[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN SYRIA:
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 25, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-75
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
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http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
------
Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
TOM COTTON, Arkansas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida JUAN VARGAS, California
TREY RADEL, Florida BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina Massachusetts
TED S. YOHO, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
LUKE MESSER, Indiana LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Thomas O. Melia, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State... 5
Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., Commissioner, U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom................................ 34
Ms. Nina Shea, director, Center for Religious Freedom, Hudson
Institute...................................................... 46
John Eibner, Ph.D., chief executive officer, Christian Solidarity
International, USA............................................. 64
Rev. Majed El Shafie, founder, One Free World International...... 70
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Thomas O. Melia: Prepared statement.......................... 9
Zuhdi Jasser, M.D.: Prepared statement........................... 37
Ms. Nina Shea: Prepared statement................................ 50
John Eibner, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................... 66
Rev. Majed El Shafie: Prepared statement......................... 72
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 112
Hearing minutes.................................................. 113
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 114
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International
Organizations: Statement of the Honorable Anna G. Eshoo, a
Representative in Congress from the State of California, and
the Honorable Frank Wolf, a Representative in Congress from the
Commonwealth of Virgnia........................................ 115
Written responses from Mr. Thomas O. Melia to questions submitted
for the record by the Honorable Christopher H. Smith........... 117
Zuhdi Jasser, M.D.: Excerpt of USCIRF Report: Protecting and
Promoting Religious Freedom in Syria........................... 119
John Eibner, Ph.D.: Material submitted for the record............ 127
Ms. Nina Shea: Material submitted for the record................. 135
RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN SYRIA:
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE
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TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 2013
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations and
Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 3:04 p.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations)
presiding.
Mr. Smith. The subcommittees will come to order.
And good afternoon. And welcome to today's joint hearing of
the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations and the Subcommittee on the
Middle East and North Africa as we turn our attention to an
overlooked aspect of the crisis in Syria: The religious
minorities caught in the middle of the conflict and apparently
targeted by government forces as well as rebel groups.
More than 93,000 Syrians have been killed in this
horrendous and seemingly endless civil war. More than 4.25
million people are displaced within Syria, and millions more
are fleeing to safety in the surrounding countries of Jordan,
Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq.
It is disturbing to note that 1 in 5 of the refugees is
Christian, although Christians in Syria make up 1 in 10 of the
pre-war population of 22 million people. This would seem to
indicate that Christians are even more fearful for their lives
and safety than other segments of the Syrian population.
Before the war, Syria was a fairly pluralistic society,
with Alawites, Shias, Ismailis, Yazidis, Druze, Christians,
Jews, and Sunnis living in relative peace side-by-side. The
situation was far from perfect, as President Bashar al-Assad's
regime had a vast security apparatus in place with members
inside each of the religious communities to monitor their
activities. The Assad government was guilty of serious human
rights violations, including the summary imprisonment and
execution of political prisoners, but relations between various
religious groups was generally not violent.
That civil coexistence has ended with the war. In February
of this year, the U.N. Independent International Commission of
Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic reported that ``the
conflict has become increasingly sectarian, with the conduct of
the parties becoming significantly more radicalized and
militarized.'' This followed on an earlier Commission report
stating that ``entire communities are at risk of being forced
out of the country or being killed inside the country, with
communities believing, and not without cause, that they face an
existential threat.''
We know that early in the civil war Assad came to view the
Christian minority with suspicion, accusing churches of
laundering money and goods for opposition forces and forbidding
banks from conducting transactions for certain churches. There
is also evidence that the Assad regime encouraged sectarian
tensions in order to maintain power, perhaps believing that if
people were afraid of Islamists commandeering a nominally
secular state, the people would be more likely to support Assad
over the opposition.
In December 2012, Time magazine reported allegations that
the Assad regime was paying individuals to pose as opposition
supporters and chant slogans at protests, including, ``The
Christians to Beirut, and the Alawites to the grave.''
Our own Government has voiced concern about the particular
threat posed to Christians in Syria. According to the State
Department's International Religious Freedom Report for 2012,
``The regime continued to frame opposition actions as
targeting the Christian population. At the same time,
it increased its own targeting of Christians and Alawi
anti-regime activists in order to eliminate minority
voices that might counter its narrative of Sunni-
sponsored violence.''
Religious minorities seem to fear the opposition forces.
Some prominent opposition groups, such as the Muslim
Brotherhood, have a religious basis which has been seen as
threatening to Syria's Alawite and Christian minorities.
Smaller opposition factions, such as the al-Qaeda-affiliated
jihadist al-Nusra Front, take explicitly sectarian positions.
There are reports of incidents in which rebel forces engaged in
sectarian violence, such as burning Shiite mosques.
Christians are perceived by many in the opposition to be
Assad loyalists, possibly due to Assad's aggressive recruitment
of Christians into the regime militias at the start of the
civil war. Other reports indicate that Christians attempted to
remain neutral, either out of passivism or concern about their
rights under opposition forces.
Christian neutrality was perceived by some opposition
groups as loyalty to the regime. In December 2012, a rebel
force believed to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood
released a video on YouTube entitled, ``Warning Mainly
Christian Cities in the Province of Hama,'' and promising
attacks if they continue to support and house pro-Assad forces.
Christian leaders have been targeted, such as the April
2013 kidnappings of two Syriac Orthodox Church bishops. Both
men have still not been returned. The Druze community reports
being targeted, as well. In March 2013, a Druze leader reported
to Christian Solidarity International, who will testify today,
``Our people get stopped at checkpoints and are asked
which sect they belong to. Once the militias hear that
they are Swaida, a province where 90 percent of the
population is Druze, our men disappear.''
Al-Nusra Front, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist
organization, has been blamed for much of the sectarian
rhetoric and violence, but dozens of the opposition groups
ascribe to Islamic jihadist ideologies and mingle with the Free
Syrian Army, which the U.S. may now be supporting.
Over the last 3 years, the United States has committed to
providing $250 million to various opposition groups in Syria,
at least $117 million of which has already been funded, largely
to the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and
Opposition Forces. With the chemical-weapon red line crossed,
the administration has also agreed to provide ammunitions and
small arms, as well. It is not clear whether any of this new
lethal assistance will go to the Free Syrian Army and its
worrisome opposition groups.
The administration also committed to send an additional
$300 million in humanitarian aid to ``vulnerable groups in and
around Syria.'' It is not clear whether distribution of this
aid will be informed by the plight of religious minorities.
I am very concerned that the administration may not be
taking seriously enough the targeting of religious minorities,
which is why we have called this hearing. Too often we have
heard from the administration that they have bigger issues to
deal with than the vulnerability of religious minorities.
In the last two appropriations cycles, we have directed the
administration to condition aid, for example, to Egypt, some
$1.3 billion, on the certification that Egypt is acting to
protect the religious freedom of its minorities. The
administration, both Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry,
refused to do so and waived it.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Government of Egypt continues
to allow attacks on Coptic Christians with impunity. I have
actually chaired three hearings on the targeting of Coptic
Christians, and I do believe much more needs to be done, and
robustly done, to protect this minority in Egypt.
Money does talk. The United States should be using
assistance to ensure recipient countries and entities have a
plan that is implemented to protect vulnerable religious
minorities.
And, with that, I look forward to hearing the testimony of
our distinguished witness from the administration. But I would
like to ask Mr. Schneider if he has any comments and then go to
Randy.
Mr. Schneider. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
calling this very important hearing.
As you rightly indicated, the sectarian violence in Syria
is an overlooked aspect of what we are seeing as events unfold,
with over 93,000 people already believed to be killed, the
number possibly being even much higher.
It is critical, as we look forward to moving Syria in a
different direction, that we take into consideration how we
create a future for Syria that does not lead to further
sectarian violence and oppression of minorities. So I look
forward to hearing from our witnesses and increasing our
understanding on this crucial issue.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much.
The distinguished vice chairman of the subcommittee?
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of a large
group of people, especially those of a particular ethnicity or
religion. Today, more than at any other time in modern history,
religious minorities are regularly persecuted, kidnapped,
tortured, and murdered in Syria, and throughout the Middle East
for that matter. They are experiencing the true definition of
``genocide.''
The Pew Research Center indicates that Christians are
targeted for governmental and societal persecution more than
any other religious group. Sadly, an estimated 100,000
Christians are killed for their faith every single year,
according to a recent United Nations report.
And yet the media is complicit in this genocide by failing
to shine a light on the plight of those being annihilated.
Their failure to inform the public prevents accountability and
action. Ignorant or not, as policymakers, we are all just as at
fault for our failure to step in and help protect the helpless.
After World War II, a war in which my father fought--and he
is one of the last of the living greatest generation, by the
way--we made a promise to the world never to forget. We echoed
that promise after 9/11: We would never forget. A promise to
the world that, after World War II, that we would ensure that
it never happened again.
But we have failed over and over again: In Cambodia, in the
Congo, in the Darfur, in Iraq, in Rwanda, and in places, quite
frankly, too numerous to mention. Countless millions have died
in genocides which occurred following our promise that we would
never let it happen again.
At what point do we say, enough is enough? Our word has to
mean something. Thousands are crying out to us to pay attention
and for us to act, and it is our moral obligation as the
world's leading superpower to do so, because it is who we are
as a Nation and a people.
To quote Reverend Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor
who actively spoke out against the Nazi regime in Germany,
``Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.'' He also
said, and I quote him here, ``We are not to simply bandage the
wounds of the victims beneath the wheels of injustice. We are
to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.'' Realizing that the
magnitude of the numbers can be overwhelming and awfully
paralyzing, perhaps we need to narrow our vision down to the
One who motivates action.
As those with knowledge of actual events on the ground, I
look to our witnesses today to give us not only some of these
individual accounts of what is happening within Syria but also
ways that we might engage and hold us accountable, by the way,
that we would be held accountable for the promises that we made
even as a previous generation. I would much rather be on the
side of those speaking and acting than those who stayed at
home.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Weber.
Mr. Kennedy?
Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
I just wanted to thank you for calling an important
hearing, and look forward to what our witnesses have to say on
the issue.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Yoho?
Mr. Yoho. Mr. Chairman, not right now.
Mr. Smith. Okay.
Mr. Collins?
Mr. Collins. No, thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
I would like to now introduce our distinguished panelist
from the administration, Thomas Melia, who is the Deputy
Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor. He is responsible for its work in Europe, including
Russia, and the countries of the Middle East and North Africa
region.
He came to DRL in 2010 from Freedom House, where he was
deputy executive director for 5 years. Earlier, Mr. Melia
worked at the National Democratic Institute, the AFL-CIO, and
on Capitol Hill. In addition, he taught democracy and human
rights courses at Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies and did that for more
than 10 years.
The floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF MR. THOMAS O. MELIA, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY,
BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR, U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF STATE
Mr. Melia. Chairman Smith and members of the subcommittees,
thank you for inviting me here to discuss the situation for
religious and other minorities in Syria today.
I request that the full prepared testimony be included in
the record, and I will just give you a summary.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Melia. Syria looks disturbingly different today than it
did at the start of the revolution. What started 2 years ago as
a peaceful demand for human rights in Daraa has turned into a
devastating nationwide conflict with a growing human toll. The
Assad regime continues to commit gross and systematic
violations of human rights.
Mr. Chairman, you recited the numbers, I don't need to
repeat them here, but the last several months have been
particularly concerning. We have seen increasing sectarian
undertones in the horrific massacres at Bayda, Baniyas, and
Qusayr. Indeed, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry's June 4 report
underscores that crimes against humanity have become a daily
reality for the people of Syria.
For centuries, Syria has been a rich tapestry of religious
and ethnic groups, including the Sunnis, the Alawis, Ismailis,
Shia, Druze, and different Christian communities. The regime
has provoked and attempted to divide Syria's population by
driving a wedge between these minorities and the Sunni
majority.
The regime continues to target faith groups it deems a
threat, including members of the country's Sunni majority and
numerous religious minorities. Such targeting includes killing,
detention, and harassment. Regime attacks have also destroyed
religious sites, including more than 1,000 mosques and an
undetermined number of other houses of worship, including
churches.
The attacks in Qusayr marked a dangerous new precedent of
direct sectarian threats by Hezbollah's forces fighting at the
behest of the regime. Over 200 civilians were killed and many
more wounded, who now desperately need humanitarian assistance.
We have also seen al-Qaeda-linked groups and other violent
extremist groups engaged in gross human rights abuses. We have
seen several reports of violent extremists conducting massacres
of Shia civilians as well as destroying a Shia mosque.
Many Christians, moreover, have reported receiving threats
on their lives if they do not join the opposition efforts
against the regime and have been driven from their homes and
killed en masse as presumed supporters of the regime. Syrian
Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim and Greek Orthodox
Archbishop Paul Yazigi were kidnapped on April 22 by persons
unknown and remain missing to this day.
The Nusra Front has claimed responsibility for bombings
across the country. A 15-year-old boy was executed for
blasphemy this month by extremists in Aleppo, who, reports tell
us, have come from outside the country to fight the regime.
These extremist groups do not support the aspirations nor
do they reflect the mindset of the vast majority of the Syrian
people or even the vast majority of the active Syrian
opposition. The atrocities committed by these extremist
elements should not be conflated with the efforts by the
moderate opposition, including the Supreme Military Council, to
seek an end to the Assad regime and to facilitate an orderly
political transition.
In fact, the list of targets that these extreme groups have
developed is increasingly long and includes Sunnis and
virtually all the minorities. In a recent interview with The
Economist magazine, one Nusra Front fighter stated that even
Sunnis who want democracy are to be considered unbelievers who
deserve to be punished.
Sectarian-based retribution plays directly into the
regime's and violent extremists' hands. It does not move the
country closer to the inclusive post-Assad future that Syrians
have been struggling to achieve.
In our conversations with opposition military leaders, we
have consistently urged opposition groups to respect
international law and human rights, and we have applauded those
groups that signed on to the code of conduct issued by the Free
Syrian Army in the fall of 2012.
We continue to try to help bring an end to the violent
conflict by strengthening the moderate opposition, blocking the
Assad regime's access to cash and weapons, facilitating a
political transition to end Assad's rule, and providing
substantial humanitarian assistance, as well as laying the
groundwork for an inclusive democratic transition, including
accountability for egregious violations committed. We are also
working closely with our allies to stem the flow of money and
resources to violent extremist groups.
We believe that a political transition is the best solution
for the crisis in Syria. We support the letter and intent of
the June 2012 Geneva Communique--June 30, almost exactly a year
ago--which calls for a transitional governing body with full
executive powers and formed on the basis of national consent.
We have been clear that there is no role for Assad in a
transitional government. He has lost all credibility and must
be held accountable for his crimes.
Our efforts to strengthen the moderate opposition and
change the balance on the ground include diplomatic outreach to
improve the representativeness and connectedness of the
opposition bodies themselves. We have repeatedly encouraged the
political opposition to include grassroots activists from
inside Syria, religious and ethnic minorities, and women from
all these communities in their leadership.
We hope that the upcoming meetings will produce more
diverse and inclusive membership and leaders who reflect the
diversity of Syrian society. We regularly track the violations
and abuses committed in Syria by all parties and regularly
reiterate our call for all parties to the conflict to protect
and to respect the rights of civilians regardless of ethnicity,
religion, or gender.
The international community must continue to support
documentation and other efforts to lay the groundwork for
justice and accountability processes and to support Syrian
efforts as they identify how best to bring to justice those who
have committed so many heinous acts.
As we expand our engagement with the Syrian opposition now,
efforts by the United States and the international community
focused on justice, accountability, and conflict resolution
will be critical to ensuring the protection of human rights
during Syria's transition. By helping Syrians to accelerate
their efforts to lay the groundwork for eventual criminal
trials, we aim to deter current and potential perpetrators of
these crimes as well as sectarian vigilante justice or
collective reprisals.
In addition to our other bureaus and agencies in the U.S.
Government engaged in coordinated programs to assist Syrians
over the past year or more, the State Department's Bureau for
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is supporting Syrian civil
society so they can more effectively coordinate to advocate for
human rights and democracy concerns.
We are also bolstering efforts to lay the groundwork for
future transitional justice initiatives by supporting the
documentation of violations and abuses committed by all sides
of the conflict and education about locally owned
accountability and transitional justice mechanisms.
