Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 20th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Good morning everyone. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we'll get our study of Canada's response to the violence, religious persecution, and dislocation caused by ISIL started.

I just want to welcome our two guests, our witnesses who are joining us via video conference today.

We have Dr. Bessma Momani, who is an associate professor from the Balsillie School of International Affairs, from the University of Waterloo. Dr. Momani, thank you for joining us again. I know we had a chance to hear you once before in our study of Syria. Welcome back. We're looking forward to hearing from you shortly.

We also have joining us via video conference from Shelton, Connecticut, from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Rod Sanjabi, the executive director. Welcome, sir. We're glad to have you joining us here today.

Why don't we just start—

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Chair, I would just like to make sure that we welcome Mr. Hawn to our committee now that we've resolved our membership issues. We're thrilled to have someone with his broad understanding and great wisdom here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

While we're welcoming people, we'll welcome Mr. Van Kesteren back as well.

[An hon. member]

He's just visiting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Yes, just visiting.

What I'm going to do is turn it over to you, Dr. Momani. We'll have you go with your introductory remarks, then we'll head over to Mr. Sanjabi, and then we'll go around the room and ask questions, back and forth, as is our normal custom.

I'm going to turn it over to you, Doctor. You have the floor.

[Dr. Bessma Momani, Associate Professor, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the committee. I appreciate the invitation. It's always an honour to speak to you.

By the title of the hearing today, I gather there is an important interest, and I think a vital one, in ISIS's role in kind of trying to reshape the region. Without a doubt, there is plenty to be said about how much ISIS has had very little tolerance for minorities who really have historically shaped the Middle East. The Middle East is a tapestry. In teaching my own students, it's often something that I have to remind them, that the Middle East is multi-ethnic, multilingual, multireligious. Iraq is really one of those nation states that, perhaps, is most diverse, so we are seeing, I think, an awful group rise at a point where a country needs so much more healing, not division.

This is all to kind of re-emphasize a point that everybody knows, which is that ISIS is targeting many of these minorities that make up the milieu of the Middle East, groups known as the Yazidis, the Christians and the Shiites of Iraq. I want to emphasize that, if I may, because I think that's obvious, but what's not obvious is that it targets everyone. I think my hope is to really lay out the explanation for why we need to think about the fact that ISIS is not only targeting minorities; it's targeting everyone and anyone in its wake who opposes its rule, and that includes Sunni Muslims.

We've seen, for example, recently the Jabouri tribe in Iraq, a Sunni tribe, that tried to rise up against ISIS. It didn't want to succumb to its rule. Again, ISIS has been able to come into certain territories because of a political vacuum left by both the Assad regime and the Maliki government previously. In both cases, I would say, initially there was some local support, primarily because ISIS was the devil you didn't know versus the ones in Damascus and Baghdad, which had so much blood on their hands, according to those groups. But as ISIS tries to cement its control, its very perverse interpretation of Islam becomes quickly dissociated with much of the lifestyle that many people follow, and there's a very quick, I think, recognition that ISIS is not an ally but very much a socially perverse system of governance.

That does not mean they are willing to rise against it—which I will talk about—but that does show that there is a growing local concern about ISIS. We need to, if we're going to talk about a western coalition, talk about ways of turning the tide, politically and socially, in these Sunni-dominated areas to ensure that ISIS does not have allies on the ground.

Going back to my example of an Iraqi Sunni tribe, a very well known one called the Jabouri family, ISIS rolled into their city and tried to lay claim. The Sunni tribe did not want to ally itself with ISIS, very much didn't like the way it was treating its women, and ultimately paid a heavy price. Four hundred people from the one family were massacred by ISIS. This is, again, a prominent Sunni tribe in Anbar province.

We see stories of this kind, which don't reach our TV screens, unfortunately, of many such types of local uprisings and defiance of ISIS's rule. A prominent Sunni Iraqi female doctor was murdered in Mosul recently. I could go on and on.

The Kurds have undoubtedly paid a heavy price, particularly in Kobani at the hands of ISIS, but it would be mistaken to think of that without really understanding the fact that the Kurds are predominantly Sunni Muslim. So it is not a sectarian...it has overlays of sectarianism, without a doubt, but really ISIS's rule is one that is targeting all who disagree with its perverse interpretation. Everybody is game. Easy targets, obviously, are the minorities who disagree with it fundamentally, but clearly many Sunnis have paid a heavy price. In fact, of the 1,200 that ISIS has killed, I'd say that predominantly we're still talking about Sunnis that have paid the price for that.

