Good morning everybody Good morning. My name is Nancy Lindbergh. I'm the president here at the u.s. Institute of peace And I'm delighted to welcome you here this morning for a very important conversation On preventing violent extremism in fragile states I warm welcome to our many colleagues from across the u.s. Interagency And a special welcome to our task force members. We have with us here today secretary Madeline Albright Governor Thomas Kane Ambassador Paula Dobriansky and our u.s. Board chair and former national security advisor Steve Hadley USIP was founded nearly 35 years ago by the u.s. Congress as an independent nonpartisan National Institute dedicated to preventing and resolving violent conflict around the world and we do this by linking research with policy with training and education and by Supporting and working with partners around the world our founding legislation also very specifically directs us to quote Respond to the nation's need for a full range of effective options in addition to armed capacity That can leash violent extremism and manage international conflict. So as a part of this vision we have long Served as a very powerful nonpartisan platform for bringing people together from across sectors across political Views to tackle some of the most challenging foreign policy issues that our nation faces and last year Congress asked us to do exactly that And to pull together a task force on extremism in fragile states so this bipartisan group of 15 foreign policy experts set out to develop new strategies that address the underlying causes of Violent extremism in fragile states places that are plagued by weak institutions poor governance and Unaddressed grievances with a focus on the Sahel the Horn of Africa and the Middle East We released our final report to Congress Earlier this year and that will be the focus of our conversation today We have a packed morning with an opportunity to dig into a topic that I believe is getting some important and critical attraction Including in the current House and Senate bills that are moving that are aligned with the report recommendations Please join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag prevent extremism and I would now like to invite my fellow task force members to join me on the stage for our first panel and also to introduce our moderator David Ignatius one of the most thoughtful Commentators on critical foreign policy issues. He's a prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post and has been covering the Middle East in the CIA for more than 25 years as well as the author of best-selling novels David over to you. Thank you to Nancy. It's a pleasure to be here Truly there isn't a subject that's more important if we needed any reminding This weekend's gruesome news from Sri Lanka Tells us that violent extremism is very much with us that the difficulties of understanding it Being properly forewarned and dealing with it are as complicated as ever Let me briefly introduce the members of our panel and then we'll go to Discussion with them and then we'll turn to the audience and look for you to ask your questions We've saved 20 minutes to do that. So please be thinking about the questions. You'd like to ask first Governor Tom Cain Governor of New Jersey starting in 1981 But really famous to our world of Washington as the co-chair of the 9-11 Commission and absolutely foundational time for our country as it struggles to think about Understand respond to that attack Nancy Lindborg president of the US IP was an associate director of the USA ID running democracy humanitarian other key programs and is now Obviously decisive in these operations here secretary Madeleine Albright secretary of state during the Clinton administration now had of a very successful consulting firm that bears her name But involved in almost every good work that I know of And finally Steve Hadley who was national security advisor in the Bush 43 administration from 2005 2009 Again, Steve is is look look at a serious discussion group Foreign policy planning exercise and Steve will be involved in it Among the many things he does is he's chairman of the US IP Board of Directors, so let me begin with Governor Cain and ask you to Set this new Task Force report in the context of your earlier work with the 9-11 Commission There's some language in the report that Says the CT counterterrorism approach that grew out of the 9-11 Commission was necessary All the things that we did as a country were necessary But they were not sufficient or cost effective in dealing with the problem that we encountered So I want to ask you to begin with a simple question Is there a way in which this new report is kind of a course correction a mid-course correction from? The the path you laid forward in the 9-11 Commission report Yeah, I don't I don't know whether I'd call it a course correction or a follow-on because when we did the 9-11 report we had a Number of objectives as defined by the United States Congress One was How did it happen, you know, how could this ever happen to the United States was the history of it How did this event happen and we found in that regard that, you know, we made mistakes all through all of government really that background leading 9-11 to happen and then How do you set up a mechanism in the United States to harden our response so that it couldn't happen again? How do you how do you correct the mistakes that were made before 9-11 and? Thirdly, what can you do to? prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again on The first two we were quite successful We haven't had a major attack We didn't understand the history of terrorism we laid out a report which is still authoritative in that regard But the preventive side was something we didn't really get around to Or at least we didn't follow up on that part of it so when I was asked To do this was a very wonderful group of bipartisan people It seemed to me and it seemed to Lee Hamilton that this was really a follow-up to our work this was taking that preventive piece which never really got acted on and Hopefully to act on it because You know there are ten times more terrorist attacks now than there were at the time we finished the report So obviously the event of peace is not working. So that was the way I saw it I thought it was a follow-up onto our work and let me Press you just a little bit on what you just Said it's true that the 9-11 Commission report Absolutely foundational document did talk about the need for preventive work for the kind of a long-term Not reactive, but but but longer term Response to this problem of terrorism and yet I think we'd all agree that that did not happen sufficiently So my question is as we embark on a new effort to emphasize that What obstructed it in the past and what do we have to look at very practically and specifically to make it work better now? Well, I think there was never a The government really worked hard on most of our report and the Congress and We did establish for the things Me first to first two recommendations major recommendations We did follow through with a framework all through government with the support of the United States Congress Prevention was sort of down the road We never really got a hand lover. There were good people in government who did work on prevention There are agencies of government that were out there in the field doing things Hopefully to to prevent the rise of new terrorists in various countries, but it was never an overriding priority Prevention for instance was not mentioned in many government documents. It just wasn't it wasn't top of the agenda And I guess what we're saying in this report is it's got to be top of the agenda right now. I mean that we are danger With Isis and that framework was a lot developed kite and all of that we're in danger of allowing this problem to get away from us again and Allowing things to happen which will be make this a much less safe world And eventually no matter how hard we put our defenses up in this country if we allow The spread of the terrorist ideology in the terrorist network then eventually it's going to get here And there's nothing we can do to prevent it unless we are willing to outreach to the rest of the world and particularly in these Fragile states and we are mandate was particularly to look at these fragile states Yes, that's where the hotbed and the birth of so much terrorism is Nancy your Agency the US IP is one of the few in government that very specifically has the mandate to deal with The problems that this report describes Every day US IP people At least as I encountered them are out in the world dealing with problems of fragility problems of of how to get greater Coherence better governance. Maybe you could tell us what you learn from this work about fragility and Give us a couple of success stories and help us see in practical terms What this report could mean if it was really embraced by the whole of our government? well the report very specifically looks at the conditions that exist in fragile states that enable extremism to take root to recruit others and If you look at both this report as well as the interim report that was released last 9-11 It describes the key conditions as being a sense of injustice a sense of unaddressed grievances a lack of Sense by the by a country's citizens that its government is Providing for their needs there and services so in essence that social contract is broken That's the definition of of fragility and you know It's a spectrum you can be on many parts of the fragility spectrum and it can exist at the national or the Subnational level and what we have learned is that the more fragile a place is the more likely it is to be the common denominator for a host of problems related to violent conflict civil wars out migration Incidents of violent extremism and we we're seeing today in the news that as Isis mutates into Isis 2.0. It's popping up in those places that are the most fragile like dr. Congo They're certainly present now in Afghanistan and the possibility is that it would spread So there's both the presence of the ideology But it's looking at those places of fragility where you want to get ahead of the problem By addressing the core governance issues to create greater resilience to the virus of the ideology taking hold Let me ask you to just say a little bit more in practical terms about What that looks like and I'll preface that with a recollection of my own from Afghanistan. I remember one of the commanders under general Petraeus Saying if you look at areas in Afghanistan where there isn't a local judge or prosecutor to adjudicate Disputes and you look at a map of where the Taliban is strong. It's the same map Okay, we get it. It's the same map So the they created in this wonderful American way the rule of law field force It had a one-star commanding it the brilliant general Yeah, I remember flying with him to coast to see the rule of law field force in action and you couldn't Dream up a better way for America to get it and apply the right people I'm sure in that little kind of village outside of host the same You know rotten lack of adjudication of disputes continues and that we we didn't fix it so Maybe you could just think a little bit about how Knowing what the problem is for so long. We could actually do better at Making a sustainable difference Well the report addresses the importance of having locally led solutions as opposed to parachuting in external forces that it Be a set of solutions that are shared so there's a shared framework among our defense diplomacy and development capabilities that Enable us all to point in the same direction as opposed to undercutting each other's efforts and that we do so in concert with international partners and There's a piece of it that says a strategic prevention initiative that Unshackles a lot of our bureaucracy From the kind of constraints that keep us from being more agile and long-term in the efforts we do and let me just cite a quick example from the report of a Very fascinating case of two villages side-by-side in Tunisia one of which was one of the greatest sources of foreign fighters and right next door about the same size they were not and In looking at what were the differences in these two places the one that did not have a lot of foreign fighters had a very active civil society presence including labor unions and a sense that they were able to Contribute to the solution of the problems themselves. So it goes to a sense of Finding what is happening locally? Where can you partner but not necessarily parachuting in our solution set? Madeleine you've written and thought deeply about Extremism and how it arises most recently in your really superb book fascism, which I commend everyone in the audience Which talks about how how extreme Extremism took root in in modern Europe in two different forms Maybe you could just Talk a little bit about this fundamental core problem of extremism How it arises what you know from a lifetime of thinking about it? About its causes and then how our government through this task force set of recommendations can respond better Well, I I do think that this is not new frankly of people getting angry over something that has happened to them and Nancy mentioned the social contract being broken I think that we've all forgotten what the social contract is about which is an agreement that people gave up their Individual rights in order to be protected by a state and there's a responsibility to each other And so when there is a new technology or some outside impetus people are likely to get angrier and angrier and the rise of fascism frankly was as a result of anger and disappointment in Italy at not Who had? Italians had fought on the side of the Allies during World War one, but their Contribution had not been recognized and they felt dist in a number of different ways and there were problems economically so it rises initially from anger and kind of a sense of disappointment that things haven't worked then They're usually and this comes either from the inside or the outside a leader who exacerbates that By saying you're angry for a good reason and I'm on your side and these other people have created the problem the scapegoats Or it comes from the outside where there are forces that say aha You can be connected to a much larger movement, and I think that's something that we're really looking at now in terms of What happened that you started talking about the 9-11 Commission? I do think that during the Clinton administration We began to look at there were acts of terrorism the World Trade Center Initially then the kind of thing that happened at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania then discovering the connection to Osama bin Laden who went to Afghanistan then the coal Attack a number of different things so that one could begin to see a pattern But we I think generally the the non-extreme world did not have a plan to deal with it I think we're pretty good in terms of dealing with an Immediate problem, but not good enough in going back and trying to figure out how to prevent it And and I you were very kind to say that I've been involved with good works But one of the things that I did when we left the administration with Bill Cohen We looked at how to prevent genocide which was really one of the bases also of the anger that you take it out on the scapegoat and Decided that we needed to look at it much earlier on This in fact requires an even earlier look back to what the issues are And I think that we need to figure out the times when these are internally created problems by divisions in society with new technology and anger corruption Which is the cancer of developing countries some developed then There really are also issues in terms of what is happening from the outside and Frankly with the end of the Cold War which had frozen