1 00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:03,990 Well, everyone, welcome to this week's CCW lunchtime seminar. 2 00:00:04,070 --> 00:00:10,080 If you're enjoying your delicious sandwiches, I'm very pleased to introduce Dr. John Eichner, 3 00:00:10,680 --> 00:00:15,720 who is an American human rights activist, a CEO of Christian Solidarity International. 4 00:00:15,990 --> 00:00:21,930 And Susan, the board of the American Anti-Slavery Group and is a member of the Institute of Historic Research at the University of London. 5 00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:27,060 He served as Karzai's main representative to the U.N. and Geneva, 6 00:00:27,360 --> 00:00:31,860 and he's appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa 7 00:00:32,160 --> 00:00:35,400 and the Congressional House Rights Caucus and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. 8 00:00:36,030 --> 00:00:44,070 In his role as an advocate, Dr. Ryder has testified on behalf of Sudanese slaves and other victims of the National Islamic Front's jihad, 9 00:00:44,130 --> 00:00:49,080 Islamic holy war against the country's black African Christians, other minority groups. 10 00:00:49,770 --> 00:00:53,700 He has frequently briefed senior policymakers at the White House and the State Department. 11 00:00:55,200 --> 00:01:01,400 And his talk today is on social pluralism, religious cleansing and hybrid warfare in contemporary Syria. 12 00:01:01,530 --> 00:01:08,940 But before we look, we hear this fascinating talk. I should blurb two special events next week's plus time seminar. 13 00:01:08,970 --> 00:01:13,920 Same time, same place by Alonzo Akintola. 14 00:01:14,250 --> 00:01:17,340 What's a man tracing the ideology in an ideological struggle? 15 00:01:17,820 --> 00:01:25,860 What are the Niger Delta Milton conflicts about? And then especially the Violent non-State Actors Seminar at on Wednesday. 16 00:01:26,400 --> 00:01:34,350 It's tomorrow at 515 and All Souls in the work room, with all typical of Rutgers talking about winning the fight against the Mafia. 17 00:01:34,590 --> 00:01:41,819 How civil society can meet the challenge. But not further ado, Dr. Ivor, thank you very much, John, 18 00:01:41,820 --> 00:01:52,770 for the welcome and the hospitality and a great thanks to Ruth for getting me here and in good shape and making everything work so smoothly. 19 00:01:54,030 --> 00:01:57,540 As you will have gathered from the introduction. 20 00:01:57,840 --> 00:02:09,300 I'm not your military man, and I had to think long and hard before I accepted the invitation to speak in a seminar series that focuses on warfare. 21 00:02:09,600 --> 00:02:14,120 But my work always has been connected with warfare. 22 00:02:14,130 --> 00:02:16,800 In my earliest days that had to do with the Cold War. 23 00:02:17,610 --> 00:02:26,519 And then after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and when I went to CSI, I was immediately involved in in war zones, 24 00:02:26,520 --> 00:02:34,440 visiting Nagorno-Karabakh at the time when it was blockaded in the in 1991 was my first trip there. 25 00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:46,350 And then I spent many years focusing on Sudan and the fact that he openly declared jihad that was waging there during the North-South civil war. 26 00:02:46,740 --> 00:02:56,940 And more recently I then going to Iraq and in Syria and Iraq since 2006 and Syria since 2013. 27 00:02:57,690 --> 00:03:07,650 Very regularly with regard to my human rights work, and you can approach human rights from different very different perspectives. 28 00:03:08,070 --> 00:03:19,550 And the work that I do with CSI focuses on endangered, especially religious communities, those who who are facing existential threats. 29 00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:26,540 That's why I want to see the Armenians in Karabakh and Southern Sudanese and now in visiting, 30 00:03:26,550 --> 00:03:34,140 you know, and documenting what's happening to the religious minorities in in Iraq and Syria. 31 00:03:34,350 --> 00:03:39,270 And, of course, there is a military dimension, and I'm an observer of that. 32 00:03:39,270 --> 00:03:48,420 And what I want to do today is to, as you'll see from my title, connect dots between social pluralism, 33 00:03:49,170 --> 00:04:00,299 religious cleansing and what I choose to call hybrid warfare in Syria to make these connections. 34 00:04:00,300 --> 00:04:07,290 Because from my perspective, I see what is happening to people, what is happening to communities, and then try to understand how it's happening. 35 00:04:07,310 --> 00:04:11,850 We know what is happening and how what needs to be done to bring it to an end. 36 00:04:13,230 --> 00:04:17,520 So I'd like to stick with the prepared text as much as possible. 37 00:04:17,700 --> 00:04:27,630 I'll try to keep eye on on time, but to gallop through this and hopefully you'll be interested enough to raise questions and we might have a 38 00:04:27,900 --> 00:04:37,830 lively debate afterwards and I look forward to leaving leaving the seminar wiser than I was when I arrived. 39 00:04:37,830 --> 00:04:47,130 As a non-military person, I really am very eager to hear what people have to say who approached this from a different perspective. 40 00:04:47,910 --> 00:04:56,130 But regarding social pluralism. For centuries, Syria has been a mosaic of different religious and ethnic communities. 41 00:04:56,670 --> 00:04:59,900 And reliable statistics are hard to come by. But I'm. 42 00:04:59,960 --> 00:05:08,000 The eve of the Arab Spring uprisings, roughly half of the or sorry, roughly 70% of Syrians were Sunnis, 43 00:05:08,480 --> 00:05:14,060 Christians and Alawites, made up about 10 to 15% of the population each. 44 00:05:15,530 --> 00:05:21,980 Shiites, well-versed in Ismailis and Druze are among the smaller minority communities. 45 00:05:22,580 --> 00:05:29,720 And not only do these or do these communities existence in Syria, they enjoy extensive religious freedom, 46 00:05:30,170 --> 00:05:37,370 provided the West emphasised that provided they do not stray into the realm of opposition politics. 