Al-Monitor quotes testimony from Rafik Hariri Center Senior Fellow Frederic Hof before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on atrocities committed by the Syrian regime:
Frederic Hof, a former Syria adviser at the State Department now with the Atlantic Council, put forward his proposal to help build a Syrian national stabilization force composed of regime defectors now in refugee camps. He said proposals to work with Assad to counter the Sunni Islamists who are threatening Baghdad was a nonstarter.“I think what today’s briefing does is effectively kill the ‘Let’s collaborate with Assad’ thesis,” Hof said. “This briefing illustrates in my view the moral inadmissibility of any American collaboration with that regime.”
Hof’s proposal drew skepticism from Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla.
“Has that strategy ever worked before? Ever?” he asked.
“I’m not aware of specific examples of that particular strategy ever having worked,” Hof acknowledged. “My sense is that this is the most conservative, creative and constructive way forward over the long term. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of Syrian officers and soldiers who have already been trained who are in refugee camps.”