Inflation bringing the syrian pound from 3,000 to a single u. S. Dollar. Small businesses are closing. Imports are plumeting and those living under the poverty line at 80 are increasing in number. An average monthly salary now reportedly buys a large bag of lemons. Government corruption has tweeted weak crisis and some humanitarians are warning of a potential famine this winter. While lebanon remains mired, the rollout of the turkish lyra to a third of the population in the northwest could be the nail in the coffin for what remains of the Syrian Regimes economy. In a podcast released last week, danny mackey focuses on the internal, that igt might represent a more dangerous threat to assad than any military threat seen in recent years. And yet, as its scitizens face dire conditions, the regime has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent weeks on new fighter jets from russia and Armored Vehicles and its purposely burned widespreads of land in the country. Fueled by these economic and now political frustrations, syrias community have taken to the streets in recent weeks holding bold protests and expressing bold sol didarity. Protests have been seen in the southern government, where an expanding insurgency is developing. In the desert, isis is resurging and discontent and criticism for the regime are emerging more clearly than at any point since 2011. So might these sanctions, teamed up with diplomacy, force iranian backers back into compromise or serve to exacerbate rising human suffering across the country . These and many more questions will be up for debate and to take part in this discussion, im really thrilled to introduce our panelists. First, we have ambassador james jeffrey, the special representative for syria engagement and coalition to defeat isis. Ambassador jeffrey has held senior positions across the u. S. Government including as Deputy National security adviser and as ambassador in iraq and turkey. Next, we have a syrian born writer and political analyst who holds a seat on the boards of the day after project in the Syrian Economic Forum and was an associate fellow at chat ham hou house. A and as a former detainee and torture victim, hes also a syria fellow at the center for transitional justice, where his work focuses on political imp z imprisonment in syria. B welcome. Finally, in terms of the format for today, each panelist will begin with five minutes of opening remarks followed by a moderated discussion. This is live on zoom, live stream and live on cspan. To the many people worldwide dialed into this event on zoom, id encourage you to submit questions using the q a feature which you should see on your screens. For those on the phone, you can submit questions by emailing them to events. Feel free to submit questions at any point during the event. Ill do my very best to work them into discussion. I understand were currently scheduled to hold this event for an hour. If the quantity of questions is as many as we expect, we may push a little bit beyond that time, but well play things by ear. But to kick off the discussion, bas a bas jeffre ambassador jeffrey, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Its good to be back. We did a lot of Work Together including on syria back in times past when i had another existence. Im sure most of you have seen the secretary of states and secretary of treasurys statements on the act last week in some of the commentaries and fact sheets. So i wont get into the details. What i want to do is to explain why the act is important. How we are going to implement it and what the next steps are. Most importantly, start with the title as charles said. The its the civilian protection act of 2019. It is designed to protect the Syrian People from assad in two way s. Directly in the introduction by calling on the end to strikes against the Syrian People then more generally, to require participation in the political process under the u. N. , thats the 22 resolution 2254 process. Which is the american policy and we do not deviate and i order from that. It is not regime change. Its not a separate deal from anybody. Its the u. N. Process we are supporting everywhere we can include ing with this legislati. Its not the first sanctions action against syria. Weve had a set of them. Mainly executive orders, but this is important first of all because it is a law. It is a law that was not only passed by congress and signed by President Trump, its a law that passed overwhelmingly, almost unanimously, in both houses. Thats very important because it reflects that syria policy in the United States today covers all parts of the u. S. Political system. From the right to the left. From republicans to democrats. From people who think very differently than other things on the need to do more on syria. Because this is such a terrible conflict for its own population, the latest statistics ive seen are the that only a little over a third of the population is now under assads active control. A little less than a third are refugees in turkey, lebanon and jordan, who have done an amazing job taking care of those people, and some in europe. Then almost a third are also in areas of regime control in the northwest and northeast. So, that is a telling point on where assad is today. We, secondly, see this legislation as give iing us mor powerful tools to go after those cronies and oligarchs who are supporting assad and assad and his family themselves as you see pr from the first list of sanctions weve rolled out. All those were under the executive order, but were going to target these people with the caesar act. Our goal is not to topple the economy. Assad is more than capable of doing that. Hes doing a e terrific job of pushing the pound into irrelevance and undercutting what is left of the syrian gdp. Rather, it is to inflict real pain on the people around assad and get them to understand this pain doesnt go away until they change their policies. That involves either breaking off support for the regime or a list of seven thing that is the regime has to do for the regime as a whole no longer to be sanctioned. That involves no longer besieging the