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Lynn Zovighian: “It’s incredible how genocide is a toolkit.” I’m Lynn Zovighian, and welcome to Smallest truths, a podcast by the Zovighian Public Office. In this second episode with Nadine Maenza, we explore why the world keeps failing to catch up with the truth of genocide and other atrocity crimes.

This is Episode 2: Pressure and truth: How atrocity survivors cut through power.

Nadine, you spoke about Washington D.C. – the center of power when it comes to big decisions, diplomatic and non-diplomatic, towards this region. Often, we feel like Washington D.C. is so far away, but then, making all these choices for communities, for the future, for what the possibilities will be and what the possibilities will not be for a sustainable, safe, secure, prosperous region. 

Today, it has never been so critical in this geopolitical quagmire that we are experiencing… it's just never been so difficult and pertinent to really build allies with the great assets in U.S. government and around U.S. government in D.C.. It's never been so hard to understand how the government thinks, how the government sees the region, how the government wants to see the region and doesn't want to see the region. But it's never been so important to build alignment, compromise, seek consensus, otherwise, we are going to have two opposing world views that are going to clash. And, unfortunately, we are in a world where, until future notice, might is usually right. 

How do communities, how do their leaders, the leaders of these grassroots organizations, [the] survivors — who get put on the defensive on diplomatic stages all the time to prove their worth and prove that they are the greatest experts of their lived experiences — how do we, how do we help make it easier for them to navigate Washington D.C.? And how do we make it easier for Washington to understand, and empathize, and build in the right decisions with us? Because it's a very difficult two-way road.

Nadine Maenza: So, what I find in Washington is… we always say that people in Congress and the Administration are drinking water from a fire hose. They are constantly in an emergency situation. And having a long, thoughtful conversation with people can be really difficult. And so, they come to the region quickly, make a quick decision and leave. And you'd hope that it will have been thought out methodically. And not saying that people don't think these things through, but they don't always. 

And as we know, you know, President Trump has made it clear he wants peace in the Middle East. I think that that is something that he has over and over again emphasized. But what does peace look like to President Trump? 

And, I want to say a bipartisan problem we've had in the United States is looking for short term wins, a deal. Let's get a deal… let's get this done. Let's get a deal here… let's get a deal here. Let's get a deal on Syria. Let's get a deal on Israel. And let's close the file, and we're done. And instead of looking for that long-term piece of stability – looking through that lens, like so many countries do – where China, Iran, Russia sometimes look at things for a long time away and they'll just outweigh the U.S…. and we're in a very short-term kind of approach. 

And so, I think what often happens is, when we're engaging with people in the international community, especially victims of crimes, is they come in without the understanding of the way the U.S. really works when it comes to policy and that, you know, we're moving super-fast, and we're wanting to get something done and to move on. 

And to be able to have organizations – civil society – is so crucial to interact with government. As you have done before, coming to Washington with civil society that's in Washington to sit with you in those meetings. You know, we try to come with survivors, try to prep them, but also to have civil society in the countries, have them connected with the United States. 

One thing I did learn when I was at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was the importance of civil society. That was a new thing for me. Because, when I joined the Commission, and we were on these government delegations, I of course thought the most important meetings we would ever have would be with other government officials in the countries we were visiting. And what I almost always found was the most important meetings were with civil society in that country. And now that's why I'm a part of the International Religious Roundtable, which brings together civil society, but also religious communities, also government, and we sit together and talk about these problems and how we can best solve them. 

And we really sometimes will bring civil society as pressure to the government, but not in a hostile way. In fact, the government will ask us. The government will need pressure. And it doesn't mean that you're anti-Trump or anti-Biden, or whoever it was, when you're doing a letter that's criticizing a policy. Because often they want to be hard on that country too, but they can't be. Without pointing and saying, listen, we're getting so much pressure from Congress, we're getting pressure from the United States, from the citizens of the United States, and we need you to release this prisoner, or it's important that this behavior stop, or whatever we're advocating for. 

And so, oftentimes, when I was at the Commission, somebody would criticize us and say: "I can't believe you just said that about the US government… this very harsh statement." And we're like: “Oh no, no! They kind of wanted us to.” There is this, like, Washington needs pressure. So just hearing the truth might touch the hearts of so many good people that serve in our government, and there are just so many, of course, and in Congress. But then they need pressure to be able to take it up the chain of command and say: “Listen, you know Congress cares, these people care, [and] these people care… [so] we should really speak to this government about this and use the power of the U.S. government in a powerful way.” And sometimes that just doesn't happen.