the ground on a lot of ethnic conflicts and dispute And they got defrosted and the worms started crawling around and so it was possible for an outside force to get people stirred up so it's the outside and the inside that is part of the issue and the inside and Obviously, I was delighted to serve on this task force and a lot of good Thinking on this but in terms of the importance of civil society I'm chairman of the board of the National Democratic Institute governance is essential and This is there need to be some outside Advisors the nuts and bolts of how to do it But it does have to come from the inside and getting people motivated to really deal with their own problems Not feel that they're being told what to do But understand that they are part of how to solve it but it's that inside outside part that we have to deal with and I think the problem really and we've been talking about this how Far back do we go to look at a problem? And get ready for something our government. There's no question that the urgent pushes out the important And various parts of the US government that should be thinking in terms of long-term policy planning are then in fact Having to deal with some immediate issue And so I do think people need to go back and look with the help of the private sector I think that this has to be an all You know all hands-on deck kind of aspect of looking at it And I think there are a lot of suggestions in the report about how we can all work together and Recognize that we're dealing with a very long-term problem Based on the fact that the social contract has been broken and people are angry and we need to help them deal with it The the urgent pushes out the important. I don't know. It's one of my takeaways and I good Segway to what I want to ask Steve Hadley Steve I wanted to ask you to think strategically about this initiative In the context of the strategic debate that we've been having in in Washington really the last few years and to sum it up I'd say there was a growing consensus that we had over-weighted the problem of violent extremism that we had Misshaped and misshaped our national resources To deal with that especially militarily And that it was time to refocus on great power competition that we had sort of missed certain aspects of the Russian Chinese Threats so as happens in Washington We're not good at doing two things at the same time as a rush from one side of the ship to the other and let's all focus on great power Competition so that's the moment in which this report lands It's and it's saying that we ought to spend more time thinking about the issue that a lot of people thought we'd spent too much time thinking about so let me ask you to to deal with that Reality in this current environment And also talk about the thing that I know vexed you as an ash security advisor, which is the long-term strategic issues versus the short-term reactive ones Well, you know it is the case that While we were heavily focused on the problem of extremism the problems in the Middle East the problem of terrorism China and Russia were not sitting on their hands And it is true that we need to pay more attention to the emergence of great power competition with Russia and China and the emergence of an Re-emergence of an ideological struggle between democracy and free markets and authoritative authoritarian state capitalism But it's one of the things I would say a truism in Washington that when people say well, it's either this or it's that It's that's Usually wrong. It's really both and that's the case of the problem of fragile states because as Nancy said fragile states because of bad Governance and breaking of the social contract our source of terrorism their source of migration flows that Threaten and destabilize the neighborhood, but they are also a theater for great power competition You see China, but particularly Russia playing in these fragile states to frustrate the United States and to advance their own interests and Usually they contribute to the issues of bad governance that the source of the problem of extremism and terrorism in the first place So fragile states is a problem whether you're concerned about terrorism or you're concerned about great power competition You have to solve the problem of fragile states because it is a theater For both so in some sense if we status can solve the problem of fragile states It will both address the issues of migration about terrorism But it will also address the issue of how we manage this reemergence of great power competition Tom I want to ask you to to Go to what maybe is the core political problem that that I see in making the recommendations in this report real and that's The historic difficulty of getting hold of government approaches Breaking down stovepipes your 9-11 commissioner report famously said connect the dots break down the stovepipes and in some ways that was done in other ways It wasn't so I guess the way I'd put the question to you If we were to have a strategic prevention initiative as this report recommends Led by the State Department but involving the whole of government. Do we need some kind of Goldwater Nichols idea? about fusing the elements that are involved in These policies the way Goldwater Nichols finally brought the services together Yeah, we do Look It's it's very very difficult take all of government on one page What we learned from 9-11 report was that? it was nowhere near the same page before 9-11 and One of the huge recommendations now report is that everybody has to gather around prevention that this should not be Thought of lightly but thought of as the essential goal, which everything else gathers around It starts with the Congress and it's wonderful that there are two bills Working their way through the House and the Senate which mirror in many ways the recommendations this report and they're bipartisan and Both of them have the support of the authorizing committees in both houses So it's very different than 9-11 9-11 we had to fight our recommendations through Congress There was a substantial body a lot of behind the scenes about trying to stop us This doesn't seem to be that way. I mean right now the Congress is very supportive and Problem is really to make sure that our recommendations and the recommendations these two bills Rise to the top of the agenda so they get done. It's not because of opposition It's just because there's so much else on the agenda that may get ahead of them And then once you've got that framework established by the Congress Getting everybody in federal government to establish get on the same page And they should be able to do that. I mean our recommendations around prevention are fairly plain and and there's something everybody can get that the the stovepipes in government caused so many problems and Read our report you'll find out the stovepipes in government what they did before 9-11 and since and But with the congressional Framework of that legislation and the support we found we found so far some very good support within government I mean we've got a nice statement of support from Secretary Pompeo a number of others who like the direction of this report So with that going for us, we hope that can become on this issue Prevention is the overall goal and everybody else sort of falls in behind that in the various agencies Well, I'll look for mention of it on Twitter as a side Nancy Well, if I could just build on that I do think that there's a moment of ripe convergence Underway both because this this was fundamentally a congressionally Mandated task force legislation is going for it also builds on some important initiatives within the US government the stabilization Assistance review that already brings together state aid and DOD. I Don't think we need a fusing of those elements because they are distinct and very important tools and disciplines But rather the framework that gets everybody to have a shared understanding of what's the problem set and what's our pathway that that's more doable and Would go a long way toward making the prevention agenda real Steve and in addition to that shared framework, which is the first recommendation of the task force report The second is what we call the strategic prevention initiative. Basically. It says step back Make prevention the the prism through which you view all these programs Make sure that roles and responsibilities are clear and then have mechanisms for interagency coordination so that you can get all the players on the same page with respect to that framework and we also suggest a deputy national security advisor for fragility for the for countering is for the Extremism if you will and that will try to coordinate all of that together and finally a Suggestion that the authorities Congress gives give people in the field the long-term commitment and Flexibility they need to tailor solutions to the very different situations in which they're active Madeline I'd think that one of the things that makes it hard in terms of getting Congressional approval or just generally is why are we doing this alone? We would not be doing it alone, and I think the point that has to be made has to be an international effort Obviously intelligence sharing a number of different aspects of that and then working Internationally on this Americans are the most generous people in the world with the shortest attention span So this is going to take a long time, and we need to have help I am multilateral Madeline, and so basically we do need to figure out how to get international Support for this because it isn't just an American problem and working with a variety of organizations Not non-governmental organizations the private sector, but definitely it takes longer I mean for instance, I think that we kind of you know We fought what was genocide ethnic cleansing in Kosovo But didn't stay there long enough because it takes a while to really build the governance issues that we were talking about trying to really kind of Have a proactive way not to let some extreme group be able to enter X country And stir things up again after we've dealt with it in the first place And so there has to be that combination of national Support for it and international that really makes us all realize this is a long-term problem not a quick fix I'd like to introduce a problem that is Not to dealt with in any detail in the report But certainly is on our minds this week as we think about Sri Lanka and has been increasingly in in dealing with violent extremism the last few years and that is that The west the United States in particular has provided the platform The command and control structure for extremist groups that has allowed them to leap national boundaries through our social media Sites and we're now in a period where I think the people who run social media Companies are thinking in new ways about what their responsibilities are and maybe if any members of the panel have a little bit of insight on this what you Suggest in terms of drawing in that part of the private sector into a conversation about how we Prevent the development of extremism in fragile places where the most robust thing sometimes Is there is their little cell phone? I'd love to speak to that because one of the things if you look at for instance examples of what happened in egypt with Tahrir Square people were brought to Tahrir Square by social media With no real plan about how to get from Tahrir Square to governance And there was such a disaggregation of voices that they couldn't figure out what to do I'm always the last person to say this but elections were held too soon in egypt The muslim brotherhood was organized that tahrir square people were not And they the muslim brotherhood wins and then things are totally screwed up in kairom and I make up this man Who wants to come into kairo to open his stall in the market? And it's such a mess that he says to hell with this I want order and all of a sudden you have a military government and it began with a social media aspect to it And I think what needs to happen is without having There's a real problem about privacy and the Freedom of speech and a number of different elements that are out there that make this very complicated But I do think we need to establish some rules of the game That might be akin to to previous arms control agreements or some kind of a way of looking at it from the perspective new rules For a very new situation created by technology and social media Which is a double-edged sword in so many ways in terms of connecting us all and making us understand things But also providing the vehicle for those that want to Plug extremism and really spread it because the thing in shrillanka one can truly Argued that it's that one of the reasons it started was in A response to what happened in new zealand and then some of the things that are now happening in india Our response to what's happening in shrillanka and it does spread by social media and we do need some rules without limiting The freedom of speech and that's your business really in terms of how One can get information across and yet not exacerbate the situation by putting in And what the russians and chinese are doing in terms of hacking so new rules of the game And any other nancy of thoughts of thoughts about that I would just add that The report is really focused on The conditions that are characteristic of fragile environments That it is a different part of the landscape than some of some of these other tools that spread the ideology Um If if states are less fragile if communities are less fragile they will be more resilient When the virus of ideology is introduced and or have the institutions to address The the results of of the radicalized Individuals it's in the absence of all that that it really gains ground and takes root and people can congregate and hold territory So you really need both you need all the tools of counter terrorism They're looking at the spread on the internet But but what this is saying is we can get more upstream with a prevention agenda By looking at the conditions that drive people towards those ideologies Yes, sir, just briefly the overall problem Somehow we've got to get social media companies to cooperate in this whole area of security Um, I know the I know the issue. I know that the social media companies say we're international companies Not necessarily american companies And therefore what you're trying to do maybe with the fbi or the cia or whatever isn't something that we want to get involved in Well, I think we've got to get them involved not not an area where we're necessarily telling them what to do But we're they're willing to meet at the highest levels To look at this whole problem of what social media is doing to the internet worldwide This whole problem of terrorism what it means to terrorism And get their input and their suggestions as to what we ought to be doing because it's in their interest too to stop this from happening I want to ask a final question before turning this over to the audience And it goes to the implicit values dilemma in your task force report We think as americans that the opposite of fragility is Is democracy is something that looks like our country, but there are many other responses China does not appear to be a very fragile country these days China doesn't appear to have a significant problem compared to other countries of violent extremism So china says to people around the world if you're worried about fragility and you're worried about violent extremism We have the answer Look at how we do things And here we'll give you some money to build a new port too I'd be interested in just brief thoughts from each of you about how We embrace this strategic prevention initiative this idea of preventing Extremism by dealing with fragility You know in a way that that isn't Democracy promotion of the sort that we saw 20 years ago. Let's say but