>>Jared Cohen: So Ausama, let's just dive right into it.
Syria has been dominant in the news for the last two years.
Close to a hundred thousand people dead.
Millions of refugees, mostly women and children.
Alleged use of chemical weapons.
The economy has ceased to function for two years.
This has been going on and on.
Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?
And how do the rebels and the opposition have the courage to persist amidst violence that's
so terrible?
>>Ausama Monajed: Well, it's a survival issue for the rebels on the ground.
You can't expect people to sit, unthwarted, waiting to be slaughtered and they had to
do something about it.
Whether this will be ended through just a typical kind of power on the ground, perhaps
that's highly unlikely.
It's turned into more of a regional and international conflict at this stage, unless there's a deal
between the western countries and Russia, on one hand, and regionally between Turkey,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran.
It's very difficult to resolve this on the ground, because the pipeline, the lifeline
of the regime, is still there.
The Iranian government and the Russian government keep supplying Assad with whatever is necessary
of not only ammunition and weapons, but also technologies, strategists.
We have the Iranian republican guards now leading operations, planning operations.
You have guerilla fighters, more than 5,000 in Syria, incurring casualties.
Even today, about 25 people -- or fighters from Hezbollah got killed in a fight with
the FSA.
More than 75 got injured.
So unless there's some kind of a deal, it is very -- or the supporters of Assad stop
supporting Assad, it's very highly unlikely it will end in the near future.
>>Jared Cohen: Now, it's a big decision to become a leading member of the opposition
in Syria.
You have family there.
You have friends there.
It's a regime that's known for its persecution and its lack of tolerance against members
of the opposition.
You know, surely this is something you sleep on before deciding to do it.
How did you -- what is your personal story of how you got involved?
>>Ausama Monajed: I got involved because I helped -- I was working for the -- you know,
for a European entity at the time, in the early 2000s, and I helped some activists getting
some funding to document poverty and some of the mass movement of the administrative
council's issues in the country through lenses, just taking pictures and posting them and
then tracking that on line.
They were arrested, their equipment was confiscated, and when I landed in the airport I was arrested
at the time.
>>Jared Cohen: How long were you detained for?
>>Ausama Monajed: For about a month, but because of who I worked for and other issues, people
got involved and I was released, but I was told "If we ever see your face again, you
will never see the light."
>>Jared Cohen: When you were in prison for that month, what happened?
>>Ausama Monajed: Yeah.
It wasn't a very endearing or fancy experience, of course.
But that got me personally intrigued and interested and determined to help in any way possible.
And then from that day, back in -- you know, at that time, I got involved with the opposition
activities, training activists on nonviolent struggle, and I did my master's thesis on
revolutions and people (indiscernible) and then when the uprising started, obviously
we were involved from day one.
>>Jared Cohen: Now, when you -- when you look at what's happening in Syria right now, it
seems that every day there's a new world leader standing up saying, "We need to intervene."
>>Ausama Monajed: Yes.
>>Jared Cohen: President Obama has gotten up and called for intervention.
Prime Minister Cameron has gotten up and called for intervention.
After there was a bombing in Turkey, allegedly by Bashar Al-Assad's regime, Prime Minister
Erdogan said just last week that anybody who attacks Turkey will pay the price.
Well, it appears Turkey has been attacked.
Hillary Clinton, before she left office, told the Syrian regime that the sand in the hourglass
is running out.
Now, what does all of this sound like to the opposition, given none of it seems to be being
backed up?
>>Ausama Monajed: It seems that the regional powers who are supporting the opposition on
the ground, specifically Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and gulf countries and other -- the rest of
the Arab world, are more anxious to end this because of fear of spilling over to the region.
Turkey, as we advanced also, they were willing to do something and they were always kind
of held up by Washington for some time.
It's very unfortunate because of also, the White House calculation of how things will
end or may go wrong.
We see Britain, France also urging all the time President Obama and the White House that
things need to be done and done quickly, and if intervention took place, any kind of intervention
-- doesn't have to be necessarily boots on the ground or a very classic military intervention,
but if that took place a year ago, think of the casualties that could have been saved,
think of the sectarian divide that could have been perhaps avoided, think of the spillover
and the regional now deadlock that we have and the intervention by Hezbollah and others,
and think of the other extremist fighting group that flourished and sprouted all over
the country, but yet still at lower numbers, by the way, not as it's portrayed in the media
-- that all could have been avoided if an earlier intervention took place.
Again, not necessarily a classic military one.
>>Jared Cohen: Now, President Obama said, somewhat infamously, several months ago that
if chemical weapons were used in Syria, they would draw a red line.
Now, there's two problems with this that I'd like to ask you about.
One is, does that mean everything else is okay and how is that interpreted in Syria?
