Highlights russias influence in syria. The humanitarian crisis and the hold on power. The Senate Foreign relations subcommittee held a hearing to examine the report and discuss the findings with the cochair of the study group. It was on but didnt get picked up. This hearing on the subcommittee on the near East South Asia central asia and counter to those on welcome to order. Today we are holding a hearing on the findings of the bipartisan syria study group. The study group was established by congress with a purpose of examining and making recommendations on u. S. Military and diplomatic strategy with respect to the conflict in this area. I want to recognize my colleagues particularly senator shaheen and my friend the late senator john mccain for their efforts to establish this working group. We also wish to honor the american men and women who have died as a part of Operation Inherent resolve the campaign against isis in syria and iraq. I want to thank the witnesses here today for their willingness to take up the task of examining an extremely accomplished problem with no easy solutions as the report states Optimal Outcomes are left behind long ago. Its never easy to devote time and resources to the task whose goal was to prevent worse things from happening. I have been to believe this comes at a very timely point in the nations history according to press reports, isis is regrouping. Theres some 15,000 fighting individuals on the ground and some 70,000 in refugee camps in isiss supporters. Mr. Asad has repeated attacks despite the fact that we once drew a red wine and it seems to be more like a green light. Turkey is hostile to the intent towards the kurdish individuals and this area led the Defense Force and present a threat to them. Apparently a province that is being held by various terrorist groups including al qaeda. Iran has 2500 located on the ground. Russian mercenaries have launched or did on a surprise attack on the troops, so theres a great deal of swirling on in this part of the world. We have as a nation the administration announced the withdrawal and one of the questions is whether this is a political interest that is being pursued or National Interest and particularly the recommendations that are going to come forward from the group are of most interest to me and im sure other members of the committee and administration. Your report concludes thoughtful recommendations to address the challenges and how to address this strategy to minimize the threats in the future and i look forward to hearing more of your thoughts today. With that i will turn the tide them over to senator murphy for his comments and questions. Thank you both for joining us here today. The civil war on syria has raged on for more than eight years. Swaths of the country are decimated and millions have been displaced. Though the crisis may have faded from the headlines it is due to the fact and part the community has accepted these events as the new normal. Its now in International Law and the rules of the war has gone to die. The crimes considered once thought outrageous are now commonplace. The administration has declared three goals of the policy, the political settlement and withdrawal of thwithdraws the id forces but at the same time that we supposedly want to accomplish these big goals, the administration cut stabilization comic pulled out by military officials into negotiations in geneva and is off to push the file of the partners rather than lead and i think its an incredibly important time for us to consider this very welltimed report. I also think its time for us to admit that our policy in syria over the course of the administrations has been a failure and we need to do some postmortem about the overall lessons learned. Its clear that the policy has failed and despite the significant Covert Military support for this continued to rage for over eight years and the decision to provide enough support to keep going but not to defeat serves to drag this out and kill thousands more innocent people damned if we had limited our involvement at the outset. Some would argue the mistake was not intervening sooner which would have kept russia and iran out of the theater and force us off to step down and allow the political process to move forward. It would be nice to think that they could accomplish these worthy objectives. Unfortunately, mr. German history provides scant examples of where the u. S. Directly intervenes in a foreign civil war and achieves its policy goals. These type of interventions always sound good on people. The paper often get us in a quagmire as they confront the reality of insurgencies and unreliable intelligence and unintended consequences. Sometimes military restraint would feel unsavory in the face of evil and sometimes the best policy if the action would ultimately create new problems than it solves and i hope that we are able to talk about these broad realities as well as the path forward. We have a lot to discuss today and i look forward to hearing from the witnesses. Thank you. Senator murphy we have one panel with two with us as today. The cochair of the study group is that a senior fellow at the managing director for the washington institute. Former senior director for the middle east affairs at the National Security council. Previously served on the task force of extremism and fragile state. In the institute that had david program on arab politics. She previously served as a senior professional staff member for the committee and spent five years work in the office of the secretary defense. We will now turn to the first with this. Thank you for your willingness to testify here today. Your statement will be included in the record without objection. If you could keep your remarks to no longer than five minutes, we would appreciate it so we can engage with questions after that. Thank you chairman romney, Ranking Member murphy and members of the committee, i appreciate this opportunity to present the final report of the congressionally mandated study group. I was honored to cochair the group of experts along with my colleague. I want