47 00:05:38,210 --> 00:05:44,030 The social freedom extends also to secular people who do not wish to identify with the religious community. 48 00:05:44,030 --> 00:05:47,270 Freethinkers, liberated women. Homosexuals. 49 00:05:48,230 --> 00:05:49,490 Before the current war, 50 00:05:49,490 --> 00:05:58,310 Syria had a well-earned reputation providing more social pluralism than any other Sunni Arab majority country in the Middle East. 51 00:05:59,750 --> 00:06:08,780 Since the early 1970s, the guarantor of this pluralistic social system has been the Assad dictatorship as Alawites, 52 00:06:08,780 --> 00:06:16,520 Hafiz and now his heir, Bashar al-Assad, have a strong interest in protecting the country's religious minorities. 53 00:06:17,240 --> 00:06:23,960 This protection was acknowledged by President Obama in 2014 when he met with religious leaders from the Middle East. 54 00:06:25,610 --> 00:06:30,259 For centuries, until the end until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, 55 00:06:30,260 --> 00:06:37,400 all of these religious minority communities had experienced persecution under Sharia based Sunni rule. 56 00:06:38,300 --> 00:06:44,360 Since coming to power, the Assad regime has rested politically on the basis of the religious minorities, 57 00:06:44,840 --> 00:06:49,460 non-Islamist, Sunnis and various other secularised people. 58 00:06:50,780 --> 00:06:57,110 The main instruments for ensuring the stability of the system had been the Alawite dominated network of intelligence, 59 00:06:57,190 --> 00:07:08,900 intelligence and security agencies. He relied on them to brutally crush 1980 and 1982, a muslim Brotherhood led Sunni insurrection. 60 00:07:09,710 --> 00:07:17,300 The Sunni Islamist Brotherhood had posed the main threat to the Assad regime throughout the late 1970s and early eighties. 61 00:07:17,840 --> 00:07:24,050 But after it was crushed, there was no further direct challenge to the Assads socially pluralistic system. 62 00:07:24,380 --> 00:07:32,360 Until the Arab Spring uprisings. But today, social pluralism is no longer a feature of life in much of Syria today. 63 00:07:32,510 --> 00:07:39,290 It is being destroyed by the peculiar form of warfare that has been waged there over the past five years. 64 00:07:41,330 --> 00:07:49,460 There are important aspects of the current conflict in Syria that are unique to our times and points to the future development of warfare. 65 00:07:50,060 --> 00:08:00,620 But there are also those that hearken back to the past. In 2014, the former director of the CIA and Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta, 66 00:08:00,620 --> 00:08:09,770 spoke of the conflict in Syria as a kind of 30 years war of the sort that devastated Central Europe in the 17th century, 67 00:08:10,130 --> 00:08:13,760 destroying one third of the population of Germany in the process. 68 00:08:14,330 --> 00:08:19,130 And Panetta was not far off the mark. There are some striking similarities. 69 00:08:19,340 --> 00:08:24,290 Among them are the interventions of the great powers, the multitude of armed forces, 70 00:08:24,290 --> 00:08:30,380 the use of proxies, including mercenaries, and the apocalyptic magnitude of the death and destruction. 71 00:08:31,310 --> 00:08:32,600 Not since the Moghul, 72 00:08:33,020 --> 00:08:42,350 the Mongol invasion of the 13th century has warfare been more grisly for the Syrian people and ruinous for its economy and infrastructure. 73 00:08:43,340 --> 00:08:46,640 Reliable statistics are very hard to come by, 74 00:08:47,150 --> 00:08:54,150 but the figures that are in currency today seem to be generally accepted that about half a 75 00:08:54,150 --> 00:09:00,140 million people just off half a million Syrians have perished as a result of the conflict. 76 00:09:00,770 --> 00:09:04,790 Half of the population of 22 million have been displaced. 77 00:09:05,630 --> 00:09:12,920 7 million of the homeless displaced have found refuge inside Syria overwhelmingly in government controlled areas, 78 00:09:13,370 --> 00:09:16,730 while 4 million have sought refuge abroad. 79 00:09:17,630 --> 00:09:21,830 What I've seen on the ground confirms the UN report's conclusion that the war in 80 00:09:21,830 --> 00:09:27,740 Syria has produced the world's largest humanitarian crisis since World War two. 81 00:09:28,640 --> 00:09:35,390 Within with the country's economy and infrastructure in ruins, there is little hope for an early end to this catastrophe. 82 00:09:35,780 --> 00:09:44,990 For the people of Syria. As in Europe's 30 years war of religion, the conflict has taken on a markedly sectarian character, 83 00:09:45,470 --> 00:09:50,210 and this became apparent already in the summer of 2011. 84 00:09:50,810 --> 00:09:57,380 And that was a major factor in Cece's decision that autumn to issue a genocide warning. 85 00:09:58,490 --> 00:10:09,090 We warned that the. Religious minority communities are facing the possibility of genocide, but it fell on deaf deaf ears. 86 00:10:10,800 --> 00:10:16,500 However, last March, Secretary of State John Kerry issued a genocide determination. 87 00:10:17,250 --> 00:10:26,040 It expressed abhorrence at the religious cleansing committed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which he declared was inherent in its ideology. 88 00:10:27,330 --> 00:10:30,360 Kerry identified the victimised communities by name. 89 00:10:30,390 --> 00:10:34,950 You see these Christians, Shiite Muslims, while also noting that others, 90 00:10:34,950 --> 00:10:40,530 in particular Sunni Muslims and Kurds, were also victims of various crimes against humanity. 91 00:10:41,490 --> 00:10:46,530 One of the most important factors that led to this genocide determination was 92 00:10:46,530 --> 00:10:51,740 Washington's desire to legitimise its military operations in Syria and Iraq, 93 00:10:52,230 --> 00:10:58,320 operations that, by their very nature also killed, maim and displace civilians. 