DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN'S REMARKS AT RECEPTION COMMEMORATING SYRIAN UPRISING

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Reception to Commemorate the Fourth Anniversary of the Syrian Uprising
Remarks
Antony J. Blinken
Deputy Secretary of State
Washington, DC
March 13, 2015

Thank you very much. And, I’m really grateful that all of you could be here, and grateful too for the extraordinary work that Daniel’s been doing every single day. No one has been working harder, no one has been trying harder, no one has been pushing us harder than Daniel to try to get to a better place on this incredibly challenging and incredibly heart wrenching situation that we face in Syria. So thank you.

I’m glad to see everyone here today, but I especially want to say welcome to the dedicated representatives of the Syrian opposition and the Syrian-American diaspora community.

Your leadership, your persistence, your strength in the face of relentless hardship and struggle have given hope to countless Syrians through four long and deeply, deeply tragic years. And, this is an occasion, as somber as it is, to honor your efforts and to honor your commitment.

This anniversary marks the moment when peaceful calls for freedom and dignity were met with bullets and barrel bombs.

When Assad went to war against his own people and lay siege to a proud nation’s rich history and heritage.

Four years ago, Syria was a middle class country of engineers and scholars; of scientists and entrepreneurs; of doctors and teachers.

Today, whole neighborhoods have been bombed out of existence; eleven million people have been forced to flee their communities. In all, nearly half of Syria’s pre-war population has been displaced.

Parents have been robbed of their children; and children have been robbed of their future. In a nation with a strong tradition of education, one of the most heart wrenching things, of the many heart wrenching things, is to know that so many of Syria’s school-aged boys and girls have not been able to step foot in a classroom for more than three years.

Four-fifths of Syrians are now living below the national poverty line. Life expectancy has been reduced by 20 years—from 79 years in 2010 to 55 last year.

And, as you know better than anyone, this humanitarian catastrophe is exacerbated further still by the Assad regime’s intentional and deadly obstruction of life-saving aid.

The regime leverages food and water as a weapon of war. It removes medical and surgical supplies from humanitarian convoys, even as those shipments are authorized for delivery.

The United States holds the Assad regime accountable for these abhorrent actions that violate our most basic humanitarian principles and terrorize the Syrian people every single day.

In this vast sea of suffering, we are grateful for the bravery and commitment that each of you and the organizations that you represent have brought to bear.

Tireless efforts embody that the spirit of compassion and volunteerism that is at the very core our common values. And for that reason, I want to especially recognize Dr. Zaher Sahloul and the Syrian American Medical Society for your truly heroic work to provide medical care inside of Syria. Doctor, are you here? Please.

We’re privileged to support, in ways that we can your work, and we know the extraordinary risks that you and your colleagues face to save lives every single day.

Just yesterday, I was looking at a report that over 600 medical staff have been killed in Syria—97 percent of them by the regime. This is a devastating statistic for a country that once prided itself on its medical education. And indeed, one of Syria’s great exports before the war, were doctors, including doctors to this country, to the United States.

I would also like to recognize, if I may, Ms. Mirna Barq and the Syrian American Council—and also Dr. Yehya Basha and the Coalition for a Democratic Syria—for your tremendous activism and service as an educational resource for the American people and for our government.

We stand with you in your efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people, just as we stand with the activists, local leaders, and members of the opposition who fight for peace, who fight for justice, and for a comprehensive political solution to the conflict.

Today, I can announce a modest step forward that the Administration is working with Congress to provide nearly $70 million in new foreign assistance to continue our full range of support to the moderate Syrian opposition.

With this additional funding, the United States will have committed nearly $400 million to support the opposition since the start of the revolution. And in two weeks, we will again step up to pledge generously at the conference in Kuwait to fund humanitarian assistance for displaced Syrians and refugees in neighboring states.

So, today, even as we commemorate this fourth anniversary, we all know one thing – it’s four anniversaries too many.

This is a time to pause and to honor and remember those who have sacrificed everything to usher in a better future for their country and their fellow citizens.

We remain committed, as challenging and as difficult as it is, to help Syrians obtain their future through a genuine political solution to the conflict.

We’re committed to degrading and defeating ISIL, which has found fertile ground in this chaos—hijacking the cause of the Syrian people to advance its own agenda and its own agenda of terror.

And we pledge to continue to work together—as partners—to end this war, restore a nation, allow it to welcome home its citizens, respects their rights, and brighten their futures.