to begin by talking about why policymakers in the American Public should care about the conflict. Its not something our group took for granted especially in the day and age when all of us face questions for good reason about the u. S. Role in the world. Then i will defer to discuss the study group assessments and recommendations. I understand the policy and i think that its important to reach back to the beginning of the conflict in 2011. It began as a peaceful uprising against an autocratic dictator, one of many such uprisings at the time that made up the socalled arab spring and it seemed eight years ago that this uprising might usher in positive change, those hopes have been dead to say the least. Theyve turned into a crucible for the complex intersecting at i would argue go well beyond the middle east into europe and the United States and elsewhere. For years the senator murphy alluded to sheltering ourselves from the fallout of the conflict and many of you wel will remembr the notion that was once popular but they could be cauterized, quote on quote and its effects would become find and the rest of the region in the world could be spared from the fallout from the conflict. But what happene happened to hio stay, nor could the effect be easily contained. In april, 2013 committee moved from iraq into syria and established in august of 2013 the Regime Forces killed hundreds of innocent people in a chemical weapons attack in its efforts in damascus. August and september of 2014, american journalists were brutally executed in september of 2015, the Russian Military intervention began and that persists until today. Along the way, nearly 7 million were driven to countries. Today syria opposes a spectrum of threats to the American Interest i would argue. It provides a safe haven to a dangerous terrorist groups for example home to the greatest concentration of the foreign fighters in afghanistan in the 1980s, the u. S. Officials have said. Isis has been driven from the territories but it is returning now as an insurgency. Iran exploited the conflict in the economic and social fabric and would have turned into a forward base for the missiles were it not for the air strikes, but those come with a cost into the increased risk of war and we have seen the conflict between the two spread in recent months in the region. Russia has exploited the conflict through its intervention and moscow has established itself brutally and cynically as a major player in the middle east for the first time in decades. U. S. Partners across the region are taking the role seriously we would judge and have expanded their ties with moscow across the board. The list goes on. Every norm of conflict by targeting hospitals and schools deploying chemical weapons in the payroll bond and using starvation and mass murder as buttons oweapons of war. Refugees of the politics in europe and strained economies throughout and beyond. Its only become more deleterious to our interest and it could grow worse we could see it occur in the exodus where you have 3 Million People holed up with forces on the free side. You could see the renewed civil war in the area where the regime is taking control but its very tenuous. The conflict matters to america whatever ones strategic framework i would argue this is a conflict where the strategic concerns of International Terrorism on the one hand, great rival combines very great power conflict on the other come together. Its not a conflict he can contain or ignore. We were also unanimous in the view that there remains much that we can do to help shape the complex outcome and shape the interest of people go into in more detail. I do want to take a few seconds that remain just to say thank you first to senator shaheen for her leadership in creating the group into the congressman thornberry for appointing me to the caucus for the honor of being named cochair of the group and thank you to the congressional leadership for naming such a thoughtful expert colleagues to the study group. I want to echo your thanks to all the civilian and military who fought and especially those who died in the course of what i think is an important conflict. The value of the repor report, o conclude is that it represents a bipartisan consensus toomey and washington today that is no small thing. Thank you. Members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to present the final report of the study group. Last Year Congress directed the study group to form an assessment of the military and political status of the syrian war as provided recommendations for the way ahead. Today we are delivering a document that represents the consensus of all 12 men are as and echoing that is no small feat. Riddled with crime and poverty, civilians are subject to conscription, forced disappearances and execution, conditions are set for the next conflict area to the political process has stalled. Yesterdays announcement on the formation of the committee may hold promise, but it is too soon to tell. To date, they havent a demonstrated willingness to make meaningful compromises. It makes it painfully difficult to build momentum toward a negotiated settlement. Number three, isis is not defeated. The usled military effort successfully pushed isis of the territory it held, but the group transitioned to an insurgency. Meanwhile, al qaeda is still active and therefore, the isis population is a few prison breaks away from reconstituting the next area to the u. S. Supported forces are strained and securing the population area five, the boots are not leaving syria despite the sanctions and strikes. In addition to the military campaign, iran is entrenching itself in economic and social fabric fo or longterm influenc. Number six, russia has exploited its intervention on behalf of us wanted to contest the u. S. Influence and leadership. The tires are strained and other support for the Defense Forces is a leading factor. The Turkish Military incursion will provide isis the opportunity to reconstitute and the military patrols in a mutually agreedupon area prevented us area over the time being. Number