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.