And the oil industry continues to be volatile due to unconventional oil production, geopolitical conflicts and oil sanctions on Iran, according to an April 2015 report by OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The major actors in East Asia- Japan, China, South Korea and ASEAN, which are all heavily dependent importers of oil from the Middle East, should temporarily ease the historic friction these nations harbor, for the sake of their economies.

“Asian policy elites are putting up this one-way firewall to politicians separating economic calculations on the one hand and national security strategy on the other,” said Van Jackson, a visiting fellow at Center for a New American Security.

For example, the relationship between Japan and South Korea has been tumultuous. In World War II, the Japanese government colonized the Korean peninsula and exploited South Korean women as comfort women, which the Japanese government currently minimizes, according to the Council of Foreign Relations records. The tense relationship continues today.

Despite the lack of trust, intensifying competition and historical rivalries, their paradoxical warm economic relationship and frigid geopolitical tensions allows for burgeoning trade relations. The multidimensional issues relating to energy include both economic and security, and are extremely complex and multi-faced.

Experts convened at the Atlantic Council last month to discuss new strategies to establish a stable oil infrastructure, despite uncertain global energy markets and unstable relationships.

Edward Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said East Asian countries avoid collaborating with neighboring states that also need oil, and instead pivot toward the Middle East to buttress their economies.

However, their dependence on imported oil became a concern when the oil market in the Middle East quivered from civil unrest.

Without their market, Asian countries would struggle in producing enough energy.

In order to address oil volatility, Jackson argued that these nations shouldn’t solely depend on the Middle Eastern oil market. Instead, they should yield historic tensions as bygones for the sake of economic prosperity.

Last year, China passed the United States as the largest net oil importer in the world, heavily importing from the Middle East, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Japan is the third largest net importer of oil globally, behind the United States and China, and has limited domestic energy after its Fukushima plant incident.

“Japan and Korea have both made explicit their intention to diversify away from Middle East imports in favor of U.S. imports to the extent that they can,” Jackson said. “So the U.S. is the supplier of choice for both Japan and Korea, and they’ve put their money where their mouth is to some extent.”

However, Asia’s demand for oil is so high that optimistic projections of U.S. export capacity may not be capable of eliminating their dependence on Middle East oil, he said.

Experts agreed that there needed to be an interconnected regional energy infrastructure among Asian countries.

The reason this hasn’t occurred is because geopolitics and historical tensions trump market incentives and collective interests.

“My concern is that whatever optimism there is on the horizon,” arising in Japan and Korea energy security, “that optimism is taking place within a context of Asian nationalism, pervasive mistrust, and strategic and military competition,” Jackson said.

As oil prices have marginally rebounded this year, both countries’ energy strategy plans encourage their respective companies to increase energy exploration and development projects around the world, according to the EIA.

“Japan and Korea are more of a litmus test for what is possible for the entire region,” Jackson said. “If Japan and Korea can’t cooperate for a common energy problem that they have, I don’t know what hope there is for the region.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is responsible for leading and coordinating international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. It “for the end of violence, for accountability, [an] end to impunity. Because failing this, those responsible for human rights violations and crimes are emboldened,” said Karen AbuZayd, former United Nations Under Secretary-General and UN commissioner of the Inquiry on Syria.

“The war will go on leaving more destruction. It will destroy lives, destroy society, destroy institutions including education, and it will destroy culture and heritage in its wake,” Abuzayd said in a Middle East Policy Council panel on April 21, 2015.

As the civil conflict treads into its fifth year, half of Syria’s pre-war population has been displaced, according to data compiled by the United Nations. In addition to those who have fled the country, more than 220,000 civilians have been killed, 6.5 million are internally displaced and more than 12.2 million civilians in the Syrian Arab Republic are in need of humanitarian assistance. Syria is in a state of crisis, and it is spreading throughout the region.

Twenty-five percent of Lebanon’s total population is Syrian refugees. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has only accepted 143 Syrian refugees, according to a May 2015 UNHCR report. Neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey are sheltering millions of refugees. Turkey alone is harboring 1.7 million refugees.

The UNHCR has so far submitted 12,140 Syrian refugees to the U.S. for resettlement consideration as of May 2015. After resettling only 105 refugees in 2014, the United States has accepted 651 refugees as of April 2015, according to a State Department refugee admissions report.

State Department officials released a statement that the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, “violently suppressed expressions of popular dissent” and his sustained reign only incited extremism and instability, according to a State Department September 2014 press release. Ever since he assumed office in July 2000, his country entered the Syrian Civil War and he has been accused of crimes against humanity by the United Nations.

The United Nations has identified and is investigating the Assad government for violations of human rights under international law. The UNHCR has submitted numerous reports that multiple agents have explicitly targeted civilians – including the Assad regime, terrorist groups, anti-government armed groups and extremists. Since last year, Syria has been criticized for silencing journalists and activists, and committing other violations of international law.

Since Syria first established relations with the United States in 1944, the relationship has been precarious at best. Syria has been identified as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979 because of its support for various terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah.

In order to counter that kind of activity, the Obama administration has slapped economic sanctions against Syria, and taken steps to eliminate its chemical weapons stockpile.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the international community established a legal framework to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, which were used by the Assad regime to attack Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013.

The unrest from the Syrian uprising, in early 2011, spawned a full-fledged civil war, which increasing armed conflict between the Assad government and insurgents trying to displace it. According to the latest U.N. report, those fighting Assad now include proliferating terrorist groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra and ISIS, which have gained traction through tactics such as public executions, torture, disappearances and mutilation.