How to counter ISIS? I'm not sure if that's the purview of the committee, but I have to say it includes and needs to be both military and a bottom-up winning of the hearts and minds of locals.

The targeted plan that we have, and that the coalition agreed to about a month back, includes things like establishing a national guard of locals to overthrow ISIS eventually. I think that is an absolutely fantastic idea. The challenge is that training is at least a year a way, depending on both Iraqi Sunnis to be trained and ex-army who have been completely disenfranchised by the Maliki government. It's going to take a lot to tempt them back, although that can be done. ISIS has been able to have some support because it pays salaries. We need to get back into the business of paying these ex-military officers a salary.

Also, we need to think about the FSA, the Free Syrian Army, which has been the so-called second part of this plan of a bottom-up national guard. They are maybe even more than a year away, some might even say a hopeless cause at this point. The Saudis have agreed to train them, but we have been seeing more and more losses on the battlefront in Syria. I'd argue that the FSA has become completely decimated, so it's not really going to be available for much longer to help us in the cause of creating these national guards.

If we don't do the second part of this—i.e., the bottom-up approach—we are going to lose the hearts and minds of the people. That's not only vital for the moral support that we need in the western sense. I might also add that translates to political support far and wide beyond the territory that ISIS controls, but including many of the Arab and Muslim countries. More importantly we need them militarily and logistically in the sense that the second phase of the counter-insurgency strategy has already started.

You can safely argue that much of the military targets from the air have almost exhausted themselves. We've seen a complete decline in the number of targets that coalition forces have been able to hit.

At this point we need the second phase, which is ground level, domestic support. I think we all agree and any analyst who advises otherwise must be very careful. Western boots on the ground would be devastating. It would lose all the hearts and minds. It would spiral into a larger war than necessary and there are plenty of people, individuals, who would be happy to fight ISIS with the proper training and resources. There is an opportunity there, but it must be done by making sure that the narrative of countering ISIS and fighting ISIS is not just about ISIS being a terrorist force that is targeting minorities, which it is, but also pointing out that ISIS targets everyone who does not succumb to its very draconian and perverse interpretation of Islam.

If we keep that narrative, and it's very important that we focus on that, I think we can continue to win the hearts and minds on the ground. I have to emphasize that looking at it only through the lens of minorities, as valid as that is, is not militarily and politically advantageous in the long term for the coalition forces.

I'll stop there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Dr. Momani.

We're going to move over now to Mr. Sanjabi.

Sir, we'll turn the floor over to you.

[Rod Sanjabi, Executive Director, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center]

Thanks very much. Thank you for having me. I would only stress before I begin my comments that my work primarily focuses on Iran so the impressions I'll be offering will be general.

Historically it's just worth pointing out a few things. One is that this degree of radicalism is not ingrained. It's not something that's existed for generations. It's largely the result of the investment in radicalization of Islamic education over the course of the last couple of generations by the Saudis and the Gulf states. What I'm speaking about of course is a little bit broader than simply the recent investment over the last ten years in AQIM and ISIS. That kind of cultural substrate is an important thing to keep in mind.

Also, it's worth mentioning that recently Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former President of Iran, pointed out that in his belief some Shiite practices, including the burning in effigy of the Caliph Umar, whom for Sunnis is some import, and such discrimination has led to the rise of ISIS. To the degree that this represents a widespread belief in Iran—and I can't say that it necessarily does—there is some sense I think among Shiites as well that this is an issue. I'm going to come back to that later.

I'd also point out that this degree of radicalism, as I said before, wasn't evident in the Sunni population of Iraq or Syria prior to 2011 and Bashar al-Assad's rather brutal crackdown and especially also prior to 2003 in Iraq. This takfiri ideology that the professor pointed to wherein all members of society who do not subscribe to the radical Salafi ideals of ISIS are considered to be non-believers and deserving of state violence is a new and very troubling development. I think that's not a very controversial point. So in the current context with ISIS having been expelled from Baiji and the refineries, it's worth noting that the $30 million or so a month it was predicted that they were going to be making is likely to go down. It's difficult for them to sell crude oil. It's much easier to sell refined petroleum products.

