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CONFRONTING DAMASCUS: U.S. POLICY TOWARD

THE EVOLVING SITUATION IN SYRIA, PART II

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

THE MIDDLE EAST AND SOUTH ASIA

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 25, 2012

Serial No. 112–146

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

RON PAUL, Texas 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina 

ROBERT TURNER, New York 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

DENNIS CARDOZA, California 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

FREDERICA WILSON, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

YLEEM D.S. POBLETE, Staff Director 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND SOUTH ASIA

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio, Chairman 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT TURNER, New York 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

DENNIS CARDOZA, California 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Mr. Andrew Tabler, Next Generation Fellow, Washington Institute for Near 

East Policy ............................................................................................................ 5

Ms. Mara E. Karlin, instructor in strategic studies, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University ..................................................... 12

Marc Lynch, Ph.D., professor of political science, director of Institute for 

Middle East Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University ................................................................................................. 17

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Mr. Andrew Tabler: Prepared statement ............................................................... 8

Ms. Mara E. Karlin: Prepared statement .............................................................. 14

Marc Lynch, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ............................................................... 19

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 42

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 43

(1)

CONFRONTING DAMASCUS: U.S. POLICY TOWARD THE EVOLVING SITUATION IN SYRIA, 

PART II 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST

AND SOUTH ASIA,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:30 p.m., in room 

2360 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Steve Chabot (chairman 

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. CHABOT. The committee will come to order. Good afternoon, 

everybody. Sorry for the change in location. Normally we are on 

2172, but we had a bunch of hearings happening at the same time 

so we are here in the Small Business Committee room this afternoon. So sorry for any inconvenience to anyone. 

I want to welcome all my colleagues to the hearing of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. As has been well 

documented, the human rights abuses being perpetrated by the regime in Damascus are simply horrifying. Recent reports suggest 

that nearly 10,000 Syrian civilians have now died. Approximately 

75,000 have fled the country and over 200,000 are internally displaced within Syria itself. 

This is now the fourth hearing that this subcommittee has held 

on Syrian human rights violations, and I am deeply saddened that 

each time these numbers continue to grow by leaps and bounds. 

What is more, the situation shows no sign of improving any time 

soon. The English language does not have words strong enough to 

adequately condemn the horrifying abuses that have been committed by the Assad regime and its allies against the Syrian people. 

Beyond questions of legitimacy, these despicable acts are proof 

that the Assad regime is morally depraved, and it is my belief that 

we and all other responsible nations have a moral imperative to ensure that Bashar al-Assad is removed from power as soon as possible. 

Today’s hearing is being called to examine U.S. policy options to 

address the continuing crisis. This subcommittee has had the privilege of hearing testimony from Assistant Secretaries Feldman and 

Posner as well as Frederic Hof, Special Coordinator for Regional 

Affairs and one of the administration’s point people on Syria. 

2

Although the administration has taken a number of steps on 

Syria for which it deserves credit, I am deeply concerned that none 

of these will actually lead to a resolution of the current crisis. 

While the sanctions that have been implemented by the U.S. and 

its allies around the world are certainly having an effect, I fear 

they will not achieve the stated goal to actually bring about the removal of Assad from power. 

Some today are looking to Kofi Annan’s six-point plan for Syria, 

the Assad regime’s recent acceptance of a ceasefire agreement and 

the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 2042 and 2043 establishing an observer mission with optimism. I am afraid that I 

do not share that optimism. Although diplomacy must always be 

given an opportunity to succeed, I do not see one iota of evidence 

to suggest that the Assad regime is sincere in any of its international commitments. 

Recent reports reference satellite imagery which indicates that 

the regime has not yet removed all heavy weaponry from population centers in violation of the ceasefire agreement. If it continues, as it has for years, to shirk its international commitments 

regarding its nuclear program, why should we expect it to honor 

this agreement now? And if years of sanctions and international 

isolation have not yet altered the Assad regime’s calculations, upon 

what are we basing the hope that they will now when the regime 

views itself as in a struggle for its very existence? Hope may be an 

effective campaign catchphrase, but it is not an effective policy. Indeed, we had all hoped for a clear path forward, that there might 

be some way through a combination of pressure or enticements to 

convince Assad to leave power. Those days are long gone. 

I fear that those who are advocating for the Annan plan are 

doing so not because they believe it has any chance of succeeding, 

but because they do not want to make a far harder, even if necessary, decision. 

One lesson that this administration appears not to have learned 

in over 3 years is that making no decision is, in fact, a decision in 

and of itself. And the cost is real. As a former official recently 

noted, ‘‘Suppose the administration had not sat on its thumbs and 

had started delivering nonlethal aid 1 or 2 or 6 months ago. By 

now we would, in fact, know a great deal more about the opposition, who is real and who has no military capacity, who can get 

things into Syria and who can’t, who is corrupt and who is effective. That we know so little about the opposition is not so much an 

intelligence failure as a deliberate policy.’’

Our chief priority must be to get Assad out of power as soon as 

possible. The longer Assad is allowed to stay in power, the greater 

the number of innocents killed will be and the higher the likelihood 

of the conflict evolving into a full-scale civil war will be. Furthermore, Assad’s removal would deal an important blow to the regime 

and Tehran and the terrorists it funds, like Hezbollah. 

As our witnesses will outline today, what remains before us are 

a series of options that range, unfortunately, from bad to worse. As 

we examine these options, however, we must not allow ourselves to 

be deluded into thinking that Assad is something that he is not. 

That he can be coaxed out of power or that he can lead any kind 

of transition or reform process. He is beyond salvation. 

3

I would now yield to the distinguished ranking member of the 

subcommittee, Mr. Ackerman from New York, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. I thank the very distinguished chairman. Atrocities can provoke two kinds of errors from those who witness them. 

The first is moral collapse, to look away and to refuse to see what 

is before one’s eyes. Whether by impassivity or apathy or rationalization, the nonresponse to horror fails the test of moral responsibility. Each of us, I suspect, has at some point walked away from 

someone or something which made a claim on our heart. Likewise, 

we as a government, and we as a nation, have sometimes failed to 

live up to our own highest aspirations. 

The second kind of failure is a form of reflex, a heedless leap into 

the fire of need. Such acts of selflessness by individuals are often 

properly understood as heroic, but in the life of nations they may 

be extremely unwise. Promising to pay any price and bear any burden sounds good on the East Lawn of the Capitol. I suspect those 

words sound less appealing while trying to survive a night on patrol in a Vietnamese jungle or an Iraqi slum. A man who jumps 

into the freezing waters to save another may succeed, but as every 

Boy Scout knows, it would be better to search for a pole or a rope 

and to pull from solid ground. And indeed, once the leap is made 

the would-be savior may quickly become a victim as well, doubling 

the stakes of the crisis. 

When this subcommittee met last year to consider the implications of the Syrian revolution, my fear was that we had fallen into 

the trap of indifference and were seemingly heedless of both the 

need of the people of Syria as well as the profound strategic implications in the potential collapse of the Assad dictatorship. 

While innocent protestors’ blood was running in Syria’s streets, 

State Department spokesmen were still rigidly calling for a ‘‘restraint on all sides.’’ A smarmy, condescending phrase that really 

ought to be expunged from our Government’s lexicon, and it made 

the Obama administration seem to be paralyzed. Behind the 

scenes, however, and to their credit, the Obama administration was 

working hard on developing the foundations for the broad, international consensus which exists today and has imposed unprecedented political, diplomatic and economic sanctions on the Assad 

regime, that has opened contacts with the would-be successors to 

the existing Syrian Government and that is continuing to support 

the demand of the Syrian people to be free of Assad’s tyranny. 

Today, I fear the pendulum is swinging toward the second and 

more potentially dangerous error of precipitous action. I want to be 

very clear. Profound moral outrage at what the Assad regime has 

done is not an impediment or a failing. It is a bare requirement 

for standing in the human race. But the loathing, contempt and 

anger provoked by Assad’s atrocities are poor counselors and doubtful policymakers. 

As human beings we must be informed by what we have seen. 

We cannot pretend to see these events as trivial or somehow normal. The butchery of thousands of men and women, the torture of 

children, the shelling of civilians in order to sow terror are crimes 

against humanity and we must not shy away from declaring these 

acts and insisting on their recognition. We serve no purpose but 

our own disgrace by hiding, obscuring or downplaying these facts, 

4

but our goal must be more than the satisfaction of our appetite for 

justice. 

