Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 4th, 2014

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My first question will be to Professor Legrenzi, and then to Mr. Tabler.

If we assume that the objective is to defeat ISIS, then the way the scenario seems to be unfolding, at least to my understanding, is that at the moment air strikes are providing a containment role. In the meantime, there's limited ground action by Iraqi forces, some defensive action by the peshmerga. We are helping to train them and equip them, so that presumably sometime in 2015 there will be some concerted offensive action. How long that will take in order to push ISIS out of Iraq, I'm not 100% sure. I think things will be challenging in places where ISIS has embedded itself, such as in the city of Mosul.

However, let's assume an optimistic scenario, in that ISIS is pushed out of what is now Iraq. What happens then? That's the question for me. Obviously ISIS will remain in Syria, and whilst the coalition has been bombing in Syria, I don't see any scenario whereby ground troops are going to move into Syria.

How does one go beyond the scenario of pushing ISIS out of Iraq? What happens at that point?

I'd like to hear your thoughts, Professor Legrenzi and then Mr. Tabler.

[Matteo Legrenzi]

Well, Syria is particularly intractable, but let me say this first. What are those Iraqi troops, which in our best-case scenario are able to reconquer all of Iraq in 2015, going to do once they feel that they are in a position to control the territory that is now controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq? If they go back to doing what they were doing before the Islamic State came on the scene, which was to terrorize the local population, to marginalize it from a political point of view, and to extract money at checkpoints, then maybe it will not be ideal, but you can be sure that within two or three years we will have another insurgent group that will spring up.

I guess that is the easier part of the answer, but it's very important, as I said, because these are Canadian lives and Canadian taxpayers' money that is being poured into this operation.

When it comes to Syria, the situation, as the other witness correctly stated, is a lot more complex. There will be tough choices to be made in terms of how far you want to go in the direction of finding a political agreement with a regime that everybody—not the regime itself, but certainly everybody in Canada and the United States—hoped would collapse pretty soon but then instead proved quite resilient. I certainly do not have a clear answer for that, but it will be a much harder choice to be made down the road.

[Andrew Tabler]

To address your very good question about what happens if our strategy in Iraq succeeds, pushing ISIL at least temporarily but maybe in the medium term out of Iraqi territory, I'm a little skeptical about that. I think that other groups would spring up, as Professor Legrenzi has mentioned.

The plan in Syria, as much as there is a plan, and it's being debated in Washington now, is for the United States to intervene to degrade ISIL in Syrian territory to allow the Assad regime to try to consolidate some of their areas as a general containment measure. It is called now in Washington policy circles “uncoordinated deconfliction” between the United States and the Assad regime's forces: the United States is flying aircraft over Syrian territory; the Bashar al-Assad regime is not shooting at those aircraft.

The problem really is with the capacities of the Assad regime. If they were more inclusive and if they hadn't tried to shoot their way out of the country's largest uprising at the expense of 200,000-and-some killed and countless others imprisoned and tortured in such a bloody way, then I think they would have a hope of moving their forces into eastern Syria to defeat ISIL.

I don't think anyone expects them to do that. In fact, while they're advancing in the north, the Assad regime's forces are being pushed out of the south. That shows the complexity of this. It's there, in the wilds of eastern Syria, that the “train and equip” force that's supposed to be trained by the United States and its allies and its regional allies from four different sites in the region is supposed to take on ISIL at some indeterminate point in the future.

The problem, of course, is to motivate rebels who are in neighbouring countries to join that force and to fight ISIL first instead of fighting the Assad regime, which has been trying in one way, shape, or form to kill or strangle the opposition into submission. That's a circle that is very hard to square, or vice versa. Given what the United States is doing up until now—and I can only speak from an American standpoint—it will be insufficient to motivate local actors or local allies who back the opposition to fight ISIL and to displace its force in eastern Syria.

Also unpalatable is allowing the Assad regime to reconquer all of its territory, for two reasons. One is the nature of that fight and the lack of legitimacy of the Assad regime due to its actions over the last few years. But also, the Assad regime is in alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its forces, which are in unprecedented numbers and level of influence inside of Syria as a result of supporting the Assad regime during the uprising. That threatens to destabilize the balance between Iranian-backed governments and forces and generally Sunni-backed governments or Sunni-based governments throughout the Middle East, and it makes this potentially much more explosive.

