Transcripts For CSPAN3 Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee

Transcripts For CSPAN3 Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee On U.S. Policy In Syria 20240714

Yes, all right. It was on, but didnt get picked up. This hearing on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the near east, south asia and central asia will come to order. Today were Holding Hearings on the bipartisan Syria Study Group. It was established by congress for the purpose of examining and making recommendations with respect to the conflict in syria. 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 part of Operation Inherent resolve, the campaign against isis in syria and iraq. Finally, i want to thank our witnesses here today for their willingness to take on the task for examining an accomplished problem with no easy solutions. Optimal outcomes were left behind long ago, end of quote. Its never easy to devote time and resources to a task whose main goal is often to prevent worse things from happening. I happen to believe that this report comes at a very timely point in our nations history. According to press reports, isis is regrouping and that there are some 15,000 isis fighting individuals on the ground and there are some 70,000 in refugee camps that are isis supporters. Mr. Assad has repeated Chemical Attacks despite the fact that we once threw a red line and that red line seems to be more of a green light. Turkey is hostile to the intent towards the kurd individuals and the kurdled Syrian Defense forces and presents a real threat to them and idlib is apparently a province thats been held by terrorist groups including al qaeda. Iran has 2500 troops which are located on the ground there, russian mercenaries and they did launch a surprise attack on u. S. Troops there so theres a great deal of swirling around this part of the world, and the administration has announce its withdrawal and one of the questions is whether this is a political interest thats being pursued or a National Interest thats being pursued and particularly the recommendations that will come forward from this group are of most interest to me and im sure other members of the committee and the administration. Your report does include conclusive thoughtful recommendations to address these challenges and how best to adjust our strategy toward syria to minimize the threats in the future and i look forward to hearing your thoughts today and with that ill turn to senator mur murphy for his comments and questions. Thank you for joining us here today. The civil war in syria has now raged on for more than eight years and huge swaths of the country are decimated and millions have been displaced though the crisis may have faded from the headlines, it is in parts due to the fact that the International Community has just accepted these tragic events as the new normal. Syria is now where International Law and the rules of war have gone to die. War crimes once considered unthinkable and outrageous, the bombing of hospitals and Chemical Attacks are now common place. The administration has declared three goals of the u. S. Policy there, and the defeat of isis and the political settlement and the withdrawal of iranian command and forces, but at the same time that we supposedly want to accomplish these big goal, the administration has cut aid to syria and pulled out officials and largely been, in ia negotiations and syria and rather than lead. And i think its an incredibly important time for us to consider this very, very welltimed report. I also think its time for us to admit that our policy in syria over the course of two administrations has been a failure and we need to do postmortem about the overall Lessons Learned. Its clear that our policy has failed and despite the obama administrations significant Covert Military support for forces opposing assad, the war has continued to rage for eight years and our decisions to keep going and not enough to defeat assad served to drag this war out and killed thousands more innocent people than had we limited our involvement at the outset. A mistake was not intervening sooner which would have kept russia and iran out of the syrian theater and allowed for assad to step down and allowed the process to move forward. Unfortunately, mr. Chairman, history provides scant examies of where the u. S. Directly intervenes in a foreign civil war and achieved its policy goals. These types of interventions often sound good on paper and often bog us down in a quagmire as they confront the messy realities of unreliable intelligence and unintended consequences and sometimes military military restraint is sometimes the best policy if our action will ultimately create new problems than it solves, and i hope were able to talk about these broader realities as well as the path forward inside syria and we have a lot to discuss today and i look forward to hearing from our witness peps. Thank you, senator murphy. We have one panel with two witnesses here today. Michael singh, cochair of the Syria Study Group is the senior fellow and managing director for the washington instud. Hes a former senior director for middle east affairs at the National Security council. Previously, he served on the task force on extremism in fragile states. We also have dana stroll, cochair of the Syria Study Group and a senior fellow at the washington institutes beth and david j. Dald program on arab politics. She previously served for five years as a senior professional staff member for this committee and spent five years working in the office of the secretary of defense. We will now turn to our first witness, mr. Singh. Thank you for your willingness to testify here today. Your full statement will be included in the record without objection. If you can please keep your remarks remarks to no more than give minutes we would action appreciate it so we can engage for questions. Thank you, chairman romney and