were looking at us like a good eye contact policy. excellent. because i was like, hm-mm, i don't think the sectarian situation in syria either, at least not the core of the problem. consecutisectarianism is worse view, and i'll be brief because i want to hear from people in the audience and especially those who are from syria and bring to the discussion more organic material. so, i think sectarianism is worse when it overlaps with class. when that overlap takes place, whether manufactured or as a function of development of society approximat society, classes and regional rural patterns and so, it becomes explosive. just like saddam hussein

privileged the sunni community, it made the situations worse, but they have been made worse and turned into divisiveness, it causes problems that do not have to put people at each other's throats. we have seen it, different sects can come together and coexist, and they can be at each other's throats. there's a conception that it's different in the middle east, that there's something more indemic about sectarian divides, and that is a conflict. in the majority of books that have been produced on the region. specifically in political science creates a exceptional situation when it comes to the

the arab region specifically. i do not think it's a sectarian situation, i do think, however, that when you create divisions based on sects for the purpose of creating mechanisms of loyalty as the regime by narrowing the circle of leadership at the top or as you use minorityism to support your power, you'll increase sectarianism, and then when you massacre people from 10s of thousands and they happen to be from the other sect you'll put a stamp that is difficult to remove, a stamp of sectarianism, whether or not the regime is actually out there just to protect one or the other. the number of christians in syria and other minorities that support not necessarily the regime but the status quo, which can be conflicted with the

regime sometimes and sometimes they do support the regime. i am half syrian and my family in syria is split on the question of the regime and the question of the uprising. so, yes, it does play a role, but the role is a function of political policies and the overlap between these variables. let's not forget that before 1950s, the minorities were themselves excluded in the countryside, because they were not part of the urban sunni community establishment. unless we pay attention to the nuances, we will revert back to the policies. it does not mean that there's no secretary -- there's no sectarianism in the end. i would like to have more talk

about who is the opposition. because they will add for information that is probably organic. let me just say this, i want to stop here, what should we be supporting? i feel it's important to stop asking these questions as americans or those representing the american state, what we should be doing is a question that is very difficult and a problem and sometimes you know, sometimes depending on who is asking and where they are standing is hypocritical to ask, not out of academics but when our state officials are saying what should we be doing in the region? are you serious? i skipped a word, what should we be doing? we should westbound stopping dictat dictatorships in the region.

it's not a puzzle. we talk about pushing for a path of democracy while we are supporting the most extreme regimes in the region, we are supporting the state of israel with our own tax dollars what is this talk of what we should be doing, we should not support dictatorships and not crush a uprising against them. is this something that exists in the strat -- we are interested in compliance. if the complaint regime is not democrat accuraic fine. the syrian people are being massacred and i do not think

they will fare by any other group in the region. i will leave the other questions to my colleagues. >> um, i just want to say a few points about the opposition to the regime, i think that we should really keep in mind that the opposition to the regime has been going on for a long, long time, it's been from the time of assad. it's not only just that we have had the massacre and the insuergency since the late '80s. in total over the last 14 years, there's been 100,000 political prisoners. this has been a population or a country that has been resisting

nor the last 40 years. you would not end up with these figures. we have thousands and thousands and even after the massacres, i'm amazed that after that, we still found that there was the communist labor front that was completely picked up and by the mid '80s and so on and put in prison the whole lot of them. you know, many of them were allowies, syrians agrees and i think there's outside, they feel they will be different, the so-called western educated and whatever, and that was -- and when he installed and the so-called -- his speech, they will do things differently, people then took it seriously and went and organized the

forums and discussed how to liablize and democratize, and within a year all the leaders were in prison. we see the pat person contin-- continued. the end of 2004 and 2000 sk5 i doing research and the problem is, should we depend on the outside or will we be able to do it on our own. and in 2005, it looked like for a good part of those leaders and so on, intervention is going to take place in reference to the pun resol unresolved intervention. then also there's a continuous talk of conspiracies that there would be one army core or one leader against the other. i remember in 2005, that at the

end of the year the leader that committed suicide or was suic e suicidsuicid suicidsuicid suicided but anyway was getting out of the way. we have a continuous opposition of people continually being surpressed. let me say any experience with the young organizers, the facebook types, they thought in february, this is their chance, last year, if they don't jump on it now, it will not happen again. i remember them saying you are not ready. you do not have the infrastructure building that they had in egypt, and they saids in our chance and we will take it. i remember there was -- when one of the merchants was slapped by