We are also promoting conflict mitigation and
reconciliation efforts by supporting positive cross-sectarian
engagement, coalition building and targeted humanitarian
assistance, and conflict-prevention training at the local
level, working through respected NGOs and community leaders.
We support these activities by partnering with large
interfaith and ecumenical nongovernmental international
organizations and universities with experience in Syria. A
broad range of Syrian ethnic and religious minority groups are
included in these efforts.
We have also honored the work of human rights activists
such as Syrian Alawite activist Ms. Hanadi Zahlout, who
recently was selected for the 2013 Department of State Human
Rights Defender Award. She has been active on human rights
issues in Syria since before the revolution and was a founding
member of the local coordination committees, which are an
integral part of the opposition infrastructure. She is
providing education and messaging on anti-sectarianism as well
as raising awareness about threats to the security of minority
communities.
Finally, to ensure that our assistance reaches its intended
targets and does not end up in the hands of extremists, we will
continue to vet recipients using the formal processes that have
been established across various agencies.
The United States stood with the Syrian people at the
outset of this conflict, beginning with U.S. support for
activists and civil society during the early protest movement.
We stand with the Syrian people today, with ongoing and
increasing efforts to strengthen the opposition and civil
society. And we will continue to stand with them going forward
until the day that we can, together, welcome a new Syria, one
where the Syrian people can enjoy a free, stable, and
democratic country without Bashar al-Assad. We look forward to
continuing to work with Congress toward this goal.
Thank you again for this invitation to testify before your
committees. I am happy to take any questions you may have.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Melia, thank you very much for your
testimony and for the work of your office.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Melia follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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Mr. Smith. I do have a few questions I would like to pose,
beginning first with, do you have any sense as to how many
Christians, how many people of minority faiths have been
killed, wounded, and put to flight either as IDPs or as
refugees?
Mr. Melia. We don't have hard numbers on that because a lot
of the people that are gathering information about deaths,
displacement, refugees, et cetera, don't always sort the
numbers by religious affiliation. But we know the numbers are
appalling and they are growing in all communities, including in
the Christian minority.
Mr. Smith. In your testimony, is that something that if you
can look into it even further, get back to us with some number
just so we know the order of magnitude, how many people have
been killed or wounded?
Mr. Melia. We can certainly explore that. I will see what
we can find out about that for you.
Mr. Smith. That would be important to have.
In her testimony, Nina Shea points out that, and I quote
her in the pertinent part, ``the Christians are not simply
caught in the middle as collateral damage. They are the targets
of a more focused shadow war, one that is taking place
alongside the larger conflict between the Shiite-backed
Baathist Assad regime and the largely Sunni rebel militias.
Christians are the targets of an ethno-religious cleansing by
Islamist militants and courts.''
Do you agree with that?
Mr. Melia. Well, I am quite familiar with Ms. Shea's work
over the years. I was a colleague of hers at Freedom House for
a number of years, and I know she is one of the most astute
students of this subject.
I think she is right that the regime and other elements
that have come into the country in the course of this conflict
are targeting a number of the communities, including
specifically Christian communities. So it is clear that the
efforts to divide and conquer are affecting not only the
Christians but including the Christians, most definitely.
Mr. Smith. I will never forget back in the early 1980s a
visit that I had to El Salvador when Napoleon Duarte was the
President of El Salvador. And there was a big, raging
controversy in the United States about whether or not human
rights conditionality should be affixed to military aid. And in
a meeting with Ambassador Corr and myself, he said, ``While
some in this government may say no, put those human rights
safeguards on all of our aid,'' because it helps him even with
some of those people who might have been part of the right-wing
death squad apparatus that he abhorred himself.
My question is that we now have taken a side, a clear side,
with the Free Syrian Army and with other elements of the
opposition. And I wonder if you could tell us how we can ensure
that our support, both in the area of weaponry and humanitarian
support and logistical support, that we can ensure that the
people to whom we are providing that are not part of the
problem, are not committing atrocities and human rights abuses
in Syria.
Mr. Melia. Well, you are pointing to one of the most
difficult challenges that we have faced over these last many
months of this conflict in figuring out how best to intervene
in a constructive way, because there are so many different
militias and armed groups in various degrees of coordination
with one another in the battle against the Assad regime. So
that explains in significant part the hesitation to provide
more to the opposition, to make sure that we don't provide more
to the extremist elements that would work against our human
rights values and against the longer-term interests of a free
and stable Syria that we aspire to.
In the assistance we have been providing--and this will
certainly be enhanced as other kinds of assistance are
provided--we will do our utmost to vet the recipients of that
through the kinds of established mechanisms that we use to
enforce other kinds of human rights provisions in our security
and economic assistance.
So we are engaged right now. It is very difficult when you
don't have your established U.S. mechanisms in a country. We
don't have an established order of battle in the opposition
forces that we can study. The leadership doesn't control all of
the armed elements on the ground.
So what I can assure you is that this is very much at the
center of our deliberations. We are working very hard to figure
out the best way to provide the kind of vetting and end-use
monitoring that would ensure that the assistance we provide
goes to the people who are working toward a free, stable, and
democratic and rights-respecting Syria.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chairman? Over here, Mr. Chairman. Sorry.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Connolly?
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chairman--and I completely support your
line of questioning. I just--are we on the 5-minute rule in
terms of----
Mr. Smith. No, no. We are not.
Mr. Connolly. May I----
Mr. Smith. You will have as much time as you want to.
Mr. Connolly. As much time as we want?
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Within some reason. And that goes for me, as
well. Let me just ask a couple of other questions, and then I
will yield to my colleagues.
When we are talking about promises and getting promises not
to do harm, how do we follow up with that? How do we actually
ensure that, once out in the field with weapons provided by the
United States of America, that Christians and others are not
being slaughtered? How do we do that?
Mr. Melia. Well, the many months of engagement and
negotiation and political assistance that have been provided to
the Syrian opposition by my colleagues who are on the front
lines in that engagement. Now, you have met with Ambassador
Ford on many occasions. Others in our Government are engaged on
a constant basis with the Syrian political and military
opposition, and this is exactly the kind of conversations we
are having with them. They are endeavoring to persuade us that
they have the command and control necessary to oversee the
disposition of the equipment and the assistance we provide.
There is a trust building. There is a certain confidence
building. We are going to have to also rely on the reports that
we get from others, not only the people directly to whom we are
assisting but also the work of NGOs and journalists and others
who are gathering all kinds of information. So we will be doing
our utmost to gather as much realtime information as we can
from as many sources as we can about what is happening on the
ground in Syria. That all feeds into the database that we use
to do further vetting.
I wish I could promise you that there won't be any--I wish
I could promise you that we would be 100 percent successful in
only sending assistance to the most high-minded. But we will
certainly do our best to work with trusted people that we think
share our values and our goals.
Mr. Smith. Does the Free Syrian Army understand that if
they commit atrocities, if they rape and kill and execute
Christians, or anyone else for that matter, that U.S. funding
ceases?
Mr. Melia. Again, this has been very much a part of our
conversation, that--and they have made statements, and we know
that they have told their people in the field to adhere to the
international standards of humanitarian law and the laws of war
and conflict.
It is not a highly organized military organization, but it
is one that, as we engage with all Syrian organizations, this
is very much a part of our discourse with them. They know, they
know why we are there. We are there to support a transition to
a democratic, rights-respecting regime in Syria. And any of the
kind of behavior you are describing moves it in the opposite
direction, and we can't support that.
Mr. Smith. One final question. With regard to chain of
command, are our military advisers and the administration
sufficiently--have they been sufficiently assured that the
chain of command, what the general says follows through to the
colonels, to the lieutenants, right on down to the private? Or
does that kind of structure simply not exist, making, again,
any kind of discipline when it comes to human rights that much
harder to adhere to?
Mr. Melia. I am going to defer to my colleagues at the
Pentagon and elsewhere who are more directly in that lane of
responsibility for the details on how that happens. But all I
can say is that this is very much a part of our policy. And I
can assure you that in our near-daily interagency meetings on
this, this is not ever out of the discussion.
Mr. Smith. I do have a final question. If you had the
opposition versus the Assad military, how would the breakdown
in human rights violations be? I mean, is it 60-40? 80-20? Who
are committing the lion's share of these atrocities?
Mr. Melia. The regime of Bashar al-Assad is by far
responsible for the most crimes against humanity, the most
murders, the most dislocation of people in Syria. That is an
easy one.
Mr. Smith. Okay.
Mr. Melia. It is a painful one, but it is easy to say.
And we have been mindful and the leadership, the
responsible leadership in the Syrian opposition, has been
mindful of the arrival of extremists who have come in and say
that they are fighting the same battle but have different
agendas. And trying to separate them out is part of their job
and part of our job, to make sure that the extremist elements
do not benefit from our assistance.
Mr. Smith. Had we done this months ago, would it have made
a difference? I mean, Secretary Kerry himself said we are late.
Are we late?
Mr. Melia. I will leave it at what Secretary Kerry said.
The question is, what do we do tomorrow?
Mr. Smith. Okay.
With regards to the chain of command, I do hope you would
take that back. You know, I have chaired hearings and I have
been around the world many times. Even looking at U.N.
peacekeepers, who have a very rigid chain of command, and yet
in places like D.R. Congo it was the peacekeepers who were
raping 13-year-olds, which became, as you know, a horrific
scandal. And here we have people that aren't even part of an
organized military, so it raises very serious questions.
Mr. Schneider?
Mr. Schneider. Thank you.
And thank you for your testimony.
I want to touch a little bit--we were talking about the
militias and the effectiveness of vetting. Do you have a sense
of how many militias are currently active in Syria?
Mr. Melia. I think different parts of our Government have
studied this and come up with numbers that grow over time.
Mr. Schneider. But ballpark, is it----
Mr. Melia. Scores.
Mr. Schneider. Scores. So more than 40, approaching 60?
Mr. Melia. Scores.
Mr. Schneider. Of those militias, any sense of how many of
them are affiliated with specific sects or religious groups
versus how many are coming in from the outside or coming in
with a different agenda?
Mr. Melia. I don't know the answer to that. I do know that,
as the violence goes on, we see increasingly the different
communities, geographic communities, religious and ethnic
communities, are feeling increasingly obliged to organize
themselves and defend their communities. And that leads to the
proliferation of militias and different centers of military
activity, defensive and then conflictive.
Mr. Schneider. Well, let me come back to that in a second.
As far as looking at these scores of militias, how are we
planning to evaluate who is moderate and who is not?
Mr. Melia. That is the vetting process that I referred to
that the State Department and other agencies will go into. But
I would rather leave that for another venue to talk in more
detail about that.
Mr. Schneider. What are examples of maybe some definitions
of what makes one group moderate versus a different group?
Mr. Melia. I guess it depends on what they say their goals
are and then also how they behave. Stated goals and behavior I
think would tell you what different groups' orientations are.
And so that is--I guess I would leave it at that.
Mr. Schneider. One of the concerns I have--and I had a
chance to meet a woman--actually had a naturalization ceremony
on Friday, a brand-new American--from Syria, from the western
part of Syria. And she was relating a story of how her brother
lost vision in one eye, he is now in Turkey getting medical
treatment, but expressing her concern.
There was someone else who was talking about the
challenges--I guess there is a significant Armenian community
in Syria, and what they see and what they see as post-Assad.
And you have different opinions on different sides of the
outcome.
This split--and I will go to the percentage split within
the population. What percent of people within the minority
groups are fearful that, if the Assad regime falls, they would
be targets of retaliation?
Mr. Melia. I don't have a number answer for you,
Congressman, but I can say that anticipating that there would
be an instinct for some kind of vengeance against minority
communities has been part of our political/diplomatic
assistance engagement from the start, to warn against, urge
against any kind of vengeance and retributive violence.
So, again, as I say, this has been very much a part of our
conversation inside the government here and with our Syrian
partners from day one, because that is a downward cycle that
can only make things worse. So we have been--you are describing
exactly the challenge we face.
Mr. Schneider. So one of my fears as we look at it is--and
you used the word ``retribution,'' or ``retributive justice.''
I will call it, for lack of a better term, an antiquated
perspective on justice. We are looking for people who have a
more enlightened vision of justice, that can look at the past
but focus on the future.
Do you have a sense that there are enough people within
Syria, across the spectrum of different sects, that we can work
with and actually try to achieve an enlightened system of
justice in a new Syria?
Mr. Melia. We know there are people who are working toward
that and would like to see a system of rights-based respect for
the rule of law in Syria. Some of them, interestingly, are
judges in other parts of the judicial system that have defected
from the Assad regime and would like to be judges and
prosecutors in a better Syria.
We know that there are people who have been in opposition
in human rights groups and elsewhere for a long time who also
see a vision for a rights-respecting system in Syria based on
international standards and norms. So we know the people are
there. And those are the people that we are trying to support
through our assistance efforts and our technical advisory
assistance efforts.
Mr. Schneider. Okay.
As we engage, as we look forward, find groups that will
share our values and vision, best-case scenario, how likely do
you think our prospects for success are?
Mr. Melia. I think the success of the Syrian transition
will depend mainly on the people of Syria and how they organize
themselves and where they push their leaders and where their
leaders take them. You know, we are playing, along with a
number of other international partners, an important supporting
role, but I think it is important always to keep in mind that
this is not so much about us as it is about Syrians. And if we
can support people to move it in the right direction, we can do
that. And that is what we are engaged in trying to do now.
Mr. Schneider. And my last questions, or line of questions.
You touched on it a little bit. In the cities, in Aleppo and
Damascus, where you have large, cosmopolitan areas where you
have different religious groups living together and, for a long
time, as you said in your opening remarks, living in peace,
that is one situation. But in the villages, where, as you
mentioned, now entire villages which would tend to be more of
one faith or another, organizing and unifying. I had a chance
to observe a battle from just across the border between Druze
in a Druze village surrounded by Sunnis. And it is a real
concern.
Are the villages going to be able to engage in a future
Syria, or are they going to carry these grudges and we are
going to see an intense or intensifying sectarian warfare after
the fall of the Assad regime?
Mr. Melia. Well, our efforts in engaging with the political
opposition have been to encourage and cajole and persuade them
to make their political apparatuses as inclusive and
representative of Syrian diversity as possible. That will
continue to be our effort. We will continue to try to push them
in that direction.
And, you know, as we have seen in war-torn societies around
the world, that is one of the most difficult things afterwards
when conflicts have broken down along ethnic, sectarian,
religious, linguistic lines, to try to patch back together
diverse communities. That will be a long row to hoe for Syria.
And we will endeavor to work with them to find peace-
building mechanisms, cross-community efforts at reconciliation.
And right now we are focusing on trying to strengthen the
political opposition that will provide a better model for a way
forward for Syria, to get them to the negotiating table and to
help them articulate a vision for an inclusive, democratic,
rights-respecting Syria.
Mr. Schneider. If the road diverges and we end up in a
failed state in Syria, what geographies do you see? Do you see
it fracturing into multiple sectarian districts, or is it a
complete failed state?
Mr. Melia. Well, now you are getting into speculating about
what is the worst thing that could possibly happen. So I am
going to not take the bait----
Mr. Schneider. Fair enough.
Mr. Melia [continuing]. And decline to go that way.
Mr. Schneider. I understand. Thank you for your responses.
I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Weber?
Mr. Weber. Mr. Melia, you are the Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy and Human Rights
and Labor; is that right?
Mr. Melia. That is right, sir.
Mr. Weber. How long have you been doing that?
Mr. Melia. 3 years.
Mr. Weber. 3 years. Are you enjoying that job? I hate to
put you on the spot, but I am going to put you on the spot.
Mr. Melia. It is a terrific opportunity to serve my country
in an important role in the government. I get to work with
colleagues across Europe and the Middle East to try to
integrate human rights considerations into our broader foreign
policy. It is a terrific opportunity for a guy like me.
Mr. Weber. Well, you sound like a politician. We will watch
your career and see what you run for next.
So you were there on August the 21, 2012. Your 3 years
would have predated that, according to the Associated Press
release, when President Obama said that if chemical weapons
were used in Syria, that was a red line that would be crossed
and the United States would take action. Do you recollect that?
Mr. Melia. I do. I do.
Mr. Weber. Okay.
Mr. Melia. We have been reminded of that a number of times
since.