Like Professor Legrenzi, I wish I had a solution to propose to you. I think that in the end, diplomacy and military force in combination—and specially used in smart, intelligent ways based on a real political process—will be the thing that solves this for the United States, Canada, and its allies. But I'm afraid at the moment we simply don't see it and probably won't see it for some time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Garneau.

We're now going to start our second round, with five minutes of questions.

I'm going to start with Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It's sad to listen to your testimony, because it sounds so hopeless. If there's one thing that all of us want to have, it's hope for the future.

Mr. Allos, let me ask you a question to perhaps help me understand. You said something that seems counterintuitive to me. You talked about Jewish people and Christians having to pay a tax. It seems to me so counterintuitive: if they kill these people, the funding is no longer available.

Is it so insignificant an amount of money that it really doesn't make any difference to the coffers of ISIS, or is it just that they are making a statement to the world by destroying these ethnic groups?

[Rabea Allos]

What happened in Mosul when ISIL went in is that first they called all the archbishops, the Chaldean Syriac Catholic and the Syriac Orthodox archbishops, to meet with the ISIL leaders to come up with a solution. Basically, the bishops refused because they already had left Mosul.

A few days after that they came up with the fatwa that you either convert to Islam or leave.

A few weeks later they came back and said that, no, Christians can come back and they can pay the jizya. But already the damage had been done and people had already left.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

So what kind of funds—

[Rabea Allos]

But according to Islam, basically, people of the book can pay the jizya and stay.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

And how much money is being demanded of them?

[Rabea Allos]

I've heard the figure of $400 per family in Mosul. But again, it varies.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

And that probably is a very difficult sum to come up with?

[Rabea Allos]

Yes.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

All right.

Mr. Tabler, could I ask my next question of you just because I don't have very much time.

You said that the central government did not include the minorities and they need more inclusion. I was just looking on the Web page here and I see that there are eight seats that are designated in Iraq for the minority groups. We heard the other day from Vian Saeed, who is a female parliamentarian, a young woman, 31 years of age I understand, of the Yazidi religious minority.

Could you give us any idea what you think the construction needs to look like to be more inclusive and to bring more of those ethnic minorities, and religious minorities, into the government?

[Andrew Tabler]

I'm not a specialist on Iraq per se, but I think in terms there is the issue of representation in formal government structures such as in parliament and so on, and that's valuable. These members though don't necessarily have to be representative of, or have actual long-standing followings within, their communities. They could be simply enticed into arrangements with whatever Shia-based government represents the majority inside Iraq. That's something I think that perhaps Professor Legrenzi or another witness could get into.

The real problem is—and I think this is another thing that you learn by living in the Middle East—governments in the Middle East are oftentimes only facades for the real power structure, which is centred around the leadership, in particular the security services and the armed forces. It's there where, over the course of the last few years, a lot of non-Shia personnel and leaders were forced out of the ranks of the military and of security services in favour of the majority Shia population. Prime Minister al-Maliki has been accused of being responsible for this, but it's obviously larger than just one man. It's there where you begin to formally exclude key minority members of a country like Iraq, Kurds or Sunnis, who should be included in a process that keeps the state functioning together, and for everyone's interest to be in the same place and not moving in different directions.

Unfortunately, that didn't occur and it occurred after, particularly the United States, but also I think Canada, poured a lot of money into Iraq to stabilize that country and to deal with the effects of war there. I think watching this process in the future and putting more pressure on Iraqi governments to be more inclusive will be key. But it wouldn't just involve parliamentary representation, it would have to involve the military and security services. In order to have those kinds of conversations you need to have them in a very serious way with the Iraqi leadership and with those countries that back it, particularly the Islamic Republic of Iran.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you.

Professor Legrenzi, Mr. Tabler punted that over for your commentary too. Could you give us your views?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Just a very quick response.

[Matteo Legrenzi]

Very quick.

I would agree 100%.