The infighting between so many groups that are unfriendly to the United States, including terrorist groups and the Assad regime, have made it more complicated for Washington to intervene. But some Syria watchers say any kind of intervention is better than the current U.S. position, which is to mostly watch from the sidelines.

“We need to plant the American flag among other flags around the world and say this issue is important, and we need to mobilize all of these resources and move on it now,” said Denis Sullivan, director of the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies. “That means dealing with a bizarre cast of characters,” he said, including the EU, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He urged global leaders to come to the table for diplomatic negotiations.

However, the United States has not furthered negotiations or drawn up a comprehensive legal framework to persevere in addressing the Syrian crisis, albeit providing $2.9 billion in monetary assistance as of September 2014.

“It’s the political overlay- it’s the political solution- it’s the parties who have a political interest in the region who are the ones who in the end come together to affect some sort of result,” said Ford Fraker, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and president of the Middle East Policy Council, in a Q & A session at the panel.

The lack of U.S. progress toward pursuing a functional political solution in Syria is due to other issues on the White House’s agenda, principally the U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement, Fraker said. He said that the Iran nuclear talks have “prevented any useful dialogue happening between the United States and Iran on any kind of Syrian solution.”

But, is it our job to intervene, and deploy U.S. troops to fight for people they’ve never met? Is the United States supposed to be the world’s police force, flashing its badge to save the day?   Does the deterioration of the lives of 17 million people affect the United States and international affairs?

AbuZayd appealed at a Capitol Hill conference demanding enforcement of international law, referral of the Syrian plight to the International Criminal Court, reformation of the national justice system, the halt of child recruitment for terrorism, increased foreign assistance and establishment of regional tribunals.

Humanitarian aid may only function as a tattered band-aid to Syria’s perpetual conflict, instead of an enduring political solution. “Will Syria’s displaced be condemned to relief instead of progress?” asked Sara Roy, a research fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

“The issues to track are the political ones,” Fraker said. “Until you see certain events having occurred that will allow the principal actors then to turn their attention to Syria, you won’t see any progress there.”

Sister Diana Momeka shares her testimony in front of House Foreign Affairs Committee members regarding the current situation in Mosul, Iraq. (Mary Lee/MEDILL NSJI)

WASHINGTON- She sat somberly, clad in a white habit and a black veil, ruefully pleading with lawmakers to provide relief for religious minorities who remain under the yoke of the so-called Islamic State.

Sister Diana Momeka, a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena in Mosul, Iraq, described herself as “but one, small person – a victim myself of ISIS and all of its brutality.

“I am here to ask you, to implore you for the sake of our common humanity to help us,” she told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We want nothing more than to go back to our lives; we want nothing more than to go home.”

Momeka and other witnesses testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill, appealing for humanitarian assistance and increased military efforts in regions occupied by persecuted religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.

Sister Diana Momeka waits for the hearing to start in order to testify on ISIS attacks on religious minorities. (Mary Lee/MEDILL NSJI)

She advocated on behalf of marginalized minorities who defy the version of Islam espoused by the self-proclaimed Islamic State. They want liberation and help returning to their homes, a coordinated effort to rebuild destroyed roads and buildings and inter-religious dialogue.

ISIS, which emerged in April 2013, has overrun territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, including Mosul and Tikrit, prompting U.S. air campaigns to help slow the advance. The terrorist group is seeking to control swaths of territory and create an Islamic state.

In early June 2014, ISIS attacked Mosul and moved east taking over Momeka’s nearby hometown of Quraqosh. Non-Muslims were given three choices, she said: convert to Islam, pay a tribute to ISIS or leave their city with only the clothes on their back.

Since then, an estimated 120,000 people have fled north to the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where many have been displaced and left homeless, according to her testimony.

“The mass execution of men, the enslavement of women and children, and the destruction of religious sites is part of the ISIS effort to destroy their communities. To make it as if they never existed,” said Rep. Ed Royce R-Calif., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. “The influx of ISIS extremists has become a plague.”

Members of the committee empathized with Momeka’s testimony. They reflected on past U.S. diplomatic and military initiatives, and insisted that they would advocate for increased support, including humanitarian assistance.

ISIS, Sunni Muslim radicals, has slaughtered religious minorities, including Christians and Yazidis. The Yazidis are a small monotheistic religious sect, often linked to Zoroastrianism.

Last year, President Barack Obama authorized U.S. Central Command to work with partner nations to conduct airstrikes in Iraq and Syria after the siege of Mount Sinjar, where ISIS drove out thousands of Yazidi refugee families, leaving some trapped on the mountaintop. The number of Yazidis continues to dwindle as radical Islamists threaten the unstable region, according to United Nations human rights investigators.

“Today it starts with the Yazidis, tomorrow it’s going to be not only the Christians, but every woman who doesn’t fit in with their philosophy,” said Jacqueline Isaac, a witness and vice president of a human rights organization called Roads of Success. “We need to stop the menace that’s going on there. If we can cut the snake at its head, we can diffuse them.”

Isaac recommended supplying provisions to the Peshmerga, the regional Kurdistan military, increasing economic support for other allies in the region, particularly Jordan and Egypt, and providing humanitarian aid for millions of refugees and internally displaced persons in the Iraqi-Kurdistan region.

“In the midst of this darkness—this suffering, we see God is holding us,” Momeka said with a morsel of hope. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to witness our faith that’s increasing day after day.”

Jacqueline Isaac greets U.S. Rep. Ed Royce R-Calif, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after the hearing. (Mary Lee/MEDILL NSJI)

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