[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 155 (Thursday, October 22, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H7127-H7129]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SYRIAN DISPLACEMENT CRISIS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as the Syrian displacement
crisis has consumed seven nations in the Middle East, among them
Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, obviously, and Syria itself, and has spawned
the largest refugee crisis Europe has faced since World War II.
The scope of the damage is incredible. This protracted conflict has
decimated Syria's infrastructure and has already taken the lives of
over 250,000 civilians, has displaced over 4 million people, and has
subjected tens upon thousands of children in that nation to Assad's
horrific barrel bombs. Most everyone who remains in Syria endures power
and water cuts, the threat of shelling, galloping inflation, and
rampant speculation about: What will happen next? Who will help us, the
innocents?
With roads often subject to ambush, freedom to travel has been
heavily curtailed. Checkpoints and concrete blast barriers have become
accepted adornments of daily life. Institutions such as schools,
hospitals, and offices remain open in government-held areas, though
many schools have become shelters for the legions of war injured and
homeless. Truly, it is grim. Often, classes are held in double shifts
to make room for the extra students. This is everyday life in Syria.
Five years into the conflict that has ravaged this once-modern
nation, more than half of the Syrian population is displaced, with over
4 million refugees in neighboring countries and tens of thousands
moving toward Europe. We see this on television every evening.
My hometown of Toledo has taken in 8 weary Syrian families--refugees
who have now again found hope in the liberty that America offers--but
fewer than 2,000 Syrians have come to the United States, though the war
has displaced more than 12 million since 2011. The free world simply
cannot allow this savage slaughter and dislocation to continue.
We ask ourselves: Where is the leadership for resolution?
{time} 1715
Now, in addition to daily airstrikes against civilians by the Syrian
Government violating international humanitarian law, Russian warplanes
are
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striking medical facilities and residential areas in non-ISIL areas
where rebel forces are fighting to overthrow the Assad regime while
Russia publicly proclaims its aim of eliminating ISIL targets.
I brought a map to the floor here that essentially shows most of
Syria, who holds it. If one looks at these red dots here, the Russian
planes are mainly bombing in the rebel-held areas, not in the ISIL-held
areas. So we see a complex situation that has developed on the ground.
As Putin moves with defiance to maintain the Syrian dictatorship, his
actions simply must be checked because it tells us that, in the future,
there will be more slaughter with what remains if those moderate forces
are not allowed to survive.
Since Russia began airstrikes at the end of September, at least 127
civilians, including 36 children and 34 women, have been killed by
Russian airstrikes, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights.
For the sake of liberty in Syria, in Europe, and around the world,
America, NATO, the Transatlantic Alliance, and our allies in the Middle
East must lead the region to peaceful settlement.
I happen to represent a region in America where Syrian Americans have
lived for over a century. I can't even explain to you how they feel
about the total destruction of their homeland, its artifacts, and its
history. I am not even able to contain it in words here.
They came to see me last week, and they asked if I would read some of
their words into the Record, which I promised I would do this evening.
They want the American people and the world to know:
The biggest killer of civilians in Syria is the Assad
regime's use of barrel bombs. Packed with TNT and shrapnel,
these dumb bombs have no target and are just dropped from
helicopters on civilian neighborhoods. These bombs cause
massive destruction and casualties. Thousands upon thousands
of children have been killed and injured by these helicopter
flights.
And they said to me: Congresswoman, if you can say one thing to the
Congress and to those in Washington who can make a difference, please
tell them to disrupt and stop these helicopter flyovers. So the barrel
bombs aren't coming out of the F-16s obviously flying over Syria, but
they are coming from helicopters that the Assad regime is dispatching
across that country.
The most important step that can be done to save lives
would be the imposition of a no-fly zone. A no-fly zone will
turn the tide of war, and bring down the regime of terror and
force Assad to negotiate his exit.
We know there is resistance to that, but the world community must
meet this latest test in order to secure a better life for the people
that remain in Syria, those who may wish to return, and, obviously, the
millions that have fled and are in refugee camps throughout that region
and now as far as Western Europe.
I would urge the President of our country to consider the appointment
of a special envoy without portfolio for Syrian peace to work full-time
to bring all relevant nations together to resolve this unfolding
tragedy and aim at a civil military strategy for transition and
settlement.
I include for the Record Anthony Cordesman's writings.
[From the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Oct. 1, 2015]
The Long War in Syria: The Trees, the Forest, and All the King's Men
(By Anthony H. Cordesman)
Cliches are cliches, but sometimes it really is hard to see
the forest for the trees. In the case of Syria, the ``trees''
include the UN debate between Obama and Putin over Syria and
the fight against Islamic extremism, Russia's sudden military
intervention in Syria, the failure of the U.S. training and
assist missions in both Syria and Iraq, and the developing
scandal in USCENTCOM over exaggerated claims of success for
the U.S.-led air campaign in Syria and Iraq.