Syrian People, no longer performing them, dealing with war criminals, encouraging refugees to return, and on and on. Another thing that we expect from the Syrian Government is to stop threatening the neighborhood. Be it by allowing or ignoring the terrorist threat that has grown up in that country. Charles again mentioned isis was on the march again in those areas we dont control. Be it use of chemical weapons, be it the weaponization of refugees, be it inviting in iran with its regional agenda or inviting in russia with a different but equally troubling agenda. The syrian conflict has suck ed in five outside armies including the u. S. , the turkish and a third country neighbor that i wont mention because it usually wants to keep its participation at a significant quiet. But we have to resolve all of these geo Strategic Issues as well as the humanitarian issues before we can move forward next, the caesar act has very strong humanitarian provisions that require us in the u. S. Government to explain to congress and insure in our actual sanctions target thag we do not undercut the humanitarian efforts underway. United states will be pledging a significant amount at the eu pledging conference for humanitarian aid at the end of this month. Already with over 10. 6 billion, were the biggest humanitarian contributor. That will not stop in this covid19, but we will continue these sanctions because of their nature, they allow us to secondary sanctions. They target specific areas. In one sense, money laundering, the central bank, which is important, although its been sanctioned in other areas, but also the aviation industry. Particularly military aviation, energy industry, construction industry. We want to make it clear to anybody who wants to rebuild assads syria, that that cannot happen without caesar sanctions until we have a political process. Now, what are we going to do with all of this . In looki ining at the larger pie right now, and charles mentioned much of this, first of all, we see an economic free fall of the assad regime. Larnlly through his own beheir and the collapse of the Banking System in lebanon. Sebl secondly, we see his military offensive has still made it. In idlib, he was stopped in his tracks by a counteroffensive. The u. S. Has not left the northeast. The president is in a way talking about withdrawals from afghanistan made clear that while well eventually withdraw from syria, nothing is on the table right now. And the third country i mentioned, is in many respects, being more effective, particularly at targeting iranian and threatening syrian targets. So military situation isnt that great. Finally, on the accountability front, which is so important in this conflict. Were seeing a great deal of support from secretary general gutierrez, who spoke out in written form in his reply to the outrageous and shameful 2504 resolution that cut two of the four humanitarian cards into syria, calling for those or at least the one in the northeast, to be reinstated, and pointing out the obvious, that the Syrian Government is going to do nothing significant to allow humanitarian deliveries in areas it does not control. We have seen the border inquiry called by the secretary general condemning the regime and indirectly, the russians, for exploiting the passing of information, cord nants and others on safe areas that were then subsequently bombed. Weve seen the opcw with this iit condemnation of the regime for three attacks in the spring of 2017 with chemical weapons, blaming not only regime forces, but saying this had to be agreed to and ordered by the top levels of the government. So thats the fourth thing. Along with the military situation, the economy, our sanctions, and accountability that we believe will allow us to press the russians for a negotiated settlement under 2254. Thank you, charles. Ambassador, thank you very much for those opening remarks. I think well go to katapa next. Thank you so much for being with us. Of course. Thank you so much, charles. Thanks for organizing this and for a ambassador jeffrey at the state department to really establish this communication for the people to explain what the caesar act, what the steps are. As you said, this is a really important step towards accountability. Especially for disappearance in syria. A lot of people look at first disappearance is going to be a a side effect of the conflict in syria, but in reality, this has been going on for as long as the party was established in syria. As long as 1963 when the first, when they came into power. When i look specifically at the design of the syrian and how basically, the Syrian Regime has design ed the laws specifically to funnel all of those detainees through illegal system that would put them in prison for years. So this is not just a side issue, organized issue. I think its great that were putting the step forward towards you know free ago lot of people of war crimes, torture and killing of detainees and maybe hopefully bring some hope ft. Families of tens of thousands in syria. Of course, what is coming ahead of us, i think there are two challenges. The first one is to control the narrative regarding syria. The caesar act. Again, i respect ambassador jeffreys and the last week and reaching out to talk a about the act and address the concerns syrians have. I almost seen him every day last week talking to different syrian communities, addressing their questions. Because the Syrian Regime will continue to bank on sanctions to justify its economic failure, its important to continue these efforts, and to listen and to hear, to control the narrative that is reaching the Syrian People. That would be by continuing reach out to the Syrian People, but also by listening to the syrians and seeing how the side effects of the act will affect the lives of ordinary syrians and try to mitigate those effects. But whether theres changes through the sanctions, this is really important to tell the Syrian People that the act is targeting those who are committing crimes and not targeting the lives of ordinary syrians. The second challenge is to adapt, to make sure, actually, that the caesar act and