something different Let me let me say a word about that. You know, we've we've had a lesson since the so-called arab spring There were a number of those countries That also seemed to have the terrorism problem in hand seemed to be Stable and yet we found they were not And the lesson we have drawn from that That experience is in the middle east which is the focus of this Study that in the end of the day, you cannot have long-term stability Until you have governments that and I I'd put aside the d word the democracy word I use it all the time, but let me let me say it in a different way You're not going to have long-term stability there and to have societies that are resilient against terrorism And migration flows and intervention from outside powers unless they are responsive to their people Are viewed as legitimate by their people are competent to provide the services That the people need in terms of education and health and the like and have a vision of a society that people are willing to support And work toward It is hard work. We don't really know how to do it We have to be very Humble as we approach it is not something we can do on our own It is about by with and through it is with local partners If local partners aren't there to work with we'll probably fail We've got to be strategic about where we make these investments But our judgment is based on the history That that is the long-term path for true stability over time and more prosperous and secure societies So that we don't have to keep revisiting this problem You know Nancy Lindbergh and I were in Iraq 18 months ago She's been there again more recently and we talked to one of the Sunni tribal leaders and he said, you know you you Americans you've won the war in Iraq three times She meets that. I'm saying you beat al-qaidi. You can beat isis. When are you going to help us forge a peace Well prevention and the skill set we're talking about Is on the path to helping societies build more peaceful and secure futures Tom well first of all amen That's absolutely right I would disagree with you on china Because I think the fact that china has to wall up a million muslims So they don't get loose in the society I guess is a sign that they also have a have a major problem that they're trying to deal with And it interests me, you know when When al-qaida and particularly isis started to take over territory In order to get people to support them. It wasn't just the ideology They found ways to fix some of the infrastructure They found ways to get some people jobs. They found ways to do things in the society to try and get support by frankly giving better government And We've got to do better than that. We've got a we've got a in this report We've got our own ideas on how to how to get better government. We should be able to do it better than they do And just a coda to that is that The report really emphasizes the importance of country led initiatives That it can't be imposed from the outside. So regardless of what you call it It is the presence Of justice the presence of More inclusive economies All of the factors That steve just noted but it has to be led through local initiatives This is very hard because we are can do kind of folks, right? But supporting locally led initiatives in partnership with our international Colleagues is a different vision. It's a fundamentally different vision. It's very hard And that is the goal of this report to try to put that forward metal and I do think what's It Steve said it and we have to be humble about this. There's no question This is difficult and that we're going through a period internationally or Throughout the world that has been complicated by any number of different factors Technology, etc. What I just have Been fascinated by is the terminology that's been used because They have to pick up on our ideas. So orban in hungary talks about illiberal democracy In china they talk about authoritarian capitalism Those are you know, so democracy and capitalism are still kind of the code words for what they think people really want because that's true And so in order to deal with the problems. So they've introduced some oxymorons and so That really makes it a very complicated aspect of it I do think the tone of what we're saying here. This can't be fixed overnight. It requires A coordinated approach and a desire to look at a problem in a new era in a very kind of consistent And dedicated way with the help of others and that's why I'm very glad to be a part of it because this is not Okay, we've got a fix and this will all be done by tomorrow It will require local action as nancy has said and local action here and support of the american people In a way that does not make it sound as if we're doing everything by ourselves So by the way, I was in a very weird meeting in china Which was an invitation from the international department of the chinese communist party Trying to figure out and i was trying to figure out what they wanted from us And they have problems at the bottom of their pyramid and they want to know what we do And so it isn't as if we are operating something that they're not interested in knowing how to deal with Well, if they find out what it is that's our secret. I hope they'll tell us So, uh, let me turn to the audience Ask you to yes raise your hands identify yourselves short questions And if it's to a particular panel member, please identify that person. Yes, ma'am Hi, thank you. This is for everyone. Thank you all for being here today. Um, my name is christine peterson I'm a first year student in the msfs program at georgetown university Um, and i'm interning at mercy core working on the global fragility act. So I was excited to hear you talk about that Thank you. Um So I wanted to ask about this fear of the word state building Specifically, do you think the fear or sort of political stigma surrounding this phrase state nation building specifically actually Will be used politically to staunch any u.s. Support either humanitarian or stabilization efforts in active conflicts such as syria and yemen For fear of repeating in iraq or afghanistan. Thank you The question is about Nation building and is that a phrase that can be used against this effort? I think what we would say is we have a different approach nation building got the notion of We the united states are going to come in and build your nation for you. Thank you very much And what we've learned it's a hard lesson. We've learned over the last 70 years is that doesn't work We can't do it. We don't know how to do it and it won't be enduring if we try And so the whole point that we've tried to say is you've got to partner with local countries Their leaders at the national level at sub national level at the civil society level Partner with those people who get the need for governance as the key antidote for fragility and Enable them and empower them as much as we can from the outside But we've got to be we've got to have some priorities We've got to focus our resources on those countries that have a national security interest for us that are important to us And where we have local partners who get it who get the vision and are willing to take the lead And only in that way is it gonna is it gonna works people have to build their own countries We can help But in the end of the day the initiative is going to have to come from them. That's nancy's point about locally owned The gentleman uh, yes here with this end up This and then i'll call on you sir I'm sufi lagari with the sindi foundation You discuss about the Sri Lanka already revealed that pakistani connection The inam hasham was visited to pakistan and one of the suicider bummer was that one And also in pakistan the hasara community and against The the pakistani involved the isi everywhere So i don't know about the fragile state, but the how you going to prevent that the state like a pakistan everywhere Whenever you find that pakistani Connection or the so the connection or the extremism even 9 11 We gave them a lot of money. We are humble with them. We are strong with them But they are not even stopping the extremism and terrorism everywhere I don't know how to going to deal with them Good, thank you. Who would like to that's a good question. Who'd like to tackle that? Well, I I do think that our record with pakistan has been very complicated Because we have been as they call us fair weather friends. We sometimes help them Sometimes there are automatic sanctions that come in and then we kind of stop working with them I do think with the new leadership in pakistan. It's important to develop a Functional relationship with them. They're dealing with huge problems and when they can't deal with us they turn to the chinese and And I think that that undermines our relationships there But I I do think I've spent a lot of time looking at pakistan and it really has been an off on relationship And I think one that is complicated by and that's why the sustainability of what we're doing is so important That we don't say we're going to help you this month and then In a year we're going to change our minds and do something else because there's always some group in every country That says look they aren't trying to help us. They're trying to help themselves And that's why it's important to have partners and really establish what we've all been saying that kind of local Connection so that it isn't just looking at how america can dominate a particular area I just I would just add as as as a moderator The the pakistan that Uses its brain power its its many gifts Is going to be a pakistan that's reshaped I think from the bottom up I think you know when when the pakistani people take possession of their country in a sense finally We'll we'll see we'll see changes Let me call on that gentleman here who had his hand up. Yes, sir question for for nancy You you highlighted the you highlighted the importance of learning what is happening locally How do you do localized learning on a large scale? I was making the comment that there was a ripe convergence And I didn't actually get past the us piece of this because we're also seeing a lot of initiatives around the world with With the world bank diffid has a new fragility strategy A number of our european partners, um, you'll hear from the next panel some of the initiatives I think the learning is that these issues are highly Contextualized that you have to really understand what is driving this sense of injustice and exclusion And what are the core pieces of fragility in any particular environment and that there isn't one tool set But it's it's the how That we engage with the local partners as opposed to the specific what? And that the learning has to happen on an iterative ongoing localized basis Driven by our Colleagues on the ground working with local partners as to we have to stop using what is Firmly known in the government as the 8000 mile screwdriver that we're going to fix it from here And so that's how the learning acts locally and it does feed up and there are things that we have learned over the The past decade. I think that are contributing to this moment of convergence We have two outstanding Questions from the audience. I just want to raise them and They're particularly for nancy, but any any panel member who wants to respond Uh, I'll be the first there are young activists on the ground across africa in the middle east Who can lead prevention efforts more effectively and cost effectively than anyone else yet? they never Qualify for international funding or if they do It's as an end beneficiary not as someone on the driver's seat of designing and leading these initiatives So unless we change that how can we make any real and sustainable impact on preventing extremism? Good question. Nancy That's a great question, especially when you look at how young The median age is in the most fragile of states somewhere between 16 and 18 And so they are very importantly the future of those countries Um, there is a great un initiative 1325 called youth peace and security That is trying very hard To enable youth leadership to have a greater place at the table at every level at a peace Talk or at their local community level and to get both more training and support as well as funding So there is there is momentum behind that I think recognition of how important it is to take youth seriously. It's certainly something we work on here at usip I suggest whoever wrote this There's no name attached should come introduce themselves to nancy afterwards. Yes There is in the report one of the things we suggest You've got to do a much better job on identifying those people And those are the people we want to work with those are the people as we follow through our recommendations Those are the people who are going to do it in the ground So our problem now is not just we haven't worked with them. We haven't identified them And that's what we got to do Well, let me just say at the national democratic institute what we try to do is identify Youth in the countries that we work in a youth movement as well as a women's support for women And I also do think because i've been talking about the importance of the private sector Part of the issue is training people or having jobs for people and training them And the private sector can help in that in terms of getting them engaged and having it really be A way that the youth are seen as their greatest Profit margin if I could put it that way that they really are the ones that are going to make the difference. So Let me take a last question the young lady here.  Thank you. I'm abbey freed with promundo An NGO that engages men and boys in gender justice efforts And forgive me if i'm mistaken, but um, I did not see the word gender at all in the report So I was wondering and of course by gender. I don't just mean women So I was wondering if Any of you have thought about Gender identities and particularly masculinities and masculine identities Particularly those of you who are speaking about these feelings of anger The necessity for providing employment And how those are wrapped up in particularly The fact that the majority of violent extremists are men and young men question Thank you. Good question. You guys do great work gender is obviously a critical issue The report does talk a little bit about that particularly in some of the annexes What we what we try to underscore, however, is that you really need to do the analysis in any particular environment To understand what are the key dynamics and obviously gender will always be one of those dynamics But rather than prescribing Here are the things you need to do It's more How to do the kind of approach in a fragile environment So absolutely. Um, and it's not going to look the same from place to place, but you raise an important point No question as you look at the whole picture Those societies are willing to value and empower women A less fragile just simply a statement of fact. So anytime we can encourage The empowerment of women we ought to do so I also do think this is one place that technology has made a huge difference in terms of I always like to talk about The kenyan woman farmer who doesn't have to walk miles to pay her bills She can now pay them with a mobile phone and have a life in which she does a business or Participates in political activity or is able to do a lot of different things. So these are the positive aspects of technology And I as I said, I do think there need to be support for ndi does a lot of work in getting women candidates and trying to To make that happen So the hard part to be that we have to be honest about sharia law makes life complicated In terms of the role of women and we're seeing that in a number of different ways And not everything can be done through this report. What has to happen is there has to be I think real cooperation with a lot of other groups because this is a long-term project that is going to require The public and private sector and different groups to be involved in it I think we all welcome to be associated with those who have the same kind of agenda So with That I want to Thank the members of the panel for their work on the task force report And for explaining it so clearly to all of us Thank you panel members and I'd now like to Call to the stage Ambassador paula dobriansky who is going to lead our next panel, which will feature us government officials who've been on the front lines in trying to deal with these problems Talking about their experiences. Ambassador dobriansky was under secretary of state For global policy Well known. I'm sure to all of you. So let's welcome her in the next panel Good morning, everyone I'm paula dobriansky and I had the privilege of serving on the task force And I'm very excited about this particular panel Because we are Going to be looking at the actual implementation Part of it and we have a very distinguished set of practitioners Long-tenured who really I think we're going to have a lot to say and hopefully We'll even produce maybe a little bit of a debate and discussion Here our theme particularly In this panel is focused on prioritizing prevention across the u.s. Government And I think as you saw in the previous panel We heard Argued that while we've defeated terrorists since 9 11 we haven't stemmed the tide Of terrorism overseas and in fact the number of terrorist attacks Per year has increased five-fold since then We also heard in that panel discussion That there is a really strong case for adopting a comprehensive us prevention strategy The term as we know a whole of government approach is key To responding to this growing threat and also one that obviously is going to require Really a new way of thinking structuring and executing us foreign policy So with that backdrop, let me not only welcome our panelists, but I'm going to introduce all of them up front and they're They're seated in the order in which I will be introducing them And then we'll proceed with questions. So right here to my right is dr. Denise Natali Who is the assistant secretary for the bureau of conflict and stabilization operations at the department of state? She previously served as the director of the center for strategic research at the institute for national Strategic studies at the national defense university And she has more than 30 years of experience in post-conflict relief Reconstruction and stabilization And now next to her is u.s. Army lieutenant general Michael Nagata who is director of the strategic operational planning at the national counterterrorism center And he also served as the head of special operations command central from june 2013 to october 2015 And then next to general nagata. We have chris milligan Who serves as the counselor at the u.s agency for international development? he's a long time foreign service member and Uh, I would also just add I know one of your last postings at least where I've intersected with you was In berma where you really had quite a handful at that time. It was an important time in a time of transition And then we have alina romanovsky who serves as principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism at the state department where she serves And oversees uh the coordination and integration of the department's International efforts to advance specific counterterrorism and counterviolent extremism policies So all of you were truly delighted that you are here And let's go forth. So dr. Natali. Let me begin with you What do you see as the critical elements of an effective preventive, uh, strategy? You know addressing fragility as a root cause of violent extremism and instability. We'd welcome your thoughts. Thank you Thank you ambassador for for this introduction and I'd like to thank the united states institute of peace Particularly president lindberg for this gracious invitation and more importantly this very significant event today There's three I would have purchased this three Key ways that I would address and that my bureau the bureau of conflict and stabilization operations addresses state fragility first We need to articulate very clearly why this is a national security priority Fragile states are Important or they're critical because they enable the growth of radical extremism. They incubate transnational organized crime They stifle economic growth They spread pandemic disease and they prompt destabilizing Migration flows. So these are why this is important to the united states The second part of this is establishing a very clear definition and policy framework and to this end The cso and usa id the state department in usa had been working to Come together to create a clear definition Or what we agree upon as a definition of conflict prevention and this is I will frame this as a limited one That is to say Conflict prevention as a deliberate effort to disrupt likely pathways to the outbreak Escalation or recurrence of violent conflict Now you're going to see me make this theme throughout and that is we're looking and prefer a limited definition Why this is limited? It's something that can be measured and managed and throughout this This morning's breakfast and the staff and just this first panel. We've heard very important ideas about You know preventing Making societies more resilient Good, you know, good governance. How do we get at root causes? These are all very important But if we don't manage this and have this into a very clear and measurable way Of addressing this then it's going to make this very important task moot And the third the third part of the strategy and this is is the most important I think is to apply the guiding principles laid out by this administration To prioritize target and be disciplined About our conflict prevention strategies We must determine where there's instability Where where there is a priority to our national security interests Where our adverse adversaries are exploiting fragility to counter these interests? And I'd like to turn to specifically The stabilization assistance review Which is I would say the the framework in which the state department Is addressing things like Fragile state stabilization and that is part of a larger foreign assistance realignment Why is this important because we have clear criterion in which we're going to address these types of problems One of them is is there burden sharing? Do we have not only international partners? But do we have private sector local partners that we're working with are we holding our local partners accountable? Most importantly establishing clear metrics of success. This must be an evidence-based Quantifiably measurable exercise or else we will not be able to continue this It's just not an open-ended process. So again clear policy outcomes, but making sure that these are linked To quantifiable measurable Outcomes. Thank you. How let me just do a follow-up. How given what you've just said, which are very clear specific points that you've made how Does that correlate with the report's recommendations? Where's the overlap? There is a lot of overlap and then we're just taking it a bit farther I clearly support the idea of having a clear division of labor so that we don't duplicate efforts So for example, again, I'll take some of the best practices of the SAR Dividing the division of labor between state department USAID and the department of defense state as the lead USAID is the lead implementer and DOD is a supporting role We are continuing to implement that type of division of labor I will take it a bit farther though by saying if we don't have clearly measurable Indicators of what it means to get at the root causes root causes can go three and four times removed And this can go on to be a never-ending process and we don't want to lose this important effort So this is going to be difficult. We know it But again, my bureau is starting this process by establishing this strategy by creating what the metrics are How are we going to operationalize this and how are we going to measure this because In this environment, this can't be an open-ended project. Thank you Metrics were certainly an important part and something during the deliberations which weighed heavily in, you know, our thinking So, uh, glad you've highlighted a number of those points General Nagata, let me let me turn to you. Um, we know that, uh, in fact both the 2000 well, 17 national security strategy and then the 2018 national defense strategy They both focused on china and russia as being long-term or not long-term but strategic competitors And looking at long-term strategic competition with them and that's a a priority And it's been a principal priority for the u.s. Military And also we have the global coalition which announced that had retaken all the territory once held by the islamic state And the u.s. Is now in the process of drawing down its presence in syria So a question for you just looking at the broad arena How does this geo strategic competition? Um, uh between and among These powers intersect with the primary and principal concerns of the task force the spread of violent extremism Give us your thinking on that Thank you for the question Before I begin I just want to add my complements And my own small amount of commendation to the members of the task force that have labored for so long to create um The proposals the ideas and the initiatives that hopefully will create greater progress for us in the future um Regarding your question in my view And in my current position i'm i'm a counterterrorism strategist In my view the degree to which Our and the international's community struggle with violent extremism The number of ways in which it intersects is interrelated with and is entangled with Are aspirations to achieve our other national security objectives including The uh, what I would call at least at present a a war of influence With other peer competitors Um are are almost too numerous to count um I think one of the biggest mistakes we sometimes make is we try to We try to act as if there's our struggle with violent extremism and these other national security imperatives operate on different Islands or on different planets They are deeply entangled with each other and i'll i'll try to explain or at least to give a few examples why I believe this is true and and we just we just don't have the luxury of of trying to Segment or segregate these into discreet Approaches we have to have an approach that deals with the fact that these are entangled but let let me try to elaborate briefly Um, I'll try to use a what I consider to be a useful model And that is the the the net assessment of model of trying to see our national security problems through the lens Through the three lenses of red green and blue red being the adversary or the security challenge We're trying to deal with green being the environment We're dealing in whether it's the physical or sociological or economic or political environments And then finally ourselves which often is the most difficult part to analyze because nobody likes to look at themselves Really hard. You might not like what you see But i'll give you three examples what i'm talking about First of all In my view violent extremists, whether it is a very large powerful movement like the islamic state or it's other more local Forms of terrorism some of which may not be religiously motivated And they may be they may be pursuing some other form of ideology But all of them Are finding new opportunities Because of the reemergence of this contest over influence among sovereign states And and these opportunities are to be found in changes in the environment that this contest is creating I'll list three of them The contest among peer competitors is creating instability That is a breeding ground for violent extremism This contest among nation states is creating uncertainty That is also and a a powerful growth medium for violent extremism And in some cases they're creating power vacuums And that is again a a rich nutrient for violent extremism So these opportunities in red are being created by changes in green And then finally It is inarguable As many people have pointed out to me That both the new national security strategy and new national defense strategy require us to pay more attention to these peer competitor Sovereign state challenges I think the question before us is do we believe we can only juggle one ball at a time As an old adage that says nobody pays the man to juggle one ball Or Are we willing to undertake the more difficult task of dealing with both problems simultaneously With sufficient success that we actually meet our national security objectives In my judgment right now the jury is out on this There's a fair amount of rhetoric that we're going to but my job as a strategist is to actually examine things like How much money how many people how much risk tolerance how much policy support is actually going into these things And I frankly i'm wondering whether or not we are determined to juggle more than one just just one ball at a time And i'll finish my mangling an old adage I have been warned since I live in the counter-terrorism world I've been I've been warned by other people in the government who work on other parts of our national security challenge look Nagata the days of Of unlimited money and unlimited resources and unlimited support for counter-terrorism are gone. We have other things to do And Here's how I answer that I get it And I i'm not voting against having to deal with these very difficult dangerous non-terrorist security challenges we have But at the risk of mangling a very old adage we can be less interested in terrorism That does not mean terrorists are less interested in us I'm going to ask you a follow-up question. It's not directly related to what you've How you've just responded and what you've just addressed But I I want to draw you out on something because I've I've had the benefit of hearing him speak a little bit earlier Um talk about definitions. Um, that was something that you In looking at the report and being a practitioner. That was something that you had some views on Yes, I'll just cherry pick a few things. Otherwise, I'll blather on too long here. Um We are challenged In many different ways not just in the united states government. I would argue this is a this is a problem the entire International community faces. I'll give you one example. It's the word we've all gathered here to talk about today The word prevention Many people and I'm and I'm heartened by the fact that an increasing number of people Both in our government around the world talking about the need to do better at prevention The problem I've just I'm discovering is very few people mean the same thing I am personally convinced just in washington dc alone if I went to A dozen of my peers in washington dc And asked all of them Do you believe prevention is important? I think they'd all say yes But if I handed each of them a blank sheet of paper And asked them to please write down your definition of what prevention means I'm pretty sure I'd get 12 completely different answers And that's a that's a significant problem if we if we if we If we believe we're all talking about the same thing, but we're actually not that's a recipe for arguments that we never solve um because we're all We're all basing our conversation on a false assumption that we're all talking about the same thing Another example, um, it's come up recently. This has been a matter of public debate. So I might as well talk about it here Have we defeated the islamic state in iraq and syria? Depending on you how you define the word defeat the answer is yes or no Now as a former member of operation inherent resolve I think I can make a credible argument that military success has been achieved because the military goal Was to rest away