The most important ``tree,'' however, is trying to
negotiate an end to the fighting from the outside, as if
Assad was the key issue and as if it would be possible for
some diplomatic elite or mix of power brokers to bring Syria
back to some state of stability if only Assad would agree to
leave and the United States and Russia could agree on how to
approach the negotiations.
Focusing on the Trees When the Forest is Burning
The problem is that the ``forest'' is dying, burning, and
occupied by four broad sets of fighters that have little
reason to cooperate with any UN-led negotiating effort,
outside agreement over Assad--with or without U.S. and
Russian cooperation.
To shift from one cliche to another, Syria presents far
more problems than Humpty Dumpty. ``All the king's horses and
all the king's men'' couldn't put Syria back together by
negotiating a solution from the outside even if there was one
King instead of a divided mix of the United States, Russia,
Iran, Turkey, Iraq, the other states surrounding Syria, the
Arabian Gulf states, Egypt, and France and the other
interested European powers.
It shouldn't take a child's nursery rhyme to point out the
obvious--although it is one whose origins may date back to
England's civil wars and first appeared in print shortly
after it became fully clear that there was no way English
could ever bring the 13 colonies back under its control. To
begin with, there is no equivalent of Humpty.
Putting Four Humptys Together with No King and No Unity Among the
King's Men
The problem is not simply ISIS or Assad. ISIS is one of the
four ``Humptys'' in a shattered Syria, but ISIS controls only
a limited part of Syria's population even in the east. ISIS
occupies both parts of Syria and Iraq. It continues to
systematically purge any religious and ideological dissent
while neither government in Damascus or the government in
Baghdad have shown any clear ability to gain support from a
major portion of the Sunnis in the area that ISIS controls.
So far, neither the forces of the Syrian or Iraqi
government have had much military success against ISIS, and
U.S. claims that Iraq has regained some 35% of the territory
it lost to ISIS are little more than dishonest spin. They are
based on the maximum line of ISIS advance before any fighting
took place and before ISIS established any level of
governance or control. They include vast areas of unpopulated
desert: areas where no one controls anything because no one
is there.
The Kurds
The second Humpty consists of the Syrian Kurds--who have
gone from a partially disenfranchised minority to the
equivalent of a mini-state in the north and east of Syria,
and have been the only real U.S. military train and assist
success. They have no reason to support Assad or any of those
who support Assad. They too are divided, and some have ties
to Turkish Kurds, some to Iraqi Kurds, some to both, and some
are independent.
At the same time, they have no clear economic viability as
a state, face growing water problems, and would need to grab
a significant part of Syria's limited oil and gas resources
in the East to be viable unless they somehow united in a
broader Kurdish entity--one that included Turkish and/or
Iraqi Kurds and would be likely to create a new set of
regional conflicts.
Furthermore, these Administration claims and maps that talk
about liberating 35% of the area that ISIS occupied ignore
the fact that control of much of the disputed populated areas
in Anbar remains undecided, and that it was the Iraqi Kurds
which not only recovered much of the lost populated areas
that did matter, but grabbed a large additional part of
Iraq--including Kirkuk and its oil fields--and created a
whole new dimension of the Kurdish problem and its tensions
with Iraq's Arab and the Turks while the corrupt government
in the Kurdish zone of Iraq has divided and threated to
create a new round of internal power struggles.
The Other Sunni Fighters
The third Humpty consists of an uncertain coalition of
other Sunni fighters. They control--or are fighting for
control--in many of the most populated areas in Syria. There
are no reliable unclassified estimates of the number,
strength, and ideological character of these factions but
there are well over 20 groups--and some estimates go well
over 30.
Some, like the Al Nusra Front--one of the most successful
in military terms--are linked to Al Qaeda. Others are less
radical Islamist factions, but are scarcely secular or
moderate, also have no ties to the hollow outside efforts to
create moderate governments in exile, and are being backed by
Arab states like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The small
groups being given limited support with U.S. weapons and
Special Forces assistance are at best petty and uncertain
players.
This is also a group of fighters that is fighting the pro-
Assad forces in what is increasingly becoming a wasteland.
The fighting on the ground, Assad's barrel bombs and the
threat of poison gas, deliberate isolation and efforts to
starve out rebel held areas have created one of them most
serious humanitarian disasters in any one country in modern
history.
Many of the more than 4 million Syrian refugees that had
left Syria lived in the area where this fight takes place.
The same is true of the well over 7 million internally
displaced persons (IDPs) that no long have a real home, job,
business, or access to key services like health and
education.
Many of the more than 250,000 Syrian civilian dead, and at
least 500,000 seriously wounded are the product of this
fighting--although it is important to note that the UN ceased
to be able to make meaningful casualty estimates well over
half a year ago, and the estimates of refugees and IDPs have
ceased to increase because (a) there no longer is a basis for
guesstimating the increase, and (b) many of the remainder are
simply too poor to leave.
To go back to cliche number one, this is the area where the
forest has now been burning for some four years. This was one
of the
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most populated and developed parts of Syria. It is an area
where Syria's already poor economy probably now has a GDP
around 20% of what it was in 2011 and has no clear basis for
recovery. It is an area where no top down negotiation between
Assad or his backers and any outside faction can begin to put
even one Humpty back together again.
