>> i am happy to look at what my friend says. he is a real champion for the low paid. people who want to work hard and improve their circumstances. taking people out of taxes was helpful. we should look at national insurance. the priority is to help small businesses take people on. it is worth recognizing that three quarters of those jobs are full-time jobs. the country is getting stronger. the economy is improving. more people are getting into work and went to encourage that. >> order. >> europe and watching prime minister's questions from the british house of commons. at 7:00every wednesday a.m. eastern when parliament is in session and on sunday night at 9:00 p.m. on c-span. watch any time at www.c-span.org

where you can find video of past episodes and other british a look affairs. -- public affairs. >> of the next washington journal, we will talk about the week ahead in washington. our guess are democrats strategist -- our guests are democrat strategist and republican strategist. we have jimmy gold. later a discussion on how the fbi plans to deal with the budget cuts under sequestration. live at 7:00urnal a.m. on c-span. >> one thing that is interesting but not import in 1995 was a certification of mobile devices. all of these devices, literally hundreds that americans have and

you can see them as easy stamp because what is sure they do not interfere with each other. back in 1995, there were not that many mobile phones going through the process. now it is really important. you have a huge battle between apple and samsung and motorola and others. they need that certification. they have billions of dollars in advertising. suddenly, the plans get delayed. as a real cost. >> we have had several budget disputes. they stem from the budget act of 1974. this occurs almost every year. the price that goes on. this,t after 40 years of we still are not very good at figuring it out how to operate the government. as the effects of the government shutdown on the fcc on "the communicators."

c-span competition asks what is the most import issue congress should consider in 2014? make documentaries showing various points of view and include c-span video. to alltest is open middle and high school students with a prize of $5,000. we have doubled the number of winners and prices. for more information, visit steenkamp -- studentcam.org. of the syrianmber opposition on the civil war. the special representative to the united states for the national coalition of syrian revolution and opposition services. this is one hour and 15 minutes.

>> good morning. let me ask everyone to take seats. maybe close the doors in the back. welcome to johns hopkins. my name is daniel seward, the professor of conflict management here at the middle eastern scholars institute and it is decisively a pleasure to welcome our guest. he comes with an impeccable pedigree of support for the democracy in syria, a pedigree that includes the imprisonment

of friends, emigration to the united states to avoid his own imprisonment and getting his masters in phd -- and phd at the city university of new york. becoming a visiting professor and associate at the university of arkansas teaching middle east politics. but also engagement with many syrian efforts to transition the country from what has been a brutal and long-lasting dictatorship to something more worthy of the seriousn citizen. -- of the syrian citizen. you -- i welcome him. we will speak for about 15 minutes and then we will go to q&a.

>> thank you for the opportunity to address you about i think one of the most important political issues of our time and that is syria. again, i will try to take about 15 minutes just to present some points and then use these points for an opportunity to hear from you and engage in a discussion. let me start by introducing the syrian coalition. and then talk about challenges and maybe highlight specific challenges and conclude with the coalition vision of how to end the conflict. the syrian coalition was developed in 2012 and it was

maybe the second wave of organization by the serious that spidey syrian opposition to -- by the syrian opposition to speak for the syrians who want change in syria. from the name the coalition , itself is made up of several groups. some of them are political groups with a long history like the muslim brotherhood, others like the damascus declaration movement, and another is a homegrown movement in 2005 and 2008 and most of those individuals were arrested, spent years in prison and many had to leave the country after the revolution. and there were individual activists like myself. i think we decided to have a better connection with the inside as the situation was

developing in syria. so we included groups like the local council that was created shortly before they were trying to provide services and governance to those liberated areas. the coalition went through now the second and third phase. it had the first president, a very charismatic figure who served these first-term. the second president was elected last summer. and we went to an expansion of the coalition. the idea of the coalition was supposed to be a kind of legislative body that could create an executive branch which would handle the challenges of the revolution. and can in fact provide a governing party -- a governing body for the liberated areas.