Mr. Weber. I would imagine. According to the AP article,
some 20,000 people at that point, after 1\1/2\ years of
struggle, had lost their lives. Does that strike you as
correct, a reasonable estimate back then?
Mr. Melia. Yeah, I can't challenge that. I don't remember
the dates----
Mr. Weber. Okay.
Mr. Melia [continuing]. Or the numbers, but----
Mr. Weber. Well, I will tell what you my wife tells me: I
wasn't looking for a challenge, okay?
Now, to date, what is that number to date? What are we
estimating, how many people have lost their lives?
Mr. Melia. In Syria? The United Nations has reported it is
above 93,000, and others say it is over 100,000.
Mr. Weber. Would you calculate the time from August 21,
2012, to date for me, please? How long has that been, August--
--
Mr. Melia. That is 11 months.
Mr. Weber. 11 months.
Mr. Melia. Close to 11 months.
Mr. Weber. A little less than 11 months.
You made the comment that you wish you could promise we
would be 100 percent successful in only sending weapons to the
``most high-minded'' in earlier testimony here today. How do
you decide who is the most high-minded?
Mr. Melia. I am going to leave the discussion for whatever
expanded assistance is being provided to the Syrian opposition
for others at a higher pay grade. I am trying to describe for
you, Congressman, the efforts that we are making to ensure that
whatever assistance we provide is accompanied by a strong
emphasis on respect for the international humanitarian law and
the rules of war and democratic standards for addressing human
rights violations.
Mr. Weber. So it was 20,000 people on August the 21, 2012,
that had lost their lives. And now it is, what did you say,
almost 90,000?
Mr. Melia. [Nonverbal response.]
Mr. Weber. So we are going to leave that to other people to
make a decision. How is that working for those 70,000 people
that have since lost their lives? It is not working, is it? We
have got to have activity, action, on our part, wouldn't you
say?
Mr. Melia. Congressman, the President of the United States,
two Secretaries of State, and two Secretaries of Defense have
been focused on this on a daily basis. We are working to
support the Syrian people to move to a post-Assad situation.
This is one of the highest priorities of this government. We
are doing it mindful of all of the complexities that
Congressman Smith, Congressman Schneider described for us
earlier.
And we have--as you noted, the President's spokesman said a
couple weeks ago that a red line on chemical-weapons use has
been crossed and that we are broadening the nature of our
assistance to the Syrian opposition. So we are moving in that
direction.
Mr. Weber. You said in earlier testimony here today that
the regime of Assad had by far committed the most crimes
against humanity. Would you give us a percentage of that? Are
they committing 60 percent, 70 percent of what you are seeing
on the ground, 90 percent? Would you attribute a number to that
for us?
Mr. Melia. I have seen different estimates from different
agencies--humanitarian, journalists, et cetera. It is by far--
it is in the 80, 90 percent or more are responsible.
Mr. Weber. So of the 90,000 people killed who have lost
their lives in this, you would say that some 80,000 are
attributable to the Assad regime?
Mr. Melia. [Nonverbal response.]
Mr. Weber. And I realize that is a guess. Okay.
Do you think the lack of action on our part--you know, let
me just--let me say it this way. You know--and you work at the
State Department; that is why I was curious about your title
and how long you have been there.
You know, Mark Twain said that a committee is a group of
individuals who by themselves can do nothing, but collectively
they can decide that nothing can be done.
And my fear is that we have a situation where we go over
there--and I am not attacking you personally--but we look at
what is going on and we make all these grandiose observations
and these declarations that that would be a red line crossed,
and then we decide that nothing can be done, and we sit back
and we wait, and more and more people lose their lives.
Is that what is going on in the State Department?
Mr. Melia. I think that is an incorrect description, to say
that nothing has been done since then or nothing is being done
today.
We are providing close to $1 billion worth of assistance to
Syrians, displaced persons and refugees in neighboring
countries. We are providing a range of assistance--I described
just some of it--in terms of political advisory assistance to
the political opposition at a national level and to local
councils around the country in the liberated areas. We are
providing support for their efforts to rebuild and sustain the
infrastructure of Syria in the liberated areas.
To say that nothing is being done I think is just not
accurate.
Mr. Weber. Well, then, it is your contention here today
that, based on your earlier comments, you want to vet 100
percent--well, you can't guarantee 100 percent, but you want to
vet people who are the highest-minded. You want to get involved
and you want to help, but yet, how you do that, how do you
decide who is the highest-minded is above your pay grade. Whose
pay grade is that?
Mr. Melia. Well, we have a number of professionals in the
government--we do this all the time on different kinds of
assistance programs. And maybe I will rephrase the ``high-
mindedness'' to say what we are looking to do is exclude
violators of human rights. We are looking to make sure that our
assistance, and consistent with the comments and questions from
your colleagues, don't inadvertently go to people that are
going to commit human rights violations with our assistance. We
are there to strengthen those people that are committed to
building a democratic, rights-respecting Syria.
Mr. Weber. Do we have a good track record in doing that?
Mr. Melia. I think if you look around the world, I think we
have often been able to help people do the right thing and
strengthen institutions----
Mr. Weber. For example, Libya? Iraq? Afghanistan?
Let me change gears a little bit on you. When the President
makes a statement that the use of chemical weapons is a red
line that is crossed, will be a game-changer--in fact, he
said--let me quote from the article here: ``The President noted
that he hadn't ordered''--I am sorry. `` `That is an issue that
doesn't just concern Syria. It concerns our close allies in the
region, including Israel. It concerns us,' Obama said,
underscoring that the U.S. wouldn't accept the threat of
weapons of mass destruction from Syrian President Bashar al-
Assad's government, rebels fighting the government, or militant
groups aiding either side.'' The AP quoted him, ``We cannot
have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are
falling into the hands of the wrong people.''
The article went on to say that ``the President noted that
he hadn't ordered any armed U.S. intervention yet but said, `We
have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in
the region that that is a red line for us and there would be
enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the
chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons. That
would change my calculations significantly,' he said,'' August
21, 2012.
And yet 70,000 more people have died. Are we losing
credibility in the world?
Mr. Melia. No. In fact, this administration has
reestablished American credibility in quite a remarkable way.
So I think that to say that----
Mr. Weber. That is why Russia and China have sent back
what's-his-face? That is why they have extradited him to our
country?
Mr. Melia. How many subjects do you want to go over, Mr.
Congressman?
Mr. Weber. Well, I am simply saying that, as a supervisor
in the State Department, at what point do you say to those who
are that higher pay grade, we are not getting the job done and
we need to change? At what point do you--how many more people
have to lose their lives before that message gets communicated
up the line?
Mr. Melia. You have quoted the President. The President's
spokesman followed up on that, Ben Rhodes, in the statement he
made 2 weeks ago on Thursday. When the evidence came in that
the red line had been crossed, decisions had been taken, and we
are moving forward.
Mr. Weber. Well, then, Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield
back, but I have a suggestion for a future hearing. Maybe we
get people with a higher pay grade in here to testify and
answer those questions as to what it takes to get to that
process.
I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Connolly?
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
And I would love to have a hearing where Members of
Congress actually have to explain themselves in terms of what
it is they want the United States to do. Are you willing to go
to war again? Are you willing to put troops on the ground if it
doesn't work out? Do you have omniscience? Do you know who is
good and who is bad in Syria?
Because unless you do, I don't think you are in the
position to lecture this administration about the options it
has and the options it has exercised. This country is sick of
war and does not want to be sucked into another one.
Mr. Melia----
Mr. Melia. Congressman.
Mr. Connolly [continuing]. Help me understand how we are
supposed to--the title of this hearing is ``Religious
Minorities in Syria: Caught in the Middle.'' Do you think that
is a fair description of religious minorities in Syria?
Mr. Melia. I think that is not an unreasonable description.
The religious minorities, of course, are disparate, not all of
like mind or like situation. But they are in a very difficult
place, not least because for the last several decades they have
lived in a very repressive country where the government has
squelched the ability of people to interact normally between
communities, within their communities.
This country is emerging in fits and starts from decades of
repressive, totalitarian rule. That means that it is hard for
people to build trust and confidence across communities. It is
hard for them to think about how to build a better future. But
it is beginning to happen now. There are Syrians that are
coming out and building these bridges, and we are trying to
support that.
Mr. Connolly. A little bit of history. When Hafez Assad
came to power, he championed the cause and was himself a member
of a particular sect not fully accepted as even Islamic by
some, the Alawite sect; is that correct?
Mr. Melia. That is right.
Mr. Connolly. And in championing their cause, did he also
champion the cause of other minorities in Syria at the time, or
purport to?
Mr. Melia. I will defer to the knowledgeable Congressman on
the strategies and policies of Hafez al-Assad.
Mr. Connolly. But you are looking at human rights; you knew
what the title of this hearing was. So I am just trying to
explore with you a little bit of history to put things in
context.
Mr. Melia. Right.
Mr. Connolly. If you were a Christian Syrian and a minority
Alawite government comes to power, initially, do you feel
better or worse about the protection of your rights as a
minority within Syria at the time?
Mr. Melia. Well, one might think that minorities would be
better treated if the government was led by a person from a
minority community.
Mr. Connolly. Could there be rational reason to be
concerned if you were a minority at that time about, in a
sense, the tyranny of the majority?
Mr. Melia. Absolutely.
Mr. Connolly. Are there historical reasons, not only in
Syria but in the region, to find that concern not entirely
irrational?
Mr. Melia. Absolutely. It is a common dilemma across the
region and indeed worldwide that minorities feel sometimes at
the mercy of majority communities that they may be alienated
from, yes.
Mr. Connolly. So, I like the title of this hearing, Mr.
Chairman, because I think it actually accurately captures the
ambiguity, the mixed feelings one might have if one were a
member of a religious minority in terms of the current
situation in Syria. If we had an insurgency that explicitly
embraced, and within reason, it could be confirmed, diversity,
protection of minority rights and the composition of which was
itself very diverse and explicitly reassuring the minorities in
Syria their rights would be better protected than they had been
in the current brutal regime, I assume, Mr. Melia, that would
make your job a little easier.
Mr. Melia. Well, it would, and that has been our quest is
to encourage the opposition, the civilian opposition to Assad
to work in precisely that direction, to articulate, and they
have in some significant ways, a vision that is inclusive of
diversity, of religious and ethnic diversity in Syria.
The challenge is going to be to help them make that real.
You know, we have encouraged them to include in the leadership
of the Syrian opposition a diverse set of individuals
representing the many different communities, including women.
They haven't always taken our advice, but that remains part of
our encouragement to them.
So we are trying to encourage them to work in precisely the
direction you describe, Congressman.
Mr. Connolly. Is it your impression that we have made
headway in that regard so that the leadership of the
opposition, the armed opposition is better sensitized and
itself more diverse than it was at the time of the uprising?
Mr. Melia. We have made some headway but not enough.
Mr. Connolly. Is there evidence within Syria that
minorities are responding to the call of the armed opposition
and abandoning the Assad regime?
Mr. Melia. Well, let me also emphasize that there are--
there is the political opposition, which is affiliated to the
armed opposition but which is distinct, and our efforts on
working with Syrians to build out their vision for a political
future for their country are concentrated mainly with civilian
leaders, but that is the group that Ambassador Ford and
Assistant Secretary Jones and Under Secretary Sherman have been
engaged with over many weeks to try to encourage them to come
together and create a coherent political organization that,
among other things, could go to a conference in Geneva and
negotiate the future of Syria and to provide more--the
beginnings of governance in Syria.
At the same time, there are these local councils that have
emerged in various parts of liberated Syria with their own
elections, their own dynamics. There is a different group of
leaders that are emerging there. And then there is the broad
swath of independent civil society, men and women and their
families who are not literally part of the opposition, per se,
not even--not part of the military opposition, maybe not part
of the political opposition but who would like to live in a
better the Syria, and that civil society is also another object
of our attention, to try to help them build out, if you will,
nonpartisan institutional-oriented projects for building toward
a democratic Syria.
Mr. Connolly.Well, I was in Egypt before the revolution and
after the revolution, and many of the same arguments could have
been used about Egypt during the revolution. And it is a
similar dynamic where, because there was no political space
allowed for a long period of time, only that which was
organized underground and organized well is going to benefit
from the vacuum created by the revolution. And so, there were
lots of secular advocates for a civil society, for a
pluralistic society, respect for minority rights who showed up
at Tahrir Square and elsewhere, and they were essentially
brushed aside when the political process got under way by the
only organized opposition group in the country, the Muslim
Brotherhood, and it is a work in progress, and the jury is out,
but there are a lot of alarming signs that it is not a
desirable outcome.
And we did get early behind the ouster of Mubarak. We
didn't get involved militarily, but we certainly put our chips
on the line very early in Egypt. And one could argue that that
is an outcome that certainly is a source of concern at this
moment.
This committee had a hearing just last week about the
judgment with respect to NGO employees, and we have expressed
concern about democratization and so forth. So, I guess my
concern is that the choices here are not easy, though some
would have us believe they are, and that those who want us to
intervene aggressively as if it is a black and white
situation--the good guys all wear white hats and the bad guys
all wear black ones--will have to explain when and if, God
forbid, the outcomes are not to our liking.
I do not believe that the choices in Syria are all that
clear. I wish they were. I do agree, of course, that the
administration regime of Bashar Assad must go, but we are going
have to work very carefully to make sure that that which
replaces it is a government that respects the rights of
minorities, including religious minorities.
I am very grateful you had this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Kinzinger.
Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I will start with a real quick quote from Winston
Churchhill. He says, ``You have enemies, good. That means you
have stood up for something some time in your life.''
I believe that in what I have seen lately in this
administration, to be honest with you, we are out to make
friends with everybody. I think it was mentioned earlier what
is going on with the man who stole--the 29-year-old who
basically decided he was going to take it upon himself to
determine U.S. foreign policy and is now being held by, I
guess, the Russians, and there is this kind of carnival going
on, and some people call him a hero. I tend to think he is a
traitor, but that said.
We don't really know, I think, where the administration
stands on a lot of issues. The administration came in, they
said they wanted a great reset with Russia. Unfortunately, I
don't think Russia got that information. We disarmed our
ability to defend ourselves against attacks, to the chagrin of
our allies, and the Russians responded by increasing their
nuclear arsenal.
The gentleman that spoke before me said something about
yelling--in terms of we don't know where we want to go, do we
know who the enemy is? Do we know what exactly goals we need to
achieve in Syria? And the answer is, no, we don't. And the
reason is because for the last 2 years, I have not heard this
administration sell those goals to the American people.
The leader of the free world is not the United States
Congress. The leader of the free world is the President of the
United States. Everywhere from 2009, where there was uprising
in Iran, utter silence, crickets on the side of the
administration. To the situation in Syria, where we saw Bashar
al-Assad initially being challenged by people who wanted
freedom from a dictatorship, we got crickets from this
administration. And now we have created ourselves, we have put
ourselves in a situation where the opposition does have al-
Qaeda influence and the opposition does have extremist
influence, and the opposition now is much more muddled because
there has been not been American leadership.
And, sir--and I say this respectfully because I understand
you are here as kind of the face of the administration. You are
not the one necessarily making these decisions. That was made
clear. But a big question I have is where has the
administration been in terms of selling this to the American
people? And if we have been as active as you say, then how come
we, on this committee, have talked to allies that have told us
they are begging for United States leadership to bring these
groups together? I won't necessarily out who is saying that,
but I will say allies have talked to us and said, we need
American leadership in this.
So, if you care to elaborate on exactly what we are doing
in bringing allies together and taking a prime role in solving
this situation, I will give you a short opportunity to do that.
Mr. Melia. Well, let me just--I am not sure I can respond
to all the points you raised, Congressman.
Mr. Kinzinger. I don't expect you to, no worries.
Mr. Melia. Let me simply say that we are engaged
constantly. Secretary Kerry is on the phone and in the room
with our allies in Europe and----
Mr. Kinzinger. Well, and I understand he wants to bring the
Russians together and the Russians have made very clear that
they have a very different interest, and if they come together
and talk to us, it is probably to buy some time. It is not
going to be because we are going to enlighten them with our
philosophy, and they will want to have freedom in Syria. Go
ahead.