94 00:10:59,220 --> 00:11:09,209 Kerry wanted the world to know that these U.S. led military actions were, as he said, fully warranted by the Islamic State's genocidal deed. 95 00:11:09,210 --> 00:11:15,090 This falls into line, of course, with the doctrine of humanitarian intervention. 96 00:11:16,600 --> 00:11:20,069 Though Kerry's statement is correct insofar as it goes, 97 00:11:20,070 --> 00:11:28,620 but he neglected to draw attention to the fact that the religiously cleansed areas of Syria extend far beyond the borders of the Islamic State. 98 00:11:29,220 --> 00:11:33,210 Other perpetrators of religious cleansing are also in play. 99 00:11:34,260 --> 00:11:41,850 Today, a huge swathes of territory running roughly 500 miles, and you can see it from here. 100 00:11:42,180 --> 00:11:55,770 It runs so close to the Mediterranean through northern Syria, down to the outskirts of Baghdad, is actually been religiously cleansed. 101 00:11:56,070 --> 00:11:59,730 And now you would be hard pressed to find members, 102 00:11:59,850 --> 00:12:06,570 any non Sunnis living there and those that are there are maybe old people that were too old to get away the ill, 103 00:12:06,960 --> 00:12:15,030 or there are always some few people who just say, we're not going and they're going to die here or they'll have to kill me before I leave. 104 00:12:15,060 --> 00:12:20,850 But for all practical purposes, this huge area has been religiously close to non Sunnis. 105 00:12:22,170 --> 00:12:28,200 There are also large pockets of religiously cleansed territory in central and southern Syria, such as Dara Province, 106 00:12:28,650 --> 00:12:42,750 the Duma suburb of Damascus, and some of the towns that had been religious, that some of the major towns that have been religiously cleansed. 107 00:12:43,170 --> 00:12:48,420 We're talking about urban areas are Raqqa, Idlib, Palmyra, al-Khateeb, Daraa, 108 00:12:49,110 --> 00:12:52,950 the northern part of there also, and of course, eastern Aleppo, which is in the news. 109 00:12:54,240 --> 00:12:57,629 Still, other areas have been emptied of their religious minorities, 110 00:12:57,630 --> 00:13:03,570 but conditions were subsequently established that enabled them to return to their homes if they wish to do so. 111 00:13:04,260 --> 00:13:11,820 Among them, the Kabore Valley, a Syrian villages not far from from Raqqa or the Armenian town of Kassab, 112 00:13:13,170 --> 00:13:19,630 near the Turkish border in the northeast, or the old city of Homs, Sadat and Blue Hill. 113 00:13:19,660 --> 00:13:24,270 And I visited all of these places apart from Kassab. 114 00:13:25,860 --> 00:13:30,599 Syria's religiously cleansed areas are coterminous with territory that is or 115 00:13:30,600 --> 00:13:35,730 had has been conquered and controlled by the anti-government Sunni rebels. 116 00:13:36,330 --> 00:13:40,530 They range from the Islamic State to those called moderate by their American, 117 00:13:40,770 --> 00:13:49,170 European and Sunni Islamist regional backers, in particular Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. 118 00:13:49,680 --> 00:13:58,890 And for short, I will refer to this nameless American led constellation of states as the an A, 119 00:13:58,950 --> 00:14:07,590 the snake prop prop up pop up from time to time in my talk, that is to say, the American led network of alliances. 120 00:14:08,010 --> 00:14:14,669 And President Obama, of course, referred to this reality in his 2014 West Point speech, 121 00:14:14,670 --> 00:14:20,400 noting that this configuration of power is unrivalled in the history of nations 122 00:14:20,670 --> 00:14:26,490 and made a special point of saying that the U.S. military component has no peer. 123 00:14:28,350 --> 00:14:34,800 The assortment of Sunni rebel forces that control territory in Syria have very relationships with the United States 124 00:14:35,460 --> 00:14:43,140 since the Islamic State's effort to capture bad Baghdad and Irbil following its unopposed conquest of Mosul in 2014. 125 00:14:43,680 --> 00:14:48,540 The United States and its LNA partners have been waging war against the Islamic State. 126 00:14:49,440 --> 00:14:59,430 The and its current relationship is ambiguous with al-Qaida's longtime affiliate, the al-Nusra Front, recently rebranded as an ex al-Qaida affiliate. 127 00:14:59,950 --> 00:15:03,120 Jabhat Fatah al-Sham conquest of Syria. 128 00:15:04,180 --> 00:15:11,829 Other so-called moderate groups such as the safe Free Syrian Army are shadowy and are subject to frequent re formations, 129 00:15:11,830 --> 00:15:15,550 name changes and shifting alliances within the rebel movement. 130 00:15:16,420 --> 00:15:22,120 They are furthermore, overtly or covertly financed, trained and armed by members of the elite. 131 00:15:22,900 --> 00:15:29,650 But there is something that virtually all of these so-called moderate armed groups have in common with al Qaeda and the Islamic State. 132 00:15:30,520 --> 00:15:34,060 They're all driven by a strong sense of Sunni supremacism. 133 00:15:34,840 --> 00:15:40,960 This is an important common denominator between all powerful groups of the armed opposition. 134 00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:51,730 A declassified Department of Defence Intelligence Agency report dated August 2012, provides confirmation of this. 135 00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:58,719 It states the Salafist, the Muslim Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaida. 136 00:15:58,720 --> 00:16:05,950 Iraq. It states are the major driving forces for the insurgency in Syria. 137 00:16:08,290 --> 00:16:15,099 The report made no mention of moderate rebels that made this omission for the obvious reason 138 00:16:15,100 --> 00:16:20,950 that non-Islamist Sunni forces are not a significant factor in the armed opposition. 139 00:16:22,450 --> 00:16:29,170 Even the the Ayeni backed Syrian political opposition in exile is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, 140 00:16:30,970 --> 00:16:37,930 that one of the key conditions for genocide is the prevalence of a racially or religiously discriminatory ideology 141 00:16:37,930 --> 00:16:46,510 or worldview that upholds a utopian vision of a homogenous society as the foundation of political unity. 