territorial control by the islamic state in iraq and syria. They no longer own mozal They no longer own raqqa. They no longer Hold any territory in the efrades river valley So by that definition we've succeeded But as I think by every as everyone knows by now, there are still Thousands of isis combatants scattered across both iraq and syria. They've reverted to an insurgency model That in some ways is still bigger Than anything al-qaeda and iraq was able to create So but through that lens it's very difficult to call this success So that's just two examples of where we're in my humble opinion. We're a little lazy. We're a little sloppy About how we use our own language because we end up using terms that Many of the people in the same conversation are not defining the same way I do think it's not a panacea here, but I do think the emphasis on the whole of government approach Is absolutely key in this Endeavor that's another thing nobody agrees on what constitutes a whole of government approach There you go Chris i'm going to go to chris next chris We know that usa id has done a really substantial work in recent years In fact ensure that we're better positioned as a government to effectively prevent violent extremism and to address its root causes and In particular fragility and also the issue of dysfunction in state society relations Um interestingly enough usa id is going through a redesign and administrator mark green In fact called recently for the creation of a new associate administrator for relief resilience and response Who's to oversee a new bureau for conflict prevention and stabilization? And let me just mention one other Because we want to hear from you about these He also launched a new strategic approach which is called the journey to self-reliance Which aims to orient the agency's program and programming toward building capacity of countries to address their own development challenges So tell us about these changes How does it relate to the core issues addressed by the tax task force on prevention? On dealing with fragility and addressing extremism Thank you ambassador and a big thanks as well to the task force members for the excellent report And to usip for hosting us here today USAID is standing up three new bureaus one on humanitarian assistance another on resilience and food security But the one we're here to talk about today is on conflict prevention and stabilization And moving forward standing up this new bureau really reinforces the findings of the task force report One for example that the strategic environment continues to evolve and shift USAID officers know that the majority of our officers are serving in fragile states or states that are subject to violence And as general Nagata Mentioned we are entering in the a war of influence or i'd say a competition of ideas as well Where competitor nations are want to reshape the world for their own benefit And from our perspective in doing so that is undermining the investments We've had in good governance and in economic performance And increasing fragility The standing up of this new bureau of conflict prevention and stabilization Also underscores the comparative advantage that An assistance agency can bring as part of a inner agency effort To on prevention So what what will it do this new bureau? Importantly it will provide us a more comprehensive and effective way Of looking at prevention and cve and advancing it This new bureau will be a stronger partner for our field missions to support them We've been rethinking our approach and our definition of cve and We realize it comes down to building that local capacity building that capacity among governance governments and communities to prevent And address The challenges of violent extremism So having a dedicated bureau on conflict prevention and stabilization will enable us to Improve our ability to build that local capacity We'll also be able to be more effectively match resources to policy objectives And importantly more effective learning So that we can use data better to design impact early on into our programs Finally it will Enable us to be a more effective inner agency partner. We recognize And agree with the recommendation for A inner agency architecture on prevention and we're keen to engage in that The inner agency needs a place where frank discussions can be had strategic priorities identified Discussion of risks can can be put on the table And so There are many areas of the task force Report that we agree with and that we're moving forward on so really in short It's a very exciting time to be at USAID Because we are implementing many of the thoughts and recommendations from the report Let me push you a little bit on the the new architecture And in looking at what AID did previously And then how this adds value and changes the direction Say a little bit more about that. I mean, do you see that as adding to more of a whole of government approach?  Yeah, thank you. Thank you ambassador. Um I have been with the ID for 30 years and I've worked in many conflict-affected states You know, so whether it was standing up operations in iraq or Refocusing our programs in Indonesia with the downfall of saharto What's happened at USAID is all our experiences in our programs and in our people And standing up this new bureau is Institutionalizing this more so that it's not just who you know, but actually It's a discipline that we're going to double down on focus on And in doing so we're moving forward and rethinking our approach to issues like prevention and cve Moving away from looking at different sectors or drivers to the local systems approach And then having a dedicated learning function To continue to improve our knowledge management of the issues so that we can So we can we can build that impact into our existing programs Well, that's good to hear because I know in terms of the deliberations of the report You know, there were several elements that were certainly highlighted metrics was certainly one and you've mentioned that as well Here bottom up approaches where those communities local communities are vested It's not only about governance and from the top But also about that vested interest and the bottom up approach and the desire to actually have success for one's own Welfare, but also you just both you mentioned it. You've mentioned it. Dr. Natali and that is the importance of flexibility Adaptability in this regard because if you want to be sustainable you can't have a rigid approach Here, let's go. Thank you very much.  How do you prioritize prevention activities? You know that usually take a long time to yield results You're under pressure and if they are successful You know, what if they don't actually yield? Visible evidence of their success and especially now there are a lot of crises afoot So it's not an easy question to address But how do you deal and make prevention a policy priority? How do you deal with those kinds of tensions that I've mentioned? Well, thanks paula for the question and And also, thank you very much. Nancy and usip and the task force for pulling together a really good set of of experts to not only produce a report that's very thoughtful, but also Created a platform for us to continue the discussion because from the counterterrorism bureau's point of view this threat The terrorist threat that's facing the united states is is evolving and it's been evolving And I think we need a platform to be able to talk about you know prevention and other aspects of the counterterrorism strategy that the united states is Is is is engaged in and I'd like to pull to answer your question paul I'd like to pull a little bit on a general and goddess thread, which is it's really in many cases all about the definition of prevention because if you look at it from the counterterrorism Bureau's point of view which is to pull all sorts of threads We could say in that the that prevention Which really is In many ways to prevent terrorists radicalizing mobilizing inspiring But is that just soft power or could that also be a compliment to the hard power? So how do we how do we define in many ways prevention? Is it also prevent do you prevent terrorists from radicalizing recruiting mobilizing by also engaging in strong law enforcement in Discussions on on ideology do you also? Look at at detention and prosecution All of those are components of what we look at in the counterterrorism bureau, which in some ways are components of prevention We can all we can argue that we can discuss that but in in our definition It would be very much those components of addressing the the terrorist threat Which i want to remind people when you look at that landscape It's not just isis and it's not just those terrorists that come out of fragile states it's Let's not forget the that the iran regime remains one of the foremost state sponsors of terrorism And now as we saw both in christ church and then in srilanka. You have another sort of ethnocentric A group of terrorists that are emerging they may get support from isis They may get support from al-qaeda. They may get support But their perspective on what they're doing is also something that we need to to address in the prevention Aspects may be very different in in dealing with those But to answer your question is do we have we prioritize prevention? I would I would say yes, we have prioritize Prevention it's in the national security strategy of this administration where if I can quote something I think it's important that champion and institutionalized prevention And create a global prevention architecture with the help of civil society private partners in the technology industry That a lot of those components And those partners are already addressed in the in the task force and the in the challenge I think for us is how do we how do we mobilize that and how do we tailor their Ability and their capacity to to engage in there in their own industry We talked a little the task force Report talks a lot about local communities. I think we would certainly agree that They are the first line of defense. You can't get this done without having the local communities buy in I think Nancy you referenced earlier in the In your presentation, you know two almost co-located Population centers in Tunisia and why it takes place in one and not and not the other If you can't get the local communities to buy into it, it's really tough to get at the problem And what does that mean local communities? It's it includes even families and schools And the law enforcement and the and and the governance or lack of governance in those communities to be able to To to address the prevention aspect um, I think that um also there it's clearly as our other panel members have indicated the united states can't do this alone We don't have the resources and more importantly We also need the political will and the engagement of all the other communities and the governments To address prevention however you want to define it It really does it's it's not just a whole of government. It's a whole it's a global effort We need the diplomatic engagement and we also need the resources for it And I want to just highlight a couple of examples of where we have and oh for those who asked about women absolutely In the communities. It's not just women who Are sometimes the first ones who detect their family members who are who are drifting towards the recruitment and mobilization But let's face it women are also becoming the perpetrators of terrorists and how do we get at that? Is there something distinctive? Is there something going on there that we've missed? But going back to sort of what we've tried to do as examples of addressing the Especially bringing the international community to get together at the community level We have the strong cities network that really brings together cities at the community level American cities and international cities to address and to share best practices that they have used in their communities to address that We've harnessed the global community engagement and resilience fund which francis was started back in 2014-15 where it was supposed to be And it was envisioned as a very large fund where the international donors could come together to address the resilience And engagement in in local communities to be frank It hasn't been funded anywhere near the way it should be And and again, that's an issue of making sure the international the governments Are also mobilized because after all they're the ones who can and do have Big checkbooks to be able to write on that one Again, we've mobilized the united nations. Do we do it enough probably not but they are mobilized and they've we've helped to create the counterterrorism Bureau there and finally when you look at the definition of what is prevention and you Sometimes it may sometimes we find that it may be too difficult to come to a very good definition But in the global in creating the global counterterrorism forum That is a place where the communities the private sector and our governments and the NGO community can can come together And at least talk about the best practices on how you de-radicalize How are how are they addressing radicalization and mobilization? So we are trying clearly We have a long way to go But there are very good examples Of at least efforts to bring the the international community together both at the very technical operational levels, but also at the At the government level the policymaker level to try to address this problem But again, it's a long-term problem and it and it manifests itself very differently in very different parts of the world Let's do another round with all of you and then we're going to go to the audience to all of you for your comments and questions Dr. Natali, let me let me just ask you this What were your reactions to what you've heard are you where there points that were made here that because you didn't have the benefit You went first and the others were after But you know what what were your thoughts? Was there something additionally you wanted to comment on and also let me stick this in You know, there's the global fragility act and it might be worth also making a mention of that Because it's important. There's a synergy here of this report And also the elements of the global fragility act and having you know, the executive branch Legislative branch and synergy on this key issue. I think it's crucial So both I want to give you a chance to comment on what you've heard and then maybe on that Oh, you got your mic. Yeah Okay, we're on a couple of comments I will go back on the definition Believe it or not if there were 12 gentlemen, I got it. We're probably down to 10 Because let's start with there's a really great example. We had acting assistant administrator Admiral Tim Zimmer Who's at usaid and myself had two very different definitions or my bureau on what conflict prevention should be and we literally started like this It took some time We met we came down to this we literally have now that's two of us So we're down we're down to 10, but we submitted that to the nsc and that is our working definition and You know Whatever words you want to use just I say a couple of things about definitions The broader and more expansive you do you go the more difficult it is to have to measure and and prove those metrics If you want to use words like sustainable peace, you'll be doing this as a never-ending process It's a very admirable goal, but just be very careful about whatever definition you choose We have to operationalize it measure it and carry it out So usaid and state we do have a shared definition There is one point also on prevention Another thing that cso does and i'm very proud and pleased to announce that we're about to launch this in a week or so is Our instability monitoring assessment platform It's it's called imap and we are getting into the forecasting business if