Mr. Melia. So, the United States currently in the person of
Secretary Kerry is on a daily basis engaged with our friends
and allies in Europe and across the Middle East on bringing
them together around Syria and utilizing everybody's points of
access to try to bring people to the table as well as to
organize effective humanitarian and other support to Syrian
opposition.
So, I don't know who you have heard from among our allies
that says we are not leading this, but they certainly come to
the meetings we convene, and there is a coordinated effort
under way, and I think we are leading it.
Mr. Kinzinger. That is the point, and Congress--I have been
in Congress for 2\1/2\ years now, and I have learned something,
and that is, there are plenty of meetings but little action,
and so bringing people to meetings--and again, I say this
understanding you are not the one leading this, so this isn't a
personal attack, but you are the face of the administration
today. I think leading meetings isn't necessarily going to
solve a situation, we have 90,000 people, vast majority of them
innocent, that have lost their lives.
It was also said earlier, ``America is sick and tired of
war.'' I get it. America is tired. We are. As a military pilot
and somebody that has been to a bunch of theaters in that
capacity and still in the military, I can tell you, we would
love all this war to go away, but we live in a moment in time
right now where history in 50 or 100 years is going to judge
what we did in this epic shift in what America and the world
looks like. This is not the time to be fatigued. This is not
the time for America to say, well, yeah, we get it, Iraq didn't
go exactly as we had planned; Afghanistan has been a lot longer
than we had planned. I feel like the administration is in a
hurry to get out of Afghanistan on an artificial timeline, but
that is a separate subject.
This is not the moment where America can say, we don't have
the luxury to say we are a little fatigued, it is time to just
move on, because in 50 or 100 years, the history books that our
kids and grandkids read is going to say, what did America do
during this time when there was a monumental shift? And it will
either be a monumental shift toward a, I don't know, Russian,
Chinese-centric world, monumental shift toward extremism, a
monumental shift toward chaos, or it could be a monumental
shift where America seized an opportunity and led the charge of
freedom around the globe.
One of the verses of the Star Spangled Banner actually has
a great line that unfortunately doesn't get said very much. It
is, ``Oh, conquer we must when our cause is just,'' and that is
something that I think we ought not to forget.
One other thing I want to chat with you about. You
mentioned that this administration has re-established
credibility around the globe, re-established credibility around
the globe. I would like to--I will give you an opportunity to
elaborate on that, sir.
Mr. Melia. I am tempted to try to cover the waterfront as
you have, Congressman. There is obviously a rich discussion to
be had.
Mr. Kinzinger. Yeah. Unfortunately, I control the time,
though, so just if you could--if you could go on with re-
establishing credibility, that is what I am curious about.
Mr. Melia. Well, I will just give you one example, which is
that this administration made the decision to become much more
active in the international arenas of the United Nations, U.N.
Human Rights Council, the OSCE, where we have come to play a
leadership role, galvanizing these international mechanisms to
articulate and enhance the norms that reflect our values,
freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of
religion, and there is a number of ways in which we have led
the international community in these venues to step up and
agree with our propositions that these fundamental
international human rights are the international system's
standards.
So, that happens through patient diplomacy, engaging with a
wide range of countries, and we have the credibility to do
that. We lead these discussions, and we often get them to a
good result, not 100 percent of the time, but often, when we
engage, we succeed.
Mr. Kinzinger. Unfortunately, though, sometimes if you
don't back that with strength, and you know, say, as was
mentioned earlier by Mr. Weber, talking about a red line, I
have said before, if you are in a crowded theater and the only
way to empty that crowded theater is if you yell the world
``red line,'' don't do it because it has a very powerful
meaning if you are President of the United States.
So, with that, I will yield back. I want to say I do
respect your work for the country, and I appreciate you being
here. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Kinzinger.
Just a few follow-up questions, and if Mr. Connolly or any
other member of the committee has any additional questions, I
hope they will fire away.
Let me just ask you, if I could, Dr. Jasser will testify
later today that the Assyrian International News Agency
recently reported that armed rebels affiliated with the Free
Syrian Army raided the Christian populated al-Duvair village
and massacred all of its civilian residents, including women
and children.
Are you aware of this report? Was it investigated by the
State Department? And did it show the Free Syrian Army
responsible? And how are those battalions? How are those troops
being held to account?
Mr. Melia. I confess that I--I don't know the details on
that specific incident. I will be glad to take the question, if
that is all right, and come back to you.
Mr. Smith. I appreciate that, and get back to us as soon as
you can.
Mr. Melia. Okay.
Mr. Smith. Dr. Eibner, who will also testify, has just
returned from Syria, and he says the very existence of
religious minorities in the Middle East are under threat. What
is happening to Christians is genocide, and as a matter of
fact, earlier they had put out a genocide alert, and I am
wondering if you agree that this is a genocide.
Mr. Melia. Our Government has not come to the use of the
word ``genocide'' at this point. We just talk about crimes
against humanity, and there is certainly some--many, many gross
human rights violations. The word ``genocide'' is fraught with
legal and moral and political meaning. I wouldn't toss it
around casually. I know it is an important part of this
discussion. I just would say that we are not there yet, but I
think it is certainly a worthy discussion to have.
Mr. Smith. Well, as you know, the very Genocide Convention
talks about in whole or in part. It would seem with the
evaporating, as Dr. Eibner says, the very existence of
religious organizations in the Middle East are under threat,
this is the ultimate game changer. People are not only being
slaughtered; they are leaving, and so I would hope you would
take that back. And I would agree that it is--it does carry
with it implications in law, but I think it is a good thing.
I remember the fight we had with Sudan in trying to get
Sudan in the horrific killings in Darfur designated as a
genocide, and the reluctance was appalling on the part of so
many, including our friends in the European community, so--and
you were there as well, so I--please take that back because I
do think, you know, we need to call it for what it is, the
systematic elimination of people because of their beliefs in
whole or in part. If that is not happening in Syria, I don't
know what is.
You mentioned also about the importance of documenting the
atrocities, and I couldn't agree more. I do hope, though, that
the documentation is thorough, that people on every side of the
divide who are committing atrocities are held to account, but I
would also say I think it is--it is--it is thoughtful, but I
don't think it is--it comports with the reality that some
somehow Assad or others on the Free Syrian Army side really
take the idea that they will be held to account some day all
that seriously. Milosevic never did. Charles Taylor did not.
Karadzic and all the others who systematically slaughtered
people after the fact, after the war is over, then they
realized that they were in a heap of trouble, but it is
important that we document. But I am wondering, how much
resources do we spend on that, and are we going just for the
higher ups? Because we saw with the Yugoslav court, the Sierra
Leone court, the Rwandan court, very often, the very people who
were the ones who pulled the trigger and mowed people down and
raped with--horribly were not the ones held to account, so I am
wondering how far down the line of responsibility we will be
going.
Mr. Melia. Well, there are different efforts under way
through nongovernmental organizations to collect and organize
the information. Our bureau is supporting one major effort in
that regard, but there are others, Syrians in exile working
with Syrians in the country. I don't know that I can--the
documentation is inclusive and far-reaching. It is not looking
at people at a certain grade or rank. It is looking at
incidents and then trying to connect the dots about who might
be responsible.
Mr. Smith. But in the past, as you know, and I know you
know this so well, having a background that is very rich in
human rights work, the colonels and the other people who commit
these atrocities are often--are often not held to account. It
is the very top, and for that matter, very few at the very top.
Mr. Melia. Well, the documentation efforts are as
comprehensive as they can be. Decisions will be made later by
Syrians in the first instance and then perhaps by other bodies
about what the accountability might be and for who and in
what----
Mr. Smith. And would this be something that would be
brought at the ICC, or it something that a special court that
might be established? What is the venue?
Mr. Melia. We haven't gotten there yet. We just got in
information for whatever venue might make use of it later on.
Mr. Smith. Several years back, I held the only and one of
the most contentious hearings I have ever held on the Armenian
genocide, and we had both sides, the Turks and the Armenians on
both side of the divide there at the table, at the witness
table, but now, fast forward to now and the fact that some
100,000 Armenians have fled, are there any special efforts
being made to reach out to that community as well as others to
help them with their refugee status?
Mr. Melia. You know, that is a good question, Congressman.
I don't have a concrete answer for you, but I will be glad to
look into what our engagement has been with the Armenian
community. I know we have met with leaders of the Armenian
church and some of the members of the ethnic community, so I
know it is part of our engagement. I just don't have a specific
answer for you on whether we have done something in particular
for that community, per se.
Mr. Smith. Very shortly, we will be marking up a piece of
legislation introduced by Congressman Frank Wolf that focuses
on--it would establish a special envoy for Middle East
religions. Obviously, he began to think--and I am a cosponsor
of it and proud to be so--how important it is that someone walk
point on these Christians who are being, as Dr. Eibner said,
their very existence is under threat. Very existence.
Does the administration support the Wolf bill?
Mr. Melia. We do not. We think that the Ambassador At Large
for International Religious Freedom and staff of the
International Religious Freedom office is able to address these
issues, and we don't need an additional envoy at this point.
Mr. Smith. With all due respect, I hope you will convey to
your superiors how disappointing that is because it seems to me
that there are religious persecutions occurring all over the
world. China is probably worst among the worst. The Ambassador-
at-Large, which was Wolf's bill as well, went through my
committee--we did all the heavy lifting on it in this
committee--is one person--it is an office, of course, but it
seems to me that a special envoy with a singular focus would
have, at least with the ear of the President, would have
additional clout to really convey, including to the Free Syrian
Army how serious we are about hands off those people who are at
risk, including the Christians, so I would hope you would take
that back. We had the same fight, as you know, with a Special
Envoy for Sudan. And it took a long time, but we finally got
it, but I hope you will take that back that we are
disappointed.
Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Melia. I will bring it back to my superiors.
Mr. Smith. Oh, I see.
Please, Mr. Yoho.
Mr. Yoho. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I will be brief. It seems like, when I was here, you
answered pretty much everything that was asked over and over
again, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, but what
I see in the Middle East, it seems like a broken record with
the policies that we have had and the same conflicts that come
up. And I read, too, that article you read about or referenced
about the 15-year-old boy that was assassinated in front of his
parents, and my concern is like everybody else, to give
military assistance to these groups, even if we vet them, you
know, there is no guarantee that somebody else will come in and
take those arms away. And from your experience, what other non-
intervention techniques, strategies can we come up with and how
can we include more Arab nations involved in this? Because, as
we all know, if Westerners intervene in an Islamic state, it
tends to unify against the Westerners, so what else could we
do, instead of military assistance, to help stop this?
Can we employ and engage the U.N. more, since that was one
of their main missions is to help resolve world conflicts, and
it doesn't seemed like we are doing very well there either. And
from your experience in the years you have had in foreign
affairs around the world, what other strategy could we come up
with? I mean, there has got to be a better way instead of
sending arms over there, because we tried that in--I mean, even
our own administration sending them to Mexico, we couldn't keep
track of them. And I don't know how we can keep track of them
in a foreign nation. So, if you could elaborate real briefly.
Mr. Melia. What we have been engaged, since long before
this uprising and conflict began, in isolating the Syrian
regime through financial sanctions and political sanctions, and
that has been escalated over these last 2 years through a
series of measures that we have implemented so that the
financial and economic assistance to the Syrian regime has been
reduced to dramatically, thanks to American leadership in
mobilizing the international community on this sanctions
regime.
The conference that Secretary Kerry has proposed, along
with Foreign Minister Lavrov to bring together the different
sides in Syria is to be convened, in fact, by the United
Nations--I mean, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who would
convene that conference. So although the initiative has come
from U.S. and Russian foreign ministers, it is intended and is
envisioned to be managed by the United Nations. So we have been
mobilizing the international community in a variety of ways to
provide--to try to cut off the assistance to the regime and
also to facilitate a discussion.
As you well know, the Russian and Chinese Governments have
not cooperated in our efforts to bring greater Security Council
weight to these decisions on Syria, and we know that several
countries are continuing to supply weapons to the government.
Mr. Yoho. Okay.
Mr. Melia. And that is--that is feeding the problem. That
is fuelling the problem.
Mr. Yoho. It is, and I agree, and that is the broken record
I see over and over again. What other Arab countries are we
bringing to the table that have a vested interest? I know
Jordan is right there, and you know, we have got Turkey to the
north. I mean, how else can we engage them and make a stronger
presence to where the influence is coming from them to say
let's calm this down, let's, you know, let's develop our
economies and not worry about this other stuff and help that
situation in that forum instead of, here is your guns, here is
your military aid, and it just--it just doesn't seem like that
works. Who else is coming to the table?
Mr. Melia. Well, the Arab League, which is the 22-member
organization in which Syria had been a member for many years,
initially was divided over this. They expelled the Syrian
regime, and most of the Arab governments of the Arab League are
on increasingly visibly on the side of the opposition in
various ways, and so they have seen this as a problem that they
would like to see resolved sooner rather than later, and they
are very much a part of this multilateral engagement that
Secretary Kerry is in--he was in Saudi Arabia today. He was in
Bahrain recently. I mean, he is constantly engaging with our
Arab friends on this question as well as with the Europeans.
Mr. Yoho. All right.
Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield back. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just a few brief items. One, I think you made a statement,
you have been asked about twice about the restoration of U.S.
prestige and engagement around the world. I want to presume by
you saying that that there was something to be restored. There
was prestige to be restored. Was that your point?
Mr. Melia. I think I am going to resist the temptation to
get into an analysis of the previous administration's foreign
policy. I just don't think it would be productive for today's
hearing, with all due respect to the Congressman.
Mr. Connolly. Fine. I will not show such restraint. I mean,
it is very clear that the United States' prestige and
engagement around the world were badly damaged by 8 years of
the previous administration. We can hold in abeyance whether
what they decided to do was good, bad, or indifferent, but what
is beyond dispute is it was controversial, unwelcome in the
international community and did us damage with allies and
neutral nations alike and enormous repair work had to be done.
That's one of the reasons why the former Secretary, Hillary
Clinton, spent so much time traveling. She wanted to repair,
face to face, damaged relationships in every continent on the
planet. So, the idea that somehow our prestige is on the line
because we haven't invaded Syria or made a clearcut decision
about who to support in Syria, I find ironic, at best, so I
will say it for you.
I thought the chairman made a very important point about
atrocities and war crimes, and if I took what you were getting
at, Mr. Smith, by documenting them now, by making sure that
those perpetrating those crimes are fully aware of the fact we
are doing that and that sooner or later they will be brought to
justice, it seems to me, could help on lots of levels, not
least of which is perhaps helping to deter some of the
atrocities, though as Mr. Weber points out, 90,000. 93,000 is a
horrific number for a country the size of Syria.
What are we doing to track atrocities and to advertise
broadly that we are doing so, and we are naming names?
Mr. Melia. Well, the efforts that we are supporting
currently are not broadcasting names now, but I think it is
increasingly well known in Syria because there are researchers
and data collectors working online and through collecting
interviews from refugees and survivors of different incidents,
there is a lot of--it is clear there is a lot of information
being gathered. And while we don't want to endanger the ongoing
effort to collect the information, the purpose of the work is
precisely as you say, Congressman, to let people know that
there will be some accountability and that we hope that at some
point, some individuals, some others will choose the better
path knowing that there will be some accountability down the
road, so that is the purpose of this.
Mr. Connolly. Well, you know, they say sunshine is the best
disinfectant, and I think I concur with the chairman's, I think
where you were taking us, which is bringing some sunshine onto
this may go a long way, but at the very least, everyone needs
to be on notice. We will pursue it, as will the international
community.
Finally, the word ``genocide,'' you reacted to the word
``genocide,'' and would you say, given your responsibilities,
that it would be a fair characterization to say that religious
minorities, including especially the Christian community but
not limited to the Christian community, in the Middle East and
certainly in Syria have reason to be concerned?
Mr. Melia. Absolutely. I think that it's very clear that
religious tensions and violence have risen across the region. I
think that is indisputable. Very clearly seems to be concerned.
Mr. Connolly. Do--would it be fair to say that policies
explicit or implicit that have been adopted in the region,
especially in the post-Arab Spring governments, are encouraging
religious minorities, especially Christians, to perhaps find a
different home, to go somewhere else, to not be integrated into
this new community, this new political community; is that a
fair statement?
