 We have a great panel to discuss what is going on in Syria today. What could the United States perhaps do to ameliorate the situation? We're going to – I'll introduce everybody. Everybody's going to speak for about 15 minutes. We'll open it up to Q&A after that. Will McCants, who's in the middle, is a very distinguished scholar of Islam, was in the work to the State Department in the counterterrorism division working on the countering violent extremism. He runs the blog jihadika.com, which is well-known. Right now he's a fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and the director of its Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at Brookings. Nate Rosenblatt is here in the classes. And he works at Keras, which is David Cooke-Cullen's shop, which is doing a lot of on-the-ground work in Syria. And Nate has worked – has a graduate degree from CICE and has worked as an election observer in Iraq, amongst other things. Ubey Shabander, who is an old friend of mine, who I met in Iraq, is somebody who's had – worked at the Department of Defense for seven years. He worked as a – one of the small advisory group to General Petraeus in Iraq during the surge year. He's worked also in Afghanistan as an advisor to the Village Stability Operations, which is basically special forces operations in Afghanistan. Right now he's providing communications, political support to Syrian opposition. In D.C., he spent five months in southern Turkey working with the Syrian opposition just last year. And finally, Leila Hilal, who runs the Middle East Task Force here, also runs our Syria initiative, has spent a lot of time talking with the Syrian opposition, writing about Syria, and is also somebody who's had a long career working on Palestinian issues for the United Nations and has a JD from Harvard Law School, amongst other things. So we're going to start with Ubey. Ubey, thank you. Thank you for having me. And it's always good to be back here at New America. I want to address a couple of issues first. One is the popular narrative that has risen in the U.S. and Western media recently that the Assad regime is winning. We saw the list slide from the Washington Post wrote actually a pretty definitive article on this issue about a week or a couple of weeks ago. And it's really a narrative that's really seemed to catch on. So I'm going to speak a little bit more about the military dynamics and the counterterrorism aspects and what's going on today, particularly with the ongoing campaign in the coast, which is very significant and could have some long-term repercussions to the military dynamics in Syria and with the potential regional impact. First, the notion of what does it mean that the Assad regime is winning or what does it mean when we say the revolutionary forces on the ground are losing? Well, it's important to keep in mind that at the end of the day, when we're looking at an insurgency and a popular rebellion against a government that claims legitimacy as a sovereign entity, that ultimately the burden is on the regime, on the government forces to prove that they are winning, that they are gaining territory. So let's look at some anecdotal evidence. What's really been under-reported is just how much damage the Assad regime's military forces and how much attrition they've taken on in the past three years and just how incredibly dependent the Assad regime has become on foreign fighters, sponsored and trained and equipped in large part by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah, and how the Assad regime has really prioritized, in fact in many instances it's taken pains to project this image that it is gaining ground, it is a juggernaut that is gaining territory and in some instances striking local ceasefires and deals with local communities and local rebel forces. First of all, if you look at just how much damage the Assad military has suffered, you've really got to take into account that it no longer relies on its conventional forces, most of whom, the Syrian Arab army, most of whom remain in the barracks. It is now almost entirely reliant upon an amalgamation of national defense forces, paramilitary irregulars trained by Lebanese Hezbollah and by the Iranian Quds Force, augmented by both Lebanese Hezbollah fighters on the ground and Iraqi Shia paramilitary forces. And the reason for that is that it simply cannot trust the majority of its conventional forces to do what Assad wants them to, which is primarily to launch a massive and discriminate artillery bombardment on a city or village, wall it off, and then go, you know, and then spearhead an invasion and clear that area neighborhood by neighborhood. So it is really, really reliant upon those paramilitary forces. In fact, I really recommend that everyone take a look at some of the reporting that Ann Bernard is putting out there right now, she's in, she's in humps. And if you look at the pictures that are coming out of these areas, that the regime is allowing journalists for the first time in a really long time to go into, they're completely destroyed. I mean, if you look at the rebel neighborhoods, that the regime supposedly has cleared, that supposedly the regime has taken control of, there's nothing there, it's rubble. So it's important to keep in mind that for the Assad regime, gaining territory essentially means you've either depopulated the area, or you've completely destroyed it and made it inhabitable. So for me, that is not a metric that the Assad regime is gaining territory. And if you look at areas that the regime supposedly has under its control, like I always use the example of Zabadani on the Lebanese border that rose up very early on against the Assad regime. Well, the regime still, the majority of its forces are still in a holding pattern in these cities because the regime knows that if they move a full brigade combat, or essentially a task force that's akin to a brigade out of these areas, they will slip back into rebel, either it will become contested or the rebels or the Free Syrian Army will come back and take them over. So in the areas where the regime does claim control, it's really reversible in many instances. And if you look at Damascus, even the central Damascus, you know, the checkpoints every few hundred meters that exist in Damascus today didn't come out as a result of a regime military strategy to defend Damascus against the Free Syrian Army. They came out, they were a result of a policy that the Assad regime crafted very early on in the revolution to prevent activists and protesters from converging into the city center. So, again, even in the urban areas that the regime claims control, it is very, very tenuous and very easily reversible and is easy to imagine what would potentially happen if the Assad regime removed the saturation of security forces from these areas and the potential scenario of a popular movement rising back up and the Free Syrian Army entering it because of the general ideological opposition to the Assad regime and large swaths of the urban areas that are still nominally under control by the Assad government. And lastly, on the counterterrorism aspect, I just want to make a quick comment on that. You know, The New York Times this week wrote a very definitive and important article on, you know, new American intelligence on what Ayman Zawihiri wants to see accomplished in Syria and that we're seeing more and more al-Qaida operatives coming from Pakistan, coming from al-Qaida safe havens in South Asia to Syria. So, it's important from a policy perspective to realize that there is a preventative rather than reactive policy that can be taken to address this issue, namely that the Free Syrian Army on January 3rd declared war against al-Qaida's factions in Syria and then on January 7th, Ayman Zawihiri issued a very detailed fatwa declaring war on the Syrian opposition coalition and elements of the Free Syrian Army that are fighting these transnational extremist groups. So I'll leave that discussion further into the question and answer session, but I just wanted to from a Syrian opposition perspective really highlight that U.S. policy has an alternative option in dealing with a counterterrorism threat and increasing its partnership with the opposition and with the Free Syrian Army on the ground before this threat becomes too wide and too embedded in Syria to handle in an effective manner in partnership with local forces. Thank you, Ube. Will? I'll pick up where they left off with the jihadis in Syria and then kind of zoom back out to look at the broader complexion of the opposition, at least as it exists on the ground in the north and south. As you've probably read, there was a major split among the jihadis in Syria a few months ago, namely between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Shem or Greater Syria and al-Qaida's branch Nusrah. The split had been a long time coming. They had been beefing with one another for a while. There had been even some sporadic fighting between ISIS and Nusrah in places like Raqqa for months leading up to the larger split. What mainly brought it about was the ISIS's refusal to submit to any sort of arbitration because ISIS considers itself a state and does not consider itself just another militia group. And as such, refused to submit to any sort of arbitration when there were disagreements. This also brought it into conflict with the other main Salafi militia that's fighting in Syria, Ahra al-Shem. And it led to the fighting that Ube alluded to in January between various parts of the Islamic front, the Free Syrian Army, and Nusrah going after ISIS. The way the situation looks on the ground now is that ISIS is sort of a big, inky black spot over much of Raqqa province and to the northeast of Derazor. It's been pushed out for the most part of the territory it held around Aleppo, but the regime has come in behind them and taken over a number of those areas. And this infighting is incapacitating the opposition's ability to effectively push back in northern Syria against the Assad regime. So that's one dynamic that's happening. Among the Salafi