A secret, unilateral move by Representative Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.) to shoot down a measure blocking U.S. recognition of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is attracting criticism from the human-rights community and congressional Republicans. As chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Meeks exercised his power to block the proposal earlier this month during talks on the annual National Defense Authorization Act.
“It is disappointing that Chairman Meeks is blocking this NDAA amendment to further U.S. isolation of Bashar al-Assad,” Kenan Rahmani, a senior advocacy adviser at the Syria Campaign, told National Review. “Chairman Meeks should explain to the millions of Syrians whose loved ones were killed by Assad why the U.S. should keep any diplomatic channel open with this war criminal.”
The proposal was intended as an amendment to the must-pass defense-spending package, which lawmakers debated earlier this month. Although Meeks has publicly taken stances critical of the Syrian regime, he relied on a procedural technicality to block this measure from moving forward. His intervention could leave the Biden administration with the option to seek normalized ties with the Assad government in the future.
Throughout the decade-long Syrian civil war, Assad has presided over a system of industrial mass slaughter. Tens of thousands of civilians have been tortured and murdered in the Syrian government’s prisons during the war, to say nothing of the indiscriminate killing carried out by the Syrian army and its Russian and Iranian allies.
An eyewitness to Syrian government atrocities testified before the Senate last month, telling lawmakers that the regime is still filling mass graves.
Under the Biden administration, there’s been concern that the U.S. might once again recognize the Assad government and that the State Department has not acted decisively enough to prevent Middle Eastern countries from accepting Damascus back into their good graces. After Russia intervened in the conflict, the Syrian government has clawed back control of most of the country and is currently focused on reconstruction efforts.
Over the past year, the administration has denied that it would seek to re-establish official ties with Syria, though it moved to poke holes in the anti-Assad sanctions that the Trump administration vigorously enforced.
Then, earlier this month, Representative Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, proposed an amendment to the NDAA that would have prohibited Pentagon funds from being used to recognize Assad. Considering the widespread support in Congress for holding Assad accountable for his war crimes, it was expected to move forward.
But as the Armed Services Committee debated its version of the defense bill last week, Meeks, in his capacity as Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, refused to waive his jurisdiction, meaning that he blocked Wilson from sending the amendment to the other committee for consideration as part of the defense bill.
Wilson told NR that he’s “extremely disappointed” in Meeks’s decision, the rationale for which he still has not explained.
“The Biden administration’s inability to isolate this State Sponsor of Terrorism opens the door for others to normalize relations,” Wilson said. “I will continue to support legislation to hold Assad and his supporters accountable for the their atrocities.”
A senior Republican aide said this is part of a broader pattern, where Meeks’s team has summarily blocked debate on certain proposals that might otherwise have won bipartisan support. Last year, NR reported that Meeks blocked legislation that would have sanctioned Russia and required an official U.S. government determination on the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front political-influence networks.
In January, Meeks joined a bipartisan statement with other senior lawmakers, criticizing Arab countries’ recent overtures to the Assad regime.
Given his previous opposition to efforts to rehabilitate Assad’s global standing, it’s strange that he blocked this amendment. Meeks’s reasoning here is a mystery, as he hasn’t spoken about this stance in public, and his spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment.