[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE ISIS GENOCIDE DECLARATION: WHAT NEXT?
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 26, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-211
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina KAREN BASS, California
CURT CLAWSON, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee AMI BERA, California
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus........ 6
Mr. Sarhang Hamasaeed, senior program officer, Middle East and
Africa Programs, U.S. Institute of Peace....................... 14
Mr. Johnny Oram, executive director, Chaldean Assyrian Business
Alliance....................................................... 27
Ms. Naomi Kikoler, deputy director, Simon-Skjodt Center for the
Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 34
Mr. David M. Crane, professor of practice, Syracuse University
College of Law (former chief prosecutor, United Nations Special
Court for Sierra Leone)........................................ 42
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Carl A. Anderson: Prepared statement......................... 9
Mr. Sarhang Hamasaeed: Prepared statement........................ 17
Mr. Johnny Oram: Prepared statement.............................. 31
Ms. Naomi Kikoler: Prepared statement............................ 38
Mr. David M. Crane: Prepared statement........................... 46
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 68
Hearing minutes.................................................. 69
Ms. Naomi Kikoler: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Report, ``Our
Generation is Gone,'' The Islamic State's Targeting of Iraqi
Minorities in Ninewa........................................... 70
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International
Organizations:
Ninevah Plains Paper by Mr. Gregory Kruczek.................... 72
Documenting Genocide White Paper............................... 76
THE ISIS GENOCIDE DECLARATION:
WHAT NEXT?
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THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2016
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:02 p.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will come to order, and good
afternoon and welcome to everyone. In January 2014, ISIS
terrorists captured the city of Fallujah in central Iraq a
decade after it had been won at the cost of so much American,
Iraqi, and British blood. ISIS moved north, taking more
territory, and conducting its genocidal campaign again
Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities. By early
August, Yazidi men, women, and children were trapped on Mount
Sinjar facing annihilation when the U.S. initiated airstrikes
to save them.
However, beyond that, it soon became clear that the
administration had no comprehensive plan to prevent ISIS from
continuing to commit genocide, mass atrocities, and war crimes
or to roll ISIS back.
This subcommittee, along with the Middle East and North
Africa Subcommittee, co-chaired by my good friend and
colleague, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, convened a hearing on the
genocide in December 2014 and called for the administration to
act before those communities of Christians and others were
annihilated.
Meanwhile, across the porous border in Syria, the Assad
regime was targeting and killing tens of thousands of
civilians. I renewed my call again for a Syrian war crimes
tribunal to be established to hold all sides in the conflict of
Syria accountable, and we had heard from such great leaders,
the former chief prosecutor who will testify today, David
Crane, about the importance of taking action in a tribunal that
had the flexibility and the capability to really hold people to
account on all sides. The world knew that ISIS was committing
genocide. Civil society groups, including some present at this
hearing today, mobilized, writing letters and holding meetings
with the administration, making statements and reporting
stories.
As a matter of fact, parenthetically, my first hearing that
I held here in this room was more than 3 years ago on the
genocide against Christians. Why was there such an indifference
on the part of some within the administration?
However, some members of the administration were pushing
hard internally for the word ``genocide'' to be publicly spoken
and for action to be swiftly taken. Yet the administration
still had not acknowledged it and still had no strategy to
prevent it from happening. Such was the situation in December
2015 when this subcommittee convened yet another hearing.
Shortly after, the Congress passed and the President signed
into law the Fiscal Year 2016 appropriations bill, the omnibus
bill, which required the Secretary of State to report to
Congress with his evaluation on whether ISIS had perpetrated
genocide.
Perhaps the most important push outside the government and
off the Hill was the 280-page report commissioned by the
Knights of Columbus and developed in partnership with the
tireless organization In Defense of Christians meticulously
documenting the genocide against Christians. That report may
have made the difference with the administration, so I am
personally grateful to Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight who is
here to testify again, and for the Knights, along with the
other groups, including A Demand For Action, that have done so
much to ensure that genocide against Christians and others
could not be ignored, trivialized, or denied.
The House passed H. Con. Res. 75, authored by my good
friend and colleague, Jeff Fortenberry, together with the
Syrian War Crimes Tribunal Resolution that I had sponsored, H.
Con. Res. 121, 3 days before the Secretary's evaluation was
due. Finally, on March 17, Secretary Kerry declared that ISIS
is ``responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its
control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.''
Although the administration made the right determination, a
long time coming but they did, the question arises now, now
what? I already have concerns that historical mistakes are
being repeated. Leading up to Secretary of State Colin Powell's
historic genocide determination in September 2004--and I was
very much a part of pushing for that to happen, along with
others like Frank Wolf--the State Department's legal adviser
had issued a memorandum that concluded that ``a determination
that genocide has occurred in Darfur would have no immediate
legal--as opposed to moral, political, or policy--consequences
for the United States.''
Secretary Kerry's legal advisers reportedly reached the
same conclusion before he made his determination about ISIS.
And so it again begs the question, now what?
For years, the administration has been unwilling to
effectively address the slaughters in Syria and Iraq. If it
still thinks it has no obligation to act, it will likely
continue its policy of acting too little too late. I am also
concerned that the administration continues to conflate its
strategy to combat ISIS with a strategy to protect religious
minorities from genocide, war crimes, and mass atrocities. They
are not the same. Combatting and defeating ISIS and Islamist
extremism, of course, is essential. However, there are many
other elements of an effective comprehensive civilian
protection strategy, putting effective monitoring and response
systems in place, and we have yet to hear them from the
administration.
Civilian protection has long been missing from the
administration's response to the carnage in Syria. More than
half its population, an estimated 13.5 million inside Syria, as
of May 2016, plus another 4.8 million registered as refugees
abroad, are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.
According to an April 2016 review of the casualty estimates of
that conflict, the number of people who have died during
Syria's civil war conflict since March 11, 2011, range from
250,000 to 470,000. Notwithstanding the challenges of knowing
exactly how many of those people were civilians and exactly how
many were killed by the Assad regime and its proxies, we know
this: The dictatorship has consistently, deliberately targeted
civilians, hospitals, and schools with bombs and bullets and
starved entire cities.
While Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah have fueled the fires of
death in Syria, the administration has mostly just watched
Syria burn. Let me also point out that, in his testimony
today--and it is worth really highlighting because others will
make similar points--but Carl Anderson makes the point that
``we are reliably informed that official government and U.N.
aid does not reach the Christian genocide survivors in Iraq or
in Syria.'' deg. `` deg.Repeatedly,'' he goes
on to say, ``we hear from church leaders in the region that
Christians and other genocide survivors are last in line for
assistance from governments. Significantly, the Archdiocese of
Erbil, where most Iraqi Christians now live, receives no money
from any government whatsoever. If assistance from outside
church-affiliated agencies ends in Erbil, Christians there will
face a catastrophic humanitarian tragedy within 30 days. The
situation is similar in Syria, according to Christian leaders
there.''
There is no easy single solution to the threats to
religious and ethnic minorities and other civilians in Iraq and
Syria. Obstacles clearly abound, including failures to
implement the Iraq Constitution, especially the decentralized
power and localized governance and security; longstanding
unresolved disputes between Iraqi Arabs and Kurds over
territory and natural resources; lack of accountability for
genocide, mass atrocities, war crimes, torture, kidnappings,
displacement, and more by a range of actors; the actions of an
indigenously developed, internally supported national
reconciliation process; conflicts over revenue sharing,
corruption and radicalization.
The list is long, complex, and it must never, however, be
an excuse for indifference and inaction. However, unless key
issues that preceded the genocide are addressed, the genocide
may be perpetuated again, and it certainly is going on right
now.
Over the coming weeks, I plan to introduce a comprehensive
piece of legislation aimed at contributing to the safety and
security of religious and ethnic minorities and civilians more
broadly in Iraq and Syria. It will also address the need for
accountability for genocide, mass atrocities in those
conflicts, and will also again call for a tribunal, like we saw
in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, or the former Yugoslavia, and I do
hope that the Senate at some point, hopefully soon, takes up
our resolution that is pending before the Sentate Committee on
Foreign Relations.
I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague, the
ranking member, Ms. Bass.
Ms. Bass. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon to the witnesses.
I look forward to hearing your perspectives regarding these
critical issues. As you know, on March 17, 2016, Secretary of
State John Kerry declared that ISIS is responsible for genocide
against groups in areas under its control, including the
Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. The Secretary went on to
chronicle numerous atrocities against various ethnic and
religious groups by ISIL over the last few years. The question
posed to the witnesses today is a logical result of the
determination of genocide, specifically what actions need to be
taken by the U.S., the international community, and, frankly,
the region, to prevent further genocide.
Secretary Kerry noted in his statement on March 17 that the
best response to genocide is a reaffirmation of the fundamental
right to survive of every grouped targeted for destruction.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today on how
that can best be achieved, bearing in mind the ongoing
suffering of women, men, and children who live in constant
fear.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you so much.
We are joined by the famous chairman, Dana Rohrabacher, the
gentleman from California.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. When we
come to this issue and we look at this, it behooves us to open
our hearts and try to come up with a formula that is going to
help those people who are who are most in need and people whose
lives are most in jeopardy. And, unfortunately--and I am just
going to have to say, and I will try not to make this
political--but our President has not come to the standard that
I believe is adequate to deal with this horrible situation and
the challenge that we face in the Middle East. It could be the
guy's unable to say ``radical Islamic terrorism,'' even after
our Ambassador was slaughtered and murdered in Benghazi, and he
hasn't been able to say those words since.
And we have been on him because of that, but that mindset
will have implications, and it has implications in the issues
that we are talking today. We have innocent people by the
hundreds of thousands, if not by the millions, who are in
jeopardy of being slaughtered in the same way the Jews were
slaughtered during the Holocaust.
And when I look at the figures of the people who are being
permitted into this country right now under this
administration, the Christians who are the basic target, the
most vocalized target of these radical Muslims who are there
who are involved with this terrorist activity, the Christians
are underrepresented in the number of immigrants in terms of
refugees and in terms of people who are actually immigrating
from those countries in which they have been targeted for
genocide. This is wrong. This is absolutely wrong. It is like
sending the Jews back and saying: We are going to have a more
open policy because of the Nazis, but the Jews aren't going to
be able to come in.
I would hope that we as Americans, both Republicans,
Democrats, and this administration and this Congress, recognize
we are in a moment now where we are defining ourselves, and we
need to make sure that when Christians are under the threat of
genocide, that they should have some priority over those other
people in those countries that are not targets of genocide. And
this isn't some sort of discrimination against Muslims or
anybody else or Shiites or anybody else, but let's recognize
that that is what is going on and that is what the threat is
and deal with the threat and not try to have a debate that is
sanitized over here in theory.
So I am very pleased, and I am grateful to Congressman
Smith, who, again, has demonstrated his total commitment to
human rights of every person on this planet and how he commits
himself to these issues.
Chairman Smith, I would suggest that we again, and today we
are reaffirming that we hear ISIL when they say that they are
going to slaughter all the Christians. We hear them when they
make proclamations of genocide against Christians and, yes,
Yazidis as well and others as well, but specifically to the
Christians and the Yazidis, and that we will then make sure
that we mobilize, and we help mobilize the American people,
which is what this hearing is all about, to save the Christians
from genocide. It is up to us. I don't want future generations
to look back on this generation of Americans and say: They
closed their ears because they had clinical analysis to do
whether or not you could single out one group that is being
targeted for genocide for preferential treatment in terms of
immigration and refugee status. I don't want to hear that,
which resulted in hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of
Christians dying in the Middle East.
Let's get serious about this. I appreciate this opportunity
to join you, Mr. Chairman, in this very moral effort to make
sure our country is practical and is courageous enough to
handle this challenge, this moral challenge of our day, to save
the people who are being targeted for genocide. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Chairman Rohrabacher, for your very
powerful statement and for your leadership on human rights. I
appreciate it. We all do.