a police officer, and then there was people protesting. syrians knew more than any outsider what the syrian regime was capable of. i remember them saying this will be worse than libya, and those same people are saying we didn't think they were going to be that bad. okay. so, yes, worse than libya but not imaginable. but you must put that in historical context, the regime that was capable of hamma and one of the stories was this merchant after leaving, what is happening with the merchants, why are they closing the market and so on and finally he said

because i think on his dead bed he called and said, if anything happens do hamma again, do hamma again. it's so central to the syrian imagination. they took the chance and this is what we are seeing. i think we are seeing violence in response to violence, they are wearing signs, think about what is happening to the so-called watchers, the collaborators with the regime, it's happening in an urban quarter that is supposed to be more urban and so on. that collaborators are getting liquidated everywhere. violence breeds violence, we will see more of it. there's no sectarianism, does not mean it cannot be

functionalized. others have used it and it was supported through various channels in lebanon, there's reasons we should be concerned about the increased violence, but we now have the cycles and i'm not sure what can be done about it. aagree with bassam, i'm not ready to give advice to any administration about what to do. i want to pose the question to the american administration and other powers acting in the region, what would they do if we had similar uprising in saudi a arabia, that is all? >> the saudi response this morning was that they would crush it with an iron fist. so there you go.

>> this is a bit of a digression, but the story of the u.s. engagement in the crushing of the uprisings is more n-- is more detailed than you stated it. the decision to step out was done with reluctance by american diplomats who were not at all pleased by the pressures from saudi arabia. there's differences of opinion and interpretation there. we can get into that later. for the opposition and so on. three key questions you posed. is it a viable counter part? do we need to wait until the

free syrian army is unified before we provide arms and support to the free syrian army and third, what is the impact of militarization on the political dynamics of the uprising and if militarization spreads is it likely to change the communities that have been essential to the support of if regime? i think we read over and over again in the media and we see examples of it on facebook and other locations of the depth and intensity of conflicts within the opposition. we have to be very careful how we read it and we have to be careful not to exaggerate, the extent to which increasingly coherent structures and protest activities are in fact taking

hold and are consolidating and beginning to cohere around a narrow set of forms for the management and governance of the uprising, we have on one hand the syrian national council, there are out liar groups related to older previous efforts to bring together opposition figures. within syria we have the national coordinating committee which took a more pro regime, and we have the local coordinating committees which are organized through, i don't know if -- but there's an effort to kind of forge more democratic frame works for governance of the local coordinating committees around syria and within the syrian national council itself, we saw, and it

was most evident in the first aassembly in late december in 2011, the want to acknowledge the concerns about representation and inclusion that had hinderred them in previous months. no one would claim that they act with -- without an enormous amount of mistakes and stumbling along the way, this notion of disarray and incoinheritance has to be properly framed. we have to recognize that there's a bit of a catch-22. for many reasons, including many very smart reasons the u.s., the eu, to some extent, arab governments have hold back or did hold back during the early

periods in which the opposition was emerging out of the conviction that it was critical to provide the space for an organic authentic syrian opposition to emerge and consolida consolidate, one that would not be laboring under the shadow that it was nothing more than an instrument of the west serve ina western or foreign agenda. and so for example, within the state department, there was a great deal of concern about any effort to reach out to the opposition. yet, what that created was a context in which an opposition whose origins we need to understand, as -- second time i did that, as rising out of a context in which any sort of political culture or society had

been brutally surpressed for years and a diasper was heavily political, now had to develop the kind of capacity for mobilization and engagement with the struggle to challenge the regime and to define an alternative future with very, very little on which to draw to assist in their efforts to do that. unlike in libya and egypt and other places where arab uprisings unfolded, it's building itself as a viable organization and cutting its teeth doing that and without much support or assistance from the u.s. or from other governments. so, you know, to the extent that we now look at the other

opposition grouping and identify short comings that raise questions in our mind about whether it's right for us to be engaging them as counter parts, my own view is that we need to recognize, i think, that there are opportunities and possibilities for the international community to engage with and support the syrian opposition, in ways that might actually help it to develop into the kind of counter part that we -- that we hope it would become. and i think, i think the fsa is a more complicated question, i think again, if we are to have any kind of meaningful discussion about strategies for providing support to the fsa, they must be done in a fashion where there's strong civilian oversight of the free syrian

army. the notion that we would create -- the viable challenger to the political wing of the syrian opposition strike mes me counter productive. i'll wrap it up there. [ applause ] >> all right. so, every single one of us except i'll note our -- we do not have a lot of time, i would like to take a few questions from the floor and then i'll give everyone a last word. why don't we start here. yeah, wait for the microphone, and keep them really brief. >> thank you very much. i have two questions first, it's what we are expecting? and how do you read the russian statement that they are not going to attend the conference

in syria and today they denounced that tunesian government was not invited to the conference? >> thank you. from the school in california, the question, a couple of the or actually all of the panelists spoke about the saudi and a little touch on iran, let's put them together, i think, you know, if i would like to have them address the idea that there's a lot of regional dimension and the struggle in syria that it is essential in the iranian/saudi conflict. saudi who lost in iraq are trying cut to the road to iranians and separate their influence between iraq and iran.