142 00:16:47,590 --> 00:16:55,390 Secretary Kerry, in his genocide determination, rightly noted that the Islamic State embraces and promotes such an ideology. 143 00:16:56,260 --> 00:17:00,910 But such an ideology is not unique to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. 144 00:17:01,750 --> 00:17:10,580 All three of the dominant Islamist tendencies that were referred to in the Defence Department Defence Department's report do so. 145 00:17:11,890 --> 00:17:18,460 One of the fundamental principles on which their common ideology is based is this Sunni supremacism. 146 00:17:19,240 --> 00:17:23,890 This principle encourages and provides legitimation for religious cleansing. 147 00:17:24,460 --> 00:17:31,960 They ought to make clear here that Sunni suppression is not the only form of religious or ethnic chauvinism in the field, 148 00:17:32,830 --> 00:17:39,610 but it is in Syria the most powerful form in terms of numbers, history, tradition and resources. 149 00:17:41,080 --> 00:17:50,050 Sunni supremacism is on full display in the writings of the late chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayed Sayed Khattab. 150 00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:54,790 And there are no shortages of authorities to cite. 151 00:17:55,240 --> 00:18:04,870 But I think it's worth highlighting because on the one hand, his movement is regarded by the United States as a as a legitimate political actor. 152 00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:14,769 Both the Bush and Obama administrations regard to Turkey under Islamic other under the Muslim Brotherhood 153 00:18:14,770 --> 00:18:21,340 linked Justice and Development Party as a model for a democratic transformation of the Middle East. 154 00:18:22,150 --> 00:18:35,170 And on the other hand, as David Von Drehle notes in the Smithsonian magazine, a direct line of influence runs from Khattab to Osama bin Laden. 155 00:18:36,190 --> 00:18:47,380 Thus, Khattab inspires Islamist tendencies ranging from a member of the NATO alliance to al Qaeda and its Islamic State spin off. 156 00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:56,330 I will not go into details about the about the tabs suddenly supremacism. 157 00:18:56,570 --> 00:19:03,620 I have many quotations. And if it's felt desirable or necessary, we can return. 158 00:19:05,330 --> 00:19:14,450 We can return to his ideology. But the fact is that the main lines are shared throughout the Islamist world, 159 00:19:14,450 --> 00:19:21,410 and this Islamist ideology dominates the armed opposition to the Syrian government. 160 00:19:24,430 --> 00:19:30,640 That was this Sunni supremacism that stoked up and drove the Muslim Brotherhood's Iraq 161 00:19:31,390 --> 00:19:38,500 insurrection against the Alawite Assad regime in the late 1970s and early eighties. 162 00:19:38,950 --> 00:19:41,710 And that was a precursor of the current rebellion, 163 00:19:42,010 --> 00:19:49,210 which in turn was preceded by a Sunni led rebellion against the infidel French during the mandate period. 164 00:19:49,870 --> 00:19:59,410 Then, as now, Sunni supremacism struck a chord with a strand of Syria's Sunni population for many centuries until the end of the First World War. 165 00:19:59,830 --> 00:20:05,260 Syria's rulers were Sunnis, according to various Sunni schools of Islamic law. 166 00:20:05,980 --> 00:20:13,660 They had a God given right to rule over non-Sunni Sunnis, all of which should be subject to legal and social disadvantages. 167 00:20:14,530 --> 00:20:19,450 I'm told I don't speak Arabic, so I take it on the basis of my friends that to do. 168 00:20:19,450 --> 00:20:25,270 I'm told that there is an old Arabic adage that is a widespread currency today, 169 00:20:25,660 --> 00:20:31,480 and it goes Sunnis are born to rule while Shiites are born to lash themselves. 170 00:20:31,940 --> 00:20:36,670 It's a kind of a part of the popular culture of the region. 171 00:20:40,790 --> 00:20:50,570 When Assad assumed power in the early 1970s, it was perceived by many Sunnis as an affront against God's law. 172 00:20:51,230 --> 00:20:58,700 Robert Kaplan has perceptively compared Assad's ascent to power, to an untouchable, 173 00:20:58,700 --> 00:21:05,390 becoming a major maharajah in India or a Jew becoming the Tsar in Russia. 174 00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:13,940 This outrage, Kaplan added, was an unprecedented development, shocking to the Sunni majority population, 175 00:21:14,390 --> 00:21:18,320 which had of which had monopolised power for so many centuries. 176 00:21:19,790 --> 00:21:30,799 The Sunni supremacism is certainly not embraced by all Sunni Syrians, but it is still very much alive and well. 177 00:21:30,800 --> 00:21:40,070 And the spirit, if not the letter of this ideology, inspires all significant sections of the armed opposition. 178 00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:46,940 And I will jump over another section here. 179 00:21:46,940 --> 00:21:58,310 Why? Where I have descriptions of the religious cleansing of a particular town of Marula, which brings to life the reality of religious cleansing. 180 00:21:59,540 --> 00:22:04,460 What the Christian residents of that particular town encountered. 181 00:22:04,790 --> 00:22:11,150 And again, if there's sufficient interest or need to, I can go back to that during a Q&A. 182 00:22:15,500 --> 00:22:22,610 So what was the key factor that created condition for the current Sunni insurgency to result in extensive religious cleansing? 183 00:22:23,540 --> 00:22:28,040 I would maintain that it is externally driven hybrid warfare. 184 00:22:29,330 --> 00:22:35,780 How far said al-Assad was able to contain and crush the Muslim Brotherhood's insurrection in 1982, 185 00:22:36,020 --> 00:22:39,530 mainly because it had no significant external support. 186 00:22:40,580 --> 00:22:42,980 His son, Bashar, has not been so fortunate. 187 00:22:43,880 --> 00:22:51,200 Within months of its outbreak, the Arab Spring uprising was transformed into a Sunni sectarian insurrection. 