I would like to introduce our very distinguished panel
beginning with Mr. Carl Anderson, who is Supreme Knight of the
Knights of Columbus, where he is chief executive officer and
chairman of the board of the world's largest Catholic family
fraternal service organization, with over 1.9 million members.
Mr. Anderson has had a distinguished career in public service
and as an educator as well. From 1983 to 1987, he served in
various positions in the Executive Office of the President of
the United States, including Special Assistant to the
President, and Acting Director of the White House Office of
Public Liaison. Following his service in the House, he also
served for nearly a decade as a member of the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights.
I will then move on to Mr. Sarhang Hamasaeed, who is a
senior program officer for the Middle East and North Africa
Programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He joined USIP in
February 2011. He works on program management, organizational
development, monitoring, and evaluation. He also provides
political and policy analysis on Iraq to the Institute of Peace
and other peacekeeping actors. As Deputy Director General of
the Council of Ministers of the Kurdistan Regional Government
of Iraq, he managed strategic government modernization
initiatives through information technology with the goal of
helping to improve governance and service delivery. He has also
worked with the Research Triangle Institute International,
Kurdistan Save the Children, the Los Angeles Times, and other
media organizations.
We will then hear from Mr. Johnny Oram who is the executive
director of the Chaldean Assyrian Business Alliance, dedicated
to professional and social advancement of communities
worldwide. He has been involved in the advocacy for the plight
of the Iraqi and Syrian Christians who have been displaced due
to the conflict. Additionally, Mr. Oram is involved in advocacy
of the rights of the disabled, specifically those with autism
spectrum disorder, or ASD. He has served in numerous capacities
at the local, State, and Federal levels of government, worked
for the Michigan legislature, Hawaii legislature, and in the
U.S. Senate.
We will then hear from Ms. Naomi Kikoler, who is the Deputy
Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of
Genocide at the United States Holocaust Museum. For 6 years,
she developed and implemented the Global Centre for the
Responsibility to Protect work on populations at risk and
efforts to advance R2P globally and led the Center's advocacy,
including targeting the U.N. Security Council. She is also an
adjunct professor at the New School University and author of
numerous publications previously. She worked on national
security and refugee policy for Amnesty International Canada
and in the office of the prosecutor of the United Nations
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
We will then hear from Mr. David Crane, who was appointed a
Professor of Practice at Syracuse University College of Law in
December 2006. He was the founding chief prosecutor of the
Special Court for Sierra Leone, an international war crimes
tribunal that put many of the worst actors in that terrible,
terrible tragedy behind bars. Ultimately, Charles Taylor got 50
years of prison sentence at The Hague because of the great
landmark work that Professor Crane did. Professor Crane's
mandate was to prosecute those who bore the greatest
responsibility committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone
in the 1990s. He served for more than 30 years in the Federal
Government. He has held numerous key managerial positions and
has been dogged in his work to document the atrocities that are
occurring in Syria and in the region.
So thank you all for being here. What you convey to us and,
by extension, to the Congress, hopefully to the administration,
will help provide us with a roadmap going forward. So, Mr.
Anderson, please proceed.
STATEMENT OF MR. CARL A. ANDERSON, SUPREME KNIGHT, KNIGHTS OF
COLUMBUS
Mr. Anderson. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for
the opportunity to appear before the subcommittee today. The
House of Representatives, the State Department, and the United
States Commission on International Religious Freedom are all to
be commended for declaring the situation confronting Christians
and other religious minorities in the Middle East to be
genocide. As we all know, the world's greatest humanitarian
crisis since World War II is unfolding now in the Middle East.
In addition to millions of refugees, many of the region's
indigenous communities now face extinction. These communities
may disappear in less than a decade, but their fate is not
inevitable. The United States can avert this unfolding tragedy
with a policy that contains, we believe, the following six
principles: First, increase aid and ensure that it actually
reaches those most in need. We are reliably informed, as the
chairman has stated earlier, that official government and U.N.
aid does not reach the Christian genocide survivors in Iraq and
Syria. Repeatedly we hear from church leaders in the region
that Christians and other genocide survivors are last in line
for assistance from governments. Significantly the Archdiocese
of Erbil, where most Iraqi Christians now live, receives no
money from any government whatsoever. If assistance from
outside church-affiliated agencies ends in Erbil, Christians
there will face a catastrophic humanitarian tragedy within 30
days. And the situation is similar in Syria, according to
Christian leaders there.
Those who face genocide are a tiny fraction of the
population. They often must avoid official refugee camps
because they are targeted for violence there by extremists. As
a result, these minorities often do not get official aid, and
this will continue to be the reality, unless specific action is
taken to bring the aid to where these minorities are forced to
reside by continuing violence.
Knights of Columbus and other private sources have
responded to this situation, but nongovernmental organizations
can only do so much. It is essential, therefore, that
government aid is increased and that we ensure it reaches those
most in need, even if special emergency appropriations are
required to do this.
Second, support the long-term survival in the region of
these ancient indigenous religious and ethnic communities. In
Iraq, the Christian population has declined by more than 80
percent, and in Syria, it has declined by almost 70 percent.
American policy should recognize the important differences in
the situations of those fleeing violence and those targeted for
genocide, and quite frankly, we should prioritize the latter.
Consider this analogy: After World War II, there were
approximately 50 million refugees, but only a small fraction
were Jews. Yet the world understood that Jews who had survived
genocide faced a qualitatively different situation and deserved
heightened consideration. The same is true today for the
indigenous minorities of the region. They have an indisputable
right to live in their country in whatever region of it they
wish. Depending on the circumstances, this may mean that they
will live where they are originally from or where they find
themselves now, but as survivors of an ongoing genocide, they
deserve to be prioritized in American policymaking decisions.
Third, punish the perpetrators of genocide and crimes
against humanity. The United States should support action by
the U.N. Security Council to refer key perpetrators of genocide
for prosecution. Equally important, we should support the Iraqi
Government and the Kurdish Regional Government's adjudication
of the cases of thousands of ISIS fighters and supporters who
remain in local detention centers. This will assist in the
important work of obtaining and preserving evidence of
genocide.
Fourth, we should assist victims of genocide in attaining
refugee status. The news report as of last week indicated that
of the 499 Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. in May, not one
was explicitly listed as being Christian or as coming from any
of the groups targeted for genocide. We must ask, how long will
this situation be allowed to continue? The U.S. should
appropriate funding and work with the U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees to make provisions for locating and providing
status to individuals, such as Yazidis and Christians, that
have been targeted for genocide. As I mentioned earlier, many
of these genocide survivors fear going into official U.N.
refugee camps where they are targeted. Thus, they are
overlooked and find it nearly impossible to acquire official
refugee status or to immigrate.
Congress should act now. Senator Tom Cotton has introduced
the Religious Persecution Relief Act, S. 2708, to provide for
overlooked minorities in the prioritization of refugees. We
support this bill, and we urge its passage.
Fifth, prepare now for the foreseeable human rights
challenges as ISIS--controlled territory is liberated by
ensuring that Christians and other minorities have equal rights
to decide their future, and obviously, this is going to happen
very soon as a result of what is happening in Fallujah and
Mosul. We should prepare now for the consequences of the
liberation of ISIS-controlled areas. We are likely to see
another humanitarian crisis as thousands of civilians flee the
fighting or return to their former communities when the
fighting ceases.
There has been much debate concerning plans for victims of
genocide in Iraq. Some have argued for returning people safely
to the Nineveh region; others that they should be allowed to
stay in Kurdistan; still others that they should be allowed to
immigrate. But these are not necessarily ultimately exclusive
competing proposals. People should be allowed to decide their
own future, and when they do, we should work to ensure that
they are treated with fairness, dignity and equality. This also
means that it will be increasingly important to ensure that the
property rights and claims of minority groups are respected.
And, finally, sixth, promote the establishment of
internationally agreed-upon standards of human rights and
religious freedom as conditions for our humanitarian and
military assistance. The United States should advocate for full
and equal rights for religious and ethnic minorities in the
region in exchange for our military and humanitarian aid. A
necessary first step to prevent genocide is to overcome the
social and legal inequality that is its breeding ground. We
should not accept one standard for human rights in the region
and another standard for the rest of the world. The rich
tapestry of religious pluralism in the region must be preserved
now, or it will be lost forever. With its loss will come
increasing instability and threats to our own national security
and that of the world.
We have a unique opportunity, and some would say a unique
responsibility, to protect the victims of genocide. The United
States can provide such protection with a policy that includes
the principles outlined above.
Mr. Chairman, we thank you very much for your leadership
and that of the other members of the committee.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Mr. Anderson, thank you so very much for your
comments, the very tangible support you are providing to the
at-risk minorities, especially Christians. And those six
points, they are very, very, very well thought out.
I would like to now recognize Mr. Hamasaeed, and thank you
for being here and for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MR. SARHANG HAMASAEED, SENIOR PROGRAM OFFICER,
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA PROGRAMS, U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE
Mr. Hamasaeed. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify before you today. I am testifying as a senior program
officer of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The views expressed
here are my own and do not represent that of the institute.
USIP works extensively and closely with Iraqi minorities,
specifically religious minorities. We support them by
establishing an organization called the Alliance for Iraqi
Minorities so that they have the capability to represent
themselves, and so, in that vein, a lot of what I mention today
is coming from experience directly engaging and trying to help
those minorities.
Definitely, the minorities in Iraq need all the support
that they can get as well as other communities, nonminority
communities, in Iraq.
The dilemma of the religious minorities is not something
new. I think it is important to look into some of the history
so that we can inform solutions that will, to see if they will
work and how do we prepare for those. The reality is that the
minorities have, over the past few decades, been caught in
between the conflicts and the problems of actors that they were
not a part of. They didn't choose those conflicts, but they
were affected by those conflicts. And ISIS is not a product,
and what they have done is not a product of today. ISIS is a
cause of atrocity, but it also is a symptom of failure of
governance and the space it has created resulting from the
political divisions among the big actors in Iraq and the
region.
So it is true that the minorities have suffered probably
the most at the hands of ISIS in the sense that they came under
attack, for displacement, for genocide, and also chemical
attacks against the Turkomans in the Taza district of Kirkuk.
The Yazidis have had their women and others taken as sex
slaves. The Christians have been labeled, their houses labeled,
and they came under specific attack.
Then the question comes: What was the response? The
specific question that was addressed to me to talk about was
the response of the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan
Regional Government. And to look at this, you can look at this
from the perspective of a glass half full or a glass half
empty. The reality is that the minorities believe that the
Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government have
not been able to protect them; that they have been displaced,
and they have been affected. But it is also true that the
Kurdistan Regional Government and the Government of Iraq have
provided camps and shelters and provided food and assistance.
They were also supported by the Iraqi community--which I think
is important--and they have to recognize their efforts in
absorbing this crisis and the problems here.
But the reality is that the scope of the problem is well
beyond the capacity of one single actor, one single government,
or one single community. It requires a collective action. And
there is a sense of fatigue for the years of displacement,
especially since 2003. The limited capacity of the government
and other actors needs to be taken into consideration into what
assistance is provided.
I think that there is a need for rethinking the assistance
that is given to the minorities and their situation. On
protection, the call for protection is not something new. This
has been, as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, there has been a call
by the minorities to address this for a long time. And the kind
of risk that the minorities are confronted with, they are
existential threats that threaten their collective well-being.
It is also a direct risk to their security as individuals and
communities.
So the risk of revenge, I would like to single out. We
talked about the post-return. There is a scenario of protracted
displacement, which will be a scenario that we have to deal
with. In the 2006, 2007 peak of violence in Iraq, about 1
million people never returned home. And the current 3.3 million
people that are displaced, about 1 million of them minorities,
they will likely not be able to return for quite some time
because of problems that are on the ground, and the revenge is
killing and the potential violence coming in those areas is a
potential risk to them.