I'm not an expert but I think their ability to pay their forces will be significantly diminished and as a result I think their fighting ability may also be diminished over the coming months. From what I know of the Iranian context I can say that careers have been made in the IRGC. The IRGC's role in regaining Amerli has been significant. It's made some propaganda points in Iran. It's worth mentioning that this has had quite an effect in the Iranian context. The IRGC, who no one would have thought in 2009 would have ever had a chance at gaining significant popular support, is now considered to be something of a force for national unity and defence. It's unlikely that Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force, will stay in command for very long. The supreme leader has a record of removing generals from power once they accumulate a certain amount of influence, especially in the IRGC.

It's nonetheless worth mentioning that this has provided a significant opportunity for them. All of this aside, I wanted to comment on the reprise that we hear a lot that there needs to be a political solution in Iraq to address the ISIS presence in Iraq. I think that's true. It's difficult in the context though, because for generations, always, the Shiite population of Iraq was marginalized. The relative radicalization of the Shiite population, especially after—well, radicalization might be strong. Obviously Maliki was unable to compromise. I don't think that will be forthcoming in a meaningful way. What you're more likely to see is a fig leaf and a facade of cooperation rather than anything else.

To finish, I wanted to point to some of the findings of the Syrian COI, the commission of inquiry. They published a report on human rights under ISIS very recently. There are a few interesting points. Victims are consistently describing acts of terror, aimed at—as the professor pointed out—limiting the exercise of religious freedom, freedom of speech, assembly, and association, and this goes quite far. There's testimony indicating that some children have been pressured to inform on their parents. There are a number of reports of ISIS attacking social and cultural events, including weddings. There are plenty of reports—and this has entered the media—of lashings and amputation for offences such as smoking and theft. Victims have described a presumption of guilt until innocence is proven, to the degree that there are legal proceedings.

It's also worth mentioning, yes, minorities are targeted significantly. They've been more or less faced with the choice of assimilating or fleeing. Forced conversion is quite regular, especially among people who have been kidnapped. There are reports of churches having been destroyed, and obviously, forceable displacement has created a massive humanitarian disaster throughout the region.

I'll end there. I'm open to answering any questions, but once again, I would urge you to remember that I am an Iran specialist so this isn't quite my field.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

The first round will be seven minutes and then we'll go to the second round of five minutes.

We're going to start with the NDP, Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to both our witnesses.

I'm going to start with Ms. Momani. Thank you again for appearing before our committee. You helped us with our study on Syria.

I should mention to both of our witnesses that we are doing a study with the goal of making recommendations. That's to be noted because if there are things that you want to ensure we have in our findings, if you think it wasn't captured in your comments or the questions and answers, please send them on to our committee so we can have that material for consideration for recommendations.

I want to start with you, Ms. Momani. It's interesting that you talked about the importance of how to describe the actions of ISIL and how we should avoid and not fall into the trap that you're laying out that they only go after minorities, yet it's clear they do go after minorities. So I appreciate what you're saying, because it is true that you can't just say that this is a Sunni group who is promoting their brand of Islam. In fact, I think many people would call what they're promoting analogous to a death cult of sorts—you're either with us or we'll kill you.

I also note that even those who are converted end up dying, being killed, or murdered, and we've recently seen that. But what I wanted to ask you about is this connection because of your experience and your background in studying Syria. One of the things that has come out recently is how there seems to be not a direct link but certainly an effect of the Assad regime at the beginning, holding back on targets where ISIL was prevalent. You see this in terms of what happened in Aleppo, where the Free Syrian Army was active and had opportunity, but where ISIL was active there seems to be a strategy by Assad to hold back a bit. For many this seems puzzling, but when you look back you can see how Assad would be playing this out to provide oxygen to ISIL to defeat the Free Syrian Army, which I think in the beginning was more of a threat.

Can you just open that up a bit for us and give us any information on that? I think it's really important. If we're looking at a comprehensive strategy for the region, I think it's important to understand this connection between Assad, his strategy, and how it's affecting ISIL, and of course that spills over into Iraq.

[Dr. Bessma Momani]

Yes. Thank you.

