 Good afternoon. Welcome to the New America Foundation. It's with a lot of pleasure that I get to introduce my old friend Janine D'Ivani who is well known to you as a journalist who's been doing some of the best reporting from Syria front page stories in the New York Times getting inside what the Syrian elite are thinking as the Assad regime crumbles. She's also a long time writer for Vanity Fair. Her most recent book goes by Daylight a Memoir of War and Love came out in 2011, a very book that got rave reviews. Her reporting has been featured in a whole variety of other outlets, New Republic, Spectator, National Geographic, Wall Street Channel, Newsweek, etc. One of the few foreign reporters to witness the fall of Grozny in 2000. So and we're really looking forward to what you have to say today, Janine. And also on this stage here is Laila Hillal who runs the Middle East Task Force at New America Foundation, who's had a distinguished career including being the legal advisor to the Palestinian Negotiation Department between 02 and 07. Was also an advisor of Palestinian refugees in the United Nations, runs our task force here as a graduate of Harvard Law School and will be Janine's principal interlocutor. And the way that we thought that we would do this event is essentially a sort of a rather than having a formal presentation more of a discussion with Janine who is here in D.C. just for the three days and is going back to Syria relatively soon. Thank you, Peter. It's good to have you here Janine. I think just it would be useful for you to set some context and for that purpose, I'd like you to describe the timeline of your visits to Syria because you've made multiple visits obviously and you've been inside the country on an official basis. Tell us, you know, the moments since the start of the uprising in March of 2011 to today, when you've been in the country and what you've seen, how has it evolved over time? Well, I had a chance to go illegally starting in October when the whole Homs crisis really broke out and again in February. But I made a decision that I wanted to go on the side of the regime and apply officially. First of all, for personal reasons, as a reporter, I've never done that. I've always been on the side of the rebels. I've always been with the so-called good guys. And I wanted to see what it was like to be inside the belly of the beast, so to speak. What it would have been like to be in Berlin in 1939 or 1940. So I applied for a visa and I thought I'd never get it because I've applied many, many times for Syrian visas was always turned down. I can't get a visa to Iran. I'm persona non grata in Russia. I just assumed it wouldn't happen. And then to my complete shock, in February, I had another chance to go into Homs on the donkey route through Lebanon, and I thought if I do this, I'm going to blow my chances of going. I got a visa and I had applied in Beirut, so perhaps that helped. I have no idea why, but I arrived in May. And when I got there, Damascus was still in a complete state of denial. I think that's... This was in May 2011. Yeah, 12. 12. This year. This year. It was almost as though there wasn't any conception that an hour down the road, Homs had been grounded to Grozny or Janine refugee camp. I mean, it was completely devastated, but yet in Damascus, they were still living this very schizophrenic life of partying and embassies were still open on the surface. It seemed very normal and almost as though people were in denial that war was very quickly encroaching. The next two trips I did were increasingly... The level of watching it erode was extraordinary. I don't think I've ever seen anything go that quickly down the rabbit hole, like Alice in Wonderland. The second trip, the first trip I went, I was warned in Beirut where of course there's this very high level of paranoia, some of it justifiably so, but people are afraid to talk on the phone because Hezbollah has the best listening devices, but even people would say to me, you know, in Syria no one will talk to you. So I arranged outside to meet activists. I had to arrange from... Actually, I did it before I got to Lebanon because I thought Lebanon would be trickier to do it from. There's a whole series. I'm the biggest computer geek, but I learned very quickly from my friends in Tunisia who were members of Anonymous, who had managed to bypass Ben Ali's whole system and in fact shut down the Ministry of Information and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And I learned through them ways that you could use proxies so that the Syrian government couldn't hack into my emails and also didn't know where I would be. And I think it's very interesting, since the Arab Spring, this whole level of technological reporting has drastically changed, Peter, since your, you know, our day of... Well, I'm a little bit older than the Telex generation, but certainly sat phones. It's now the activists communicate with SMS or with Skype. And Skype is a huge thing. It's the one thing the Syrians can't crack, although you know as of yesterday the internet's gone down. How widespread is the access to satellite equipment? Do you have a sense of that? I think the rebels have quite a bit. But for the activists, the councils, the... The loc, the LCC, I think the average activists that I met, I was shocked. It was one guy I saw with an iPad. He was arrested very quickly after that. But most of them are very, very cautious. They use throwaway phones. But it's harder and harder now to get chips because everything's tracked. I mean, this is... Assad's regime is apparently second next to the North Koreans in terms of security. So... But one point I wanted to make is by my last trip there, which was just last month, Damascus had turned into a... You could not move from one side of the city to the other. I was too young to be in the Beirut Civil War, but people told me it was very similar that you couldn't... It takes hours to get from one end to the other because there's checkpoints after checkpoints after checkpoints. And of course the danger of that is that you're stalled there for hours and there are car bombs now all the time. So the change in the society, which is what really interests me the most, is drastic. People pulled their kids out of schools because they didn't want them to travel, because they didn't want them to get stuck in these traffic jams. No one goes out at night anymore because it's too dangerous. The Shabia, the armed gangs, the thugs are everywhere. You can't get taxis at night. So I mean, it's kind of now the reality that we are in the midst of a civil war is finally crept in. And so how has that reality changed the consciousness and or the position of people in Damascus? Because you're reporting over the summer showed a Damascus that, as you said, was in denial. There were parties. Restaurants were full. People were either not necessarily speaking out in support of the regime, but were expressing some denial through their behavior. Now that the situation in Damascus is one of conflict, and as you said, people are not going out and their lives have changed dramatically, is that changing their position towards the regime? Is the regime's support being chipped away at? How do we measure its support at this point in time? It's quite extraordinary because I did manage, even though it was reporting in a closed society, a closed culture, and I have done that before during the time of Saddam in Iraq. And everyone, other reporters had warned me that no one will talk to you. You'll get nowhere. You won't be able to leave Damascus. And it wasn't true. In fact, I went to Durea the day after the massacre, just drove in through the checkpoints and got inside and was able to witness what happened and to speak to survivors and to go to the graveyard where they were burying the dead. I think, in reference to your question, there are still true believers. And that, in a way, it reminds me a bit of Serbia during the war in the former Yugoslavia. It's one of the women who I work with. She started working with me. She's not a journalist because she just said, this is my country. I love Syria. And I don't believe what the foreign press is saying. It can't be happening. And I watched her transformation. It was extraordinary from working with her at the very beginning to going into Durea with her. And afterwards she came out and she was very shaken. And she said, you know, Syrians cannot do this to other Syrians. We don't spill Syrian blood. Before that, she had taken the line which the government does take, which is foreign fighters and the Salafists and the rise of fundamentalism, which is taking over the opposition. I think the Alloites, and this is my humble view, will fight till the last man. I don't think this view that they will go back to their heartland, Latakia, is realistic yet. I think eventually it will be a very long, protracted, bloody war in the Bosnian kind of template. But seeing them retreat to Latakia and the hinterland for them would be an absolute defeat. And there is a kind of pride. Has there been that retreat to the hinterland on the part of the Alloites? Are they returning to the Latakia area where they originally were primarily concentrated? No. Well, people are leaving. 