Crisis in syria and how western nations can respond from the center for strategic and International Studies this is one hour. Good afternoon. Welcome to the center for strategic and International Studies. Welcome as well to our viewers online print my name is jacob, acting director of economic humanitarian agenda. The humanitarian agenda is a project that cis speaks to leverage the expertise of our scholars and programs to shine a light on the most pressing humanitarian issues in the world today and offer policy solutions. Before we begin i like to direct everyones attention to our emergency exit and safety and security plan and encourage you all to take this opportunity to turn your phones to mute. I want to acknowledge before we begin the partnership that our partner has with the agency for International Disaster systems whose support allows us to put on events that works with this discussion. We have a short time today so i will be brief. All of us here are keenly aware of the immense human suffering stabilize in the cross area right now and families and individuals have been forced into multiple with targeted attacks going on civilians all of which challenges our notions of shared humanity. The event and escalations of violence this past weekend only increased the urgency of finding solutions for this we humanitarian challenges faced by the civilian population of syria. I have to say that while we are grateful through our speaker today we are joining us and for hosting and having this event today i find it deeply distressing and disappointing that after so many years we continue to be hosting events on the same topic highlighting the same challenges and we continue to find ourselves asking what we do and what can be done. Without any further ado i like to pass it over to one of our regular partners in the humanitarian agenda for doctor altman is the Senior Vice President of the specific chair and goble security in u. S. Strategy and is the director here at csis and will introduce our speaker today. [applause] thank you, and thank you to the humanitarian agenda and the usaid for supporting these programs. The horrors of are playing for those who wish to know them could almost one william people, many children, our standard along the borders and trap between armies. In the province has long been a different place doubling its population since war broke out in syrians sought refuge from the fighting. Now 3 million syrians are huddled there suffering from cold and lack of water, sanitation and medical care. This has been occurring outside the public layer not because its unknowable but because the public is uninterested. Seized by coronavirus and president ial Campaign Insight shaky economy and rising tensions in europe United States and elsewhere the crisis gets little attention. That is what brings us here and we are here to speak to a forceful humanitarian whose organizations have been doing terminus work to try to relieve some of the suffering. David is president and ceo of the International Rescue committee where he oversees the agencys humanitarian in more than 40 or affected countries and its refugee and Resettlement Assistance Program and over 20 u. S. Cities. Under the leadership the irc has extended its ability to rapidly respond to the humanitarian crises and to meet the needs of an unprecedented number of people uprooted by conflict, war and disaster. The organization isnt lamenting and a vicious global strategy to bring clear outcomes, strong evidence and Systematic Research to the humanitarian programs through Collaborative Partnerships with the public and private sectors. Before he began this important work he did other important work from 20072010 and was the foreign actor terry of the United Kingdom and graduated from oxford in 1987 were the first class honors degree and got a masters in Political Science in 1989 from mit which they intended as a kennedy scholar. This compliments have earned him a reputation and former president bill clinton words, is one of the ablest most corrective Public Servants of our time and as an effective and impassioned advocate for poor people i am pleased to reduce to you mr. David [applause] thank you very much, john. Thank you, jake. Good afternoon. Ambassadors, excellencies. Also thank you to usaid who you are partner and you are our partner. The office of foreign disaster systems gives foreign aid a good name and its a flexible entrepreneurial committed partner of ours and its a nice link that they are also partners of yours and im afraid that the timing of this event is very, very good for all of the wrong reasons but the situation today in northwest syria is beyond desperate and does i know from my own staff on the ground life, nevermind livelihood is daily in doubt and as jake referred to the Turkey Russia syria clashes should underline to all of us that the wider diplomatic vacu vacuum, notable for the absence of coordinated european engagement, notable im sorry to say also for the absence of the United States is a real and present danger, not just to humanitarian needs but also to wider regional stability. My purpose in making this speech today is, in part, to bring the humanitarian reality to washington to speak up for our staff and for the people who they serve in the hope that there is still room for humanity and principal in the corridors of there are a few countries with the capacity to shift that dynamic in syria in the u. S. Is one of them. I hope there is residents and what i described today and as well as brainstorming amongst all of us here in the conversation after my speech about what to do about it. Also bringing in lib to washington today the situation i want to make a wider argument in this is