Mr. Melia. You are describing the ongoing political social
challenges of these countries in which new political actors,
new governments are changing some of the dynamics, some of the
protections that may have previously existed for minority
communities. You are describing the challenges we face in the
region, but more importantly, that the people of the region
face, and so this is an important issue and worthy of greater
discussion and examination.
Mr. Connolly. I share the chairman's concern about the fate
of so many minority communities in the region. I can tell you
when I go--Mr. Schneider was talking about going to a
naturalization ceremony. I go to as many as I can in my
district, and some of them are very substantial, 700, 800 new
citizens. What has struck me in the last year or so was the
upsurge in the number of Christian Egyptians and Christian
Syrians who are coming to the United States for citizenship
because of their palatable fear of remaining back home. Now,
that may be anecdotal. It may be just those families, but the
numbers certainly grab one, and I just think it is really
important.
I don't know that genocide is going on, though we are going
to have a witness who will assert otherwise, but certainly some
kind of cleansing seems to be going on in certain corners of
the region, and it is very troubling, and it seems to me that
the United States must speak out about that to--and without
doing something ham-handed, try to offer its protection to
those minority communities. A delicate job, but it seems to me
that is something incumbent upon us as we move forward, a value
you would share, Mr. Melia?
Mr. Melia. I agree with you, Congressman.
Mr. Connolly. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank
Mr. Melia for being here. He and I go back way back. We worked
on the Hill together in the United States Senate. He worked as
a foreign policy legislative--he was my foreign policy
legislative assistant to the late Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan. I was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
staff, and Tom did a great job then and is doing a great job
for his country now.
Thank you, Mr. Melia, for being here.
Mr. Melia. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Mr. Weber.
Mr. Weber. I am okay.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Melia, and I
do--you know, there are a number of questions that you did say
you would get back on, and I hope you will do it very quickly.
Mr. Melia. We will come back to you, Congressman, as soon
as we can.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Melia. Thanks.
Mr. Smith. I would like to now welcome our second
panelists. And thank you for your testimony today.
We will begin with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, who is a member of the
U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and he is
also founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for
Democracy and is the author of ``A Battle for the Soul of
Islam: An American Muslim Patriot's Fight to Save his Faith.''
Dr. Jasser is a first-generation American Muslim whose parents
fled the oppressive Baath regime in Syria. He earned his
medical degree on a U.S. Navy scholarship and served 11 years
in the United States Navy. Dr. Jasser has testified before the
House and Senate and briefed Members of the House and Senate on
many occasions in the past.
We will then hear from Nina Shea, who is currently a senior
fellow at the Hudson Institute, where she directs the Center
for Religious Freedom. She has been an international human
rights lawyer for 30 years. During that time she has worked at
Freedom House and served as a member of the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom. Ms. Shea has also been
appointed as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations main body
for human rights by both Republican and Democratic
administrations. She regularly presents testimony before
Congress, travels extensively and writes on religious freedom
issues in many well known news outlets.
We will then hear from Dr. John Eibner, who is the chief
executive officer of Christian Solidarity International in the
United States, and travels around the world to frontline
situations to document gross human rights abuses. Dr. Eibner
has directed human rights campaigns for CSI on behalf of
persecuted Christian communities in the former Soviet Union,
Egypt, Iraq, and Sudan. He has recently returned from a trip
Syria. We are grateful for his insights into the conditions
there. Dr. Eibner also served as CSI's main representative at
the United Nations in Geneva and has written extensively on
human rights issues for a range of well-known publications.
I note parenthetically, one of my first trips to the
Eastern Bloc was to Romania back in the early 1980s with CSI.
We met with a number of dissidents, combatted the atrocities of
the Ceausescu regime, and as a direct result of that,
introduced legislation to take away MFN from Romania because of
its egregious human rights abuse. CSI played a pivotal role in
my and Frank Wolf's work on Romania.
We will then hear from the Reverend Majed El Shafie, who is
a human rights advocate who has established two successful
human rights organizations and is currently the president of
One Free World International, an organization that focuses on
the rights of religious minorities around the world. Reverend
El Shafie advocates globally for Christians, Chinese Uyghur
Muslims Baha'i, Ahmadiyya Muslims, Jews, Falun Gong, and so
many others. He is frequently called upon to provide expert
testimony in refugee and protection proceedings in both Canada
and United States. His work has been covered in a wide range of
television, radio and print media and has taken the gospel and
the human rights advocacy implicit about the gospel faithfully
all over the world.
Dr. Jasser, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF ZUHDI JASSER, M.D., COMMISSIONER, U.S. COMMISSION
ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Dr. Jasser. Thank you, Chairman Smith and subcommittee
members for holding this very important hearing. I request that
my written statement be submitted into the record along with a
special report that our commission, USCIRF, put together
called, ``Protecting and Promoting Religious Freedom in
Syria.''
Mr. Smith. Without objection, so ordered, and all of your
full statements and any additional information you would like
to have affixed to it will be made a part of the record.
Dr. Jasser. Thank you. Well into its third year, the Syrian
civil war has widespread implications both for religious
freedom or belief in the stability of the region and beyond.
The Syrian people have experienced indescribable horrors with
almost 93,000 dead, 4.2 million internally displaced and 1.6
million refugees. Stories refugees related to USCIRF, our
commission, remained vivid in my mind. Our staff visited there
earlier this month, visited Egypt and Jordan.
A regime soldier tortured by his colleagues because he
refused to shoot civilians, Sunni women and children. A mother
relaying how the regime questions children about the
opposition. The wrong answer can mean death to the child of the
family. A high school and university student despairing about
their own futures.
The war hits especially close to home for me and my family,
the son of Syrian immigrants. We daily sit on edge waiting to
hear from family members, as so many American Syrians do, my
own in Aleppo and Damascus, wondering who is next to be
tortured, disappeared or forced to choose between the regime or
death.
What is the nature of this conflict? The Assad regime has
created a humanitarian crisis on a scale not recently seen in
the region, and it will certainly get worse, and it is on its
way to heading exponentially as the vacuum, which has been
Damascus, may be on the way to what the rest of Syria has
experienced.
By the end of 2013, more than half of Syria's population,
over 10 million people likely will need urgent humanitarian
assistance. The Assad regime turned what was peaceful political
protests that began in Daraa with no religious or sectarian
undertones into a sectarian conflict, most of that in the last
year. Despite wide defections and a paralyzed economy,
remaining regime-associated individuals are supported by a
foreign military aid, training, and fighters who belong to U.S.
designated terrorist groups. Foreign countries the U.S.
considers to be allies sponsor the opposition, many of which
have very different visions of moderation and religious
freedom. The regime and foreign fighters particularly fuel
sectarian fires which target people of faith.
There have been 2,000 mosques and churches that have been
targeted and many of which have been destroyed. The Assad
family's brutal authoritarian rule--make no mistake, this
started 42 years ago, created the political conditions and
sectarian divisions that the regime is cashing in on today,
fueling today's conflict. With political opposition banned and
security forces perpetrating egregious human rights abuses,
dozens of domestic and foreign opposition groups have emerged,
as we have heard in testimony. Some espouse democratic reform,
others religiously motivated violence, such as the U.S.
designated terrorist group, Jabhat al-Nusra Front, and they are
often way too disporate to work together, complicating the
situation for religious freedom in the region.
The Assads selectively permitted religious freedom for the
smallest religious minority groups as long as they did not
politically oppose the regime. While religious minorities will
certainly be more vulnerable in a post-Assad Syria should
extremist groups take power, the Assad regime has targeted
Sunni Muslims, as we have heard with Mr. Weber's questions
about the numbers, committing against them the most egregious
human rights and religious freedom violations. But certainly
the religious minorities are caught in the middle. The
estimated pre-conflict population in Syria was 22 million, 75
percent are Sunni Muslim, 12 percent Alawi, 10 percent
Christian, 4 percent Druze, and the Yezidis, Shi'a Muslims,
Ismailis and Jews are less than 1 percent each.
These religious minorities increasingly are being forced to
take sides in this vacuum. The Assad regime used sectarian
rhetoric to discourage Christians and other religious
minorities from supporting the opposition, whom the regime
refers to, along with all Sunni Muslims, as extremists and
terrorists who will turn Syria into an Islamic state
inhospitable to religious minorities. And in fact, the Assad
regime has fomented an environment in which the radicalization
of not only bringing in al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra caused the
radicalization of many of those who started out peacefully.
The regime frightens Christians by predicting a fate like
the Egyptian Coptic Christians and Iraqi Christians should the
opposition succeed and thus frightening them into taking sides.
Al-Qaeda-affiliated foreign terrorists and the wide deployment
of Shabiha, which are the regime terror squads, makes credible
this argument. The Alawite community from which the Assad's
Baathist party arises, however, is not monolithic, with some
elites abandoning the regime for the opposition and denouncing
the violence perpetrated against civilians.
And if we accept the regime's narrative that this is a
sectarian battle, which it has turned into, then we buy into
their rhetoric. Foreign Assad supporters also are entering
Syrian and stoking sectarianism, including Hezbollah, Iranian
Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and Shiite fighters from Iraq.
Alarmingly, Syria's sectarian conflict now appears to be
spreading beyond its borders, including into Lebanon and Iraq.
We now are seeing levels of sectarian violence in these
surrounding countries that we hadn't seen before.
Despite being in the middle, religious minorities are not
fleeing Syria in the numbers anticipated. Most of the 1.6
million refugees are Sunni Muslims. At the end of April, UNHCR
reported that less than 1 percent of each minority community
has registered and had been registered in Egypt and Iraq,
Jordan, and Lebanon. While about 300,000 Christians reportedly
are internally displaced, data for others, though, are
difficult to find and unavailable. Christians and Alawites, who
constitute less than 1 percent of registered refugees, largely
on moving back to their homes or regime-held areas that they
are beginning to feel now are safer from regime bombing.
I will highlight, lastly, a few of our recommendations.
The U.S. should assist the Syrian opposition coalition in
any future post-Assad government to protect likely targets of
sectarian or religious motivated violence, including religious
minorities. Next, to offset the influence of extremist groups
who establish Sharia courts in liberated areas, the U.S.
Government should provide technical training and support to
local councils, courts, lawyers, and judges on domestic laws
and on international standards relating to human rights and
religious freedom.
As nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar vie for influence,
the U.S. Government should form a coalition with partners among
the Friends of Syria in support of efforts from all intra- and
inter-religious tolerance and respect for religious freedom and
related rights. The U.S. Government should establish a Syrian
refugee resettlement program for those fleeing religious
persecution.
So, in essence, Chairman Smith, sectarian violence has been
both imported into Syria and ignited within by the Assad regime
as a final justification to maintain its tyranny. We must seek
these and other remedies now and post-Assad to address the
plight of religious minorities and for all free people in Syria
for whom the United States may well be their last best hope.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Dr. Jasser.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Jasser follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Ms. Shea.
STATEMENT OF MS. NINA SHEA, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR RELIGIOUS
FREEDOM, HUDSON INSTITUTE
Ms. Shea. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
Thank you, Chairman Smith, and I commend you and the two
subcommittees for holding this critically important hearing.
The persecution of religious minorities concerns America's core
values but is one the United States has failed to address in
Iraq to the devastation of the Christian Mandaean and Yezidi
communities there, and the U.S. must not fail to recognize a
similar threat that has already developed in Syria.
I will focus today, in my testimony, on Syria's Christians
and the threat that they face to their continued existence in
their ancient homeland. This threat applies equally to Syria's
other defenseless and even small minorities, for example, the
Yezidis, and I would like to enter into the record a statement
of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization as well as the
assessment statement of the Syriac National Council.
Though no religious community has been spared egregious
suffering, Syria's ancient Christian minority has cause to
believe that it confronts an existential threat. This was said
by the U.N. Human Rights Council's Commission of Inquiry on
Syria, and this group, in contrast to Syria's larger groups,
has no defender. Primarily, ethnically Assyrian but also
Armenian and Arab and numbering about 2 million, the Christians
face a distinct peril so dire that their ability to survive in
Syria is being seriously doubted by the church and by secular
observers as well.
While in some neighborhoods they struggle to maintain
defense committees, they lack militias of their own, nor do
they have protective tribal structures or support from any
outside power. The Christians are indeed stranded in the middle
of a brutal war, where each side, regime and rebel, fires
rockets into civilian areas and carry out indiscriminate
attacks. The Christian churches, which were registered and
permitted by the Assad regime, have not formally allied
themselves with either side in the conflict, though they have
been under intense pressure to do so.
However, they are not simply caught in the middle as
collateral damage. They have been targets of a more focused
shadow war. Christians are the targets of an ethno-religious
cleansing by Islamist militants and their Sharia courts. In
addition, they have lost the protection of the Assad
government, making them easy prey for criminals and fighters
whose affiliations are not always clear.
As Archbishop Jeanbart of Aleppo's Melkite Greek Catholic
Church states, Christians are terrified by the Islamist
militias and fear that in the event of their victory, they
would no longer be able to practice their religion and that
they would be forced to leave the country. He went on to
explain, ``as soon as they reach the city of Aleppo, Islamist
guerrillas, almost all of them from abroad, took over the
mosque. Every Friday, an imam launches their messages of hate,
calling on the population to kill anyone who does not practice
the religion of the Prophet Muhammad. They use the courts to
level charges of blasphemy, who is contrary to their way of
thinking pays with his life.''
Unprotected, the Christians are also prime victims of
kidnappers and thieves. Such threats and assaults are driving
out the 2,000-year-old Christian en masse from various parts of
the country. Archdeacon Youkhana of the Assyrian Church of the
East, who works with Syrian refugees, wrote to me recently,
``We are witnessing another Arab country losing its
Christian Assyrian minority. When it happened in Iraq,
nobody believed Syria's turn would come. Christian
Assyrians are fleeing massively from threats,
kidnappings, rapes and murders. Behind the daily
reporting about bombs, there is an ethno-religious
cleansing taking place and soon Syria can be emptied of
its Christians.''
Syriac League President Habib Afram states that Christians
are ``systematically targeted'' with kidnappings, which are
used either to collect ransom or to terrorize them into
leaving. The highest profile attack, of course, was the
kidnapping by gunmen in April of the Greek Orthodox Archbishop
Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Ibrahim. This sent an
unmistakable signal to all Christians: None is protected.
Other clergy have been kidnapped and disappeared as well.
In February, 27-year-old Father Michael Kayal of the Armenian
Catholic Church in Aleppo was abducted while riding on a bus.
An Islamist spotted his clerical garb. He has not been seen
since. A similar fate befell a Greek Orthodox priest, Maher
Mahfouz, around the same time.
Last December, Syrian Orthodox parish priest Father Fadi
Haddad was kidnapped after he left his church in the town of
Qatana to negotiate the release of one of his kidnapped
parishioners. A week later, his mutilated corpse was found by
the roadside with his eyes gouged out, his murderers unknown.
And reports are just in today that St. Anthony's Monastery
in Idlib was stormed last Sunday and killed--the Islamist
rebels killed Father Francois Mourad who was defending the nuns
there.
Ordinary individuals, too, have been summarily killed after
being identified as Christian. An Islamic gunman stopped the
bus to Aleppo and checked the background of each passenger.
When the gunman noticed Yohannes' last name was Armenian, they
singled him out for a search. After finding a cross around his
neck, ``One of the terrorists shot point blank at a crossing--
at the cross, tearing open the man's chest.''
A woman from Hassake recounted in December to Swedish
journalist Nuri Kino how her husband and son were shot in the
head by Islamists, ``Our only crime is being Christians,'' she
answers when asked if there had been a dispute.
Gabriel, an 18-year-old, fled with his family from Hassake
after his father was shot for having a crucifix hanging from
his car's rearview mirror. The son told Kino, ``After the
funeral, the threats against our family and other Christians
increased. The terrorists called us and said it was time to
disappear; we had that choice, or we would be killed.''
The New York Times reported that a young Syrian refugee
demonstrated how he was hung by his arms, robbed and beaten by
rebels ``just for being a Christian.''
Muslims, of course, are subjected to kidnapping, too, but
the Wall Street Journal reported on June 11th, often, ``their
outcome is different'' because they have armed defenders. They
told the story of a 25-year-old cab driver, Hafez al-Mohammed,
who said he was kidnapped and tortured for 7 hours by Sunni
rebels in al-Waer in late May. He was released after Alawites
threatened to retaliate by kidnapping Sunni women.