300,000 people have left. So among, left, yes. So there's refugees amassing on all the borders which is a mix of, I don't think they've broken it down ethnically, but I would assume there are Alloites in that as well. They're afraid, you know, this call, this rallying call of Alloites to the coffin, Christians to Beirut. The Alloites I've met disregard that. I mean, there is a level of fear now amongst the population which has been started when the car bombings started. And people are beginning to become more and more, especially as winter approaches because it's very cold there. There's the lack of petrol economically. The country's a mess. Lack of heating. And I think that they're beginning to get more and more frightened about, okay, now we really are at war. But I don't think there has yet been established. And I traveled throughout the Alloite region, hinterland, a mass exodus from Damascus and they're going to grind themselves in there and fight from there. Is that because the regime is protecting them? Or is it because they have the economic interest in Damascus, in the urban cities? I mean, what is keeping... I mean, people are predicting the fragmentation of Syria into three states, into a Kurdish state, into an Alloite state, and then a Sunni Muslim majority state. But you're suggesting that we have not seen this demographic movement yet that would follow this fragmentation or reinforce this fragmentation. What is keeping people where they are? Well, I think we're in early days. I mean, I'm not saying that at the end of the game that's what Syria will be. It's probably what it will be. If anyone's left standing after the regime does collapse, and it will collapse, but I don't think... I mean, the last reports I got because the internet is down there from my activist friends was just there was heavy fighting near the airport in Damascus. So I... eventually it may come to that. I as a witness, purely as an on-the-ground field worker, have not seen Alloites in particular running to Latakia. I was in Tartus as well because I wanted to try to see what the Russians are doing there. And I think when people leave, when they make the decision to go, they make it for a purely personal reason, for their safety, for economics, and most, as you know, most Syrians of the elite class have dual nationality. They're either American Syrian or they've got British passports, so they're going because they're frightened and they want to get their money out. I think around Assad's inner circle, there haven't been as many defections yet. So I think he's still pretty confident. And I think he... I think the Alloites that are around him are true believers. In him or in what exactly? In the concept of what Syria is now, and in him, and in the regime, and in the fact that the biggest fear, it's really interesting to see how fear works in society and how it catches on. And I've seen this in many other conflicts I've covered, is that you instill in the people the sense that, well, we may be corruption and our regime is not perfect, but what may come next is essentially worse. And of course they look at the FSA and yes, we're now beginning to offer them more political support and Britain and France want to stand by them and America may or may not arm them and they're beginning to gain more tactics to shoot down Assad's airplanes. But the fear of most ordinary people, and this is who I... I mean, I try to talk to as many demographic... I mean, I don't go talk to politicians and leaders because they don't really interest me. I go to villages and talk to people there and talk to soldiers and talk to activists and talk to housewives. And to me, that's much more... I gain much more insight than I will ever do sitting with a government official. But I think that they are becoming increasingly scared that there will be a Salafist regime and one FSA commander I spoke to, actually several, said the same thing. We will have democratic... What do you want? What do you want out of all this bloodshed that's about to happen? We want free and fair elections, which is fair enough. But he said, but it has to be a Sunni. And I said, well, that's not... that's hardly free and fair elections. And then I said, do you mean a Sunni? Because there is a Sunni majority, so of course that would make sense. He said, no, no, I mean Sharia law. And this was a fairly... not a fairly unradicalized... he wasn't a Salafist, but he... you know, he met with me, he met with a woman. He was in Duma outside of Damascus. So I think what people fear, and many people have expressed this to me, even members of parliament very bravely have said, the regime is corrupt. What regime is not corrupt? We do need a new government and we need it to happen, and now is not the time, because we are in the midst of a declared civil war. And any kind of transition that will happen will be at grave cost to civilians and human life. So the West has been pressuring the opposition for a long time to send messages or to minority groups to be inclusive in their political formation. And the Muslim Brotherhood, for instance, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has issued statements indicating that they want a multi-ethnic state. This was very early on in the revolution. And these statements of inclusion, the attempts to the election of George Sabra to the head of the Syrian National Council and the election of a Kurdish head is part of this response to show a tendency towards inclusiveness. Is this convincing people on the inside? And if not, what would convince more people to demonstrate, remove their support for the regime? What is it that we can do to achieve a game-changer in Syria? Well, people are divided into two. You'd say the true believers, the regime supporters, those are the people you see driving around with our lives, with our blood, we support Bashar. And then I think you have people who... I live in France, so I have French family who half of them were in the resistance and the other half weren't collaborators, but they just wanted to have food to feed their families. And I think what I find a lot in Syria are people who are not intent on pulling down the government simply because they want to keep the status quo. So I think it's... The propaganda machine of the regime has worked so strongly in telling them that if the Alloites go, the Christians, the Alloites, the Druze, you will all be in grave danger. We then will be taken over by an Islamic State. The other thing a lot of people say is why should we take orders from Saudi Arabia? How can they give us democratic lessons when women can't even drive there? Why should we listen to Qatar? So I think that when you say these people that support the regime, you've got to break it down because it's not as simplistic as pro-regime, anti-regime. I think there's a huge middle ground there and there's a huge discrepancy between the street and society. And the street are the demonstrators, which of course started out as peaceful demonstrators. And then there was a big clash between them and those who wanted armed conflict. So the FSA is divided into so many factions, and it's not just factions between the brigades. You'll find from village to village that they don't coordinate their... they haven't coordinated radio support between each other. So I think that it's a really big step to say a pro-regime, anti-regime. I think there's a hell of a lot of people in there who just want to stay alive and don't want to be sucked into a bloody civil war. But they must see that a regime that is bombing its people, its city is not one that will produce status quo and stability going forward. They deny it. They don't believe it. I mean, you have Sana State news agency. Most poor people do not have BBC or CNN. They don't believe it. I mean, they don't believe... They will say, I know someone who works in the Ministry of Information, you know, the Heart of Darkness, and she's from Aleppo, and they will say, oh, it's terrible what our soldiers are going through there, all of them. And when I've been to Homs several times, and the last time I went, I went with the Syrian army, which was very interesting for me because really what it showed me was how incredibly cost-effective war is on this level of urban fighting because they would spend two days fighting to get one building, one arms depot, one school. It wasn't war in the way you imagine it in a film of everyone blasting each other to pieces. It's not. You know, they have buildings and they operate by carving through holes in the buildings that they crawl through so that they can avoid the snipers. And they do this street by street by street by street and they spend all day, all night battling with one sniper up there and one guy there to try to get control of one building. And when I talked to the soldiers there and, you know, I said, what about human rights abuse? They'll very quickly say, you know, the other side is torturing as well and they, you know, soldiers like soldiers everywhere usually don't want to be there. You know, a lot of these guys are conscripts. A lot of them feel that they're fighting, they've been fed something, they've been told that they're fighting to keep their country together, that it's going to be ripped apart a la Yugoslavia or Iraq. And they point to that. They'll say, you know, we don't