As a nation and as a leader in the international community, we 

continue to have powerful interest in seeing the ultimate destruction of the Assad regime. But that doesn’t mean that we want to 

see Syria in anarchy without any government. We want Assad’s 

forces to stop the killing. We want Assad gone. But that doesn’t 

mean sundry airstrikes or the mere declaration of safe zones will 

succeed in achieving these ends. We want the Syrian opposition to 

cohere, to stake out strong, determined positions regarding a liberal, Democratic, pluralistic Syria to come. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that releasing a flood of arms will facilitate that objective. We need to engage both our heads and our hearts. 

Yes, Assad must go and we need, from both a moral and a national interest position, to facilitate that effort. But determining 

how to do that is considerably more complex than simply declaring 

it to be good to do so. It is all well and good for politicians and pundits to make robust speeches. For some, exhortations meet the definition of duty. Nevertheless, words, however righteous and mightily declared, do not feed refugees. They do not send soldiers back 

to their barracks. They do not collapse corrupt, bloody, failed regimes. 

Diplomacy that makes space for the Syrian people’s continued 

popular protests, international cooperation that facilitates the 

movement of relief supplies, economic sanctions that pressure and 

squeeze don’t inspire us. No statues will be built and no parades 

will be marched to honor the slow and hopefully steady constriction 

of a still tightening political-economic noose around Assad and his 

thugs. 

Our goal of course is not wish fulfillment or glory. We are engaged in this work because it is our essential moral obligation and 

because it serves key national security goals. And that is why despite the starts and stops, despite the agonizing slow pace, despite 

the endless frustration of coalition building and the diplomatic engagement with adversaries, we must keep at this work until it is 

done. Assad must go, and for that the noose must tighten. And 

with the means we have we must speed the work. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much, Mr. Ackerman. We appreciate your statement. And we certainly appreciate the distinguished panel that we have before us this afternoon, and I will introduce them at this time, before they will have 5 minutes to testify, each. 

We first have Andrew Tabler who is a Next Generation Fellow 

in the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute where 

he focuses on Syria and U.S. policy in the Levant. Tabler served 

most recently as a consultant on U.S-Syria relations for the International Crisis Group, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Current 

World, writing on Syrian, Lebanese and Middle Eastern affairs. 

Mr. Tabler received his B.A. from William and Jefferson College, 

and his M.A. from the American University in Cairo. We welcome 

you here this afternoon. 

And next we will have a speaker, Mara E. Karlin who is a lecturer and Ph.D. Candidate in Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins 

5

University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Previously 

she served in a variety of policy positions in the U.S. Defense Department including Levant director and special assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. In connection with her work at 

the Pentagon, she received the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Award. She is a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, and an adjunct scholar at the RAND 

Corporation. 

And our third and final witness will be Marc Lynch who is an 

associate professor of Political Science and International Affairs at 

the George Washington University, where he also directs the Institute for Middle East Studies. He is also a nonresident senior fellow 

at the Center for a New American Security, and director on the 

Project on Middle East Political Science. He is also the editor of the 

Columbia University Press book series, Columbia Studies in Middle 

East Politics. He received his Ph.D. in Government from Cornell 

University. 

And we welcome all three of you here this afternoon, and as you 

know our rules allow 5 minutes from each, and we have a lighting 

system on your desk. The yellow light will warn you that you have 

1 minute to wrap up, and the red light means that we would appreciate it if you would complete your testimony at that time or shortly thereafter. 

So we will begin with you, Mr. Tabler. You are recognized for 5 

minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MR. ANDREW TABLER, NEXT GENERATION 

FELLOW, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY 

Mr. TABLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Ackerman, and thank you for this opportunity to testify before the 

subcommittee today on the situation in Syria, and U.S. Government efforts to force Bashar al-Assad to step aside, as outlined by 

President Obama in August 2011. 

During Part I of this hearing in December of last year, a representative of the Obama administration characterized Assad as a 

‘‘dead man walking.’’ I agreed with that assessment at the time 

and I think much of it still holds true. International pressure and 

sanctions placed upon the Assad regime are having an unprecedented effect on its ability to fund its operations, and evidence 

shows that hard currency reserves are being rapidly depleted. Unfortunately, however, repeated vetoes by Russia and China at the 

United Nations Security Council, the overall lack of defections from 

the core of the Assad regime, and the findings of a recent visit I 

made to southern Turkey and Lebanon have all helped me understand that Assad still has many more political and military resources that he can call upon to continue what is literally now a 

death march for months if not years to come. To force Assad to step 

aside, the United States will need to accelerate efforts from the 

ground up by supporting the opposition ‘‘within Syria’’ in concert 

with allies forming the core of the Friends of the Syrian People 

group of countries. 

The Assad regime’s continued suppression of the Syrian opposition continues, and has claimed upwards of 10,000 lives thus far. 

Thousands more have been arrested or displaced including those 

6

that have fled to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Recently the United 

Nations Security Council passed a resolution backing a six-point 

plan developed by special envoy Kofi Annan intended to bring 

about a cessation of hostilities and a process to facilitate a ‘‘Syrianled political transition to a democratic, plural political system.’’ Despite agreeing to this plan, the Assad regime has failed to meet 

agreed deadlines to cease use of live fire and heavy weapons as 

well as its commitments to withdraw its forces from population 

centers. 

The United Nations has also approved a plan to place 300 monitors in Syria for up to 3 months to observe implementation of the 

plan. Given the regime’s failure to observe the agreement thus far, 

it is unclear if the monitors will be able to do their jobs. What the 

regime’s failure to implement the agreement thus far shows, however, is that what has become known as the Annan plan may be 

able to deal with some of the symptoms of the crisis in Syria, including introduction of monitors and delivery of humanitarian assistance, but has little hope of dealing with the disease itself, a minority-dominated regime with a 42-year track record of being unable to reform, now brutally suppressing an opposition carved out 

of one of the youngest populations in the Middle East outside of the 

Palestinian territories. 

The regime has thus far had a harder time dealing with civil resistance over the past year than armed resistance. Assad’s actions 

thus far indicate that he wants to use the Annan plan to grind 

down not only the armed opposition in the country, but the overall 

protest movement as a whole. Thus the Annan plan as currently 

implemented serves Assad’s interests and directly undermines 

those of the United States. 

The introduction of monitors is a positive development, but only 

insofar as it will help guarantee Syrians’ right to peacefully express 

themselves in favor of the Assad regime stepping aside. Quite simply, the regime is failing to implement point two of the Annan 

plan, halting fighting and use of heavy weapons and withdrawing 

its forces from population centers, because it knows well it cannot 

implement point six of the plan, respect freedom of association and 

the right to demonstrate peacefully as legally guaranteed. 

Assad knows well that peaceful protestors, who have continued 

their activities unabated as the international community has focused its attention on the armed opposition, will fill in the main 

squares and demand his departure or worse. To preclude this scenario he has labeled the peaceful protestors as terrorists and used 

live fire to put them down. 

The best way the United States has of ensuring that President 

Assad steps aside and expediting the more democratic government 

in Syria is to implement Plan B, a coordinated effort to pressure 

the regime from the ground up, including support for the opposition 

within Syria. This effort is already underway, partially, and would 

be implemented in addition to the sanctions and other diplomatic 

pressure. So I want to emphasize this would not replace what the 

administration has done up until now but would augment it. 

The United States is a member of the Friends of the Syrian People, a collection of 83 countries which met for the second time on 

April 1st. Its core members include Britain, France, Germany, TurVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:45 Jul 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\MESA\042512\73999 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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key and Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to forge and lead a coalition of 

countries to more directly support the opposition within Syria. 

Thus far the United States has committed to only giving nonlethal 

assistance to the opposition in that country, which could include 

communications equipment. 

Pressuring the Assad regime to end violence against the population and ultimately make an exit will require such U.S. assistance and much more. In the short term, the United States should 

share limited intelligence with the opposition inside of the country 

on the regime’s movements. 

Second, the United States should intensify its examination of the 

opposition within Syria and see, quite frankly, which groups with 

whom we could work and perhaps with whom we cannot work, 

given their long-term goals in Syria. 

And third, Washington should immediately expand contingency 

planning about possible direct U.S. military support as part of actions to head off massacres or a humanitarian disaster. This includes supporting the creation, with such allies as Turkey, of safe 

havens inside of Syria. In addition, the United States should consider what kind of military force may be required, and under what 

circumstances, to assist the opposition in deposing the Assad regime. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Tabler follows:]

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Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much. We appreciate your testimony. 

Ms. Karlin, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MS. MARA E. KARLIN, INSTRUCTOR IN STRATEGIC STUDIES, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL 

STUDIES, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 

Ms. KARLIN. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Ackerman. Thank you for holding this important hearing on 

U.S. policy toward Syria and for inviting me to participate. 