188 00:22:51,920 --> 00:22:57,079 Mosques became the starting point for anti-government demonstrations that were soon vocalising 189 00:22:57,080 --> 00:23:03,740 incitement to genocide in the form of the slogan Alawites to the Grave and Christians to Beirut. 190 00:23:05,420 --> 00:23:09,980 The Obama administration opted not to remain on the sidelines. 191 00:23:10,700 --> 00:23:20,060 Already, the Bush administration had imposed economic sanctions against Syria in 2004 following the U.S. invasion of Iraq the previous year. 192 00:23:20,930 --> 00:23:27,200 The declared reason for the Bush sanctions was Syrian support for Hamas and Hezbollah and for allowing 193 00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:33,410 Syrian territory to be used by Sunni insurgents for launching attacks against U.S. occupied Iraq. 194 00:23:34,790 --> 00:23:38,300 In 2009, the Obama administration renewed these sanctions. 195 00:23:39,230 --> 00:23:42,650 Syrian Syria had long been a thorn in Washington's flesh. 196 00:23:43,070 --> 00:23:49,130 And when the uprisings in the spring of 2011 shook the regimes of the region to their foundations, 197 00:23:49,550 --> 00:23:56,730 the Obama administration believed the time was ripe for revolutionary change in its address to the American nation. 198 00:23:56,750 --> 00:23:59,990 On May 12th, 2011, he had, he declared, 199 00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:07,550 it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region and to support transitions to democracy. 200 00:24:08,300 --> 00:24:15,380 Regarding Syria, the president condemned the violent means of repression used by the Syrian authorities against demonstrators, 201 00:24:15,740 --> 00:24:21,020 and he emphasised the close relationship between Damascus and Iran. 202 00:24:23,270 --> 00:24:31,160 So there were in part humanitarian reasons for intervention, and then there were geopolitical reasons, the relationship between Damascus and Iran. 203 00:24:31,610 --> 00:24:40,010 He then instructed President Assad Assad to lead a transition to democracy or to step out of the way. 204 00:24:42,980 --> 00:24:53,900 And should he disobey the warning, he said the regime will continue to be challenged from within and will continue to be isolated abroad. 205 00:24:55,010 --> 00:25:05,720 The Bashar al-Assad did not obey. And as a result, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in July that the Syrian president had lost legitimacy. 206 00:25:06,710 --> 00:25:14,390 The next month, President Obama announced that for the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for Assad to step aside. 207 00:25:15,170 --> 00:25:22,080 Now is the time for action. Obama articulated a clear and simple policy objective. 208 00:25:22,100 --> 00:25:30,800 It was regime change. In doing so, he cited grave human rights abuses as factors to to legitimise his own policy. 209 00:25:31,370 --> 00:25:36,560 But the American goal was presented so much differently and I believe, more credibly. 210 00:25:36,710 --> 00:25:43,790 One year later, by a previous cited Department of Intel, IT Department of Defence Intelligence Analyst, 211 00:25:44,450 --> 00:25:50,450 he or she noted in a secret memorandum that the foreign backers of the armed rebellion aimed 212 00:25:50,450 --> 00:25:57,200 at the establishment of a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria, 213 00:25:58,070 --> 00:26:06,469 that the defined function of the envisaged Islamist Sunni stan was to isolate the Syrian regime, 214 00:26:06,470 --> 00:26:10,160 which has considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion. 215 00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:15,140 In other words, its its purpose was to break the Shiite crescent. 216 00:26:16,310 --> 00:26:25,160 The analyst also dismissed the notion of regime change, saying that the regime will survive and have control over Syrian territory. 217 00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:30,410 If we are left to the mercy of the Freedom of Information Act, 218 00:26:30,410 --> 00:26:38,180 we are not likely to know with any degree of certainty exactly what the Obama administration's endgame for Syria was at the time. 219 00:26:39,590 --> 00:26:43,999 But what we do know is that the Assad regime, as predicted by the analyst, 220 00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:53,270 still controls much territory in Syria and Islamist principalities have indeed been established in eastern Syria. 221 00:26:53,630 --> 00:27:05,720 The principal one being the Islamic State. The severance of the Shiite Crescent by the establishment of a de facto or de jure or a Sunni polity 222 00:27:06,170 --> 00:27:12,770 strikes me as a more credible geopolitical goal than simply the removal of President Assad from power. 223 00:27:14,450 --> 00:27:22,580 It is clear that the achievement of Washington's strategic goal in Syria was not to be left exclusively to the to the Syrian people. 224 00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:29,450 President Obama had already stated in May that the United States would continue to promote democratic transition. 225 00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:36,630 Jail and also to face considerable pressure from outside the country. 226 00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:42,120 The question for the Obama administration was how to achieve its policy goal. 227 00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:47,190 His preliminary instinct, according to Jeffrey Goldberg, 228 00:27:47,280 --> 00:28:00,310 was to lean back on what had been by that time known to most White House insiders as a cryptic way for describing the Obama military doctrine. 229 00:28:01,230 --> 00:28:04,140 And it was don't do stupid [INAUDIBLE]. 230 00:28:06,810 --> 00:28:13,560 White House staff understood this tongue in cheek presidential decree to mean don't make the same fatal political mistake 231 00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:20,280 that Bush made when he committed thousands of American boots on the ground for an invasion and occupation of Iraq. 232 00:28:21,810 --> 00:28:25,290 Obama was neither a pacifist or an isolationist. 