want an Iraq situation. We don't want Afghanistan. We don't want, we don't need, you know, outside, we don't want a proxy war. And the other thing, you know, of course the Middle East is rife with conspiracy theories. So there's many theories about why America wants Syria strategically as a buffer to Israel. So I think that you really can't say what is going to change their minds, you know, because they're not seeing the destruction of Aleppo the way we are. We're getting it also because there's no journalists inside covering the regime side. There's some Russian and some Chinese. So you're getting all the pictures from the FSA who let anyone in. And it's quite a lopsided reporting story. And that raises kind of an interesting question, Jeanine, because you've been in conflicts like Sarajevo and others, which is Peter Juvenel, who's known to both of us, is one of the world's greatest war cameramen. And he's saying it's interesting to him how few independent cameramen are going in. And the reason is because, in a sense, CNN or other organizations can rely on social media, which appears to give quite a lot of coverage of the conflict, but it doesn't really give it any context. So I guess the question would be, is the social media that is coming out, how useful is it? And to what extent is it a valid representation of what's really going on? Because clearly it's propaganda, in a sense, from one side of the... And it may well be correct, but what is it leaving out? And what should... I mean, you're one of the very few, and near Rosen we were just talking about, who used to be a fellow here at New America. And CJ Chivers have been doing a great job, I think, at The Times. On the other side, though. Yeah. But so how would you assess how independent journalism is covering this and how could it be better and how is social media helping illuminate or not the conflict? I'm very worried about the way this story is being reported because I get a lot of letters from young journalists and young students who want to become journalists and they're beginning to think that they can all rush to... It started actually with the Arab Spring. They rushed to the Libyan front without having any context to the Middle East or of war reporting and got themselves into huge amounts of trouble, got kidnapped, people were killed. Anyone can go to Turkey now, cross over with the Free Syrian Army, get their accreditation. They're welcoming you with open arms. Of course they want people to cover their side of the story. It's not like the Chechen War, which was quite tough to get alongside the Chechens, but the FSA are very open to it. And so we're getting a lot of really starry-eyed, naive reporting from bloggers, activists who cannot put it into context. They have been in the Middle East long enough. They don't know other wars. They don't know other conflicts. They don't know the big situation. They're 22 and just got out of journalism school. Now with the activists, there are certain ones we trust and we don't. Again, being a total technological dinosaur, I actually do use Twitter, but I don't use it to replace, which I saw people doing in Egypt and it horrified me, to replace Reuters or AP or primary sources. And people are using Twitter now as a way of, I see reporters in Beirut scrolling and they're taking it as fact. The Syrians, the activists have been pretty good with the LCC, which are the local coordinating councils, getting figures and coordinating the, do you know about LCC? Of course, yeah, coordinating how many were killed or how many were. But for instance, in Derea, which, was it July? I can't remember why it happened. The figures that came out, first I was told by a witness, a man who had survived it, that 2,000 people were killed. Then I went to the grave digger, who's always a good reference. I went to the grave digger and I said, how many bodies have you buried so far? And he said 400. Then I called Human Rights Watch and they had no idea because they couldn't get someone in the country or they had locals and they didn't know. The BBC was reporting hundreds, which is always an easy way to do it. But in the end, we came, the figure was around 300. So it started out at 2,000 and then it went to 300. But in some ways it doesn't matter, does it? No, human rights... It may be hard to verify numbers. They could be higher than are reported. They could be lower. But it doesn't matter in a sense. What matters, I think, in terms of reporting from Syria is understanding the dynamics that are happening in the country in terms of any sort of fragmentation within the society. Efforts by civilians to respond to the contraction of the government and provide services. The tactics of the regime, the strength of the regime, the ways in which we can reach out to different communities and try to bring them in towards more of a consensus, which may not be possible now, but for the future is needed to support a transition. So aren't those the issues that really matter for Syria rather than the numbers? I don't think it's there yet. I think it's the issues that really matter for Syria are survival. I'm coming from a very different perspective of you. So I'm on the ground sort of seeing how people are living and trying to get through their daily lives. They're not thinking of a political process now. I mean, they're thinking more about even when people will admit to me, we do need a regime change. The moment is not now. I mean, if we're talking about any kind of intervention, what people want probably is the support of Britain and France and the UK, which they're getting. But I think that the day-to-day issue there is not about what will happen in the transitional government. It's about how are we going to stay alive? I mean, they're now getting Aleppo. I would say the plan for the FSA or what I've been told is to encircle Damascus and strangle it. And I think people fear that. I think they fear getting into food is incredibly expensive since they stopped the import tax and since they stopped the trucking route, which Syria had always been used as the route from Turkey through which goods could be imported throughout the Middle East. And when they stopped that, they stopped the taxing. And civil servants aren't getting paid. There's no petrol. So you see these clogged buses of people having to go to work really early in the morning and they don't get lunch breaks. What I'm talking about is the day-to-day life of people trying to survive. My understanding is that salaries and pensions are still being paid. To some, not to... I mean, the people I know haven't paid for months. So in Syria, there is a different reality in Damascus as compared to the outside... The hinterlands, yeah. Well, the villages and the towns or the suburbs of Damascus and in the countryside, in different parts of the country. And you hear the stories from people who... I was speaking with someone recently who's from Kabul, which is a former neighborhood, now a town outside of Damascus. And the regime is providing electricity and water, but it's not providing services. It's not doing the garbage collecting. It allows flour to come in, but it doesn't actually... It's not baking the bread. And the civilians are having, you know, amidst a situation of high destruction, are having to organize themselves as a community and respond to law and order issues and to make sure food can be delivered. Have you been to these areas? Yes. And how does it compare to Damascus and the urban areas? Well, electricity, first of all, I have to laugh when you say that because the government gives electricity. You know what that is. It's how they string up. And I've seen this in many places in Palestinian refugee camps. It's basically stringing up electrical wires to connect onto other grids. I think that in these... mainly in, you know, Berza and Duman and Kabul and... It's very tough, you know, because, first of all, people were poor before and now they're even more so. The government services, the health care services, for instance, you know, the elite, when I first went there, one of the things I would always say is we have the best medical system and we're much better than the Lebanese and the Americans and look at America, your health care system is a mess. But for these people, it's pretty non-existent. I went to some villages outside Homs and, you know, people are trying to, as you said, which is a very common theme in wartime anyway, you know, the neighbors are gathering together to try to have local almost vigilante groups. One thing I started investigating when I was there was these sort of guardian angels in neighborhoods, mainly in the Christian neighborhoods that go around at night and patrol. But this adds another dimension of tension because they're armed. So you're getting more and more armed people hanging around and, you know, if you make the mistake of going out at night, which no one does anymore. When I first got there, I went to the opera. I mean, it seems insane now. What was playing? It was Italian tenors. They had flown in from Italy. I mean, this was in May. So between now and then, now it's a city of car bombs and you constantly see cars leaving with people with their goods stacked. They're fleeing to Jordan or Lebanon or even more so. I can't describe the frustration