that the wider argument that im trying to make that its the war in syria is not just a disaster but an argument that the war in syria will dangerously become a byword, a precedent for a new normal of brutal, divisive, contagious conflict. Impunity on the battlefield, stalling of diplomacy, the un pulled from pillar to post, a system inadequate, enabling states, creaking under the strain of refugees, western policy befuddled by a mixture of dysfunction, division and deni denial. That is the reality of the syrian story that jake referred to and the danger is that it becomes copied elsewhere. Here is what i will do today. First, summarize the Current Situation across syria starting idlib. Second, how we see syria as a warning for the training gene nature of conflict around the world today. Third, set out shortterm imperatives for how to save lives today and forth, draw wider lessons for humanitarians and diplomats. I think we all know that the assault on idlib is intended by the Syrian Government to represent the grim imax of the nineyear long civil war in syria. I know to civilians have fled since december with not a 400,000 still at risk of joining them. The largest civilian displacements is the war started nine years ago so yes, there have been conversations about syria and debates about syria over nine years but this is the largest displacement reflecting some almost borland fighting and every single day another 11000 civilians who joined the hundreds of thousands on the run and among those forced to flee are about 20 of our local staff who attempt to preserve their own work as well as their own families as they do so. Over 80 of those on the run are women and children, many are out in the cold braving freezing temperatures about 20000 with no shelter at all, freezing rain and snow which has led to the deaths of about seven children in the last month. Deaths from freezing itself. A tax on Health Facilities who represent some of the most egregious war crimes and are taking place despite specific calls from you and secure to Council Resolutions to be stopped. In the past three weeks alone the irc and other organizations we work to suspend operations at a number of Health Facilities and relocate an entire fleet of ambulances because they were being attacked. In total more than 80 health in Idlib Province are now being closed. It is also the case that the situation has deteriorated so far that all the usbased ngos have come together in the Global Emergency Response Coalition which is a humanitarian to launch the only secretary in joint appeal in our history to raise funds for to plummet inside idlib. The fact that the exodus and idlib is the greater since the world began his testimony to the marilyns and i dont think it should obscure that there are risks in other parts of the country too. In the northeast of the country 70000 are still displaced in the region is still recovering from the consequences of the turkish offenses against the predominantly Kurdish Democratic forces by month ago. Just last month a u. S. Convoy exchanged fire with the progovernment militia while driving to a checkpoint. Meanwhile, the Islamic State has been diminished but not vanquished. The group is not as deadly in the past but it is a persistent threat counting out regular ied accounts in places like rocca, east of the euphrates and temporarily capturing villages and bombing oil and gas facilities west of the river. In areas previously for opposition control which has since been retaken by the Syrian Military we know from our own staff that the end of formal fighting has not led to an end of violence or an improvement in the civilian populations humanitarian situation. Charles of the middle institute counts more than 350 attacks in the past 12 months in the southwest of the country where the civil war began, including an attack last month they killed two workers. The situation resembled the present conflict rather than an emergent piece. Meanwhile, outside syria the situation of nearly 6 million syrians who fled across the border should not be forgotten. 78 of syrians in jordan live below the poverty line. Half of the 500,000 syrian refugee children in lebanon still out of school nine years into the war. It is worth noting and im sorry to say this as someone who is a foreigner in america and i live and work here and i have huge admiration and respect for the country but to the following is almost the most stunning statistic of all those i will give you. It relates to the continued shame for the u. S. That this country has made it so difficult for syrian families to find refuge here could remember the statistics, 3. 5 million tgs in turkey, 915,000 in lebanon, 655,000 in jordan, 567,000 in germany and just 5623 were let into the United States last fiscal year. And only 320, not 320,000, 320 are on track to enter this fiscal year. That is what the reduction in the Refugee Resettlement program has meant for syrians hoping to find safety here. Meanwhile, the Syrian Government has made no secret of the fact that the syrians who fled to neighboring countries as refugees are not welcomed back. The government has levied a wide range of criminal charges against returning refugees today many of them risking improvement in torture if they try to return but they also use the implement law ten to appropriate land that once belonged displaced families, preventing refugees from having a place to come home to. Finally, the conduct of the war will make reconstruction and attempts to make some cord type of normality all impossible for the decades to come pick 9 of the syrian publishing are currently served by functional Wastewater Treatment plants in only 46 of Health Facilities are not fully functional. More