Let me state my bottom line up front. The United States knows 

what it does not want in Syria. But getting to what it does want, 

the end of the Assad regime, will be messy, difficult and 

unsatisfying. With that in mind and given the varied constraints 

on the United States, we can best support transition in Syria by 

playing a signaling role. There is no debate about the repugnant 

and despicable acts of the Assad regime in Syria. The longer this 

conflict lasts, the more bloody, internecine and tragic it will be. 

To expand on my bottom line, I would like to offer three critical 

observations. First, let us step back and dissect what the United 

States does not want in Syria. We do not want Assad to stay in 

power. He has proven to be venal and vicious, a murderous thug. 

We do not want a power vacuum that facilitates continued civil war 

or begs for a robust long-term U.S. nation-building effort, or enables Syrian territory to be manipulated and disrupted by rogue 

nonstate and external actors. And we do not want continued violence. Violence that has already resulted in ten times more deaths 

than when the international community first intervened in Libya 

last year. 

Second, nearly one decade ago, General David Petraeus, looking 

at the impending chaos in Iraq, posed a crucial question, ‘‘Tell me 

how this ends.’’ The outcome in Syria is not evident today, but I 

can say with some confidence how it will not end. It will not end 

with Bashar al-Assad voluntarily stepping aside or choosing exile. 

It will not end with him making sufficient reforms to enable a 

transparent and free Syria. This regime will not permit actions 

that serve to undermine and ultimately overthrow its rule. Those 

who predicted Assad’s speedy collapse or asserted his willingness 

to inaugurate a new Syria have been proven spectacularly wrong, 

for Syria today remains immersed in violence and Assad remains 

entrenched. And how and when Assad departs, will invariably affect the contours and dynamics of the new Syria. 

Both of these points illustrate how messy, difficult and 

unsatisfying our options are. We would be wise to recall them as 

we consider what the United States should be doing to effectively 

support transition there, which brings me to my third and final 

point. 

Our operating maxim should be the following. Facilitate the end 

of the Assad regime while coalescing alternative, viable and inclusive leadership. Both objectives must be actively pursued. To date, 

efforts to isolate, sanction and advertise the regime’s bad behavior 

have degraded its capabilities, and efforts to support the opposition 

have helped it delineate a vision of a new Syria. They should be 

redoubled, emphasizing to key supporters of the Assad regime both 

13

inside and outside of Syria that a transition will occur, and their 

interests are best served if this happens soon. 

But above all, the United States can play a signaling role. It can 

leverage its comparative advantage as the critical actor to whom 

other states have looked to for guidance as they respond to the 

Assad regime’s atrocities. Over the last year when the United 

States has signaled both publicly and privately that it supports vigorous efforts to undermine and counter the regime, it has had an 

impact. 

Washington’s active participation in the Friends of Syria committee is an important step, as is its increasing support to the Free 

Syrian Army. In that vein, the United States has signaled what it 

will provide, such as communications, intelligence and nonlethal 

assistance. Providing such capabilities signals U.S. willingness to 

support an alternative to the regime but with limited cost and commitment. 

The United States has also signaled what it will not obstruct, 

such as other states paying salaries and providing equipment. 

However, for the FSA to seriously counter the Syrian regime and 

its military, it needs to be transformed into a coherent and effective 

fighting force. Solely focusing on equipment assistance will ultimately have a limited impact. Meaningful support will require substantial training, advice, potential reorganization and shifts in personnel, and an overall refinement of its capabilities. To be sure, a 

strengthened opposition is significant, but it is unlikely to tip the 

balance in the near term. 

Signaling shows that the United States will not stop other states 

from taking more serious steps to counter the regime. For those regional players that seek to more actively and militarily confront the 

Assad regime, the United States should not prevent them from 

doing so, and should consider how it might play a limited complementary role. As Syria’s neighbors are flooded by refugees and 

increasingly destabilized by the upheaval next door, the signal that 

Washington sends will be of even greater consequence. 

In conclusion, the Middle East is mired in uncertainty and 

fraught with upheaval. For the United States, this arena is more 

difficult and complex to navigate today than ever before. Yet our 

interests are largely the same as they were before the revolutions. 

We must be cautious in our decision making, to be sure, but also 

cognizant of our priorities. 

I thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today, 

and I am ready to answer any questions you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Karlin follows:]

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Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

And finally, Dr. Lynch, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MARC LYNCH, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, DIRECTOR OF INSTITUTE FOR MIDDLE EAST 

STUDIES, ELLIOTT SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, 

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY 

Mr. LYNCH. I thank you Chairman Chabot and Ranking Member 

Ackerman, and thank you to my two colleagues for their very 

thoughtful presentations, much of which I agree with. 

I would begin with the fact that less than 2 weeks ago a ceasefire 

came into effect in Syria, which many people did not believe was 

possible. Four days ago, an unanimous United Nations Security 

Council resolution was adopted, authorizing a 300-member team to 

monitor the ceasefire, something else which many people believed 

to be impossible. 

These accomplishments are not ones to be easily or lightly set 

aside. The urgent and admirable imperative to do something to 

help the people of Syria and to attempt to bring about the downfall 

of the Bashar al-Assad regime should not mean that the United 

States rushes into a poorly conceived military intervention. This 

painstakingly constructed international consensus and a plan 

which was always designed to take time to manifest should not be 

abandoned before it has even had the chance to succeed. There are 

no easy answers to the Syria problem. It is one of the most difficult 

that I have dealt with in all of my years working on the Middle 

East. 

But I respectfully disagree that the Annan plan either helps us 

out or hurts the United States. It remains the best option that we 

have available to us to create the political space which would make 

it possible for the Syrian people to bring about a change from within, without embroiling the United States in a protracted, messy 

and difficult ongoing insurgency. There are no cheap or easy forms 

of military intervention which would quickly bring down the regime 

of Bashar al-Assad or effectively protect Syrian civilians. There are 

many measures which we could take, which would likely increase 

the odds of Assad’s survival while increase the deaths of Syrian civilians, and it is incumbent upon us to avoid making such foolish 

decisions. 

We also must be highly cognizant of the risks of limited half 

measures which leave us unable to succeed, but find us embroiled 

in subsequent steps which could end up placing us in a situation 

comparable to that of Iraq, where we find ourselves forced to patrol 

and take responsibility for a shattered polity where we are not 

wanted. 

Rejecting military action does not mean doing nothing. This is a 

false choice. The United States has effectively taken the lead in 

constructing this international consensus, which did not appear by 

magic. The six-point plan presented by U.N. Special Envoy Kofi 

Annan offers a plausible, obviously far from certain, path toward 

the demilitarization of the conflict and a subsequent political transition. The ceasefire obviously has not ended the killing, but it has 

substantially reduced the violence. Since that ceasefire began there 

has been a dramatic increase in peaceful protest across the counVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:45 Jul 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\MESA\042512\73999 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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try, and this holds out the hope and demonstrates that the will of 

the Syrian people has not been broken. We must continue to place 

pressure on the Syrian regime, increasing economic sanctions, its 

diplomatic isolation, and preparing for future international justice 

and accountability, but we should not rush into a military intervention which might be satisfying in the short term but leave us with 

something far worse than we currently have. 

In my prepared statement, I discuss in some detail the shortcomings of a number of available military options including safe 

zones, humanitarian corridors, arming the opposition and more. I 

won’t take time to talk about those here, though I am happy to discuss them in the questions. 

The fundamental point that I would like to make in the time remaining to me is that while the current diplomatic strategy is 

clearly frustrating, difficult and faces long odds, it is not something 

which is designed simply to buy time and to not act. There is a 

logic behind Annan’s plan. And that logic is that it is the militarization of the conflict which serves the survival of Bashar alAssad’s regime. The opposition is incapable of winning by force, 

and it is very unlikely that anything that we do will change that. 

At the same time, the center of Syrian politics and the very real 

constituencies which continue to support Bashar al-Assad are 

bound to him by fear of the future. Minority communities fear that 

they will face retribution. That they will revenge killings. That 

they will be butchered in the aftermath of the fall of Bashar alAssad. 

The demilitarization and the ceasefire which Kofi Annan is pursuing are precisely designed to reduce those fears and to carve out 

the political space necessary to begin a genuine political transition. 

Nobody, not me and I believe not Kofi Annan, believes that Bashar 

al-Assad will agree to voluntarily end his regime. He has never 

demonstrated any willingness or ability to do so. But that is neither necessary for the plan or its objective. Instead, the objective 

is to create the space for Syrians to find a way to remove Assad 

by calculating that their interests are best served to rescue their 

country by removing Assad themselves. And our job must be to create the international space to make that possible. 

Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lynch follows:]

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Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much, Doctor. And we will go 

ahead and ask questions. At this point I recognize myself with 5 

minutes for that purpose. And I would ask Mr. Tabler and Ms. 

Karlin, Dr. Lynch has painted a relatively bright picture on the 

Annan plan and seems to be optimistic about its possibilities and 

success. I wonder if you might feel otherwise, and if you wouldn’t 

mind commenting on that. I appreciate it. We will start with you, 

Mr. Tabler. 

Mr. TABLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t think Marc believes that necessarily the Annan plan is going well. What I said 

in my testimony, and where I think probably we agree, is that the 

Annan plan as implemented is the problem. This is not a ceasefire. 

Having multiple shelling incidents a day on the third largest city 

in Syria is not a ceasefire. It is not even fragile. It is just not a 

ceasefire. It is a reduction in hostilities, but even that went out the 

window a couple of days ago when the death toll spiked again 

when they began using shelling. 

They also have not completely withdrawn their military formations from cities, and this gets to what I think Marc was talking 

about a little bit later on. The key part of the Annan plan is that 

the Assad regime is vulnerable to civilian resistance and has been 

for over a year. It is the peaceful protestors that have kept Assad 

on his heels. The problem is, is that they are constrained by the 

placement of military forces inside the country now. They move 

them around, they move them to the outskirts of town, they put 

them inside of buildings, and unfortunately, when they move them 

to the outside of town they begin to use artillery and mortars on 

the populations inside those cities. So the Annan plan as implemented now, and this is the problem, it contravenes a pillar of U.S. 

policy going back over 1 year, and that is that Syrians should be 

allowed to peacefully express themselves and to assemble. And this 

was established long ago, long before the Annan plan was established. The fact is, is that this has not happened. 

And so now we are sending in monitors, again which could carve 

out that space for protestors. But my only response would be it gets 

back to my original point, he cannot implement point two of the 

plan because he cannot tolerate point six. That is, he can’t tolerate 

anything that would allow Syrians to once again flood the main 

squares of cities and demand that President Assad go, and this is 

where he is particularly vulnerable. Thanks. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. Ms. Karlin? 

Ms. KARLIN. Sir, I would just add, I think Andrew’s point about 

implementation is particularly cogent, and there are two issues 

that illustrate this for us. First of all, as of yesterday there were 

11 out of 300 observers in Syria. Realize observers should be working 24 hours a day, so that would leave very few working at each 

hour of the day even if you get to the large number of 300. So the 

numbers are extraordinarily small. 

I will add another example which I think is telling. Right now 

there is an observation force on the border between Syria and 

Israel. It has been there since the aftermath of the 1973 war. Indeed, it has been an extraordinarily quiet border. But not because 

of the presence of that force, but because it is in both states’ interest to have it. If it is not in the interest of Assad to actually impleVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:45 Jul 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\MESA\042512\73999 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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ment the key aspects of the Annan plan, which involve his transition, then the observers really won’t be able to do a whole lot. 

Thank you. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. Mr. Tabler, in your testimony you stated that, ‘‘Washington should immediately expand contingency planning about possible direct U.S. military support as part of actions 

to head off massacres or humanitarian disaster. This includes supporting the creation with allies such as Turkey, of safe havens inside Syria. In addition, the United States should consider what 

kind of military force may be required and under what circumstances to assist the Syrian opposition in deposing the Assad 

regime.’’ Ms. Karlin and Dr. Lynch also discussed this subject. As 

I am sure you know, whether and how to aid the Syrian armed opposition continues to be very contentious. 

What assistance if any do you believe should be provided to the 

armed opposition and under what circumstances? What do you believe are the risks and benefits of arming or training the armed opposition, and additionally, are foreign nations providing aid to Syrian rebels already, and if so, how should that factor into our decision making? 

Mr. TABLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To answer your question, I think that the immediate first step is to expand the nonlethal assistance to the armed opposition within Syria. And what 

I mean by that is communications gear and other kinds of equipment that will allow them to better communicate with each other 

and coordinate their operations. I think that this is particularly the 

smart move in light of the Assad regime’s failure thus far to implement the Annan plan. 

There are risks to dealing with an opposition that you don’t 

know. The opposition inside of Syria is headless. It is not 

leaderless. There are many leaders. And the operations of the opposition within Syria are civil and armed and they vary by region. 

And there are some regions where we are more familiar with the 

groupings, particularly around Homs for the revolutionary councils 

and in Daraa. Idlib province is a bigger concern. There are groups 

there which are operating, which many perceive not to be in the 

long-term interest of the United States. It is also a very confusing 

environment. 

But what I learned from my last visit to the Turkish-Syrian frontier was that this assistance was already going across the border. 

I have heard that there is more assistance going across the border. 

A lot of this assistance by the way is not funneled via States. It 

is funneled via individuals. A lot of times, for example, weapons. 

The armed opposition inside of Syria obviously is getting weapons 

from somewhere. Where they are getting them from is, actually 

Syrian officers are selling them to Turkish intermediaries who are 

then selling them back to members of the opposition. And all this 

requires is wealthy people coming up with some cash. There is 

plenty of cash in the Middle East and it is already making its way 

there. So that trend is established. 

The question going forward is, given that there isn’t a resolution 

to this—and I think Mara is right, I just don’t see how this settles 

down anytime soon. Are we going to allow other countries in the 

region who don’t share our long-term interests inside of Syria be 

26

able to affect the outcome with the opposition? Or should the 

United States get more directly involved? And I think the only way 

to answer that is to take a much closer look at the groups that are 

on the ground and determine who you can work with and who you 

can’t. And I think to your original point, we should have done this 

much earlier and we didn’t. We worked it from the top down when 

we should have also, not instead of but also, been working it from 

the bottom up. 

Mr. CHABOT. Okay. Thank you very much. My time is expired. 

The gentleman from New York is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. I found it interesting that the chairman invited 

you to fight among yourselves and nobody really rose to the bait, 

which leads me to suspect that you are a lot closer to agreeing that 

there is no clear solution to this problem, or am I wrong in that? 

Ms. KARLIN. Sir, I think you are probably right in that. Having 

spent a lot of time wrestling with these issues, I think the three 

of us are cognizant of how difficult and, as I noted, how 

unsatisfying the options are. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t 

choose one of those options, I think, as Mr. Chairman mentioned. 

But I think we deeply appreciate we are now in the 13th month 

of this conflict. Ten thousand people have been killed. It is hard not 

to be rather sober about it. 

Mr. LYNCH. I would agree with that. Mr. Tabler, Ms. Karlin and 

I, we see the same Syria and we see the same facts. I would say 

that there are two, only two clear areas where I think that we seriously disagree. I think the first is on the potential for the ceasefire 

and the Annan plan to actually have a positive effect on events inside of Syria. And here, and actually even here I agree with much 

of what was said. For example, I think that the observer mission 

must be rushed in much more quickly. The French Foreign Minister just proposed that all 300 should be on the ground within 15 

days. That is something the United States should support strongly. 

This should not be slow rolled. But if you look at what has happened in the areas where observers are currently located, violence 

stops, and then they leave and violence starts again. And that is 

the point of having an expanded mission on the ground in order to 

make sure that they don’t have to leave and that you can actually 

create that political space. So for the Annan plan I think we disagree on the potential utility of that. 

And the second, I think, very serious area of disagreement is on 

the question of arming the free Syrian Army and the Syrian opposition, which quite frankly, I think, would actually lead to the 

worst possible outcome in that it would stand up——

Mr. ACKERMAN. You are for don’t arm them. 

Mr. LYNCH. I am very much for don’t arm. And the reason for 

that is that by doing so what you do is you create a balance of 

power on the ground in which the opposition is not going to be able 

to win, but you will succeed in generating enough violence to scare 

the other Syrians back into the arms of the regime and you end 

up with a protracted insurgency. I look back in history and I try 

and see examples of this strategy working. The only one I can find 

is Afghanistan, mujahideen in Afghanistan. And how did that end 

up? The Afghans stayed collapsed. The Taliban took power and alQaeda was created. I can’t think of another example in modern hisVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:45 Jul 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\MESA\042512\73999 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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tory in which a strategy of arming the opposition, picking and 

choosing who you can work with and trying to bring down an entrenched——

Mr. ACKERMAN. Thank you. Mr. Tabler, do we arm the opposition? 

Mr. TABLER. I think that we need to identify groups with whom 

we could work and potentially arm some of those groups. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. If we arm those groups what does that do? Does 

that bring Assad down or does that guarantee that the U.N. peaceobserving mission has nothing to observe because there is no 

peace? 