Ranking Member murphy. I appreciate this opportunity to present the final report of the congressionally mandated Syria Study Group. I was honored to cochair this Bipartisan Group of experts along with my colleague dana stroll. I want to begin by talking about why policymakers and the American Public should care. Its not something that our group took for granted especially in a day and age when all of us face mounting questions and maybe for good reason, frankly, about the u. S. Role in the world. Then im going to defer to miss stroll to discuss the study groups assessments and recommendations. To understand u. S. Policy towards syria, i think its important to reach back to the beginning of the conflict in 2011. It began as a peaceful uprising against an autocratic dictator, one that made up the socalled arab spring as everyone here will remember, and if it seemed eight years ago that this uprising might usher in some positive change, those hopes have been dashed, to say the least. Syria has turned into a crucible for a complex series of intercepting conflicts and as i would argue well beyond the middle east and to europe and the United States and elsewhere. For years as senator murphy alluded to, the United States decided to shelter ourselves from the fallout of the syrian conflict. Many of you remember the notion that was once popular that syria could be cauterized, quote, up quote, that its effects could be confined and the rest of the region in the war could be spared from the fallout of the conflict. Could the wars effects be easily contained. Isis moved from iraq into sir wra and established his capital in raqqa. Resources killed hundreds in the summer of damascus. American journalists were brutally executed by isis. That persists until today. Along the way, nearly 7 million syrians are drive tone neighboring countries or the shores of europe as refugees. Today syria poses a spectrum of threats to american interests, i would argue. It provides safe haven to some of the worlds most dangerous terrorist groups. Idlib is home to the greatest concentration of foreign fighters since afghanistan in the 1980s. Isis has been driven from the territories it once controlled, but its returning now as an insurgency, as you said, senator romney. Iran is entrenching itself in the economic and social fabric and would have turned syria into a forward base for the missiles if not for israeli strikes and those strikes have come to a cost with the increased risk of war and weve seen the conflict between the two spread elsewhere in the region. Russia, too, has exploded this con fleck, on its as a major player for the first time in decades. They taking the judge. The assad regime and its parters in have smashed . Deploying chemical weapons in barrel bounds and using starvation and mass murder as weapons of role. They have europe and strengthened economies throughout the le vant and beyond. At any point at which we hope to shelter ourselves, it has only become more deleterious to our interests and it could yet grow worse. We could see a massacre and exodus of refugees in idlib where we have 3 Million People hold up on every side. You can see turk they brings it into conflict and you can see a broader war or a renewed civil war in the areas where the regime has retain control and that control is tenuous, frankly. The conflict in syria matters. To america, whatever one preferred strategic framework. This is a country where our two strategic concerns and great rival, im sorry, great conflict on the other come together. Its not a conflict we can simply contain and ignore. Our group is unanimous in that judgment, but we were also unanimous in our view that there isnt much we can do to shape the United States to help shape the countrys outcome and protect our interests which ms. Stroll will go into more detail. I want to say thank you to first senator shaheen for creating this work and for the honor of being named cochair of the group. Thank you to the congressional leadership for naming such thoughtful by an expert colleagues by a study group and i want to echo, senator romney, your thanks to all those americans, civilian and military who have fought and especially those who have died in the course of what i think is an important conflict. To me, the real value of this report, just to conclude is that it represents a bipartisan consensus and to me in wash wish today. Thats no small thing. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Singh. Miss stroll. Chairman romney, rashginking member murphy and thank you for inviting us for the Syria Study Group. Last year they formed a military status of the syrian war and provide recommendations for the way ahead. Today we are delivering a document that represents the consensus of all 12 members and echoing mr. Sins that is no small feat. This is a bipartisan plan for action. Here are our toplean conclusions. Number one, assad has not won the war. Areas under his control are riddled with crime and poverty. Civilians are subject to forced disappearances and execution, conditions are set for the next phase of conflict. Two, the political process has stalled. Yesterdays announcement on the formation of a Constitutional Committee may hold promise, but it is too soon to tell. To date assad has not demonstrated willingness to make meaningful com from myselfes. His offensive in idlib makes it painfully difficult to build momentum toward a negotiated settlement. Three. Isis is not defeated. The u. S. Led military effort successfully pushed isis out of the territory it held, but the group has transitioned to an insurgency. Meanwhile, al qaeda is still active in syria. Four, the isis detainee population is a few day away from the next caliphate are resource, trained and securing in pop lalgz. Iranian boots are not leaving syria despite u. S. Inkie stinks and the economic and social fabric for longterm influence. Six, russia has exploited its intervention