We share those truths [with the U.S. government], and they take them, but they don't know what to do with them, and so that's where the pressure from civil society, the pressure from Congress on the Administration to move with that truth that they've learned, helps them to be more effective, so that so it's actually a benefit to them. They don't see it as us being mean to them, us being adversarial. It's more of: “This is the way the U.S. government works.”

So, oftentimes people coming in with a story of persecution will not understand that, and that's why at the IRF Roundtable we come alongside them and say: “Oh, we got it! We will do a multi-faith letter, we'll do a meeting here, we'll take you here. And it's really a way of – really civil society, both in Washington and on the ground in those countries – working together to make sure Washington is getting those truths.

Lynn Zovighian: And sometimes the smallest truths, Nadine, because sometimes it takes that small detail that the government could have missed — because they're not on the ground, but those people are. And that just reconfigures opportunities, reconfigures diplomatic strategies.

Nadine Maenza: Exactly, those individual stories, the individual communities, how they're living, what they're experiencing. 

You know, we sometimes want to do a monolith of: “Every Christian feels this way.” “Every Bahai feels this way.” “All the Druze are here.” And, there are some generalizations that can be true, but we also have to remember they're all these individuals, [with] different ideas and different lived experiences. But to use one as an example and to be able to tell the story of what this community faced here that will rise up people in the government to be able to use the power of the U.S. government to press those governments to change their behaviors, or to support communities that are, that are not being supported.

Lynn: And that is why I know you care so much about going to where the evidence lies, and looking for that truth, seeking not just the truth — but, there was a reason why we wanted this podcast to be called the Smallest Truth… the Smallest Truths… because it's often plural. It's often a diverse set of truths. It's often diverse, sometimes conflicting interests amongst the same communities in that same environment, and so it's just immensely not black and white. 

And, you and I have spent the last few days together in Beirut, but you had just come in from Damascus after your second visit there in a short period of time, and I know that you have learned so much, and a lot of those learnings are not only deep, but they're precarious, and they're time-critical, and they're immensely complex. I've understood from you that the complexity… in many ways, it's never been this complex, and it's never been this obscure. What are going to be the most effective ways, safest ways to move forward? It's never been so hard to answer those questions, not just for you as a guest in that environment, but especially hard for the people who are living in those environments. Could you tell us more?

Nadine Maenza: So, Syria is, of course, in a very complicated situation at the moment, and it looks so much simpler from far, far away. 

You see the violence, and you say there's a perpetrator to that violence; the perpetrator should be held accountable. And that's all true, and we can all agree that that is the truth, that it does exist, and we do need to press the government in Syria to hold perpetrators accountable for the crimes they're committing, have committed, and are committing. But, at the same time, there also are drivers of that conflict. Deep, deep divisions after years of Assad family rule. 

So, it's easy to look and say: “Wait, we didn't see this violence under Bashar al-Assad. Was it better under Assad? Because we didn't see this kind of violence against the minorities?” But yet, when you're on the ground talking to the communities, and you see those deep divides between them, and one community whispering in your ear about the other community. Because some of the marginalized communities, in particular the Sunnis, and some that have come back, a young man who [has] not seen anyone from the Assad regime being tried, and so they're just going to go find people from a community and pay them back themselves… 

I talked to one gentleman from one community that was told – you know, that five were going to die from his community – from everyone from the other community, if violence kept happening. And this is just an innocent leader of a village. There [are] just complicated situations, and so how do we de-escalate those tensions? But [also] how do we help build social cohesion and stop the violence and make sure there is rule of law? There’s so many layers. 

So, you know, deal with the violence, and obviously, safety and security is key for every single person in Syria. But, also looking further into, you know, what does equal citizenship look like so they aren't marginalized? Because for so long, the Sunnis were marginalized. Well, now, some non-Sunnis feel marginalized. So how do we make it so that they go back to the way they really have lived most of Syria, which is as equal citizens, right? 

We've heard, story after story, about living alongside each other peacefully. That's the Syria we want to see. And so, how do we get to that? And really have some experts come alongside this [U.S.] government and say: “This is how to move forward this way.” And to the international community, the US in particular, to urge there to be arrests of those [committing crimes]… and so many of them videotape the atrocities themselves. It should not be that difficult to arrest them and try them.

Rather than have a vigilante type [of] situation, which right now, most of the regular deaths happening in Syria are vigilante deaths. So, people really paying back either a person or a community for a crime that already happened, or they perceived happened…. so, it's very complicated, but yet, there is, there is a way forward. 