Many also pointed to criminal assaults and the government--
and a government that fails to protect them. A refugee detailed
to journalists: ``Two men from a strong Arabic tribe decided
one day to occupy our farmland just like that. When I went to
the police to report, I was told there was nothing they could.
The police chief was very clear that they would not act as they
didn't want the tribe to turn against the regime.''
Christians also fear the Talibanization through Sharia
courts where they are given four choices, either to pay a
Jizyah tax; to convert to Islam; flee; or be killed. Half of
Aleppo and other places are already under these courts. And by
the way, the villagers from the areas where these courts have
taken over have reported to the Catholic Press that the
fighters were foreign and were recruited, some told of having
been recruited by being told that they were going to liberate
Jerusalem.
There are reports that Christians are leaving Syria in
droves. Though the details have been sparse, and this is
partially due to the fact that these Christians are fearful of
and avoid the refugee camps, so they are therefore not
registered with the U.N. as refugees.
An Orthodox cleric concludes, it would not be good if all
Christians were to leave Syria because then the church would
disappear here, but those who stay risk their lives and the
lives of their children.
And Mr. Chairman, my time is almost up, so I just want to
say that I have a number of recommendations. I am not going to
say them all here now, but I would like to point out that the
situation the Christians and the other minorities should be--
defenseless minorities should be accurately reflected in a
special report, one that Congress could mandate or in official
speeches from the bully pulpits of our highest level officials.
That, so far, has not happened.
The State Department Religious Freedom Report on Syria,
which was released last month, notes rather blandly that there
are ``Reports of harassment of Christians . . .'' and that ``.
. . societal tolerance for Christians was dwindling. . . .''
There were a few actual cases were cited by the State
Department, and there is not really single--the slightest hint
in this gross understatement that the threat they face is an
existential one. And there have been no statements issued by
the White House's Atrocity Prevention Task Force either on this
issue.
And therefore, I would support the bill that was introduced
by Congressman Frank Wolf and Anna Eshoo and that you are co-
sponsoring for a special envoy for religious minorities.
And I just want to conclude by saying that the refugee--
there is a real danger that refugee relief is not reaching
these smallest minorities because, again, they are not in the
U.N. camps, and they are not being registered by the U.N. and
that they are rather seeking shelter in churches and
monasteries in Lebanon and Turkey and that the United States
should make an effort to identify those places and to count
those refugees and to give them aid and to ensure that any
humanitarian aid, which is desperately needed inside Syria,
also reaches their villages and neighborhoods. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Shea, thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Shea follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Dr. Eibner.
STATEMENT OF JOHN EIBNER, PH.D., CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
CHRISTIAN SOLIDARITY INTERNATIONAL, USA
Mr. Eibner. Thank you, Chairman Smith, for your determined
leadership in the defense of human rights over many years, as
you mentioned, going way back to the 1980s when you travelled
with CSI as a young Member.
And I would like to thank members here for their
constructive questioning and contribution to the debate.
I would also ask, Mr. Chairman, for my written submission
to be--and appendants to be placed in the record.
I returned only last night from Syria, and while there, I
traveled with local church workers from the tranquil
Mediterranean town of Tartus through the Valley of Christians
to war torn homes, stopping at cloisters and villages along the
way.
Today's hearing, Mr. Chairman, is indeed timely and
important. The war in Syria has been catastrophic for all the
people of Syria and carries within it the seeds of genocide.
This ever-expanding war, a war that the vast Sunni Muslim world
increasingly views as a jihad, threatens to set the entire
Middle East ablaze.
For 2 years, our Government has pursued a revolutionary
policy of violent regime change and has done so in the name of
the Syrian people. I would like to use this opportunity to fill
in some of the gaps in Washington's regime change narrative.
Syria is a multi-religious country. Religious minorities,
mainly Alawites and Christians, constitute roughly 30 percent
of the population, with Sunni Muslims in the majority. All
communities have suffered greatly, but the war's seeds of
genocide have the greatest potential to cleanse the country of
its religious minorities.
For over four decades, the secular-minded al-Assad
dictatorship has provided a kind of protection for the
religious minorities in a country where they have long
experienced severe persecution under Sunni rule. The Assad
regime has provided more space for non-Sunni minorities than
can be found in any other Arab Sunni majority state in the
region.
Those who would overthrow this dictatorship have a
responsibility to provide a credible alternative system of
protection, one in which the vulnerable minority communities
have confidence. Wherever I went in Syria, I heard from
Christians about the considerable religious freedom that is
guaranteed by their government, freedom to worship, freedom to
provide Christian education, freedom to engage with broader
society through social services, freedom to proclaim their
faith through public processions on religious holidays, some of
which are public holidays, and freedom from the obligation to
conform to discriminatory Sharia norms.
I was repeatedly asked by displaced Christians, why is
America at war against us? Why is the United States destroying
infrastructure of our country? Why is Washington handing us
over to Islamic extremists? They also wanted me to know that
the genuine prodemocracy movement of the so-called Arab Spring
had been tragically overtaken long ago by a parallel Sunni
supremacist movement, one that is dominated by jihadis, many
with links to al-Qaeda.
Dismay was also expressed about Washington's outsourcing of
much of its Syria policy to regional Sunni allies, in
particular, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, all of which have
grave democratic deficits and deny religious freedom and
minority rights to their own citizens.
It seems that America's intervention in the war is aimed
primarily at detaching Syria from Shiite Iran and transforming
it into a Sunni Islamic state. The goal appears to be to
construct an anti-Iranian-Sunni access, stretching from Turkey
in the north to the Gulf states in the south.
During my visit I spoke with Christians who were personally
terrorized during the Arab Spring days of 2011 by mobs pouring
out of Sunni mosques, shouting, ``Alawites to the tomb,''
``Christians to Beirut,'' and other genocidal slogans.
Witnesses provided accounts of murder, including ritual
beheadings and religious cleansing of their neighborhoods, and
the desecration of churches.
Kidnappings, as we have heard, are on the increase, with
Alawites and Christians as the principal victims. One Christian
church worker told me that four Alawite cousins of a friend
were kidnapped and beheaded; a nun told me that she personally
knows a Christian girl who was abducted by the terrorists and
is now mentally disturbed on account of the abuse. The most
widely known kidnapping case is that of the Syriac and Greek
Orthodox archbishops of Aleppo.
Such acts of terror are not senseless; they send a clear
message to the religious minorities: Leave the country now. The
conflict in Syria today, Mr. Chairman, cannot be portrayed
simply in simple terms as one of the evil Assad's dictatorship,
a war against a peaceful, democracy-loving people of Syria. The
war has indeed taken on an ugly sectarian character. Nowadays
the religious minorities and secular-minded Sunnis that could
constitute possibly a majority of the Syrian people tend to
look to the Assad regime for protection, while those striving
to reinstate Sunni superiority or supremacy within an Islamic
state are the driving force of the anti-Assad insurrection on
the ground.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, if our foreign policy establishment
is determined to bring an end to the Syrian war and to
strengthen guarantees for the religious rights of minorities,
the United States will desist from financing and arming forces
of Sunni supremacism. Our Government will rein in its Sunni
Islamist allies and will cooperate with Russia, as President
Reagan did to end the cold war, to create conditions for
successful peace talks. We need to hear from our President and
from all American statesmen, irrespective of party, who wish to
escalate the war effort about their ultimate war goals and
their plan for preventing genocide and guaranteeing minority
rights for the Syrian people.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Thank you very much for your
testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Eibner follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Reverend El Shafie.
STATEMENT OF REV. MAJED EL SHAFIE, FOUNDER, ONE FREE WORLD
INTERNATIONAL
Rev. El Shafie. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for having me. It is
a pleasure and honor to be here with all of you. And thank you,
members of the committee and all the staffers; I know that the
staffers as well work so hard.
My name Reverend Majed El Shafie. I am founder and
president of One Free World, an international human rights
organization based in Toronto, Canada. I am not just the head
of my organization, and I am not just a man wearing a suit
behind my desk. I used to be a prisoner back home in Egypt, and
I was tortured by the Egyptian regime. And until now I have my
scars on my body, which I consider it a badge of honor.
The war in Syria and what we are seeing right now in Syria
is started by March 2011, and I believe it started as a genuine
uprising. I believe that the people was tired from the regime.
I believe that they want end of the corruption, the emergency
law, and reform of the Constitution. Sadly, as we are seeing
today--and we hear this expression many times, the ``Arab
Spring''--what we see today that the Arab Spring been hijacked
to become an Arab deadly winter on the minority.
We all are against a dictatorship, make no mistake. We are
all against a dictatorship, from Mubarak to Assad, to Ghadafi,
to Ali Abdullah Saleh; whoever they are, we are all against a
dictatorship. The problem when you take a dictatorship out, you
create a political vacuum. Who is using this political vacuum
is the extremist. And, sadly, the worst thing that you can have
a democracy and freedom between day and night in the Middle
East, this is will not happen.
The truth and the reality there is no--there will not be a
democracy in the Middle East or true freedom without two major
elements. Number one is the separation between the religion and
the state. Number two is the freedom of religion of the
individuals, the freedom to believe or not to believe.
We see here that the attacks that this Arab Spring or what
so-called Arab Spring led to attacks on the Christian
minorities in Syria; not just the Christians, you can found as
well attacks on the Druze and the Shias. These attacks been led
in areas like the Roman Catholic Church, our Lady of Salvation
in July 5, 2012; the deadly bomb blast in August 28, 2012, in
Druze and Christian areas; the arrest of many of the Christians
and other minorities and torturing them on the hand of the
rebels; and, of course, we know about the kidnap of the Greek
Orthodox Archbishop Paul Yazigi and the Syrian Orthodox
Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim, which we don't know until now where
they are and what has happened to them.
Not only that, because when the extremist comes, they don't
only--they are not only danger on the minority, they are also
danger on the moderate Muslims. And we see right now even
incidents such as the 14-years-old Mohammad Qatta in the city
of Aleppo, which was in a coffee shop. And he made a statement
about the Prophet Muhammed. The rebels kidnapped him, they
tortured him, and they killed him in public. He was a Muslim
boy; he was not a Christian boy.
We see as well the attacks on the Shias, like in June--in
the early June, dozen of Shiite Muslims in the town of Hatlah,
where massacre been reported, that the rebels have looted and
destroyed religious sites after taking control of the--of this
areas or this region.
The worst dilemma that facing Islam today as a faith is not
rising of the extremist, but is the silence of the moderate
Muslims. The worst dilemma that facing Islam as a faith today
is not the rising of the extremists, but the silence of the
moderate Muslims.
We see here that United States decided that they will
provide weapon to the opposition, the rebels. It seems to me
that United States will not learn from its mistakes yet. We
provided weapon to Osama bin Laden during the mujahideen war in
Afghanistan, and it turned against us. We provide weapon to
Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, and turn against us.
We provide weapons to Libya, to the rebels in Libya, and 2
months later they killed our American Ambassador.
Providing a weapon to the rebels in Syria will be a mistake
that the innocent people will pay the price for it, especially
the minorities. Nevertheless, if the United States none-less
goes ahead with the military aid, it must demand accountability
from the rebels, include the return of the weapons after the
conflict, and deny any further aid if weapons or ammunitions
are used against minorities, civilians, or American allies,
such as Israel.
Let us make it clear: United States in--pledged $500
million in humanitarian aid. If the rebels refuse to respect
the minority rights, woman rights, stop child abuse, we have to
stop or at least to connect our humanitarian aid with
improvement of human rights in these countries. I believe that
the American people is tired of using their tax money to
support terrorist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt and elsewhere.
In the end, and my closing remark, I believe that our world
today is unfair place, is unjust place not because the people
is doing evil, but because the people who remain silent about
it. History will not remember the words of our enemy, but will
remember the silence of our friends. The persecuted Christians
and the minorities is dying, but they still smile. They are in
very deep, dark night, but they still have the candle of hope.
Believe me when I tell you, they can kill the dreamer, but no
one can kill the dream.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. God bless.
[The prepared statement of Rev. El Shafie follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Reverend El Shafie, for not
only presenting testimony, but as a man who has literally been
tortured for his faith, thank you for being here and forgiving
us the insights of your thoughts and where we should go.
Rev. El Shafie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask the entire panel a couple of
questions. And I will just lay it out, and if could you
respond.
I asked earlier the Deputy Assistant Secretary as to
whether or not he, and especially the administration, construed
what is going on against the Christians to be genocide. I would
point out that Syria acceded to the Genocide Convention in
1955, and Article 1 it makes it very clear that genocide
means--and this is right from the convention--any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in
part a national ethical--ethnical, racial, or religious group,
such as killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or
mental harm to members of the group. And then Article 3 talks
about the acts that are punishable: Genocide, conspiracy to
commit genocide--you don't even have to do it; the mere
conspiracy is an actionable offense--direct and public
incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide,
complicity in genocide. And yet, like we saw with Sudan--and I
remember, Ms. Shea, you were very active and outspoken during
previous administrations when we utterly refused, as did the
Europeans, as did the U.N. Human Rights Council, to call what
was going on in Darfur a genocide. I am wondering, you know, if
each of you could say whether or not you believe what is
happening to the Christians rise to the level of genocide.
Secondly, I had asked earlier about the conditionality.
And, Reverend, you talked about the importance of
conditionality with human rights. And I noted that even
Napoleon Duarte, the former President of El Salvador, told me
directly how important conditionality was when it come to human
rights, even within his own government. And I am wondering, we
heard a lot about vetting. I am not sure how vetting is done in
an efficacious way to ensure that the bad guys don't get the
guns. But the conditionality issue, I am not sure there are
conditions; if you know of any, please say.
Let me ask Dr. Jasser if you could add--you mentioned--and
I read your recommendations, the 20 recommendations that were
made by the Commission. Has the administration embraced all,
some, or any of those recommendations that were made by the
International Religious Freedom Commission? And I have a few
other questions, then I will yield to my colleagues.
Mr. Jasser. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
I will address the last one first, in my role as a
Commissioner. We have begun having conversations at a staff
level regarding our recommendations, and our report is a little
over 1\1/2\ months, 2 months old. So we are in the process of
hoping that they adopt some of those recommendations because of
the plight of religious minorities. But I can't speak
officially for--and, obviously, we are not part of the
administration to be able to speak on their behalf on what they
feel about those recommendations. We do hope as a result of the
testimony that they do look at them and embrace them as a
method in which we should employ the way to protect religious
minorities.
To speak to your other questions, again, our report and my
testimony do lay out the egregious and horrific plight of the
Syrian people across various faith groups and the sectarian
divides. However, as you mentioned, and many have mentioned,
labeling it as a genocide involves certain legal and other
ramifications that I can't respond to as a Commissioner.
But let me just speak on my own behalf personally. I do
think that, obviously, as somebody who speaks to Syrians
frequently, and trying to keep in contact with them; they just
do not know if they will be around tomorrow. For example,
what's happened to Sunni Muslims, the millions now, a
population in Syria of 22 million with 1 to 2 million displaced
refugees, 90-plus percent of which are Sunni Muslims, I would
be hard pressed as an American citizen who cares about
humanitarian rights not to say that there is a genocide against
Sunni Muslims in Syria.
But what happens in all conflicts, and what is the last
card that Assad has pulled, is fomenting sectarian divisions.
So what is going to happen, given Assad allowing al-Qaeda into
his country, has been to basically allow them to have competing
genocides so that he can legitimize, the regime can legitimize,
its continued existence.
Because I will tell you, as much as I agree--and in my
testimony I talked about atrocities committed by some of the
rebels. Now, is there a command-and-control center for the FSA?
There isn't. And there are obviously many, many groups. But God
help the minorities, such as the Christians, who may disagree
politically with the Ba'athists or with their political ends,
because at the end they may have the religious freedom to
practice, but there is no certainty for those who are
politically against the regime's authoritarian means.