of the checkpoints. I mean, it's not more frustrating than going between Ramallah and Jerusalem, but there's so many of them that I can't quite understand their logic, the Syrian army's logic of putting them so close together. And the big complaint is that, you know, no one could get to work. I was with my very close Syrian friends and we got a call from her husband saying, you know, he was out near Berza, which is a suburb, and he couldn't get back into town because he had been completely encircled by checkpoints. But there is one point I would like to make and that is that I was allowed to go to the government hospital, which I was quite shocked they let me go. And it was the day that they had 45 funerals of government soldiers just from the Damascus area. And I wonder, I kind of escaped from my mind and I went into the hospital and started wandering around talking to soldiers, Syrian soldiers. And they're really getting hammered and that was one thing that I suddenly hit me, you know, realizing that it is a guerrilla war. I mean, the FSA are nowhere nearly, they don't have air power. And air power, if you've ever been under aerial bombardment, is the most terrifying thing in the world. And part of it, the use of it is to bring fear to the population. But I realized how, and I saw this when I was with the Syrian army in homes, how they're not used to this kind of cat and mouse, David versus Goliath. You know, the FSA will come up and punch them and then jab them and run back in and it's like a boxing match. And they're getting very worn down by it. So I think that's how the eventual... You know, it struck me with these pictures of the service to Air Missile taking down the helicopter in the last couple of days. I mean, in 1986, the introduction of the Stinger basically changed the war in Afghanistan because Soviets had total air superiority and it was more... Soviet pilots became fearful, which changed the dynamics. So to what extent... I mean, obviously, to what extent do you think this new capability will change the conflict? Or is it not clear because they may be a very limited number of service to our missiles that they've acquired? We don't know yet how many. So I think that's going to make a huge difference. But I think it will make a difference because it will keep them on their toes, so to speak. I mean, before having air power put you, as you said, in this position of great superiority and also you know that you can bomb the hell out of Aleppo or various hotspots that surround Damascus that you want to clear, but if they've got surface to air missiles then there suddenly is this new threat to them. They've got something to be afraid of. And I think before they lived in this bubble again of not just denial but arrogance. You know, we've got this fantastic army, we've got air power, we've got weaponry that can put you to shame, they've got tanks, you know, the FSA. Someone did tell me they've captured a few tanks but I mean they don't have tanks. It is a guerrilla. They're fighting much more of a guerrilla tactic. So I think this will make a huge difference and I think it's going to play out. Is there anything that Assad can be offered that would encourage him to leave or is that out of the question? I don't think. I mean, this is again my opinion only not. I don't think so. I think just it has gone so far past the point of negotiation. I mean, Kofi Annan failed miserably. One of the most terrible things I could see was those UN monitors sitting in a hotel every day doing nothing. They were frozen. They couldn't move because their security was at risk. You know, like UN missions I've seen all over the world, all I could think was what a waste of money and time and effort. And they were just sitting there playing chess and drinking coffee and looking at their watches and they couldn't go out and the human rights people couldn't go out into the field to see what was happening in Haman homes and had to rely on people like me to tell them what was going on. Kofi Annan failed and left bitterly disappointed. Brahimi is a very elegant and eloquent man but he doesn't have a great track record and I don't see now what he can possibly offer Assad. I mean, and also it reminds me of, like all these dictators, it starts out, they're offered a lot of places to go. You can come to Britain, you can come to France, France usually takes anyone in. There's a whole area of the Aether on Dismont, we call dictators row because it's, you know, Assad's... Re-add sometimes works but not in this case. I think his circle is shrinking. I think it will end up with, you know, you can come to Uganda if you want but it's really becoming less and less. He will go down like Gaddafi in some way. I mean, he has to sit down. At one point I thought he'd send his family out because she is British but I think now, I think she's a true believer as well and I think that, you know, his circle is going to close in and close in and what the only way out I can see is an internal coup. I don't think we're going to have American intervention boots on the ground after the failures of Afghanistan and Iraq. I cannot imagine us doing it other than as some kind of a humanitarian mission or the UN using some kind of, you know, UNHCR is some kind of aid in that way but certainly not a military operation. It could be wrong but that's my... Great, should we open it up to questions from the audience? If you have a question, wait for the microphone, identify yourself, questions, encouraged statements, not encouraged. Gentlemen here in front. I'm Josh Shellbrand from the National Council on U.S. Arab Relations. You mentioned just briefly at the beginning the possibility of the kind of three-state breakup and you mentioned a Kurdish state and I'm not sure how... if you've been to the Kurdish area or anything like that but just if you could elaborate on that, do you think that's a possibility? Do you think that, you know, Turkey would allow that to interact with Iraq? Anything, any insight you could give? I think that was Leila who mentioned it so I'll let her answer that question but I haven't been to that area because I'm trying to stay. I mean, next week I am going to Aleppo via Turkey so I will know more but I've been trying to cover the regime side just because no one else has been doing that. But do you want to talk about the Kurdish situation at all? Well, I think, you know, I haven't been inside Syria but what I understand is that there's a problem of cohesive leadership within the Kurdish community and there's the Kurdish National Council which is participating partially with the opposition but my exposure to them has been that they have particular red lines which indicate a desire to see an autonomous Kurdish area in the future whereas the Sunni, the Muslims, Arab people or the people who are secular, who want to see a transformation in Syria of a democratic country resist this idea of separation and fragmentation of the country but I think it is very much a future fault line in Syria. And Turkey is a huge issue as well and that will be a big threat to them. Yes, but I think it's... Turkey won't support it because of course they have their own Kurdish population which they don't want to go down that road but one I think sees for Syria in the future a system of decentralization. The country, before the revolution there was not a fair distribution of resources between the urban areas and the outlying areas and power was very centralized which was a problem which was part of the authoritarian system of the regime and so I think in transforming the country and fixing its historical problems you will inevitably end up with some form of decentralization and that scenario I think you could say that the Kurds will at the very least end up with certain powers that would hopefully address some of their historical grievances. This is kind of a factual question. The total death toll is 40,000 now right? The population of Syria is 20 million roughly? Yes, 23. So the Iraq war I think the general civilian toll is around 100,000 or 100,000 plus in a population of 25 million obviously that war went on for much longer so if you look at these numbers the Syrian civil war is actually more intense than the Iraqi civil war. After 23 months. I don't think that is that well understood? I think that to the outside world how great a death toll it's been I think it really is beginning to hit home now how desperate and how bloody and I do think this winter is going to be pivotal. You mentioned the 300,000 refugees is that the total refugee population only Damascus? That is the refugees amassing on the borders of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Because during the Iraq civil war you had two million refugees who left the country and two million internally displaced so it sounds like... Internally displaced has not been recorded yet because so many people have been displaced in homes for instance basically if you drive through it it's empty city, Hama, places like that so people have descended on Damascus and at first in the summertime I would see them living in parks because there's a lot of open air parks and they'd be living there and now there's schools and then schools started officially on September 11th and the schools were being used as