especially that they lost iran. and thank you for a great presentation. >> i have a question on the -- on the resolution and the u.n. if we get back to that for a minute. the -- the reaction to that, that i have heard and it's based more on popular press than academic press is that russia has personal ties to the assad family and they are more concerned about that than they are the syrian people and nobody could explain why this chinese joined the russians in the veto. it seemed obvious to me that the russians and chinese both go against interventions in

internal matters, what they consider internal matters because they do not want it used on them. so i wanted you to comment on that. >> we are going stop the questions. last final word quickly and then we will have to have wrap up at 2:00. >> i hope others jump in on this as well. py any in terms of the tunesia conference, this is largely an agenda setting meeting with one principal -- with one principal item on the agenda and that is to organize a division of labor among the states that endorse a political transition in syria about which governments will undertake, which roles in engagement with the syrian opposition, i think this is a frame work that has as one of its principal aims to annoint

the syrian opposition through a frame work a broader range of political governments will try to achieve their objectives, that is a switch from a few weeks ago when international institutions were to provide those arenas to achieve those efforts. there's differences in how government, in the sense of governments about appropriate strategies for engaging the strategies, tus is not prepared to provide weapons to the opposition, it's less clear that arab league governments, especial approximately saudi arabia and katar are equally reluctant to provide weapons. what we are seeing is the elements of a struck customer put in place through which the friends group will organize themselves with the syrian

opposition. i would look for that to be a baseline objective or goal to come out of the meeting. if it doesn't, i think we have to ask questions about the efficiency of the friends group as a vehicle in secures a jeem change. in terms of russia -- what? you know, we will set a side the rest of your question. in terms of the resolution at the u.n., chinese and russian motivations. there's a long standing strategic partnership between russia and syria that i think was an important part of their decision to veto, that is far less meaningful in the chinese case, the chinese expressed support for the arab league resolution and told the friends group that they would support the arab league resolution that they voted against in the

security council in just a few weeks ago. it had a great deal to do with principals of global government and the maintenance of international order in which they are determined to prevent the west from organizations for oversight of global governments. if you read this altrticle, the are chinese spokesmen who make the case, there are underlying principals of global governance at stake in this vote and we expressed our views on that and not permitting the west to define this for the international community p that is why they back tracked so quickly in this period immediately following that vote. and i will leave it at that. i want to thank all of you for your time and attention.

i am afraid i need to rush back to the u.s. institute of peace. >> i have to rush back as well. not to the institute of peace, to the george mason university. i really -- okay i'll just -- which questions are we addressing? all of them? >> whatever you want. >> so on iran, yes, plets bring in iran and all the players, regional and international, the issue is not in a sense not just iran, not iran, the issue is that there's an expectation or an interpretation that makes this about syria and about dictatorship and about the opposition kmr opposition, which is the case, and this is true, and they make it only about this, and the response that i've been trying to say, it's not just about dictatorship and the opposition, i've been writing against dictatorship and against the syrian regime for many, many

years and i wrote against the iraq regime. the point is here, the question of syria is -- we are pretending that this is just about syria, it's about syria but it's also about a very important hurdle in the middle east to achieve a renewed domination or what have you and the objestacle is hezbollah and iran. the target of the attack is a resistance to any form of rule at the state level in the region. that is what is not being discussed. there are two major camps in the region now, the one camp which can be called the resistance camp is manifested by three actors, and a lot of people who

support resistance in the region against arab countries domination as well as israel do not necessarily support the syrian regime or the iranian theocratic regime and not necessarily hezbollah, so it's important for us to not take this at face value as i shared and look at what is motivating a lot of people to support the syrian regime or the status quo in syria and try to oppose the opposition, but there are things at stake that are making the trade off horrible. most of the people in the region do not support the syrian regime and also, do not support what is now being worked up regionally and internationally to move the process to some sort of co