creating a new body known as the smc, the supreme military council, headed general adris who would become the head of the moderate forces in the syrian army. the free syrian army would be represented. again, this is a brief history of the coalition in terms of its structure and vision. of course, the vision is similar to those previous creations, like the syrian national council, which is to move syria from a multiparty system into a state ruled by law and into an inclusive free and democratic syria. in addition to that, think it is

a good idea to talk about some work that we have been doing in the meantime since the revolution began in march 2011. we thought very hard about issues of transition, how to deal with the questions of maintaining law and order in the post aside era -- post-assad era. we have 2 projects. it provided details, vision in all of those areas. and all of those programs have been in fact endorsed, embraced by the coalition. just to mention a few challenges facing the coalition and have the coalition envisioned an end to the conflict. one of the first challenges facing the coalition is the

humanitarian area. this is something we were faced with in the syrian national council. many of us are human rights activists and we find ourselves always spending a lot of time and energy dealing with the humanitarian situation. if you haven't followed the latest figures on that, we have more than 2.5 million refugees since the beginning of this conflict. but the most serious figure is the internally displaced syrians. this has passed the 5 million mark. as you can imagine, with all the assistance we are getting from the international community, from neighboring countries, syrian communities everywhere, those efforts have not in fact been able to match the need of those refugees. i heard a figure from osha saying that only 7% have been addressed.

been addressed. this continues to be a serious challenge facing us. i know, for instance, the first money received in the coalition, 93% of that figure went for humanitarian assistance. that has always been a very urgent matter that we have to face. i could just give you the latest problem we have in the humanitarian area. the area that the regime used the chemical weapons against, we have about 1.8 million syrians trapped and don't have access to food. they don't have access to medicine. and they have been appealing to us, to the international community, to do something. there have been reports about eating leaves. i saw somewhere that there was a religious kind of ruling, fatwa, that people could eat dogs and cats. it is a very terrible situation.

one of the things that has been contacting the international situation, the un and come friends, everybody, is to allow immediate access to those areas. this is something that has been going on for the last two or three weeks. that is challenge number one. challenge number two is the challenge of radicalization in syria. this aspect has received much more attention in the media. it is a serious concern to us. and it is a serious challenge. to understand the complex issue, we need to remind everyone that this revolution began peaceful, so -- similar to egypt and tunisia. but what really led to the militarization of the revolution was the fact that the regime never for a day stopped killing of these peaceful protesters. first, they were using snipers.

there were assassinations. and the regime tried to keep the tabs below 20. on friday, the numbers would go up. it was the defection of officers and soldiers from the army, young people had had enough and they decided to carry weapons in self-defense and that led to the militarization of this revolution. it is mostly the byproduct of the syrian army, the syrian state. they were supporting the idea of a democratic and inclusive syria. i think there were several missed opportunities to the international community, especially the friends did not step up their support of that. that created a vacuum in which we started to see the inflow of extremists came they came from neighboring countries. they came from everywhere.

if you remember, again, last year, a year ago, there were a few of those extremists. but now they are growing in numbers. the reason for that has to do with the perception among many syrians that the international community has not been supportive. the continued brutality of syrians, which is unbelievable. the regime has gone from guns to scud missiles and bombs from world war ii to bomb civilian areas, that is an environment that creates that kind of extreme -- a lot of people turn to it and turned to extremists. that led to the further

radicalization. some of those groups came and were well organized, well armed, effective and they attractive syrians. of course not, we now have the more extremist group called isis which is from the extremist group from iraq. the good thing that is happening is that local communities are turning against these extremist groups is pursuing they are trained to impose their vision on communities. but the threat is very serious and we take it, again, very seriously. that is why i believe two things can in fact stop this trend. number one is to find a quick political solution that would end the killing. number two is to move on to the creation and strengthening of the moderate forces within the frisian army. another has to do with providing governance for the liberated areas. as you know, a large areas

