Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 5th, 2015

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

To follow up on that “it didn't happen” point, even in Ottawa when we had things happen on October 22, almost immediately something came out on Facebook with someone saying that no, it didn't happen, that somebody in Canada had made it all up. Well, I can guarantee that everybody in this room was there and of course it did happen.

That's the counter-messaging part that I think is really important. We have who knows how many homegrown jihadis in Canada. CSIS says they're tracking about 140, but you can guarantee there are many more than that. I think it is pretty effective, but is there anything we can do? Maybe it's a naive question, but the two guys who acted in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and in Ottawa in October weren't members of ISIS, I'm sure. ISIS didn't know who they were, but they lay out this propaganda and they know they have live hand grenades sprinkled across the rest of the world that are going to go off at random. Of course, that fits their plan quite well.

Of the countermeasures you talked about, how aggressive can we get in this era of political correctness? We have communities in Canada, as you do in the U.S., that are particularly vulnerable. In my city of Edmonton, the Somali community is particularly vulnerable. There are three members of the Edmonton Somali community who were recently killed over there and that caused some alarm. How do we get into those communities that we know are vulnerable without being accused of being politically incorrect with the pre-emptive counter-messaging?

[Dr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross]

I think there are multiple ways. The Somali community is actually a very good example. In the United States, the Somali community in Minneapolis–St. Paul went from being one of those horror stories to a success story. It's now a little more ambiguous at this point.

In the community initially, you had a number of foreign fighters, long before ISIS. You had a number of Americans who had gone over to Somalia to fight with the extremist group al Shabaab. Canadians did as well. While there was initially a lot of enthusiasm in the community for Shabaab's predecessor, the Islamic Courts Union, in part because the arch-enemies of the Somalis, the Ethiopians, had gone in and invaded.... The two countries have a very long history.

Despite that early nationalistic fervour, when members of the communities saw their sons fighting, dying, and often being killed by their own supposed allies in arms, and saw the first American suicide bomber, Shirwa Ahmed, a graduate of Roosevelt High School, this ended up changing the community's view from seeing local law enforcement as something that was their enemy to an understanding that it was a bulwark for protecting people from going over. That's one aspect of counter-messaging. I think community partnerships are important.

I was in Ottawa a few years ago taking part in a conference on Somali youth radicalization, so I understand what a hard nut it is to crack within Canada, but there is a success story in the U.S. For that particular community, I think there's a lot that can be learned from the Minneapolis–St. Paul example.

The second thing is on a broader scale. I think they have a messaging campaign that is very effective right now. In the longer term, as I made clear before, I think they're in a lot of trouble. The way we can hasten that is by really making sure that credible media outlets get examples, as I said before, of their losses and of their atrocities. That will hasten the toxicity which is due to them. There's a reason why, even though youth throughout the Islamic world were extraordinarily inspired by al-Zarqawi back in 2005-07 and even after his death, by 2008-09 nobody was being inspired by al-Zarqawi.

They have a messaging that is going to explode on them. The faster we can make that happen, the better.

Let me say one final thing, which is that ISIL's decline does not mean the decline of jihadism. I think this is really a generational challenge, but the sooner ISIL really is disrupted, the better. There's a variety of reasons for that, one of which is that it actually makes al Qaeda look more moderate.

Ms. Laipson mentioned the situation in Jordan. One thing that is happening is that the Jordanian regime has flirted with the idea that al Qaeda can serve as the bulwark against ISIS. That's one reason why you have some extremist clerics like Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi let out of prison. Maqdisi was actually a mentor to Zarqawi and was true-blue al Qaeda. He served as one of the Jordanian negotiators trying to get Lieutenant al-Kasasbeh freed.

That's an example of how disruptive it is to us to have this extraordinarily extreme organization that goes beyond anything we've seen before. It has created a situation where al Qaeda can seem moderate, and that in itself is an enormous problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. That's all the time we have.

We're going to turn it back over to the NDP.

Mr. Toone.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

I want to thank the witnesses for their presentations. They've been very, very informative.

I'm especially interested in the general concept that we're looking at a generational problem, so there's no quick and easy solution. We really do need to be looking at the long term here.