Look, I think Assad for a very long time was interested in keeping control of Damascus, Aleppo, and the Latakia coast. That's his heartland. If we look at the map of what ISIS controls....

You know, I'm almost skeptical about using the words “ISIS”, “IS”, or “Islamic State”, because it's not a state. They control two or three cities and lots of roads that connect them. They don't particularly control a big, vast amount of arable, livable territory. Much of it is desert. It's not to say that the millions who are under its unfortunate tutelage don't matter; by no means is that the point. But if you look at the map of Syria and Iraq, they've taken the void. They've taken the amount of territory that is mostly uninhabited, mostly desert and not necessarily the most resource rich, although they do have access to a few oil refineries. Most of it is desert, uninhabited desert, and the people who inhabit those areas tend to be more rural, tend to be more conservative. That's why that ideology first took hold.

Initially, at least, they were able to come into that territory because the people on the ground were able to see that there was at least an attempt to govern them, to provide services, to provide electricity. We hear, for example, that in Mosul and parts of Syria, much of the reason for the initial welcoming of ISIS was that they came in and picked up garbage. They provided things like electricity and water. They freed political prisoners from jail. So they were able to initially—again, very initially—get public support. That's why they made such a vast spread so quickly.

I digress a little bit, but the point is that these are really not cities in the classic sense, not populated cities—with the exception of Mosul, which is not easy to ignore. My point is that much of Syria is barren.

Going back to your question about Assad, Assad did not fight ISIS. Some on the ground would be skeptical and argue that Assad and ISIS were aligned. I think that's a bit extreme. More importantly, Assad turned a blind eye and said, look, I don't have enough forces to fight two fronts; let me focus on the secular front, which clearly the international regimes globally are more sympathetic to, such as the FSA, the Free Syrian Army. ISIS eventually, if it does get hold of much of eastern Syria, as it did, is easier to at least garner the international support to counter it.

I think he played it quite well. He was right on that front. But his key goal was to hold on to the centre of the country and the coast, the highly populated areas: Aleppo, the most populated city; the second, Damascus; and then Latakia, because of access to the sea and also its Alawite heartland. Those were all the reasons why he focused on that. That was a tactical and I think a political choice.

So he didn't fight ISIS, and ISIS was able to pretty much spread in Syria very quickly and easily with initially popular support on the ground. That has obviously changed. People have started to see that ISIS is not a saviour against the Assad regime, it's a medieval interpretation of Islam that's even worse than Assad. But that's taken time to get to, and I think that explains why in Syria, at least, we have seen a lot more of this kind of uprising against ISIS than we have in other areas.

I'll stop there.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

My time is up, but I just want to ask you: what do you call them? I'm conflicted with this as well. I don't want to call them a state; I think it adds to their legitimacy.

Do you have a quick response on that?

[Dr. Bessma Momani]

The quick response is that I think “ISIS” is legitimate. “ISIL” is a term that Barack Obama likes, and the administration, because it avoids the word Syria and we know that he is allergic to the concept of Syria. I think we shouldn't fall into that trap.

As well, “Levant” does not translate into anything. It is ISIS. I think that's the simple way of looking at it. “Islamic State” gives them absolutely legitimacy. It's neither Islamic nor a state, so let's stick to ISIS. That's what I would say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

We'll turn it over to Mr. Anderson for seven minutes, please.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To our guests, thank you for being here today. I hope you won't think me rude if I interrupt you. I have three questions that I want to ask, and I think they may take a little bit of your time.

First of all, Mr. Sanjabi, can you tell me a little about the situation with minority communities moving into Iran from some of these areas, particularly from Iraq over the last few years? Has that been an issue for the Iranian government to deal with, and what is that issue?

[Rod Sanjabi]

The numbers were relatively small—or had become smaller. A large number of Shiites went to Iran immediately after the U.S. invasion. That number had lowered. It has increased again. I think it's nowhere near the number who are going to Turkey. You have to keep in mind that there is Iraqi Kurdistan in the way. Most of them right now, just temporarily, are in Erbil and the environs. They are primarily in Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey. That may change, if the conflict becomes more permanent.

Again I'd like to stress that the economic situation for ISIS is not good right now. I think that the human rights situation, and especially pressure on minorities, will increase, short term, as a result of this. It's a kind of rule of history. ISIS will be weakened and will be looking to especially vulnerable communities to make up the deficit.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I need to stop you there, because I want to lead into another area that has to do with this.

