Michael Singh is the Managing Director and Lane-Swig Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute.
Articles & Testimony
The Washington Institute's managing director testified before the Senate regarding next steps to address Syria's ongoing war and its effects on the population. The following is an excerpt from his prepared testimony. Download the PDF to read his full remarks.
"The humanitarian crisis in Syria is of a scale with few parallels in the world today. However, it is not possible to divorce this humanitarian crisis from the conflict that has given rise to it, nor is it possible to craft a successful policy to address the crisis without a successful policy to resolve the conflict. There is nothing humanitarian in providing assistance to the victims of a conflict we are doing little to end, when it is within our power and our interest to do far more.
"In the Syrian civil war we see a confluence of moral imperative and strategic interest; where so often these impulses conflict, here they coincide. The moral case for action is clear -- the United Nations has asserted that 70,000 civilians have been killed in Syria since March 2011, and almost four million, out of a population of twenty-two million, forced from their homes, about 1.2 million of whom have fled Syria entirely. These numbers overwhelm comprehension, yet still fail to convey the full extent of Syrians' suffering..."
Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs
