Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 15th, 2016

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I'm asking about this power-sharing model because I'm worried that there might be certain divides, tribal divides, religious divides. Those might breed a system in which, if there's a proper democracy with voting rights, individuals would just vote based on their religion, based on their tribal ties, and not necessarily based on a broader ideology regarding which party would bring a platform forward that would better the country.

[David Romano]

That's what has been happening at the national level, and it's a significant risk at a regional or governorate level if you devolve power and power-share. They might have competing tribes within the Nineveh government, for instance, who don't power-share with each other within that governorate, and the problems are replicated at a lower level. It's a definite risk.

If good leaders emerge who convince people to vote beyond narrow sectarian interests, I think that's how, often, historically that risk has been overcome. There's no guarantee that will happen.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

You have another minute.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Okay, that's all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, MP Tabbara.

We're now going to move to MP Hardcastle.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Romano, for your input. I want to focus on the diplomatic and humanitarian responses, rather than military responses, to what has been happening.

We've heard from a couple of organizations. We've heard from a member of the White Helmets. We've heard from the national Syrian Opposition Coalition. I'd like to hear from you on what you're seeing. How useful would it be for us to be more forceful in the establishment of some solutions? Are there some solutions? What about establishing the humanitarian corridors? We heard about the no-fly zones and establishing some practical methods. Is that beyond us, or is that really what we should be more vocal about?

[David Romano]

I think the Syrian regime has decided that it's not in its interest to allow humanitarian corridors, because it's been pursuing a strategy of starving its opposition and laying siege to them. If that remains the case, I think they're going to be impossible to establish and maintain. The problem with the no-fly zone is that it effectively means declaring war against the Assad regime, because enforcing those requires taking out ground-to-air missile defences that the Syrians have installed, and that means striking Syrian army positions, which they'll reciprocate against. It draws the coalition full-force into attacking the regime that's backed by Russia and Iran, and it leads to a very dangerous situation. I'm not sure either of those is a good option.

I think that advocating decentralization within one Syria as a short- and medium-term solution to get the fighting to stop with various cantons, not just the Kurdish canton but other areas in charge of their respective communities until things can calm down a bit, is something Canada could do as a way to calm thing down a bit.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you.

That's very interesting to hear. How would that work? Could you expand a little bit on what you're seeing and what you would envision? How would that work for besieged areas?

[David Romano]

We could look at the example of the civil war in Bosnia. When the Dayton accords were being drawn up, whoever controlled whatever territory they were in pretty much kept it. This unduly rewarded Bosnian forces, which had conquered a fair bit, but no one saw another way out of this morass.

In Syria we're in a similar morass. If we could get Russia on board whereby we would freeze everything where it is for a while and leave the different communities running the areas they control with an opening for areas under siege to get supplies delivered to them by the Syrian regime, and with monitors making sure that those supplies go in, then perhaps we could get some breathing room to take it further.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

What do you think is the key to the new approach needed in the diplomatic response?

[David Romano]

I guess every group that controls territory in Syria needs to be brought to the table without preconditions, and that's a hell of a task, because, for instance, Turkey won't allow the groups it supports to let the Kurdish groups, the second-largest controllers of territory in Syria, to attend such a meeting, but until we can get that kind of agreement where everyone sits down without preconditions and talks about a way to stop the fighting countrywide and leave people running their own areas for a while so that everyone can recover, we're not going to get out of the Assad regime. At the same time, the Assad regime may need threats—I don't know—because it feels it can win now.

I wish I had a better answer for you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you, Dr. Romano.

For the next question we are going to MP Miller.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

David, since you are a student of political Islam in the area, I'm curious about your thoughts about religion generally and the role it's playing in this conflict. I guess that's a broad brush stroke. If you look at the history of Iraq and Syria, particularly with the reign of the Baathist parties in both those countries, relative to the rest of the area, it's generally seen as a secular society, and now there's a tendency to divide ethnic groups neatly and tidily along religious lines, which, as you will agree, is perhaps not the case.

Let's hope we get to a post-conflict governance model, but as we look toward governance generally in both those areas in the next few years, I'm curious as to your views on how neatly things can be divided into religious buckets as opposed to simple power grabs and other interests, ethnocultural divides.

Certainly in the case of the Yazidis, the religious narrative of the Daesh's attempt to exterminate them was there, and there has been some suggestion by a number of panellists who have appeared before us that the religious or ethnocultural differences will be greater as there is a power void.

I'm curious to hear your views on this.

