which have been guaranteed by the government for decades dozens of families have died camping out in the cold over the past 6 weeks including want to hear and ghazi prudy yesterday the supreme court took note of the deaths the number of elderly people women and children of the demonstrations and said it's extremely disappointed with the government's handling of the protests. the government maintaining if it the laws are in the interest of farmers by giving them access to new and pick a market with pharma suspicious not just of the government but also the makeup of the supreme court's committee india's biggest protest since prime minister the day the modi was 1st elected 6 years ago a set to continue elizabeth al-jazeera ghazi to. the top past the hour on al-jazeera and these are the headlines a u.s. house committee is debating a bill demanding president donald trump's removal from office as democrats accuse

trump of inciting the mob stormed the congress last week. there is no debate as to who misled those people who sent them here to ravage our capital to it was undermines our american democracy president trump that's who it was he called for insurrection on social media on a stage with television cameras capturing is every word i mean all donald trump's made his 1st public appearance since the attack on the capitol he again accuse democrats of a witch hunt over his impeachment from says attempts to oust him a causing tremendous anger but added that he wants no violence. meanwhile his secretary of state like pompei oh is it al qaeda or is a stablish a new base in iraq who told border he made that assertion without providing any

hard evidence and it appears to be a last minute diplomatic offensive against him in the final days of the trumpet ministration help them avoid al-qaeda has a new home base it is the islamic republic of iran as a result bin laden's wicked creation is poised to gain strength and capabilities we ignore this iran or qaeda nexus at our own peril we need to acknowledge it we must confront it indeed we must defeat it and in indonesia divers have recovered one of the black box recorders from a passenger plane that crashed into the sea with 62 people on board on saturday the cockpit voice recorder however is still somewhere under water. coming up in about 25 minutes on al-jazeera next though inside story with 8 adult.

half a 1000000 dead 12000000 displaced the 10 year long war in syria and still no end in sight a harsh winter and coronavirus of adding to the misery and the death toll so what's the future for syria this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program i'm peter doppie now the war in syria is heading into its 11th year marking more than a decade of fighting and with no sign it is coming to an end the conflict has

displaced millions of people and killed around $500000.00 and it's also torn syria into rival areas controlled by different groups backed by regional or international players and the country is also now facing a surge in covert 19 casey is an economic crisis and new u.s. sanctions targeting the government of president bashar al assad all this is left the situation increasingly desperate for syrians who remain in the country and many of those who have sought shelter elsewhere around 6600000 have fled the country since the war began while another 6100000 displaced inside syria the u.n. is calling it the worst manmade disaster since world war 2 in november the u.n. said urgent relief aid was required for at least 3000000 people particularly in the provinces of it lip and aleppo many don't have adequate shelter heating fuel or even blankets to help them survive the winter with

a 9300000 people are suffering from food insecurity up by almost one and a half 1000000 compared to last year and the number of children going hungry is now more than 4 and a half 1000000. for more on that let's bring in our guests today here on inside story in washington we have kynan ramani advocacy manager of the syria campaign a human rights organization in milton keynes in the u.k. after rector of the nurses say middle east focus think tank also in the united states in oklahoma we have joshua landis director of the center for middle east studies and sandra mckay at the university of oklahoma gentlemen welcome to you all kenan ramani coming to you 1st there in washington is any one side actually winning the war in syria as off today well as we sit here today you know almost 10 years after syrians to to streets protesting for democracy and basic human rights i

think what we can all agree on is that the syrian people have lost the most 500000 people have been killed as a result of the unrestrained taliban regime and you know i don't think anyone can say that there's a winner in all of this the assad regime is still the same corrupt brutal regime there was 10 years ago it's taking control now of nearly 60 percent syrian territory but but this isn't just about the military is about their immense human suffering in loss of life there is a result of the regimes unwillingness to can see even the most basic human race its own people america in milton keynes there in the u.k. this going current us administration is kind of gone silent on syria in the past few months but it has up to 3 or 4 months ago liked to tout its gains its successes