The U.S. Institute of Peace has worked on models that help
the return of IDPs and prevent violence. We have done this in
the context of Salahuddin and the Speicher massacre that ISIS
perpetrated against the Shia cadets and soldiers who were in
that camp. We facilitated dialogue among the tribes, and we
have been able to mitigate the violence and prevent killing and
facilitate the return of IDPs. Tikrit right now has about
150,000 people who have returned since May of last year.
The same kind of effort will be needed in the context of
the minorities because there are several layers of conflict
that need to be addressed: Risks coming from existential
threats like ISIL; then there are risks that will come from
competition over scarce resources; and there will be risks
coming from just tensions of some of the minorities considering
what has happened to them by some of their Arab neighbors.
There are minority-minority tensions that need to be addressed.
There are Arab minority issues and Kurdish-Kurdish issues that
need to be addressed. There is a need for conflict resolution
to help them with the long-term viability.
The minorities have the organizations and the capabilities
to help themselves. They have been a partner and a voice for
the minorities over the years. The Alliance of Iraqi Minorities
has worked with the national government and with the Kurdistan
Regional Government to pass legislation and make sure their
issues have been prioritized. And they could continue to play
that role. But at the end of the day, the scope of the need,
the magnitude of the problem, will require more than what has
been provided to date. I cannot emphasize enough the need for
international support for early detection and action on those
warning signs that the minorities have been giving us.
It goes without saying that actually solving the bigger
problems of Iraq will go a long way in helping the minorities
over the long-term to stay safe and not to be attacked. While
the minorities will be able to develop the capabilities to
provide local security, larger existential threats coming from
problems like ISIL, will require the help and the support of
the Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan Regional Government and
the larger communities around the minorities. So it is
important to put emphasis on, how do you rebuild those
relationships? How do we put mechanisms in place that will
prevent those kinds of attacks?
I think the capacity is limited and the peaceful
coexistence is the emphasis that we need to put in as a
mechanism. Civil society organizations have been a good vehicle
to help the Government of Iraq and the international community.
They will need help in both a scenario of return, but also a
scenario of protracted displacement, to prevent host community
tensions as well.
So, with that, I will stop.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
subcommittee. I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hamasaeed follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Mr. Hamasaeed, I am going to say thank you very
much for your testimony, which was very extensive. I have read
it, and other members, I am sure, have read it.
Without objection, your and all of the distinguished
witnesses' full statements and any information you would like
to attach to it will be made a part of the record. So thank you
for that testimony.
Mr. Oram.
STATEMENT OF MR. JOHNNY ORAM, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CHALDEAN
ASSYRIAN BUSINESS ALLIANCE
Mr. Oram. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members,
guests. My name is Johnny Oram. I am the executive director of
the Chaldean Assyrian Business Alliance based in Detroit,
Michigan. We are an organization that is aimed at fostering
professional relationships and also to enhance the betterment
of our societies globally, especially at a critical time when
the existence of our peoples in our motherland as well as in
Syria is being threatened.
Before I go into recommendations for this committee, I
would like to talk briefly about our peoples' presence here in
the United States. We the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and the Syriacs
are the descendants of the original peoples of Abraham. We are
the indigenous peoples of Iraq. We are defined by our language,
which is Aramaic, the language that the Lord Jesus Christ
spoke. Oldest language in the world. We are also defined by our
faith. We are a part of the Eastern Rite of the Roman Catholic
Church in union with Rome. A good number of our Assyrians are
from the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the
East, and the Syriac Church, as well as the Presbyterian, and
many other denominations.
My people immigrated to the United States in the early 20th
century to come to the greatest nation in the history on Earth,
a land where they can seek opportunities and be free to profess
their faith. They came to communities such as Detroit to seek
employment in our automotive plants. They came to the United
States not only because of economic opportunities, but they
came to the United States because the church and we had
communities here that they were attracted to. When you have a
church, they will come. And, subsequently, there are schools,
which I will elaborate here a little bit later, but that is
very important to our communities: The faith and family.
Oftentimes, the Assyrians and the Chaldeans are categorized
as Arabs. However, we are not Arabs, but rather, we are in
predominantly Arab countries, though many of our people live in
Iran and Turkey, which are not Arab countries. Again, we are
the indigenous peoples of the land. Nineveh was the capital of
Assyria afterall. We have close to 150,000 Chaldeans and
Assyrians in the metro Detroit region alone and an additional
200,000 throughout the United States in Chicago, Phoenix, San
Diego, San Jose, Turlock, and Modesto. We also have a
significant Syriac community in New York and Connecticut.
My people here in the United States have a deep connection
and a relationship to our persecuted refugees in Iraq and
Syria. And we have welcomed thousands of them who have come to
the United States with open arms. We feel for them.
I would like to touch point on the people who want to
leave. So I am going to go ahead and kind of emphasize on that
here. Seeing as Christians and other minorities are
particularly targeted by the Islamic State, it is imperative
that they be given special consideration in the search for
asylum. This is amplified by the fact that they even face
persecution in asylum and shelters in Europe by radicals. Nuri
Kino, a world renowned investigative journalist and founder of
the grassroots human rights organization A Demand for Action,
has been instrumental in uncovering this in Sweden and other
places throughout Europe. Our people are being harassed. Our
people are being threatened. They are being intimidated. They
are being coerced, even in Europe.
The opening of the new processing centers in Erbil and
Beirut, where the majority of Christians flee from Iraq and
Syria, were positive steps. But the number of people processed
must be increased to deal with the overwhelming. As far
assimilating into the United States, I think this is a perfect
time to have a conversation and to talk about schools like Keys
Grace Academy in Madison Heights, Michigan. I alluded to
schools. This is a first of its kind in the Nation where they
have engaged in Assyrian language immersion and basically
preserving our identity and our culture. And the school has
also helped kids adjust and integrate into American culture
while maintaining their heritage in a meaningful way.
The public education system here in the United States is
woefully unprepared to deal with these kids, many of them who
have seen severe trauma. But schools, like Keys Grace Academy,
which are run by our own Chaldean and Assyrian people, who
understand what they have been through, are extremely critical.
Furthermore, groups like the Chaldean Community Foundation in
Sterling Heights, Michigan--basically it is a suburb of
Detroit. This organization has been instrumental in helping
Assyrian and Chaldean refugees to assimilate into American
society. The foundation processes over 20,000 visitors annually
as they help our new arrivals into the metro Detroit region
seek employment, health care, assistance, education, moral
support, and so on. Our community in metro Detroit is 150,000
strong and growing. As you are all aware, Mr. Chairman, members
and guests, my Congressman from Michigan's 11th congressional
district, David Trott, offered an amendment to the NDAA, the
National Defense Authorization Act, that passed the House on
May 17, which is aimed at protecting Christians and other
religious minorities throughout the Middle East from the
Islamic State-led genocide by establishing a U.N. refugee
processing center in Erbil. This requires the United Nations to
step up and do its share to protect our vulnerable communities
in Iraq, as well as the United Nations.
I also urge the United States Congress to reform the
Refugee Act of 1980 by establishing more P-2 and P-3 visas for
our refugees and bypassing the U.N.-mandated refugee allotments
and quotas. Moreover, this is also going to be important for
the refugees in that they can apply directly to admission to
the United States of America, rather than be sent off to other
lands, such as various designations in Europe and elsewhere,
where they have been unwelcome.
Now, I would like to elaborate on the people who want to
stay. The reality is that the vast majority of people will not
be able or desire to leave. So the particularly important
measure will be with those that deal with the situation in Iraq
and Syria. In the short term, emergency aid going directly to
these organizations on the ground is extremely critical. Aid
organizations, like Help Iraq, the Assyrian Aid Society, ACERO,
the Syriac Patriarchate, et cetera, have a proven ability to
actually get aid to our people. Other organizations, such as my
colleague Shachar Zahavi over at IsraAID, Israel's leading
humanitarian organization, have been instrumental in providing
aid, relief, and medical care for our refugees.
The fact that our people are still being targeted in UNHCR
camps by locals, not by U.N. staff, they almost exclusively
stop going to these U.N.-run camps and, therefore, critical aid
doesn't reach them through traditional channels. Our aid
organizations, which I have alluded to earlier, fill in the
void as much as possible. But resources are always in dire
straits. We have seen some legislative support in the Senate's
foreign operations appropriations. But, unfortunately, the
legislative support has not translated to enough material
support on the ground.
I can't really emphasize how important this is, but we must
directly support our indigenous aid organizations on the
ground. For example, our own USAID sends funds to the United
Nations with the intent of distributing these funds to our
communities in Iraq and Syria. The Iraqi and Syrian Christians
are not receiving any of these moneys. All this money goes to
the UNHCR camps, a place which is unsafe for Christians and
Yazidis and other religious minorities. Where is the security
apparatus to protect our people in these camps, especially when
they are trying to receive critical aid for their very own
survival? Supporting local security forces in Iraq and Syria is
the best way to ensure a stable environment where people are
able to return. After the Islamic State invaded, both the
Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army abandoned Christian and Yazidi
areas of the Nineveh Plains and Sinjar, leaving the inhabitants
defenseless and deeply distrustful of the institutional
security apparatus.
Support authorized through the NDAA for the Assyrian,
Chaldean, Syriac Christians, and other minorities in Iraq and
Syria is crucial in standing up to these forces.
I worked with A Demand For Action on these efforts, and
there has been some support realized for Syriac Assyrian forces
in Syria, but the forces in Iraq are going to need considerable
support. But it is support that they deserve and that they are
entitled to and is the only way to gain confidence of the
people who have inhabited these lands for thousands of years.
Finally, the creation of a safe haven with international
protection which ultimately would be transitional to a province
in the Nineveh Plains with the semblance of self-governance and
self-security is the only way to regain the trust of the
minorities who feel that they were betrayed by the Iraqi
Government and the KRG.
These issues affecting our communities in Iraq and Syria
are especially addressed in H. Res. 440, a resolution
introduced by Congressman David Trott and Congressman Sherman
of California, which calls for precise actions that can
positively affect the situation on the ground. Marking up that
resolution is critical as it would additionally serve as a
moral boon to the beleaguered people as it is the first
resolution in congressional history to recognize the Simele
massacre in 1933, an event where 3,000 Assyrians were massacred
under the watch of the Iraqi Government.
I would like to talk on the IDP situation in Turkey. Sixty-
seven years ago, right here in Washington, DC, all the
signatories to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO,
agreed to the following: The parties to this treaty reaffirm
their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of
the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all
peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard
the freedom, the common heritage, and the civilization of their
peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual
liberty, and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability
and well-being in the North Atlantic area. They are resolved to
unite their efforts for collective defense and for the
preservation of peace and security.
Mr. Chairman, Members, being a member of NATO requires
respecting peoples of all religions and all faiths. Many of our
churches in Turkey are being confiscated by President Erdogan
and the Council of Ministers in Turkey under this whole guise
that they are basically going to reform and revitalize those
communities that have been impacted by war, especially in
places like Diyarbakir. My very bishop, Francis Kalabat, in
Detroit, Michigan, and many Assyrian and Chaldean clergy
oftentimes have to travel to Turkey to administer to the
faithful there because our faithful basically cannot profess
their faith freely.
This is a NATO ally. This is basically a campaign to begin
the extermination of Christianity in the Middle East, and that
really doesn't bode well for us. This is of extremely vital
importance to our national security and to the security of the
world. These include Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox
churches that date close to 2,000 years.
Mr. Chairman, I would sincerely request that you and your
colleagues move forward existing efforts in Congress to urge
the Turkish Government, led by President Erdogan and his
Council of Ministers, to immediately return these churches to
their rightful owners. This right here is an example of
continued persecution and displacement of Christians in the
region. Again, Turkey is supposed to be our ally, but they are
not being a good actor in the situation. These actions clearly
undermine the very agreement that the Turkish Government signed
to become a member of NATO in 1952.