233 00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,410 He was and is a progressive internationalist. 234 00:28:28,710 --> 00:28:35,460 Was ideologically convinced that the United States should pursue vigorously the goal of global liberal hegemony. 235 00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:40,170 In the tradition of all post Cold War U.S. presidents. 236 00:28:41,190 --> 00:28:47,820 This means the projection of American power to fill vacuums wherever and however they may arise. 237 00:28:48,690 --> 00:28:54,630 President Obama had no doubt about the United States ability to do this in the case of Syria. 238 00:28:56,940 --> 00:29:04,950 He believed that the smart wars for the development of this liberal global hegemony would be those fought somewhat 239 00:29:04,950 --> 00:29:13,709 along the lines projected by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman in this influential study conflict in the 21st century, 240 00:29:13,710 --> 00:29:20,040 the rise of hybrid warfare. I'm sure that that's well known to everybody here. 241 00:29:21,450 --> 00:29:24,899 Now that U.S. intervention in Syria appears, at least to me, 242 00:29:24,900 --> 00:29:33,690 to correspond to a great extent to Hoffman's description of what hybrid warfare actually is and how it plays out. 243 00:29:35,130 --> 00:29:42,240 But there are many debates surrounding the concept hybrid warfare, and there is no universally agreed definition of what it is. 244 00:29:43,350 --> 00:29:46,980 Some deny that it constitutes a new, distinct form of warfare. 245 00:29:47,940 --> 00:29:54,030 In an article in Nature Review, one author asks, Does it even exist? 246 00:29:54,510 --> 00:29:58,079 And recommends that NATO policy makers should forget everything, 247 00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:04,260 hybrid and focus on the specificity and the interconnectedness of the threats they face. 248 00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:10,350 This author might be right, but the fact is his advice is largely ignored. 249 00:30:11,370 --> 00:30:18,000 The term hybrid warfare continues to be used by the highest officials of the Western alliance, 250 00:30:18,420 --> 00:30:25,260 mainly to brand a threat emanating from Russia and also to some extent, the Islamic State. 251 00:30:26,910 --> 00:30:36,360 Now, NATO's does have a very short official definition, which is so short and loose that it's really not particularly helpful. 252 00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:46,680 But the outgoing supreme allied commander of Europe, General Breedlove, has put a little bit of meat on that very bare bone. 253 00:30:47,550 --> 00:30:58,260 He portrays the hybrid warfare as allegedly undertaken by Russia and Ukraine and the U.S. in the Middle East as a continuum of threat, 254 00:30:58,410 --> 00:31:01,410 including unconventional and conventional methods. 255 00:31:02,010 --> 00:31:14,310 These methods exploit non attractive means like cyber information, warfare, surprise, deception, extensive use of proxy and special forces. 256 00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:20,070 On the unconventional side, there is the use of political sabotage, economic pressure, 257 00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:29,790 intelligence operations and special operations, and the posturing of conventional forces for a wide range of options. 258 00:31:30,030 --> 00:31:36,000 I think that's a fairly helpful definition used by NATO's leadership, 259 00:31:37,980 --> 00:31:44,490 since this concept has does have some definition and creeps into the rhetoric of NATO leaders. 260 00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:51,330 I take the liberty of using it to brand the United States efforts to achieve its strategic objectives in Syria. 261 00:31:52,680 --> 00:32:00,780 Let's take a brief look at the Obama administration's playbook for creating an Islamist Sunni stan in eastern Syria. 262 00:32:03,580 --> 00:32:08,319 As President Obama was ramping up pressure against the Assad regime during the spring of truth. 263 00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:14,140 That summer of 2011, economic sanctions were the principal overt action on public display. 264 00:32:15,340 --> 00:32:23,020 He announced the imposition of what he called unprecedented sanctions to deepen the financial isolation of 265 00:32:23,020 --> 00:32:30,070 the Assad regime and further disrupt its ability to finance a campaign of violence against the Syrian people. 266 00:32:31,090 --> 00:32:37,629 These actions are indeed unprecedented in appear to be wreaking enormous death and destruction while bombs, 267 00:32:37,630 --> 00:32:40,480 bullets and beheadings capture media headlines, 268 00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:50,020 the sanctions quietly kill and gravely damage whatever economic activity and infrastructure survives of the of the hard war. 269 00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:55,599 We can see from hindsight that economic sanctions in Iraq between the Gulf War and the 270 00:32:55,600 --> 00:33:00,700 overthrow of Saddam Hussein so weakened the state that it became largely dysfunctional. 271 00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:04,310 And we can expect similar results in Syria. 272 00:33:04,630 --> 00:33:12,790 Should these draconian sanctions remain in place? It should be noted here that there is enormous enthusiasm in Washington, 273 00:33:12,790 --> 00:33:21,520 or at least there was up until Election Day about the use of sanctions as a coercive instrument for the advancement of American interests abroad. 274 00:33:22,930 --> 00:33:29,380 Economic sanctions are a weapon of war that can be employed at low cost in terms of both blood and treasure. 275 00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:36,129 Yet they can have powerfully destructive impacts as the globalised banking system develops. 