I met so many people that encouraged me in the government, outside of the government, that want a peaceful Syria, that want a Syria with social cohesion. We have the Northeast that is having some positive discussions with Damascus. Is there a way? There is a way. I should say, [that] the Northeast can integrate in and actually strengthen all of Syria. It's got to be something they all agree to. I don't think America should decide what that looks like. I do think there's a way that we, however, need to urge them to look for the long-term peace and stability, rather than a deal at any cost. Because we know that won't bring peace and stability to Syria. 

So, the question is, how can we preserve the remarkable religious freedom conditions they've created in the Northeast? Half the leaders are women. Religious minorities are actually overrepresented in government. You would expect it to be mostly Kurds, it is obviously a lot of Kurds, but there's also in the Arab areas, it's mostly Arabs. So, it really depends on the areas that they are, and how do they integrate in in a way that is sustainable. 

How can local communities have their own security? People come from their own communities. They had a successful integration in the Northeast, in Aleppo, with two of the neighborhoods, the Kurdish neighborhoods, where they kept the government structures they built in the Syrian Democratic Forces that used to guard those Kurdish neighborhoods, just became the [14:05 recording 2] or the police, and they're under the Aleppo government, and that seems to have worked. 

So, is that the way forward for Northeast Syria? That's encouraging to me, that there could be a way forward here, and that the international community will support that. So, there's hope and there's fear. And it's all mixed together because they're at such a precarious time in Syria. So, you know, we want to come and bring value and help in a positive way, not add to the sectarian tensions. And so, that's the key to our work in Syria.

Lynn: You know, these are the toughest questions. There's no time to get those answers wrong.

Nadine: And it's just a snapshot. I saw a snapshot of Syria; in two weeks it could be very different. I can't presume that, without staying in touch with people on the ground and listening, that I have all the answers. And so, I am lucky to be able to go in and have these snapshots, but I do understand it’s a complex, ever-changing situation, and that we need to encourage the Syrian people, who are the ones that need to decide their own country's future.

Lynn: I'm always struck at the fact that there is no toolkit that's readily available for these communities. Many of them are people that we've come to know so personally and care so much about. There are no easy ways for them to share back the evidence that is so strikingly clear. We'll talk more about this: how it's never been so strikingly clear, not only what the evidence is, but also how traceable it is, and how clearly it can be verified, despite the complexity, which is quite incredible. 

The communities, the champions, and their allies, people like yourself, you don't have a manual to get it right with Washington. It's not because Washington necessarily makes it hard. It's because somehow, the complexity either lends to an over-reductionist, a desire to be over reductionist, a desire to just simplify things… cut out the complexity, let's just focus on the immediate matters. But what if everything is interconnected? What if everything is urgent? What if nothing is not a priority?

Nadine: Yes, and that is often the situation we find ourselves in. 

Lynn: Right, and so I find it just so incredible that we don't have these toolkits. As public sector, as private sector, as third sector, we've never really built that capacity. We don't have the readiness to just launch the necessary multi-dimensional response units, analytical lenses, and strategic avenues every time a crisis becomes a crisis. And I find that very shocking. 

Because, the atrocity crimes, Nadine, that we are very concerned about at ZPO; the ones that are, that usually have the least media attention, the least diplomatic relevance – and they're usually the crises that might have had a spark but now they're forgotten or being forgotten – these crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, these crimes of war, what they fundamentally have in common is how similar they are. It's incredible how genocide is a toolkit.

Nadine: Yes. They know exactly how to do it in a way that stays under the radar.

Lynn: Absolutely, yes! Perpetrators know how to advance the interests – their interests – through crimes and mechanisms, and the violence, and misinformation, and propaganda in this digital age, in this incredible military, accelerated military technological age.

So, Nadine, while our communities don't have the toolkits that they need to navigate through the crimes being inflicted upon them, the perpetrators have all the toolkits that they need. They have the financial means. They have the military prowess. They have technological advancement completely to their advantage. And, they have the right to impunity. 

[Meanwhile], our communities and survivors have to, every day, be put on the defensive and claim and reclaim those, supposedly, universal human rights. 

So, what I find just incredulous is all these crimes have so little innovation. They're all so similar to each other. All the toolkits to perpetrate those crimes are fundamentally built on innovation, and yet we're still not ready for the next crisis to come. We still don't have the capacity to handle the next genocide. We still don't understand how to build and design the necessary roadmaps to speed up the pathways to global awareness, diplomatic pressure. And then, on top of all of that, international law, the courts of law –– they are working at the slowest pace. 