militias, there's a new push into Latakia. And the push I don't think will last very long because logistically it's very difficult to supply because they are moving into generally hostile territory. But it is important for morale to push into Assad's heartland, which is one reason they're doing it. And I think the other is that it takes some pressure off of other areas in Syria where the rebels are having a harder time against the regime. The biggest split among the rebels is, of course, between the Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front. They're willing to work tactically together in many areas, but there's a fundamental split between them that has to do with regional political dynamics. And a lot of what is keeping the rebels from being ineffective has to do with fighting between Saudi Arabian Qatar. This has affected the Itilaf, the Syrian opposition coalition, and it has also affected the militias. The Islamic Front is much more in the Qatari camp, not solidly, but big chunks of it are, particularly Ahar Al-Sham, is in the Qatari camp. And the Free Syrian Army is much more in the Saudi camp, again, with caveats. But some of the main forces that are part of the Free Syrian Army, like the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, that's been pushing it back against ISIS, is widely held to believe to be backed by the Saudis. The Qatari's have encouraged, I don't know how sincere they are, but they've encouraged the Islamic Front to subsume themselves under the Supreme Military Council, which is affiliated with the Free Syrian Army. But the Islamic Front has refused, and again, I don't know how serious the Qatari's are really pushing them. And the Free Syrian Army itself is fractured because of this infighting between factions associated with the Saudis and factions associated with the Qatari's. So you have these very big splits in the rebellion that are keeping it from coalescing and presenting a united front against Assad. The other thing, of course, that's keeping them divided is private money that's flowing into Syria. People often talk about, when they talk about Syria, they talk about states and who the states are sponsoring, which is important. I've just talked about how it's influencing the conflict. But private individuals are having an outsized impact in Syria. We usually think of this in terms of foreign fighters, and indeed there are thousands who have flooded into Syria at an alarming rate that are impacting the fortunes of the rebels. But there's also a lot of money that is coming in that are keeping these foreign fighters fed and that are also keeping some of the most conservative of the militias in business. This has been a dynamic that's been apparent since 2012, and it's one big reason why the rebel opposition was unable to coalesce. On the one hand, you didn't have a systematic flow of funding and heavy weapons coming from a centralized source, so that would have been state provided, and that was absent. United States wasn't willing to do it. The Saudis and the Qatari's were fighting with one another. It was difficult to line it up, so that kept people from coming together. And then the other dynamic is this private money flowing in, particularly to the Salafi militias. If you're getting all of your money, and we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars according to U.S. Intel estimates, if you're getting all of your money from private sources with no strings attached, none of the strings that the Americans want attached to it. If you're getting all your money from elsewhere, why would you come together into a larger fighting force if you didn't have to? And this dynamic is still at play. A lot of this money is going through Kuwait. The government does not have good counter-terrorist finance laws. They are trying under U.S. pressure to shape it up, but there's still a lot of money coming in. The Saudis have also tried to tighten up. They have done a little bit better, but there's also a recognition that for two years, they really turned a blind eye to a lot of their young men going to fight. And a lot of the recent measures and decrees, royal decrees that have come out, as well as the recent counter-terrorist law that came out, is an effort to kind of roll this back. It's been Saudi policy that they didn't want young men to go fight for a long time, but they didn't really put any muscle behind it. They're trying to, and they should. They have a lot of their youth fighting in Syria far and away. The largest number of followers of the ISIS and Nusra Twitter accounts come from Saudi Arabia. It is going to be a big headache, and it's going to be a big headache for the rest of the Gulf. This kind of money that is flowing into Syria and these mechanisms that have been created for moving this money, that's not going to go away. This conflict will endure. Those methods will get more sophisticated when the conflict ends. All of those networks and that money are going to go elsewhere, and it can also fuel sectarian conflict at home. One final point is that it seems from recent press reports that Saudi and the United States are trying to energize the rebels that are fighting in the south as a way to put Assad under increased pressure on two fronts, but also to, in a way, take some of the energy away from what's happening in the north, which is so divided. The main problem there is the same problem that has persisted throughout the conflict is that the United States does not want the rebels to get serious anti-air weapons. Jordan is also quite resistant, and until that resistance goes away, those rebels fighting in the south will not be able to regain the ground that they have lost against Assad. It will be a very difficult slog. Nate, thank you, Will. Thanks, Peter. Thanks to the New America Foundation for putting this on everyone for coming. I'm going to speak about the issue of Syria and the conflict from a different perspective. At Keras, we've been doing a lot of work for almost two years now, understanding the dynamics of local community governance, aid procurement, aid delivery, and basic service provision. When I think about the issue of Syria and when we do analysis on it, this central unit of analysis is this local community governing structure, around which a lot of events and forces orbit, so the armed actors, Islamist groups, aid, the international community, et cetera. That's the perspective that I want to bring here. Before I get into my points, I just want to note that I'm speaking in my personal capacity, not as a Keras analyst. We do a lot of our work with USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, which has, I think, had the intestinal fortitude or the foresight to fund a little bit more of the learning and sense-making in Syria and not just the programatics. I think understanding the nuances of Syria's conflict is as important in acting appropriately in Syria as actually just acting. So I think when I sort of present my remarks, I think we'll talk a little bit about three things. The first is, seeing as we're just past the three-year anniversary of the uprising, talk a little bit about how civilian governance capacities evolved since the start of the uprising, very, very, very brief, I promise. The majority of my remarks will focus on sort of taking you across Syria, thinking about what is the sort of context of these different local dynamics. Someone says, the Syrian conflict is very local, it's hard to say anything more broadly about the conflict. There's no one-size-fits-all policy, et cetera. So I think I'd like to present some of the themes that we're finding in the different areas of the country. And then lastly, present a few things that we see as major issues going forward and things to be looking at carefully in the Syrian context. So that said, I mean, I think we've been focusing on in Syria for almost two years the issue of local councils. And when we started this in fall 2012, these local councils, which were basically community-generated responses to the absence of regime authority in their area. So people were saying, not only how do we provide basic services, keep schools open, pick up trash, et cetera, but also how do we build a decision-making authority that's legitimate at the local level. And so as early as mid-2011, we saw these organizations form. And over time, they evolved. And at the point at which we started looking at them in fall, they were still very different. You had community organization groups that were 15 people. They represented the local families, et cetera, et cetera, to 350 people elected by a community. So in Afrin, for example, in Aleppo, there's a 350-person general assembly. Other councils would work in secret. So we would speak with council members who were in the suburbs of Damascus. Their job was to just help IDPs get acclimated to the community. It was regime-controlled. They worked completely in secret. But over time, as we got into 2013, these councils started to homogenize. And I think not coincidentally, there was a lot of international attention paid to this entity that was a local council. And so now, looking at that today, local councils are sort of a thing in Syria. Every town and city has one. They're generally about 20 to 40 people in size. They've got about 12 to 15 sort of executive leadership positions that included president, vice president, someone who focuses on human rights issues, someone who focuses on education, finance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think we've seen a sort of process of homogenization of these councils. And on top of those councils now are provincial councils whose job is ostensibly to connect the local community needs up to the Syrian opposition coalition or the Etilaf. And then the programmatic agendas that the Etilaf has, the provincial councils are supposed to bring that down to the local level with varying degrees of success. So that's where we are today. What does this mean when it comes to understanding the local dynamics across Syria? I'll just very briefly take you through a few themes