If I could bring it back to some immediate concrete measures that we might be able to take, one of the measures that was discussed was financial. You mentioned that ISIL may have betrayed a certain financial requirement through recent ransom demands for $200 million. I'm interested in seeing what we have done to try to stem financial flows to ISIL. There was mention at one point that they were robbing banks. I'm assuming they're robbing banks within their own territory and not outside the territory. What are we doing to stop financial flows into that territory? Is there anything more we can do?

[Ellen Laipson]

The U.S. treasury department does have the authority to work with central banks and commercial banks in many countries as part of pre-existing counterterrorism authorities. There's a lot of global cooperation on trying to block terrorist financing.

As you interpreted from our own earlier remarks, some of their financial schemes are very local. We're not on the ground in Syria. We're not physically present in Mosul and some of the towns that they're controlling in western Iraq. I think that we—if you mean we as North Americans—are not directly involved in trying to block their finances. I think we're trying to help the Iraqis and Syrian opposition to do the best they can.

But I don't believe, to the best of my knowledge, that ISIL is depending on funds that are transiting internationally. They are getting their resources locally or through donations that come through informal networks and channels.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

So the measures that could be taken are fairly limited on that front.

Regarding displaced people, we're looking at phenomenal numbers of displaced people in that area. The UN's talking about somewhere around five million people needing some form of humanitarian aid. How are we doing with regard to helping in that humanitarian crisis?

If I could perhaps bring it down to just a few particular points and perhaps branch it out later, you mentioned, for instance, sexual enslavement of women. Are we able to bring any assistance on that level? Are NGOs involved in this? Is there anything more we can do on that front?

[Ellen Laipson]

At least on the U.S. side, we have a pretty large operation. We're the number one aid donor to Syrians in distress. That means both Syrians on Syrian territory—and there are some very delicate channels that have been developed to try to get some assistance to people who are still living on Syrian soil—and those who are outside the country.

I think the UN is quite distraught that some of the appeals for emergency aid for Syrian refugees are unfulfilled. I think it has raised less than half of the money it thinks was the target in the last calendar year. I don't know what its goals are for 2015.

The Turks have given a huge amount of in-kind assistance to the Syrian refugees and have been a little ambivalent regarding how much they want the international community to be their partner. They want to do some of it themselves.

My guess is that we are able to address only a small percentage of the actual need. There are Syrian families and children and so on in enormous distress who the international community has not been able to reach.

[Geneive Abdo]

I'll just add something briefly about Lebanon.

The official statistic now is that a fourth of the population in Lebanon is Syrian refugees, and that's considered a modest number. I think that Lebanon is a very good example of a country that could be significantly affected by the Syrian refugees, because it's on the brink now, and it has been on the brink for a long time, since the Syrian war began. Will Lebanon be drawn into this?

I think it's absolutely incumbent upon western governments to deal with the refugee crisis in Lebanon, because we don't want Lebanon to become another falling state.

The UN is completely overloaded in Lebanon. There are children all over the streets of Beirut—Syrian refugees—who basically beg and steal, not for their families in most cases, but to send money back to organizations in Syria. There are smugglers and this sort of thing.

It's a serious problem on many different levels, because it's affecting the Lebanese economy. It's affecting political stability in Lebanon. It's really draining the country and it is a cause of further instability.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Toone.

We're in our fourth round and I think we'll go to Mr. Goldring, Mr. Garneau, and then we'll finish up with Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Goldring, for five minutes.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, you mentioned the vulnerability of ISIL and touched a bit on their access to heavy equipment, tanks, artillery, and paraphernalia like that to conduct their warfare. What kind of an effect have the friendly troops, the allied people, been having on it? Is there a continuing supply to them and where would that continuing supply have been coming from? You said they were stealing or robbing them from neighbouring nations, but is that the extent of it? Obviously, they would need to have long-distance artillery and tanks to be able to conduct what they're doing. Where would that type of equipment be coming from?

[Dr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross]

Originally, the equipment came from overrunning Syrian bases and then capturing all the heavy armour, artillery, etc. on the Syrian bases. There are a number of instances in which they've overrun those bases. When they advanced into Iraq in June, they captured a great deal of territory, including overrunning a number of Iraqi bases. That helped them to get a lot more in the way of heavy armour during that period and they've overrun some bases since then.