That's what the survivors tell us, right? You know, we're quoting our survivors here, who say: “How long is it going to take?” “Will I ever see justice in my own lifetime?” “How many times am I going to have to explain the sexual enslavement that I endured under Da’esh?” Or: “the hatred and the dehumanization as an Artsakhi Armenian that I survived under Azerbaijani military and political might in Nagorno-Karabakh?” Or the fears and the vulnerabilities and the fragilities of our communities here in Lebanon, who simply say: “Well, here we go again. The ‘Never Again’ is a mockery. It is always: Here we go again. Not: ‘Never Again.’

How is it that we have such a striking dichotomy? 

We know what the next crime could look like. We often have forewarning that something is going to hit hard, and perpetrators don't actually put a lot of effort to even hide or cover up. They have the massive advantage of impunity and [have] created often falsified international credibility and legitimacy that they don't have to put an effort to hide the Presidential decrees and speeches of President Aliyev. 

He made clear months before the blockade that there was going to be something big, enormous, and striking in Nagorno-Karabakh, and then kept on giving us hints until the fully comprehensive, very effective military assault of Nagorno-Karabakh took place — and the second-year commemoration will just be in a few days [from the time of this podcast recording]. Why are we here? What are we doing wrong?

Nadine: Yes. The way that the U.S. government is set up is diplomacy is the key goal of the State Department. And of course, war is the goal of the Department of Defense. And so, what I always say is diplomacy – it seems the State Department, in a bipartisan way, regardless of what party is running the State Department, – its goal is keeping nation states happy, de-escalating any sort of conflict with other countries. So, it seems like the international community is always seeking that first, for their own country. 

And so, when we start seeing early warning signs coming from the Holocaust Museum's early warning system, from Genocide Watch, from the Terrorism Index, there are plenty of really rich reporting out there that is telling us things are increasing here… problems are here. 

In the Sahal we now have all of these terrorist groups that hold land there that are committing atrocities. And I think what happens is, if the U.S. government looks and acknowledges that, that means they have to do something. If any of the governments do that. 

And now, when we're looking in the place like the Middle East, and there's a perpetrator. What if that perpetrator is an important ally of ours? Now, all of a sudden, we're in conflict. 

[The] perfect example would be Türkiye during the Ukraine war. They were key to negotiating, you know, food being transported to Ukraine. They were invaluable for the deals that were made, made by the administration. So, they didn't want to do anything that would anger Türkiye. So, Türkiye had a green light to bomb northeast Syria to continue to shell, almost daily, the Assyrian villages there that people still farm in… I might add. 

I was there, and they were like: "This happened last week, this happened the week before." And 2 million people without electricity, and yet, because they're so important to the U.S. for other things…

So, I think part of it is the international community doesn't want the responsibility, unfortunately, of dealing with these atrocities. So, they would rather just look away. 

And that is why we must not allow that to happen. And that is why pressure is crucial, why reporting is crucial, why ZPO is crucial to documenting the crimes, to drawing support for the communities that are being attacked, and in getting the international community involved, getting civil society all over the world involved, so that these countries can't look away.

Lynn: But you know, ZPO, with you – and I want to just do a small call-out on our Young Innovators Program, with also your daughter who was a key fellow in in our program – we documented even before the Turkish strikes in Northeast Syria became so disciplined and so aggravated and so effective. We were documenting the attacks in Sinjar, that sometimes were weekly.

Nadine: And they were attacking civilians, Yazidi survivors…

Lynn: …Chaldean villages… we know from our Assyrian and Syriac friends, the [Turkmen]… the same patterns… the same toolkit. 

We took that to State Department; we took that with our friends at the Wilson Center. 

How many reports have we published with the Wilson Center? Documenting, mapping, not only the Turkish strikes and the Turkish aggression, but being able to also decipher the fog of war that those strikes were and continue to create, to enable on-the-ground movement, and to institutionalize insecurity… Because the power balance, the power imbalance when we do not deal with the problem in its face, when we do not deal with appropriate perpetrators to their faces, they build upon their power. 

Power grows, not linearly; exponentially. 

Time is the most critical asset and resource that we are all so underfunded with. We never have enough time. 

And so, what is remarkable is the expectation and the necessity to be able to push these smallest truths in Washington D.C…. to be able to sound the alarm, which we have to relentlessly do again, and again, and again…. in the face of dehumanization, in the face of immense fatigue and exhaustion. And frankly, community, almost like system overload, and yet, you have the incredibly effective lobbying groups, interest groups of Türkiye, of Azerbaijan on Capitol Hill, paid with fantastic budgets. They don't have to ever rush. They don't have to be in constant emergency mode. They get to take it easy, wine and dine. Keep on effectively, pushing their messages one by one, slowly but surely. 