that we see when we look at the local community sort of governing entity and their relationship, particularly with armed groups that Ubey and Will talked about through the north, to the east, south, and then back into the middle. When we look at the dynamics in the north, particularly in Aleppo and Idlib, we see two major themes arise. And the first one Will talked a lot about, and that is the ebb and flow of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL or Daesh, as it's sort of colloquially known. And so in late 2013, Daesh sort of took over a lot of towns in northern Syria, and people we talked to in councils were very worried and felt like essentially there was a sharia law version of the regime. Control was very heavy handed. The Daesh would establish collaborators in the community that would rat out activists who were trying to sort of work with the councils and work with local civil society groups. As Will said, Daesh has a very overt governance strategy, and this was very counter to that. But I think the theme that we note here is that, as Will mentioned, Daesh has been kicked out of these areas in northern Syria, particularly Aleppo and Idlib. And when we talk to councils and say, well, what do you think about that? Isn't that good that Daesh is gone? They said, yeah, it's good, but we're still in the same place where another Daesh could come and take over just as easily. And so what's to say that the Islamic front, if they started to develop an interest in governance and not just fighting, wouldn't be able to impose similar restrictions on our lives. And so I think the theme of the vulnerability of councils in these areas and their inability to really partner with large armed groups that can provide a sponsorship and a deterrent to these Islamist groups that have an interest in not just protecting communities, but also governing them. The second theme, I think we really notice, this transition we're starting to see between armed groups getting involved more as aid providers. And so the Syrian Revolutionary Front, which has been sort of the representative of the Syrian Military Council on the Etilaf in the northern parts of the country, has been for a long time involved in the protection of aid deliveries. A lot of these groups will take a cut of whatever aid comes in as part of payment. But SRF and the Islamic front, as we'll mention, particularly Ahar Shem, is very powerful in these northern areas. They've also been doing a lot of aid sponsorship, but they've started to become more like aid providers. And there's a major debate within the different factions of the Islamic front as to whether that's a, I guess you could say, a market that they're starting to get involved in. And a couple of weeks ago, Ahar Shem in particular, which has been a proponent of this strategy, sort of organized the delivery of 10 large aid trucks into southern Idlib. And the reason this is important is because this is a heavily conflicted area. It's a town called Khan-Shehrun. And it's very hard to get aid to that area. And so what Ahar Shem is saying is not only can we coordinate the battle strategy, but we can also start cooperating with the Khan-Shehrun local council, Syrian civil society organizations, and Turkish aid organizations to provide aid in the same areas. I think that's a really significant trend. Going east, we'll look at Raqqa. And as we'll mention, Raqqa is sort of the headquarters of Daesh since it's been kicked out of Aleppo and Idlib. And in looking at Raqqa, I mean, it was almost a year ago that Raqqa was the first liberated provincial capital in Syria. And so many of the hopes of the opposition were poured into this place. And it was considered by many potentially to be the capital of opposition-held Syria. And the trajectory we've taken from then to now, I think, is an unmitigated disaster for a number of reasons. But today, basically, Daesh runs the city. It runs really the province. It's replaced the local council with people who are beholden to them. Not entirely replaced in terms of individuals, but the political recognition of their authority. And the only group that really contests their authority in Raqqa is Jabhat al-Nusrah. And we can talk about that dynamic a little bit in the Q&A if you're interested. But I'm going to go keep going east to the northeast in Al-Haseke province. And this gets into Kurdish politics, which if you're interested in, we can talk a lot about. But basically, the Peyadeh, the Syrian Kurdish representative of the PKK, really runs Al-Haseke and most of Rojava or the Syrian Kurdish areas. With the same sort of heavy handedness as Daesh, just without the sharia law sticker attached to it. And people are really concerned about Peyadeh's interest in governance and how that often comes into conflict with a lot of the activists that are Syrian and Kurdish and working in these areas. And so a lot of Syrian Kurds who are interested in reaching out to the Arab community in those areas are often prevented from doing so by the Peyadeh. I think the presence of the regime in these areas as well really puts a lot of tension between the Kurdish and Arab communities in that area. Going down to Derazur, I think in Derazur it's particularly interesting. There's a major disconnect between the local needs and the provincial council that I talked about earlier, trying to reflect those needs upward, and the ability of organizations to provide aid in Derazur. And mostly that's because the two major routes to Derazur are through Turkey, down through Raqqa. And that has been blocked by Daesh. And they won't allow aid to come through. There's also a route that comes from regime held parts of sort of rural homes on Palmyra and et cetera. And that goes in so the Syrian Arab Red Crescent has been present there. There's also aid routes that come in from Iraq. But those have different affiliations and allegiances when it comes to armed groups. So the Sharia Commission is very powerful there. We can talk about that in the Q&A if you're interested. But I think the point here is that there is a major problem of the Etilaf being able to work with the communities in Derazur. And I'm going to have to say this is a very funny quote. We talked to a guy from Derazur a week ago, and he was very frustrated with the provincial council, which was part of the Etilaf in making a lot of promises for aid that could be delivered to the community. And the guy said in talking about how the Derazur provincial council was not making good on its promises, they said, the guy said, the Derazur provincial council has not provided even one cigarette of aid. So I'm going to specify the local frustrations with the Derazur council. And that also manifests itself in not just cigarettes, but something important, which is water. And there's a huge water problem in Derazur. Just to quickly go south. In Derah, I think, as Will noted this, there's a much better, more unified civilian and military cooperation entity. And I think Leila's laughing at me. Maybe I'm over time. But there's a much better cooperation between civilian and military groups there. The provincial council and the local council and a lot of the local armed groups, many of which have affiliations with the Syrian military council, are working very closely together. And as Obay mentioned with the issue of Qasab and the sort of opening that that lays out in terms of the inability of the regime to really extend a lot of its authority in areas that it considers priorities. So it's going after Yabrud, for example, outside Damascus, but it's having trouble reaching Qasab. Derah is actually another example of that. And it's really opened up a lot in the last few weeks. As the regime fights in Yabrud, it's really opened the ability for armed groups to fight in Derah. And they've taken grain silos a couple of weeks to go in Derah, and bread is a huge problem in Derah. So that was a very important move. They're also looking to make moves to go north towards Damascus. But I think the opening of Derah province, insofar as it relates to the presence or absence of the regime, has really also created an opening for other Islamist groups with more governing interests to get a foothold. And so we're seeing Jabhat al-Nusra is actually playing an important role in the area. And our teams estimate about 10% of the council positions in Derah province are beholden to Nusra. And I think they see that growing. And I won't go into too much more. I think in Damascus, the ceasefire issue is big, and I'm going to talk about that in the last bit. So I'll just leave it there. We can talk about all the other areas if you want. I'm going to just quickly say what's ahead. I would posit three things as themes to really focus on and for people who have an interest potentially to write research papers on. The first is this issue of ceasefires, and Laila's going to talk a lot about that. But I think there are two aspects of it that are very troubling. One is the increase in siege warfare that we're seeing as a tactic, both from the regime side and from the opposition side militarily, to extract concessions from one another. And so the regime has been besieging communities in Damascus for a long time. It's led to ceasefires from those communities. But the opposition has done that as well. In Derazur, they cut off electricity to Derazur city in order to get the regime to give them the bodies of martyred soldiers. So I think it almost doesn't seem like it could get worse in Syria from a civilian perspective, but I think this is a very troubling trend that could indicate that it might. In addition to that, I think the ceasefires in Damascus have fallen apart in most places. And I think in the large part, that's due to the lack of enforcement of anyone in holding both sides to an agreement. So for example, in Yarmouk, which is the Palestinian camp in Damascus, there was a ceasefire that was brokered by the local community with the regime. They needed aid. And aid came in. But all of the requirements or all the things that the regime agreed to do or not do were broken by the