But this is an area where they're in trouble because they've failed to overrun any bases for the past few months. They've made some serious attempts, including one back in December to overrun Assad's air bases, but ended up getting rebuffed.

One thing which I think is incredibly important to watch is when they make advances against bases, because the reason they're doing so is to try to get the equipment that's stashed on the base. That's the only way right now that they're able to get that specific weaponry. Now, there are other weapons they can get from other places, things like surface-to-air missiles. Unfortunately, there's a much bigger market for those, but tanks and Humvees are pretty hard to come by, and there are only a limited number of places where they can get them.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Certainly, there would be breakdowns in the field and there would be the losses by the air strikes as well. With that and their lack of access to new supply, is that not putting them in a very vulnerable position? They can't carry on what they're doing strictly with troops on the ground and rifles.

[Dr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross]

Yes, it absolutely does.

In terms of breakdowns my assessment is that they have shown pretty good capability in repairing their vehicles. They don't necessarily lose vehicles due to an inability to maintain them. But, yes, they're vulnerable in this regard.

I would provide a caveat, though, a bit of caution. If they can't fight like a conventional military anymore, they might revert to fighting like an insurgent force. They were actually very successful in Anbar province in late 2014 in an offensive led by Omar al-Shishani, who's a Chechen field commander, who basically, in rampaging through Anbar, captured the city of Hit during that advance. They fought very much like an insurgent force, going in and capturing territory; that is, they had light forces and good speed of movement. They didn't have these big columns, the kind of things that ISIS in many places is characterized by. If they resort to insurgency warfare, that does create its own sets of vulnerability, but the bottom line is it makes it more difficult for them to maintain their territorial holdings.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

If they go back to insurgency warfare, what's the status of the troops that we'll be able to be put forward now, to be able to take care of the insurgency, if boots on the ground are needed at that time? The heavy equipment will eventually either break down or will be lost by air strikes.

[Dr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross]

This gets into the broader picture of Iraq, where I think the decline of ISIS is not the decline of Iraqi jihadism. Even if ISIS were to cease to exist as an organization, it would be replaced by another organization that I think would be less brutal, but you would still have problems.

The forces that would be there to deal with insurgencies would obviously be the peshmerga in the Kurdish north, the Iraqi security forces, and you still have Iranian-backed militias which would be a part of the response. Iran has a large number of commanders on the ground, including those in Quds Force. A number of Quds Force commanders have been killed in Iraq. So you have a number of different forces on the ground. Obviously, there are also American and Canadian and British forces.

I was in Ottawa when news first broke that Canadians had actually been in engagement against ISIS and not just playing a supporting role. I know what big news that was. So you have this array of forces that would deal with it. But if they are forced to resort to just being an insurgency overall, then as I said, that means they have more difficulty holding territory, which in itself is a sign of ISIS' decline. Now, this is probably going to happen in Iraq, but not in Syria, because there's not really a strategy to displace them from their holdings in eastern Syria, which means they'll be a regional problem for some time to come.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Goldring.

We're going to move to Mr. Garneau.

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

In talking about governance, let's assume that ISIS miraculously disappears from Iraq. Iraq, as you pointed out, is an artificially created country after Sykes-Picot. I had the opportunity to go there in September and to meet with government officials. We talked about a number of things. The deputy minister of foreign affairs was particularly interested and I had a long conversation with him about federalism and it's already come up in today's context.

Canada is a federal system and it works, perhaps miraculously, remarkably well. It's not to say that Canadians in British Columbia and in Newfoundland are a homogeneous lot; we are quite different in many ways. Here it seems to me that challenges in Iraq are much greater and the biggest challenge, of course, is that there are Shias and Sunnis. It makes me wonder sometimes whether, no matter what kind of governance system you have, you can't somehow paint over the fact that there are Shias and there are Sunnis and that they don't seem to be able to find a way to get along. Is there a system of governance, other than dictatorships or oppressive regimes, that can make a country such as Iraq work such as it is, given the challenge they have?