You can't compete with that consistency, can you?

Nadine: The truth does have a way. 

So, we saw for instance, in Northeast Syria, we were able to effectively at USCIRF convince the Biden Administration to follow a lot of our recommendations for Northeast Syria. But one of them that was super important was to lift sanctions on the Northeast, and we were told that was impossible to do. 

And [we] had congressional support and did actually get there. It didn't have the kind of impact we hoped [for] because I think, what I learned is, as we look at Syria as a whole, you can't just lift sanctions a little bit and have anything happen, they're either all or nothing. Because people won't invest long-term if they think they [the sanctions] might come back. 

So, I know for some people that want sanctions to be there, so that they're kind of leveraged. The people are in such a dire economic situation, it's really tough to do that. But you know, we were able to get some things done despite the dynamic that was against us. 

And it was because we had pressure, and we had truths. And when you're telling the truth, you don't have to have as much lobbying. You could have a million dollars against you now, you still have to work hard and get the word out, and there were plenty of people that did that, and USCIRF reports, did that. 

We obviously didn't lobby ever for them, we were lobbying for our recommendations, which is very different. But we were able to get that done despite the heavy lobbying against what we were doing. 

And so, the truth does have a way of breaking through, but we also have seen it takes so much time, because the lobbying does interfere with the truth getting out. And of course, they spin a narrative that often complicates the situation and makes it harder for people to come to that realization of what is that simple truth? Which truth is it? Or make it so muddy that you just… people stop looking… they can't figure out what's happening there. I'll look away, and I'll go somewhere that's clearer… make it so muddy that people are like: "Ah, I'm not sure if it's true or not. Are they exaggerating? Are they not exaggerating? Which one is true?" 

And that's often the case, the way these perpetrators make it difficult for the media, for governments to intervene with these atrocities, because it's hard to get the real truth on the ground. But eventually that does come out, and what we want to do is have it come out. 

These are early warning systems. What we want is to see it coming; to intervene before it happens. And unfortunately, we are not there yet.

Lynn: Right. Because, effectively, they, the perpetrators, make it so easy for governments to exit or not even enter to begin with. And in this region, you know, our region here, the Levant, the South Caucasus, we have the historic reputation, that label that we just can't, get rid of: “the problem zone,” “the war zone.” And we are always “difficult,” “complicated.” And I can understand how U.S. government officials might just love to be able to just say: “Let's just pack up and leave.”

Nadine: And I think the last administration had publicly said they were pivoting away from the Middle East. But I think it's important to understand that the Middle East is so complicated because of all the world powers being there. 

The people of Syria, the people of Lebanon are not in and of themselves complicated. They're not dangerous. 

But when you have all the major players of the world here in some sort of proxy wars in their different interests… for the U.S. to exit is actually hurting U.S interests. 

And so, I think at this point we do have a president who's engaged. So, the question is: how do we help the State Department have the right information? How do we help them to be armed with the truths on the ground? How do we help them to look further than that two-year election cycle? 

How about if our goal is the next 10 years of peace in the Middle East, rather than getting a win now that gives you a boom for this upcoming election? How do we do it for a longer term? And I think that's why civil society is so crucial; to be able to produce the reports you produce that document the crimes, to be able to have those roundtables. 

We have a letter on Syria that's a multi-faith letter that we're getting signatures on now that we'll be presenting to the President, sending to the Secretary of State… and many organizations, many different religious communities from around the world will be signing; saying this is what we want to see in Syria. 

So, those are the kind of things we can do to help educate the State Department; help educate U.S. government, help educate governments of the world. Because the UK still matters, the EU matters, and of course, even the local governments. I mean, it's so important that they understand, because oftentimes they're sitting here with all the power dynamics and all these international players. 

And like I said, we cherish the opportunity to work directly with governments, and obviously we do that very quietly, normally, and advise them not in a way to whitewash. And I think there are people that have done that; gone into a country and taken funds and gave them a clean bill of health, so to speak. And we don't do that. 

What we do is go in and work with them to try to improve their laws. We have legal scholars we work with that do that. We have people on the ground that help build [that] cohesion among clerics. We have people that help with that religious literacy. We have people that can help train security forces. 

So, the whole idea is, how can we bring value to governments to be able to create environments where religious communities can live peacefully?

Lynn: As Nadine said: “The truth does have a way of breaking through, but we also have seen it takes so much time...” Justice means making truth impossible to ignore. Thank you for listening. Until next time, may we carry the smallest truths that shift power toward justice.

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