Mr. TABLER. Well, they are observing the implementation of the 

six-point plan. They are not observing peace or even are supposed 

to keep the peace, so they can observe the agreement all they want 

and make their own decisions. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. Well, I don’t know. It seems sometimes that policymakers are more interested in checking the boxes. We have a 

six-point plan, one, two, three, four, five, six. We don’t care what 

the hell happens as long as that did whatever the plan said. 

But if the ultimate goal here is to get rid of the Assad regime, 

do you do that with arming the people? And if you arm the people, 

it would seem to me that what Dr. Lynch said, you are going to 

give the observers a lot more to observe. Because if you arm one 

side more than they are armed, they are going to use those arms 

because that is what they have the arms for. 

Mr. TABLER. Right. We have the ability to arm the opposition in 

greater numbers, but——

Mr. ACKERMAN. Is it wise to do that is the question, and what 

does that yield? 

Mr. TABLER. They are going to get the weapons whether we give 

them to them or not, and this is the problem. I mean there is——

Mr. ACKERMAN. We don’t have to, we can move on to the next 

country and call the next panel. Are you saying we shouldn’t do 

anything because they are going to do it anyway, so we are wasting 

a lot of time, resources——

Mr. TABLER. I am saying to blanketly not support the armed opposition inside of Syria would not be, I think that it is necessary 

to do so in order to pressure the Assad regime. That does not mean 

that we throw away the rest of our policy. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. My concern is, when there is not a clear, everybody can agree to want to go forward plan to a horrible situation 

that is festering somewhere, that what we do on this side of the 

table is we break down onto our own sides, and it becomes an exercise in let us blame the administration or let us defend the administration. And our real concern has to be, on both sides of our tables here, is to figure out what we do as a humane people that is 

in our national interest to resolve this situation the best and fastest way we can with the least damage to human beings and to the 

greatest advantage to our American national interest. And we don’t 

seem to have a clear path by which to accomplish that. Is that a 

fair assessment? Forget about us bickering on this. 

Ms. KARLIN. Frankly, I don’t know that there is a clear and satisfying path. I will say this. To take off of Marc’s points, if we look 

at some historical examples, there was really 11⁄2 years of turmoil 

28

and tumult including the positioning of observers in the Balkans 

until Srebrenica happened, and that was the spectacular attack 

that fomented the international communities’ involvement. 

And I would also respectfully counter one of th points that Marc 

had made regarding other scenarios where we have seen arming an 

opposition, pushing out a government or rendering impotent. I 

think if we look at Lebanon in the early 1980s, Iran’s efforts to 

support the formation and strengthening of——

Mr. ACKERMAN. I don’t know that that is a wise thing to do to 

go back in history and find out who beat who and how they did it, 

because someone will then come up with an observation that this 

is a different country and it is a different century. 

Ms. KARLIN. Indeed, sir, indeed. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. So while it might be historically interesting, we 

are not going to make any policy decisions based on the Philistines 

beat the Hebrews or something somewhere back in the——

Mr. CHABOT. The gentleman’s time has expired but if somebody 

wanted to complete that thought that would be good. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. That would not be me. 

Mr. CHABOT. Dr. Lynch, did you want——

Mr. LYNCH. Sir, if I may. I think that what unites the three of 

us at the table is, and I think what actually meets your mandate 

of us not simply bickering is that none of the three of us is urging 

doing nothing. All of us would like to orient our policy to see that 

Bashar al-Assad’s regime ends and the Syrian civilian population 

is protected. Our disagreement, I think, is fundamentally about 

what is the best way to do that. And I think that makes for a better and more constructive kind of policy debate, and one which 

hopefully can go forward. 

Mr. CHABOT. Okay, thank you very much. The gentleman’s time 

has expired. The gentleman from Nebraska, Mr Fortenberry, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the 

witnesses for coming today. I am sorry I don’t have the benefit of 

your earlier testimonies since I arrived late, and if any of this is 

redundant, please forgive me. 

But I think the central question here is, what does a post-Assad 

regime governance structure look like? What is the probability of 

that actually happening? And then the third question is related to 

an interesting scenario that I encountered on a radio call-in show 

recently. It was a national program. A gentleman came on who was 

American but of Syrian descent and who said that our policy ought 

to be to defend Assad. He was a Christian, and because Assad protects the Christians that should be the United States policy, which 

again begs the other question as to how he holds a coalition together that continues to empower him to provide some semblance 

of governance structures in the midst of this chaos. 

So everybody follow me on those three points? 

Mr. TABLER. Congressman, we don’t know what a post-Assad 

Syria would like yet. I can tell you based on what the country is 

that it would be a very diverse one. A quarter of the population are 

minorities, and the Sunni community, the 75 percent of the country 

are divided between tribal Sunnis, settled tribal people, urbane 

Sunnis from Aleppo and Damascus, and then more conservative 

29

Muslim Sunnis from the northwestern part of the country in Idlib 

province. It would look like a mosaic. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Then the binding element currently, force and 

fear? It has got to be a bit beyond that. 

Mr. TABLER. In the past that is certainly how the Assad regime 

has ruled over the country. I think a post-Assad Syria that would 

not be necessary. I would imagine that you would see a country 

that would have to come up with some kind of structure that would 

be able to incorporate all those different communities into it. 

But there is a tremendous amount of bickering inside of the opposition. I think there are two distinctions here. One is, the exiled 

opposition, the Syrian National Council, is incredibly divided and 

they have had a lot of problems. One of the reasons is because they 

are not facing any gunfire and they are not under pressure to come 

together. They are arguing over chairs. And why would they argue 

over chairs? Well, a lot of Western countries, Middle Eastern countries, and including in a de facto sense, the United States, only engaged this Syrian National Council and they ignored the rest of the 

opposition inside the country. So they have no incentive to come together until very recently. 

The opposition inside the country has come together in some 

areas, have coalesced more quickly in the face of live fire. There is 

nothing that focuses the mind like being shot at. And I think that 

that is a trend that we have seen in a number of different areas 

including around Homs. 

The reason why one of your perhaps constituents was arguing——

Mr. FORTENBERRY. It wasn’t my constituent by the way. 

Mr. TABLER. Oh, sorry. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. And I rejected the premise. The United States 

is not going to stand by idly and watch this kind of brutality. It 

is not who we are, and the times in which that has happened we 

go back and question ourselves. 

Mr. TABLER. Right. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. So I rejected his premise. But at the same 

time it points to this idea of Assad being able to hold this coalition 

together in some manner with some degree of authority, whether 

that is legitimate authority or whether it is through fear and force 

primarily. 

Mr. TABLER. The Saudis call the way that President Assad rules 

now, the killing machine. We call it Whac-A-Mole. It is very simple. 

You send military forces into areas that you don’t control. You try 

to clear them but you can’t hold them. And it drives up death tolls, 

it drives refugees across the border. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Well, it is unimaginable that he can sustain 

this into time——

Mr. TABLER. The Assad regime is——

Mr. FORTENBERRY [continuing]. Given the state of the world and 

the interconnectedness of the world, the resources that are 

transnational that can flow to people who want to affect governance outcomes. 

So back to the question. What does a post-Assad regime look 

like? 

30

Ms. KARLIN. Thank you, sir. Let me make two points. A postAssad Syria is still violent. I think we can be cognizant of that. Because you have had an authoritarian structure really imposing it 

to rule through violence and the potential for violence for decades, 

we can expect violence to continue. Given its diversity there are a 

couple models one could look at. One could look at Iraq or one 

could look next door at Lebanon. Neither——

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Is a Lebanese model multiple confessions, 

government of multiple confessions viable? 

Ms. KARLIN. It would be difficult. I think in the near term it is 

possible. The challenge with the Lebanese model is it doesn’t really 

function very well. I mean you have a government that entirely impedes all actions, so those are not heartening models. That said, 

compared to authoritarian regimes——

Mr. FORTENBERRY. It doesn’t function well, you are correct. But 

somehow it functions. 

Ms. KARLIN. But somehow it does function. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. In the midst of the rise of sporadic chaos 

somehow the mail gets delivered at the end of the day. 

Ms. KARLIN. It does, messily, to be sure. And it is even difficult 

for the bureaucracies to move forward in any way in Lebanon, even 

something as simple as ambassadorial confirmations. But that said, 

they do exist and you don’t have the same degree of violence, for 

example. And furthermore, in Lebanon you do have the challenge 

of an extraordinarily powerful, armed nonstate actor of Hezbollah 

helping govern it. 

On the question that the individual asked you, it is an intriguing 

one. Look, the straw man for why one would support Assad would 

be that he had brought stability. And that is really what the exchange was. He was supporting terrorist groups, had a covert nuclear program, undermined the Arab-Israeli conflict, fomented instability in Lebanon and Iraq, but at the end of the day Syria was 

stable. That is really no longer the case, and I don’t know that anyone really predicts that to be the case for the near to immediate 

term. Thank you. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Thank you. 