[Ellen Laipson]

I think Iraq has a new constitution that many Iraqi citizens still believe is better than the alternatives and is better than what preceded it, where citizens do have rights. I think the process of reconciliation in Iraq hasn't been a high enough priority for the Iraqi government. I think that both civil society leaders and Iraqi politicians should be spending more time visiting areas outside their own ethnic or sectarian identity. This was an idea that was starting to happen, where Kurdish politicians would visit Basra, exchange visits, to promote more of a sense of national interest and national identity. I think it can be done. I think Baghdad is still potentially a more diverse and successful melting pot of—not always melting, but co-existing—Iraqi diversity.

I think we should also remember that citizens want services from their government. Sometimes the sectarianism could be muted a bit, or mitigated, if whatever the unit of governance is, whether it's a governorate or a national level government, as long as the services are being provided. Are there utilities, public schools, roads? I think that would do a lot to mitigate some of this resorting to subnational identity, because people are looking for basic essential services and if they're not getting them, they become disaffected from their government.

Again, I think that in places like Iraq some decentralization is desirable. That proves you are living in a post-authoritarian era, but whatever the unit of government, you have to focus first and foremost on providing essential services.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

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

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

We've heard this afternoon about the importance of messaging. Dr. Gartenstein-Ross has mentioned this a number of times. Mr. Dewar brought it up. One of you mentioned trying to develop bigger platforms for moderates.

I want to try to ask a specific question and hopefully I can be clear on this.

In the west, we have a foundation or a culture that revolves around some things such as, right now, democratic values: freedoms, especially of expression, human rights, principles of equality, some expectation of honesty, those kinds of things. It seems that in the east people use some different cultural foundations in their communication. I think you touched on it when you talked about the Jordanian incident where honour and dishonour are driving factors; pride and shame play a huge part and when you're dealing with enemies, you want to create this sense of humiliation and defeat.

I'm wondering if there is any place we can change our language to try to approach this situation a little more effectively. We have divisions within Islam on the interpretation of the law. Can we use language more effectively to isolate some of these folks? In particular, can we use that language paradigm of honour, dishonour, shame, and pride more effectively, even in western culture? We're dealing with communities who don't support the messaging and the activities of ISIL. Is there a way we can more effectively communicate with them? That's for a couple of you. Ms. Abdo has been in the Middle East for a long time, and Dr. Gartenstein-Ross, I'd be interested in your perspectives on that as well. Is there anything to this?

[Geneive Abdo]

Sorry, I missed the last—

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

Is language important?

[Geneive Abdo]

Yes, language is very important. Again, I don't mean to deliver bad news, but language is really important and I think perceptions are really important, but in a sense, I think it's a little too late now.

I think the language is important if we're going to try to cultivate, as we say for lack of better terminology, moderates. That's for two reasons basically. It's not only to gain their interest, but also not to discredit them. This was true with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example. During the year that they were in power, they faced a dilemma: do they try to look to the United States for assistance, whether it's economic or any sort of political assistance, because doing so discredits them within their own population.

In that sense, language is important. If western governments are going to become involved in some way, whether it's on a diplomatic level, whether it's about public diplomacy, about counter-messaging, the language is important. It's also important in the sense that you want to be able to empower, not undermine the people you're working with. In that sense, I think language is very important.

I hope that answers your question.

[Dr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross]

What I would add, as well, is that we're in an age in which governments have so many more platforms than they did before.

There is one interesting U.S. government initiative from the State Department, which is controversial in terms of how effective it is. The State Department has a program called Think Again Turn Away, where they get on Twitter and they debate with jihadists. They produce things like.... For example, there was a tribute to bin Laden that jihadists had put together. They put together something that looked exactly the same, but it said in Arabic kind of the opposite of what the tribute had said. The tribute was something like “a lion in life, victorious in death”, and they said something like “disgusting in life, humiliated in death”.

It's interesting because it's a different kind of messaging. I don't think they have it 100% right, by any means, but I think it gets one thing very right, which is that you now have many other platforms than just the bully pulpit in which you can engage in this counter-messaging campaign. I think the State Department's program does take into account the values of honour and shame, and that's where some of its own kind of counter-propaganda is coming from.

One thing I would say is that it's important to pick out what platform we're using to determine what kind of language is appropriate for that platform. I think there are some platforms in which a different kind of language is appropriate than would be from a prime minister or a member of Parliament.