SYRIA: ENOUGH ALREADY; Congressional Record Vol. 164, No. 11

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SYRIA: ENOUGH ALREADY

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from

Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to condemn in the strongest

possible terms the ongoing, unrelenting attacks against civilians in

Syria committed by the barbaric, lawless regime of Bashir al-Assad,

with Russian backing.

We have all heard the statistics over and over again like a broken

record: as many as half a million people killed since the armed

conflict began in March 2011, tens of thousands of them civilians; tens

of thousands more detained, disappeared, and perhaps, or even likely,

dead, directly at the hands of the regime; more than 11 million people

displaced once and again, inside and outside of Syria's borders, the

largest single refugee crisis the world has seen since 1945. More than

half of those displaced are children and youth.

Last summer, much was made of the cease-fire agreement that the Trump

administration reached with the Russian Government to establish

\\\`\\\`deescalation zones'' to stabilize Syria, while keeping the Assad

regime in power.

We were told the agreement would save lives. Trump said: \\\`\\\`. . . all

of a sudden, you are going to have no bullets being fired in Syria. . .

.''

Well, that has turned out not to be true. The deescalation zones are

not deescalating.

As of late December, more than 400,000 people remain trapped,

besieged by regime forces in eastern Ghouta, one of the deescalation

zones, only half an hour's drive from Damascus.

As U.N. Special Adviser on Syria Jan Egeland said last December:

\\\`\\\`There is no deescalation zone, there is only escalation in this

deescalation zone.''

Idlib, another \\\`\\\`deescalation area,'' suffered a dramatic increase in

air attacks last September against armed groups not covered by the

cease-fire agreement. In late December, airstrikes and shelling against

a hospital, a medical warehouse, and a vegetable market killed,

injured, and displaced scores of people.

The U.S. Government heralded the military defeat of ISIS in Syria in

November. But the defeat of ISIS has not and will not end the Syrian

conflict; and Russia has not succeeded in pressuring Assad to end the

conflict, nor in restraining Assad's attacks on civilians as he has

gone after rebel forces.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in Syria deteriorates each and

every day. World Vision estimatesthat 5.6 million people are in need of

acute humanitarian assistance. The U.N. says a total of 13.1 million

people need some form of assistance. That is 3 million more than at the

end of 2016. The situation is worse today, after months of

deescalation, than it was a year ago.

Of those 13 million, 3 million are trapped in besieged and hard-to-

reach areas. That is 4\\\\1/2\\\\ times the population of Boston or

Washington, D.C.

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Humanitarian access to those areas is not guaranteed by the regime,

nor by its backers; international law and obligations be damned.

Some of the most heartbreaking news out of Syria has to do with the

crisis in healthcare. The \\\`\\\`weaponization'' of healthcare in Syria is

not new, but the depravity of it all still shocks me. According to a

recent report by researchers at the American University in Beirut,

\\\`\\\`Syria has become the most dangerous place on earth for healthcare

providers.''

According to the International Rescue Committee, in 2011, there was

one doctor per 600 people in Syria. But now, in east Ghouta, there is

only one doctor per 3,600 people.

Medical supplies are not allowed into besieged areas and terribly ill

patients are not allowed out.

What military or political purpose is served by denying medical

evacuation to women and children suffering from heart disease, cancer,

kidney failure, and blood diseases?

Mr. Speaker, current policy is not working to end the crisis in

Syria. It is time to change course, not by sending more Special Forces

troops there without any authorization, nor by promising to keep them

there indefinitely to fight against the next iteration of ISIS.

What we need is to reassert American diplomatic leadership and exert

real pressure to end the war. We need a plan to transition Assad out of

power. We need to pass \[H. Res. 632\](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-resolution/632), condemning the senseless attacks on

hospitals and medical personnel in Syria.

We need to shame Russia for its failure to ensure humanitarian

access. We need to increase our contributions to humanitarian

assistance for Syria and make full use of the option of cross-border

assistance.

We need to open our hearts to the Syrian refugees and welcome more of

them to our country. We need to do everything in our power to lay the

groundwork to ensure accountability for Assad's victims. That includes

funding the international, impartial, and independent mechanism to

assist in the investigation and prosecution of war crimes.

The Syrian conflict has gone on far too long. The horror of it all

can be mind-numbing, but we must not lose our outrage. Now is the time

to reenergize our efforts and find a way to end the suffering.

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