Mr. CHABOT. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Thank you. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much. We will move into a second 

round here and I will yield myself 5 minutes. As the conflict in 

Syria enters its second year, the prospect for a prolonged conflict, 

I think many of us believe, has the potential of intensifying. If the 

conflict in Syria evolves into a protracted battle between government forces and an array of various Sunni militias, some analysts 

fear that governance inside the country could erode significantly 

and that the conflict could expand to other countries in the region. 

Under what circumstances do you believe the conflict in Syria 

could or would spread to, or draw other countries of the region into 

this? And I will just go down the line beginning with you, Mr. 

Tabler. 

Mr. TABLER. It is possible that the conflict, such a conflict could 

spread, but as we found out from Iraq and also a number of other 

conflicts in the region, domino theories and contagions don’t often 

hold true. I think Lebanon is particularly susceptible to some sort 

31

of pressures from Syria, given that you have many of the same 

communities that go over the border and the close history between 

those two countries. But I think what is going on, actually in Lebanon the situation is rather quiet. Certainly is a lot hotter up in 

the areas in the north where the refugees are coming across the 

border. I think what is going on in Syria is a uniquely Syrian one. 

It is a tempest. 

Again, the prospects for the Assad regime reforming, in my opinion based on my long experience there and particularly in the 

knowledge of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, is close to zero. It is a minority-dominated regime like Saddam Hussein’s. I think the 

chances of them splitting any time soon, I think it is going down 

by the day. On the other hand you have this young opposition 

carved out of what is essentially one of the youngest populations 

in the Middle East. It is headless. I don’t see how this is politically 

solved. Even if President Assad wanted to cut a deal tomorrow 

with whom would he negotiate? And who would be able to take 

people off the streets? That is the real challenges, and I think this 

is one of the reasons why all three of us have been, and many others, have been scratching our heads the last few months. 

Mr. CHABOT. Okay, thank you. Ms. Karlin? 

Ms. KARLIN. Thank you. In terms of the spread, I think there is 

actually very real potential for it. And I look at Turkey as really 

the center of gravity here. You many have seen the Turkish Prime 

Minister’s recent comments where he had suggested that he may 

ask NATO to invoke Article 5. We know the last time Article 5 was 

invoked was following the September 11th attacks and really the 

only time since then. That is a bold statement. It shows how 

discomfitted he is by the actions of the regime in Syria and by the 

slews of refugees and potential violence further plaguing the country. So it could be increased to be sure. Lebanon, frankly, is used 

to——

Mr. CHABOT. I am sorry. Article 5 is the mutual defense? 

Ms. KARLIN. Yes, sir. And Lebanon is used to being regularly destabilized by various regional events, and no doubt one would expect that to happen. 

And then for a more creative option is really to look at Jordan. 

For example, we saw slews of Iraqi refugees go to Jordan and dramatically shift the Jordanian economy because they came with a 

lot of money. And so Jordanians couldn’t afford housing. That led 

to some real difficulties for the Hashamites. So there is the violent 

challenges, those that we are most aware of and the tangible ones, 

and also the ones that are under the radar and indirect but actually have really problematic consequences. Thank you. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much. And Dr. Lynch? 

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, sir. I agree again with what my colleagues have said. I would also point to the potential impact on 

Iraq, which as you know we spent a great deal of time, blood and 

treasure trying to stabilize, and is uniquely vulnerable to a spillover given the long border and the history of cross-border relations 

there. 

There is also the potential for reverse impact where if you go 

back to the 1950s, the last time you had a really unstable Syria, 

it becomes a battleground for regional conflict, proxy war, between 

32

in this case, the Gulf States and Iran basically becomes an arena 

in which they fight their battles. And that historically is something 

which was very destabilizing for Syria and across the region. And 

it becomes an extremely useful place for a group like al-Qaeda, 

which is mostly on the ropes, to reconstitute itself. To project itself 

as the defender of embattled Sunnis in Syria, this could possibly 

be its only opportunity to reestablish itself as a meaningful force 

in Arab politics. It has not done so to this point. I think that much 

of what we have seen is propaganda from Bashar’s regime, but 

looking ahead is something which any serious strategic assessment 

has to take into effect. 

The final part of my answer to your question and to Representative Fortenberry’s question is that much depends on how violent 

the transition process is. An extended, turbulent, violent transition 

process is more likely to create both a violent, unstable situation 

inside of Syria and across the region. And I think that is the great 

concern of the Turks in particular as they try and find a solution. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much. And the gentleman from 

New York is recognized for a second round, if you want to go. We 

are into the second round so I can go. All right, go ahead, Mr. 

Connolly. We will go to the gentleman from the Commonwealth of 

Virginia. Not the State, but the Commonwealth. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. That is right. Can anyone name the four Commonwealths in the United States? There are only four. 

Mr. CHABOT. Kentucky. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Ackerman, 

for your graciousness. 

Ms. Karlin, you talked about Turkey. There have been some alleged encroachments, shooting across the border, targeting some 

refugees perhaps even. How helpful has Turkey been during the 

Syrian crisis from the U.S. point of view, would you say? 

Ms. KARLIN. Thank you, sir. The Turks as you may know had a 

very close relationship with the Assad regime for a number of 

years. In fact, this was how Prime Minister Erdogan really showed 

his comparative advantage, was that he believed and he articulated 

that he could bring the Syrians in for a close relationship with not 

just the U.S. but also with the Israelis. You might recall he had 

tried to broker an Israeli-Syrian peace deal. So that relationship 

was critical for the Turks, and that is why for the first few months 

of this conflict we saw the Turkish leadership, both the Foreign 

Minister and the Prime Minister, very enthusiastically trying to 

work with Assad to reform. And then they realized he wasn’t going 

to, and they were scorned and they were perturbed. 

And since then I would say they have actually been quite helpful. 

They have welcomed in the refugees. They have supported them as 

much as possible. In fact, in many ways you could probably say the 

Turks have been more forward-leaning than a lot of other states, 

the United States, and also in Western Europe, because they are 

perturbed by what he has done. They are particularly perturbed 

that Assad lied to them. They thought he had this potential and 

he clearly didn’t. They are now feeling the direct effects of the turmoil in Syria, and it is why, I think, they are the most worried 

about this dynamism in the contours of what really plays out. So 

33

I think they can be a close ally here, but I do believe they are going 

to look for what role the U.S. is willing to play in support of them. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Did you want to comment, Dr. Lynch? 

Mr. LYNCH. I would just add that when you look at Turkey, the 

Kurdish issue, the roles——

Mr. CONNOLLY. I was just going to ask about the Kurds. Go 

ahead. 

Mr. LYNCH. There you are. They are obsessed and have a deep 

problem with their own Kurds, and that leads them to be highly 

skeptical of any post-Assad situation in Syria in which the Kurds 

enjoy autonomy or any form of seemingly——

Mr. CONNOLLY. Although correct me if I am wrong. In Syria the 

Kurds have been relatively quiescent compared to say Iraq or even 

for that matter, Turkey. 

Mr. LYNCH. For the Turks this is matter of great concern. The 

rationality or the history is not something which is necessarily 

guiding their decision making in that regard. But I would say that 

with the Kurds, and I would say even more broadly, again in response to Mr. Fortenberry’s question, is that the Syrian opposition 

has not done a good job to this point of trying to reassure communities like the Kurds, the Christians, the Alawis. And if there is 

going to be any hope of a stable or nonviolent transition, they need 

to do a much better job of guaranteeing the security and the inclusion and participation of such minority communities. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And you bring up a very good point. The Assad 

regime has been a minority Alawite regime since its founding. The 

Alawites are in some quarters of the Islamic world considered 

worse than heretics, even nonbelievers. And I don’t judge that but 

they have got a problem in mainstream Islam in terms of acceptance. One could look at what is going on in Syria and differentiate 

it from Libya or some other situations and say, well, for the 

Alawites this is do or die. If they lose power there are a lot of other 

problems besides just the fall of a regime, from their point of view. 

How much of a dynamic do you think that represents and how 

if at all, you talked about reach out and reassure the Alawites. 

Well, that sounds good, but I mean given the dynamic and given 

the current power structure that has been in place for quite some 

time, that is a lot easier said than done. Any of you can comment. 

Mr. TABLER. The minority nature of the regime galvanizes it 

against the kind of splits like we saw in Egypt and Tunisia. A split 

meaning, for the military, acts as a and ousts the ruling family in 

the name of the nation. Because the idea is that if the Assad family 

is thrown out that along with it go the prospects of the Alawites. 