sanctions resulting from the caesar act are actually cierring their goal. So make sure we have a very responsive Sanction Program. If you look at the Sanction Program today out of almost over 300 syrian individuals listed on the sanctions list, we have 270 individuals, for example, from the Research Center working on chemical weapons. If we want to make sure that actually the caesar act are in effect and we are targeting people who are behind detaining syrians, behind torturing syrians, we need to expand and look into those individuals in every Intelligence Center and every secret prison to make sure we have those individuals, those who are directly responsible for those horrific acts weve seen. Thank you, charles. Thank you so much for placing that into some very important context. Reen, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me and i think i have a good point on which to start, which is to follfo follow up. The narrative on the sanctions is extremely important for syrians to understand why this is necessary and how it could possibly benefit them, but also to counter the other narratives, which is that everything that the regime has done has been to save the country, has been to save syrians, and none of this would have happened had it not been for those sanctions and for this fantasy of regime change conspiracy. I think its very important to remind those people, whether they are knee jerk reactions, who say that anything the u. S. Does must be bad or they are pure ignorance about what the regime has done. We imagine that the economy and that was done by this regime, from turning a socialist, closed economy, into a socalled open economy, but only for a certain segment of society. So while they launched into this crony capitalism, no concurrent measures were taken to make sure that the normal economy for everybody else was going on, so that means that people saw subsidies begin to be reduced. Without something to make up for them and the subsidies were needed because under the father for 30 years, everything was closed and the only way that people could access anything from gas to bread, needed to be subsidized so i think we need to look at these issues to understand even if the sanctions were removed, we would not be getting the normal involvement of a government of a normal government with the people. I want to mention that if anybody has been policing the Syrian People, it has been the regime for all these years. In the news lately has been the price or the fee of 800 for an passport. This is not new. The regime has always made syrians pay for the privilege of going to syria. Just by way of example, i can tell you thatven young men who have never lived in syria, but who come from syrian heritage, and wanted to visit their country, would have to pay 5, 10 or 15,000 to be exempt from the military. This has gone for years. The import fees on cars until 2005, the import tax, the duty, was 255 and we can name numerous examples of how it has always been the syrians who had to pay this heavy price to be able to participate in daily life. So this is an answer to the you know, to the naysayers who say that the sanctions hurt the people. Im not going to pretend they cannot hurt the people, they can, and thats why my position when i look at the situation today, is to say that the sanctions alone are not enough and ambassador jeffrey mentioned they would be political pressure to move on with 2254 and i think this is and this is the key point that we are only against the regime enablers but at the same time theres only one way out of this and if we dont call it regime change, we can at least call it political transition which is precisely what 2254 is about and finally i would say about the sieges that the regime has carried out repeatedly, not just in syrian cities but i remind you that when the regime had to with draw very quickly after the assassination in 2005 it imposed a blockade on lebanon. And its to think that this is because of these sanctions. Thank you for those really important opening comments as well. All three of you said things that compliment each other but give very important different perspectives or overlapping perspectives. Quite clearly its no secret to you that the legislation sparked quite a debate within the community thats following syria and events elsewhere in the middle east. And having an overly negative effect on this civilian population. All three of you have addressed why that argument by itself is potentially problematic but i wanted to ask you about the fact that, you know, sanctions of any kind can have unintended consequences. And is there or are there any plans or actions underway to try to prevent any of the unintended consequences. Theres been talk about whether they should bailout the economy and and last week to make up for the inflation being seen in damascus so thats one example. The other thing that struck my mind is being included in the sanctions. Her syria trust for development is engaged in very Strong Language and requirements. We will adhere fully to them. We have no intention of targeting anything that delivers humanitarian assistance anywhere in syria. The first thing that were doing aside from articulating the policy is ensuring that we can make an additional large contribution to the humanitarian needs of syria beyond the 10. 6 billion we have already given. And some of that flows to regime areas. I want to repeat that. Aid to individuals and stabilization and reconstruction funding that will be exploited by the regime to build their happy holiday luxury resorts and thats what we are opposed to. Not humanitarian assistance. These were announced three days ago. The incredible collapse of the syrian pound and the other economic problems that syria faces cannot be blamed upon the sanctions. Thirdly we are looking at ways that we can enhance our stabilization assistance. For example, in the northeast, there are 50,000,000 or actually 54 million notified on assistance to areas there. Targeted on minorities and religious groups but basically it will help the entire situation and were looking at various other options that final