We, the United States of America, have a moral and
fundamental obligation. We need to step up as leaders of the
free world and help the thousands of Christians and other
religious minorities escape displacement and death, give them
hope when they have lost hope, and to reassure them that they
have a place that they can come to if they so choose where they
can be a part of a nation and contribute to our economy and our
society.
As I have mentioned earlier, we have the resources to
absorb them. This is the right thing to do. Thank you very
much, Mr. Chairman. May God bless you and God bless America.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Oram follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Thank you so much, Mr. Oram, for your testimony
and recommendations and insights.
I would like to now recognize Ms. Naomi Kikoler, and thank
you for being here.
STATEMENT OF MS. NAOMI KIKOLER, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, SIMON-SKJODT
CENTER FOR THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE, UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST
MEMORIAL MUSEUM
Ms. Kikoler. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Ranking Member
Bass, for holding a hearing on this important issue and for the
opportunity to testify. I ask that you include in the record
the text of the Holocaust Memorial Museum's report issued last
November, entitled ``Our Generation is Gone: The Islamic
State's Targeting of Iraqi Minorities in Ninewa.''
Last month, I was sitting with a Yazidi woman in a
displaced persons camp outside of Dohuk in the Kurdistan region
of Iraq. She was kidnapped by Islamic State fighters in the
village of Kocho during an attack where hundreds of Yazidi men
were killed. When I met her, she, along with her two young
children, had escaped her Islamic State captor in Syria only 2
weeks earlier. She had been forcibly converted to Islam, and
for almost 2 years, she was held as a sex slave. She and her
children are the face of a modern day genocide that is being
perpetrated by the Islamic State. For those still being held
today, that genocide is ongoing.
The administration's determination that this self-
proclaimed Islamic State committed genocide and crimes against
humanity against religious minorities is an important
recognition of the heinous crimes committed by the Islamic
State and the suffering of victims like the woman I met and her
children.
However, if the label of genocide is truly to have meaning
for the victims of that crime, then this discussion should
evolve from a question of what happened to how to protect
vulnerable communities, using military and nonmilitary tools,
from future threats by the Islamic State and other extremist
groups. This includes how to secure justice and accountability
for the victims of their crimes.
Genocide is a rare occurrence. There is no blueprint for
how the United States Government responds in situations where
genocide has been committed or is taking place. With this in
mind, we at the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of
Genocide traveled last month to the Kurdistan region of Iraq
and to newly liberated areas by Mount Sinjar to assess what
needs to be done to protect vulnerable minorities as a followup
to the report released in November 2015 documenting the
commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic
cleansing committed by the Islamic State against minorities.
Our trip starkly revealed that these communities remain at
risk of future atrocities. Those who stay in exile in the
Kurdistan region of Iraq are physically safe, yet they yearn to
return home. As long as the Islamic State exists, these
communities will remain vulnerable. The Islamic State still
occupies large swaths of land in Nineveh, making it impossible
for minority communities to return home.
Certain liberated areas are also too dangerous for
civilians to return home as they are within the range of ISIS
mortar fire. This is particularly true for communities on the
south side of Mount Sinjar and those close to Mosul.
Defeating the Islamic State, therefore, should remain a key
priority of the U.S. Government's efforts if our hope is to
ensure the very survival of these communities. Yet to animate
this objective, civilian protection and the prevention of
atrocity should be at the core of that strategy. We know from
past cases that this requires a comprehensive and sustained
strategy using military and nonmilitary tools that is
calibrated to respond to evolving conditions on the ground to
prevent genocide and other mass atrocities. In this context, a
strategy would include day-after planning to identify scenarios
and tools that would mitigate potential future flashpoints and
implement strategies to address them, including rebuilding
liberated areas, promoting reconciliation between groups,
advancing justice and accountability efforts, and securing a
political resolution between the Government of Iraq and the
Kurdish Regional Government to the disputed areas in which many
of Iraq's minorities live.
The most common sentiment that we heard from displaced
minority communities and one that needs to be addressed is
their lack of trust in the officials and institutions that are
responsible for their physical protection and for guaranteeing
their legal rights, as well as their deep distrust of their
former Sunni Arab neighbors who they perceive as having been
complicit in ISIS' attacks.
Religious minorities continue to feel that the Iraqi
security forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga abandoned them when
the Islamic State attacked Nineveh. Many also continue to feel
that they are being used as political pawns by the Government
of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government in the ongoing
contest over the disputed areas. This leaves them nervous about
who and how their land will be administered should they return
home.
For over 10 years, religious minorities were targeted on
the basis of their identity by extremist groups and were
politically marginalized. The early warning of their
vulnerabilities went largely unheeded, and as a result, many
saw fleeing the country as their only protection option. Today,
in the absence of what they, again, see as being credible
actors to provide their physical protection, many communities
are seeking to arm themselves. New threats are also emerging
for not just religious minorities but also for the Sunni Arab
population who may be the victims of revenge killings. The
proliferation of unregulated and poorly trained militias may
pose additional threats to civilians in areas liberated from
the Islamic State as they seek to liberate additional
territory. Many that we interviewed expressed concerns about
the potential for conflict between militias within particular
religious communities and amongst religious groups.
This all underscores that defeating the Islamic State and
protecting vulnerable communities requires more than just a
military strategy if civilians are to be protected. It requires
tackling the root causes that allowed the Islamic State to rise
and that enhance the vulnerabilities of minority communities.
In light of this, we believe that there are four principle
areas where additional efforts could be paid to ensure both the
immediate protection needs of vulnerable communities seeking to
return home and ensure that the long-term and systematic
drivers of conflict are mitigated.
Those are, first, an explicit policy to provide genuine
physical protection to vulnerable populations. Protection could
include strategies for employing local, domestic, and
international actors to provide security to ethnic and
religious minorities returning to liberated lands and Sunni
Arab populations at risk of reprisal killings.
In planning military operations and broader policy
objectives, actors should consider the possible unintended
consequences of the actions taken and whether they will
heighten risks for civilian populations living under the
Islamic State's control and/or might contribute to future
cycles of violence.
The Iraqi Government and international donors should ensure
that all Iraqi security forces, Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, and
local militias fully adhere to international human rights and
humanitarian law standards and are held accountable for
violations in accordance with international standards.
Withholding military assistance to those groups who do not
adhere to these standards could be a powerful tool in
addressing the behavior of bad actors.
Second is support for stabilization and reconstruction
efforts in liberated areas. This includes increasing the
presence of development assistance from relevant agencies and
departments. Many of the displaced expressed concerns to us
that they will be unable to return home in the absence of
economic opportunity and the reconstruction of their devastated
region. High rates of unemployment within the Sunni population
and perceived economic inequity was one of drivers of the rise
of the Islamic State. Affected regions must be rebuilt and the
engagement of the international community must be sustained in
that endeavor in the years to come.
A critical component of stabilization and reconstruction
efforts is investing in reconciliation so that diverse
communities can once again live alongside each other. In the
absence of such efforts, there is a grave potential for future
conflict between communities.
Third, transitional justice efforts are central to
responding to the commission of past crimes and the deterrence
of future crimes. The clearest obligation in the Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is to
punish the perpetrators of genocide, and international justice
is the cornerstone upon which the international community has
responded to the crime of genocide, from Nuremberg 70 years ago
to the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda, Yugoslavia,
and Cambodia.
Today, substantial support is needed to investigate,
collect, and analyze evidence; secure mass grave sites; and
detain perpetrators for the purpose of future prosecution. In
this effort, we can't lose sight of the importance of holding
individuals accountable for crimes committed at the local
level.
The most common answer to the question of how can trust be
built between minorities and the Sunni Arab population that we
pose to people who are displaced was that those who committed
crimes in their towns and villages needed to be held
accountable in a court. The rampant culture of impunity has
left high levels of distrust amongst ordinary Iraqis. They need
to see justice advanced not only against the Islamic State's
leaders for genocide but also for the crimes committed by their
neighbors in their very own communities. This necessitates
detaining fighters, investigating their crimes, and then
prosecuting them at the national as well as possibly the
international level.
Fourth is securing the political resolution to the ongoing
dispute between the Kurdish Regional Government and the Iraqi
Government over Nineveh. Our report was very clear in
identifying the ongoing dispute as a key factor that
exacerbated the vulnerability of minority communities in part
because the dispute is perceived as having contributed to
growing support for extremist groups, and when the Islamic
State advanced, there were no clear lines of responsibility. As
long as responsibility for protecting these communities remains
in question, vulnerabilities will remain acute and create a
vacuum that the Islamic State or a successor group could
exploit.
Finally, to recognize a genocide has happened is to
acknowledge a collective failure to prevent the crime of all
crimes and to uphold the commitment to never again. Going
forward, the U.S. and other governments will need to place
civilian protection and the prevention of atrocities at the
core of their counter-ISIL strategies, but the commitment to
prevent and protect minorities must extend beyond the current
threat posed by the Islamic State. We must endeavor to ensure
that in 10 years, we are not yet again meeting in the wake of
another failure to protect vulnerable minorities in Iraq and
Syria.
Countering the Islamic State and preventing future
atrocities perpetrated by other groups necessitates an ongoing
assessment of those groups' motivations, organization, and
capabilities for committing atrocity crimes, and of the
vulnerabilities of at-risk communities. Continuous monitoring
and analysis of the warning signs and risk indicators on the
ground will be needed and strategies developed to ensure that
threats facing minorities in the future are mitigated.
That is what upholding the commitment to prevent, enshrined
in the Genocide Convention, should mean. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kikoler follows:]
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----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much for your testimony and
for reminding us of what the face of genocide is with your
experience with the young woman and her two children. As you
pointed out, she was forcibly converted to Islam. For almost 2
years, she was held as a sex slave. That is just numbing in how
awful and horrific that reality has been, so thankfully you
were there, and now you have conveyed that message to all of
us. And that should be fresh impetus for all of us to do even
more.
I would like to now yield to Mr. Crane, a former chief
prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID M. CRANE, PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE,
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW (FORMER CHIEF PROSECUTOR,
UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL COURT FOR SIERRA LEONE)
Mr. Crane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the subcommittee, its staff and, in
particular, its chairman for its decades-long fight against the
atrocities committed by state and nonstate actors around the
world. In fact, you and I have been working together since
2002, along with many members of this committee, in seeking
justice for the oppressed.
We are in an age of extremes with adversaries never
contemplated facing challenges that are most likely not
solvable. The 21st century is shaping up to be no better than
what I call the bloody 20th century, where over 225 million
people died of nonnatural causes, over 100 million of which
that I estimate at the hands of their own governments.
In the 21st century, conflict will be kaleidoscopic and
dirty, with one or all sides ignoring international law. Our
current planning in the United States and preparation cycle
make us incapable of dealing with these kaleidoscopic conflicts
and events, and I am working with the International Peace and
Security Institute to quantify that data.
Despite this, we have seen the evolution of modern
international criminal law, which has now given us the
practical and legal capability of holding dictators, thugs, and
their henchmen accountable for atrocity if there is a political
will to do so. I underscore ``if there is a political will to
do so.'' If we do have that political will, we have the
experience now to prosecute those who feed on their own
peoples.
Now, we have mentioned many numbers this afternoon related
to casualties: 300,000 persons killed, over 10 million refugees
moving about the region with no hope and no homes. But I do
want to underscore that these are about human beings,
individual human beings. When I was in Sierra Leone, I would
hold townhall meetings, and I was in Makeni, the headquarters
of the infamous Revolutionary United Front, who cut hands off
of victims and other body parts. And as I was holding this
townhall meeting, a young child soldier stood up. He was about
12, and he looked at me in the eye, and he began to weep, and
he said: I killed people. I am sorry. I didn't mean it.
And as I was holding him in my arms as he wept, a young
woman stood up 10 feet from me, most of her face was missing
because it had been put in a pot of boiling water. She was
holding her child, and she, through cracked lips, said: Seek
justice.