we're not already And that is to say this is a force screen almost like an ops center where we are creating Instability indexes this will be available to the 70 000 plus people at the state department and eventually to all of Folks out of of state, but we monitor in lifetime Conflict instability there's different types of conflict in every part of the world you can tap on it So these are the kinds of things that we want to use as an early warning tool That we can then provide as the types of data analytics To our policy makers And again, I I go into you asked about the global fragility act We are aware of it. We have at state department policy planning working on white papers on Fragility so that we're in synced we are working again with usaid to come up with a concept paper on a way forward Hoping that in preparation for a fragility act to be Planned and and again linking it to The usip task force finding so we're on it And we're preparing for it. Thanks. Thank you and general just a few brief comments from you on any Point that you've heard that you want to respond to Made by your colleagues here on the panel, but also talk a little bit about what is the role of the military in all of this You know does the military have a role? Well, I don't think they'd let me back in the Pentagon if I said that So maybe that's exactly what I should say I'm not sure I want to go back to the Pentagon. I don't work in the Pentagon right now, obviously The I'll start with the second one first The I do believe, you know, I have spent the last 18 years of my life and what can only be imperfectly Style is the kinetic fight Me and thousands of my colleagues not just American international colleagues and our ability when necessary to use physical force against violent extremism needs to be preserved and where we can strengthen, but We have made incredible strides and particularly in the last 18 years through Because of the press of necessity we had to get a lot better our ability today after 18 years of experimentation Extraordinary investments and a great deal of sacrifice to to win the kinetic contest with a terrorist group is Perhaps unmatched in history that said as The previous panel mentioned As a matter of fact the governor mentioned this there are more terrorists today than when we started So we're not solving the problem with kinetic force. It's necessary to prevent an imminent threat. What have you? So and the the department of defense the united states military is not a set up to be a prevention executor But we can provide powerful forms of assistance and support and and I I think that That what the military should be considering and I know many of my colleagues are considering This and how can the how can the military be a more effective enabler mostly of civilians? mostly of civilian agencies Uh indigenous communities, what have you we got to do this carefully because being a military force carries some perception baggage with it But if we're careful and we're imaginative I could I could foresee a day and I hope we achieve a day where the military is a more powerful ally A more effective advocate for a mess a more effective and more imaginative enabler of of non-military people non-military organizations That inevitably have to be on the front lines of prevention Um as to your first question What I thought of repeatedly as a as I was listening to my colleagues on the panel is um Something about the strategic context that I believe we are in And I'm going to say this a little over simply just to be brief The world and our adversaries are not waiting for us to figure out what the heck we're trying to do in prevention The the world is increasingly Moving out in its own directions and and not waiting for us increase. In fact, I would argue there are some people who were They've stopped caring About whether or not we're going to fix ourselves in the prevention arena Not that may be unfair, but I I do believe there's evidence and some people have just I just made the assumption the united states is never going to get serious about this and they're just going to have to find their own way We have to become Far more willing than I believe we currently are in experimenting With how to successfully prevent violent extremism and I'm using the word experimenting or experimentation very deliberately I do not think we can Credibly state We know All the formulas all the methods all the approaches all the effective employment of resources all the effective policies We ought to embrace to successfully deal To successfully prevent the next generation of terrorists from being created At the strategic level we it's not that we know nothing and there are thousands of heroic americans And international actors who are striving in this arena every single day many at peril of their life So i'm not trying to denigrate what they're doing today But Again, I promise to be brief. So let me may just use an analogy here Um, I whenever I think about this and there's a few people who have heard me say this before I I think of something that I remember learning in school It was after Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and he was being showered with praise for inventing the light bulb And he said to several people during that time. I didn't invent the light bulb I invented 900 ways not to have a light bulb The only thing you people remember is the last experiment that succeeded What I remember if I hadn't failed 900 times you wouldn't have a light bulb now I'm not suggesting we should fail 900 times at preventing terrorism before we find the answer But the grain of truth that I believe is in that story Is we're not going to just magically leap from where we now are now to strategic success in preventing terrorism We have to be willing to ruthlessly experiment Embrace the fact that we're going to fail often in order to find pathways to success now ask yourself this question When's the last time you heard a senior government official tell his workforce? What that what successful tech sector companies are selling their workforce every day fail fast Fail often hurry up and fail. So we find the path to success faster than our competitors I don't know if we're ever going to be willing to embrace such an idea in a math massive bureaucracy like the united states government But we'd better try all right Chris and alina Let me ask both of your questions because I'm looking at time and I want to give them a chance to ask questions. So Chris lessons learned you've been I mentioned at the beginning you've been in berma, but you also were in Haiti You were in iraq Are there lessons learned that you could put forward and then let me just toss out alina Then can we go to you quickly and that is uh, what do you think that? AID needs the department needs those who are in the field and actually dealing with the issue what is needed now So lessons learned Let me think of three things one What we haven't talked about today Which is the importance of that in country coordination at the country team level And what you need to do is to get the three d's working together under chief omission authority To have the same theory of change that is based upon a sophisticated understanding of the political economic and social dynamics of a country I've seen this I've seen when it works and I've seen when it hasn't And there has to be a clear statement of our assumptions upfront as there haven't been in some of the cases where we've not been successful Having that theory of change enables the ambassador and others to push back and say no On all the good offers of assistance that are not strategic and take up bandwidth and prevents the good intentions with unintended consequences Resources it's not just a question of the amount of resources It's the flexibility and the ability to reprogram too many resources that can actually be a problem if they're not the right resources perspective We need that long-term perspective many times because of the immediate deteriorating of the immediacy to show Results on an annual budget basis We actually undermine accountability by making local organizations whose capacity we're trying to build Focus on us instead of on the people that should be working for And secondly what it does is it undermines the local ownership And if they don't own it if they know we want it more than they do then we've already failed All right. Thank you for that alina a brief answer on the needs I know that's uh So I know that's a a a a challenging question, but I think I think there's a there's an aspect to the challenge of prevention, which is both long term, which I think You know, we've been at this for quite a while and we do need greater experimentation But at the same time when you're dealing with violent extremism or terrorism, you also have a very short term And so more medium term issue these terrorists I mean we can look back and say how did the terrorists come about? But the reality is they are growing and there are more now than there were before And when I look at the challenges that our bureau is facing a very good example is the whole What do we do with the foreign terrorist fighters? That is an immediate problem and it's immediate problem because you have to You can't just allow them to wander around the rest of the globe for however long They're going to be around But they're also in these detention camps for example, they're recruiting like crazy And what are we doing about that? And that's a very very short term problem So in in in trying to address the issue of prevention it really it's it's a it's a pretty there are many many dimensions to it And one of the one of the most important dimensions is in fact How do you address the the foreign terrorist fighters and those who are found recruiting? Many countries do not including the developed world Many countries don't even have the laws on the books that allow people to actually prosecute the terrorists The the ability to get the information and evidence off the battlefield for example in order to prosecute people That's not even that's not an easy thing to do. So we have we have many dimensions of this to to to address And it's as I said earlier it is an evolving It's an evolving threat and it's an evolving challenge and we we're not very good at at At mobilizing our resources because they're relatively inflexible as I think we all know because we've tried to mobilize each other's resources but But it's also how quickly can you turn around and and experiment with new ways or bring about the ones that have been successful And apply them in other places So we do have a big challenge still ahead of us. All right. Thank you all for that. Let's go to all of you I notice that there are these microphones over there. You're standing near one. Could you use it? Are he there we go All right, and then and then I'm going to go here and then also down here Let's get to and then we'll come in the middle and we'll come over there Please and if you'll identify yourself We can't hear that mic's got to be turned on or you got to put it closer to yourself. Is it turned on it's on hello Okay, please could you reintroduce and put it close to your sure My name is Sean Connelly and I work for a British consultancy called albany associates Firstly if we look at the end state and I think this is a question for the general We have quite a nebulous set of goals there However in my experience In the field both in the military and the Civilian world the means and ways that we have an ever-growing list They're fairly comprehensive, but in my opinion they're laden with values now For example every project that you implement will need to have a gender aspect to it And that's not to say that these These values and these methodologies aren't Founded in previous successes and that are not necessary But what I've seen and I think you can see on a macro scale in places like Iraq and Afghanistan Is that the beneficiaries for want of a better word don't want a lot of these measures implemented And they don't want these things to be part of the solution So I guess my question is what's more important reaching this nebulous end state or spreading western values Okay, we'll come to the answer in a moment That was directed to you general and you have a question the hand down here the gentleman right here in front And while you're bringing it there was also one that came in I guess online And this was if I understood correctly for Dr. Natali Let me just interject this because I want to get as many questions The question is what are the quantifying key metrics that outline the prevention strategy of your agency? Okay, please Thank you panelists all My name is chris bosley. I'm lucky to work here at usip My question is primarily primarily probably for chris and general negata In a formal life. I worked for the intel community And during my time in the ec obviously we came very very good at providing support to The kinetic fight But maybe we were less good at providing that same kind of support to us a id for example I was lucky enough in the ec to work for people who supported efforts to increase that support But the systematic and bureaucratic barriers that kind of coordination are vast And so I guess my question is what kind of mechanisms can we use and How important is it because maybe it's not important to Institutionalize that kind of relationship between the ec and these prevention efforts that usad and others are working on Okay, let's work backwards chris if you don't mind your name was invoked in that one and then we'll go to the general and then to Dr. Natali and let's try to give chris answers so we can do another round. Thank you. Yeah, thank you I think that's an excellent question and when we talk about the ic It's a two-way street too because usa it has a lot of very good information from the field on going on Um, I think we're doing much better now. I think we're evolving. Uh, certainly this past year I've seen very robust interaction when we think about standing up new bureaus with specific missions on conflict prevention and Stabilization that is a opportunity to rebuild those relationships to make sure that they're more intense and productive Okay, all right, uh general and and by the way, elena will get you in the next round. All right for the question regarding goal versus, um other Other Targets we could should be seeking like appropriate ways and means Here's my view. First of all, I see no prospect of achieving an effective international community agreement on what the goal is um The I've I still hear people say we're gonna bring an end to terrorism. No, we're not. It's like saying we're gonna bring an end to crime Um, we certainly want to reduce it, but there's no real agreement that I'm aware of about how far Do we want do we need to suppress this? So I would argue we we should be until we can come up with something we all agree with Um, what we should be focused on is something that I hope everyone here already knows that Um, kinetic means of combating terrorism are very expensive and we've lavished means on them But we there's apparently no end to the amount of resources we can throw at hunting down terrorists and either arresting them or killing them I'm not trying to make light of it. It's it is important work and frankly I wouldn't have gotten a paycheck for the last 20 years if I hadn't done it, but but One thing I know for sure effective prevention is not cheap But is that it is a tiny fraction of the money required to physically contest terrorists So I think we should be closely more closely examining What are the resource requirements to make prevention more effective and on the second question? Um, I'll be very brief about this Um, I believe that effective intelligence support for people that do prevention people to do counter messaging People that contest extremist use of the internet people