regime. And so Jabhat al-Nusra stepped into the community and said, we're going to defend you against all these violations, the regime has done. And so then the regime in turn said, well, the ceasefire is now halas, it's over, and we're breaking it off. And so the community is really frustrated with this. But the thing that's important to note is I think when thinking about negotiated outcomes in Syria, the enforcement of these agreements is just as important, if not more so, than the agreements themselves. And lastly, I think two points. This issue of armed groups becoming aid actors, I think will become a major issue, not just in the particular areas, but other parts of Syria, especially as we think about potentially providing more robust support from the international community, specifically to armed groups. And that relationship will certainly spill over into the aid community. And the last thing I would say is, you know, Uba'i talked a lot about the regimes, the question of does the regime have a military advantage in this conflict? I think that's very arguable. I'd love to get into discussion about that. But I think what's less debatable is the advantage the regime has in the services and salaries and governance issues. And I'll just end by saying we talk a lot about this issue of what would happen, we talk a lot to activists in Syria about what would happen if Syria was partitioned. And one of them said to me, everyone would move to the regime-held areas of the country. So what does that mean for allegiances, negotiations, outcomes, et cetera? I think there's a lot that could be said about that as well. I'll just stop there and pass it on to Layla. Thank you, Nate. Layla. I think thanks, Peter, for convening this session. And Nate, I think it was useful to hear what you had to say because it really shows how complex and fluid the situation is in Syria. For purposes of this event, I'm not typically engaged in following the fight, the battlefield in Syria. There's a statistic that 95% of Syrians aren't carrying arms. And I'm much more interested in my work and what's happening amongst the civilians with the local councils or with different civilian initiatives, the protection of civilians. But for purposes of this conversation, I tried to look at the question of who is winning in Syria. And I was watching the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that was held a couple days ago on Syria, trying to figure out what should be U.S. foreign policy after the Geneva talks in January and February. And Nate's colleague, Dr. David Colcullen, spoke and really in very basic terms sort of laid out some statistics, which I thought were useful in trying to answer this question of who's winning. And he said that 75% of the country is opposition held or contested. And that the regime is only in full control of one major city, that being Damascus. He said, and this is what I'm also aware of, that there have been significant losses by insurgents lately that have caught the headlines. But there also have been significant rebel gains. In Latakia just this past week, there was an offensive which allowed for the first time rebel control over the port city, over a port, which means sea access for rebels now. And then also the last official border point between Syria and Turkey is now under rebel control. Of course the question is, who are these actors in control? Are they forces that the U.S. wants to align with, et cetera? But putting that question aside, David tried to sort of quantify the military balance. And he said that there are some 200,000 rebel fighters or opposition fighters and 350,000 regime fighters. And that ratio is not a significant one that would weigh in favor of the regime. And he described the situation as one as an escalating stalemate. And Dr. Valli Nasser, who was also on the panel, affirmed that this is the right takeaway. And it seems to me that that's the right takeaway, that we can continuously look at who's in control of what and what's happening and what part of the country militarily, but ultimately after three years, we are in a situation of stalemate, of concern, is that there is a perception that the Assad regime is winning. Winning perhaps because they've entered into this chemical weapons deal with the U.S. and Russia and has their hand, in that sense, winning because they are holding Damascus, winning for whatever reason. The notion is that the perception of whose winning matters matters. And so I think we have escalation, continuous fighting, continuous humanitarian crisis, and the worrying perception that one side is winning. And so that's my takeaway for purposes of adding to this particular debate on the war in Syria. But one thing that I think needs to be said is that the debate really overlooks the fact that whoever is winning militarily is not necessarily winning the peace. And I think that there's no clarity on what peace for Syria looks like. There's really no thinking being done on what is the solution for this crisis. And there's a lot of preoccupation with the who's who, who are the bad guys, what are the bad guys doing, what is the regime's position, and there's a lot less focus on how do we actually get out of this quagmire and three years later, we're still in cycling through the same discussion. I think that the Geneva talks, the model, the paradigm that underscored the Geneva talks, a transitional government with day after reform options via the opposition body, or getting to a transitional government with day after reforms via regime and itilaf direct talks doesn't make sense anymore as a paradigm for solution if it ever did. I think Syria is a failed state. I think from what we've heard, the government, the regime, the Assad regime does not have a legitimate monopoly of power. There is a rise of warlords. There are a multiplicity of armed actors. I think we need to start thinking about Syria as a failed state and thinking about what the implications are for what kind of negotiation process we need to get out of this process. I think ultimately that process has to be Syrian-led. I don't think it should be led by the State Department and I don't think it should be led by the Gulf. I think that third parties have an important role to play and we need to think through it. It's counter-terrorism or a policy of containment which is what I think the U.S. is, that's its stance right now. I don't think that that is a position that is useful to helping us get to solutions. And so I think we need to be reordering the discussion, focusing a little bit more on what's happening relationally between the armed groups, the different groups, the civilian actors, and trying to figure out how those relationships that are happening and unfolding on the ground in Syria, including with regime actors, can be capitalized on to build up a process with third party support to get to a more stable ground, hopefully maybe a ceasefire, at least in the beginning, and then eventually toward a process of recovery and reconciliation. Thank you, Laila. Well, Laila, you used the phrase escalating stalemate and a kind of classic kind of, when you look at how civil wars end, it's a, as Zartman put it, it's a mutual recognition of a mutually hurting stalemate, and that's sort of the, so is there any recognition on both sides that the stalemate is just gonna continue and that perhaps there should be something that could be done to end it? And a sort of corollary of that, you mentioned third parties and there's perhaps a director at Ubey. Who would be the trusted interlocutors by either side, if anyone? Well, first on the issue of stalemate is, you know, we have to take into mind the context that you have, a stalemate ultimately favors the insurgents. A stalemate in such a fight as we're seeing in Syria today is really at the benefit of the revolutionary forces who simply don't have to lose. They just have to hold on. And ultimately and ironically, in many cases, the regime forces are getting, get weaker the longer that they are out in the field fighting the opposition forces that are essentially an asymmetrical force in their composition and in their strategy. So this is a regime, this is a military force that was not meant to be fielded for such a prolonged period of time and to fight this type of fight. Now, that's precisely why the Iranian cause force came into play, to provide that expertise, to provide that training in urban warfare and guerrilla warfare. And in some ways it's actually had a pretty significant impact on the dynamics on the ground. In terms of interlocutors, well, it's on the regime side, we're seeing increased dependence on both Russia and Iran, an interesting piece of information that since February, since the beginning of the first round of negotiations in Geneva, we've actually seen a significant increase of Russian delivery of arms to the Assad regime. And this is important in particular because the Assad regime depends on the Russian Black Sea fleet to deliver these spare parts and refurbished aircraft that the regime then uses to drop the barrel bombs over Aleppo. And as a consequence, we saw a significant spike in the use of these barrel bombs, 500 to 1,000 pound bombs that the regime is dropping all over Aleppo and in southern Syria. Now, these barrel bombs don't actually have any real military utility. They're simply used as part of an institutionalized and systemic strategy to depopulate the liberated areas and to force thousands, and in the case of Aleppo, potentially upwards of 100s of thousands of internally displaced people to leave the city into the northern countryside. So this is a regime that is still very highly dependent on shifting militarily the demographics and depopulating white swaths of the country as part of their campaign. And this is not a sign of strength. This is a sign of weakness. This is a sign that this is a regime that is ultimately not comfortable in its authority, that this is a sign of a regime that is ultimately not confident in its ability to hold territory that it does not simply totally destroy and annihilate. Well, if