That is why we do this. And that is why I want to
underscore in my remarks today that we don't forget that it is
individual human beings, one person at a time.
There has been a complete breakdown of the rule of law and
accountability in the Levant. The laws of armed conflict are
ignored, resulting in mounting civilian casualties. There is an
increased use of banned weapons systems, such as barrel bombs
and chemical weapons, along with the increase in various
torture and execution methods not seen since the Dark Ages. The
Caesar Report, which I coauthored and which we testified a year
or so ago, found direct and clear and convincing evidence of
this horror.
In the Levant region, there are three international crimes
that are being committed. They have been highlighted in this
testimony and are well-known by this subcommittee: War crimes,
crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide. I want to
underscore and caution that we have to be very careful that
politicians and diplomats tend to rank or tier international
crimes and holding out genocide as the top tier.
Well, I would just submit respectfully to this subcommittee
that 300,000 people killed as a result of an international
crime don't care whether it is a genocide, crime against
humanity, or war crime. So I want to caution our use of terms.
They are important, but they are crimes, and I also want to
point out, of these three crimes, one is a specific intent
crime, which means that you have to have a specific intent to
destroy in whole or in part a peoples.
It is a difficult crime to prove, and in some cases, you
almost need a smoking gun, so I would just caution this
subcommittee, when they are considering the war crimes, watch
out for tiering and ranking the crimes, as well as
understanding that genocide, even though a very serious crime
indeed, a crime of crimes, is a difficult and very specific
type of crime, which at the legal level, has to be clearly or
beyond a reasonable doubt proven each and every element.
So what is next then? You asked me that question. First,
there must be a realization that the ISIS phenomenon is a
decades-long challenge. We are entering into an effort that is
of cold war ramifications.
At this time, we do not have a solution for this challenge.
Until we do have a realistic and practical solution, we must
understand that we may not be able to restore international
peace and security, only manage some sense of security in the
Levant. The conflict there truly is kaleidoscopic in nature,
where if one thing changes, everything changes. We cannot
predict or plan what happens next.
The cornerstone to a possible beginning of a solution is
Arab resolve and cooperation. However, this may not be possible
given political realities. The West cannot be seen as an
interloper, only as a patient enabler and a facilitator. We
can't be seen as launching the seventh crusade, so to speak.
Over the next several years, you must contain the ISIS
threat regionally, stamp out ISIS' attempts to further their
cause elsewhere and focus on achievable programs in the region
locally and domestically, and I would underscore some of the
important points made by my colleagues this afternoon.
I just would like to say a young man or woman who has a job
and some hope for a better future is less likely to turn to
terror and to ISIS. Essentially, what I am saying is that we
cannot defeat ISIS using kinetic energy alone. In reality, it
can only be done through economic revitalization, almost a
Marshall Plan for the Middle East. It is that kind of
commitment.
Additionally, we can take realistic steps to start an
accountability mechanism for the region, particularly as it
relates to ISIS atrocities. If we have the political will, we
can establish some tried and true methods. We should start with
a truth commission, not a reconciliation commission at this
point, but start with a truth commission. Let's get something
started. Let's get something going.
We also have the ability and the experience to set up a
domestic court or an internationalized domestic court, even a
hybrid regional court, which we did in the Special Court for
Sierra Leone. The International Criminal Court, though an
important and permanent entity, is politically, unfortunately,
neutralized by the United Nations Security Council and,
unfortunately, will not play a major part in this effort, even
though we need to recognize that they do have a potential
place. The practical reality is, a domestic court, an
internationalized domestic court, or hybrid regional court
supported by regional countries, countries in the region, is
the most practical and realistic opportunity.
Now, these mechanisms can be headquartered in Iraq, Turkey,
or Jordan, supported by members of the Arab League. The
international community could assist and train commission or
court personnel as requested and needed. The idea is having
Arab states prosecuting Arabs for crimes against Arab peoples
in violation of Arab laws.
Now, we have done this before with the Special Court for
Sierra Leone. We have moved into an area, worked with peoples,
developed methodologies, efficiently managed justice mechanisms
and broad accountability to millions of victims there in West
Africa. We have translated this success into the Syrian
Accountability Project, where we have built a conflict map, a
crime base matrix, sample indictments so that someday, when a
domestic, regional, or international prosecutor is designated,
we can hand this package over to them for their consideration
to get things started.
So what are my conclusions? The Levant is an unmanageable
space. International peace and security cannot be restored
using today's outmoded problem-solving techniques. Thus, there
are no foreseeable political or military solutions. This is a
multifaceted, and I underscore, decades-long struggle. It is
truly kaleidoscopic.
Our next step should be to continue to try and contain
ISIS. On the periphery, create achievable regional and domestic
programs, and I would humbly suggest perhaps that Marshall
Plan.
Let's take away the reason for ISIS to be--no hope in the
future. We have and can offer better alternatives, such as
freedom and a jobs plan, possibly. It is within the realm of
possibility to development a justice mechanism outside the U.N.
Security Council. The focus should be using regional and
domestic arrangements to create those mechanisms. We must not
be discouraged. We must be patient and firm in our resolve for
accountability, stability, and peace.
A little over 10 years ago, President Charles Taylor never
thought that he would be held accountable for his crimes in
West Africa, but today, he sits in a maximum security prison in
Great Britain for the rest of his life paying the price for
aiding and abetting the murder, rape, maiming, and mutilation
of over 1.2 million human beings. We can hold ISIS accountable
for their crimes and begin to establish some sense of peace in
the Levant.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this time. I stand ready to
answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Crane follows:]
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----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Professor Crane, for your testimony,
for your leadership. And one of the pictures that I will never
forget is the picture that was all on the front pages or page 3
of most of the newspapers around the world of Charles Taylor
receiving a 50-year prison sentence, eyes cast down, thinking,
I am sure, that he would never be held to account for the
atrocities he committed on the Liberian, Sierra Leonean, and
other people of the region.
So thank you for that successful prosecution of the other
men who committed such horrific acts of violence against
innocent people, especially women and children, for that and
for your recommendations. They are outstanding.
Just a few questions to start off. I will yield to my
colleague, and then we will have perhaps a few more additional
questions.
Mr. Anderson, you make a very strong point--Mr. Oram, you
do it as well--that the aid that is meant to go to--or what
many people think would get to Christians is not getting
through and to other persecuted minorities, like the Yazidis,
and the importance of backing indigenous efforts, particularly
the churches, to get that aid through.
We had a hearing last--I chaired it with the Assistant
Secretary Anne Richard under the auspices of the Helsinki
Commission on why is it so many people went to flight and left
and made their way into Europe? One is that there was gross
underfunding of the international calls for subsistence.
Mr. Hamasaeed, you made the point as well that efforts
continue to fall woefully short of the need for food, shelter,
healthcare, education, and psychosocial support for those to
deal with trauma in your testimony, and the number that we got
was about 40 percent of the requests of the competent
authorities, like the UNHCR, that is all they got. And this
year, so far, we are at, for 2016, 23 percent funded, although
we are not done, 2016. Forty percent, 42 percent, is, as you
said, woefully, woefully underfunding.
One of biggest takeaways from that hearing came from the
UNHCR representative, who said the reason why people left, one
was the loss of hope; secondly, a cut to the World Food
Programme of about 30 percent. And they said: That is it. They
don't have our back. We are going to stagnate here, maybe even
die. We are going to head to Europe or Germany or somewhere
else where the pastures might be greener.
So the international community fatally, I think,
underfunded those efforts. The U.S. led the effort. Perhaps we
should have done more or mobilized more. This isn't a hearing
to point fingers. It is to say: We have got to get it right.
And my hope is that we will do a second hearing. Just so you
know, Ms. Bass and I, we have already asked Rabbi Saperstein to
come, the top point person for religious freedom. He couldn't
come today, but he sends his regrets. He will make an
appearance. We will also ask Anne Richard, Assistant Secretary
at PRM, and others, because I do think there is a place where
we need to be joined at the hip, congressional and executive
branch, to make a difference in the lives of these people.
But the gross underfunding, and if you would elaborate a
little bit on this 30-day window. Mr. Anderson, you talked
about that if people don't get food and medicines--and any of
you who would like to touch on this--they are literally at the
point of starvation and, obviously, other terrible consequences
from malnutrition.
Mr. Anderson. Well, I would say, Mr. Chairman, most of what
we hear is anecdotal. Just this week, my assistant is in Erbil.
I was speaking with him this morning, and he was calling me
from a Yazidi camp. He told me that what he had been told was
that the Yazidis in this camp had received one food drop from
the U.N. when they arrived, and since that time, all of their
assistance has come through the Archdiocese of Erbil. For
example, all of their medical assistance comes through the
medical clinic that we have been funding.
So if those sources stop, you can see here is a community,
they are still living in tents. There is nothing available for
them. So I would think maybe have the same kind of evidence
that you are receiving, but we hear this from the religious
leaders in Erbil, and we hear it from the religious leaders in
Aleppo and throughout Syria. It is the same, same issue.
Mr. Smith. Yes, Mr. Oram, and then Mr. Hamasaeed.
Mr. Oram. Mr. Anderson, thank you. Yes, that is a common
narrative in Erbil for our people. So, as I had mentioned in
testimony, Mr. Chairman, organizations like Help Iraq, Assyrian
Aid Society, ACERO, and others are basically doing the job of
what governments and governmental agencies should be doing. And
a lot of our people, a lot of this assistance goes to the U.N.
and U.N.-run camps. But a lot of our Christians and other
religious minorities are afraid to go to those camps because
the--so one recommendation is to, really, in addition to the
refugee processing center--we don't know--I know that there has
been legislation to call for that and also to form some other--
a venue for them to go and receive aid, so there needs to be a
security apparatus in place, especially even at the U.N. camps,
because most--a bulk of that aid goes to those camps.
Mr. Smith. And you know, when I raise it with the UNHCR, as
I did at that hearing and I have done ever since and before,
they are very defensive, and I understand where they are coming
from. It is not them. It is the people in the camp.
Mr. Oram. Right.
Mr. Smith. Those who wish them ill, ``they'' being the
Christians or the Yazidis or the other minorities.
Mr. Oram. That is correct. You are absolutely right.
Mr. Smith. But that doesn't mean I don't have a
responsibility and all of us to get the money, the food, and
humanitarian assistance to those who are suffering.
Mr. Oram. And that is why it is so extremely critical in,
you know, the Senate's foreign operations appropriations
mechanism to increase aid for these international
nongovernmental organizations because they are preparing. So
what oftentimes has happened is organizations like Help Iraq
are vested with a responsibility of engaging in fundraising
campaigns throughout the world.
In Detroit, we have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars
from our community, and all that money, and clothing, drives
for clothing and food and blankets, especially in the
wintertime. That is also a critical time.
But our communities in northern Iraq, the Assyrians and the
Chaldeans, they are basically prisoners in their own country.
The other important issue is, and, Mr. Anderson, the Assyrians,
the Chaldeans can't be gainfully employed in Kurdistan. Now, we
have a problem with that.
Mr. Smith. Yeah.
Mr. Oram. You can't seek employment. Kurdistan, so far as I
understand, is still a part of Iraq. Our people are basically
depending on the diaspora communities for their survival. I
have had conversations with folks from the United Nations, and
they basically said when it came to the issue pertaining to the
security of Nineveh and the communities in Syria and what have
you, Qamishli and what have you, they basically said that they
don't have the resources or they are not in a position to
provide U.N. peacekeeping forces to protect those communities
that are being threatened.
So, really, the United Nations really needs to step up to
the plate.
Mr. Smith. Yeah.
Mr. Oram. And be a leader and providing a security
apparatus. And, also, when--I would like to jump into the
refugee issue. Yes, we have, as far as refugee admission to the
United States, the Christians have really been--about we are 1
percent--less than 1 percent of admissions into this country. I
am not here to have a debate about religion and about Islam and
Christianity, but it seems 99 percent of the refugees that have
been admitted into the United States are Muslim.