And I think lastly, as far as vetting, I think it's
important, and I will tell you that the trajectory of the
conflict--we have tried now for 28 months-plus the ``do nothing
and let the Friends of Syria sort of guide it,'' and it has
gotten us to this point of talking about competing genocides
and almost 100,000 dead. And I think at the minimum the choices
that we have thus far for protecting religious minorities is to
begin to play a role to help push it--as Mr. Kinzinger said
earlier, to help push history toward at least giving those that
would like a democratic, moderate Syria a chance at promoting
those values and helping those who would be our real allies on
the ground to have the ability to see a future Syria that is
not run by either extreme, and I think at least us playing some
type of a role there, and in the recommendations we give, as
far as helping those who promote out principles within the
Friends of Syria, and also of building infrastructure there
that can help provide safe haven within the opposition.
Ms. Shea. Yeah. I think every one of us who was really
monitoring the situation with the minorities, the smallest,
defenseless minorities in Syria, has very much Iraq on its--the
precedent of Iraq on our minds. And in Iraq over the last 10
years, two-thirds of the Christian population there has been
eliminated. They have been driven out by violence. Many of them
have been killed, but most are just--been sent it into exile.
Ninety percent of the Mandeans, the followers of John the
Baptist, have also been eliminated from Iraq under the same
conditions; the Yizidis, over half. These are the smallest
defenseless minorities. They have essentially been ethnically--
or religiously, I should say, cleansed from Iraq.
That is very much on our minds now in Syria, as we--hearing
these anecdotes and hearing the church leaders attest to what
is happening to the Christian people. And I also received a
letter this week from the Yizidi representative saying the same
thing, villages, Yizidi villages, emptying out. So that is
why--because when the dust settles, there may not be any small,
defenseless minorities left in Iraq. There will be Sunnis,
there will be Shiites, as horrific as the violence has been
against those groups and the allies. Those groups will--do have
champions outside of Iraq, Syria, and have militias and
militaries at their disposal. These smallest defenseless
minorities do not.
And in my first recommendation, I--I said that there should
be a report trying to establish exactly what is happening, and
that is why I support the special envoy, because we hear the
anecdotes, we don't have the dimensions of this--this problem.
But, of course, we fear a genocidal situation. And this problem
will not end when this war ends, because there are so many
militants who are so intolerant.
And I am very concerned by Secretary Kerry's statements
today in Saudi Arabia where he said, meeting with the Saudi
Foreign Minister, Saud al Faisal, saying that he expressed his
appreciation for Saudi Arabia's leadership within the region,
and saying that we believe that every minority can be
respected. So, ``I express our appreciation for Saudi Arabia's
leadership within the region. We believe that the best solution
is a political solution. And we believe that every minority can
be respected. There can be diversity and pluralism.'' I don't
know who the ``we'' is there; if that is the United States,
then fair enough. But if he is talking about our partner, our
closest partner in the region, as he starts out his speech by
referring to Saudi Arabia, then he is sadly mistaken. There is
not a single church or other house of worship other than the
Wahhabi mosque and some Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia. So
Saudi Arabia does not believe in diversity and pluralism and
does not respect minorities.
So I am very concerned. I think there should be a special
envoy to take--to understand more clearly what is happening to
these minorities, especially since they do not register. When
they go into exile, they do not register with the U.N. They are
afraid of being minorities again in the U.N. camps and being
victims again outside of Syria, in Turkey or other places. So
that has to be taken into account as well. We do not know how
many Christian refugees there are. There have been some guesses
of hundreds of thousands, but we really have no idea, and this
has to be assessed.
Mr. Eibner. The CSI issued a genocide alert for the whole
Middle East region because we were concerned that conditions
for genocide exist. It doesn't mean to say that there is full-
blown genocide, but there is very good cause for concern, as we
heard from the representative from the State Department.
The situation in Syria is more acute than anywhere else in
the region because of the conflict there and the vulnerability
of the minorities. What we see are acts of genocide or
genocidal massacres which have affected every minority
community in Syria, including Sunni Muslims, if you think of
them as a minority in places where there is perhaps an Alawite
majority, certain provinces and regions where the Sunni Muslims
are very vulnerable. And we see a situation developing in Syria
that is out of control, and it will look very much like the
Balkans, like Bosnia, where every side in the conflict was
involved in massacres and acts of genocide, crimes against
humanity.
So we are, you know, deeply concerned about this. We are
deeply concerned that--just over a year ago, if I am not
mistaken, there was an Atrocities Prevention Board that was
announced with much fanfare at the Holocaust Museum in
Washington, and we have not heard anything about, you know,
what their findings are. They concerned about the possibility
of genocides; not even genocide, but atrocities. What do they
see as going on, and what are their recommendations? I would
have thought that members of the public would want to know what
the Atrocities Board is doing and what their take on the
situation in Syria is.
Another cause for, you know, great concern, I am a
historian by background, and one cannot help but look back to
the days of the Ottoman Empire when in 1908 there was a great
revolution, you might call it the Ottoman Spring, where members
of all religious communities, ethnic communities were dancing
in the streets to celebrate freedom. And within a decade there
is genocide, and Anatolia is completely, you know, cleared of
its religious minorities.
It can happen. It can happen today, it can happen this
year, it can happen within the next--we, the United States,
have an international obligation to try to prevent genocide.
There are international undertakings that we have signed on. I
would like to see the United States Government take these
seriously and act on their responsibilities.
And just another observation about the movements of people.
I think that one can learn a lot about a situation by seeing
how people vote with their feet. They are not able to vote with
the ballot in Syria, but there is something that can be picked
up by movement, how people move around the country. And what I
have observed is that when people are forced to flee their
homes--and in most cases it is not because of targeted violence
against them or their religious community, but there is
shelling, there is bombing, there is a war going on, and they
want to get out of there--they tend to go either abroad, or
they tend to go to areas controlled by the government, such as
Tartus Province, which is relatively tranquil.
And I saw myself that there are many Sunni refugees or
displaced people who are living there, trying to stay out of
harm's way, and, of course, like all Syrians they are denied
their political freedoms, but I did not detect any sign of
special harassment or that they were targeted by the
government. And after all, we must bear in mind, too, that
while the Assad regime is a dictatorship that did not respect
basic human rights and does not provide democracy, it does not
have an ideology that targets religious minorities.
Unfortunately, we see increasingly an opposition that is
dominated by the forces that have an ideology that say
Christians are not equal citizens, Alawites are not equal
citizens, and they should either leave, or, if they stay, they
have to have a second-class role in society.
Thank you.
Rev. El Shafie. Mr. Chair, I believe that my colleagues
here answered your question in details. I don't want to repeat
their words. There are some people here already tired. So I--I
think I would--I don't have anything to add on that.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I wish our
colleague from Texas was still here, because I find this
discussion quite fascinating.
If I am understanding you correctly, Mr. Jasser, you think
that the United States ought to take a risk and arm the rebels
because the Assad regime is so brutal that the alternative
can't be worse, and that is where we ought to sort of put our
chips. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I thought I
heard you kind of say that.
Mr. Jasser. Well, our Commission's recommendations do not
get into those types of details. We get into the fact that
there are things we need to do on the ground in a humanitarian
way to help move to the protection of religious minorities.
I did make a comment personally, not as a Commissioner,
that I do believe the last 28 months of not helping the
opposition at all has proven that the Darwinian solution of
sort of letting it play itself out has brought the worst actors
in the region into Syria, has caused the biggest devastation.
And the sense that there is a binary choice in Syria now, which
is between al-Qaeda and the Assad regime, I think is a false
choice. I think the opposition's numbers clearly show that the
majority of them are the millions of Syrians that have been
devastated in this----
Mr. Connolly. So, all right. Not wearing your Commission
hat, you personally still think we ought to bet down and invest
in the opposition even with some queasiness.
Mr. Jasser. Absolutely. Because the lack--the choice of
doing nothing--is going to bring the worst pathway. And the
pathway toward repairing a country that has been devastated by
50 years of dictatorship will involve some growing paints. It
may involve, you know, arming some of the wrong people, but we
can correct those with involvement versus letting Qatar and
Saudi Arabia decide the future of----
Mr. Connolly. Got it. Perfectly legitimate point of view.
But let me ask you two questions. One is in making that
recommendation to the United States Government, if you had a
magic wand and you were the chief recommender, that would be
your recommendation. Are you also willing when you make such a
recommendation to take responsibility for the possibility that
the outcome isn't at all what you hoped for, and that, as a
matter of fact, you are wrong; that what we have done by
intervening and providing military assistance is to actually
strengthen the hands of those we do not wish to strengthen, and
we produce an outcome we do not wish, a jihadist, theocratic-
oriented, intolerant of minorities regime that actually
respects diversity even less than the Ba'athist regime it
replaces?
I mean, I know that is not what you wish, but when you ask
the United States, a power, superpower, to intervene in this
kind of situation in that way, somebody has to take
responsibility for the risk, the probability, slim, moderate,
remote or high, that the outcome is going to be worse than the
regime it is replacing.
Mr. Jasser. Sir, speaking on my own behalf, I would tell
you that if we exerted real leadership as leaders of the free
world in that region, and we actually stood behind those
decisions not just for 6 months, but for years, and laid out,
educated the American public about what is as stake not only
for Syria, but the entire region, for our allies, Israel and
the empowerment of Iran, and play that out over not 1 or 2
years, but over the next 10, 15 years, and saying that we will
have a policy that will be pushed forth to protect minorities,
to protect those who believe in the values of freedom and
liberty within that region, and say that there are no clear
answers, but doing nothing is going to allow a Darwinian
solution that will allow the last 2\1/2\ years that has
demonstrated the death and devastation and actually the loss of
American interests, and our allies in the West have lost
significant influence in Syria with what--with the devastation
that we have seen. So, you know, choices will evolve, but I do
believe that currently we have seen the failure of the current
policy. And while I can completely understand your concerns, I
believe helping the opposition is a better choice than doing
nothing.
Mr. Connolly. Now, you are on a panel with three others who
are concerned about protecting the rights of minorities,
especially religious minorities. And I think I heard every one
of the--your three colleagues on this panel actually differ
with you. They are very concerned about arming the rebels
because they actually cited the lack of respect for religious
diversity within the armed insurgency in Syria.
Mr. Jasser. Well, sir, I am also concerned about arming the
rebels, but I do believe that the solutions so far have created
a vacuum. There have been no solutions. If you look at our
recommendations that come from USCIRF, it involves a much more
active role in protecting those minorities and ensuring that
the current Syrian coalition and others are accountable to
international standards of human rights to which we have not
held them accountable because we are taking such a back seat in
what is happening there, that we need to take a front seat
rather than allow other countries, as Ms. Shea mentioned, like
Saudi Arabia, that really have no respect for religious
freedom, to play a role in a future Syria, where you have both
sides. One is Iranian standards of religious freedom and Saudi
standards of religious freedom, both of whom are on the worst
lists as far as advocacy for religious freedom. And I believe
America will play a role----
Mr. Connolly. Dr. Jasser, I just said to you I certainly
respect your point of view. I wish the world were that black
and white. I wish our choices were that simple. They are not.
And I--I am not sure--in fact, I know I don't accept your
characterization that we have somehow taken a back seat for 28
months.
I am not quite sure what you would have us do. And I would
say that when the United States intervenes in that region, very
overtly, it can lead with the best of intentions to results
that are undesirable. I am not sure the intervention in Lebanon
under the Ronald Reagan administration was such a wise policy
in retrospect. It led to terrible deaths for the United States,
and I am not sure it led to an improved outcome in Lebanon;
history will have to judge.
You know, the President got a lot of criticism for leading
from behind in Libya, and yet I will say to you, and I was in
both Egypt and Libya last year, I was more hopeful about the
outcomes in Libya in terms of pluralism and respect for
minority rights--albeit it is a much smaller country--than I
was for Egypt. And I have been to Egypt many times.
So I wish, you know, our options were really clear cut, and
we could find the guys with the white hats, because I would
support them, too. But I am not so sure that it is clear. Nor
was it as clear 28 months ago that the insurgency was only
composed of elements of people wearing white hats.
Now, Ms. Shea, let me ask you, you gave a very interesting
analogy. Iraq. The interesting thing that both Iraq and Syria
shared, of course, when Saddam Hussein was still in power was
they both had Ba'athist regimes. And Dr. Eibner actually cited
the Ba'athist philosophy or political governance not in an
admiring way, but he reminded us that the one thing, though,
that was true was you weren't having a whole bunch of
Christians and other minorities fleeing because they were
worried about the oppression and brutality of a regime on their
rights. They weren't being singled out as such in a way that
unfortunately they seem to be at least with some elements of
the--of the insurgency in Syria. Is that your view as well?
That--terrible, though, the brutality of Saddam Hussein
was, no one is praising that regime. There was a difference
between the Ba'athist philosophy that governed both in Iraq and
Syria with respect to minority rights or with respect to
minorities, including religious minorities. That is quite
different than an explicit avowed ``they are not us'' kind of
philosophy that seems to come out of at least some of the more
extreme elements of the insurgency in Syria today. And, for
that matter, in the post-Saddam Hussein world of Iraq, whatever
respect there was for minority rights seems to have dissipated
and worsened in the current situation in Iraq. Are those views
you would share?
Ms. Shea. Well, I think both regimes, in a way, they were
mirror images of each other. They were both Ba'athists and
secular, but they were both the minorities themselves. Saddam
Hussein was, of course, a Sunni minority in the Shiite Iraq.
And Assad is a----
Mr. Connolly. Alawite. Right.
Ms. Shea [continuing]. Minority aligned with the Shiites in
a majority-Sunni Syria. So that there was an emphasis on
building a secular society from those regimes, and, therefore,
there was more space for other minorities like the Christians
and the Yizidis, et cetera.
I don't think there is any going back to that, though, in
Syria. I think what we are seeing now is the Assad regime
making deals with tribes and others at the expense of these
minorities. They are letting gangs of criminals prey on these
minorities with impunity, just as actually is happening now in
Iraq, continues to happen in Iraq, with the impunity situation
that USCIRF has--they have identified.
But the--there is the jihadist element in the rebels that
is extremely worrisome, and these are being supported, it is no
secret, from the Gulf region.
Mr. Connolly. I was struck by your testimony and that of
the other two panelists to the other side of you not because
it--not because you were saying that we should go back, or we
should shore up the Assad regime because, given the
alternative, it is leaser of two evils, but to show that our
choices in Syria are not so clear, and that the outcomes are at
high risk. That isn't an argument to do nothing, but it is an
argument to take care and caution and make sure we know what we
are doing before we just rush in and support one side or the
other.
Ms. Shea. I oppose military aid, for what it is worth, from
my opinion, to Syria at this point. And I conclude that we
should have--make every--make the peaceful settlement in Syria
among our highest foreign policy priorities, and that the
President should use his prestige that you have identified to
make that happen, and to be fully engaged in it.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
Dr. Eibner, I just want to make sure I characterized your
views correctly. I did?
Mr. Eibner. Yes. There was no misrepresentation that I
picked up.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
And Reverend El Shafie?
Rev. El Shafie. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. I thought I heard you actually say
explicitly, don't arm the rebels.
Rev. El Shafie. That is correct.
Mr. Connolly. And you said that why? Remind us again why
you think, unlike Dr. Jasser, the United States should not go
down that road.
Rev. El Shafie. Let's look at the--first of all, allow me
to explain that there is no win-win scenario about Syria. If
Bashar al-Assad stayed, Iran, Hezbollah have the stronger arms
in the region. If defeated, we ended with extremist Sunnis that
only God knows what they will do. So there is no win-win
scenario when it comes to Syria.
But let us take a look at the opposition, the Syrian
opposition, the rebels. Let us look at their component at their
cells. You found like the Free Syrian Army, the National
Coalition of Syrian Revolution, the opposition's forces or the
Syrian Opposition Coalition, that is led by al-Khatib, Moaz al-
Khatib. He in exile in Cairo. You have the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood, or the SMB. This is a guy by the name Mohammed
Riad. He is in exile in London.
When I am look--and I am not saying they are the only ones
that leading the opposition, but I am talking about the big
names, the main player. All of the names that I am telling you
right now, they are very extremist and very violent. And my
fear, when we arm the rebels, even if we are arming the people
that we feel that they are less extremist, that they will not
have a full control on where is this weapon going, and this
weapon in the end will go to kill civilians or minority, or
will attack Israel, which is alliance, or will kill our
Ambassador in Damascus later on. That is my fear.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, you have been most indulgent. I really
appreciate it. I do think this panel has given us a lot of food
for thought and highlights the complexity of the choices we
face in Syria. Thank you so much.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Yoho.