to try to prevent terrorist travel and the like Need just as much intelligence support as people like me that have had to physically target terrorists But we have very little in terms of tradition methodology Structure or even emphasis on providing intelligence support for those kinds of ct activities Okay, dr. Natali. Thank you. Um We don't have CSO does both quantitative analytics and we're highly operational around the field. There's not one clear quantifiable metric That's a cookie cutter for all it depends on the issue and it depends on the place But what we certainly do is we'll send our people out in the field Work with all of the interagency all of the folks even like folks like people here at usip and find out what the best practices are Create a baseline and before any program starts we have to start with them and I'll give you an example I just came back from Niger And I had the opportunity to go out to the to the border town of diffa, which is on the Nigerian border And this is a Boko Haram Stronghold and one of the programs that we do and one of our lines of effort is defections. We do security sector stabilization, but getting Fighters to defect and then USAID we work closely with they do the reintegration part now Before I left people said this is success. It's fantastic. I said, well, how are we measuring success? We have 200 people in a defection camp Well, how many Boko Haram fighters are there? Well, there's thousands But there's 200 and so then I speak to the minister of terror I speak to all these people and they're telling me well, wait a minute. We don't want this defection camp We're actually going to get these guys to speak directly to the tribal chief and defect on their own So, you know, we have to again as general legata said it doesn't mean you stop But you have to wonder after two years. Why aren't these guys Defecting then we go speak to the tribal chiefs the religious leaders and they're saying well, these guys didn't come and apologize to us So now, you know So what are the metrics the metrics are if the goal? What is the strategic insight to prevent foreign fighters from returning to the field? Right and be and engaging in terrorist activities. Then I have to have a number to that That's one example CSO also does is countering violent extremism So we are working on creating these baseline metrics and we have one in the western Balkans We have one right now going on in Africa So these metrics of cve baseline will be then shared and used throughout the interagency These are just examples of how we can move forward in addressing these fragile states with very clear metrics that are appropriate To each locality and then they have to be readjusted over time Thank you. We've come to the end of the session But I'm going to take two more questions and Alina you will go to you first We'll go to the woman who's way up there and then there is a hand right here the gentleman down here I apologize to others of you On the timing and if you'll introduce yourself Yeah, my name is Kate. I go straight in. I'm with the Albanian service of voice of America And either dr. Natali or miss Erwin Oski can answer my question. Both of you mentioned foreign fighters and a couple of days ago Kosovo took in quite a few of them with their families and um many women And of course, this is a challenge. So I wanted to know how is the u.s Going to support Kosovo's efforts to either reintegrate or work in this Direction with the foreign fighters And then is there a double standard to having Kosovo receive a fragile country receive the foreign fighters While many western countries have resisted All right Receiving them even though the administration has asked them to thank you. All right. Thank you and sir. Yeah I don't know you know or not, but uh, there are 10 years or 12 years girls Who you please forgive me. I'm Sufi Lagari with the Cindy foundation. Thank you.  It's not a non-state actor. It is a pakistan's sponsored State-sponsored The guy name is Mia Mithu. He is protected by pakistani army general. Believe me. You can google it So your question so my question is if you not just question my even recommendation to the usa id if Pakistan already on f at f list I don't know what other steps The u.s. Government can take it. Maybe usa id stop the aid to the pakistan To save the girls. Okay. Maybe other you can tell the what are the other steps? They can take it Let's go first. Uh, alina on the first question I said I was going to go to you first and we'll just quickly come down the row here On the question generally of foreign terrorist fighters I'll say that our policy and the administration's policy is that, you know, we want Governments to take back the foreign terrorist fighters I will also readily admit that there are countries that are very reluctant in doing it But we applaud those who are finding a way to take them back To answer your question specifically about what we do to help Countries who to take them back. Obviously we have You know our legats at post we have regional legal advisers in the Balkans for example that are working directly with the governments and also train prosecutors and judges to be able to, you know Prosecutive necessary and then Incarcerate we also work in Kosovo and other countries are part of our global counterterrorism forum Which again where we share the best practices So we are not simply saying take take your foreign fighters and forget it. We we have had in place A number of of of efforts in which we can help these the governments and the countries who take them back But ultimately it is really the countries that have to figure out how they are going to De-radicalize and reintegrate their The foreign fighters who they are taking back. Okay. Thank you chris. So let's go to you next and then I'm going to come to Dr. Natali if the general doesn't mind because of their names being in vote No, thank you for raising the issue shows the complexity of the local conditions in the country Which we work and we take these issues very seriously and we work through them with the ambassador and our state department colleagues in the field It also reinforces one other Point discussion that we've been having here for us prevention isn't the end state The end state is resilient and responsive and people-centered government And so Prevention is how you get one of the ways you get there. So we don't say one and done prevented done It's part of the continuum toward that journey of self-reliance ambassadors. You meant to a more resilient nation state All right and dr. Natali. Thank you I can't speak to Kosovo per se, but I can I can address the way that we do approach How we do defections and I agree with my colleague We work with national governments and it's their country. It's their ways of addressing their foreign fighters We don't specifically work foreign fighters is how do we get people who are in any form of group to defect? so again if There are best practices. Is there a national framework for defectors? Is there a way to reintegrate them into society what we've learned already? You can do all of the messaging and we've been very successful or quite On getting people to defect, but if you don't have the integrate reintegration part These people will be sitting in the detention center for years and then want to go back so There are best practices, but we work very closely with national governments and local partners So that they can obviously own this project up with our best practices in mind Thanks with the general's permission. I'm going to close us. Thank you I first I want to go back and thank A nancy limborg and the u.s. Institute of peace. Thank you for your sponsorship Governor keen is here. Thank you again for your leadership on the on the task force Very very much appreciated and what a terrific panel Really a very very substantive very distinguished panel panel. Please join me in thanking them And I have one announcement. It's 11 35 and we have 10 minutes for a quick break and then to be back at 11 45 for the next session Please thank you Good morning. Good morning I love to see the energy in the room people having lots of connections and conversations But we are going to get started with our third panel I'd like to ask everybody to find their seats if they might Good morning. My name is Raj Kumar. I'm the president editor-in-chief of devx I am delighted to be here on what is a very important occasion I think in this town and maybe in in other capitals around the world where this topic deserves much more attention I remember many years ago now maybe almost 20 years ago I tried to understand how the u.s. Government organized its foreign assistance activities I wrote a paper on it and I counted 49 separate programs That may be a little out of data. Maybe it may be bigger now The this morning's conversation has been a lot about that complexity Right. Just how do we as the u.s. Government get organized? But actually we're going to make things even more complex right now because we're going to bring in the international perspective How does this play around the world in particular context with other donor countries and with other non-state actors with ngo's with private sector? We think this is a critical component to any future state where we are really focused on preventing extremism Now In order to have a conversation like this To be successful. It's important. I think to take that complexity and first frame it So at least for me reading this report, which I think is a big contribution I think the report is trying to change the narrative, especially here in washington But around the world and in in this way. I think the narrative has long been Terrorism is a problem. We've got to go out and root out terrorism And I think the the narrative shift that this report is is trying to make in this town is to say Let's take the focus off of just terrorism itself, which is a symptom And consider what is the environment that allows terrorism to grow and to breed? And once you do that it changes your perspective quite a bit because once you start to look at what is that environment You actually start getting much closer to issues of of justice and of governance and really of development And so the people sitting next to me on the panel today are by and large people who work directly on development issues wearing various hats But who have spent their careers working on those issues in many of the countries that we're here to talk about So let me briefly introduce them and then we're going to jump into our conversation ambassador diane corner sitting right next to me Is the counselor of foreign and security policy at the british embassy here in washington dc And diane has spent her career across the great lakes region in africa most recently was the Deputy head for the mission in car. You've worked all over the world in many of the contexts that we're going to be talking about today Sitting next to her Is habib mayar who is the deputy general secretary of the g7 plus Which is a great organization to have represented today because you represent really 20 of the most fragile countries in the world Countries like haiti in liberia and two more or less where you're based And before taking on this post habib ran aid coordination for the afghan government So he has seen some of these challenges up close in a very personal way that we're going to get into in a moment Well rica modier is sitting next to him and orica is the assistant secretary general at the un and director of undp's bureau for external relations and Advocacy and has herself spent a long career working in many of the countries that we will be talking about today And undp plays a big role Because frankly they can operate in a lot of the countries that today are very fragile and many organizations simply can't be there Uh next to her is ambassador martin dahinden who is the swiss ambassador to the united states Before taking that role you you may have seen his name many times in the pages of devx When he was the director of the swiss agency for development and cooperation Uh and has again spent much of his career working very much on the issues we're talking about today And then sam worthington At the very end of the panel sam is well known in this town. Uh, he leads the largest Association of international non-governmental organizations in the world like 220 some members Many of the the big brand name non-profits that you are very very familiar with So let me begin the conversation by asking hubby To start us off because i'd like to go from washington where we've spent a lot of time and energy And get to what you've seen on the ground you spent time growing up in a refugee school You've coordinated aid within your country of afghanistan and now you're thinking about these issues across many fragile states Give us some grounding about how this looks from where you sit Thank you so much. First of all, I would like to congratulate us ip and the respective task force I think the recommendations of the report really speaks to The priorities that we have been advocating Within the g7 plus it's an intergovernmental organization of 20 as you mentioned conflict affected countries First of all, I would like to start with the statement of the problems Fragility and its associated problems are not the inherent features of these countries Actually, these countries are victim of terrorism extremism fragility And most of these countries are as you are aware that on the crossroad of some important geopolitical You know positions Where some of these problems like, you know colonization foreign aggression and then civil war And then the resultant problems of, you know, like extremism which Took their roots there as a breeding ground They were exposed to these challenges which were not their own willingness So the starting point is that we have to see These countries are tackling terrorism or fragility As a way of, you know, helping these countries or building partnership with these countries to do that because that is a common problem There's a common challenge everyone is, you know Being the victim of terrorism and extremism And these people have been the people in these countries have been deprived of the very basic needs Yet the basic needs, you know, like which are provided in other countries are luxury for us And then definitely when you grow up in such a deprivation or such a deprived, you know, environment You become habitually radical in your thoughts You know, you lack the school, you lack the basic services of health and education and everything And you can imagine as you rightly mentioned, I mean millions of Afghan refugees We grew up in schools where we were taught, you know, with the primary school of, you know, mathematics where the Pictures of bullets, you know counting one bullet or two bullets or three bullets So these are some of the challenges that we grew up And then the second problem was the fragmentation that was imposed, you know, the international engagement in these countries In different ways, humanitarian do their own things, peacekeepers do their own things without much coordination And all of them are doing it in a compartmentalized way And that's that that, you know exacerbate this fragmentation And that's where the new deal or the G7 plus was then formed and we endorsed a new deal for engagement in fragile states I don't know how many of you might have heard about it. It was a first international agreement Or framework which recognized a nexus Among all these factors, like you mentioned in the beginning that we should not we should stay away from the compartmentalized way of tackling these issues All these problems of, you know, lack of security, justice, inclusive, you know, politics and also economic Foundation in these countries have Made these countries become a breeding ground for terrorism and extremism