You said that Maliki probably will be unable to compromise and to cooperate effectively, and Ms. Momani talked about the need for a domestic coalition. I wonder whether the two of you can talk—and this may use up our time a little bit—about what that domestic coalition might look like, given the recipe and the mixture of people we have there. I don't need to go through the whole list, but the entire neighbourhood is involved.

What will that domestic coalition look like if it is to be effective? How can we assist in the establishment of it? I guess we want to also talk about Canada's response to the situation. How can we play a role that will be effective there?

[Dr. Bessma Momani]

I point out that this is already done, in the sense that the way in which the American forces were able to eventually overthrow al Qaeda in the first case, after the 2003 intervention, was by making a coalition with the Anbar province's locals, called sahwa or the awakening, in 2007.

That was basically getting local tribes, putting an Iraqi uniform on them, paying them salaries, everything that Maliki didn't do, which was.... I have to point out that the Americans did a fantastic job of training and professionalizing this force, but then, when the Maliki government came into power and the Americans left, he basically stripped them of all their stars, stopped their salaries, and told them, “You're a Sunni; go home”.

We need to reverse that tide; that's the simple way.

The national guard model that the coalition has put together is a fantastic one. You just need to move into that phase. We haven't moved into that phase, clearly, because we're focusing only, so far, on the military strategy, from the top down. By that I mean literally through air support and air power, which is needed—without a doubt you need to do that—but we're not moving into the second phase, and I'm afraid we're not going to be able to train them fast enough.

We need to put more resources into the training of those resources and of those forces on the ground that include the Sunni tribes in both Iraq and in Syria. We need to put money and time into that quickly.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Can it be done effectively in both countries, or do you focus on one rather than the other, or what do you suggest?

[Dr. Bessma Momani]

In terms of the political strategy, obviously Iraq is easier, because in Iraq you have the central government's authorization. We have been focusing more on the Iraqi tribes to do that—at least, that's the way the message has been portrayed by the coalition—because we are in essence defying Syrian sovereignty. As much as we hate the Assad regime, by international law it's still the legitimate sovereign.

That means training local groups. I don't think we have stopped training the FSA, but we haven't done a really good job of being complete about it. Now you have the difficulty, though, that clearly the FSA has become less and less powerful over time.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Let's talk about the role, then, of Turkey and the Kurds in this as well, because I would think they would need to be brought into this. They seem to be one of the more effective fighting forces in the area.

[Dr. Bessma Momani]

Yes. The Kurds are a formidable force, the peshmerga. They have a history of fighting. They would need to be empowered, definitely.

Part of the challenge of the peshmerga, which are in the Kurdish region of Iraq, is getting Turkish permission, which is really hard to do, understanding their history of allowing peshmerga access into Turkey to get around the fact that much of ISIS territory stands in the way.

Literally, ISIS controls the vast desert between the KRG, the Kurdish region, and the areas of battle, but that can be overcome.

You have to give something to the Kurds, and we haven't done that, maybe behind the scenes. We need to give something to the Kurds that says that they have a purpose in fighting ISIS, not just in Kobani, which is clearly important for their own historical narrative, but more importantly fighting ISIS will mean something for them. There's only one thing that the Kurds want and it is some recognition of autonomy toward independence.

I know we're allergic to the concept of independence. I understand that, but that is really important. I completely understand why the Kurds would say that they are going to be defensive and they are not going to go on the offensive until they are told there's something in it for them.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

We had heard that radicalization is a result of investment in education by a number of people in the area. That is something we probably need to address.

How do we deal with that? Is that the longer-term issue? You shake your head one way. Do you not agree that investment in education has been a cause of a lot of the problems we have here?

[Dr. Bessma Momani]

No, because frankly, the force of fighters ISIS has is global. They're coming from everywhere. They're coming from Tunisia. They're coming from Canada, dare I say. They're coming from Belgium. They're not coming from just Iraq and Syria. They're coming globally because the radical ideology is online.

It's not necessarily coming through the school system. That's not an endorsement of the school system, but a lot of it is being self-radicalized online, and we need to think about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Garneau, to complete the first round, seven minutes, please.