I think that that is a real barrier. It makes this regime much more 

rigid. 

And the reason why the Obama administration has tried to work 

with Russia in this regard is not because of any kind of love for 

Russia, but rather it is based on an assumption, an uncertain one, 

that the Russians have assets inside of the Syrian military which 

will be able to be called upon later to convince the generals in that 

country, despite the fact they are Alawites, to expel the Assad family. I think there have been a number of conversations in this regard. But thus far it seems that the Russians are not willing to go 

along with it. Either it is based on their own calculations in the 

34

region or, and there are others that speculate, that it is based on 

their own conversations with the Alawite generals themselves that 

they realize that the regime can hold on for some time. And that 

makes this a particularly difficult problem to solve diplomatically 

involving Russia. 

Mr. CHABOT. Okay, the gentleman’s time has expired. Did you 

want to make a comment, Dr. Lynch? 

Mr. LYNCH. Yes, very briefly. I do not believe that the sectarian 

dimension is the most important here in the sense of Sunni-Shia 

conflict or of the Alawites being heterodox. I think for mainstream 

Sunnis this is not a major issue. It is a major issue for Salafi 

jihadists of the al-Qaeda variety who are as you say deeply hostile 

to any form of Shiaism and including Alawis. But I think that the 

real risk is that this can increasingly become something which defines relations as the conflict progresses, as we saw in Iraq where 

you did not have a great deal of sectarian tension early on, but as 

the killing proceeded the battle lines and the identity lines became 

harder and harder. And even intermarriage and living in close 

quarters wasn’t enough to protect people from that sectarian differentiation. 

Mr. CHABOT. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman 

from Nebraska, Mr. Fortenberry, is recognized for 5 minutes in the 

second round. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. What are your thoughts as a panel on 

leveraging military assets by a coalition of nations to create space 

for humanitarian relief and space for the development of a new and 

just and legitimate form of governance for Syria? 

Mr. TABLER. Working inside of such a coalition for the creation 

of where there would be safe havens, buffer zones, humanitarian 

corridors, there are a variety of concepts, is something which there 

are contingency plans for this together with Turkey which have 

been developed by multiple sides. It is certainly doable. It presents 

a number of challenges militarily. That would allow a space where 

refugees could run as the game of Whac-A-Mole continues. 

But also, and the Syrian opposition has argued this, that this 

would create a space also politically inside the country where people would be able to go and organize and essentially have a 

Benghazi. It is unclear if immediately that would happen. It certainly would have a political effect inside the country. It certainly 

would be a major loss for President Assad to lose control over areas 

of his country. It would depend on though how it was carved out, 

if simply Turkey invaded to prevent refugees coming across. 

Where this problem intersects with the Kurdish problem is that 

every time there is a game of Whac-A-Mole people die, people go 

across the border into that group. And this is what the Turks are 

worried about now. Turkey is worried that the PYD, the Syrian 

version of the PKK, which they consider a terrorist organization, 

that members in Syria now are acting as police in the Kurdish 

communities. They could then melt into these refugees going across 

the border, and that is a national security threat to Turkey. It is 

one of the reasons why Article 5 could be invoked. And so that is 

one of the reasons why Turkey would intervene. 

But there is also a possibility that areas like in Eastern Syria 

where the tribes are dominant could also break away. And that 

35

would function also politically. In Eastern Syria particularly you 

have serious production of oil and natural gas. So that would very 

quickly constrain the regime’s ability to refine gasoline and diesel 

fuel as well as the production of natural gas which fires most of 

their power plants. 

Ms. KARLIN. Let me just quickly add, sir, the creation of such 

areas would no doubt be a turning point, and I think Andrew nicely delineated what some of those might look like. There are of 

course challenges inherent in what those areas do, to be sure, but 

I think it is important that we are cognizant no matter what terminology we use. Those areas generally will look pretty similar 

whether they are safe havens, support havens, no-fly zones, you 

name it. They will all at least within the Assad regime’s eyes be 

seen as the same. And that is important to be cognizant of. Whether or not we should actually establish them or support others doing 

them is a separate issue. But I think from the Assad regime’s perspective this is all the same. Thank you. 

Mr. LYNCH. So without running afoul of the ranking member’s 

warnings about history, let me say that history is fairly clear that 

safe zones don’t work. That the safe zones don’t work. That either 

they require an enormous amount of diplomatic and military effort 

to sustain, or else they become in a sense unfunded mandates in 

which you offer guarantees of protection which you are not able to 

deliver, then you end up with your Srebrenicas. 

And so I think that it could be a turning point, but likely a turning point to deeper involvement. In order to establish a safe zone, 

for the United States with the way its military works, you would 

need to first establish a no-fly zone. That requires heavy bombing 

often in urban areas. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Let me be clear. I didn’t say the United 

States. 

Mr. LYNCH. Well, whoever does it. I mean I think no military is 

going to be willing to act in these areas without having the military 

ability to do so safely. And so basically this is something which 

sounds easy, but actually it is quite difficult when you look at what 

it actually entails. And then once you have done it you then have 

to maintain it. If you look at the example of in 1991 we declare Operation Provide Comfort and we spent the next 12 years protecting 

the Kurdish north, and that did not lead to a cascade of Saddam 

falling. We also declared a no-fly zone in the south to protect the 

Shia and that didn’t work at all. And in fact, so you can go back 

and you look at those examples. 

I would say that whatever happens, it has to be done with the 

mandate of the United Nations and with international legitimacy. 

NATO, I think, cannot do this on its own. It doesn’t matter if the 

Arab League supports it. Those are useful steps toward getting a 

Security Council resolution, but acting without the Security Council would make this something destructive of international laws 

and norms rather than building respect for international law. And 

I think for this administration or for any administration, this 

would be an extremely dangerous step to take. 

Mr. CHABOT. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman 

from New York is recognized for 5 minutes. 

36

Mr. ACKERMAN. I think there is a certain amount of international 

naivete spearheaded by American and Western notions of democracy, that somehow we will settle this all down by having some 

kind of big general election and everybody is going to peacefully 

abide by whatever the results are, which is something we can hardly do in this country anymore let alone expect it to happen in a 

place where you have such sectarian and other kinds of interest. 

This is going to require, I think, taking a close look at what Russian expectations are, how to get the Russians on board so that 

they can resolve the issues that are very important and critical to 

them, and other countries as well. I will put that out there for anybody who wants to comment on it. 

But in specific, looking at the major players who can have an influence or an effect on the resolution of this problem, which countries are the most critical of the Obama administration or American interests, if I could defang the question as I started to propose 

it, and apply the Goldilocks litmus test of the porridge being too 

hot or too cold, or who thinks we are getting it just right? Do we 

have critics that are not on board because of what we are doing, 

and who are vocal of what they think we should or should not be 

doing? 

Mr. LYNCH. Let me start that. I think that Saudi Arabia and 

Qatar have been very vocal in wanting us to take a firmer line. It 

reminds me of an old line that we once heard from Secretary Gates 

that they want to fight Syria with the last American. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. I wrote that down before you said it. 

Mr. LYNCH. Yes, it is right there for you. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. So they are not sending any of their citizens. 

Mr. LYNCH. Exactly. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. They are holding our coat and wishing us the 

best in the fight. 

Mr. LYNCH. Exactly. I think that Russia, I think, Andrew has already spoken of quite effectively. I would only point out two things 

here. The first is that a lot of Annan strategy, Kofi Annan strategy, 

is built around trying to hold the Russians here, which is to say 

that this is a plan to which they have agreed. It is their ideas, and 

in a sense they then take on a certain responsibility to deliver. 

The second point I would make is that everybody tends to equate 

Russia and China but, in fact, their interests in this are quite different. China has no interest to speak of in Syria. It has a great 

deal of interest in the energy of the Gulf, and they are much more 

likely to be responsive to Saudi Arabia and Qatar in terms of pressure on them to shift their position. And so I would not speak of 

Russia and China as a unified bloc. They have different interests 

and they might behave differently. You have already seen signs of 

that in New York at the Security Council. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. What is your view of their attitude toward what 

we are doing? 

