So, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you all very much for coming. Great Washington weather. We're welcoming you to the Institute of Peace on rainy morning, a topic that I think will be enlivening. We will have a great session here today. I want to welcome those of you who are here for the first time. I talked to a couple of people who are here for the first time at the Institute of Peace. My name is Bill Taylor. I'm the executive vice president here, and I am here to tell you a little bit about the Institute of Peace as it is a host for this discussion of countering violent extremism and the resolved network that we're here to talk about here today. Institute of Peace was started 30 years ago. We focus on conflict, and we're talking about violent conflict. So the topic we're here to talk about here today is very relevant for us. We believe that if we think about this, if we focus on violent conflict, if we do the analysis, that we can make some gains on peace. We think that peace is possible, that it is practical, that it is important for the United States as well as the international community. So the work that you're doing, that we're doing together today to think about the issues must lead to action, must lead to policies and then to action and then the recycling and the thinking about what the action has done and see what we need to do next. So that's what the Institute of Peace is doing. I'm very glad to have you here. The topic is a big one. 65 million people displaced around the world from conflict, attacks on schools, on cafes, on museums around the world. What's going on here? Why is this happening? This is the kind of question that we would like to address. The other question we'd like to address, though, is there are communities around the world that are not afflicted by or somehow resist this notion of violent extremism. What's going on there? How do we reinforce the resilience of these communities? How do we compare those who succumb to violent extremism, those that then are displaced and those that stay to fight it, to resist it? And we don't know. The problem that we're here today to talk about is evidence. We don't have the evidence on which to base the policies on which to act in order to deal with this problem. So you're here. We're all here to focus on evidence in the first part of this chain toward action, toward actually moving toward peace. And that is where we get into the resolve network. You all are focused on this and it's a good effort. It's the first step. Resolve, of course, is barely a year old. A year ago it was a gleam, a little more than a gleam, but it was an idea. And now it's reality. Now it's reality. Now we need to work on it to make this work. I would like to turn this over to Georgia Homer, who is the director here at the Institute of Peace for our CVE work. And Georgia is going to introduce our keynote speaker as well as describe to you what's going on for the rest of the day. So thank you very much for joining us. And Georgia, over to you. Thank you, Bill. And good morning, everyone. Thanks for making it out in this dreary day today. As Bill just outlined for you, the USIP has made a strong commitment to addressing the understanding of drivers of violent extremism. And USIP is very proud to host the secretariat of the resolve network and help incubate and support this very important initiative. We all know that the cycles of violence that we've seen unfold in Nigeria and Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere are deeply rooted in longstanding dynamics of political and social conflict. The question that many communities around the world will face now is how to interrupt those cycles. And clearly there's no easy one-size-fit-all solution. So the resolve network with its growing community of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers is really uniquely positioned to help advance our understanding of those local dynamics. Today marks an important milestone for the network. As Bill mentioned, a resolve was launched on the sidelines of last year's UNGA, and it's now poised to share a shared research agenda and to extend the global community of CVE practice by working with local researchers online and in person to dig deep into the drivers of extremism. And this week, Resolve will launch its new version of its website, which we fully expect will serve as a key hub and a community for information exchange on these complicated issues. Many of the speakers that we have here with us today have firsthand experience in the communities that are facing the challenge of violent extremism. We have researchers from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Bangladesh, South Africa, Europe, and North America. And they really do represent the cutting edge of research in this field. And as we'll learn in our discussion today, there is some consensus growing around where the gaps are in the research. Geographically speaking, the rise of violent attacks in Nigeria and Bangladesh and Somalia and Libya and Afghanistan suggest that research in these countries really needs to be prioritized and that Tunisia, Malia, Algeria, Kosovo, and Kenya also need additional attention. There's also agreement that we don't know enough about the role of the state of religious actors and institutions or security actors in shaping community responses to extremism. We don't know enough about the feedback loop between intergenerational migration and displacement, violent conflict, and extremism. Resolve hopes to fill some of these critical gaps in our understanding. But as we'll hear from our keynote speaker, Mohamed Hafiz in a few minutes, we do know that the evolution of groups like Daesh and Al Qaeda is long and complex. Dr. Hafiz, it is an associate professor and chairman of the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School, who's written extensively on extremism and political Islam. In addition to his case studies in Algeria and Egypt featured in Why Muslims Rebell, he's explored the motives and strategic logic of suicide bombers in a book on Iraq published by USIP. We are very thrilled to have him here today and look forward to his address, which is provocatively titled of barrel bombs and beheadings, the roots of intergenerational extremism. Please join me in welcoming Mohamed Hafiz. Thank you, Georgia, for a very nice introduction and I want to thank Candace, thank the United States Institute of Peace and the Resolve Network for giving me this great opportunity to be here today, to exchange ideas and to be among distinguished scholars, ambassadors, practitioners, and so on. So I really am grateful for the opportunity I'm flattered and I think the weather is somehow appropriate for the topic that we're talking about today. Gloomy and overcast is really going to perhaps be the theme throughout this day. Two years ago I met a Lebanese colonel who was dealing with Arsal crisis. Arsal is a town in northeast Lebanon that borders on Syria and in August 2014 ISIS made an attempt to take it over. Fortunately it was failed, it was pushed back after five days of battle and the colonel that I met was quite chatty and animated. He was a bit you know nervous, you could tell, he was betraying his nervousness about what's happening to his country and to the region and of course he has or he had every right to be nervous. If we look at Lebanon by that time was flooded with Syrian refugees. ISIS in 2014 was at the height of its power and the hopeful Arab spring by then had turned into a bleak Arab winter and we had civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya and instability elsewhere. In the course of our conversations he said something that informs the title of this presentation. He said that Arab citizens today are trapped between barrel bombs and beheadings. He said it in Arabic, what he meant by that was that Arab citizens today are trapped between the barrel bombs of Bashar al-Assad that he hurls on his own people with devastating effect just as what we're seeing in Aleppo in the last few days and the savage beheadings of ISIS that are there out for the world to see usually filmed for the world to view. But what he was really saying is that people in the Middle East today in the Arab world more generally have no choice but to support despotic regimes or succumb to fanatical extremism. He viewed the problem as a choice between two tragic options either Assad or ISIS. Today I will argue that this is not only a false choice it is one manufactured by regimes enduring a crisis of legitimacy in order to maintain their grip on power. State coercive practices and violent extremism are two sides of the same coin. Rather than a choice between say Sisi and ISIS, Sisi and ISIS are two sides of the same coin. Arab states have been confronting an enduring crisis of legitimacy one rooted in their failure to establish good governance transcend authoritarian rule and project military strength. This triple failure of Arab states has resulted in regimes relying on manipulation, coercion and outright repression than on legitimate authority that can inspire confidence in their rule. Part of this strategy has been to purposely hollow out the moderate middle in order to present their populations and their western allies a choice between despotism and extremism. In reality these seemingly polar opposites depend on one another. Both thrive when the moderate middle is marginalized and society is polarized. This is the root of intergenerational extremism in the Arab world. Now I know that violent extremism has many causes and cannot be reduced to a single explanation and as we move far away from the Arab world we will undoubtedly encounter different drivers of extremism. What is unique in the Arab world however are the depth pervasiveness and persistence of extremism. Just as importantly perhaps the Arab world has become the mother ship that dispatches a great deal of extremism around the world. The ideology of extremism, the tactics of extremism and the networks of extremists. Containing and defeating violent extremism around the globe cannot succeed when a major region of the world serves as a vector for future generations for radicalization. Here's how I will proceed today. First I will pose a puzzle. Why after 35 years since the Iranian revolution and 15 years since 1911 is the challenge of radical Islamism more acute than ever? Why after so much resources and so much effort dedicated to countering violent extremism the problem today is worse, not better. Next I'm going to pose a couple of hypotheses that commonly are given to explain the endurance of extremism in the Arab world. Now while I don't necessarily disagree with these hypotheses I will argue that they miss something deeper, something structural. And that will be the third part of my presentation today where I will describe the crisis of legitimacy that pervades the Arab world and make the case for how regimes are unable to establish structural and institutional legitimacy which are rooted in good governance, rule of law, and respect for human rights. These governments are relying on coercive practices that disincentivize moderation and incentivize radicalization. And I will conclude with a message to the Resolve Network. I will say to you that our challenge is not only an empirical one, it is also one of imagination. It is not enough to, it's not sufficient to dedicate our energies and resources toward more studies to figure out why people are radicalizing. We need plenty of bold and creative recommendations for going beyond false choices and failed strategies in our effort to counter the roots of violent extremism. So let me begin with a puzzle. The 1979 Iranian Revolution marked the ascendancy of Islamism. Now Iran is not an Arab country but certainly it did inspire a lot of Islamist movements in the Arab world as well as around all of the Muslim world. Now the Iranian Revolution marked the ascendancy of political Islamism and the attacks of 9-11 marked the extremization of Islamic radicalism. Since those two seminal milestones, radicals and extremists have faced an oppositional onslaught from local, regional, and international forces. There was a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq, and a war on terrorism. These wars were waged by a superpower with tremendous financial, military, and intelligence assets, and when that marshaled local and international allies to be able to defeat extremism. We have dedicated over 100 billion dollars to bolstering the security capabilities of the Afghan and Iraqi forces and provided similar levels of support