One thing is the token representatives who sometimes are co-opted to give the impression of inclusion. And one thing is the people who control the ground, who are on the ground. Always ask yourself, who are the men with the guns? Who are the people who actually control territory in Iraq? Look at who they are and you will understand where power resides in the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to turn to Madame Laverdière, please, for five minutes.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank everyone for their very interesting presentations.

Mr. Legrenzi, you mentioned in your presentation that air strikes posed certain problems, that there were civilian losses, and all of that. As the critic for international development and the deputy critic for foreign affairs, I meet with many groups that do humanitarian work on the ground in Iraq.

They find that air strikes have a negative impact on their work. First, it puts their own personnel in danger. Then, they see a very negative reaction on the ground or, at the very least, confusion among the population. In fact, people tell them that they do not understand why we are bombing them, on the one hand, and feeding them, on the other. The bombs destroy their homes, but then we help them rebuild.

How do you think these air strikes are perceived by the people on the ground?

Does this risk fuelling an anti-western sentiment?

[Matteo Legrenzi]

Absolutely the air strikes have the effects that you just outlined. Everything that has been witnessed by humanitarian operators on the ground and that you described is correct. On the other hand, as a sort of stopgap measure, they proved necessary, for example to prevent the overrunning of Sulaymaniyah and Erbil in the Kurdish regional government areas. Those are some of the parts of Iraq that are just about functional, where a semblance of normal life goes on. I'm afraid there is no easy answer because all the negative effects that you just described are right and correct. You're absolutely right, but on the other hand, when push came to shove a few weeks ago, these air strikes steadied the nerves of, for example, peshmerga and Kurdish fighters who were also about to flee.

I think the broader point is—and I think everybody agrees on that—that these can be interpreted. Air strikes can be interpreted only as emergency stopgap measures, and because of exactly that, they do create recruits for insurgent groups, be it Islamic State or others. They have to be accompanied by a political process that may verge on extreme pressure on the Iraqi government, that may verge almost on encroachment. Otherwise it's sort of a vicious circle. Yes, it has to be said that, from a military point of view, they prevented the overrunning of Erbil, for example.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you.

I have a brief question for Mr. Allos. You mentioned the issue of the flow of money, how they are financed. To you, and if we have time also to our other witnesses, what can be done to reduce that flow of money going to ISIS?

[Rabea Allos]

It can be reduced by political pressure, diplomatic pressure on Saudi Arabia, on Qatar, and on Turkey to a certain extent. They should stop it. Qatar is certainly financing this, and individuals in Saudi Arabia are financing this.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Tabler, do you have a comment on that?

[Andrew Tabler]

I think that it's here in trying to deal with the money flows that ISIL is a particular threat, because it is probably one of the most self-sustaining groups that we have seen arise, particularly from not only the Sunni community in the Middle East overall, but perhaps of any country or any proto-state in the region. I think you've seen efforts to try to cut down on its illicit oil sales and trying to cut off transfers of money. It's a little difficult because, while Sunni states in the region have an interest, I think that in cutting off financing to ISIL it does not necessarily mean that overall Sunni society feels the same way. It's the unfortunate by-product of authoritarianism. States and their leaderships have divergent interests from their general populations. And it's there where private money transfers to some jihadist groups in Syria, not just ISIL but Jabhat al-Nusra and other groups, have proven very important.

In the case of ISIL, they were very important in terms of start-up money. That isn't necessarily the case going forward. In order to avoid the situation of having to have boots on the ground or more direct military intervention by the United States or by Canada or other countries in the future, we need to incentivize those Sunni countries that back the opposition in Syria. It's also the Sunnis that represent the sectarian basis for ISIL. We need to incentivize them to use every means at their disposal to defeat ISIL. In the case of Iraq, there's more or less some agreement. In the case of Syria they want President Assad to go as part of a transition in that country and they're adamant about it. Until now, the Obama administration, in particular, has been unwilling to fulfill that pledge which was outlined by President Obama in August of 2011 but has not been followed up upon in terms of military force since then. That's precisely what these countries want in order to defeat ISIL. I suspect that they will go along with the coalition to defeat ISIL but will not do everything they can to defeat it until we make such a concession.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We'll move back over to Mr. Schellenberger, for five minutes, sir.