the revolutionary forces win because they're not losing, and you know from the, and also a question perhaps for Will and Nate, you know, the academic literature would suggest that somewhere between 10 and 15 years for an outcome to come about in this kind of situation. So are the rebels prepared for this kind of length of fighting? Do they understand that this stalemate can go on for a very, very long time? All right, I'll take that first. I'll take the first crack at that. I think the rebels are. I don't know if the international community is, and if that's something that the international community can stomach with this push for negotiated solution in the context of thinking about the Dr. Zartman's theories of ripeness. I mean, if we push for a solution before there is this mutually hurting stalemate, it will not only perpetuate the violence at a low level, but it puts the international community in a very difficult position of having to say, well, what is the involvement that people would take in Syria in the post-conflict reconstruction process? How much would they cooperate with whatever the transitional government is or whatever it looks like in tamping down whatever remains of either the staunchly pro regime if the transitional government looks more pro rebel or staunchly pro rebel if the transitional government looks pro regime? To what degree is the international community's involvement in the reconstruction and stabilization of a post-conflict Syria make them a little bit complicit in the tamping down of such a group? I think the rebels can do it. It's just a question of how much would they be involved in that. I actually will question that. I mean, Dr. Zartman's theory is that a mutually hurting stalemate is something that arises typically before the conflict gets really underway. And once it's underway, it's hard for a party to see a stalemate as being an opportunity to get out of the conflict. And both sides right now are almost, all actors are in this fight, this existential fight. And I think the regime is fighting to the end. And I think increasingly the rebel fighters are also fighting, the Sunni fighters are fighting for their own survival. And so I think we may be beyond the point of a mutual hurting stalemate bringing the parties to the point of compromise. But I wanna say something about the rebels. I mean, the Syrian American community brought a lot of people from Syria to the Washington this past month to recognize the anniversary of the conflict. And talking to people who are inside Syria, they say that if you talk to rebel fighters and say, well, what do you want? They actually say, I wanna go to school. I wanna go work. I want a normal life. Many of the people who have taken up arms or who are leading these councils are not doing what they were trained to do, are not doing what works, are not doing an easy job. And so I actually don't think we can assume that there is a staying power on the part of the opposition, particularly if they're not well equipped. And the other thing I wanted to say is that I don't think we can talk about the regime as a monolith anymore. There are paramilitary forces that have acted against government wishes in the context of the Homs ceasefire. We have heard about people saying that they've made deals with regime actors and the deal has been cut or interfered with by the Iranian embassy. I mean, it's just, it's a very, very complex situation, but I don't think the regime anymore can come to the table as a side per se. Was it a mistake when historians write about this period for the United States to say that Assad must go? Because you can't negotiate with somebody when you're pointing a gun at them. If there's no sort of, where does that leave him? I don't think it would have been a mistake if they had put some muscle behind it. The mistake was saying it, but not really taking the actions to make it happen. What can the United States do now, realistically, to ameliorate any of this? We'll take that as the answer. That's the most eloquent answer we've ever. Well, Peter, just really quick on that issue. So just last week, Ban Ki-moon issued a very damning report that related to the UN Security Council Resolution that was passed exactly 30 days ago that called upon all sides to immediately open up humanitarian access and to end indiscriminate, bombarbon indiscriminate killing. Now, the Ban Ki-moon report is important because it clearly shows and it clearly outlines how the Assad regime is in malfeasance and is in non-compliance of the Security Council Resolution. So now we're at a turning point where the Geneva negotiations have completely stalled, if not failed because of the Assad regime's refusal to go back to the negotiating table and in large part because the Russians have also clearly indicated that they will not push the Assad regime to accept a transitional governing body as a basis for a negotiated solution. And we now have the UN Security Council faced with a new decision on how do you now hold the regime accountable and how do you push the Assad regime to accept its international obligations, which it clearly has no intent in following through. And it's not really clear if the United States has a policy on that follow-through. There are many steps that the United States can do to pressure the regime, one of which is increasing the capacity of the moderate free Syrian army to defend the Syrian people against these atrocities and then to potentially open up humanitarian routes into the besieged areas where you have over 250,000 people that are facing starvation environment due to the regime's starvation onto submission campaign. But quite frankly, more and more it is increasingly clear that all avenues for a negotiated solution have been exhausted and which leads us to really the only other alternative, which is for the administration, for the United States to take the lead in at least putting the Assad regime on notice that there will be punitive measures that go beyond what has already been put forth. But what could those possibly be without a congressional authorization for violence? I mean... A lot of it will simply... I mean, look, no one is asking for boots on the ground. And no one is asking for American airplanes over Syrian airspace. But you're seeing a lot of dynamic in Congress telling the White House that the status quo is not sustainable. It's not sustainable because, A, the humanitarian situation is gone so beyond the pale that it's destabilizing the entire region and it's directly affecting and impacting American national security interests. And two, the status quo is not tenable because there are real serious counterterrorism concerns with extremists and transnational elements that have aspirations to attack Western interests and regional allied interests because they're taking advantage of the vacuum that's resulting in the status quo. So really, you really have to increase the capacity of the opposition in the Free Syrian Army at an exponential level. And you have to work with the allies to quite frankly reconsider some of the options, some of the military options that were previously taken off the table. Look, the... What's the meaning what? Meaning either the regime will have to face military, a multilateral military action, a punitive military action. Or two, sanctions, you know... How does that happen, Ubey? I mean, you need a UN resolution for that and that's not gonna happen. Absolutely, you're simply not going to see a UN Security Council resolution because of the Russians. So you're going to either have to rely on the regime's refusal to abide by its international obligations, stand by the right to protect doctrine, or you're gonna have to go back to simply what the United States has been doing up to this point, which is supporting the opposition, both on the governance side and on the military side, and trying to pressure the Russians to get the regime to come back to the negotiating table. Unfortunately, that track has also been all but exhausted. Go ahead. I go back and forth on this issue, but I think under the R2P, the responsibility to protect doctrine, there may be a case to be made to say that there is a moral duty to protect civilians and that may require addressing the aerial advantage that the regime holds. Beyond that, I don't, I think any other military option becomes very messy. And we can debate that. Can I also just press on that? Can I? But one option that we haven't heard of, and we don't typically think of this as an option in the Middle East, and that is a peace keeping or peace enforcing force on the ground, because you do have these localized ceasefires that are popping up and they're running into trouble and the possibility of monitors on the ground could perhaps create more humanitarian space for Syrian actors to begin to address some of the complexities, some of the crisis that is happening on the ground. It's an idea, it needs to be studied. If the R2P was sort of invoked, it would be a very novel use of it under which authority would it come from? I mean, who would be the enforcer? In Kosovo, which wasn't a UN operation, it was a NATO operation in Europe. I mean, who would be, how do you operationalize that? Well, I think you would have to do a coalition of the willing if you will. But it would put the United States in an awkward position, potentially, to be, presumably you were saying the United States would lead this, right? Because it would be outside NATO and it would be outside the UN. Yes, I mean, I don't have, I haven't studied the legalities of it or the operational aspects of it, but I think that there's enough consensus out there that one of the major dangers and protection problems is the barrel bombs and the aerial attacks. Here's a wild thought, what if the Arab League did it? Yeah. The Arab League, I mean, they were there and monitors on the ground in 2012 and there was a qualitative drop in the number of people killed while they were there in country. Well, the Arab League has sort of surprised us once in the past in its 60-year history, which is