to various countries in Africa and South Asia. Yet today violent extremism and Islamist movements is at an all-time high. A quick glance at the map of the MENA, the Middle Eastern North Africa. If we look at that map it will reveal significant levels of violence from the Maghreb to the Mashrek. Algeria has AQIM, al-Qaeda and the Islamic Maghreb. Tunisia and Libya have Ansar al-Sharia and ISIS. Egypt has Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis which is now ISIS. Yemen has the Houthis and al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula. Iraq and Syria have ISIS and the Nusra Front which recently changed its name. Indeed, more than a third of Arab states are facing some form of Islamist violence. All this leads to the puzzle. Why, after three decades dealing with Islamist movements, after all our collective experiences, our efforts, and our human and material resources, why did the arc of Islamism bend in the direction of radicalization and extremism? Instead of containing the movement through a simultaneous process of institutionalizing moderation and containing and ultimately suppressing extremism, we have the opposite occur. Radicalism is on the rise and moderation is in retreat. Why? So let me consider a couple of explanations. There are actually a lot of explanations out there and when I started this, Candace gave me the guidance. I should try to keep this in 25 minutes. So I decided to go after the two most common I think plausible explanations of why extremism persists but then I will offer my own. And these two explanations are what could be called the systemic explanation and the other one would be the strategic opportunities explanation. The most common one is the systemic argument which is that missteps by hegemonic powers have empowered extremism by removing the sources of stability principally strong men and altering the delicate balance of power in the Middle East subsystem. Such steps have unleashed regional competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran accompanied by a sectarian discourse on both sides to the benefit of extremists. Missteps such as the ill-advised interventions in Iraq and Libya or the opposite argument that the hasty disengagement created a vacuum for extremism. Whether you know disengagement from Afghanistan after the Soviets left in 1989 or disengagement in Iraq in 2011 and we didn't take the oil and Libya or disengagement in Libya after the toppling of Qaddafi. It is perhaps appropriate to say at this point that the views expressed today are my own they do not reflect my institution or that of the U.S. government for which I work. Now the logical conclusion of this argument is that we must do everything in our power to restore an equilibrium based on strong men and powerful security sectors to control the chaos. We must reject Polly Anish nation-building projects. As one Washington pundit put it we cannot transform we can only transact. This sort of thinking has led to the excessive securitization of the war on terrorism. We have adopted a largely security-centric approach relying on boots on the ground and drones in the air while merely paying lip service to the other dimensions of countering radicalization and extremism including good governance development human rights rule of law and conflict resolution. Now this is a credible argument and warrants serious consideration. No one can doubt that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and NATO's intervention in Libya in 2011 have created opportunities for extremists to exploit. However this argument ignores the mass carnage and instability in places where intervention did not occur. Take Algeria during the 1990s and its civil war that led to over 200,000 deaths and you know thousands have displaced and disappeared. Look at Syria today where intervention although there is a kind of intervention but certainly not the robust intervention of regime change that this argument points to. We could add to the list Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. These are all places that you know equivalents of hell on earth in some ways without really major Western intervention in them. The fact is extremism seems to thrive with or without Western interventions and while Western interventions have proven to be destabilizing at times the current instability in the Arab world has a more proximate cause which is the Arab spring revolutions which cannot be attributed to Western meddling. And as for the militarization of counter violent extremism this argument assumes that local regimes are willing to cooperate with Western efforts to promote good governance, advance human rights, and rule of law and resolve deep-seated conflicts. Attempts to transform polities and improve governing institutions require receptivity from ruling elites. In some places such aid and assistance was welcomed but in others it is viewed with suspicion and indeed rejected as undue interference or outright subversion precisely because it empowers oppositional forces. Now the other explanation, the other plausible explanation, is that of the strategic act or the strategic opportunities argument. Which is to say that jihadists control their own agency and have been quite good at exploiting opportunities when they arise. They scale up their recruitment when conditions are permissive and they scale down their activities when they are confronted with constraints. They articulate powerful narratives and disseminate them online and through social media. They have also created a culture of jihadism that is intrinsically appealing to young alienated men and increasingly women. In other words the persistence of extremism has less to do with the strategies and policies of local governments and their western allies and more to do with how jihadists interact and exploit shifts in opportunity structures. So an example of this would be ISIS. So ISIS before it was ISIS it was the Islamic State of Iraq and at the height of its power in 2006 it was confronted by a US surge, confronted by a tribal awakening and that effort over a period of time shrunk its activities and it ceased to be a major insurgent group and became more of a sort of vexatious terrorist organization with major bombings and it was mainly up in the north around Mosul and other parts it was driven out of Anbar and elsewhere. But when the US left in 2011 and when the Arab Spring took place and turned into a civil war in Syria ISIS seized that opportunity was able to expand on it and scale up its activities again. So the logical extension of this argument is that we should do everything possible to address the enabling environments of extremism such as the diffusion of non-violent but extreme networks, illicit traffickers, vulnerable communities, social media and so on. This means we have to be more contextual not global in our approach to countering violent extremism. Find where are the vectors that where extremists can exploit and let's target those vectors and hopefully deprive them opportunities there. Now I accept that extremists behave strategically and exploit local opportunities to grow their ranks but this does not explain the scale scope and magnitude of extremism in the Arab world today. Again one third of these states have an extremism problem in some form or another. Also this argument may explain why we have extremism say in Iraq and Syria but it doesn't explain the thousands of young men and women unless they're much fewer women come to fight as foreign fighters in those conflict zones. They come from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia just to name a few. The interconnected nature of extremism in the Arab world the fungibility and mobility of extremists across conflict zones suggests that we need to view this as a systemic problem not just local or context bound. So now let me give you my view and let me just say that I actually agree with these two explanations but I think there's something deeper going on particularly if one is seeking to explain the endurance of this. You know we're looking at nearly 40 years now since the Iranian Revolution and you know we've had the civil wars and we've had the insurgencies and counterinsurgency and so on and yet the problem persists. To explain the persistence of the problem I think we need to go a bit deeper in our analysis. So to explain why so many young men are volunteering as willing martyrs in the ranks of violent extremism and why this problem persists despite our concerted efforts we have to look to the structural drivers of extremism. And I argue that the enduring crisis of legitimacy has created fertile soil for jihadi roots to take to take root or for jihadi roots to grow and grow and grow again. To start it is important to delineate what is state legitimacy. States could potentially draw their legitimacy from three sources of authority. There is traditional authority such as tribal and religious authority which is what we see in some of the gulf countries relying on tribal customs and patrimonial systems and that's sort of the the tribal tradition and that's a source of authority for some of those states and as for the religious authority we see the Alawite monarchy in Morocco or the Hashemite monarchy kingdom in Jordan. Those would be ways that people could draw legitimacy from tribal or religious sources. Then there's ideological authority that I get to rule because I have an ideological vision of our society and I want to promote that and that vision is good not just for my society indeed for the world. So think of the Iranian revolution advancing of an ideological vision where Islam reigns supreme and in in society. Think of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt advancing the notion of Pan-Arab unity, Pan-Arab unity being the ideal that would redeem the mistakes of the earlier generations that divided up the Arab world or Boumedian and the FLN after their war of liberation against the French advanced third worldism decolonization and that was a source of legitimacy for that elite and of course the Soviet Union advancing communism as an ideology. So ideological authority could be a source of legitimacy for some states but another way that states could could derive authority and legitimacy is through structural and institutional authority based on a set of agreed upon political institutions or the deliverance of good governance as part of a social compact between the governed and the governing. In the modern world traditional authority tends to wane and ideological authority tends to have a short shelf life just as the Iranian youth that are born after the Iranian revolution they're not necessarily as inspired by Vilayat al-Faqih as maybe the earlier generations. In any case both of these forms of legitimacy whether ideological or traditional authority have to be supplanted by or at least supplemented with structural and institutional authority to be viewed as legitimate. This means that states are legitimate when they are perceived to be acting in the common interest provide personal security political rights economic goods and abide by the rule of law and their general publics have confidence in their ruling elites political parties governing institutions economic systems and civil service. Absent state legitimacy rooted in structural and institutional authority elites have to rely on coercion and coercive measures to maintain their rule if you cannot rule by consent you have to rule by force. States will devote more resources to coerce and coercive measures that range from electoral manipulation elite fragmentation side payments for cooptation coup-proofing surveillance and social control to the more harsh measures or the harsher measures such as curtailment of civil liberties massive human rights violations and indiscriminate repression. So how does this all relate to the Arab world and to extremism in the Arab world? My argument is that in the post-independence period Arab states have sought to build their legitimacy on the basis of traditional and ideological authority but have not succeeded in transitioning towards structural and institutional authority rooted in voice and accountability effective governance or government effectiveness regulatory quality rule of law and control of corruption. In other words according to the key measures of good governance used by the world bank's worldwide governance indicators the MENA region suffers from a good governance deficit which in turn translates to lack of confidence in ruling regimes. So here's what I did I went to that website the worldwide governance indicators it's