Let me just conclude by saying this. These statistics are powerful. They tell us a lot. We try to make sense of them. We try to digest them. But, behind every single statistic is a human being. And I know for the people in the room, these human beings are your friends, your family, your loved ones. And, nothing we can say or do can fully express the pain I know all of you feel every day when faced with this conflict and this tragedy. And I know, too, the tremendous frustration that I would imagine virtually all of you feel at the fact that we are four years in, and it endures. It is a small consolation that many of us share that same frustration, that we continue, as Daniel said, to work at this every day, and we will continue to work at it every day until we get it right.

Thank you. Thank you for everything you’re doing.

GENEVA II CONFERENCE ON SYRIA: SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS

FROM:  STATE DEPARTMENT 
Intervention at the Geneva ll International Conference on Syria
Intervention
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Montreux, Switzerland
January 22, 2014

Thank you very much, Secretary Ban, and thank you, Ambassador Brahimi, for your commitment to helping the Syrian people find a new future. And I join with Foreign Minister Lavrov in thanking all of the countries around the table, all of the groups around the table. I thank President Burkhalter and the people of Switzerland for making this important meeting possible. And I thank the Russian Federation and Foreign Minister Lavrov for his cooperation and efforts together with us, working to try to initiate this process. I also want to welcome the leaders of the Syrian opposition, and I thank them for the courageous decision they’ve made. Everybody here knows the pressures that have existed.

Today is a beginning. It’s a beginning of what will obviously be a tough and complicated negotiation; peace talks to end a war and to end a struggle like this always are tough. Frankly, this is a test for all of us who support the Syrian people in their effort to end the extraordinary suffering that the world has witnessed, and which continues. And it is a test of the global community’s ability to come together and ultimately secure a Syria where people can live in dignity and not in fear.

I want to start by saying that I think it is impressive, I think it is significant in and of itself, that so many countries have come together, even though we know it’s for one day that all the countries will be here in this forum. But all of them have come together because everybody understands how critical it is for the world to prove that we have the ability to make a difference in this kind of a conflict.

Now, lost in the daily reports of violence is the fact that this revolution did not begin as an armed resistance. This started peacefully. It was started by schoolboys in Daraa who are armed only with graffiti cans, citizens who were peacefully and legitimately calling for change. And they were met almost immediately with violence. When their parents came out to protest the arrest of the children, 120 people died. That was the beginning.

And tragically, the Assad regime answered peaceful demonstration after peaceful demonstration with ever-increasing force. In the three years since then, this conflict has now left more than 130,000 dead, and it’s hard to count accurately. We all know that. The fact is that these people have been killed by guns, by tanks, by artillery, by gas, by barrel bombs, by Scud missiles. They’ve been killed by weapons almost exclusively of the magnitude not possessed by the opposition. Starvation has been used as a weapon of war. And most recently, we have seen horrific reports of systematic torture and execution of thousands of prisoners. This is an appalling assault, not only on human lives, but on human dignity and on every standard by which the international community tries to organize itself, recognizing the horrors of the humanitarian catastrophe that has unfolded, the destabilization of neighboring countries, and the endless exile of refugees.

As a result, the international community came together 18 months ago to support the Syrian people as they sought to change course. Now, this has taken a lot longer than many of us wanted to bring everyone together. But we have come here determined as ever to implement the Geneva communique. Sergey Lavrov just mentioned the Geneva communique; I reiterate the Geneva communique. And the Geneva communique can only be implemented through the concerted efforts of everybody in this room. Millions of people are relying on the international community’s ability to help find a solution that can save their lives and their country. And we see only one option: a negotiated transition government formed by mutual consent.

Now, we need to deal with reality here. We really need to deal with reality. Mutual consent, which is what has brought us here, for a transition government means that that government cannot be formed with someone that is objected to by one side or the other. That means that Bashar Assad will not be part of that transition government. There is no way – no way possible in the imagination – that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain the legitimacy to govern. One man and those who have supported him can no longer hold an entire nation and a region hostage. The right to lead a country does not come from torture, nor barrel bombs, nor Scud missiles. It comes from the consent of the people. And it’s hard to imagine how that consent could be forthcoming at this point in time.

So just as there could be no place for the perpetrator of this violence, there could also be no place for the thousands of violent extremists who spread their hateful ideology and worsen the suffering of the Syrian people. And as we hear talk about terrorism today, make no mistake: It is the presence of the current intransigence within the existing government that makes this problem worse. That is creating a magnet for terrorists. And until a transition takes place, there is no prayer of reducing the increase of terrorism.