And when the United States basically was debating as to
whether or not to declare this a genocide, their whole concern
was, well, the Christians, they have options. They can pay
jizya, a fee to basically stay alive. It took 1\1/2\ years for
Secretary Kerry to make this declaration, and basically, all
experts throughout the world came to the understanding and
conclusion that this was actually a genocide, and I do commend
the Secretary for finally making that declaration.
So, yeah, we need to really step up to the plate and
provide financial assistance to these organizations and so the
money can get to the communities.
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Hamasaeed. Yeah, if I may just stress that the point I
made in the written testimony as well, which the need today,
whatever is seen by the international community, is far greater
than what the system captures because the system does not see
the amount, the volume of assistance that came from the local
communities, from the Iraqis, whether in the Kurdistan region
or the rest of the country. They have helped a lot in
shouldering this and, actually, were the first responders in a
way to the wave of crisis.
But I think, in addition to seeing the current need, we
have to also look forward toward what would be the magnitude of
the problem in a scenario of a protracted displacement a year
from now, 2 years from now. A good number of those people will
stay with us, and the kind of tensions that we see today in the
housed communities, in the IDP camps, and a good number of
people are outside the IDP camps, sometimes not registered in
this system because of lack of documentations or the
bureaucracy does not have the capacity to handle this
magnitude.
Neither the Kurdistan Regional Government nor the Iraqi
Government have handled something like this from a bureaucracy
assistance standpoint. They don't have the capacity. Then there
is the issue of resources. The communities have exhausted their
resources that they have because of the economic downturn in
Iraq. The drop in oil prices has strained the system. The
country is fighting ISIL, so there are the military expenses.
You have the destruction that comes from this fight. Ramadi: 80
percent destruction, other towns, the pictures are horrible.
Sinjar, other minority places; the potential for return is a
significant problem.
So the tensions will be something that we need to focus on.
And it is important as we do this, there are issues that are
directed at minorities from ISIL and other groups, but some of
this is just a natural product of the chaos and the conflict
where people do not have income and resources. They don't have
jobs. There is a pressure on the governments of the region, in
Iraq or elsewhere, to provide economic opportunities and give
job permits. But the economy being down and people not having
jobs is not just--you can go outside the camps, but there are
no jobs.
There are many, many IDPs who have been interviewed, and
they say: The economy outside is such that there is nobody to
hire us because the economy is down. Oil prices are down. And
the Kurdistan Regional Government and its tensions with
Baghdad, they are late 3 months in the payment of their public
servants. Their resources to help with the IDPs are far more
limited.
So, therefore, the international community really takes
this seriously from a humanitarian standpoint but also from a
conflict prevention standpoint because the more displaced, the
more--they either have to migrate, or there will be--they are
vulnerable for other forms of radicalization as a response to
the problem that they face.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Kikoler.
Ms. Kikoler. Thank you for raising that question, and maybe
just to pick up on some of the things that Sarhang mentioned.
I think it is really important to underscore that the
implications of the underfunding means that this crucial
conversation about the day after--and in reality, we are
talking about today. For areas that are already liberated
around Sinjar, this is a question that people are grappling
with today. Do people return? Can they return? Who is taking
the leadership in pushing that conversation?
That discussion of the day after should be a central
component of our counter-ISIL strategy conversations right now.
All of us have highlighted a couple of components that usually
fall outside, as Sarhang mentioned, of the traditional
discussion of conflict prevention or counterterrorism. That is
reconciliation, reconstruction, addressing political
grievances, and the importance of accountability. Each of those
require resources dedicated toward them, yet they are simply
not a priority right now for many of the actors that we hope to
take a leadership role in these particular issues.
Mr. Smith. If you could just elaborate, not a priority for
whom? The U.S. Government? The governments in the region?
Ms. Kikoler. I think it would be fair to say the
international community, as a whole, has not been focused on
this day after conversation, and I think there is an important
role that Congress and others can play in raising that
particular issue.
When we went to areas that had been newly liberated, to
highlight what Sarhang mentioned, you see town after town and
village after village that has been simply devastated: Homes
that have been bombed; every gas station has been destroyed;
water is down; electricity is beginning to be back in order.
People are waiting to return home because they are waiting to
see the schools in the Kurdish Regional Government close,
waiting to see schools open now in newly liberated areas. Those
are the types of urgent needs that need to be addressed and
need to be part of that counter-ISIL strategy.
I think just to underscore a point that was made before
too, those are not traditional kind of kinetic issues that need
to be prioritized from an atrocity-prevention perspective, and
it means that they are being viewed as second-order priorities
whereas, really, they should be first-order priorities if we
are hoping to prevent a recurrence of these crimes, and we need
to do that with the recognition, as Sarhang said, that the
capacity of the Government of Iraq and the capacity of the
Kurdish Regional Government to address these issues is really
quite diminished, and there are also concerns about the
political will to address some of these particular concerns.
Mr. Crane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As I am sitting here thinking of time and how long this
conflict has gone on, I recall back in March 2011, I was asked
by the Syrian National Congress at the time to meet with me and
The Hague to talk about justice mechanisms that we could
implement in the spring of 2011. It was a time of hope and
excitement. It was the Free Syrian Army versus the Assad
regime. It was not that completely simple, but that was pretty
much it.
They were enthusiastic. They were listening, and I had been
working with that group, along with the International Criminal
Court, United Nations, and other countries in dealing with the
transitional justice process. But dealing with my Syrian
colleagues, I have noticed a sadness in their eyes, and they
realize that this isn't going to go well, and I agree with
them.
I particularly noticed, after the summer of 2013, when a
certain line was drawn in the sand, saying: If you do this,
then the international community will step in. It happened and
nothing happened. And as we had been collating and putting in
the crime base matrix events that have taken place that
possibly could be war crimes, crimes against humanity, what
have you, there was a pause in that summer of 2013 when the
threat was made that if you do this, then we are going to step
in. We actually saw, anecdotally, a decrease in atrocities. As
soon as that line was drawn and was stepped over, then all hell
broke loose, and we saw an increase in atrocities, which have
gone off the chart since that time. Our crime base matrix at
the Syrian Accountability Project is now over 7,000 pages of
incidents that have taken place that could amount to
international crimes.
So I just want to underscore, when we are talking about the
urgency of time, we have now moved into an era where there is
no practical solution to the Levant.
Mr. Smith. I have some additional questions, which I will
hold for a few moments, but I would like to yield to my friend
and colleague, Ms. Bass, the ranking member.
Ms. Bass. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate you
giving me the opportunity.
First of all, I would really like to thank all of the
witnesses for not just your testimony but the work that you do.
It has really been sobering.
I wanted to ask a couple of questions of you, Mr. Oram,
about the Assyrian population in the U.S. You mentioned the
Michigan area, and I was wondering, are there other places
around the U.S. where there is a population?
And the other thing you mentioned was the population in
Europe is experiencing some problems. It sounded like it was
internal to the community, but I wonder if those same types of
problems are being manifested in the United States.
Mr. Oram. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Bass.
We have, in the metro Detroit region, close to 200,000
Assyrians. We have been in the United States for decades. In
addition to Detroit, there is a significant population of about
70,000 Assyrians in Chicago alone. And then we have communities
in San Diego, Phoenix, and the Central Valley of California,
the Modesto-Turlock area.
Ms. Bass. Uh-huh.
Mr. Oram. So, yeah, we have a considerable population of
our communities.
I will go to your Europe question on Europe, but as far as
the problems here, no. When the the refugees immigrate to the
United States, like specifically in Detroit, in particular, we
have a community in Detroit that is so strong and well rooted,
groundly rooted in the community, people in the community know
who the Chaldeans and the Assyrians are. But, you will have
your occasional individual or individuals that will basically
categorize the Assyrians and the Chaldeans as being Arabs and
Muslims and we are terrorists and what have you, but see, a lot
of it is also about education. We go around to communities, and
we educate policymakers all throughout the country and business
leaders about who we are, what our identity is and our faith,
and so that is extremely important.
But no. Our communities don't face violence here in the
United States.
Ms. Bass. Uh-huh.
Mr. Oram. This is the land of the free. This is the
greatest country in the history of Earth.
And as far as Europe is concerned, yes, what is happening
is a lot of the refugees are being grouped up, and it is not
the governments that are really conducting this. It is
basically the populace in some of these countries. Europe's
borders are very porous.
Ms. Bass. Right.
Mr. Oram. And so what is happening is, you know, we have
our refugees that are in Sweden and all throughout Europe as
Nuri Kino, the investigative journalist and the founder of a
Demand For Action, has spent 30 years documenting the issues of
refugees and migration and what have you, and so there are
communities in Europe where they face violence because of their
faith.
Ms. Bass. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Mr. Oram. Sure.
Ms. Bass. And then, Mr. Crane, I really admire what you
have done in the past, and Mr. Smith has shared with me a few
minutes ago about how you faced daily death threats during the
time of Sierra Leone, and to come through that, you come
through it with a certain amount of soberness.
I didn't particularly like to hear what you said, but I
appreciate the reality. When you said that, one, you
characterized it as Cold War ramifications, and I think you
meant by that that this is nothing that is going to be solved
quickly.
Mr. Crane. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Bass. But I appreciate you saying that because there is
too much rhetoric out there about why don't we just do this and
it fixes it, and I think you painted a far more realistic
picture, and I appreciate that, even though it was difficult to
hear.
So I wanted to know if you would elaborate a little more
about some of the solutions that you talked about. You talked
about a Marshall Plan. I was wondering what your vision would
be as to who would come together to do that.
You talked about holding ISIS accountable, and you
mentioned a hybrid court, and I wanted to understand what
exactly that meant, how that would be.
What you went through in Sierra Leone, trying to imagine
holding ISIS accountable like that when the leadership is so
diffuse. How would you hold ISIS accountable? What are some of
your thoughts about that?
Why don't we start there?
Mr. Crane. Thank you, Ms. Bass.
I appreciate your comments, and I think your questions are
very, very important. What I really wanted to underscore in my
comments this afternoon is that this truly is a decades-long
effort. In this age, where we try to solve problems within 24
hours, it just can't be done.
After World War II and facing the Cold War and the
challenge of the Soviet Union, the world got together and
created the political will to face down the Iron Curtain and
what was behind it. We created NATO. We moved into Korea. We
are still in Korea.
Ms. Bass. Uh-huh, right.
Mr. Crane. 1950. NATO is a successful example of a
commitment by the world to stop tyranny. So there is historical
precedent if there is the political will to come in and begin a
process, begin a process where we have the international
community, administered probably by the region where we have
the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, others where
we have funds where instead of spending billions dollars a week
bombing what we perceive to be a threat and creating job
programs.
I mean, what a wonderful thing it is to see almost like a
Civilian Conservation Corps out there creating roads and
building and reconstructing the damage that has been done.
Again, I know it is not that simple, but at least if we change
and shift our emphasis on construction as opposed to
destruction, I think that we have a better chance in
succeeding. So that was what I meant by the Marshall Plan.
Ms. Bass. Let me interrupt you for just a minute about
that. Okay.
Mr. Crane. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Bass. One, I would love to see that actually here with
our infrastructure, our failing infrastructure, and need for
jobs. But this is what confuses me, and that is, who would the
actors be?
Because post-World War II--I mean, and most of what you
described in terms of International Monetary Fund, World Bank,
et cetera, are European based, you know what I mean, and how--
what parts of the region come together considering, you know,
whether they are actively involved or not, how would you have
the European-based powers then go in and say here is a Marshall
Plan for what is predominantly the Arab world?
Mr. Crane. Well, again, an excellent question and probably
an unanswerable question as far as political will. We just have
to step back and stop using kinetic energy to solve the
problems in the Middle East. It is not working, and yet we take
all of those billions and, in some cases, now probably
trillions----
Ms. Bass. Trillions, right.