beautiful you should go to it and I looked at the data for 2010 now the data was collected from 2005 and the last data set is 2015 so I took the midpoint 2010 and that was also the year that preceded the Arab Springs and I wanted to see how did the MENA region as a whole which includes oil rich countries as well as oil poor and and failed in weak states. As a whole MENA how does it compare to the OECD countries the high-income countries but also to mid-level or low-income countries mainly Latin America so those were my three data points and I looked at those in the various measures that constitute good governance. In all the major areas of voice and accountability government effectiveness regulatory quality rule of law and control of corruption in all those measures in all those measures of good governance MENA lagged behind not on the high not only on the high-income countries but also Latin America many of which are lower middle income states. High-income countries tended to be in the 88th percentile or near there while Latin America was in the 50th to 60th percentile MENA region was in the high 40s. Now there is one exception when it comes to voice and accountability MENA states were ranked in the 23rd percentile not even half of where Latin America is. In summary Arab states have a long way to go in the key measures of good governance. A region that should have benefited tremendously from the global energy boom of the 1990s and 2000s is entering an era of energy oversupply with a poor set of governing institutions. There's one more area in which Arab states do not inspire the confidence of their populations. I'm referring to their military feebleness. Despite spending 5.5 percent of its GDP between 2001 and 2010 which is more than double the world average of 2.5 of GDP the MENA region offers its public little by way of military performance whether it is in the regional wars that it wages or protection of its territorial sovereignty or Arab states are not known for their military prowess. Their dependence on external power is a source of embarrassment and reliance on proxy actors often adds fuel to the fire especially when accompanied by sectarian discourse. The provision of internal security tends to be better but it is often done with heavy handedness and with little respect for human rights. So when it comes to the most critical functions of the modern state protection of its territorial sovereignty and provision of internal security Arab regimes have underperformed their regional rivals and even sub-state actors further calling into question their legitimacy. These are the conditions that have allowed Islamism to emerge and persist as a serious challenger to secular nationalist elites confronted with such major oppositional movement regimes turn to outright repression or selective co-optation of Islamists not just the radicals sort but also the nonviolent and centrist ones by doing so they either suppress the moderate middle or co-opted its ideological message without seeding any real problems thus creating room for radicals to step in with an uncompromising vision of society. The ideological pillars of ISIS today which are territorial revisionism uncompromising Islamism and merciless violence are nothing less than a counter hegemonic move targeting the three vulnerabilities of Arab states today weak governance repressive authoritarianism and military feebleness. It is not difficult to see how some young Arab men will find in this radical narrative appealing. I see that I need to conclude permit me just two more minutes and I promise it'll be worth your time. The year 1979 was a fateful year that was the year that Iranian revolution marking the ascendancy of political Islamism it was also the year that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan which inspired a certain young man to come to the aid of the Afghan Mujahideen and eventually changed history for the worst on 9-11. It is interesting that 1979 was also the year of a famous satirical Arab play called Kasek Yawatan which translates roughly to cheers to the homeland. In that play the Syrian actor Dureed Daham who goes by the stage name of Ghawar is naively optimistic about the future of his country. His wife gives birth to their daughter Ahlam which is Arabic for dreams. His newborn however dies a few months later after she couldn't get medical attention she needed because the doctor in the hospital was preoccupied with a VIP patient who was suffering from erectile dysfunction. Ghawar depressed takes up drinking after he could not get answers to why his dreams had died. The final scene in the play trenchantly captures the crisis of legitimacy that I have spoken about today. An inebriated Ghawar receives a call from heaven it is his dead father who was martyred for the pan-Arab nationalist cause. His father wants to know what has happened to all the sacrifices of his generation. He begins by asking tell me my son what is the state of Arab unity today are you unified in one big country? A drunken Ghawar replies well father today I had breakfast in Baghdad lunch in Khartoum and I'm speaking to you now from Abu Dhabi. A pleased father asks a follow-on question what happened to the prisons and the detention centers. Ghawar laughs and says we turned them into schools and hospitals what about social justice my son Ghawar replies foreigners from all over the world come to marvel at our system of justice and rule of law we've become a tourist destination tell me my son the father asks what happened to Palestine did you return it to its rightful owners a war a bit crestfallen by now parries the question by asking how could you ask such a question after 30 years of struggle feeling reassured the father says well my son it looks like you didn't you don't need anything down there an inebriated Ghawar replies with a bit of sober truth no father we don't need anything except perhaps a bit of dignity that's all nearly four decades since the famous play the Arab world is no closer to regional stability good governance and inclusive polities things are getting worse not better the persistence and endurance of extremism its pervasiveness and trajectory in the wrong direction must force us to go beyond mere technical analysis or academic analysis or a narrow focus on local contexts that drive extremism we have to step back and look at the big picture and ask why does a group with a fraction of our resources intelligence capabilities and network of allies why such a group can inspire thousands to join its caravan of death and destruction if you agree with me that the structural roots of extremism have to do with a deficit in building legitimate state authority on the one hand and excessive reliance on coercive state practices on the other then we cannot limit the power of our collective intellect to small solutions in the name of realism and pragmatism we need to dedicate our energies to imagine an alternative future for those struggling with extremism and conceive bold and ambitious solutions that can bend the arc of Islamism toward moderation and peaceful integration and beyond barrel bombs and beheadings thank you thank you very much dr. hafiz for that very student analysis and for underscoring the issues of legitimacy and governance that are critical to this problem set it's actually a perfect lead-in to our first panel which is going to be talking specifically about governance issues but first we invite you to a brief coffee break out in the forum so please have a cup of coffee process your thoughts and please come back at 1020 1020 thank you be getting down beyond the theory beyond the research and really ground-truthing some of these assumptions and questions that we are having around the cve problem governance is a word and a topic and an area of inquiry that comes up very commonly in this field and it's something that each person on the stage has spent years looking into they have experience around the world and what we're going to be doing over the next about hour is digging into their real practical world experience i think that the organizers organizers invited me to sort of heard these cats in a way that is engaging but also because of some of the outcomes of the work that my organization has been doing my name is Cameron Chisholm by the way i'm the president of the international peace and security institute we ran a similar cve event that i think i see many faces here that i saw there where we tried to break down the silos and really understand where is the future of cve and what we found coming out of that which was interesting was that 86 percent of the individuals in the room the by far the majority have thought that inclusive governance was the most effective way to counter violent extremism when we look at the way that the international organizations as well as militaries focus on this particular subset of topics the funding doesn't necessarily match up with what we all collectively thought is the most effective but governance itself is a loaded term Dr. Hafes explained it well and we sort of joked afterwards that well we don't really have anything to say at this point because he's right all of this intersects rule of law governance and society civil society all of these interact in a way that builds local systems that are resilient enough to withstand the push and pull of violent extremists that's easy to talk about at the 40 000 foot level what we're going to try and do is get granular so i'm going to introduce the esteemed panel next to me and then i hand it over to them each of them will speak for about five to seven minutes i'm going to facilitate a conversation for about 15 and then we're going to open it up to q and a for 20 minutes because there is just as much knowledge in the room as there is up here and so hopefully we can create a robust conversation in the process so first i would like to introduce Beza Tessafaye she is the conflict and governance research manager at Mercy Corps and oversees the portfolio of research studies centered on youth and violence she recently wrote a report entitled investing in iraq's peace how good governance can diminish support for violent extremism and she's going to be digging into that as well as a little bit on Somalia second we have ambassador humayang kabir he's the vice president of the bangladesh enterprise institute in Dhaka he's a career diplomat for 30 years and is the informer ambassador to the united states from bangladesh he's currently working with youth at the national level in bangladesh on cv e then we have sharyl frank she's the division head for transnational threats and international crime division at the institute for security studies in pretoria she really focuses on rule of law development crime and violence prevention as well as crime victimization child justice child protection and restorative justice so all of the pieces that fit into good governance and finally we have richard atwood who's the multilateral affairs director at the international crisis group and he's the head of the new york office he focuses on transnational threats peace operations and political transitions he also sounds really smart because he's british and so everything that comes out of his mouth just seems a little bit smarter than the rest of us so that's last so i'm going to ask you a question first and i'm going to have it over to tebeza and that question is why does governance matter in understanding the push and pull of radicalization to violent extremism okay thank you cameron and and good morning everyone it's really a pleasure to be here and i'm especially honored to be part of this very impressive panel so the topic that we've been asked to speak on uh the links between governance and violent extremism is is something of importance to the work that i do so i wanted to share a few thoughts based on my experience at mercy core where as cameron mentioned i oversee a portfolio of research on violent extremism and touch a little bit on the the issue of governance as many of you know just as formality mercy core is an international organization we work in over 40 different countries and in recent years we've been conducting field-based research to understand what are the drivers of violent extremism and relatedly what are some of the ways in which we can address those drivers effectively and a very common denominator that's come up in our research is the important role that injustice plays in driving people to engage in violent extremism and we've seen this across the board um and then conversely we've also begun to see that governance can play a big role in