the internally displaced people's residences and now they're kicked out to the street so I'm really guessing that this winter is going to be a pivotal landmark for this war that we will see it will either go one way or the other whether or not there's any kind of American intervention which looks intervention but it looks as though there's more concern now from the Obama administration than there was before in the beginning when it was taken as a an uprising that had turned into an armed conflict it was declared officially a civil war I think in June or July A question for either of you what is the Obama administration planning to do what should they be doing what do you think they are doing right now I don't live in Washington and I don't follow the Washington world that's probably your domain I think that the Obama administration doesn't have a policy on Syria and I think that probably leading up to the elections Obama was he felt the pressure of certain groups that are calling for intervention either I think initially there was a call for intervention in terms of military intervention to along the lines of Libya which I think is what inspired the armed revolution in part in large part and I think now there's the request that the U.S. and other western states provide the insurgents with heavier weapons to combat the regime's artillery and I think that the Obama administration has been sitting on the sidelines on this question whereas the Gulf states Saudi Arabia and Qatar are apparently funneling funds primarily funds and so I think now that you have a new coalition which Syrian coalition which people are saying resolves many of the problems or should resolve problems of fragmentation in the opposition there will be more pressure on the Obama administration to do something about Syria what that should be I think is requires a deeper analysis of the dynamics on the ground in Syria in terms of who has the power and whether or not you can actually achieve a cohesiveness amongst fighters inside the country which is the real problem I think also I did have a briefing with someone from the State Department who said to me we have no intel inside we just don't know what is happening inside there and I thought that was a very brave admission to make to say that we actually and I understand how because there are no embassies left even before it was difficult to gather intelligence inside Syria I'm not talking about the FSA side but the actual regime side I think it is very very difficult to know there's very few reporters there's Russian and Chinese are allowed in whenever they want to go but there's very few western reporters there's no aid organizations I saw someone from the Red Cross begging for a visa and he was refused so I mean when you have a situation like that on the ground where you really have no one bearing witness to what's happening it's terrifying I think so we don't know what's going on and he said and anyone who says they do the defectors is about the closest we're going to get to finding out what he is thinking and what's going on in his inner circle and whether he's in control or his brother is in control or who actually is pulling the strings so along those lines we're in a situation of a war of attrition and as the regime contracts it loses morale we have the downing of a jet recently which you said you know we'll put more pressure on the regime do you have any sense of whether or not it would be willing to negotiate a transfer of power which wouldn't include which would produce a very different Syria I do think eventually your point that there will be this fraction a country that is divided will is what will happen but I don't think it will happen with the alloites without them fighting a big fight and I think you know anyone who has spent time with them knows that they're very tough they'll fight to the last man eventually they may have to retreat to Latakia but it's not going to be for a while the coastal region and the hinterlands of the Assad family but I don't think it will be for a while and I don't think it's till they're absolutely desperate and I don't think yet they've reached the desperation stage although what Peter was saying about now that the rebels are going to be armed with anti-aircraft missiles it's going to be a big turning point so but no I don't think that negotiating I don't think Brahimi can go in there and sit down and say look Bashir I think it's time you head it back to Latakia you and your gang no Damascus is their stronghold they don't see this little space of land even though they are extraordinary a minority within a minority that is in control of the military the civil servants the banking the government how they've risen to that extreme and you know the history of his father is just extraordinary but I don't think they're going to go without a very big fight can you identify yourself just wait for the microphone yes I'm Chris Ardress with MMA you mentioned as soon as you talked to say we don't want to be we don't want to rock we don't want Afghanistan is there a sense that they have that the Syrians you talked to are more concerned about their day-to-day survival and express some concern that the west or that the regional interested parties are more concerned about the endgame so there's a disconnect between how to get there versus the day-to-day operations on the ground and we'll sort things out later when we get there we'll have to concentrate on getting the regime out first yeah I think it's what I said earlier about the disconnect between society and the street I mean it's actually happening on the street and the demonstrators well now most of the demonstrations have been crushed completely but the activists and their plans for a future or even the meeting the Friends of Syria meeting which is coming up that doesn't really affect living in area 86 of Damascus which is a very poor Alloite area or people who are trying to get money out of the bank and they can't I think that there is this big disconnect between the political process and the diplomatic process which has clearly failed and what is the day-to-day life of people who are trying to decide should we get the hell out of here before Damascus is besieged or should we stay I mean my close friend there is building a house so this kind of shows you the level of unreality some people have she's wealthy she's a member of the Syrian elite but yet she decided to work with me because she wanted to see what was happening in her country because she couldn't believe Sana and people who said you know it's foreign fighters who are killing everyone you know these aren't Syrians the FSA is not composed of Syrian Syrian people she's building a house she's looking on the internet before it closed down for spigots to get imported from Germany and I keep saying to her what are you doing and she's building it out by Duma and I find it you know there is this kind of disconnect and maybe it's a natural survival technique maybe it's a way of dealing with saying we are about to go into a Lebanese civil war most of these people remember are of the age where they remember what happened in Lebanon in the 80's and they don't want to go down that route but at this point it is I mentioned earlier the going down that Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole of chaos and that's how I feel every time I go back it's more and more it's less and less a society that's functioning and more and more people scrambling to stay alive back here Sean to a Metropolitan Police Department as far as your experience goes is war for you just a is it traffic jam or are you seeing people on the street with rock and pell grenades firing at each other and you know how much different is your job than a war photographer running into the action can you take us to what a day you expect to be like on your next trip well my next trip is going to be really different because I'm doing something I've never done before which is I'm going with the FSA a certain brigade into Aleppo so how different is my job than a war photographer it's the same job although when I'm working in Damascus it's very different because there's a lot of guns on the street people have but there's soldiers who are armed and they're armed at the checkpoints when I go to see the FSA guys in the surrounding areas they call them the hotspots and the red zones they're they're armed so I see them with arms but you don't see it's not like the pictures of Lebanon or even Sarajevo of guys with RPGs on their shoulders and fighting from snipers on rooftops it's not yet Mogadishu or Sarajevo in Damascus although the car bomb thing I remember coming one day from a trip to Malula which is a Christian town about an hour from Damascus where they still speak Armaic the language of the Bible and I was in a very good mood because I had met the local iman and this town decided that they were going to the local iman the mother superior and the Greek Orthodox community had all gotten together and said we're not going to let this happen to us our little town is going to stay intact even if it explodes around us so it was quite a happy day and as I was coming back into town I saw this enormous cloud of smoke and I just thought oh god none of their car bomb and I managed with the police to get