Mr. Yoho. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Connolly, great questions. I appreciate it.
And your testimony, I guess, is--it is almost a nightmare.
And we know it is going on over there, and that is my concern.
And, Dr. Jasser, I want to commend you and your parents for
having the good sight and you the good fortune of landing on
the shores of America to where you and hopefully your parents
have experienced and lived, and it sounds like it, the American
dream. And I think that is a basis underlying tenet for all
humans, that yearning to be free. And I would love for
everybody in the world to have that and experience that, but
reality is we are not there yet.
Reverend El Shafie, you are from Egypt, right?
Rev. El Shafie. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Yoho. When you said you were tortured, was it President
Mubarak at the time?
Rev. El Shafie. It was the regime, the Egyptian regime.
That is correct, Mubarak at the time.
Mr. Yoho. And you know, the--I guess back in the old days,
we will say it, things were more predictable; they weren't
good, but they were predictable, because if you propped up a
regime, you could kind of determine how they were going to
respond----
Rev. El Shafie. That is correct.
Mr. Yoho [continuing]. And how they would react.
We have got a whole new ballgame now. We have got a new
group of people in there that have arised from the Arab Spring,
and like you said, it is turning into the Arab Winter. Their
ideologies are different. They are stronger. There are stronger
beliefs in--I don't want to say extreme Islam, but, I mean, we
are seeing that played out with Sharia law and all that. And so
it is a whole different game, and we don't know how people are
going to respond, and we don't know how to--I don't want to say
manipulate, but how to work with them to get the results we
want.
And what I have heard from three of you is the way I feel.
You know, arming them is a bad thing to do. I mean, we have
tried that. We have seen it in Iran in the 1970s. We have done
it with Iraq. We have done it with Afghanistan. Libya is yet to
play out. And that is one of my questions is I would like to
hear your response and what you think is turning out in Libya,
if we are on the right track with what we do with the flyovers
and the minimum intervention that we had, so that we can look
at Syria and which way to go.
Because what I have heard from all of you is the promotion
of liberty, the promotion of freedoms, human rights promotion,
religious freedoms. And, again, I don't have to remind you, but
those are more Westernized ideologies; not freedom. But to
promote and to try to force human rights on an Islamic country
when they don't believe the way we do, I don't see how you can
do that without taking complete control over a country, and
that is something that is just not acceptable.
What are your thoughts on that? If you would, start with
Libya on how you think that is turning out right now.
Rev. El Shafie. Do you want me to start, or do you want to
start with Dr. Jasser?
Ms. Shea. You start.
Rev. El Shafie. The separation between the religion and a
state, any religion, any state, is necessary to ensure true
democracy and freedom in any country. Any religion, any state.
The problem that you are seeing right now is lack of education.
One of the major issues that we see in Egypt, for example,
is lack of education. Even if you reform the Constitution, you
have 30-40 percent of the Egyptians is illiterate; they don't
know how to read or write their own name. Even if you reform
the Constitution, they don't know what they are voting on. So
here comes the religious guy, comes in the name of God, and
they will follow him because they don't know any better.
So education have to come before democracy. Without
education, democracy dies. Education is the oxygen of
democracy.
In Libya--back to your question, in Libya, how we can see
the future in Libya--you got to remember there was a time that
came that they said there was somebody, American pastor, I
believe in Florida, was burning the Koran, something like that.
Mr. Yoho. Right. From my hometown.
Rev. El Shafie. Blaming you, by the way, I'm sure.
And everybody went attacking American Embassies, burning
Bibles and so on and so forth.
Do you remember what happened in Libya, sir, in that time?
They went to cemeteries. There were cemeteries where the old
British soldiers that fought the Second World War was. There
was a cross in their cemeteries, and they went to destroy the
crosses. This is after a very short period of time that we
supported them, that we send our troops to help them, and to
finish Ghadafi like--the war won in Libya because the NATO
troops interfered and because the American troops build no-fly
zone, make no mistake.
Mr. Yoho. Right.
Rev. El Shafie. But this is how was the respond.
When we are not helping, I think one of the major thing
that we are missing in our policies is accountability. There is
nothing wrong with accountability. When I am giving you--I went
to Iraq not that long time ago. I took Canadian Members of
Parliament and Canadian Senators--I live in Canada; I am a
Canadian--and I want to Iraq. It was the first Canadian
delegation to go to Iraq after the war. Canada gave to Iraq
$300 million. When I met with the Vice President, and when I
met with the Deputy Prime Minister, I told them, ``What did you
do with this money?'' And they said, ``We don't know.''
I want to inform you and to ensure you that 90 percent of
the aid that goes from the American Government, if it is not
more, and goes to the Libyan Government or to the Iraqi
Government or to Syrian Government at some point is--will be
misused.
Mr. Yoho. I agree. And that is--you know, as we give
foreign aid, I think we need to change our whole policy in that
here is our aid; these are the conditions you take it under.
You know, we believe in these things: We believe in human
rights, we believe in freedom of expression--or religious
freedoms and all that. I am not going to tell you you have to
do it, but if you want our money, this is what you do.
Rev. El Shafie. That is it.
Mr. Yoho. And so--but you see Libya playing out in a
favorable way, or do you think it is still rocky and it can go
either way?
Rev. El Shafie. No, is still rocky. I think Libya----
Mr. Yoho. I think so, too.
Rev. El Shafie [continuing]. Is the cancer under the skin.
Mr. Yoho. I agree.
Rev. El Shafie. This will come at some point.
Mr. Yoho. Dr. Eibner?
Mr. Eibner. Yes, sir.
I think Libya is very rocky indeed. And we have heard about
some of the events in the Libya since the revolution. One which
is not mentioned by Reverand El Shafie was the arrest of scores
of Coptic Christians from Egypt in Libya, and they were
tortured and abused very badly simply for allegedly sharing the
Gospel. So there is great cause to be concerned about the
consequences of our policy in Libya.
I would agree with Reverend El Shafie that there are really
two fundamental conditions for democracy. One is a separation
of religion and state, and the other is the freedom to choose
one's religion.
Mr. Yoho. I wrote that down when you said that. How do you
instill that on another country when that is not their belief?
Mr. Eibner. That is exactly what I am leading up to is that
these two conditions, which I think we would all agree are
fundamental conditions for democracy, are generally thought of
throughout the Islamic world as un-Islamic.
Mr. Yoho. Right.
Mr. Eibner. And that to promote those conditions or those
values is to act against Islam. That is the huge problem that
we face.
Mr. Yoho. Exactly right.
Mr. Eibner. In order to really fundamentally change--of
course, the United States can use its influence here, and there
and tinker with systems, and make it a little bit better or a
little bit worse, but to fundamentally change the situation so
that one has--so that these conditions are met, it would mean
nothing short than going back to old-fashioned imperialism,
where the United States moves in like the French or the British
in old times: Here we are, we are here to stay, we run the
show, and we take responsibility for governance. That is
something that we in the United States do not do with our role
as a superpower. It is another way of saying, actually,
neoimperial power.
Mr. Yoho. Right.
Mr. Eibner. We want to have our--guarantee our resources,
our strategic interests, but not take real responsibility. And
we repeatedly take half measures like, you know, calling for
the overthrow of the Assad regime, but without having a real
strategy and resources to make it happen and to make it work in
a desirable--in a desirable way.
Mr. Yoho. And that is what I see is, I mean, we are doing
the same thing over and over again, but we are not getting the
results we want. And I don't know how you get to that, because,
like you said, you can't separate religion from politics in
Islam, because it is one and the same; they work together in
that--in that mindset. And we are trying to say, well, we want
to separate religion from the politics; we want the religious
freedom.
Mr. Eibner. Well, I say that I don't believe that these are
our real goals as a Nation. Our strategic goals are not to
achieve that, and as I mentioned in my statement, I am
convinced that our major strategic goal in the region is to
create this Sunni axis from Turkey to the Gulf states as a
barrier to Shiite in Iran, and these human rights issues and
religious liberty issues are sadly sacrificed on the altar of
these greater geopolitical interests that our Nation has.
Mr. Yoho. Okay. Thank you for your testimony.
Ms. Shea?
Ms. Shea. Yeah. I want to second what my copanelists have
said about Libya, but I think that it is very important to
focus on Egypt and to think about Egypt as you are. We do
provide billions of support for the government even now. And
maybe putting Egypt soon on life support as it threatens to
teeter over the cliff of failed statehood--June 30 is the date
to watch; they are planning big demonstrations against the
regime and counterdemonstrations against the protesters.
And Egypt is the country in the Middle East with the
largest--in the Muslim Middle East with the largest Christian
population, by far; maybe 8-10 million Christians. Only two,
three others rise to anywhere near 1 million, and that is
Syria, with perhaps 1 million or so Christians; Lebanon; and
Iraq, which has been devastated, the Christian population
there.
If the Copts are attacked--continue to be attacked, it is
going to be a very, very difficult situation, and it will be--
signal further radicalization of that whole area, because once
the great cultural crossroads in history, this Middle Eastern
region, it will be totally Islamicized for the first time and
can be expected to radicalize.
Mr. Yoho. And that is my concern. That is where I see we
are heading with the policies we have. And, you know, I have
read all your stuff in here, and what I look forward to is
redirecting our foreign policy in a way that it is not
interventionism, it is more on trade, technological advice, and
help along those lines. And that is what I look forward to
doing.
Ms. Shea. We don't have any red line at all in our aid to
Egypt to protect the Christian minority there, and we should.
Mr. Yoho. Okay. Doc.
Mr. Jasser. Thank you. And I am just sort of--there are
some issues I just think we really need to address. And as far
as promoting religious freedom abroad, you know, the mechanism
is, the narrative--I think many of us agree on the symptoms,
that there are religious minorities being attacked, that their
plight is as grim as it has ever been. But then as you make
that assessment, you can't get away from the fact that you
cannot defeat al-Qaeda and radical Islam in Syria or in Egypt
or in Saudi without changing the dictatorships.
Assad produced, allowed al-Qaeda in because it is a
mechanism for sectarian control his population. So if the
narrative becomes a binary choice, I can tell you, as you
mentioned, my family, you know, they saw, as they were in and
out--my grandfather was in and out of prison in the 1950s. As
dictatorship after dictatorship happened in Syria, and then it
solidified into this Ba'athist regime, they looked upon the
West as the leader of the free world and a place to come to
build these ideas. Not as a Commissioner, but my NGO is based
on the separation of mosque and state, is based on advocating
Islamic ideas against groups like the Brotherhood. But Egypt,
for example, will finally be able to treat the condition of
theocracy that comes from the Brotherhood through the freedom
that it got after the departure of Mubarak.
So to think that it is going to be clean and not a mess is
not what I am trying to say, but to say somehow that Arabs or
Muslims are any different than Americans were at their
revolution is just, I don't believe, the human narrative that
is part of the International Religious Freedom Act that every
human being wants to be free when left to their own devices.
And the United States, I believe--and I think to say that
sitting on our hands doesn't have--you know, sort of keeps us
clean of what is happening and with no moral obligation, and
somehow we can then during any political cycle say that we had
nothing to do with the changes there I don't think is a fair
assessment in that there are choices. And if Syria continues to
go south and radicalize, that that will be a choice we have
allowed to happen, and that we could have steered it in a
different direction.
Certainly some interests will try to blame people that
decide to help the opposition with some untoward effects that
may happen, but I still believe that the last 28 months
demonstrate that anything against Assad, you defeat him first,
and then later--and many of the Free Syrian Army say this:
Defeat Assad first, then we defeat al-Qaeda.
Mr. Yoho. Well, you know, I want America to be the magnet
in the world that people look to and aspire to to look at a
country that says, that is what freedom does; you can become
and do whatever you want to in a country that honors those
basic rights, and we have that Constitution we have been
blessed with.
But yet I guess what I am looking for is a way to have the
people uprise, because it has got to come from the ground up.
We can't instill it from the top down. It is not going to work.
I mean, when you have 1 billion Muslims in the world that don't
quite believe the way we do, to put our beliefs there, it has
got to be an uprising from the ground up. And I look forward
to, you know, sending questions to you guys and hearing more
from you.
One of the things that has been promoted is Radio Free
America, you know, and the Freedom Network to get that message
out. And there are other things like that I know we can do on a
small scale, but to promote that, that ideology of freedom,
that it is there for everybody, and help them achieve that.
I appreciate your time. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Mr.----
Rev. El Shafie. Can I add something, please, just something
extremely small?
Mr. Yoho. Is that okay, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Smith. Absolutely.
Rev. El Shafie. One of the things about education, like
what I was talking about education, the accountability of the
American aid. First of all, I--I disagree with Dr. Jasser, if
we defeated Assad today will defeat al-Qaeda tomorrow. Never
happened before in history and will not happen now. It just
will not happen. Experience wise it did happen.
But, example, just a quick example about education, because
if you really want to build this true democracy, you have to
start from the young generation. This is a book from the
Egyptian--from the Egyptian schools during the time of Mubarak.
Was supported, funded by American aid, the 1.9- that we gave to
the Egyptians after Camp David.
This book, it was supposed to be--it is in every school
until now. When you open the book, you found on page number 24,
speaking about jihad, for example, violent jihad. When you are
looking at page number 11, you found that there is no Israel on
the map, does not exist completely. And so on and so forth, big
examples.
I think this will be much better for all of us, if we are
giving aid for a school, for example, to raise a new
generation, let us go to the school ourselves or the Embassy
that--in this region, like if we have the American Embassy in
Cairo, for example; why don't make a surprise visit to the
school and grab one of the books that you paid for?
Mr. Yoho. I think that is a great idea, and that goes back
to your idea of accountability. I mean, we all talk about
transparency and accountability, but we don't see it, and we
don't follow through. And we can't afford to do that anymore
for the sake of Syria, Egypt, all these other countries. And it
is--if we are going to spend the American taxpayers' money,
when we are borrowing at the point we are and the debt we are
in, we need to change the game and the rules of the game, I
will say.
Rev. El Shafie. Yes, sir.
Mr. Yoho. And again, thank you all. Appreciate it.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Yoho, thank you very much.
On that very point, as you and I and, I think, everyone in
this room knows, in Rodgers and Hammerstein's famous South
Pacific, there is a song in it where you have to be taught,
taught about racism, taught about hate, how it is passed on
from generation to generation. And I and our subcommittee for
years has raised the textbooks issue, particularly in the
camps, but as well, as the Reverend said, the books that were
very much utilized during the Mubarak regime.
The problem is we have gone from bad on worse. And I think
that is what we are trying to say with this hearing, that the
Christians have been targeted. As Ms. Shea has so eloquently
pointed out, it is not collateral damage; they are being
targeted. And I don't think that understanding has--has been
accepted by some people within the administration, or within
Congress, or in the European community.
And, Dr. Jasser, as you know, during the worst days of the
Bosnia conflict, you know, not only did I make frequent trips
there, but I had the hearing where we heard from the translator
who was there when Milosevic and the Dutch peacekeepers were
lifting up glasses of wine or champagne as 8,000 Muslim men
were loaded onto buses and were destroyed in an act of genocide
in Srebrenica, a so-called U.N. safe haven.
Hopefully, we learned from those lessons. Part of the
reason for this hearing is to say that Christians are being
targeted, as Ms. Shea pointed out, and the response has been at
best inadequate.
I do believe there is good faith on the part of the
administration. The problem is that we haven't had that line to
say, our Deputy Assistant Secretary talked about generically
talking about human rights with the opposition, the Free Syrian
Army. There needs to be a very carefully delineated list of
things that need to be avoided, including the targeting of
Christians simply because they are Christians. So hopefully
that message will be taken back.
Your testimonies have been of enormous, enormous help to
us. I have other questions, but it is late, and you have been
very patient with your time. I will submit them for the record.
But I want to thank you, and thank you for your bold and
very effective leadership over the course of many, many years
for each of our four distinguished panelists.
Mr. Yoho, thank you for your participation. Thank you to my
friends on the other side of the aisle.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:58 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
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Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H.
Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and
chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations
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Submitted for the record by Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., Commissioner, U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom
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Material submitted for the record by John Eibner, Ph.D., chief
executive officer, Christian Solidarity International, USA
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Material submitted for the record by Ms. Nina Shea, director, Center
for Religious Freedom, Hudson Institute
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