addressing some of those injustice-based grievances so in the short amount of time that i have i quickly want to go over two research studies that sort of demonstrate through empirical evidence how exactly governance can help reduce support for violent extremism so the first study i wanted to touch on is called investing in iraq's peace how good governance can reduce support for violent extremism and it's a study that we conducted in iraq around 2014-2015 as a background mercy core has been working in iraq and between 2013 and 2015 we've been conducting nationally representative public opinion polls on citizens perceptions of governance their views on civil society and even their level of support for armed opposition groups now in 2014 as we were in the middle of our second public opinion survey something unexpected happened the prime minister at the time prime minister noy al maliki had resigned under intense international pressure and as many of you will recall maliki was sort of seen by many as being unable to deal with the threat of violent extremism in the country and he was also blamed by many as having stoked tensions with the sunni community in iraq which then led this crisis of legitimacy for the government in many of those sunni dominated areas that then fell into the hands of isis so because maliki's resignation occurred right in the middle of our survey just randomly we were able to look at whether that resignation had any kind of impact on people's support for armed opposition groups and what we found was really really amazing so we saw that across the country after maliki resigned support for armed opposition groups such as isis had actually fallen but what was most interesting is that this reduction was most significant amongst iraqi sunnis so we saw that support fell from 49 percent to 26 percent amongst sunnis and as i mentioned this was a largely representative survey across iraq at that time sorry so this the second study that i wanted to highlight is one that we're just wrapping up now in Somalia and we're hoping to launch that next month and whereas the iraq study was looking more at macro-level governance reforms or macro-level governance changes the Somalia study is really focused on micro-level governance interventions and how that affects people's attitudes and support for for armed groups and violent extremism so specifically what we wanted to know is if we introduced civic engagement activities in secondary schools for young people does that have any kind of effect on their level of support for for violent extremist groups like alshabab and what we found was that just by being in school simply being in school secondary education actually increased support for political violence and that's to me is not so surprising because a lot of times educated youth have higher expectations when it comes to getting a livelihood or having a voice in politics and when those expectations are raised but not met these people young people can be drawn into violent extremist groups that use violence against the state so education in a sense can be a threatening thing but once we introduced civic engagement for those secondary school youth we actually saw that the support for political violence went down and the reason for this our survey sort of revealed is because young people saw that they had the ability to change things through non-violent means rather than through violence and so civic engagement sort of increased their belief in the efficacy of non-violence and being able to you know get the changes that they desired to see so just to conclude because i think my time is almost out essentially what our research is telling us is that governance does matter and we are beginning to see that some types of reforms or interventions can actually shift attitudes towards less support for violent extremism and importantly we also see that these types of reforms have to take place both at the macro level through more expansive political reforms but also at the micro level through activities that engage people in civic life such as civic engagement community action mobilization campaigns and the last thing i guess to mention is that although we're very encouraged by the research that we've been doing and the results that we found this research is still really nascent so there's still a lot of work to be done and a lot of questions and gaps that remain in in terms of really being able to understand how we can effectively address governance and and violent extremism so i'll leave it there and happy to answer questions thank you very much Cameron i think i should begin by thanking the US IP for hosting the resolved meeting here and inviting me to come over here and it was i must say that yesterday and today i'm looking forward to having stimulating and exciting discussion now the issue of governance that has been the focus of discussion of this session in Bangladesh i think we have recently come to the international attention for a wrong reason although we have a lot of good stories to tell in terms of you know sustained economic growth women empowerment robust civil society participation in global peace building and so on so forth but we must admit that the recent incidents particularly for the last one and a half years have been have been difficult for us and Bangladesh is now seen as a country on the front line of extremist violence now i have been working from our institute which is Bangladesh Enterprise Institute for the last five years roughly in 28 of 64 districts in Bangladesh and mostly working with the school college and madrasa students and what we are seeing the young generation is looking at the governance is affecting or lack of governance or deficits in governance is affecting them quite hard and that is what that that worries us in the sense that if the younger generation is losing faith on the system then the problems could come down the line we when we work we talk to the younger generation and they are picked by a couple of things and all are related to the governance issues one issue that we seek common among all these young people around the country is that they are really nervous and concerned about the growing level of violence and in Bangladesh what we are seeing is that the recent violent extremist activities have been a kind of continuation or graduation of the level of violence during the last say five ten years time so when they say that they are really concerned about violence and then it becomes a point of concern for us because our history is saying that this kind of trend of violence can lead to radicalization in the first place and then into extremist violence so that is one thing that the younger people are telling us which we believe that this is a part of the problem the second feedback that we are getting is has just been mentioned is that the lack of justice or impunity that is also affecting them quite hard and they feel that the the space for getting justice is getting depleted pretty fast so that is again another issue that comes up and that that gives us some degree of concern the third area where governance problem is most acutely manifested is the issue of corruption for example the young people tell us that can we get a job without giving bribes so that means that this is an issue that bothers them a great deal and they feel picked by two counts number one is if they don't pay bribes for example not in all cases but in many cases that they may be deprived of their rightful space or opportunity and on the other hand they see that somebody who is not qualified is getting the job because of their different kinds of connections and linkages so this is these some these are some of the issues that we are seeing that that young people are really concerned about with regard to the the violent extremist activities what we are seeing is whenever if you look at the history 45 year history of Bangladesh we can see that whenever the governance loses steam then the violence in different variety it may be leftist left-oriented violence for example in the 70s early 70s or the right variety what we are seeing now can spike and just after our independence in the early 70s the governance the government started with a good footing huge popular support and then as they started losing their standing in in the eyes of the people then the alternative the young people started to look forward to an alternative ideology or alternative course and at that time in the early 70s it was a leftist kind of extremist activities then next time in 2005 2006 when the last government came and then they started to lose their grip on the on power and started engaging in questionable kind of policy and activities then we saw in 2004-5 then it again it spiked and now we are seeing for the last one and a half years initially as a targeted killings and recently on July 1st at holy artisan cafe in Gurshan where number of foreigners were killed and also Bangladeshis were killed in that kind incident so what we are seeing as a kind of trend is that whenever the governance started to falter then people start looking for an alternative and has been mentioned by Mr Hafiz that legitimacy is a very important issue now legitimacy is not a static idea it is a dynamic kind of process so a government which can come to power with a legitimate election having landslide even mandate but if they start losing their way or their steam then the people started to get alienated from then and particularly this happens with the younger people we are in a transitional society like many other societies and in a transitional society the young people particularly aspire more and the younger generation particularly what we see at the grassroot level in Bangladesh they are quite different from the previous generation and that they want more they are more connected their aspiration is higher and they expect more from the government and look for better opportunities and if those are not available or in any way obstructed then they get frustrated then alienated and if they are humiliated then i think the enabling environment is created for them to look for an alternative thought process alternative ideology and eventually alternative kind of course and that comes very handy in a Muslim majority country for example in a in a in a in a Bangladeshi context particularly we have a nice blend of two i say identity chromosomes one is the culture another is the religion so they are finally blended and whenever there is a problem or whenever one is pushed hard the other tends to come back and take the or occupy the minds of the people so we need to work in a very fine balance and here in Bangladesh in recent years we are seeing that when the government or i would say government with secular views government whenever the governance started starts to falter and people gets alienated and then try to find out an alternative or take recourse to an alternative ideology and that's what we saw recently in in Gulshan on first of July but here i should also mention that that legitimacy is a very important issue as i mentioned governance is another issue and it has the governance has to also be inclusive and dynamic and if it is not inclusive and dynamic then the problem can start and then against that kind of environment the the extremist elements can either borrow a national banner or brand or an international banner or brand as we have seen in recent incident in Bangladesh thank you thanks very much for this opportunity to speak on this panel i thought i would use this time to reflect on our global governance framework the UN counterterrorism strategy and particularly our experiences in Africa on how that has played out in terms of the the response to violent extremism and the understanding of government of violent extremism i just wanted to say also that this you know this UNCT strategy has just been reviewed it has had a 10-year review it includes great principles like human rights and the rule of law it includes concepts around prevention and and last week in the at the UN in those discussions there was a lot of pessimism about the massive gap between what is in that strategy and what is actually implemented in reality and so i'm reflecting on this from our experiences as the Institute for Security Studies now work in East Africa and the Horn, West Africa and the Sahel particularly around supporting governments to promote these rights-based responses to violent extremism and many of the organizations involved in the Resolve Network have produced a lot of evidence over the last 10 years and what we've seen is a lot of significantly