The Assad Faction(s)
The fourth version of Humpty is the group of factions and
fighters supporting Assad. It is important to note that this
is not a unified group. No one has given most of those in the
area Assad control a choice as to who controls them. The
majority of the population is Sunni and other non-Alawites.
The Alawites are not Shi'ite, and are a gnostic religious
group that may have political ties to Iran and the Hezbollah,
but Alawites are not Muslims in the normal sense of the term.
There are no reliable data on Syria's population. The CIA
estimates, however, that some 17-18 million people remain in
Syria, it estimates that 87% are Muslim (official; includes
74% Sunni 74% and 13% that are a mix of Alawi, Ismaili, and
Shia). Some 10% are Christian (includes Orthodox, Uniate, and
Nestorian), and the final 3% are Druze and some small number
of Jews who remain in Damascus and Aleppo).
If one looks at the maps of Syria's sectarian and ethnic
divisions before the fighting, they are also distributed into
a series of small enclaves, many near the coast. They have no
clear ``region,'' and it is far from clear how many of the
Sunnis in the regular Syrian forces, the real Shi'ites and
other minorities in Syria, or the more secular Sunni
businesspersons and civilians would support either Assad or
any mix of Assad supporters if they had a choice.
It is also important to note that the World Bank rated the
Assad regime as having some of the worst governance in the
world before the uprising began in 2011. It was also rated as
deeply corrupt. Transparency International rated it as the
159th most corrupt country in the world--out of 175--in 2014.
The Arab and UN development reports warned that the younger
Assad was no better in moving the country towards real
economic development than his father, and that the massive
population increase in Syria had created a ``youth bulge''
for which there were often no real jobs.
The Syrian GDP per capita was at best around $5,100 even in
Purchasing Power Parity P terms in 2011 before the upheavals
began--and ranked a dismal 165th in the world. It now may
average half that level. Some 33% of the population is 0-14
years of age; 14% is 15-24, and over 500,000 young Syrian men
and women now reach job age each year in a country where
direct (ignoring disguised) unemployment is estimated to be
33-35%, and the poverty level was well over 12% before the
fighting started.
A Time for Honesty, Transparency, and Realism
One cannot ignore trees, anymore than one can ignore the
forest. The failure of U.S. policy and military efforts,
Russian and Iranian support of Assad and major Russian
military intervention, and the conflicting ways in which
other states intervene will all make things worse. The impact
of religious warfare and extremism, and failed Syrian
secularism, are even more serious problems.
It is time, however, to stop focusing on either ISIS or
Assad, to pretend that Syrian ``moderates'' are strong enough
to either affect the security situation or negotiate for
Syria's real fighters, and act as if a shattered nation could
be united by some top down negotiation between groups that
hate each other and have no competence in dealing with the
economic, social, and governance challenges Syria now faces.
The first step in solving a problem is to honestly assess
it. No negotiation can work that does not deal with grim
realities and divisions created by years of fighting. No
amount of U.S. and Russian intervention and argument can
bring security or stability. No UN effort at conventional
negotiation can survive encounter with reality, and no effort
of any kind that does not address the sheer scale of Syrian
recovery and reconstruction.
Ms. KAPTUR. Anthony Cordesman, probably one of the most respected
thinkers on this subject, ends a very significant analysis of the
situation in Syria and greater Europe with this admonition. He tells
America: ``We face a moment of facing up to honesty, transparency, and
realism.''
And he tells us, ``One cannot ignore trees anymore than one can
ignore the forest,'' related to Syria. ``The failure of U.S. policy and
military efforts, Russian and Iranian support of Assad and major
Russian military intervention, and the conflicting ways in which other
states intervene will all make matters worse. The impact of religious
warfare and extremism, and failed Syrian secularism, are even more
serious problems.
``It is time, however, to stop focusing on either ISIS or Assad, to
pretend that Syrian `moderates' are strong enough to either affect the
security situation or negotiate for Syria's real fighters, and act as
if a shattered nation could be united by some top-down negotiation
between groups that hate each other and have no competence in dealing
with the economic, social, and governance challenges Syria now faces.
``The first step in solving a problem is to honestly assess it. No
negotiation can work that does not deal with grim realities and
divisions created by years of fighting. No amount of U.S. and Russian
intervention and argument can bring security or stability. No U.N.
effort at conventional negotiation can survive encounter with reality,
and no effort of any kind that does not address the sheer scale of
Syrian recovery and reconstruction'' can work.
I commend his writings to my colleagues and the major studies that
have been done this year by the Center for Strategic and International
Studies as providing a glimmer of the road that we must walk toward.
I want to just thank my colleagues for the opportunity to place this
in the Record tonight.
I want to thank the Syrian Americans that live in northern Ohio for
their patriotic citizenship and their deep concern about what more the
United States of America could do to bring resolution to this deeply
troubling conflict in Syria that has precipitated such unrest, not just
through that region but, indeed, to all of greater Europe.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
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