against eisel will those gains stay in place. well i don't think it was gains against isis or i so it was against against the syrian population the the normal or the average salary has has become one overall 30 of what it was prior to the to the crises and that is mainly because of the sanctions the incremental sanctions have just been to syria in the past few weeks and it's really horrendous people cannot find means you know to to stay alive let alone all the current of endemic or whatever so we don't think up a person they don't think that the united states ever had ice hits as its 1st priority in syria now till till now in the east now they just want their own geopolitical influence they could see the russians coming in and they want to oppose that which is fine but this is happening at the expense now a lot of syrians and they are suffering joshua landis there in oklahoma bill

roebuck who may not go back he's currently u.s. envoy he said in the past week or so that the humanitarian situation is and i quote under control what we're seeing of syria today doesn't look like a human it's a situation a humanitarian situation that is under control you know it's it's not under control and in fact bill roebuck in a long interview today made it very clear that there is huge amounts of damage she said in the northeast where america has a real influence. he said cutting off reconstruction and. has been terrible for that area he said many people see the united states the coalition. s. responsible for withdrawing without rebuilding and he said that agriculture is the main basis for the economy there and he said tons of irrigation and other infrastructure has been destroyed and it hasn't been rebuilt and this is

a situation across syria and as your other guest said the sanctions although they're not the primary reason for the devastation clearly they they just are they're very hard to rebuild syria with these sanctions i think the u.s. policy you know they'll have to be a real re-evaluation of what's going on in the policy of europe and the united states toward syria because as long as it can't rebuild lebanon's economy is going to be weak jordan is weak and iraq is going to be weak the entire region needs syria to be rebuilding and as long as it's being punished like this there won't be rebuilding in the entire region in milton keynes coming back to you can we talk i mean i guess is kind of country about areas to do with the syrian conflict that lead directly to the humanitarian tragedy the people would say because there are supports an all of the peace efforts such as it is that they all

positives point number one the u.s. has managed to keep the s.d.f. mainly in the main on board but only because the s.d.f. reacted in a known predictable way to action that the united states wanted to take on the ground in syria. i didn't get any well i don't get exactly what you're aiming at. is there if a specific example where you could verify that question isn't quite a fight with because donald trump signaled very clearly ok actually we will stay in syria. yeah well fair enough. basically the united states it's not about the s.d.f. it's is just about making use of a situation where they can counter the united states that is they could counter a russian influence or russian increasing influence they don't want to leave syria

to be all rosy for russian so that they don't expand more into the middle east which is traditionally a u.s. territory now the s.d.f. are being used obviously as the years are are happy with the support they are getting from the united states but they need to realize that their own project doesn't bode well with the rest of the syrians the whole or the entire notion of having one ethnicity or one group of people being specific or more specific about their country than everybody else is so devastating in syria and there are all sorts of hidden issues that we cannot really see because the arabs in that area are feeling very nervous and one could argue it is because of the american presence over there that the arabs are not causing so much trouble once the american presence is out there and it could be of the biden administration it could be later on we don't know this could actually have a back they could actually have a backlash so is the united states did the united states do

a very good job over there i could argue from the rest of syria's point of view all they did is to prevent the syrian people from their bread and butter the syrian people cannot extract oil they cannot get wheat they cannot insufficient that is. quantities and they have now to import what they were exporting 10 years earlier and this has really added to the problems that the people are having and the whole notion of it i would argue again is that people need to disengage from the government so the whole sanctions isn't punishing the acid regime. it's about drawing people or pushing people to the limit so that they can disengage or they would disengage from their government and i personally cannot see that happening anywhere so you can ramani in washington has a marker in milton keynes there hit on another reality here and just in the past

week or so your thorough sees in damascus is saying we're going to have to stop fuel distribution by one quarter so that's that's making people's lives even worse than they were before and you're talking about an economy that's highly centralized if you're in damascus you're ok in effect you're ok if you're outside damascus any place else in the country that has a major impact on how you exist and how you live day to day. well certainly there is a huge humanitarian suffering right now in the economy though the budget for 2021 is just a little under one 3rd of what it was this year is around 33000000000 dollars last year is around $9000000000.00 definitely the syrian economy is reeling after almost 10 years of war but let's not forget this is because the syrian government decided to destroy around 40 percent of its own infrastructure decided to displaced more