alarming trends and for example the use of force and violence as our first option and the many cycles of violence that results from that you know revenge attacks and those those sorts of patterns we've seen limited effective use of criminal justice and rule of law responses when we've seen criminal justice responses we've seen mass arrests we've seen long detentions with our trial we've seen arrests of children and we've seen the criminalization marginalization of a lot of specific groups of people large groups of people young people and particularly repressive actions against these groups and then of course we've also seen counterterrorism rhetoric emerge in political debates and and the and and the suppression of political opposition so some of those patterns I have been very well documented by many of the people in this room and and we we're aware of it our research in particularly Kenyan Somalia which we published in 2014 where we talked to al-Shabaab fighters and fighters from the Mombasa Republican Council as well actually reflect on some of these governance issues because many point to the the the turning point for them joining radical radical organizations and actually taking violent actions came from a response to repressive government action and and then other research that we've done for example in Nigeria and indicates the frustrations of young people especially young men in having access to the economy and the issue of corruption also emerging very strongly them saying there's no way in there's no way to progress and with how those frustrations play out in terms of taking violent actions those pathways are not yet really understood we don't understand them yet but certainly those are some of the things young people are saying to us and other evidence we've done a citizen surveys in Nigeria particularly the affected regions in the north and then also in Lagos and in Abuja and talk to over a thousand respondents about government responses to Boko Haram now the north people have been pleased that the government has taken some action however the impact of that action in terms of further displacements and people disappear families being dissipated and so on have raised questions about that in the the big cities people are saying we don't think the government can get have control over this situation but we actually and we're not sure exactly what they should do about this they're probably taking and using the right responses by by these forceful military actions so so there is a sense of not knowing what are the alternatives from citizens themselves not knowing what to ask for from their governments in terms of the responses and we've seen from our support work of of law enforcement people prosecutors the judiciary particularly East Africa and the Horn to some extent in West Africa as well is that there is understanding amongst many of those practitioners about the strategies that they wish to take which is in alignment with the global framework however they also experience a significant amount of political interference in what they do in the in the choices they can make and the policies maybe they but when the time comes to react different orders are given which they need to follow so i do want to say there is some good news and notwithstanding for examples the challenges that Uganda faces we know that we've seen them actively prosecute cases we've seen them follow procedures we've seen them deal with the most recent cases exceptionally well not always successfully but at least procedurally well and and we think there's a lot to be to be applauded in the law enforcement prosecutorial responses the the way the judiciary is behaved and and in East Africa and the Horn certainly there's a general consensus amongst the law enforcement community prosecutors of how they should do things differently how they would do things differently so we think there is there are very important things happening amongst certainly the the institutions responsible it's just whether we can expect the politicians to always behave the the way they should so as a final comment then is that i i think this you know last week's discussions with you and you know really raised pve as or cve as the as the sort of new thing that we need to be emphasizing it's it's being presented as somewhat of a panacea to i think the the failures of of of dealing with these problems and and there's a strong stated view that you know these solutions are to be found at a very local level so the point i would make is that i think we should be really very careful about cve and pve and we need to be thinking about it a lot more and i think i can say more about that in the in the discussion um but i think there is a lot more that we need to understand about the nuance in the programming we need to do in order that it addresses these structural and institutional matters as well as matters at the local level and and it's it's not just this clean equation of give people jobs and they won't they won't be violent and those sorts of um assumptions that are somehow embedded in some of the pve rhetoric at the moment i think are problematic um so i will stop there and maybe we can pick up on some of these things later thank you very much um yeah thank you and thank you very much to usip and to resolve for for for inviting me it's really a great honor to be part of this it's been a great great discussion great to be on this panel i work for an organization called the international crisis group we're a conflict prevention organization we we're a global organization we have experts in about 40 different countries uh many of them are from the countries that they're working in they're among the leading experts or leading political analysts usually on the countries that they're working in their research is very much the the the foundation of our work they try to talk to as wide a range of people as possible they talk to people in government they talk to the opposition they talk to arm groups they talk to the communities that are vulnerable to to violence they talk to different parts of civil society and we try to collect their findings in reports policy notes op eds and other pieces that we publish on our on our website um crisis group is is i think best known for our analysis on individual countries or individual crises uh but we have now started to move into cross-cutting or thematic research and we published earlier this year a uh a report that looked at the rise of the islamic state in iraq and syria uh its ability to spread elsewhere and the i think what we called the resurgence of al-qaeda uh how al-qaeda was adapting to to to new conflicts in the middle east particularly in syria but also of course in in yemen and the report really tried to draw on the the deep expertise of our local analysts of years working on on these and similar movements from west africa all the way over to south asia and uh we have an enormous amount of work follow-up work planned this year on uh in in various different places that that are affected um i was sort of reflecting on this question of governance uh as as the others were were speaking uh the link between governance and the emergence of groups like the islamic state or al-qaeda their ability to recruit their ability to to expand you know and of course governance is an enormous part of the story i think uh uh professor hafiz's articulation of the legitimacy problem in the arab world was probably the most articulate articulate or the best articulation of it that i've heard for a long time so i mean i completely agree with that and clearly from what the others have said governance is an enormous part of the story bad governance governance abuses violence by governance by governments uh uh government illegitimate illegitimacy forms part of the narrative of uh many violent extremist groups many groups like al-qaeda and the islamic state so of course it's an extraordinarily important part of the story i think what struck me when the others were talking though is that it really the relationship between a government's relationship with its citizens uh its ability to provide basic public goods its ability to include all of society the relationship between that and other factors driving the emergence of these groups is really enormously context specific and it really varies an enormous amount between different places as i think these presentations showed very clearly uh i think it emphasized to me something that's at the core of what crisis group does which is understanding the local dynamics but it was a really really reemphasize this without a local understanding it's very difficult to see very difficult to understand how the relationship between bad governance and the emergence of groups like the islamic state and al-qaeda plays out and i think if we to pick up on on some of the things that professor hafiz was saying you know of course this this problem of of the crisis of legitimacy that is the structural underpinnings of what's happened over the past few years in the middle east there's no doubt about that at all that is the long-term problem um and without addressing that long-term problem the the issue will the issue of extremism will will will remain that said in the short term that crisis of legitimacy didn't lead to extremism not in the short term it led to protests protests in syria protests in iraq the toppling of governments in yemen the toppling of governments in libya and it was the genesis of those crises that have opened opportunities for al-qaeda in the islamic state so the bad governments led to protests often regimes crushed those protests as happened in syria and iraq or after those protests after the toppling of governments society struggled to find a formula for sharing power and resources like happened in yemen or in libya and it was the escalation of growth of those crises that have opened opportunities for for both the islamic state and al-qaeda so i think there the the relationship with governance is is profound of course but it's it's also it's also indirect i think you could go to to bukkaharum which which we haven't talked about very much not clearly the the bukkaharum its emergence is rooted in the lack of governance in northern nigeria the presence of the state or the absence of the state or where the state is present it's reliance on local and often predatory forces i think you can make a similar argument for other neglected peripheries whether in northern mali or the sinai or even the tribal areas in pakistan that the absence of the state the absence of governance has been part of the problem but it's always working in a combination with many other different factors in northern nigeria it was the attempted instrumentalization of bukkaharum by the governor it was the brutal crackdown very much echoing what what sherrill said that the the crackdown is often what really leads to to to the to growing support for for extremist movements so northern nigeria was the instrumental instrumentalization by the governor it was the crackdown in mayduguri it was the extrajujujusal killing of muhammad yusuf which really pushed bukkaharum along the very destructive path that it that it took so it was a problem rooted in governance matched with a certain set of circumstances which allowed the movement to then expand and then i think if you look at the the foreign fighters that are that are traveling from many parts of the world to iraq and syria the relationship between them and their state may be part of the story in some cases but they're also being recruited online they're being recruited through networks and they're going for reasons that range from a search for identity a search for purpose for eternity adventure a whole wide range of reasons of which their relationship with the state may be may be one so i think it is a while recognizing that governance is of course an enormous part of the story and and the problem won't go away without improving relations between the state and society and state and its citizens in many places it's not the whole part of the story and the the way it plays out varies between places so it doesn't lend to general prescriptions but of course that it's not a problem that lends to generic prescriptions we should be very cautious of generic prescriptions because of all the local specificities having said that i will make one general prescription and i think it's uh you know i think it is one that's that's relevant and particularly relevant today and it is related to governance and this is this sort of what comes next question as the islamic state loses territory