Libya, right? So maybe it will surprise us again. Okay, well, let's open it to questions. If you have a question, identify yourself and wait for the mic, as the gentleman here is. Oh, Daboudine, none of you emphasize the humanitarian disaster that is taking place. I mean, we talked about the military. We talked about who controls what territory. We talked about Syria being a failed state. Sure, got it. So humanitarian. But my point is, the US has given the most aid in terms of humanitarian support. Now, when you look at the rich Arab states, why can't they give more aid to help those refugees in Syria? I mean, in Turkey, in Lebanon, in Jordan, because ultimately the outcome is gonna be determined by this humanitarian issue. I'll start with that. I mean, I think you're absolutely right in bringing the humanitarian issues to the fore and in highlighting, in particular, the challenge of refugees. I mean, as we all know, the Middle East is in a place that does refugee communities very well. And what is the chance of an entire generation of Syrians who are cast asunder from Syria? What's the state of the rebuilding process inside Syria? And I think one of the things I wanna jump off from what Obay said is not only is the regime depopulating areas in a lot of places, but it's also going after a lot of the key infrastructure that Syrians rely on for their daily existence. And I would encourage for whoever is working on this particularly to determine whether this is deliberate targeting, but it's certainly no coincidence that in Derazur, for example, there are four water treatment plants. One is under regime control. The other three under opposition control are all destroyed. In Deraz, bakeries are constantly bombed. In Aleppo, they've been constantly bombed. People have to shuttle bread back and forth, and so when you think about what that means in the context of the refugee issue, you're talking about a huge number of people who are displaced, who are sent outside, who are leaving Syria, and who would be going back to places that have not only been decimated, but whose key infrastructure has become so destroyed that there'd be no interest in them returning at all. So you're thinking about not just saying, how do we make the lives of refugees tolerable in the countries around Syria, but how do you figure out what are the drivers of people that would bring them back to their homes, and how do you engage that issue in a multi-faceted way? I also don't think the Gulf countries have been too bad. I mean, they have given a lot of money at the UN conferences in January, 2013, this past January. They've pledged a lot. A number of those countries have actually followed through, so I don't think they've been absent on the humanitarian front. Just a real quick note on that. Look, the humanitarian situation is, like I said, beyond the pale, but it's a hemorrhaging wound, and a policy to sort of cauterize it and to contain it is simply not working, and it's simply not a viable strategy. You have to go back to the root causes, like Nathan implied. The fact of the matter is, you're going to have this outflow of refugees is not going to decrease anytime soon. The displacement is not going to stop anytime soon if you don't deal with the issue that is driving it, the engine in the first place, much of which is this systemic military strategy by the Assad regime to displace populations and to use mass and indiscriminate artillery bombardment, and real quick on the food distribution issue. Just last week, and Reuters had a very interesting article on the first delivery, cross-border delivery of the UN World Food Program, coming from Turkey into Hasaka province and to Kamishli, a majority Kurdish area that still has some elements of regime control. And when locals were asked about this delivery and the significance, one of them replied, well, it's useless because it goes to regime distribution centers, and ultimately the regime has control on who is fed and who is not. And we have severe problems with this issue in Damascus. So there are some real important questions that need to be asked in terms of billions of dollars of US money and Western funds going to these relief organizations that are not used to feed those that need it the most and that are not used to provide medicine to those who are sick, but ultimately are used as a tool, as a weapon by the Assad regime. What's going on here? You have this here. Where are these hundreds of millions of dollars of private money coming from? Can you identify this stuff as well? Mark Brodsky retired. Where are these hundreds of millions of dollars of private money coming from? Yeah, these are either Syrian expats that are living in the Gulf or Gulf-y citizens themselves. I mean, they're donating the money. There's a few prominent bundlers, particularly who live in Kuwait, that solicit money primarily over Twitter. And it's very easy to route the money there and they will report on the donations they've gotten from around the Gulf. And then that money ends up in the hands of the militias in Syria. And at least early on, the brigades in Syria, the rebel brigades were very upfront about receiving the money, who sent it to them. Sometimes they would rename their brigades after the bundler who had sent it so they could attract more. And that's one reason, incidentally, that there are a lot of YouTube videos from these militias, particularly the Salafi ones, because they're designed to generate money, bring in this revenue from the Gulf. Yeah, I would have just said, and Will's being modest, but he should be bragging about a great report that Brookings put out earlier this year with Elizabeth Dickinson on the flow of foreign funding into Syria, particularly to militant groups. It's a great report, so I would encourage you to read it. But on the council side, there's a similar situation. There's less of this sort of bundling and processing, there's less money and attention being paid to the community organizing groups, but Syrian expats in the Gulf are a huge source of donations. I think when you think about what that means with regards to the organization of a governance body in the opposition, it means chaos because you're talking about people plugging in at every level of the governing structure. So people are donating to a town that people are donating, Qatar will give $8 million to the Etiolaf to give to local councils as sort of a one-off thing. And so these councils get money themselves, they get money from the provincial council, so everyone's trying to raise money on YouTube and Facebook, et cetera. And it makes for a very, very chaotic situation as contrasted to the regime side where they get the millions of dollars in loans from Iran or Russia, and it trickles down, and I think that's a big one. Just a clarification, so if you wanna donate, how do you actually do that? And who do you, how does the money get transferred? It happens, I mean usually there's a number that's put up for WhatsApp, and then they provide you with the details for how to get the money to Kuwait, and then the money is wired usually over to some town in Turkey, and somebody goes across the border with a suitcase full of dollars. Also, illicit oil sales, it's critical to focus on this issue. You had the majority of the oil wells in Eastern Syria and Derazor, and parts of Hasakah, had been either captured by El Nusrah or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. And increasingly you're seeing these oil fields and very crude sort of extraction facilities being implemented, being set up by these extremists. And who's the oil sold to, in many cases, is to the Assad regime, because the Assad regime still controls the two refineries that Syria has. One in Homs and one in Tartus. So you have this interesting dynamic where knowingly the Assad regime is working closely with some elements of whether it's El Nusrah or the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant in Derazor to sell, to both extract and sell oil for financial benefit and for the Assad regime. They use the crude oil or the refined fuel for diesel and to fuel its war machine. So you have this interesting dynamic, both on the financial side and some may argue a tactical cooperation between the extremists and the Assad regime. Gentlemen over here, I'm gonna, yep. Brian Fishman. Hi, Brian Fishman with the New America Foundation. I have two questions. One is, we know that the United States has many interests in Syria. If you had to name the single most important that we should optimize policy around, what would it be, counterterrorism, eliminating Assad, the humanitarian situation, containing regional instability? We can't have it all, so what's number one? The second is, what do you think the implications of an ISIS or a Nusrah, either sourced or either of those organizations providing safe haven for an organization that conducted a terrorist attack in Europe? What would the implications of that be? So I'll take a stab at both. I think the priority should be bringing the rebels together under a single unified command structure because I think it has major implications for everything else that we've talked about, for counterterrorism, for the aid and for governance, and for bringing Assad seriously to the table, because right now, the perception is not just in the press that he's winning, he believes that he's winning, and he won't change his mind until there is a credible unified threat against him. So I think that has to be the priority. The implications of a plot being launched against the United States or Europe from ISIS or Nusrah-held territory would be pretty, pretty grave, and I think it's one reason you started to hear noises in the press about al-Qaeda operatives from Pakistan, Afghanistan, moving into the area. I think we are gearing up for a major CT push. I don't know if it involves drones, perhaps it's just used to justify giving more serious weapons to the opposition. But I think one way or the other, the United States will have to change its calculation. It is either gonna have to double down on the opposition