Mr. Crane [continuing]. Of dollars, and we could have
shifted that in a way that would have revitalized an area. Not
making it a religious base, not making it Sunni versus Shia or
Christian versus Muslim, an ability for the region, backed by
Arab states as well, with some leadership by the European
Union, what have you, to do this.
It is not going to be easy.
Ms. Bass. Uh-huh.
Mr. Crane. But I am just trying to get a conversation going
and asking the question, can we do better than just kinetic
energy, bombing our way out of a solution?
Ms. Bass. I appreciate that.
Mr. Crane. So, again, forgive me for not being able to give
you specific answers because----
Ms. Bass. That is okay.
Mr. Crane [continuing]. I don't, but I think that changing
our perspective will certainly be important.
Now, you also bring up a--the hybrid court idea. At the end
of the day, this is all about the victims, right. We are very
arrogant about how we approach international justice. We don't
have all the solutions. There are certainly other justice
methodologies. I always used to ask the question, is the
justice we seek the justice they want? I think that is really
an important question because we tend to think that the
European model of international justice or the common law model
is the model, but some of these justice mechanisms in other
parts of the world have been around for thousands of years and
have worked.
So we have to be very, very humble to realize what do the
victims in Syria and in the Levant and in northern Iraq, what
is justice to them? And once we begin to consider that, there
are many, many possibilities, and it may not be an
international system. So a hybrid court or a domestic court or
internationalized domestic court may be something that may be
important. Even going back and looking at tribal and cultural
type of methods of justice may be a start or a beginning.
How would you hold members of ISIS accountable? Well, of
course, that is a challenge. I think that once we were able to
do that--that is part and parcel to this overall A plus B plus
C plus D step forward, is begin to try to contain ISIS. A good
example is ISIS is like a cancer that is not going to cause a
fatal result, but it is there, and so your doctor is going to
have to say: We are going to have to manage this.
Ms. Bass. Uh-huh.
Mr. Crane. And so we should manage ISIS like such, try to
cut out areas that they try to grow in other parts of the
world, Libya, for example, and other parts. Deal with those
smaller problems, but try to contain ISIS, and then begin to
develop many things, to include a justice mechanism where it
can be seen that the international community, the region itself
is actually doing something.
It doesn't have to be elaborate. It can be just a simple
step of creating a truth commission where we have the trust
being garnered. Again, if you build it, they will come. I have
been told, well, you can't have a truth commission for these
various reasons, what have you. Well, we have got to do
something. We have got to be seen at doing something in the
transitional justice area other than talking about various ways
that we can go about that.
That is just a simple example. But this is all part and
parcel to a larger achievable results: Contain ISIS and begin
to pick out areas where we can succeed so we can bring back
that hope, which robs ISIS of its ability to recruit, and that
cancer begins to shrink.
Now, again, there are many, many levels of problems here
that could throw this off the rails. But we just have to look
at this a little bit more simply and a little bit more
objectively and step back and go what really is working and
what really isn't working, and I will guarantee you, it is not
using kinetic energy.
Ms. Bass. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Mr. Crane. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Bass. I yield back.
Mr. Hamasaeed. Just quickly on the question of justice,
this is something that the U.S. Institute of Peace is dealing
within areas that have been liberated, because we have the
experience that we are looking at, like, what does that look
like? And that--this is closer to Salahuddin and not directly
minority areas. But the issue of justice where you have tribes,
they have their local mechanisms that usually they go for
revenge and there is exacting blood money, and these have
complicated the situation.
In the case of Tikrit, after what is known as Camp Speicher
where ISIL killed 1,700 soldiers and cadets, we managed to tap
into those local traditions through facilitated dialogue--using
facilitators USIP trained over the years--there is a level of
venting that needs to take place among those actors. That
happened. And then they engaged on the substance. They realized
that going into this cycle of violence will change the nature
of the problem, and it will make things more complex.
So there are ways that you can deal with this and tap into
those local solutions and prevent violence. There was a
question of justice. So, for those who have been killed, for
those who have been displaced, what does justice look like? And
there is no universal answer. It really varies depending on
what the different communities accept. In Tikrit, they decided
they will work with the judicial system of the government. The
tribe said: We will work with the system, and we will bring
perpetrators to justice, and we will work with you.
In a town few miles away, in Yathrib, Salahuddin, the local
population, to date, are not allowing people to return because
they do not necessarily accept that other local solution. And
the government doesn't have the capacity to deal with the
justice of ISIS because, as you alluded to, these are
fragmented members. It is not an entity that you can go to one
place and capture them.
And unless the local population cooperates with this
process to help you identify who did this and what, then it
will be very difficult to bring perpetrators to justice. And I
have to warn about after 2003, de-Ba'athification was getting
rid of the members of Ba'ath party was a big problem,
contributed in the way it was dealt with to giving the--add to
the problem of today. Actually, the day after of this problem,
liberated areas, I think this is our problem: Going after those
labeled as collaborating with ISIS and then what will be the
ramification for the political process? For the stabilization?
For the next cycle of the problem?
So putting energy and resources and building it bottom up,
tapping into both what the system can do, but also really
getting the community to work with this issue because they have
seen it in the most painful way now. They have been displaced.
They have seen their people killed. I think there could be an
opening to tap into that and build upon that. But if we just
leave it like this, I think it will fester, and this will
become the underestimated problem that we face.
Many people underestimated that the vacuum in Iraq could
give us ISIS in its current form. And then there was
underestimation of the damage that ISIS could do and the
response needed. I think the post-ISIS situation also is
probably underestimated right now and could use more attention.
Thank you.
Ms. Kikoler. Thank you very much.
One of the purposes of our recent trip was also to look at
issues relating to accountability and justice, hence our
recommendation around the need to prioritize transitional
justice. And just very briefly, I think there are five points
that I would make.
The first is there is a need for there to be an independent
international investigation into what happened to ensure that
there can be the collection of evidence and the preservation of
evidence and their analysis in accordance with international
standards, to help establish truth, to help families identify
what happened to their loved ones, and to push for future
prosecutions and accountability.
The second is that there needs to be an investment in
supporting the capacity building and rule of law efforts of the
Government of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government. That is
needed immediately, but it will have long-term benefits to
ensure that the rule of law actually means something and that
minority communities feel that should their rights be violated
in the future, they can resort to courts and not have to take
up other means to protect themselves.
The third is both the Government of Iraq and the Kurdish
Regional Government currently lack legislation that allows them
to prosecute genocide. There is an effort under way to create
such legislation. The political will to do so is mixed. There
is an important role that the international community can play
in pushing for the enactment of that legislation so that we
could possibly see cases brought at the national level.
The fourth, as I mentioned earlier, is the importance and
priority that should be placed on local cases, trying people
for murder, for these kind of property seizures, for what
happened in their own communities, and there is an important
issue that arises on that. It requires the detaining of people
and the investigation for future prosecutions.
Now, many Islamic State fighters tend to blow themselves up
or killed on the battlefield. It is unclear for those who are
being detained by different forces what is happening to them.
We need to do a better job of trying to arrest people, ensure
that there can be future prosecutions with them. That is going
to be very pertinent when we see a liberation of Mosul. And it
is going to raise a lot of challenging human rights questions
about the vetting of people as they flee Mosul in ensuring that
not all Sunni Arabs are stopped and detained and assumed that
they are Islamic State supporters but that those few that have
actually committed crimes are actually held responsible.
And then, finally, to underscore the point that Sarhang
made about the critical need to support local civil society
that is undertaking these efforts to do documentation but also
to do the conflict management and mediation and reconciliation
work that will be so critical to ensuring that we don't see a
further recurrence of atrocities.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bass.
And thank you.
Just some final questions.
Mr. Anderson, you pointed out in your testimony that
American policy should recognize the important differences in
the situation of those fleeing violence and those targeted for
genocide, and we should prioritize the latter, and I would add
with emphasis, especially since the administration has made the
designation of genocide against Christians and other minority
faiths.
Consider this analogy, you point out, after World War II,
there were approximately 50 million refugees. Only a small
fraction were Jews, yet the world understood that Jews who have
survived genocide faced a qualitatively different situation and
deserved heightened consideration.
I believe strongly--and if you want to elaborate on that--
that you could put exclamation points on that for the
Christians, the Yazidis. Today, when they can't even get into
an UNHCR or IDP camp or a refugee camp, are unwanted, at risk,
and as you pointed out, a news report showed or indicated that
of the 499 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States in
May, not one, I repeat and say again, not one was listed as
being Christian or as explicitly coming from any of the groups
targeted for genocide.
To me, that has got to change. I mean, that is
unconscionable. It is not like we haven't been raising this
for, in my case, 3 years. In the cases of so many others, 3
years, and we have had hearing after hearing. You talk about
protecting, and Ms. Kikoler, your point about civilian
protection as being a core, I think, is very well placed. It
has not been, and maybe you might want to elaborate on, do you
sense that it is becoming a core protection, especially in
light of the genocide statement?
And let me also ask about the idea of stabilization, and
again, there is so much overlap, great minds think alike, and
you five have provided expert testimony, and there are a number
of areas where there is an overlap of concern and
recommendation. I chair the Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe and have been very involved for years on
Bosnia, was actually in Vukovar right before it fell, before
Serbia conquered it 3 or 4 weeks before it fell, and worked
very hard with the Yugoslav court to hold people who committed
those atrocities to account.
Well, the whole idea of stabilization, one of our members
of the full committee, Scott Perry, was part of the
stabilization force and can tell you, as was mentioned earlier
by Professor Crane, we are still in Korea. The stabilization
force, it took years, and I remember being in burnt-out homes
throughout Bosnia. I was actually in Srebrenica, where the
genocide against Muslims occurred, which was horrific. I was
there for one of the re-interment ceremonies.
My point being, we do have to plan for that post-conflict
when there is a liberated area? I am concerned we are not doing
the kind of aggressive planning that is necessary. Because we
had forces on the ground in Tuzla and elsewhere, we did a lot
of that. It still wasn't perfect.
But get this, as of yesterday, and I had a hearing on
Bosnia, there are still approximately 800 people who committed
horrific crimes in Bosnia, mostly against Muslims, who the
criminal court for the former Yugoslavia devolved to the local
courts, and they--not one--not one--have been taken up.
So the importance of the courts can't be overstated as a
means of meting out justice and giving the survivors at least
some peace that their next door neighbor or the guy that is one
block away wasn't someone who was putting bullets in the heads
of family members or committing acts of torture.
I do meet frequently with these folks in Bosnia, and if we
don't have lessons learned from all of that, shame on us. So
all the more reason why a court needs to be set up.
And I really, really appreciate again, Professor, your
point about the cornerstone of a possible beginning of the
solution is to get Arab resolve in cooperation. The idea of
having Arab states prosecuting Arabs for crimes against Arab
peoples in violation of Arab laws, the idea that at least you
have ownership, and I think that is a very, very important
point for all. We want to lend and assist.
And, again, on capacity, as was mentioned by some of our
witnesses, you, in Sierra Leone, left not only well-trained
prosecutors and people who understood rule of law and how to
garner evidence and present it in court, you left buildings
where people could work and do the important work of justice.
And I think all the more reason why we need to push that.
But if you could speak to these questions that I am
raising--all of you or some of you, however you would like--I
would appreciate it.
Maybe start with you, Mr. Anderson, on this. We have got
the designation. Why aren't Christians being focused upon?
There is no religious test here. I think the President erred
when he said we don't have religious tests. When Jackson-Vanik
passed and the Soviet Union and Jews were escaping the horrific
psychiatric prisons of the Soviet Union, and I actually went to
Perm Camp 35, where a number of political and religious
prisoners were--and it was terrible--but we saved hundreds of
thousands of Jews through limiting MFN to the Soviet Union
based on focusing on Jewish people who were being so persecuted
by the Soviet Union.
We are talking about minority faiths here. We need to
redouble our efforts, as you pointed out on the Tom Cotton
bill, and thank you for that. Well, maybe you want to
elaborate, if you would.