in iraq and syria around syria in libya as boko haram is pushed back from some of the areas that it controlled as al-qaeda was pushed out of al-muqala in in yemen this question of what comes next i think is extremely important and governance may not be the right exactly the right word but what comes next has to be better this is partly about the provision of basic public goods certainly security but also simple things like refuge collection and and sewage and water and schools and medical facilities ideally some form of dispute resolution uh it means that it means basic services but it also means that what comes next is is inclusive enough of all those parts locally inclusive enough of all those parts of society so that the conditions that led to the rise of these groups or the the ability of these groups to take territory the reasons that communities acquiesced or were forced to acquiesce aren't aren't replicated again so i think this is uh you know for us this is one of the big um big research questions this year what will come next as these movements are starting to be pushed out of of some of the areas they controlled i think if you look back a year ago there's no doubt that both the islamic state and bokeh harm for example and to some degree al-qaeda in yemen have lost territory this question of what comes next i think is uh is an extremely important one all right well thank you as you as i said there's a a lot of knowledge on this panel and and i luckily get the the opportunity to ask the first question um and i think you set me up well richard uh one of the words that we've heard a lot uh is context and complexity uh and and i think that's really important when we're talking about governance um and and i'm coming to someone who is a true believer in focusing on governance uh not as the panacea but as something that is incredibly important and often the often overlooked uh we spent the past year and a half trying to build a rapid assessment governance tool with partners that creative associates to actually get at this um and what we found uh is that reality sometimes gets in the way um there are political agendas there there there are actors there are international interests local interests and such and so we can go in with the best of intentions and say governance is important let's build governance um so what i'm really interested with this this group is digging into where have you seen uh international support uh supporting the building of good governance uh work uh in your careers or in in your research uh and then how do we take that and extrapolate what's next for uh areas like syria or livia uh so we can hopefully do it better next time uh why don't we start with the ambassador uh since you can actually talk about your experience within bangladesh and the cycles that you've gone through uh because it's very context specific and then open it up to the rest of the group uh to talk about broader regions or or areas uh thank you very much i think it's a wonderful question uh in bangladesh we are as we face the violent extremist threat uh the government and society both are trying to uh address this challenge from their own perspective from the government side after this uh july one uh attack the government uh put in place i would say or rather sharpened their focus on policy areas and also certain some mobilization areas for example uh zero tolerance policy of the present government has been there for quite some time but it was more in the realm of uh policy but now the government is trying to put it into effect now the challenge that is coming up is that when the government is trying to apply or becoming uh more tough on the extremist elements uh that is creating again a law and order question extrajudicial killing comes into picture too much of use of force comes into picture so new questions are emerging as the government is trying to be tough on the extremist uh that is one problem and then and government on the other side is trying to mobilize the people against this scourge for example and uh a lot of policies have been put in place to mobilize different sections of people and that's from the government side and on the on the social side also we are those who are working at the civil society groups or with the society as a whole or community as a whole we are trying to now sensitize the people more intensely about the threat that is coming up and particularly for the Bangladeshi case and maybe maybe this is relevant for other countries as well uh violent extremism is a kind of uh far end of the spectrum there the grievances comes first and then perhaps frustration alienation humiliation then radicalization and then it goes into a violent extremism so we have we have we I think we have a huge space to work particularly in this area so we are looking at how we can help young people not to get radicalized and that's this is a space where we are trying but on the grievances we can we are trying to do whatever we can but the issue larger issues are beyond our control for example the issue of lack of justice impunity corruption these are issues of government policy or government the demand government intervention and now how the international community is engaging with us uh government is trying to work with neighbors for example they they are working taking support from the Indian government and Bangladesh and India are both working together to to address this issue as much as they could from the other friendly countries for example United States European Union Australian government those who are supporting the government to build up their capacity they are working with the government now here once one area where I think government has been slightly creative I would say is that they now recognize that they can't do the whole thing or they can be active everywhere so they have come to the realization that if somebody else could also help them to work both at the government side and also the community side uh that would be better and in that space came recently the GSAR Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund this is a multi donor multi partner a fund that has come up recently and it has taken uh as pilot countries Bangladesh Nigeria Mali Kosovo and perhaps one other country so this is a a kind of new framework uh for countering the violent extremism or radicalization even and that's working with the government because the country support mechanism that is the central body in the within the country is represented by the government civil society NGO business community and so on so forth so here we are seeing at the policy level this is the GSARF has a country mechanism with blessings and support from the government side but its activities are being done at the grassroot level at the community level to empower them to build their capacity build the resilience and here the civil society groups are working uh uh working I would say uh quite effectively we have started the work and we believe that if you can really improve the resilience of the society or the community and then engage different stakeholders uh into the community then perhaps we can create an environment I'm not sure if you can stop all the attacks or we can stop all individuals from not coming here but we can create an enabling environment where the possibility of the young generation or particularly young people getting radicalized and then going into extremist activities could perhaps be reduced I think here uh this is we talked these days quite frequently and Sheryl has mentioned the secretary generals event secretary generals plan of action it talks about prevention so I think it would be better if we focus more on the prevention there on the on the curative side and GSARF basically is focusing on that prevention and I believe that some the society such as one in Bangladesh uh we have now enough space to work on the prevention side and if you can do that perhaps the extremist state could be uh dealt with quite effectively and here the government's cooperation with the civil society or community leaders will play a very important role and from Bangladesh enterprise institute side I mean we are uh we do some research we implement projects do some advocacy with the government and also give them policy support for us I think it would be a good opportunity to work and contribute to this process of fighting violent extremism so I'm going to now cut my own question short in in the respect of time and open up questions to the audience the rest of you feel free to answer my question or answer the better questions from the audience no pressure but I'll take three at a time just because we don't have much time left and then we'll answer them as we as we see fit so let's the young woman here in the black down in front red tie and then the woman right here in the tan suit thank you my name is Courtney Raj doing a report for the Center on International Media Assistance about the impact of CVE on media development the media plays a critical role in good governance and there are many studies and evidence that shows that media has an impact on reducing media transparency helps reduce corruption and the corruption is a driver of extremism so I'm interested to hear what role you see for media independent media and good journalism in the type of approaches that you're suggesting thank you please go ahead hi my name is Mary Greer I work at the American Bar Association rule of law initiative and I particularly a question for Cheryl although any of the other panelists are welcome to weigh in in the in the criminal justice area I'm curious you mentioned Nigeria and Uganda do you have any observations about why you think if there were criminal justice interventions why they were more effective whether there was more independence in the decision-making or you felt like the criminal justice actors were better trained and one other part of that was there any use of alternatives to incarceration in terms of an ultimate disposition rather than just continued detention if i've been camp had I had the international center of excellence for cve my question refers to the fact that of course cv violent extremism and radicalization is also a concern in western countries for instance nowadays obviously in europe but also in well-established non-western democracies like in Indonesia so my question to the panel is reflecting on the role of good governance and government at such can you give your thoughts on how to look at this phenomena from the perspective of let's say a european democracy or even a non-western democracy and also countries which have a relatively well-established role for individuals and communities to express their grievances and their opinions in a different way than using violence great thank you so we have media transparency and countering violent extremism criminal justice why some are effective and some are ineffective and now violent extreme in western countries how do we take a look at that and tackle that issue so I will open it up to whoever wants to jump in first well let's let's have a someone who hasn't spoken maybe I can speak to the the the question on media first is that we've worked with journalists in west Africa particularly reporting on organized crime issues and corruption and and it's been a very difficult pathway to do that because of the the difficulties of the of the subject matter itself but certainly the freedom of journalists to operate the the media outlets available to them to use in order to communicate however it's been an incredible you know two years watching these journalists work and producing stories that are in-depth stories that inform the public and and that has been I think a real benefit I think the real difficulty is the dangers that journalists face in the context of violent extremism in just doing what journalists do is going out there and not only reporting on what's there but also reporting on government responses to what violent extremists are doing and the crackdown on journalists from governments just the and the lack of international support I think generally for journalists I think in some other forum I had discussions about you know the protection of journalists being something that was very difficult to present in the Human Rights Council and getting representation of those issues so that's my comment on the journalists issues it's really an important area for for investment but incredibly difficult and a quick response to the criminal justice issue is that it also relates to Cameron's original question about international assistance because I think that