And then two, now that we firmly believe the chemical weapons have been used and there's
no action being taken, what does -- again, what does the specific incident mean to you
all in the opposition?
>>Ausama Monajed: Well, you're right.
It was actually perceived as if President Obama -- I mean, on the ground in Syria as
if President Obama is saying "Anything else that you use, conventional weapons, is fine,
including missiles and air strikes and tanks in the street, but once you use chemical weapons
it's a red line."
Yes, he -- you know, he didn't mean it that way but that's how people understood it.
Especially with the, you know, inaction by the U.S. at that level.
But Assad and whoever is in his camp and advising him and the countries supporting him know
that Washington is just going to talk the talk at this stage and not walk the walk.
It's just rhetoric.
Until Washington reaches a deal with Russia on Syria and how the outcome could be, then
all these threats would be just, I think, empty.
>>Jared Cohen: Now, let me be provocative for a moment because there's a common critique,
a probably all-too-common critique that you hear in policy circles both in Europe and
the United States, which is, "We don't know who the opposition is.
They're mixed up with al-Qaeda and al-Nusra.
The bad guys are the ones with the weapons who are better organized.
If they come to power, they're going to massacre the Alawites.
If they come to power, we don't know what their position on Israel will be.
This is a mess.
How would you address those critiques?
>>Ausama Monajed: Obviously there are answers to all these questions.
All -- mostly myths.
Number one, we don't know who the opposition are.
You know, you've been seeing opposition in every media outlet, every place, in every
corner for the last two years.
Were they able to talk before that?
No.
They were massacres.
They were harassed.
They were persecuted.
They were jailed.
It's a police state, nothing worse in Syria than North Korea, you know, when it comes
to the issues.
Are they fragmented?
Yes.
What do you expect from a political opposition that has not had the chance to talk to each
other, or meet, or convene, or practice politics or -- or governance or any of these issues
for decades?
So of course they have to learn this from the A, B, C. And the learning curve has been
really, really remarkable.
Whether the opposition, the moderate forces or secular, are mixed with extremists and
stuff, we have to differentiate between the political opposition and the fighters on the
ground.
That's number one.
And number two, on the ground, we have a vast spectrum of fighters.
You have the main bulk, which is the FSA, Free Syrian Army, who are defected soldiers
and officers, professionally trained Army men and women, and those are obviously -- the
majority -- secular.
And then you have the civilians who picked up arms just to defend their, you know, farms
and neighborhoods and families.
And then on the right of that, you have the extremists or religious fighters or whoever
flew in to fight.
But what are the percentages?
Even intelligence agencies estimate the foreign fighters in Syria, or whoever associated with
the global jihad networks -- i.e., al-Qaeda -- do not exceed 1200 to 1500 fighters, and
you're talking about thousands and thousands of defectors and thousands of civilians carrying
arms.
But again, it's an interesting story in the media to tell.
Oh, there are -- it's over-magnified in the media.
And again, if intervention took place earlier, if any kind of a deal would have been reached
at an earlier stage, we wouldn't have been dealing with this now.
>>Jared Cohen: Now, one last quick question, which is: It's very clear that courage is
able to persist on the ground, you know, in ways that it's very difficult for any of us
here to imagine, but we also know that courage alone isn't enough to be able to topple a
brutal regime and replace it with something more moderate that will better the lives of
Syrian people.
So what is missing?
And more specifically, when you look out at this audience, you have tons of influential
people from lots of different sectors.
I think people in the audience want to know: What can they do to help?
>>Ausama Monajed: Well, there are lots of things.
Number one is to keep the story alive.
It's very important to keep the story alive because that maintains the pressure on Assad's
guard.
The story goes up and down in the front pages and the headlines if there is a major massacre,
(indiscernible), two hundred children slaughtered in one night in their homes.
Then, again, it's back on the front pages.
We want to keep that story alive.
That's a very important thing for the producers, at least producers for the media sector.
Financial support, the NGOs is also needed.
I'm also advising the -- you know, the coalition now on major projects, the infrastructure,
the telecom, the gas and oil, for the post-Assad era, and all this expertise is needed.
All the support we can get now from these sectors on how to reform, rebuild, all these
sectors later is also important.
Technology, use of technology, to bust the narrative of Assad and his camp also of what's
going on.
We need to use technology to actually prove that the data and the information they're
using are all lies and propaganda and pure lies and here's the evidence by using these
kind of technological tools.
So all these things can be used and all these ways to help.
>>Jared Cohen: Ausama, I could talk to you all day about this.
Unfortunately, we're out of time, but I think I can safely speak for everybody when I express
my admiration for what you're doing and the constant fight for freedom and democracy in
your country.
>>Ausama Monajed: Thank you for having me.
[ Applause ]