Mr. Anderson. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman, and
especially for your leadership for so many years on this.
It goes without saying: Every human life has dignity, has
sanctity. We should do whatever we can to support each
individual who is in these tragic situations, and of course,
the help that we are doing, as I mentioned, helping Yazidis,
helping Muslims, there is not a distinction of helping the
individuals. But I think we have to realize a basic reality
here, that there are minority, indigenous communities that have
been in these lands for thousands of years, and they are going
to be extinguished. And that is a different qualitative
reality. And so what the world has to ask itself is, are we
going to allow that to happen? Are we going to allow it to
happen?
And, therefore, if the decision is, no, we are not going to
allow this, then we have to make special efforts. We have to
give special attention to preserve these communities. It is
just as simple as that. Nobody wants to apply religious tests,
but the fact is these people, these communities, this heritage
will be gone unless we do something extra to save it.
Mr. Smith. Answer to any of those questions?
Mr. Oram. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Again, I
commend you for your leadership in spending so many years in
this respective body fighting for religious freedoms throughout
the world.
Mr. Anderson is correct. The Assyrian and the Chaldean
communities of Iraq and Syria do face extinction, but another
problem that I would like to kind of touch on is the central
government in Baghdad. After the war, the Coalition Provisional
Authority dialogued with the Iraqis in basically implementing
Article 125, the redrafting of the Iraqi Constitution with
Article 125 which basically talked about the protection of
Iraq's Christian minorities. Article 125 is a moot point right
now. The Iraqi Government has failed in upholding its
constitutional duties. When the Islamic State came barreling
through many towns and villages of the Nineveh plains, the
Iraqi Army, 50,000-60,000 and some odd to about 10,000 or 9,000
thugs, basically, surrendered and basically relinquished their
weapons, arms, clothing, and uniforms and fled. That is
basically negligence on the Iraqi Government's part. We can
basically sit here and point fingers about they did this and
play the blame game, but let's move forward. I urge that this
Congress basically urge the Iraqi Government to step up to the
plate and help these communities, everything from financial
assistance to each individual that has been impacted because,
again, the Iraqi Government has a moral and fundamental
responsibility to protect its citizens, and they failed. Thank
you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. If I could, and Professor Crane, if
you could, in addition to those questions, in your statement,
you talk about the Syracuse Syrian Accountability Project,
which you have founded: Over the past 5-plus years, we have
built a trial package that a domestic, regional, or
international prosecutor can consider in developing a case
against all parties committing atrocity in the Levant. This
package includes a conflict map, a crime base matrix, and other
associated documents to include sample indictments. And you
pointed out how you used that very same technique in
successfully prosecuting Charles Taylor and other henchmen.
Can you elaborate on that because that is absolutely vital,
I think, to the future of successful prosecution? It is not
like it all has to be reinvented. Don't reinvent the wheel. You
have ready-made tools here.
Mr. Crane. I think it is very important that we do
understand that we have made great strides in the past 20 years
in international criminal law. Most of this was theory when I
was in law school or not even taught because it didn't even
exist. What we do now, we have this capacity, the rules of
evidence, the practical experience, and the jurisprudence to
prosecute and hold accountable any individual who commits
atrocities, international crimes. Again, the bright red thread
of all of this is politics, and that is always, always a
challenge related to dealing with these types of issues. But at
the end of the day, because we have this practical experience
now of taking down and holding accountable a head of state, his
henchmen, for what they have done to a region, we need to
continue to work together to use those techniques so that
someday, whether it be tomorrow, next year, or 10 years, we
will have that ability then to hold accountable those who have
destroyed this area of the world.
So we do have a conflict map. We have literally developed a
criminal history of the Syrian conflict and in the Levant since
March 2011. We continue to monitor that and write that chapter.
We also have that crime base matrix, which lists by date, time,
location, perpetrator, as well as the specific violation of the
Rome Statute, international humanitarian laws, such as the
Geneva Conventions, and we have translated the Syrian criminal
code, which is a good criminal code, one that could be used for
the basis for domestic prosecutions, into English. And so we
have also identified by paragraph and line the violations of
Syrian law as well. That particular aspect of the Syrian
Accountability Project now numbers over 7,000 pages. In fact,
there is so much of it that we have put it into a memory stick
because I can't transport that around. In fact, the chairman
knows; I gave him a copy of that last week. Now we share this.
This is not all about the Syrian Accountability Project at
Syracuse University College of Law. This is about justice for
the people of Syria. So we share all of this data, and have
since March 2011, with our colleagues in the United Nations,
various key countries, such as the United States, our friends
in the war crimes office there, along with the international
criminal accord. I personally give this data to the chief
prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, as well. So we are sharing. We are
working with other important accountability organizations to
work together to make sure that, again, at the end of the day,
it is about the victims and justice for the victims.
But one caution here. You know, 10, 12 years ago, when I
was investigating west Africa, we went out and did it the old
way, cops going out, gathering evidence, taking statements and
what have you. Now, with this social media age, we are
inundated by a tsunami of information. It is too much. The
challenge now is not finding the evidence. The challenge is now
finding the evidence in a haystack. Ninety-nine-point-nine
percent of the data coming out of Syria in whatever capacity
being held by whatever organization is not evidence. We cannot
use it in a court of law. I think that is really important for
us to understand. It is a great historical body of information.
It is important in many other ways, but it can't be used in
court. I think we tend to forget that, that we have all this
information, but it is just information. It is not evidence.
And so I think we have to be very, very careful when we say we
have cases against all these individuals. The answer is we may
have cases against these individuals, and we have to be very,
very careful. But, again, that is up to a prosecutor, a local,
regional, or international prosecutor, to take this and
hopefully take our trial package and use it in whatever way he
or she can use it in order to seek justice for the people of
the Levant region.
Mr. Smith. Before we conclude, anything else that any
witness would like to--yes, Ms. Kikoler.
Ms. Kikoler. Just in light of the question that you asked
about the integration of civilian protection, I think it is
really important to underscore that defeating ISIS but failing
to prevent atrocities and provide adequate security to all
Iraqis will likely fuel future grievances, a proliferation of
armed groups, and continued conflict. In our original report,
we highlighted that the current counterterrorism and
counterinsurgency paradigms don't prioritize an assessment of
or compel a response to, in a systematic way, the unique
threats and risks of mass atrocities that local populations and
individuals may face, so, as a result, going forward, we do
feel that it is important to prioritize the mapping of the
motivations, organizations, and capabilities of perpetrators
and the vulnerabilities of at-risk communities.
Finding proactive ways to identify where these communities
are, our report focused on Iraq--there are communities in Syria
that remain at risk: Mapping their location, tracking the
movement and mobilization of potential perpetrators, and
identifying other actors that enable or inhibit the
perpetration of mass atrocity crimes. This includes
intelligence gathering and analysis that plays a critical role
in developing the strategies that will be used to provide
protection for communities and prevent future atrocities going
forward.
Mr. Smith. Could I ask you, on that parallel, if you would,
would a safe haven, is that more of a surface appeal but strewn
with a number of challenges that may make it unachievable, or
is it something that ought to be, in your opinion, promoted?
Ms. Kikoler. I think, from our perspective, there are a
host of questions that need to be asked about how to provide
protection, and we don't necessarily go into military
strategies at the Museum ourselves. I think the questions that
can be asked about areas like safe havens and other options
are, what are the specific threats facing civilian populations?
What are the resources that are needed to provide protection?
What are the various options that are available to ensure that,
over a sustained period of time, communities will be protected
and a host of other scenarios?
In the case of northern Iraq, one of the things that we
have highlighted is the need to focus on addressing the deep
distrust that communities feel toward others and recognizing
that the areas that we are talking about are not ethnically or
religiously homogenous. Communities live alongside each other,
and any discussion about local administration, physical
protection, has to take into account those realities in that
particular area, but I think others would probably be more
well-versed.
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Mr. Hamasaeed. Yes. So I think that it is important to look
at the different scenarios that we talked about, the protracted
stay but also the scenario of return. The whole system is
struggling with providing food and assistance, so that is a
level of need we are talking about, and the scenario of return,
there is a physical protection of those people, and then ideas,
such as safe havens and all of that, there are practicality
elements that need to be taken into consideration.
Okay. What objective will that serve? So, in the past, a
safe haven, again, is a system like Saddam Hussein could have--
a systemic protection would have been helpful, but right now,
the threat is far more retail in the sense of you have a terror
organization that knows no boundaries. And then you have the
fear of revenge that is actually at the individual and tribal
and family level sometimes. So a safe haven or the concept of
protection and physical protection, that changes how you
deliver that. This is where the better relationship with the
neighboring communities and working on that becomes necessary.
And I think one of the things that could be helpful for the
Iraqi minorities--as important as they make this case, as they
present solutions--some of the solutions will create other
problems, will create other conflicts and other competition. It
is important that at this moment of frustration and this moment
of anger--and it is a lot, and they have every right to be
angry and frustrated and disappointed. But getting back to what
Mr. Crane said about achievable programs and achievable
objectives, it is important to look at a framework solution for
Iraq. Without fixing that, the minorities will always be caught
in between those.
I would like to stress that the military approach is
probably important for certain problems, but it will not solve
the long term. And preserving those communities, you may be
physically safe if you relocate to the Kurdistan region or you
relocate to outside, but preserving the community, as a
community--and for Sabean-Mandeans, their numbers have dropped
over the years to about a couple of thousand worldwide. This is
how you lose a community. The Christians have seen their
numbers drop from about 1.5 million in 2003 now to about less
than a third of that in Iraq. Preserving the sense of community
will require for the minorities to be striking those
relationships with those Iraqi communities for the long term.
But also the civil society and the external assistance could go
also into preserving those communities in terms of education,
in terms of programs that will provide services to those areas.
And this is what the Alliance of Iraqi Minorities has done very
successfully: Working with the Iraqi Government and with the
Kurdistan Regional Government. Those efforts could help the
minorities help themselves, be the voice of the community, and
engage the international actors.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Oram.
Mr. Oram. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for touching on the safe
haven question. You know, right now, a good number of our
people do not want to return back to their villages and towns
in the Nineveh plains because they have lost the confidence and
the trust of not only their government, but remember, a lot of
their Sunni neighbors in the villages essentially marked them
for death. They basically went ahead and etched on the big
``N'' for Nazarene, identifying them as Christian families, but
the only way for an effective safe haven mechanism is obviously
laying a foundation for the successful liberation of Mosul,
which is basically the gateway of Iraq's Christian region, and
also to ensure that the Assyrian communities of northern Iraq
enjoy their own self-autonomous identity, their own affairs, as
well as a security apparatus through the support of our
Government. That is the only way that they can have their
confidence and their hopes restored, by having a security
mechanism in place, their own autonomy, dictating their own
policies and what have you. This is extremely important for a
long-term effort, for fulfilling a safe haven for our
communities in northern Iraq.
And that is why it is important now to address this and
this is going to be a long process, and so I think, right now,
we really need to identify the current situation at hand with
respect to the IDPs, the violence and the harassment, the lack
of aid that they are receiving, as well as reforming our
immigration or Refugee Act of 1980, designating new visas, the
P-2 and the P-3 visas, for many of these Christian families to
come to the United States. And a lot of them have relatives and
friends and families in the United States. They can come back
here and join them. This is important, but I think it should be
a part of our long-term foreign policy strategy to preserve
Christianity in the Middle East. We are the oldest in
civilization. We are the indigenous peoples, and it is vital to
America's national security to make sure that this is reached.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. I want to thank each and every one of you for
your time, your leadership, for taking the time to present
very, very incisive testimonies to the committee, and we will
share this with a large number of people, so thank you, and I
look forward to working with you going forward.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:17 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Record
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Material submitted for the record by Ms. Naomi Kikoler, deputy
director, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H.
Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and
chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H.
Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and
chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]