they were diverting traffic but I ran through the car bomb site and you just realized this is what people are living with every day now so you have not yet seen urban fighting in the streets of I mean it's central Damascus outside yes because Durea is 20 minutes outside and it's completely they drove through with tanks and leveled it it looked like Janine refugee camp in the aftermath of that who is organizing the car bombs like responsibility some people say it's the government to instill fear into the people that they to frighten them different factions have ICG put out a report recently of the rise of the Salafist and which FSA brigades are more so than others and some of them have taken responsibility for the car bombs in June and July the television station the army headquarters but they are becoming more and more frequent they're real I spoke to a UN bomb specialist who told me that they're a complete amateur our bombs I mean they're not they're very unsophisticated you know sticky tape just kind of shoved on the bottom of a car so clearly you know there are people now training and they're stepping up their activity did that answer your question is that the war photographers this gentleman over here in front Flip Capistrano Department of Homeland Security thank you for all your all your work and reporting from out there thank you you had mentioned one of the one of the end games was an internal coup and seeing as you were embedded on the government side did you get a sense or a feel for that any of the atmosphere or there was something in there that might have sparked your interest the reason I say that is because in the early mid to late 90s I did a lot of work with the Iraqi National Congress and so you remember those days of there failed time and time again attempts to have an internal coup around Saddam fruitlessly but they did try and I think in many ways this is the only way he's going to go is in fact when the ministers were killed in July or was that August I'm getting my timings all mixed up May was it that early May yeah they anyway the rumor was that he did it that they were getting too close to an internal coup and that was one of the many Damascus rumors that because again you know rumors fly around this city like you cannot believe but the rumor was that he had organized the killing of those three ministers because they were getting too powerful I think that to me seems like the most likely scenario if he's going to be unseated either that or a Gaddafi like I met quite a few people that are actively supporting the FSA with money you know I met I within you can meet one family and it's extraordinary thinking of one specific family the sister is completely pro-government a true believer the brother is one of the main financial funders of the FSA the sister one sister just had come from abroad recently and just is in denial this isn't happening in my country so I wouldn't I'd say in Damascus you get a lot of pro who again it's a kind of lazy pro it's just that I don't want to be in a war oh I don't closely as the regime monitoring your activities I mean it sounds like you've got quite a lot of freedom of movement yet this is a totalitarian nausea totalitarian state well you know it's phones are tapped obviously so I don't use my phone we communicate with a series of strange codes you know I have to check in with certain people and you know it's bright and sunny day or it's you know the sky is green or whatever there's a system we have of talking to each other emails hacked and you it's very clear because you kind of go on your email and your passwords already there so it's a very so you learn how to use all these proxies and bitropia I think it's called something that basically makes it seem as though I'm in San Diego California but I have been and I don't even want to say it because I'm afraid I'll ruin my jinx myself I mean when I'm with the woman I work with I put on a Sunni headscarf and I can look Syrian so I have been stopped so few times and usually we have another ruse which is we put her mother in the car with us and her mother's about 75 and she gets in the back seat and this woman is so brave and if we get pulled over by soldiers she starts berating them you know and saying young man I have to go home and take my heart pill so I have been able to wander around but I think it's because I'm by myself and I'm not a TV crew and I don't have a camera although I did film for the first time very proudly on my iPhone for the New York Times and they managed to edit it enough to turn it into a video but I'm able to roam around and people do talk people want to talk that's one of the things that I found is that you know when they've been inside a regime and a totalitarian regime like that they want to tell you about their seven years inside prison and I just finished a big series on torture for Granta magazine which comes out in January and that was very hard to do it is very very very disturbing because the level of torture being used on both sides by the way although the regime side is much much stronger is some of the worst I've ever thought of but so far I have been able to wander around freely whether that will change I'm afraid to say hopefully this event won't be the beginning of the end this is your first public event right yes Jennifer over here thanks my name is Byron Lewis I'm with the National Council on US Air Relations that kind of in the same vein as the John over there did you hear any specific names when you're speaking with people in Damascus necessarily for you know they're not FSA supporters but the kind of person that you said just I don't want to be in war do they have any specific personalities or individuals within the regime that they've mentioned as you know well you know maybe if I said when then you know this guy could fill in I'd be fine with that as usually you know in the same way it was with Iraq there's a big discrepancy between the people in exile and the people inside so there's a big resentment about the whole friends of Syria and the FSA guys in Paris there's a big disparaging there was also a big break remember between those who believed in peaceful demonstrations you know following the Jean Sharp model and the and those who took up arms so I have not heard you know people throw off certain names but not one that there's a general consensus like this could be our strong leader and that's the problem and that's the problem with the FSA as well they're so fractured and they're so as I said before it's not only within their general committee and their general it's village to village they're not communicating about roadblocks and checkpoints and what military maneuvers are we going to take I mean some of them are trained soldiers defectors from the Syrian Army but a lot more of them are farmers with guns so I think this to me is where the whole lies is that there is not really an end game plan there isn't at least with the Iraqis there was the INC outside and who had a lot of money and and these other guys that were working in conjunction with the American government there isn't friends of Syria is not that strong would you say that I mean I don't think they have enough influence on people inside Syria I think there's a huge I don't think there is a free Syrian Army I think there are our military that are fighting for a similar cause and often coordinating their efforts but I don't think we can say that there's one cohesive free Syrian Army and I think that there is a debate inside Syria between civilian power and military power the military approach has certainly won the day inside Syria but I think that the Syrians realize that the military can't be the power the political power going forward and I think that there is a real question about how that will play out over time. Question for either of you is there any chance that Russia or China would drop their efforts to some kind of UN resolution that would enforce some kind of no-fly zone or something it's not military action but it's essentially leveling the playing field China will follow Russia but I don't think Russia will budge do you I don't I think Putin's whole ridiculous line that this is the last bastion of Christianity it's just such rubbish that um he hasn't really studied aloewism clearly it's a kind of very strange Christianity now I don't think Russia will budge do you I can't imagine well I think it's a question that cannot be dismissed I think the US has not I think that there was UN Security Council resolution that was an agreed resolution between the P5 which included Russia and that was not followed up with the Russians wanted to move forward with that and the US was hesitant on that so I'm not sure that we've exhausted so what were the terms of that resolution well it was vague on Assad staying in power I mean I think which is a red line for Russia a stated red line they don't want they don't want to engage in regime change and they think the West wants that obviously because that's their stated position so this is a standoff and the opposition has refused any scenario with Assad staying in power so that is a political stalemate but as the dynamics change on the ground and as the regime loses power and if the opposition becomes stronger there is a question of whether or not