There is another way forward. We all know it. It is what this conference is organized around. It is the Geneva communique, which has the support of the international community as a peaceful roadmap for transition. And the only thing standing in its way is the stubborn clinging to power of one man, one family. I believe the alternative vision of the Syrian people is one that can gather the respect and support of people all around the world. It is a place that doesn’t force people to flee or live in fear, a Syria that protects the rights of every group. We have not only an opportunity, but we have an obligation to find a way forward so that the people of Syria can choose their leadership, know peace, and for 9 million refugees, finally be able to return home in dignity.

My final comment is this: There are, in this room, all of the players who have the ability, with the exception of one or two, to have an impact on the choices that are made here. People who are supporting different groups are here. These people have the ability to affect the outcome. And if we put our common energies together, we can forge a resolution that can provide peace to the region and peace to the people of Syria. And I hope we will succeed.

U.S. ANNOUNCES NEW $123 MILLION IN NON-LETHAL ASSISTANCE TO SYRIAN PEOPLE

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Secretary Kerry Announces Doubling of U.S. Non-lethal Assistance to the Syrian Opposition and New Humanitarian Aid for the Syrian Crisis

Fact Sheet
Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
April 20, 2013

Following his meetings with Syrian Coalition President al-Khatib, members of the Coalition’s leadership, and international partners supporting the Syrian opposition, Secretary of State John Kerry announced the United States’ intention to double non-lethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, as well as provide additional humanitarian aid to Syrians in need.

The new non-lethal assistance underscores the United States’ firm support for a political solution to the crisis in Syria and for the opposition’s advancement of an inclusive, tolerant vision for a post-Assad Syria. The United States will work with the Syrian Coalition and other opposition representatives to determine how the new $123 million in non-lethal assistance can best support their efforts to meet the needs of the Syrian people and lead the way to a political transition that will bring an end to this conflict, and build the inclusive, democratic Syria that its people deserve. This new pledge brings our total non-lethal assistance to the Syrian opposition and civil society groups to $250 million.

The United States will also use a portion of this non-lethal assistance to implement President Obama’s directive to provide an expanded range of support to the Supreme Military Council (SMC). We intend to expand this new support beyond military food rations and medical kits to include other types of non-lethal supplies, which would be determined in collaboration with SMC leadership.

Secretary Kerry urged international partners gathered in Istanbul, as well as all Friends of the Syrian People, to make similar pledges of assistance to the Coalition and the Supreme Military Council with the goal of reaching $1 billion in total international support for the opposition.

In recognition of the devastating humanitarian situation as a result of the crisis in Syria, Secretary Kerry also announced nearly $25 million in additional food assistance for the Syrian people. This aid will provide 25,500 metric tons of wheat – providing four months’ supply of flour to over one million people – as well as food rations for those inside Syria and refugees in Jordan affected by the violence. The United Nations World Food Program will begin distributing the wheat to those in need in all 14 Syrian governorates as quickly as possible. The United States is the largest donor of food assistance both within Syria and for refugees in the affected neighboring countries and is providing a total of over $409 million in humanitarian assistance for the Syrian crisis.

NONLETHAL AID CONTINUES TO SYRIAN OPPOSITION

Photo Credit:  U.S. DOD

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

U.S. Continues to Send Nonlethal Aid to Syrian Opposition

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2012 - The United States will continue to funnel nonlethal aid to the Syrian opposition, and urges the international community to unite against Bashar Assad's regime, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said today.

The State Department is providing $100 million worth of nonlethal aid to those seeking to overthrow Assad. The opposition in Syria rose after protestors brought down long-term regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.

"The people of Syria are being brutalized by the Assad regime," Little told reporters. The United Nations estimates that there are 30,000 dead in Syria from the fighting between the Assad regime and the opposition. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled the country, and hundreds of thousands more are displaced within Syria.

Tensions in the region have escalated, with Jordan and Turkey hosting most of the refugees. Syrian regime forces have fired into Turkey, and the Turks have responded in kind.

Little called on the international community to do more to isolate the Assad regime. "What this points out is the need for greater international consensus on how to move forward on Syria," he said. "We have called on the international community to unite, and those efforts have been stymied."

U.S. policy is to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on the regime and to provide humanitarian assistance. "That's the right course of action at this stage," Little said.

The United States will work with all nations who want to see the Assad regime go, the press secretary said. "That's where the focus needs to be," he added. "Others in the international community don't quite see eye-to-eye with us and our allies and partners, and I hope that at some point we see greater coherence."

The Defense Department is working closely with Jordanian government officials to help them build their country's capacity to deal with the refugee crisis, Little told reporters. "We are very concerned about refugee flows into Jordan," he said. "We're concerned about [chemical and biological warfare], along with our Jordanian allies. We're working closely with them to monitor the [Syrian] CBW sites."