Mr. LYNCH. I think for China, simply standing up to the United 

States at the moment is something which is useful for them politically given their grievances and things happening in Asia, but they 

have no intrinsic interest in Syria in the way that Russia does. And 

as a straightforward realpolitik, which is how I think the Chinese 

approach the world, it is much more important for them to keep 

37

the energy producers of the Gulf happy than it is for them to keep 

Syria or Russia happy. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY [presiding]. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

So let us——

Mr. ACKERMAN. I want to appeal for the judges. I think the clock 

was running from the last time, right? 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. It is confusing to me too. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. Did I go 81⁄2 minutes? 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. It didn’t seem that long, but it is always interesting to listen to you and time flies by. But don’t know what 

the time was. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. I take that as the ultimate compliment. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Chairman, if I may. The clock kind of went 

the opposite direction. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Is that what happened. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And I believe the gentleman had——

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Well, I didn’t want to lose my legitimacy of 

authority in the chair here, so I apologize if I cut you off prematurely. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. No, I will abide by the decision of the chair. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Well, why don’t we do this? The chairman is 

back and I will return the gavel to him. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I would ask you now to consent that the gentleman from New York be granted an additional minute. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. I would rephrase that and say my remaining 

minute. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Your remaining minute. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. I would just like to hear the response of the 

panel to try to get their, what I was trying to elicit, Mr. Chairman. 

It was not the fault of the gentleman who was in the chair, but the 

clock went haywire and reversed itself. 

Mr. CHABOT. Are you using your minute right now? 

Mr. ACKERMAN. Only if you think so. I was trying to elicit from 

the distinguished panel what they thought of the assessment of 

other countries viewing whatever our policy is, as whether we are 

being too harsh or not harsh enough. 

Mr. CHABOT. Okay, very good. 

Ms. KARLIN. Sir, I would just add, I think Marc did a nice job 

of delineating those in the Middle East who are frustrated by our 

policy. I would be sure to add to that the Turks who I think have 

looked for very strong signals from the United States and have not 

received them. And on the Russia point, it is one worth considering 

in that the Russians have a lot to lose if the Assad regime goes, 

and very little to gain at this stage. They lose money. They lose a 

lot in arms sales. They lose access to their only port out of what 

had been the Soviet Union’s territory. And for them to just do a 

little to impede change in Syria delivers a lot. 

They perturb the United States no doubt. They really by themselves accede at the table. When we talk about the Annan plan, so 

much of the discussion is, well, what are the Russians going to do 

about it? That is really where the focus is. So for the Russians, and 

of course if we look at what has happened in the region in the last 

11⁄2 years and the massive losses that they found in Libya given 

38

the change in administrations there, they are not enthusiastic 

about seeing a new Syria. 

On the China piece, I would just add to Marc’s comments. The 

Chinese are notoriously uncomfortable when other states look at 

domestic politics, when they look at what is happening internally 

and how a state treats its population. For decades, the United 

States focused on Syria’s foreign policy, what it was doing outside 

of its borders. And now really for the first time in a long time we 

are looking inside, and that is not something that the Chinese are 

inherently comfortable with. Thank you. 

Mr. CHABOT. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman 

from the Commonwealth of Virginia is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank the chair. And something that you said, 

Dr. Lynch, intrigued me. You said safe zones don’t work. Surely 

that is an arguable point. There are a lot of people who believe the 

safe zone, if you can call it that in Iraq, for at least Kurds, did 

work, which is why that part of the country even to this day is 

prospering and growing and attracting investment and so forth. We 

actually kind of cordoned it off and helped protect it from Saddam 

Hussein at the time. I may take your point on the south, but 

wouldn’t you agree that at least an arguable case could be made 

that it worked in the north? 

Mr. LYNCH. Yes, it could. But the cost was about 20,000 deployed 

troops, and it consumed an enormous amount of America’s diplomatic attention to maintain authorization for that at the Security 

Council over the years. And midway through, in 1996, one of the 

Kurdish political parties invited Saddam Hussein’s troops in to 

come and help finish off his political rival, and our no-fly zone was 

unable to prevent that. And so it was a guarded success at very 

high cost. But my point would be that what it did not do was what 

many people claim a safe area in Syria would do, which is to create 

a space where an alternative Iraqi leadership could emerge and 

thrive. Efforts to do that by the Iraqi National Congress failed 

rather spectacularly and it did not create a rallying point, which 

then led to a domino effect throughout the—so in other words, yes, 

it was a limited success in protecting the Kurds in a geographically 

concentrated space with almost complete ethnic homogeneity——

Mr. CONNOLLY. Yes. And I thought that was maybe the broader 

point you were making which is, Syria is not Iraq. I mean it is 

much more Balkanized, much more difficult to find a safe zone to 

say, well, that is going to be the safe zone, and we have three distinct, although there was lots of intermingling, but three distinct 

areas in Iraq that we could have, we pointed to. 

Mr. Tabler, did you want to comment on that? 

Mr. TABLER. I think that the idea of safe zones, yes, they are 

problematic. Yes, they are sort of a half measure so to speak between a overwhelming direct military intervention to sort of rip out 

the disease itself. And I would expect that these solutions, a safe 

zone or some of these other solutions are not perfect ones, but they 

are ones that are probably going to be considered, and I know are 

very seriously being considered by Turkey, as ways to try and manage the conflict as it goes forward. 

So then the question becomes, should the United States contribute to an effort now to deal with this problem and what it 

39

should be, or do we just wait and let this go on for 10 years which 

some estimates in this town indicate. And just see where it goes 

and allow other people to, and including our allies, to try and affect 

its outcome. I think this would be easier to solve if I could really 

clearly see what the solution politically would be, and I just can’t 

see it. I don’t know anyone that really knows the country or 

knows——

Mr. CONNOLLY. That is my final question for all of you. Revolutions always start off better than they usually end. And yet looking 

at today’s Egypt and Libya I would say the jury is out. What have 

we produced, collectively, not just the—and so as we look at Syria 

there are reports just this week that perhaps there has been some 

infiltration by extremist elements, terrorist elements, trying to exploit the situation. 

What ought to be, what could be a likely result given the experience we have just had with the Arab Spring and given what we 

know about Syria and its differences with other Arab countries? 

Mr. TABLER. The Assad regime is already destabilized and it will 

continue to deteriorate one way or the other. And into that very 

volatile vacuum can step other parties, for sure, and it can suck in 

a lot of other countries in the region and it can draw in a lot of 

other countries including the United States as well. The ultimate 

outcome, the settlement of the Syrian revolution is unclear. 

But what I can tell you is this. Whether America does something 

or not this is going to continue. This is not going to settle down 

any time soon. I don’t know anyone I have met in the region who 

thought so, and we really need to be able to look at this as a storm 

and how are we going to deal with it. This is a bit different than 

a tornado. A tornado, you just have to let it blow through. In this 

particular case there are some things we can do, the question is 

now, what? 

Ms. KARLIN. Sir, I would just add to that. It is hard to know 

when a revolution really ends. When we look at Egypt, for example, 

there are large swaths of the population that still think the country 

is in revolution. And yet there are those, particularly amongst the 

more conservative elements, that see the revolution as over. They 

have succeeded. They are in power, and moving on. And so I think 

that is a dilemma that we will see in Syria also. It is one we saw 

in Iran during that revolution also, if you will excuse me for citing 

history again, sir. 

So the results, what we know is this will be messy and we know 

that the violence will continue. It will be difficult. It will probably 

embroil various members of the region. And ideally the U.S. will 

be able to help shape how it plays out to a degree. But it is not 

stopping. I think we are all probably in quite a violent agreement 

about that. Thank you. 

Mr. LYNCH. And even though we are over time, I would simply 

say that I agree with Andrew that this is likely to continue for 

quite some time. And again, if you see what the ceasefire did in 

the 2 weeks since it has come into effect, each Friday you have 

seen a qualitative jump in the number of peaceful demonstrations. 

And the fundamental question is whether that is enough to develop 

into the sort of tide of peaceful protest which could pose genuine 

problems for the regime. I think that Andrew’s sense is that if that 

40

begins to happen the guns will come back out in much more force, 

which is precisely the point at which we need a united international community ready to put serious pressure on Assad to stop 

that from happening. That is why I want the observer mission to 

move in much more quickly, why it is so important to keep international consensus to the U.N. and why we need to push that forward. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CHABOT. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman’s time has 

expired. I want to thank the members of the panel for their excellent testimony. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. CHABOT. Yes. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. If I might before you conclude. Just for the 

record, I didn’t mean to disparage all of history. 

Mr. CHABOT. It is too late now. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. But just to try to reclaim my honor. 

Mr. CHABOT. It is okay, you are retiring anyway. 

Mr. ACKERMAN. I just wanted to caution us that we are not always informed by events in third century Babylonia as to what to 

do in 21st century Afghanistan. 

Mr. CHABOT. Excellent. Okay, thank you very much. And we 

want to thank the very fine presentation by the panel this afternoon. I think it was excellent testimony. And without objection, 

members will have 5 legislative days to submit questions or supplement their statements. And if there is no further business to come 

before the committee, we are adjourned. Thank you very much. 

[Whereupon, at 2:59 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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