than half of its own population and forced millions of people take refuge outside the country the syrian pound was plummeting last year when the regime decided to launch an offensive into its lead and potentially force the displacement of 3000000 people who live in the northwest part of the country so these are decisions that are being taken again and again by his union regime to prioritise not giving the syrian people any allan's of their basic human rights forcing any kind of opposition and descent into its dungeons where people are still to this day arrested and tortured and raped in syrian prison cells these are the decisions of the syrian government and the international community must continue to step up to provide humanitarian assistance to help those who are in the most need but their primary responsibility for all this falls on the assad regime and its allies kosher

at just about to a point that you mentioned earlier about lebanon on is bashar al assad's plan basically to sit tight he's overseeing a country where half the population has been displaced big parts of the country are not under his control there's a fiscal crisis in lebanon and iran is on the more and more sanctions and a lot if not all of the syrian oil that he needs in damascus comes from or through iran. yes you know it's not going anywhere he's fought this war in order to win unfortunately syria is you know as we know is extremely divided along ethnic and sectarian regional lines to so wait you're iraq and lebanon are and no one group is going to lay down their arms because they fear they're going to be slaughtered and that's what we've been seeing going on in syria now for the last 10 years and he's not going to lay down his arms now that he's largely won this war and the international community unfortunately is going to have to deal with him as as the

arabs are as well and you know the united states and europe has thought that putting more and more economic pressure on assad is going to force him to lay down his arms and to accept the opposition into government but that we clearly could see is not going to happen and that leaves the international community with a terrible dilemma do they want to continue the sanctions we know what the result will be it will be just like it was on iraq in the 1990 s. where almost half a 1000000 people died from sanctions according to the u.n. investigators and and that's that dilemma you know in many ways the west has lost this war to. you know to overturn the assad regime and to punish iran and to push back russia and. where do we go from here can they accept

this and begin to to bring diplomacy back you know which i think is the only way forward and of course people don't want to do that and we're in this to the syrian people are suffering as a result because this is really gotten out of their hands and it's become an intractable international struggle for power and that's that's the dilemma we face today america there was just to go back to that idea of the international community stepping up as it were there was an international e.u. donor conference at the end of last year late last year but with minimal russian and turkish involvement if the international community is going to turn up and do the right thing by the people who have suffered so much how can that happen if the russians and the turks in effect look the other way for the duration of another conference where russia and turkey will come to that conference i seriously doubt it i think you know the international community lives in 2 worlds you have russia

and turkey cooperating a lot on what is happening in syria let us not forget that since the they launched the estonia process in 2717 of the bloodshed has gone down. there is a lot of stability and so on but the west so to speak the europeans and especially the americans and especially with the latest a relation called the caesar act they stepped up sanctions and the stanchions are biting and they are going to bite even it is a bit more but let me go back to some of the notions that your good guests the gentleman. pointed out well 1st of all i think lots of people do not probably realize that there is something that is called the acid constituency i either people who from day one refused to participate either to participate in the revolution. or to speak or act. she stood against it and those people took that decision because they for betrayed be better not for that for the government not to

fall down their calculus doesn't change it would be very hard for them to convince to convince them it would be very hard to convince them that if assad goes now that everything's going to be great so the pressure that is being mounted on them unbearable pressure that is is going to lead nowhere moreover out of them feel that they have suffered a lot that they have lost so many loved ones so as to keep their position in what ever syria is they're not going to concede on things let me give you an example and going back to what mr landis said it's not only sectarian lines and actually i would argue against that it's pretty much all societies have been split in half take hold off for example which is the eastern area rural area around damascus now this has gone back to government control last year there is nothing to suggest there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest. that people in that area at this moment

in time would want those who fled to italy to come back why because at the beginning. there were a lot of people who you know they were like middle class they were ok with the government they just lived ok and the marginalized they made an uprising against them and things are not easy this you could see this in there are you could see this in is the older you could see this in aleppo versus all so it's urban versus rule it's within all societies so those people do not want to give up what they thought that they gained through hard work and let us remember that this constituency isn't around ethnic lines or sectarian lies it's each society within itself so how to solve that it's not easy at all it's to keep punishing those people and tell them that is the bad choice and unless you do something about it you go into a fresh uprising or whatever it is you know your life are going to be worse when