or it's gonna have to start cutting a deal with Assad. Either way, but the CT very much is a, I mean as Ambassador Patterson said it a few days ago, it is the top priority for the United States. And if that's the case, it's going to have a big impact on its policy. Gentlemen here. Thank you, I'm Blake Selzer with CARE. I had a quick follow-up to both Ubey and Nathaniel to talk about the need for, in during this escalated stalemate, that there's no one to enforce agreements and specifically mentioning the UN Security Council resolution 2039, which you mentioned was presented to Ban Ki-moon this week officially, showing that there has not been progress made. But Russia did support that resolution and you said that there is no chance that any Security Council resolution moving forward. My question is, do you think we shouldn't be pressuring Russia? Do you think there's a chance? I mean, this is a first 30-day report and then there's another 30-day report. So just wanted to get anyone on the panel's thoughts on pushing the Security Council, recognizing the challenges with Russia. Absolutely, so just real quick on that. Look, in order to really gain as a regime true compliance to the Security Council resolution and to gain as a regime compliance to negotiate a political solution at large, which the Security Council resolution also holds a regime to adhere to, you really have to shift their calculus on the battlefield and this was mentioned extensively actually in the Center for Foreign Relations Committee hearing the other day. Now, on the issue of, well, the Russians supported the resolution. Absolutely they did, but it was interesting. The Russians supported it because there was no Chapter 7, there was no enforcement clause. So we can go back into another 30-day report and another 30-day report and we'll end up exactly where we began, if not worse, with the humanitarian crisis going even exponentially out of control and with the region even further destabilized and with even additional space being afforded to extremists on the ground. So without enforcement and without that credible threat, you're simply not going to have any realistic scenario with the Assad regime adheres to that Security Council resolution or adheres to its obligations to go back to the negotiating table. Brian Fishman who's here was part of the team that released the Sinjar documents which were critical in reducing the foreign fighter flow and you were in Iraq when that happened and Del Daly and Hank Crumpton and others went to all the relevant countries and really that was important to get the balance to come down because they were providing the bulk of the suicide attackers. Is there anything analogous in Syria that could be done? Obviously, Will mentioned the Saudis have kind of criminalized going to Syria now which is I think important, but what else? Well, I mean, there's actually some striking analogies and similarities. There's a reason why al-Qaeda in Iraq's successor, Nusrah and eventually the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant are absolutely obsessed with moderate majority Sunni groups like the Syrian Revolutionaries Front that are now actively fighting them. The jihadists refer to them as the sahwat, the awakening groups and the reason why they refer to them because they see this plot which is their worst nightmare of locals rising up as part of a popular mobilized movement against the dictate of the Islamic State. This is exactly what happened in Iraq where when American military forces were there and in some cases, well, in many cases, fueled and supported by the United States where you had both tribes, both the major tribes, the Sunni Arab tribes in Iraq and some Sunni nationalist insurgent groups flip and turn against al-Qaeda in Iraq which led to al-Qaeda in Iraq losing significant ground and just as importantly as losing ground the attempt to establish the Islamic State of Iraq completely failed because it was rejected by the local populace and the locals were given the necessary tools to fight back against al-Qaeda in Iraq. So hence the obsession in Syria today. Those are fresh memories from what happened in Iraq and their biggest fear in Syria are not American drones or American F-16s. It's Syrian fighters and the Syrian community rising up against al-Qaeda's grand vision of a transnational caliphate as opposed to a Syrian state. And that's exactly what's happening today. That's exactly why the jihadists have even publicly stated that the reason why they're in Syria is not to fight Assad but to establish an Islamic State and that is why they're prioritizing in Aleppo and in Eastern Syria fighting groups like the Syrian Revolutionary Front and the Free Syrian Army and not the Assad regime. I just, I'm sorry, I have to say that it just doesn't make sense to keep flowing money and arms into Syria given the context. I don't, I mean, it just seems to me to be part of the problem rather than the solution and that the US is falling back on this as the alternative to containment. I think shows that they still have no policy and they still aren't interested in saving Syrian lives. And I think that until we get that as our primary starting point, I really don't see how we can build out a real solution to this conflict. Well, meaning if the US stopped arming the moderate opposition that that somehow would be a good thing? There is no moderate opposition. I mean, there's no way we can say what is a moderate opposition in Syria. Well, let's do the thought experiment where we stopped any kind of aid in the United States. I mean, would that make any difference to the conflict given the hundreds of millions of dollars you've just referred to that is coming in? I mean, I think that the US needs to strike up a very deliberate diplomatic campaign to end this unbridled resource drive that's going on in Syria. I think that that's a positive contribution that the US could make. I think the US has tried and failed on that front. What the United States hasn't done is gotten serious about resourcing the rebels. And until you have a real pipeline of arms and money that's coming through, you are not gonna pull these groups together. And this conflict will continue to fester and continue to drag in all the bad actors in the region. But respectably, I mean, to what end? I mean, are you expecting that the money in arms will go in to let the rebels win? Are we expecting it to be such that it puts pressure on the regime enough to actually come to the table with serious negotiation? So I think the skepticism that I have is from the US policy perspective, I think they're trying to do two things at once. They're both trying to be the broker of the negotiations and at the same time, the representative of one side of those negotiations. So it's trying to do two things and it's doing neither of them well. And this isn't like, this isn't new for the United States and the Middle East either. There's a conflict nearby that is trying to do the same thing. And so I think if the goal is to, I mean, and I agree, if the goal is to arm these groups such that you can get two negotiated outcomes so that we can have this mutually hurting stalemate based on pressure from both sides. I mean, if that's the strategy, I think that's a wise one. I just don't know if there is the understanding of the process that it takes to get to those points. At the same time as we all say, the negotiated solution is the only way to go, how do you hold that at the same time as saying the money and arms we're funding to these groups to support them is going to get to the negotiated solution. I haven't seen anyone make those connections in US policy circles or make any sense. Let's also be clear, the United States has not decided to fully resource and fund the rebels. They've made plenty of noises about it, but that has not happened. So these are not parallel processes that are happening. The United States is still very much in containment mode. Is the de facto position of the United States the retention of Assad then with its current policy? Yeah. Yes. Okay, this lady over here. Hi, Maria Saab, I work here at NAF. My question is whether the US has lost an opportunity to collaborate with Russia to help this area problem given the recent events in Ukraine. And if that creates prolonged, I don't want to use stalemate in this context because we've been using it in other ways, but stalemate for possible negotiations from top-level countries affiliated with the conflict. Can the US be pushing aid to neighboring countries like Lebanon and Jordan and Turkey that have really been dealing with the humanitarian crisis and are also at risk of major security problems? Okay, hold that for a second because we've got eight minutes left. So I want to gather up some other questions and this gentleman right at the back and then the gentleman in front of him. Hi, Emid Barudia with Al-Mayadine TV. You spoke about the USA probably getting to a point where it should double down on the opposition or talk to Assad. When would that happen? What would be the trigger for the US to make this choice? Okay, the gentleman in front of him. Peter Carridge, State Department. This is more from a personal capacity. What do you think about the prospects of an election now that Assad regime has been pushing forward with the bombardment campaign and the small local ceasefires to try and put out a perception that elections are quite possible? That's not a question of legitimacy of the elections but more on the feasibility of those elections. Okay, this gentleman here. Can you wait for the microphone? Zachary, you want? Yeah. Yes, my question is, of course, we're all familiar with the events in Iran, the ascension of a relatively moderate Hassan Rouhani and, of course, the people around him. Do you think there's any possibility that with the right methods, we can get a change in policy and a more cooperative attitude by the Iranian government? Good question. I have one final question over here. Thank you, Peter. I'm William from Dyncorp International. If I could ask Dubai to go back to