the successes and I have to say they are minus successes have been to do with a discursive approach firstly with those governments and the governments who do want to engage and not taking these formulaic approaches that international governments usually bring and that is about you know just taking a tool or a set of tick boxes and saying this is what we need to achieve and security sector reform across the last 20 years of making these efforts we've seen the failures of massive investments and very little returns on those investments and I think it is because of the that international methodology I think training is is a huge issue it's what a lot of what we do but it does come with the discussion and then it does come with the need for the political support for whatever the bureaucracies should be doing and the political procedures for it for example international assistance sometimes and you know we work at sometimes a very technical level for example bomb disposal and being able to investigate bomb incidents and explosive incidents the ability to manage a crime scene the ability to understand switches and detonating devices the ability to understand the mechanics of these things takes training you need specialized units to do this and we find that international assistance can be really arbitrary in these the Germans come in or I'm not I'm not I'm using the terms as an example but I don't mean the Germans a country may come in and do training disappear for two years another country comes in maybe trains the same people but not there's there's so little coordination there's so much disorganization in fact we started with some of the the governments developing a database of who's being trained and so on especially with something as technical as bombs also an explosives you do need ongoing training and a lot of these terrorism incidents do need that sort of technical engagement and really investigate as understanding what they're doing you do need to train every year the same batch of people keep them in the same units and and have all those negotiations with those governments about those things so it's a mix of all of those three levels of things in my view you know I'm gonna end it over if you have anything because it's been the longest since you spoke um I guess I can just touch briefly on the last question around violent extremism in in parts of the non-developing world so in the US and Europe although mercy core our research hasn't really focused on this I think there can you can drop parallels in terms of the communities that you see being engaged in violent extremist groups in for example Europe you have immigrant communities that have been largely marginalized and sort of excluded from the economic and political process or or life in those countries so again I want to echo everyone by saying we we're not trying to say that governance is the solution to to all of the root causes of violent extremism but even in in Europe and in America I think there are ways in which governments can can focus on more inclusive processes to bring in communities that might be marginalized and then therefore be more susceptible to the appeal of groups that sort of valued within their within their countries I mean I agree very much with with Beza I mean I think I would add maybe and Evil you know this better than I do and I think Tarak also works on this so there's others that know more about this than I do but but I mean in in in Europe certainly and I imagine here recruitment patterns have changed enormously over the last 10 or 15 years I mean it's it's it's the Islamic State is not recruiting in the same way that al Qaeda used to recruit and al Qaeda is not recruiting in the same way al Qaeda used to recruit it's recruiting mostly in in these parts the world we're talking about it's recruiting a lot of the time online through networks and and without the same sort of references or the very unsophisticated references to religion and certainly religion is used but the references are often quite unsophisticated often the references are much more to youth sub the youth subculture to belonging to adventure to search for identity so I think the the the patterns of recruitment have changed enormously in some way pioneered by al Shabab al Shabab started doing a lot of this some some time ago so I think those those patterns have changed I think definitely the work within communities is extremely important and trying to to to disrupt the networks in particular because it is done through through through networks I would just like to pick up on something that that Cheryl said earlier about about about cv because I think it's it's it's it is very important of course there's an enormous amount of enormous value in the cv agenda in a corrective to some of the counterterrorism policies and the very security-focused policies that sort of dominated the immediate response to 9 11 so the the agenda holds enormous value and it's it's it's it's it's very well motivated and you can see that that there's a political tool to move governments the right way it's extremely helpful I think this is a discussion on governance and and violent extremism you know and I think there are some dangers into trying to subordinate goals related to good governance to counter radicalization I think we should be quite cautious about labeling activities that are the basic obligations of states to their citizens like providing education building schools some of these other things that states should be doing in any case bringing in excluding communities I think we should be very cautious about labeling these cv and we can think of them we can think of their benefits in terms of cv because they may have some in some cases but we should be very cautious about labeling them cv particularly in in the areas where they're where they're being conducted there are clearly dangers in doing that in terms of stigmatizing communities in terms of undermining the people who are actually doing the activities and I think that's that's that's one thing that we should be quite cautious with the agenda I think the other thing that we should be quite cautious and again it's not it's to recognize the enormous value in the agenda but also recognize that there are some some some dangers in its implementation I think the other danger is of course that the definitional problem and we're never going to resolve the definition of what is a violent extremist but but it is it is quite a fluffy term and I haven't found a definition yet that that I think is is suitably narrow to not include a very diverse set of armed groups or rebels or other or other social movements you know and I think the the the term is is clearly very pejorative I think there is a danger that that governments misuse the term and define their enemies or their political opponents as violent extremists in a way that that makes some of the policies that the cv agenda promotes actually more difficult to to promote so I think that's another that's another caution with with with the agenda that we should be we should be careful about very careful about about labeling both both the labeling of the groups and the labeling of the the activities supposedly to counter them so we're running very low on time so we're going to quickly ask two more questions we'll have one minute answers up here if that maybe 30 second answers and then we can continue this conversation throughout the rest of the day so let's take two very very quick questions here and who else has a question that's right here the the gentleman in the suit that's probably not descriptive enough I apologize all right hi hi my name is Zohra Halimov from gvu the question is to Richard actually you talked about the what is next what is after things were changed and things are changing quickly since the extremism becoming global many fighters are foreigners who are serving now if I can use the word in Syria now they have families and they have children who are growing up in the same environment what would happen to those what would happen because most of the discussion we are talking about local and local initiatives the governance and human rights of the locals and etc but there is plenty of people who came from abroad who been there who have children now and what would happen with the children of those who are actually involved in the extremism thank you thank you please yeah I'm wearing my suit today I have a radical idea I'm Peter Brorson I help set up the European Institute of Peace and I'm not with the Russi now the radical idea is this that I'd like you just a very quick feedback on if the main challenge and you seem to agree with Professor Hafiz that the main challenge is ineffective governance why don't we engage the the violent extremists as our allies not as our enemies they seem to be addressing the same question they are upset about ineffective governance we are upset about ineffective governments they do have traction partly because they're brutal but partly because they answer something how far can we take this fantastic all right each of you has 30 seconds to answer the issue around generational radicalization for foreign fighters and to address this radical idea of embracing our our enemies so 30 seconds solve it let's start with Beza and we'll just go all the way down so I like the the idea of trying to question you know in a radical way how do we actually address governance and I guess just I think to make it short the goal for us at Murtikorn for a lot of other organizations is to create other options for people to be able to change the situation in their countries besides violent options so right now ISIS and al-Qaeda and lots of other groups Boko Haram offer violence to people as a promise for them to be able to create these governance changes that they want but I think our role and the role of the international community really is to create other alternatives whether through diplomacy or through governance interventions at the local level to basically be able to make those changes come about perfect 30 seconds yes 30 seconds interesting idea one could look at and I think some recent examples can testify to that for example in Nepal from 96 to 2006 there was an insurgency branded as extremist movement and then eventually it was brought into the mainstream and now the current prime minister himself is a leader of that movement at that time recently in Colombia the FARC and the government movement FARC and the government have now agreed to a peace agreement I mean as has been mentioned by Beza alternatives can always be looked at now if we are not too wedded to the brand then perhaps if we take a problem solving approach possibly one can look at that kind of outcome thank you 30 seconds yeah very quickly I think also to respond to your question I think the the PVE framework is should actually be that if we are not to be conflating it and if we're trying to find out what it means rather than conflating it with all these development issues that should be separate and I think PVE allows for a lot of thinking about that especially at the local level where you are talking about communities who are dealing with these issues on the ground so and I'm not I'm not certain about the sort of very international diplomatic level and how that works nor at the national level so I can't speak to that at all but I certainly think that PVE offers us a some way of defining it as its own thing if we do be if we are talking about issues such as the one you raised now at the local level Richard concluding thoughts 30 seconds I mean on the provocative question I mean clearly it's part of these groups recent success is their ability to in a very rudimentary way and with enormous variety sort of provide basic public goods security and in particular quick dispute resolution which and again it's very varied I would say that that overall their track road is not great either I mean if they're very much reflects what Professor Haffer said at the beginning that people are caught between two extremes one is predatory governments or legitimate governments and the other ones is violent and extreme groups you know I think the you know you could look across and Boko Haram has done almost nothing in terms of governance sure the Taliban and the Shabab provide some sort of elementary dispute resolution and certainly they're able to sort of resolve conflicts between communities in ways sometimes the government's unable to but it's if things were better things have to be pretty bad before communities acquiesce or support them I think you know I think really the big