Congress goes after Assad for war crimes

Congress is setting its sights on Bashar al-Assad and his regime amid concerns that the Obama administration has all but given up on deposing the Syrian strongman.

The House Foreign Affairs panel on March 2 is set to mark up a resolution from Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., calling on the Obama administration to push for the creation of a war crimes tribunal to investigate and prosecute violations "whether committed by the officials of the Government of Syria or other parties to the civil war." The move comes as Republicans and some Democrats are convinced that Secretary of State John Kerry is caving in to Russian demands to keep Assad in power.

"There is the potential to move forward in a way that would push back the gains both made by [the Islamic State] and by the Assad regime, but that would require leadership," committee chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., told Al-Monitor in an interview last week. "It would require cutting off material support for the Assad regime and increasing pressure on key players aligned with the regime and further isolating those involved in war crimes. How about making it clear that the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed by Assad because of chemical weapons and barrel bombs, that that constitutes war crimes? It takes that kind of leadership."

The committee is also scheduled to take up a resolution calling the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq a "genocide" and urging that perpetrators be brought to justice. The resolution, from Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., and Assyrian-American congresswoman Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., is championed by a coalition of religious freedom organizations that hope to spark a global movement to create a safe zone for Middle East Christians in their historic homeland of the Ninevah plains of Iraq.