Sec. 3. Findings

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Congress makes the following findings: Since mass peaceful demonstrations started in Syria on March 15, 2011, the Government of Syria, led by Bashar al-Assad, has responded by committing human rights abuses and launching a violent crackdown that has claimed an estimated 70,000 lives and degenerated into a civil war. The civil war has caused a humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations, there are more than 1,400,000 Syrian refugees registered in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq and more than 2,600,000 Syrians displaced within the country.

More than three-quarters of refugees and internally displaced persons are women and children. The refugee crisis threatens the stability of the Middle East, putting immense burdens on Syria’s neighbors, most notably Lebanon and Jordan, but also Turkey and Iraq. The civil war has increased the danger that the Assad regime could lose control of its chemical weapons stockpile, with the chemical weapons potentially falling into the hands of terrorist groups like Hizballah and al Qaeda.

On April 25, 2013, the White House issued a letter to Congress stating that our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent Sarin . The security vacuum in Syria has created a safe haven for both Shia and Sunni extremists, which could threaten the security of the United States and its partners in the region. Instability in Syria has threatened Israel’s security, particularly on the shared border along the Golan Heights.

A change of government in Syria could be a significant blow to the Government of Iran and Hizballah, which would lose a strong ally and which have also been aggressively providing military and other assistance to Bashar al-Assad’s forces, including through the trafficking of weapons and supplies on commercial flights originating from or terminating in Iran. The commitments made by the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces at the international meeting in Istanbul on April 20 and 21, 2013, constitute an important endorsement of shared principles and objectives that should guide United States Government cooperation with the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and affiliated forces.

These principles include a commitment to the territorial integrity of Syria, a rejection of sectarianism and extremism, and pledges to secure chemical weapons and support nonproliferation efforts. It is vital to the national security interests of the United States to ensure that the United States planning and programs, specifically those conducted under the authorities or funding provided in or authorized under this Act, are focused on ensuring a stable and appropriate political transition in Syria and limiting the threats posed by extremist groups, weapons proliferation, sectarian and ethnic violence, and refugee flows in the aftermath of the current conflict.