eight, the scale and scope of human suffering for this conflict set up a new standard for the 21st century. The parties responsible, alassad, iran and russia. Torture, starvation and intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure. For the significant increases in military or financial assessment, therefore we propose a strategy that strengthens key elements okeyelement of the cur, the call for reinvigorated leadership and prioritized as resulting the underlining conflict. The tools for the strategy are already on the table. A usled International Coalition against isis limited u. S. Forces on the ground, capable partner forces, sanctions, assistance and diplomacy at the start we recommend the following steps, reverse the military withdraw from northEastern Syria, strengthen the sanctions to get them multilateral. Leave the ongoing isolation of the regime. Spend about 200 million in u. S. Stabilization funds already proven by congress. Continue to withhold reconstruction to the parts under their control. Concurrently, the u. S. Must continue to provide humanitarian assistance inside and outside of syria while shoring up the vulnerable refugee hosting partners and hosting communities on the borders. Our group acknowledges the strategy will not lead overnight to the elimination of isis. But this next combined with highlevel bubble leadership will provide leverage to shape the outcome for the protective National Security interest and when the conditions are conducive for the negotiated settlement. This is the end state envisioned by our group. The government viewed as legitimate population capable of ending dependency on the forces and able to dominate the threat. Russia, iran or isis. Such an end state will require an updated political and social contact. To conclude, just i a few thank you us. The work wouldnt have been possible without the support of congress and in particular, senator shaheen. Thank you for pointing me and the democratiin thedemocratic ce the democratic cochair. Facilitating the group its been nothing short of tremendous in particular thank you to the executive director and her team and my personal thanks to my fellow cochair who has been a partner as well as a friend as i balance my role in this group and i thank him for that as well. Thank you so much for both your comments today. Im going to ask a few questions and then we will turn to the Ranking Member. You mentioned briefly at the end might look like and i would like to have you elaborate on that. Im not sure that we have a say in software we are headed for what we hope to have done what success would look like and perhaps there is near and longterm success but what do you think is a realistic objective for our involvement because they describe the kind of things that might happen, some calamitous outcome is. What is the realistic positive outcome but our involvement should be aimed to achieve. What we are not saying is the removal of a alassad is a realistic objective for the policy at this point in time, so what we are doing is calling not for the removal, but for meaningful changes in regime behavior as a way to address the underlining causes of conflict. The history is collaboration with al qaeda. It is the enabling the communities in north and Eastern Syria the time and space to demonstrate an alternative model of government to the regime so some of the changes. Revising the property of all to have access to the real estate and rebuild their lives and livelihoods. The only party in the conflict that has a vision for how they see it and he dont think an independent analyst would say that he had the ability to do that in russia and iran it is not a realistic option for them and they have to accept compromise, because right now it doesnt seem hes willing to broke or any kind of compromise when it comes to sort out reestablishing his absolute will. The u. S. Says it is now aimed at trying to put pressure trying to get him to accept the reform that is needed. In my own view and the view of the group is that that is the right strategy, but its going to take a more concerted effort than leadership as long as there is a question for example whether we are really committed to doing this, whether we are committed to maintaining for example our military presence to what is quite small, i think that may get him to believe the realistic objective is that there would be a unified syria with representation of minorities and so forth come something of a coalition of the government of times or is it your view one part held by one group of people and one part held by the other. What we hope is the choice could be left to the people themselves rather than something that is opposed by us or the International Community. I think that what we need to do, and this is the broad strategy that the report lays out is to have a strategy in place that aims at bringing them back together with the reformed government, may be decentralized system of government, so for example, the kurdish in the northeast have a greater say in how they are governed, but that we also need to be postured in a way that allows us to protect our interest and keep and consolidate that is how it needs to be pitched in this question. Thanks for instigating. It seems as if over the course of the u. S. Policy we have had two overarching goals. One is to end apartheid in. This is a war that is absolutely decimated and second, to delegitimize alassad our stated goal was the removal today. I think you reflect a consensus within the administration that that may be unrealistic but legitimizing the behavior that he has engaged in. Those goals to to me its an invitation for the status quo to persist if you insist that hes hanging around, then im not sure why a limited u. S. Military presence and slight uptick in humanitarian focus and Public Engagement is going to correct for his behavior given that his patrons that are going to stick with them through thick and thin are making such demands on him and in the foreseeable future it doesnt appear that there will be an ability to change their mind. Ive heard before t