and then fragility And then but but the challenge then was that when we endorsed a new deal that had huge, you know It was endorsed by more than 40 countries mainly the OECD DAC The civil society in the G7 plus But then it was it was it remained just in the circle of technocrats It did not take the political routes, you know, it didn't take the The political buying from the donor countries and I think I'll be not to interrupt but I think that is a key difference with at least the goal of this report If you notice who the co-chairs are on the report the institution that's leading it the audience that it's focused on It's trying to get that political buy-in right from the start, which is key to this one quick follow-up question before we go on I just you you you made a very important point that being Fragile is not a permanent state But what would you say thinking about those audiences, especially here on Capitol Hill, for example? What would you say to members of Congress who might say but it seems to me these countries are just in a in an endless cycle of violence and conflict and fragility And we can't get out of this What would be your response to that to that skepticism? You know our one of the one of the biggest challenges is that we always We rarely consider this potential of resilience that these countries have And then we try to overcome or solve the problems which have taken decades to take roots And we try to fix them with the quick fixes with the very time-bound projectized approach Let's take the example of technical assistance Annually 15 billion dollars have been spent in in fragile countries just providing the technical assistance Now if you compare that to the public spending on higher education It's huge amount. What higher education might attract is just a minor portion of that Why because we assume that we can fix these problems within you know over over nights, which cannot be done So my response would be that first we have to look at the potential of resilience in these countries and then we have to Avoid or get rid of this time-bound quick fix Impatient way of doing business in these countries. We have to develop You know with the development with the with the local leaders with the local people we have to develop locally Contextually sensitive approaches in these countries and that would only be you know possible when once you're involved with the local actors And I think it was earlier mentioned that we have to be humble as an international community to listen to them and one one last point I would like to add to that is usually Countering the terrorism we always look at the hard means We don't consider, you know the softer ways of doing, you know, for example dialogue in reconciliation In my countries, for example, first of all, if you know before I mean 9-11 we could have avoided that if you had earlier engagement there And secondly once we got involved there We could there was a great chances for peace and reconciliation. We could have solved that We could have just engaged all the parties and it would not have become that multifaceted So I think we also have to look at the multi, you know, we have to adopt a multifaceted approach of solving these problems Ulrika, you know Habib has mentioned this division in the way we work. There's humanitarian and there's development There's so much stove piping and siloing and I'm sure you experienced this at UNDP as do many of the international agencies Where the funding your your mission might be at a country level But the funding comes with all of its own restrictions and requirements suddenly there's a humanitarian emergency There's lots of money that floods in but talking about a topic like prevention Where's the funding for that? So how do you try to reconcile these things and you've come in the past from the swedish development agency yourself? How do you see Us as a community organizing ourselves in a way that can actually prevent the extremism we want to prevent Thank you. Yes, I was previously state secretary in swedish government, which actually led also for time the initiative on the g7 and the the new deal And I think I just wanted also to say that one of the first and most important principles Are what you spoke about at the end namely the importance of local ownership And now working with the United Nations development program with presence in 170 countries all over the world And of course many of these being these conflict-ridden countries with huge programs in iraq in jemen and many other countries We see the importance of being there working with local resilience in the midst of conflicts Because we need to work in pair with the humanitarian colleagues within the un system to see to that we uphold Local basic services because then it will be much easier to rebuild onwards But the reason also why I choose to come to the un in these times is because that I believe that it's utterly important That we work together and find multilateral solutions to these local problems that also have as you said initially Many root courses that are of course within the countries But also that are victims of of geopolitics that needs to be solved through multilateral solutions and I also believe that it's really important because of the values values that we need to Safe guard and develop we were asked in From from the audience in the previous panel About whether we are pursuing western values Well, I think you have to look at the un and see that the un is actually the house where we Create and recreate and safeguard the values and also the lessons learned How do we invest the right way with regard to prevention? And you in the p did a very interesting report a couple of years back that some of you might have seen that was called journey journeys To violent extremism where we also interviewed Individuals about their experience and what actually made them Make the choice to to go into violent extremism And there you would find as we all would know many of of the circumstances Lack of hope for the future of course given Not enough of access to opportunities Education job and so on But also 70 percent of these people many of them being very young had experienced also what they Felt was injustice in relation to relatives or close family or friends And that was also what sparked them to move into the other side It's a striking report If you haven't seen it is worth reading because you actually hear from the voices of people themselves who are being radicalized about why they are I just wonder for the local organizations that have been brought up now a couple of times For them when I see them and talk to them There is often this frustration about big international organizations like the ones that are represented here because of the fact that the funding is so siloed One of the recommendations that comes out of this report That's maybe the most important and maybe the most significant action items is the idea that there would be a multilateral fund Established that would really allow dedicated funds for this idea of prevention Talk to us about the importance of that and whether you think there's real practical application for it in the world today So I think it's very easy to argue that we need more coordination with regard to funding as well I mean We need to talk about aid and development efficiency Of course local ownership is is one of the most important principles But of course coordinating action will make it less costly As well and base those actions on the local experiences UNDP being one of the biggest development agencies of the world Has only 12 of core funding and that of course tells you that we don't have the possibility To really plan strategically and act quickly even if we wanted to because we have so many of our donors That actually want to have their own projects And their own way of of presenting What they find is important There are other ways of doing that and that is to base our strategic plan and our actions on experience Experiences such as the one from the g7, which we have also coordinated with the un And and do it in a different way and of course we need much more coordination So I think that this recommendation of the report is is really important Ambassador to hinden can I ask you to come into the discussion because again, you've had these two hats You've run a major development agency in switzerland and now you're an ambassador here So much of what we're talking about today really connects to policy and politics ultimately So what is the environment like today? For coming out and changing the way we actually work We're hearing from a couple of people who are doing a lot of the work on the ground We need to change But it seems so challenging to actually get traction around changing the international system Even changing the way individual countries operate How do you see it from your current perch? This is a double challenge and we have heard it in both Contributions before that a lot of the fragility is linked to Geo strategical Tensions and this is a framework. We should work on and I'm very much convinced about Multilateralism. I think for most of those conflicts It would be good to strengthen Multilateral efforts in the united nations, but could also be regionally for instance with Organization for security and cooperation in europe For other parts. This is one element, but of course this would not solve all The difficulties we found on the ground You mentioned rightly that I was head of the swiss development cooperation So when we when I first time really Approach fragility it was in the context of fighting against poverty We have seen that in most of the places where we didn't progress in the fight of poverty We had fragility and this was also where also the places Where where you have breeding ground for extremist movements breeding ground for extremist movements Because not only of the poverty but because people Didn't have perspectives in their lives and this is not the same There's not the short cut in between poverty and extremism It's more about people feeling excluded and not Having a perspective in his life. And so what I think there What is important to do is on one side to engage directly With those people who feel excluded or are already on the path of extremism Try to mediate Try to have a dialogue with them. This is one element And then the other element is of course the work on the environment to Create job opportunities This is a challenge Because it takes place in in an environment where success is not granted I had very often Myself difficulties with When I had to go to parliamentary commission to defend when things went wrong And when we spent money without having the result So it's important to address those issues and also to be less risk averse If not, you would direct all the activities to the safer places Where you have perhaps other opportunities to develop for instance private investment Yeah, I want to get to risk aversion with sam in a moment But you make an important point that poverty reduction And preventing extremism are not the same thing. They're they're different agendas But they are increasingly happening in the same places, right? So as we get toward 2030 the countries that will remain in extreme poverty Are largely the same countries, right? It's much the Sahel region the Great Lakes region We can kind of pinpoint where the problems will be So maybe you need to have a separate fund. Maybe you need to have a separate approach But there is going to be quite a bit of convergence around the geography Yes, and I mean if you look at the core elements, this is a lack of rule of law Violation of human rights all those things That are not creating a sound fabric for for a good social and political Development and so we need we need to be aware of aware of this So sam I want to bring you in and think about the non-profit organizations that that work around the world Often in these contexts You know many times they're there because they have a mission to go where the the greatest human need is And no one else is able to go and they go Oftentimes u.s. Government other governments are risk averse and so they'd rather fund an international nonprofit than work directly with a government When maybe there's issues of corruption or fear about that at least Part of what this report is talking about is look we need a more integrated approach That actually works more directly with governments that works more directly with local actors So where do you see the evolving international NGO kind of fitting into this picture today? so first thanks for the report and just There are a couple of examples of civil society's role in creating some success stories And I think there's been a lot of mention of civil society through this And it's interesting that most of the conversation has been government actors other actors in this mix um and An international NGO has a unique role to play In that it is trusted largely in the west and is able to get some degree of local trust Ideally you need more local funding more local engagement and so forth Because it is only the local actors who will be able to change an environment And there's a tendency of donors and NGOs to pass risk downward risk starts with the government You push it to the NGOs take more risk in terms of this down to the local actor and so forth And that pushing risk downwards has a consequence One is when you get into anti-terror rules, which are very well intentioned UN essence have rules of who you could work with not work with and so forth that pushes this concept of Down to an environment of people not wanting to take the risk To work with the wrong actors there is a sense of Let's protect our own resources as they go Which unfortunately and we're seeing a trend here The general trend in many countries is a closing of civic space It's exactly the opposite of what we want here rather than more civic actors having more say able to Express the grievances of citizens able to Imagine where a health clinic should go to have some say over their future Civic actors are seen as independent of government and therefore risky So there is a tendency there to let's deal with what we could control Let's pull it together And I find NGOs are caught between these two worlds between the world of the local civic actor wanting some say and dignity over their own lives And this desire for us to have change But that change that we want we want to have some control some metrics over it And I took the two things don't neatly mesh together Yeah, in some ways when I talk to NGO leaders The language they use is the same language that you would see in this report or that we're hearing today But for them they've been using it for so many years They've been talking about community level dialogue and and the importance of things that feel soft In a in a field when we think about counterterrorism that is a very hard field But those soft things are actually really critical So a lot of the expertise that was needed at a moment like this if you buy what's in the report Is really the expertise that's inside the NGO community And and ultimately and it comes down to what is the nature of your partnership with that local actor? Is it one of control? Is it one of trust? Is it one of building capacity? Is it that you are independent there? We've talked a lot about whole of government a whole of society is much messier than a whole of government And no organized government is going to organize a whole of society You need spaces for voices to express themselves in different ways and tolerate those which is inherently a political process And that's where you start getting the peace building. That's where you start getting Discussions around good governance and it's as slow and I think that just the thing to end on here We've talked about timeframes. This is not three to five year proje