276 00:33:36,130 --> 00:33:43,810 With the US dollar dominating international financial transactions, the might and reach of this instrument spreads globally. 277 00:33:44,710 --> 00:33:54,880 In a recent report entitled The New Tools of Economic Warfare Effects and Effectiveness of Contemporary U.S. Financial Sanctions, 278 00:33:55,780 --> 00:34:04,540 a team at the Centre for U.N. Security for a new U.N. security under the leadership of Michele Flournoy, 279 00:34:04,780 --> 00:34:14,140 a former deputy secretary of defence under Obama, and she was widely touted to be Hillary Clinton's Secretary of Defence. 280 00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:23,320 Now this report highlighted the significance of financial sanctions for the impact for the United States global aspirations. 281 00:34:23,620 --> 00:34:32,890 When they concluded sanctions may become one of the most important instruments of economic competition or hybrid warfare in the future, 282 00:34:33,430 --> 00:34:42,580 with undeniable staying power because of their utility and projecting power to achieve desired to achieve desirable policy outcomes. 283 00:34:43,540 --> 00:34:51,190 Syria provides a wonderful laboratory for examining the effectiveness of this tool of economic warfare. 284 00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:57,880 Information warfare is another important aspect of Washington's Syria strategy. 285 00:34:58,300 --> 00:35:06,400 The U.S. government using its full range of covert and overt instruments of what used to be called psychological warfare during the Eisenhower 286 00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:15,970 and Kennedy eras has largely succeeded in creating a dominant and powerful media narrative designed to delegitimize the Syrian government. 287 00:35:17,410 --> 00:35:21,639 Linked Leaked Clinton emails show to Google's Jared Cohen, 288 00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:31,000 who seems to embody what we might today call the digital military complex, has been involved in this process. 289 00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:40,000 One of the most advanced aspects of this program is the establishment and funding of an extensive media network in rebel held territories. 290 00:35:40,390 --> 00:35:48,790 It is made up mainly of so-called citizen reporters, NGOs and activists purporting to rise to represent civil society. 291 00:35:49,330 --> 00:35:54,340 They feed outlets like the opposition related Syrian Observatory on Human Rights 292 00:35:54,760 --> 00:36:00,550 with information and broadcast footage that is then forwarded to the media. 293 00:36:01,540 --> 00:36:07,930 Much of the output is human rights related, but religious cleansing doesn't feature in it. 294 00:36:09,820 --> 00:36:16,690 These two aspects of the destabilisation strategy impact religious cleansing insofar 295 00:36:16,720 --> 00:36:21,430 as they render the Syrian state incapable of effectively protecting its citizens, 296 00:36:22,090 --> 00:36:31,510 including the non-Sunni minorities. But the lethal and non-lethal aid to the armed opposition has a has a very direct impact. 297 00:36:32,020 --> 00:36:35,080 The details of material support may never be known, 298 00:36:35,530 --> 00:36:43,210 but the main players in the American led network of alliances acknowledge that they provide both kinds of support. 299 00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:49,990 I just had an email message today from a colleague who said that a new Foreign 300 00:36:49,990 --> 00:37:02,260 Office report says that the UK has devoted £65 million of non-humanitarian aid and. 301 00:37:02,900 --> 00:37:14,170 A declared purpose is to serve. The purpose of this aid is to bolster moderate governments and improve the lives, the lives of ordinary citizens. 302 00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:23,320 So this is non-humanitarian aid that is being used to bolster moderate governance and improve the lives of ordinary citizens. 303 00:37:23,330 --> 00:37:34,190 I must say, I don't know many I don't talk to many Syrians when I travel there who would buy such Orwellian, Orwellian proclamations. 304 00:37:40,670 --> 00:37:49,219 Now Washington's model for Syria appears to be the Reagan administration's policy for supporting Mujahideen Shia jihadists, 305 00:37:49,220 --> 00:37:57,920 including Afghan Arabs, out of which Al Qaida emerged against the infidel Soviet Union. 306 00:37:59,990 --> 00:38:04,300 Just what is delivered and by whom and to whom is shrouded in mystery. 307 00:38:04,310 --> 00:38:11,090 But every now and again, the public is able to catch a glimpse of the aid for Syrian rebels. 308 00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:19,969 And the investigations into the attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi revealed that the CIA was sending ex Gadhafi weapons, 309 00:38:19,970 --> 00:38:26,090 including missiles, to an unidentified anti-government rebels in Syria via Turkey. 310 00:38:26,930 --> 00:38:37,399 The Syrian operations of the Benghazi CIA centre were meant to be to be kept secret, but the agency has acknowledged that its, 311 00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:44,480 together with partners, provide support for Syrian rebels out of facilities both in Turkey and in Jordan. 312 00:38:45,860 --> 00:38:49,729 The White House was embarrassed when it emerged that all of the equipment, 313 00:38:49,730 --> 00:39:00,980 that all of the equipment that reached Syria out of a $500 million rebel training and support program, ended up in the hands of the al-Nusra Front. 314 00:39:01,670 --> 00:39:09,110 A similar scandal was revealed when the New York Times reported that Syria bound weapons that were shipped in to Jordan by the CIA 315 00:39:09,110 --> 00:39:18,230 and Saudi Arabia had systematically been stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market. 