on behalf of a sacked to contest to u. S. Leadership. Serve. U. S. Turkey ties are immensely strained and the forces is a leading factor and a Turkish Military incursion into Northern Syria will provide isis the opportunity to reconstitute. Join u. S. Turkey military patrols in a mutually agreed upon area and prevent the 16a ario for the time being. Eight, the scale and scope of human suffering over the course of this conflict have set a depraved new standard for the 21st century. The parties responsible, assad, iran and russia have faced no meaningful consequences for the use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs. Sport you are, starvation and the targeting of the infrastructure. Our group considered the American Public for millaitary d financial investment, therefore we propose a strategy that has key elements of important approach calls for reinvigorated u. S. Leadership and prioritizes resolving the yirnd lying syrian conflict. The tools for this strategy are already on the table. A u. S. Led coalition against ices and limited u. S. Forces on the ground, capable, local partner forces, sanctions, assistance and diplomacy and effective and resourcing of these tools are needed to give them teeth. To start, we recommend the following steps. Reverse the u. S. Military withdrawal from northeastern syria. Strengthen u. S. Sanctions on assad and his backers and maybe them about on u. S. Stable stiegz funds and continue to reconstruction aides under the u. S. Condition trol. While refugee mosting partners and Host Communities on syrias borders. Our group acknowledges that this strategy will not lead overnight to the elimination of isis, the remo removal of iran from syria or a political settlement that ends the war, but this mix of tools combined with consistent highlevel and credible American Leadership will provide leverage to shape an outcome of core National Security interests when conditions are conducive for a negotiated settlement. This is the end state for syria envisioned by our group. A Syrian Government viewed as legitimate by its population capable of ending dependence on Foreign Forces and able to eliminate the threat from terrorist groups. Syrian citizens will therefore need to not fear the assad regime, russia, iran or isis and such an end state in our view which was a political or social com mrakt inner issia. To condition cute, the it would not have been possible without congress and in particular senator shah een. Look, they, my personal thanks for, and for making me the dechl democratic cochair. The usip team facilitating our group has been nothing but direction o and he has been my friend as i balanced and welcomed my second child after our set of meetings and the child was extremely timely and i thank him for that as well. Thank you so much for both of your comments today. Im going to ask a few questions and then well turn to the Ranking Member and then senator shaheen. You mentioned briefly what the end view might look like. If you dont know where youre going any road might get you there and im not sure we have a sense of where we ared he headed what success would look like and perhaps theres nearterm success or longer term success, but what do you think is a realistic objective for our involvement in syria. Because mr. Singh described the kinds of things that would happen and some calamitous outcomes what is the positive outcome and a realistic positive outcome that our involvement in syria should be aimed to achieve . And either one of you can take and both can comment on that if youd like. Thank you for that question, senator. So first, we should highlight what we are not saying is a realist being outcome at this point in time. What we are not saying is the removal of assad and his regime and damascus is a realistic objective for u. S. Policy at this point in time. So when we are doing is calling not for removal of assad, but for meaningful changes in regime behavior as a way to address the underlying causes of conflict. History of Bashar Al Assad in syria is collaboration and cooperation with al qaeda. We know that he has used extremists including ice toys release them from prisons when it suited his purposes and in the past deployed them against u. S. Forces in iraq. That is number one and number two, what we are talking about in term was defeating isis is enabling the postisis communities of northeastern syria the time and space to demonstrate an alternative governance to the assad regime. Some of the clear changes that the assad regime that would suggest that he is open to meaningful concessions and revising propersy law so that all syrians would have access to real estate and to rebuild their lives and lively hoods in syria and obviously to end torture, release political detainees and to engage in a meaningful way in the u. N. S facilitated politica process. I would add to that, senator, the only party in this conflict that has a clear vision for how they see it ending is Bashar Al Assad. He believes that he can reconquer all of syria. I dont think that an independent analyst would say that he has the ability to do that even with russia and irans help especially not while u. S. Forces and our partners are there on the ground. So the question is how do you persuade him and those backing him that that is not a realistic option for them and that they have to accept compromise because right now it doesnt seem that he would retake syria and reestablishing his absolute rule. And so the u. S. Strategy is trying to get him to accept that reform is needed. My own view, i think the view of the group is that that is the right strategy, but it will take more concerted efforts and leadership by the United States and as long as theres a question, for example, as to whether were really committed to doing this. Whether were really committed to maintaining our military presence ev

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