than one in three schools damaged or destroyed. This is a decay that will affect future generations as well as the current one. The broader point, i think, is really important in the catastrophe in idlib and then this is the third thing i want to talk about that how we should understand the situation in syria today as symptomatic of a wider, what i call, age and immunity paid the catastrophe are symptoms of the utter failure of diplomacy and the abandonment by the International Community of syrian civilians but it also foreshadows an even darker trend towards impunity and characterized by disregards for the rule of International Law and equally great dessa facet of international diplomacy. It allows the suffering of civilians to continue on a basic brutal siege tactic, airstrikes on open senses, of junction of childs over, use chemical weapons, public beheadings, in town squares. These crimes are bad enough but accountability has so far been all but nonexistent. The majority of the blame lies with the allied syrian russian and Iranian Forces of the un high commissioner for human rights pointed out of the roughly 300 civilian deaths in northwest syria this year 93 were caused by the Syrian Government and its foreign allies. In the process of so blatantly violating vote rules of war those countries have spurred a race to the bottom and gives me pleasure to point out that in the effort to take back rocca from the Islamic State the u. S. Lead operation destroyed or damaged more than 11000 buildings in the city and has taken no response ability for reconstruction. This can only undermine calls for quote unquote, restrained from Russian Forces in idlib. I believe fear will receive in syria is not unique in that it foreshadows a dangerous trend where the laws of war so carefully built up after the Second World War become option optional. I think it is important to understand what the drive of this age of impunity. I would put to you there are four. First, war is now increasingly urban so the distinction between civilian soldiers is eroded. This is a major reason or the war in syria has displaced more than 11 Million People. Here is an interesting thing. According to it carnegie since 19 provide an average of five people were displaced for every one person killed in conflict. In syria that five one ratio is 25 to one. The battlefields in syria is increasingly crowded filled by nonstate actors with the constellation of free syrian groups, local Partner Forces by the u. S. Backed syrian Democratic Forces and foreign militaries for the u. S. , russia and iran. The involvement of so many groups, more than 100 record the conflict and invent data has fractured the battlefield geographically but also hierarchically given the often unclear chain of command within each of these groups. Furthermore, here is the point, it is not just well, ill go to the point. Third point, the large presence of foreign militaries has made the war far deadlier to civilians due to the increased firepower they bring to an otherwise quote unquote civil war. As devastated by the widespread russian airstrikes on cities like idlib with the issue is not just the imbalance of Foreign Forces in syria but that the mere presence of in total, 70 countries now contribute to complex and other countries according to the Peace Research institute of oslo. The syria phenomenon does not stand alone. Its increasingly common elsewhere or just think about somalia, iraq, elsewhere. The fourth driver of this age of impunity needs to be talked about. Its an obvious point dramatized in the title of this years Munich Security Conference but the title was quote unquote west les ness. It takes a german speaker to find a way of encapsulating the trauma or the dysfunction of western policy. The absence of the west and the syria endgame is not only a military question outside the northwest of the country but syria is low, very low on the western diplomatic priority list and Foreign Policy is very low on the political priority list. In fact, fear of entanglements largely outweighs commitments to the suffering and the roots of this abstinence are obviously the failures in iraq and afghanistan the lingering effect of the financial crisis but when liberal democratic countries committed to human rights are absent than those who regard those rights as an inconvenience are given free reign and that is what we are seen. Because although syria is the poster child for the age of impunity if you look at civilian debt and look at killing of aid workers and if you look at a range of indicators of children caught up in conflict syria is not an outlier but part of a trend and so that leads to the concluding or the prescriptive parts of my remarks. I want to talk about shortterm relief in a idlib and calm onto the wider lessons. The immediate need in syria is a ceasefire, obviously, and increased unimpeded access for civilians in need but there is no chance of this happening in little point in people calling for it without a strategic decision in washington and Washington Capitals the syrian matters enough to require all the costs that come with engagement of any kind. Since im running a humanitarian ngo i have to steer away from the military side of these questions other than saying all military decisions should be taken with a view to their humanitarian consequences. Even short of the military questions once the decision is taken that engagement is right there are ways to increase the cost on those who are perpetrating crimes on the battlefield. For example, instead of un states and officials expecting others to address the crisis both need to step up. I suggested general spearhead and shuttle diplomacy between italy, damascus, moscow and