there can be a diplomatic consensus and I'm not sure we know we have not exhausted all efforts to figure out what that looks like but let me just say one thing on this issue and that is that people who understand the regime and its dynamics say that Iran is the country that could produce a coup inside the regime and so it's Iran is an important factor if you want to see the regime change which is betrayed by what happened in Libya that is a big issue I mean that is a big part of it is that Russia feels that the whole no-fly zone and that it would be used only for humanitarian purposes that they were really betrayed and so I think I can't see them yes it is still open to the diplomatic process but I just can't see after that kind of betrayal taking that on this lady over here obviously there's going to be a new UN ambassador pretty soon I'm Roshan Akhtagavi I'm a journalist I report primarily on Iran actually so I now have two short questions from Mr. Giovanni first thank you well regarding Iran I mean since you're one of the few people that's been on the ground and seems to have a deeper context of what's really happening I mean what sort of presence does Iran have there I mean how influential is the government there on the ground or even with the regime I mean we know that they probably give economic aid or financial aid perhaps oil but beyond that what sort of influence do they have and then another question I had quickly was regarding your comments about the FSA commanders that you had spoken with who appeared they're not Salafi they would meet with women they appeared not to be extremists but they said that they want Sharia and so my question is how do they what do they think Sharia is how do they view Sharia because there are so many ways to see it so what does Sharia mean to them right now well I think first your first question about the Iranian presence some of the torture victims that I had to interview in depth said that the people that came to take them away were speaking Farsi this was in Homs in Baba Ammar so I've also heard that there's his Bola military advisors in Damascus I mean it would make perfect sense that there are Iran is the leader in the region and their main backer the regime's main backer and supporter so I think that I personally have not seen or heard anyone speaking Farsi but they're around apparently and they're fighting and they're training with the government soldiers the second question which was about remind me again what's their version of Sharia there's so many interpretations of Sharia but I mean a little in the way that there's so many interpretations of what it is to be a Salafist it's a literal interpretation of the Quran and I think when they see it these guys would meet with me and I'd have my headscarf on and they'd say take off your headscarf you're not a believer you don't need to do that so I don't know how extreme going from one commander to the next would be or one I think some see in Islamic state the most devout and some in the way of Afghanistan or of Yemen and some see a more liberal way of interpreting the law but so I mean I think Sharia is open to so much legal I'm not a lawyer you are so you can probably answer that part better but I think the opposite of the regime I think having a country that follows a religious purpose and has a devotion to God and Allah and you know where whether or not women would then be treated like cattle like they are in Afghanistan and Yemen I don't know I don't know how far they would push it along you know that would depend entirely on who ends up in the in Assad's seat so I think we don't know yet other question here on the front lady I'm Charlotte Ernst with TV2 Denmark the UN has reported that the children of Syria have sort of been subjected to an unprecedented levels of violence and torture and as you mentioned before there is no NGO corridor into Syria what was your sense of that that sort of war on children while you've been traveling there did you see that well I mean the first incidences of those children that were killed in Darya were horrific and again that's something when I ask people about they say oh that didn't happen that was made up I think that you know homes when I was last there school children were going back to school and it was actually horrible I was sitting with a family who lived on the front line and they had just come back they ran away in March when the bombing was too much and they had just come back and there were three tiny children in the house and we were getting shelled and they didn't react and I just find when you see that when children do not react to bombing I used to see it in Sarajevo all the time and that's horrible because you know you should be jumping under your chair or you should be shaking or crying and the mother said to me that they were reacting in ways one child had lost all her hair they were having nightmares I mean clearly you were going to have and a post traumatic stress for years to come after this there has to be some kind of unravelling of society which it is they were going back to school which was interesting they didn't have textbooks had been burned or bombed or whatever but they were starting to try to get the children back to school but yeah sorry? I'm talking about homes specifically well the whole district started September 11th by the way to ask you a personal question you have a young son, what does he know about what you're doing and what is his reaction he's eight, right? it's really hard because his father is also a reporter and he was shot in Libya last year by a sniper near his artery he survived, he lost the hearing in his ear but it was very terrifying and before that my son just thought you know mom's very good at her job and she knows what she's doing and now when I go he says I don't want you to die and I say I'm not going to die and he says but daddy almost did very hard and I miss him and he misses me and I find it harder and harder to work with children once you have a child seeing the suffering of civilians for me is really what I focus on much more than the political or the analytical angle and to see the suffering of children is always the most horrible but I mean I try to reassure him that I am going to be okay and just hope for the best he did say one great thing to me about Assad, he said if I ever met him I'd sit him in a corner I'd say go sit in that corner and think about your life that was great we had Tim Heatherington sit on this stage and Tim was killed in in Mizrata and it goes to the question about the difference between a war photographer and I think you know your husband's one so you know better than anybody I mean there's no way to get the picture except by being there you have to get really close and he was there during the fall of Gaddafi and he was on the street and he was very very close to action and he was shot by a sniper and unfortunately I found out about it by watching Sky News so it wasn't it's not a profession for the faint hearted let's put it that way this lady here Hi my name is Rikal Clark I'm with the Public International Law and Policy Group so I heard that you mentioned you know you worked a lot more with the individuals and the villages and stuff rather than approaching the political officials and honestly I totally admire that I think that's wonderful because you know you got a more personal sense of what's going on but I'm just curious you know when you approach these individuals and you said you were wearing the scarf and you know did you come across any obstacles of trust issues like didn't they you know like the stories that you're sharing are like I spent a lot of time in the Middle East you know I look I'm American but I'm Arab however people still when they see me they view me as an American woman they view me as a white person rather than Arab and especially when you start to speak you know you can have the woman in the front seat who's Arab and yelling at the young men but how did you approach the situation discussing these individuals retrieving this information from them on such a like a trust level like how did you establish that It takes a long time especially with the torture project I did I mean that's humiliating for Arab men to sit and tell you about sexual abuse in prisons and things you just have to be the way that I've always worked and I've been very fortunate is I don't work for a wire service so I don't have to churn out copy I can spend especially working for Granta I could spend three months going back to the same person over and over again and spending hours talking to a farmer I'm not on a time limit I mean with the New York Times I was but it was slightly different and I think I learned during the war in Kosovo I did a big project on rape and systematic rape in particular and I didn't interview entire villages of women that had been raped and what I realized then is that you have to you must be very very patient and if people don't want to talk to you that's it I'm not the kind of reporter that you know shoves a microphone in their face and makes them talk they don't want to talk they don't want to and with the torture victims some of them just could not couldn't do it it was too traumatic I'm a woman and but there was you know several that had been so brutally