the military balance, back before Hezbollah came in, sort of in mass, there were reports that the opposition was getting pretty good at pulling up tanks with IEDs, that the Air Force was not working so well. They were wearing out, running out of parts. They couldn't maintain them and they were shooting down or destroying some aircraft. It's been a year and a half since then and they're still flying. What's going on with sort of that level of armament? Yeah, just to, you know, when it comes to the regime's order of battle, like I said before, they're only using a small percentage of their overall military in the first place. And absolutely right. In 2012, the regime really faced a situation where they were losing. And more importantly, there was a recognition by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Kutz Force, and by their auxiliaries in Hezbollah that without a significant infusion of support, the Assad regime would collapse. So it's interesting to see their strategic calculus. They saw an ally that was losing and potentially on the brink of collapse and their decision wasn't to abandon them or their decision wasn't to potentially strike a grand bargain with the opposition, but to empower him and to fuel his war machine. Now, when it comes to, yeah, they have the Assad regime's Air Force has faced significant attrition and they have lost actually a not insignificant amount of aircraft both fixed wing and helicopters due to ground fire and very limited use of captured ground to air aircraft missiles. But they have been able to make up for those losses because of the Russian specifically because of the Russian provided refurbished aircraft. So that's really critical to keep in mind. All things remaining equal, this regime's military forces and its order of battle would have been severely faced, severe losses on the ground if it wasn't for Iran and Russia and Lebanon, says, Balak. Okay, well, so is there any chance of an opening with kind of Iran now that there is a thawing of U.S.-Iranian relations? Well, Lakhdar Brahimi was just in Iran. Nothing came out of it. And it's important to keep in mind, Rehaina does not have the Syrian portfolio. That portfolio lies directly in the hands of Major General Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Kutzfors, basically the commander of the external special operations arm of the Iranian regime. And like I said before, their decision wasn't to strike a deal when they saw Assad on the brink of collapse in 2012, but to double down. And we've seen them even double down even more in the past year, moving actual senior commanders of Kutzfors, some of whom have actually been killed, really highly trained and highly valuable operatives. And we haven't seen this happen since 2006 when they did this in Iraq, when they brought in mass, both special forces units from the Kutzfors and advisors to help Shia extremist militias there. Question on the elections? We're running out of time, so let's try and get to these questions. The question on the elections? Yeah, we study elections a lot in Syria and there's just no way to make them legitimate even at the local community level. And they will be held though in July? So far as we know, I mean, yeah, I think the policy would be to just... And what kind of percentage are we anticipating Assad all day? 99%. And then 9.7%. Okay, good. Why would you elect if you didn't know you were gonna win? What about the inflection point question for the US in terms of is there a point where the US will actually do what we're suggesting? Yeah, or not. It'll be in January 2017 when the new president takes a oath of office. That's when the inflection point will be. There's not gonna be a change in policy under the current administration. I think the best we can hope for is a change of policy on the margins. The President Obama's trip to Saudi Arabia is a very important one where Syria is a main topic of discussion. There's certain things on the margins that you can do such as increasing the type of quality, increasing the quality of military aid that the opposition forces have on the ground. President Ahmad Al-Jarba, the president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition gave a speech on this in the Arab League just last week where he specifically said that, look, if we don't have the necessary resources to defend ourselves, then simply there is no discussion of a political solution. There's no discussion of resolving the humanitarian crisis without ensuring that the Syrian people have the right tools. Question on aid. Anybody? I mean, I didn't even hear the question. It was, I think, my ID in TV, right? Yeah, maybe that the right be aid that we could give to some of the regional countries that would be helpful in some way. Yeah, but I think like I said, it doesn't address the core problem. Final sort of closing thoughts. I mean, I think that, yeah. I think that there's just another conversation that we can be having about Syria that we're not, which is to look at what's happening on the ground. I think that we can't wait until 2017 for a new policy. There will be no Syria left by then. Time is important. And so we need to think about ways to de-escalate violence and to give Syrian space to dialogue and to reconstruct localized spaces and reconstruct a social and ultimately national contract. And we need to be talking about that as well as the military balance. I mean, you heard a lot from Obay and Will about the need to support the opposition. And Will mentioned the idea of supporting the opposition towards a more advantageous position at the negotiating table. And I think that sounds like a really good idea in theory. And I would agree with that in theory. I just am deeply skeptical of this administration's ability to maintain relationships. I mean, we don't do relationships well in the Middle East. Let's be honest. And we can't keep relationships with these armed groups that may be moderate today, but I don't think we have the ability, practically speaking, to maintain leverage over those groups such that they don't become something else tomorrow and we don't see this whole endeavor as a sunk cost. So given that skepticism, and I think the administration has a very deep skepticism of that, which ends up putting it in this vicious cycle of cynicism where we don't think we can change the events on the ground because we can't build relationships. So this little amount that we do turns out doesn't change the events on the ground. So we're back to square one. So that's a problem there, but I think given that that exists, and I also share that skepticism that it's possible, I think the United States need to think more creatively about instead of supporting one side with guns and money, thinking about what are the spaces in the middle where there's enforcement of agreements that they can stand with regards to the regime's barrel bombing of humanitarian conditions. I think you're looking at something a little bit more like Bosnia where you say, okay, you hit bread lines in Aleppo, we will strike another target somewhere else. I think something like that is probably gonna yield more positive outcomes than thinking that more guns and money to the moderate opposition is gonna really fundamentally change the dynamic on the ground. Look, if the rebels continue to remain disunited, you can't do any of these things. I'm not talking about army moderates. I'm talking about bringing the whole thing together. You can't do that without serious U.S. involvement. You cannot do that without the U.S. bringing Qatar and Saudi Arabia together and you cannot do that without cutting off the private money that's flowing in from the Gulf. On that latter issue, the administration has thrown up its hands for the last two years until folks on the outside started making noise about it and they've all of a sudden decided it's something doable and now you see Kuwait making noises that it may be able to do something. This stuff is not impossible. It just takes identifying the problem and being willing to put your shoulder behind it and so far the administration has not on a number of these issues. Look, I mean, difficult is not impossible. Syria is not intractable. It's not a sectarian black hole and we're seeing a real strong argument can be made increasingly today that you're seeing a convergence of American national security interests with both supporting the opposition and with taking real concrete steps that would stem, if not, neutralize the root causes of this humanitarian disaster. That is a convergence of America's moral interests and the moral imperative and the strategic interests to ensure that a failed Syrian state doesn't become a magnet for international terrorism, doesn't become the new North Waziristan on the Mediterranean. It can be done by supporting groups like the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, which the United States has become increasingly comfortable with and increasingly approximate with in terms of the fact that the United, you know, the American government has been working with the opposition now for well over two years. Washington knows who they are. They know the true nature of the moderate opposition. They know what their agenda is, where they are, their whole family story. So this notion that, well, we don't know who they are, we don't really know who to work with is really is not the case anymore. So if anything, United States can double down. It has options on the ground in working with the moderate elements of the opposition and it can do so in a way that can both at least neutralize the Assad regime's capacity to expand atrocities on the ground while strengthening the ability of the moderates to establish local governance and to establish security to prevent extremists from taking over. I want to thank Layla in particular for helping to organize this and Nate and Will and Ube for presenting and that was a master class in Syria. Unfortunately, it left us kind of where the Obama administration is, which is it's difficult to know what to do. But thank you for all coming.