outside of the control of the syrian regime. but the national council could not provide serious services for those areas. it was filled by the free syrian army and some provided by peaceful activists and they created local councils. local councils vary in terms of safeco station -- terms of sophistication. they are trying to fill that vacuum. in the coalition, we thought that the creation of an interim government is necessary. we went through first nominating a person for the job. that didn't really work through. but lately, again, another person was nominated, an activist from the list of --

from the inside to form the interim government that would then create service-oriented small executive bodies -- i don't want to say the word ministries -- maybe in order to do that. in the next meeting of the coalition, that will be presented and we wish these individuals would move into the liberated areas, technocrats that can provide services. the last point and i will end here, how do we envision an end to this conflict. we supported every political initiative that was introduced. specifically, the arab league initiatives early on that called for a kind of yemeni like solution where it would lead to the creation of a transitional government and then into a

democratic system. we endorsed those ideas at one point when the arab league sent observers. we supported that when the u.n. sent observers. the arab league solution was presented to the u.n. and was vetoed by russia, unfortunately. but i think political solution continues to try to present some kind of transition. that is where the geneva communiqué of 2012 comes in. at the time, the geneva to indicate had some positives. when they met last may and decided to hold a geneva two conference, we thought that this could in fact present an opportunity to end this conflict. number one, there should be in fact a clarity about the

expected outcome of this process and for us is the transition to democracy. we won't talk about power- sharing. we are not point to talk about rehabilitating the assad regime. that is the essence of the communiqué of geneva. we talked about the creation of a transitional government with full executive authority including military security, all of those powers that existed in the presidency currently and then leading into a transitional period and then to an election. from our point of view, we believe that we need the support of key countries in the region. and we want their endorsement. that is why, during the meetings, the leadership had in new york, with different members of the international community, including our friends, we insisted that countries like turkey, saudi arabia, qatar, all of those countries would support

our going to geneva. and we wanted the u.n. eventually to provide some guarantee that there would be a implementation of any arrangements, including maybe the need for some peacekeeping forces. from all points of view and we go through this with an understanding of not a when we say assad should not be part of the process, that is not a precondition. any political solution must begin with as out -- with assad stepping down. this is how the conflict can end and end soon. that would open the door for transitional justice and for syria moving into a democracy. i would be glad to take any questions. >> thank you very much.

you have answered so many of my questions. the question on conflict management, if you want to geneva, if you even got what you are asking for out of geneva, which is a democratic transition, would you be able to deliver on what you need to deliver on, which is to name the layers. -- the players could do you have control of the situation that would enable you to be with the regime would certainly be looking for, which is an interlocutor? >> this is a difficult task ahead of us, knowing the structure of the free syrian army.

but we need to consolidate the free syrian army in a way that would strengthening the smc and create more of a professional institution that is in protecting the entry rather than being loyal to one entity. i think the challenge is to control of the extremist groups. we don't recognize them. we don't work at them. but all efforts should be between now and then to weaken and isolate these groups. that is what we have been doing in coordination with the smc. we believe that the difficulty with the isis, because those guys have been engaged in a war against the free syrian army. they have been taking over areas.

we believe, i mean, we don't believe that this is isolated from the regime and many of those individuals were trained by the syrian regime to kill americans in iraq. this is the genesis of isis. even some factions of the free syrian army would benefit from the support of the neighboring countries. then it can happen. but it will not be 100% for control. if we are able to control most, then you're able to deliver at least your site in then the rest can be out there. >> question. please stand up. i don't see a microphone. >> that's ok. i might. >> the problem is for the recording. if you could go to the microphone, thanks.

i should have noted that before and few people can go to the microphone who want to ask questions. please do introduce yourself first. can i obtain a copy of that vision? thank you. >> it is a project called "the day after" and it is available online. if you search, you can find the whole document. a few words about it -- it is a project that lasted eight or nine months. there was a participation of 50 or 60 syrians. they were divided into working groups and addressed areas like law and order, transitional justice, constitutional design, and justice. we provided recommendations for now and after the transition.