tortured that I think they just felt there was one guy in particular I won't go into detail what happened because it was so horrible I still have nightmares about it but he I want you to write down my name and I said I really I don't want you to use your name you've got to think about this he had been a student of law he was a human rights lawyer so he was well aware of what the Geneva Convention how it absolutely doesn't apply when torture comes into it but I think it's a matter of gaining trust and whether or not your body language has a lot to do with it it is a physical thing and I do think that if I had blonde hair and blue eyes I'd be in a lot it wouldn't be as easy for me to do it but I've always tried wherever I work to blend in more or less and I am alone I'm not with a TV crew if you show up with CNN and you're producer and you're five cameraman and you're the BBC I mean Lise Doucette is a fantastic reporter I was watching one of her reports and she couldn't even go into the grocery store and interviewed the guy there you know the cameras but I go in and I buy some gum and I buy a coke or whatever a Pepsi and I sit down and I start talking I don't speak Arabic but I'm with my let's call her Anna it's around her name and we begin to speak and we're talking about the weather and then it gradually you need to spend a lot of time it's a matter I think of patience and really hours and then coming back not I don't do one interview can I come back tomorrow at 10 o'clock and you know you gradually get and that's what I did in Sarajevo and I learned how to do it there and actually before that I worked in Gaza for many years during the first Intifada and that's where I started doing it I mean you get very suspicious people and the more they see you the more they approach them and ask them things that you know they're unable to give you I think that's it That's a very good answer We're going to have time for one more question Is there a question over here This gentleman here I wanted to invite you to speak a little bit more about some of the moral and practical complexities that surround going into Syria and reporting with official sanction from the regime effectively it was deliberate but you very pointedly didn't mention the one journalist who has done that perhaps the most extreme degree who is Robert Fisk who has had an extreme amount of criticism for being effectively embedded with the regime forces now of course when you went in it sounds like you had more freedom but then again you mentioned that instant where you went to the hospital you managed to slip your mind it just happened to be the day when they had 45 funeral soldiers who were being buried quite deliberate in that sense but I wondered if you might say a little bit more about that because of course people read what you produce I mean these demacine activists they know what the journalists write about they'll have read reports about your time you spent at the parties and the swimming pools so I was wondering in that sense I wasn't at the party I was there as a reporter I wasn't there in my bikini drinking beer so I was just wondering how you you know which one did you expand a little bit more on the moral and practical complexity of this especially because I've never done this before I've always been known as a human rights reporter that kind of travelled with the Sierra Leonean people always on the good side always on the side of the good or so I thought it was very complex for me to come to terms with that but I found the Robert Fisk issue is completely I'd rather stay away from that because I just don't like dissing colleagues and he's been terribly dissed by other members of the press because he has his stuff does border on more pro-regime and I really have tried not I've tried to be objective I've tried to write what I see but I don't try to take a view in it and he's been reporting for much longer than I have and he's much a figure that needs a certain amount of respect but people have become very disenchanted with what he has been writing now you can look at it two ways when I was in Iraq during the days of Saddam we were all fighting to stay inside and it was a horrible system with the Ministry of Information because they would haul us in every day and they rang us and humiliate us for what we wrote and we had to keep a very tight line but to be honest I wrote a piece about Durea for the Guardian about the massacre in Durea which was very brutal and very graphic and they gave me a visa immediately after and they called me in and they yelled at me and they said we weren't going to give you a visa and how can you write such lies but then they said I mean you lied you lied you just sit there you take it but I don't work with them and I don't have a minder so I so then how do you have this access how do you gain this access I think I go under the radar because I'm not a big news organization and I'm not staying in the four seasons I mean when the broadcasters do get their visa and CNN does get let in then they stay in the four seasons and they kind of make a big deal about it are they forced to stay in the four seasons no I stay in a tiny little hotel with Homs refugees now the reason I ask is that it's not atypical for an authoritarian regime you have to stay in a particular hotel we had to stay in the Al Rashid and we couldn't no no and they even say okay the day of the funeral that could easily have been set up but still it did show that they're getting pounded so why would they want to show me how pounded they're getting another thing that happened was when I was with the Syrian army they brought me to a recently cleared FSA weapon depot and there was a rusty hook hanging and they said do you see that hook it was used for torture and I I said you could have just put that up and they just looked at me so I mean I have found that I and maybe it will all change you know but I have found that they have let me wander around and I am convinced because I don't have a camera we really want to thank you Jennifer you have a question sexual violence and more it's not an issue that people talk about often and it's certainly not sexy and politically convenient but often the effects of sexual violence are more durable and more lasting but are there any sort of patterns that you notice when you are doing reporting in terms of the types perpetrated you know who is perpetrated against mainly and sort of a question for Layla and Peter in your discussions you know with policy makers or is there any sort of um procedures in place to sort of implement um you know post conflict structures that could that address the victims of this I don't think we have yet seen Bosnia style rape camps although someone did recently send me some information about there was some violence against women you are not talking about Egypt and that whole you are just talking specifically about Syria well yeah I mean there have been a couple reports I think Amnesty put out a report Human Rights Watch also put out a report and you know people aren't willing to talk about this it's not Muslim women in particular right so I mean there are many reasons why people who focus on sexual violence and war like Elizabeth Wood and Derek K Cohen don't talk to victims they talk to you know they talk to former soldiers they try and analyze patterns that way and so I was wondering if you know in your reporting if you know in your I wouldn't talk to you would talk to the perpetrator of the crime so for example soldiers defected soldiers in refugee camps or why not go right to the source because people are often that's often unreliable information and especially during this is at least among practitioners during conflict it also sort of it often sort of exacerbates their problems and makes people often more unwilling to you know reveal yeah they've been gang raped in the middle of the street so people often don't talk to during war people often don't talk to well I haven't had that experience I'm not a practitioner though I was just wondering if you could talk about what patterns you found that particular thing no but I've done it many many many times in Bosnia and I spent years working on rape in Bosnia the rape camps in Focha and years in Kosovo so I it's not my experience but again it goes back to the question before that I mean it doesn't happen overnight it takes months and months and months and months of working with the same women over and over again and gaining their trust I don't know if I'd quite be a practitioner talking to a soldier outside a camp who's not that to me isn't reporting the truth I mean it's sort of a second or third hand but again I'm not a policy maker and I don't work that's not the way I work so I'm a very different kind of I mean I'm a field reporter I have to hear what people say and I have to listen to them and I have to it's when you say unreliable there is a system for interviewing rape victims so that you because of course there often is exaggeration or unreliability but you there is a way of doing it which you can you need to be very methodical and you need to be very precise at the same time without intimidating them Great well thank you very much Janine for a really fascinating discussion and thank you Layla also for being such a good interlocutor Thank you