they know that their lives are going to be worse if the government falls and all hell breaks loose again then i think they are being punished without a reason ok let's just go back to ramani in washington is there 2 other 2 factors coming together here factor number one there's a political malays outside syria those people that would be involved or were involved in the geneva peace process and also the istana process and that malays is coming together with contrived inertia on the part of al assad. well i think what we can all agree on is that the international community has to step up more to reach a political solution in syria that ends all of the brutality we've seen from the past 10 years and also ends the humanitarian situation in the economic situation that we're seeing today there needs to be a transition to a more inclusive government in damascus that not have the participation of those

who have committed heinous war crimes against their own people and there has to be reconstruction vestment from you know primarily the west the united states europe to make serious suitable once again for its own citizens in for refugees to be able to return there but i just want to you know point out one thing when you know we're talking about the sort of what i hear the previous guest cough talked about is general that this is an area in which the essid regime had just each over 1000000 people for years was not been allowing you and humanitarian trust into that area for 8 years this isn't this the same place where the as it regime launched sarin gas attacks in 2013 it killed over 1000 people so it's not as if this is an international conflict now it's you know people are divided and they're same sions this is this is the result of the essid regimes brutality use of chemical weapons

detaining innocent people and torturing them in prisons dropping barrel bombs on hospitals and there is the consequence is now that you know that. that as a regime is taking control of these areas it is much more difficult to find a solution when the government is responsible for this scale of atrocities and war crimes just all around us in oklahoma instability in the context of syria is a by word for more death more destruction more displacement more people being detained more people being tortured clearly stability will not come out of a military process whether it's militia fighting militia or anyone else involved in the military conflict has got to be diplomatic slash political who will drive who will drive that bus towards stability not instability you know.

this statement that these are the consequences that syria is facing i don't think is a productive way to look at this because nobody is going to drive political change in syria today from outside the country the united states has largely washed its hands of syria and russia and iran it made it clear that they're not going to pressure assad to step down from power. and that that's the dilemma there is not going to be political major political change in the region not in jordan not in lebanon not in iraq and not in syria all of these governments have resisted change and despite efforts on the united states in an international coalition to bring about regime change preval regime change and a freedom agenda as president bush brought about and reform of the greater middle east it's not happened in fact what's happened is the united states helped to kick

off a terrible civil war in in both iraq and syria and now libya and other places because in a search for this democracy where the united states didn't find enough partners and clearly got spooked by the syrian opposition which turned out to be much more islamist and not democratic. and the number of democrats unfortunately was too few to to really lead the opposition in a united movement for democracy none of the slogans in the beginning of the syrian civil war were for democracy ok josh you're going to cause you know because we're heading very quickly towards the end of the program i just want to get in a couple of final couple of final points and i woke up in milton keynes as of january the 1st this year an estimated 13600000 people in syria need ongoing humanitarian aid that's that's a hellish number but it's 2000000 more than this time last year so it's gone up by

2000000 in 12 months that's simply not sustainable mary start but you know ending on a positive note perhaps for everyone we can see some movement within the arab world . about finding some way or some half way meeting the syrian government halfway this is started in cairo i think like a couple of months back now are live with this and apparently those arabs are just talking to the syrian people you know where could we meet halfway and then probably the objective is or the initiative is is to take that sort of bundle into and put it in the hands of the new american administration and say look this is a stalemate nobody is going to reach anywhere you know because everybody is so much entrenched and the people are suffering can we move this a little bit about but again i would like to reiterate this very key point if you

just think of what keeps the syrian government on its feet and let's just call that the constituency and it is a mogul mation of lots of people lots of ethnic backgrounds but main interest for the government not to for nothing is going to happen until they are convinced in a solution the syrian government is not being able it will not be able to impose for. example every conciliation out of thin air with a supposed opposition or whatever nothing's going to happen until that group of people accepted and i'm going to give you a very swift example the syrian government because of the average family court finds itself at the moment in a very isolated situation and the natural thing to do is to go to hamas and the palestinians and try to mend bridges this is being blocked by the public opinion of that group of people i.e. this constituency and this is now intrusted this idea of rejoining with hamas is

entrusted to has and must follow the his will leader who happens to have some popularity a lot of popularity actually still inside syria but again it's not happening so at be using these groups of people who have personal issues with their neighbors with their others is the key thing and it's not going to happen soon unfortunately gentlemen we have to leave it there thank you to our guests keenan ramani our calf and joshua landis and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time via the website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter handle is a.j. the inside story for me feature dog and the team here in doha thanks for watching we will see you very soon for the moment.

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