316 00:39:20,060 --> 00:39:27,200 Perhaps the greatest embarrassment for the Obama administration came when Vice President Joe Biden, 317 00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:36,439 in off the cuff remarks at Harvard, stated that Washington's Sunni regional partners in particular the Turks, 318 00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:44,569 the Saudis and the Emiratis had poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tons of weapons into al Nusra, 319 00:39:44,570 --> 00:39:50,570 Al Qaida and the extremist elements of jihad coming from other parts of the world. 320 00:39:51,170 --> 00:40:01,220 The vice president furthermore admitted that the United States was not able to provide support to support weapons to moderate forces, 321 00:40:01,610 --> 00:40:06,170 because there, in his words, is no moderate middle assisting in Syria. 322 00:40:07,220 --> 00:40:16,760 Maybe we can come back to this in Q&A and also to the reference that I made about Afghanistan, Reagan's Afghan policy being a model, 323 00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:26,060 because we see a theme in American policy and it goes back to the time of the British in their dealings with even Saudi in Arabia, 324 00:40:26,420 --> 00:40:36,469 that jihad can be a useful instruments of projecting power and promoting your interests. 325 00:40:36,470 --> 00:40:40,580 And it appears that this is in play in Syria today. 326 00:40:43,530 --> 00:40:48,269 The US armed forces have intervened more directly on the ground in Syria since 327 00:40:48,270 --> 00:40:54,090 Washington and its partners opted to wage war against the Islamic State in 2014. 328 00:40:54,660 --> 00:41:03,240 American planes are regularly bombing positions in Syria, and but it's not only from from the air. 329 00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:12,480 The U.S. has established its own airport facility in Hasakah province. 330 00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:19,170 American and other and special forces are on the ground training opposition forces. 331 00:41:19,710 --> 00:41:25,920 Washington acknowledges that there are at least 300 American special forces in the country, 332 00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:33,570 but there could be and probably are many more who are involved in covert actions that cannot be identified. 333 00:41:34,260 --> 00:41:38,430 Half a dozen or so of these special forces made headlines last September when they were 334 00:41:38,430 --> 00:41:43,740 roughly expelled by their Free Syrian Army hosts while being threatened with slaughter. 335 00:41:44,550 --> 00:41:51,750 A YouTube video shows Free Syrian Army soldiers shouting They are crusaders and infidels down with America. 336 00:41:52,290 --> 00:41:55,770 Get out, you pigs. They're coming to Syria to occupy it. 337 00:41:56,970 --> 00:42:04,590 These are the same kinds of insults that are routinely hurled at religious minorities by Sunni supremacist rebels in Syria. 338 00:42:06,620 --> 00:42:15,169 Now. My conclusion writing at the beginning of this year in military review, Charles Bartles, an analyst at Fort Leavenworth, 339 00:42:15,170 --> 00:42:18,590 summed up the Russian military's perception of how Washington, 340 00:42:18,590 --> 00:42:26,450 directly or through its extensive network of alliances and intelligence relationships, puts hybrid warfare into play. 341 00:42:27,380 --> 00:42:31,190 Much of what Bartels has to say was based on Anthony Cordesman, 342 00:42:31,190 --> 00:42:40,040 a detailed eyewitness account of the Russian Ministry of Defence 2014 Moscow Conference on International Security. 343 00:42:40,850 --> 00:42:45,409 Bartels wrote Instead of an overt military invasion, 344 00:42:45,410 --> 00:42:51,680 the first volleys of a U.S. attack come from the instalment of the political opposition through state propaganda, 345 00:42:52,310 --> 00:42:58,910 CNN, the BBC, the Internet and social media and nongovernmental organisations. 346 00:42:59,780 --> 00:43:05,810 After successfully instilling political dissent, separatism and or social strife, 347 00:43:06,110 --> 00:43:13,220 the legitimate government has increasing difficulty maintaining order as the security situation deteriorates. 348 00:43:13,250 --> 00:43:19,340 Separatist movements can be stoked and strengthened and underhand. 349 00:43:20,150 --> 00:43:28,100 Special operations with private military forces can be introduced to battle the government and cause further havoc. 350 00:43:29,270 --> 00:43:34,700 Once the legitimate government is forced to use increasingly aggressive methods to maintain order. 351 00:43:35,240 --> 00:43:43,940 The United States gains the pretext for the imposition of economic and political sanctions and sometimes even military sanctions, 352 00:43:43,940 --> 00:43:50,650 such as no fly zones, to tie the hands of the besieged governments and promote further dissent. 353 00:43:51,890 --> 00:43:57,709 The character of the war waged against Syria by the United States and its allies corresponds to a large 354 00:43:57,710 --> 00:44:04,250 degree to what the Russian military views as the standard pattern of contemporary American hybrid warfare. 355 00:44:05,210 --> 00:44:12,200 Whether or not we choose to call the kind of warfare that Washington and its allies practice in Syria hybrid warfare, 356 00:44:12,650 --> 00:44:22,910 there is little doubt that these interventions have caused material, you know, extensive damage to out throughout the country. 357 00:44:23,150 --> 00:44:31,640 They've contributed to religious cleansing. And so all of the various aspects of this manmade catastrophe. 358 00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:40,610 The new president elect of the United States has made sounds suggesting that he might not continue to prosecute his predecessor's war in Syria. 359 00:44:41,270 --> 00:44:49,190 We will see anything can happen. But should this come to pass, the dynamic of religious cleansing will be considerably diminished, 360 00:44:49,670 --> 00:44:54,740 and Syria's remarkable social pluralism will have at least a chance of survival. 361 00:44:55,820 --> 00:44:58,160 Thank you very much for your attention.