[David Romano]

Islam is a contested, multi-faceted field just as Christianity, Judaism, and other religions are. The Baathists were secular, but at the same time, they also incorporated Islam into the legitimation of the regime. It is a bit ironic for the Assad regime, which is Alawite, to incorporate Sunni Islam into the regime, but they actually did. They gave it official state status as the main religion in the country. Of course, Saddam, in his later years, added the Allahu Akbar to the Iraqi flag in his handwriting, and more and more justified his rule under Islamic discourse. That has only become a more pronounced tendency among many groups since 2003, and of course since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, communities like the Yazidis, the Christians, and the secular Kurdish groups want nothing to do with that. There are also Kurdish Islamist groups, but they're minor.

In a power-sharing or decentralized system, when Baghdad, say, passes a law banning alcohol or banning women from wearing skirts or trousers, it doesn't apply to other regions where the consensus is that this is not what they want. A way to defuse some of those divisions and contests over the nature of Islam and whether it should be enforced is to have more decentralization. That said, we have a violent Salafi bent out there that has still not given up on enforcing its interpretation and imposing it on everyone else.

It's going to ebb and flow whether or not people primarily identify according to religious discourse, ethnicity, or tribe, but we know that the more insecure people are, the more likely they are to fall back on one of these identity categories as their primary one, as opposed to a regional or civic national identity that requires more trust of out-group members.

I don't know if I answered your question at all.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

I just wanted to hear your thoughts, because I don't think there's much of an answer to that type of question. I'm just curious to hear your general views on it, since you're on the ground and a student of political Islam.

[David Romano]

I think the currency of Daesh is significantly weakened when the territory it controls is being taken back, with the uprooting of mass graves and displaced communities coming back. I think in this case the military isn't completely divorced from the ideology. The story of Daesh coming in I don't think was necessarily because the Sunni Arab community in Iraq or Syria was especially Salafi; they were just looking for any ideological vehicle to politically deliver them from central governments that they found oppressive. When that turns out to be a chimera, a dead end, then I would assume they would open up to other alternatives that aren't Salafi Islam.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Finally, is it your sense that some of these differences, whether they're ethnoculturally based or religiously based, will get worse if there is a power void, or do you see things differently?

[David Romano]

They could get worse if they don't come up with methods of adequate governance for areas liberated from ISIS in both Syria and Iraq. They could get better, however, if the government is okay and Baghdad's rule in the Sunni areas isn't too oppressive, and if the Kurdistan region doesn't go into the areas that it has newly acquired area and turn out to be too aggressive. If they start delivering services and some local power to the communities there, then I think you could conceivably see a dramatic turnaround on those issues, because I think in the end people are just not so different from people in Canada. They just want a way forward and a future that promises them an improvement over what they've been living in the past. It doesn't have to be a jihadi way forward or a radical nationalist way forward. They want to live as well as they can and as free as they can.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Thank you, David.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you, Dr. Romano.

We are now going to move to MP Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Dr. Romano, first off, I would like to thank you very much for your intellectual depth on this file. In fact, I think if we lifted the answer you just gave to my colleague Mr. Miller, that would encapsulate the confusion that most westerners have around Islam and the eastern world, and that would give us a handle on it rather than some of the stereotypes that we see in the mainstream media with regard to Islam.

I wanted to be clear that we're talking about religious minorities now. I wasn't here for the testimony, but I understand that Global Affairs made it very clear that a high volume of Shiite and Sunni Muslims have been killed in this conflict, maybe collectively more than the minorities. It's a different situation around the religious minorities in the sense that they don't generally have any place to go. I just wanted to ask you if my thinking is correct on that.

I was just in Jordan at the Zaatari refugee camp, and I spoke to some officials there. They're very clear that some of these religious minorities wouldn't even seek out a camp. That wouldn't be a place they would find safe at all. Is that a reasonable assessment?

[David Romano]

Conditions in the camps are not great. They want to work. They want to earn money to support their family and send their kids to school.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Absolutely, but would there be a concern among a lot of the religious minorities that they would suffer persecution in the camps, so they would avoid them and try to find help in their own way?

[David Romano]

That would depend on where. I'm not as familiar with the situation in Jordan. I know some of the minorities would quite likely feel threatened in some of the camps in southern Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.

In the Kurdistan region of Iraq, as well as Rojava, I've not come across any reports that minorities are afraid for their safety in the camps. The authorities have done an admirable job of protecting them over there. Some of the camps are mixed. Some of them are overwhelmingly all Yazidi, and others are overwhelmingly Christian. In terms of physical safety, it's been good here.