most hated figures in Shia Islam. And this was
00:18:45.320 deliberate. And you remember when the guys in the militias in Rastan went from having regular
00:18:52.840 beards to having Salafi beards and shaved off their mustaches. And then that's when you knew 0.95
00:18:59.720 that Qatari funding has sort of properly gone into Syria in order to blow up the whole country. 0.96
00:19:05.400 I'm happy that you mentioned Qatar, by the way. I'm very happy you mentioned Qatar. I think
00:19:14.200 if there is one land in the world that I wouldn't step in,
00:19:20.920 that would be Qatar. Because what Qatar did basically is spending fortunes, tens of billions of
00:19:28.600 dollars to radicalize big segments of the Syrian people. Hamad bin Jassim himself confessed on the
00:19:36.360 Qatari national TV that they even supported al-Nusra Front. He said, no, support for ISIS is an
00:19:43.480 exaggeration. He said, we didn't do that. But the Qatari role in Syria is really not discussed enough,
00:19:50.200 because they have a strong PR machine in the region. They have, in my opinion, one of the biggest
00:19:58.520 offices in the entire region called Al Jazeera. And what they did basically, in Arabic, they say
00:20:07.080 exactly, they say something, and they push the people into radicalism and sectarianism and jihadism.
00:20:14.200 They normalize the term Islamic State and not Daesh or ISIS or terrorism. And they host clerics,
00:20:23.080 sheikhs, imams, giving fatwas live on television, saying, for example, Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi,
00:20:31.080 who is now in God's hands. He said, I permit the killing of every Syrian, whether civilian or soldier, 1.00
00:20:41.400 if he's working in a public sector in Syria, which means if you're working in the airport, 0.71
00:20:47.160 if you're teaching at school, if you're working in the energy sector, it is permissible for these
00:20:51.800 so-called rebels to kill you. You're not a soldier, but you're serving the regime according to him.
00:20:58.040 Thousands of people got killed because of that while on their way to their work. But when you open
00:21:04.680 Al Jazeera English, they say, yeah, the entire world needs a democracy except for Qatar, right?
00:21:11.080 And then you go into Al Jazeera Plus, they're talking about pandas, they're talking about LGBTQ 0.99
00:21:16.680 community. They know to who they are speaking and to who they are directing their speech.
00:21:23.560 This double game of Qatar is very dangerous. And the people need to know, especially your respected 1.00
00:21:29.400 audience, that Qatar played an instrumental role in radicalizing the people and corrupting the brains 1.00
00:21:37.320 to the extent that people started blowing up themselves. Like all these sheikhs and imams 1.00
00:21:42.040 and who are giving fatwas. And nowadays, many of whom who are giving fatwas are in Syria.
00:21:48.440 Yes.
00:21:49.000 And as these sheikhs are Saudis, Syrians, Qataris, Kuwaitis, etc. The other day, 1.00
00:21:56.680 there was a campaign of crowdfunding. They're doing a crowdfunding to support the people in Hama.
00:22:03.880 And some of these sheikhs were there donating $6 to $10 million. How can any of these sheikhs, 0.99
00:22:12.920 like the question is, where did they get this money from? How is it a Syrian sheikh,
00:22:18.600 who used to live in Saudi Arabia, and on TV, raising the sword and saying, 0.97
00:22:23.400 let's go to jihad and let's go and kill the infidels, has $6 million. Like, I mean, come on, 1.00
00:22:31.800 me and you, we are hard workers, you know, $6 million. We have $6 million.
00:22:37.800 That's a lot of money. No, they were, I think you're referring to the guy who was in Saudi Arabia,
00:22:45.080 what was his name?
00:22:46.600 Aar'ud.
00:22:47.000 Sheikh Aar'ud.
00:22:48.520 Sheikh Aar'ud, yes. One of the worst human beings alive. 1.00
00:22:53.880 And yeah, you saw clerics from Kuwait going into Syria to try to radicalize people. You saw them 0.77
00:22:59.640 from all over the Gulf. They emptied their prisons of radicals and sent them into Syria. And it was 0.82
00:23:06.200 done in a coordinated way. And it was led by, you know, US support. We had Operation Timber
00:23:14.120 Seqib Moore. And this was known at the time. And we have Clinton's emails saying Al-Qaeda is on our
00:23:19.640 side in Syria. And this was all done essentially to cut the supply line between Iran and Hezbollah.
00:23:28.040 But now relations between the new Syrian authorities and Israel are not exactly going great. Talk to us
00:23:37.320 a little bit about that.
00:23:40.120 So I think that Netanyahu is very smart. And I never underestimate Israel. And I always tell people,
00:23:49.000 you should be very, very careful what the Israelis say and do. And they think ahead. Unlike all the 1.00
00:23:56.280 countries in the region, all of them, without exception, Israel has a plan for 50 years ahead.
00:24:01.560 And they have a long, let's say, strategic patience with the program that they try to implement in the
00:24:08.920 region. Now, the Jolani forces occupied the border crossing between the Golan Heights,
00:24:15.560 Syrian occupied territories now in the hands of Israel. And the Jolani forces were present on the
00:24:21.960 border crossing in touch with the Israeli army for three to four years. Yes. And they were fighting
00:24:27.400 against the Syrian army. They were injured by the Syrian army. They went to the Golan Heights
00:24:32.760 field hospitals operated by the Israelis, received medical treatment, cash, light weapons, and
00:24:40.840 the logistics, the intel. And this is all in Israeli press. I'm not bringing anything from myself, you
00:24:47.160 know. The former head of Mossad was challenged by Mehdi Hassan, one of the few times he did great
00:24:53.880 journalism that he challenged the former head of Mossad. And he said, yeah, we gave, we supported Al-Qaeda
00:25:00.760 and we gave them medical treatment for humanitarian reasons. This is what he said.
00:25:04.280 But when Jolani, and this is very important in my opinion, when October 7 happened, I think everything
00:25:13.880 changed in the region and Assad was asked to make a shift. And this is the time, especially after the
00:25:21.240 assassination of Nasrallah that Assad has to do the U-turn. And Assad is not an Anwar Sadat. Anwar Sadat,
00:25:28.680 in one day to another, he flipped and he opened his country to the Americans and he normalized ties
00:25:34.680 with Israel. But Assad is not that type of personality. So he was one feet here and one
00:25:41.000 feet there, a little bit with the Gulf and a little bit with the Iranians trying to diversify. It won't 1.00
00:25:45.480 work that way after October 7. It was a time to be in a camp. If you enjoyed this piece of premium
00:25:51.160 content from the Lotus Eaters, head to our website where you can find more.