Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Mokhtar Lamani]

My concern when it comes to strikes is that we have had very bad experiences. I was in the session of the Security Council when I was still ambassador there, after the international community decided to go to Afghanistan. I remember that one of the talks we got there was about how the Americans were going to be strongly in Kabul, and that if the Taliban were in the mountains, they were going to strike. I remember that I was one of the people defending against the idea and saying, “No, it's not going to happen that way, because if you strike there, you are going to kill innocents and you are going to make the Taliban more popular.”

It's very slippery. It has to be done in a way.... It was mentioned several times about having boots on the ground, local boots, but the right boots.... This is going to take a long, long time. I'm not convinced that what is being done now with the Iraqi army, which is sectarian, is the right thing.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

But should we be going into Syria with air strikes?

[Mokhtar Lamani]

It's a very hard question. I really don't know if.... For Syria, while there are some new proposals now for a lot of things, it is very cynical. I myself have used several times the words “the crisis of Syria”. I've been doing this work for more than three decades, mediation and this. It's just Kafkaesque. Absurdity has no limit. It was mentioned about the peshmerga now working with Iran from the other side, ISIL with this government or the other government.... Everything can happen. I'm not sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Paul.

We're going to finish off with Mr. Anderson for five minutes.

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

I want to follow up a little further on what Mr. Dewar started. He talked about Syria, but I'd like to hear a bit more information about how you see the national interests of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran playing into this as well. We only have five minutes so I realize this is ridiculous, but perhaps, Professor Akhavan, you can address that to start with, and maybe Mr. Lamani can as well. What are the national interests of those three countries going to do to affect this?

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Well, much of what is happening in Syria, and what has been happening in Iraq as well, has been a regional power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The fault lines have been the Sunni-Shia divide. Clearly, the Assad regime would have collapsed had it not been for the intervention of Iran and of Lebanon's Hezbollah.

I think that once Assad crossed the “red line” in using chemical weapons and there was no western military intervention forthcoming, it was a profound turning point. Now, of course, the Free Syrian Army is disturbed that the only time there is western military intervention it's in favour of the Assad regime.

I think these contradictions have to be understood, and there has to be a wider rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia if there is any meaningful solution to the regional problem.

Lastly, the Assad regime is of course essential for Iran's ties with Lebanon's Hezbollah and the wider balance of power between Iran and Israel, so all of these pieces have to somehow fit together.

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

Before I go to Mr. Lamani, what do you see as Turkey's role in this? We get conflicting reports of their interests and how they may be playing that out.

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

I think Ambassador Lamani said it correctly, that Turkey is not a country like Chad or Mali. It has tremendous military intelligence resources. I have heard many sources explaining how, for example, members of the al-Nusra front were moving freely across Turkish border points.

So it is not a secret that Turkey has tried to establish its own sphere of influence in northern Syria using these Islamist elements, but the Islamist elements are incredibly complex and there are many shifting alliances. So what we call ISIL could itself be transformed many times over as new alliances are struck. Part of an effective solution, beyond military strikes, is to give an incentive to those Islamist elements to defect from ISIL and to be given some other constructive role in the future of Syria.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Lamani, could you bring Qatar into this as well, if possible?

[Mokhtar Lamani]

During the Cold War, the most extremist about any crisis were the superpowers, the Soviet Union and the Americans. The neighbours try always to find a solution because they are always scared to have some problems, except now. We see extremes much more from the neighbours of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey, much more than the Russians and the Americans. They went too far.

Maybe I disagree a little bit with the professor about the internal situation, which I was following for the last two years. First of all, there's nothing in Syria called the Free Syrian Army. If you want to be accurate, you have to add an “s”, Free Syrian Armies. I myself tried to have data about the armed groups. You cannot imagine; they're called brigades, but of course “brigade” has no military definition. They can be five people as well as 30,000 people. I counted more than 2,000 different brigades.

The second problem is that when you are talking about the coalition or about the political opposition there's a huge problem. What is their impact on the armed groups? It's very limited, and I'm not talking about the extremists, al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, ISIS. It's becoming very complicated, and I agree with the professor that you need to have even those who you consider as part of the problem to be part of the solution. For this you need a political will, which is not there yet.

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

Actually, I was going to follow that up before, and you did talk a bit about how can we contribute to that political approach. I wonder if you just wanted to build on that a little bit further. What roles you see the Canadian government having the potential to play in encouraging this? You talked about dialogue with some of the Scandinavian countries, but do you have any other suggestions as well?

[Mokhtar Lamani]

They're different, Syria and Iraq. Let's begin with Iraq. I think if you have a committee, or if you charge a foundation or a university or whatever to invite and to develop a kind of dialogue, first separately, with people, you should avoid some mistakes that were done in 2006 and 2007, especially by the Nordics. I remember I was invited once by the Norwegian government, which was trying to help in Iraq for national reconciliation. When I went to Oslo I found that there were only members of the parliament, because at that time in the parliament everything was blocked. I said, well, those are not concerned by the national reconciliation; national reconciliation is those who accept the political process under occupation and those who are opposing, by arms, to have everybody.

In these things, especially with the complications now, we should have an objective. The objective is to isolate ISIS, if you have the other Sunnis. This is the difference with Syria. In Syria everybody is against, except if there's cynical work to use them or whatever, which is happening on the ground.

By inviting these groups, inviting members of the government and different parties, and then organizing a kind of seminar of national reconciliation, developing this and bringing some experts from Canada—because they need a lot of help, they don't know a lot of things—on institutions, federalism, changes in the constitution, I do strongly believe Canada can do a lot in this kind of dialogue.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

To our witnesses today, thank you very much for what was a very informative and a very good round today. Thank you all very much.

With that, we will adjourn the meeting.