question it's a question that flows very much from what Professor Haffer said you know if this is the structural problem this problem of the lack of legitimacy you know can regimes reform and how are regimes going to reform over time this is the big question because that they will have to reform they will have to reform to meet the aspirations of growing youth populations to meet the aspirations of their citizens and I think the you know one of the big questions is is can they reform in a way that that doesn't lead to further instability and can they reform in a way that that sucks some of the oxygen from from as you say the the other extreme thank you well thank you for the questions thank you for the panelists for taking your time we'll continue this conversation throughout the day and and we'll solve all of this within the next 12 hours so thanks in advance and this from dough is going to come up and make a couple announcements and we'll move from there thank you all for coming again I'm Candice Rondo I am the director at the director of the secretariat for the resolve network here at USIP and a senior program officer we haven't done a lot of plugging of the network so I feel like this is my one opportunity to do that while we have a captive audience at the moment for those of you who don't know much about the network and what we're about this is actually our first annual fall forum we have now 17 partner organizations as many of whom you see here today our panelists are coming from all of the world and this is a tremendous effort to really build relationships between organizations between researchers between practitioners and policymakers who are really concerned about the issue of violent extremism whether we like the definition of that term or not we know it's very contested but we know that there are some core problems as was said this morning I'm by Dr. Hafez and also our panelists just now on the governance panel governance is a root cause or poor governance is a root cause and it is something that many of our guests here today have encountered in the field they do come from all over the world and today we have a myriad of topics to talk about this panel is entitled a new narrative we're going to explore the relationship between religious identity and discourses on violence before I open it up to the panel and I think we're going to try and keep it kind of Oprah style that's the way I like to roll I want to encourage also our panelists to refrain from speaking giving long speeches I think it's important for us to sort of engage the audience too because I was noted there are a lot of smart people in the room today but before we get started a little bit I want to talk a little bit about the topic and sort of set the tone a bit because it's it's something that you know you hear a lot about the role of religious identity in informing the way communities think about violence and justice most importantly a lot of ink has been spilled a lot of money has been spent on countering countering counter narrative campaigns and you know I think we can say quite honestly today I don't think we've gotten a lot of bang for our buck we see this this effort online not only by the U.S. government other governments too around the world have made an effort to kind of reach out via social media through you know through videos through Twitter and so forth to try and reach this group of imaginaries of isolated folks out there they're there they are isolated that is true but oftentimes their journey to that to that place whether it's on Facebook or on Twitter is is built by the community and so I want to posit a few things I think our panelists would probably agree but maybe have very different views on maybe some of the nuances that there are there are maybe three reasons why these types of campaigns these counter narrative campaigns have not been so successful so far the first is you know when you're you're talking about violent extremism we know that there's no single driver violent extremism there's no single narrative either one thing that I think Daesh has been very good at al-Qaeda been very good at they seem to intrinsically understand that identity is fluid and that the motives of individuals are fluctuate varying upon their context socially politically and economically they understand how to tailor stories for women they know that stories about heroism bravery social justice are likely to appeal to young men and they can tell those stories in French and Arabic and English and Urdu and they can do it well and they can package it in 30 minute 30 second sound bites something that I think many governments struggle to do is to work with sound bites second a lot of governments have been very unsophisticated in their approach they've taken on this idea for instance that religious figures you know provide potentially a pathway to to changing the mindset around violent extremism particularly in Muslim majority countries or particularly in places where the question of political Islam is is unresolved in the minds of some community members what they fail to sometimes I think understand is that actually many religious figures have difficulty reaching those audiences because they're trained in classical classical Arabic and so sometimes you know it's sort of like a kid will ask you know what do you think about the the latest episode of narcos on Netflix and you have you know a priest saying well let me tell you my son about Beowulf right so I mean there's a there's a kind of disconnect between the language that is spoken by a lot of religious figures and I think a lot of our panelists here today will tell you sort of what that means and why that's so important to sort of think about lastly there is this obsession within governments around trying to target messages through mobile phones through the internet the reality is it's about relationships it's about real family relationships friends peers those in your immediate network those of the people who influence how you think and they are the ones who may be driving to messages on the internet but they're not the only ones so it's important to remember that in the Middle East in Asia in Africa a lot of what's happening is happening at the kitchen table it's happening in the market it's happening in schools it's happening in businesses and I think you know there's a lot to be said for the sort of that level of conversation and how to influence that so I want to introduce our panelists very quickly on my left here we have Huda Abadi Dr. Huda Abadi from the Carter Center she's the Associate Director of the Middle East and Africa Conflict Resolution Program at the Carter Center she's recently done a lot of work with religious figures in in North Africa trying to sort of explore ways with them to reach out to communities and innovate in their messaging Tahir Abbas is a senior research fellow with the Royal United Services Institute otherwise known as Rusi in London before joining Rusi in 2016 very recently he lived and worked in Istanbul for six years he's a tremendous amount of experience researching and writing on ethnic relations Islamophobia and radicalization it's since the 1990s Imtiaz Ghul an old friend from Days in Pakistan is the CEO of the Center for Research and Security Studies he's an author of four books on Afghanistan militancy in Pakistan and radicalization he's leading and he's also a leading national analyst on security you can see him often on on geo news and others in Pakistan he's a very popular figure there my colleague Eliza Irwin is a senior program officer here at USIP she is in the forward office of for our operations in Kabul she oversees peace building and cv projects there welcome to all of you let me just start quickly with the question that I hope will prompt discussion between yourselves why is it so difficult to to reach young people or women in communities that are impacted by violent extremism what are the pathways that are the most effective that you've seen in the field thank you first of all good morning thank you for having me it's an honor to be here I want to talk a little bit about just set the background on what we do so I can share some of the lessons learned from our own project so I lead a project on countering dash propaganda by working with religious and community leaders the first component of the project is really research which fits really nicely into the narratives we have coded more than 200 300 videos of dashes propaganda we've looked at all of their online magazine tabek and now the french one that has come up which kind of it's a kind of helps us with working with religious and community leaders we're working with religious and community leaders from Morocco Tunisia France and Belgium and so one of the things that I would like to start to say is dash has really capitalized on failed states core social political grievances misinterpretations of religious texts and yearning for an idealistic Islamic society but if we look at dash's narratives we've identified seven main narratives that really depend on the context of the recruitment so I will just very quickly outline them so one is humiliating the west second is western transgression of the muslim umma or of the muslim world the third one is military jihad fourth is providing social services so you see them like being basically that if you join dash's territory you'll become a full citizen you're able you're going to be able to be an engineer or a doctor your dreams will be coming true you're going to have education and you're going to be given basic rights that you were not given in your own host country the fourth the fifth one is hypocrisy of the muslim minna and religious leaders the sixth one is the ability to administer territory and territory and provide law and order so the question of justice and the last one is pure theological and uh pure theological and religious appeals i would like to say that the pure religious appeals so the reason why dash in their propaganda that the reason why you need to join dash's territory is to become a better muslim is less than 10 percent of their propaganda so I just want to I want to showcase that it's not really it's not really the religion that is the main problem they are it's cloaked in a religious rhetoric but it's more than it moves beyond the religion in of itself it's more core sociopolitical political grievances and then moving a step ahead one of the problems that we have not been able to to really be very effective is I would say one the most important thing is one we have not tackled the rise of Islamophobia and this goes hand in hand if you're trying to tackle uh dash extremism you need to tackle also the rise of the radical right because they feed each other it's the same it's you know two faces of the same coin so if you're trying to do one you need to do the second there's a lot of lack of trust by religious and community leaders the second one is also the notion of the good versus the bad muslim so we're going to engage only with the moderate quote on quote moderate religious leaders and we're not going to engage with the conservatives the fact that we also use in our terminology moderate Muslims is in of itself problematic so we need to move away from good versus bad muslim because we feed into dash's ideology this is exactly what they want and us versus them and really also engage with very much conservative Salafi religious leaders they Salafi religious leaders or conservative muslim leaders does not equate terrorists does not equate you know violence political violence and we need to move away from this in just this month early this month we had a workshop with religious leaders and it was mixed between mainstream religious leaders and Salafi religious leaders and ex-foreign fighters including women because women are really the community gatekeepers they know what is happening it's still an untapped resource and the workshop was amazing i mean these people would not have been together i myself had my own preconceived stereotypes that oh my goodness one of them is just going to walk out but the fact that everyone has their own following and has their own ideology is in enriched the discussion in of itself and lastly i want to say that one of the problems with religious and community leaders is the fact that many of them rely as you mentioned on very traditional forms of communication so if you google muslim responses on dash you would see tons and tons of really it will take you days to go over every single muslim response against dash however the problem relies on they relied on traditional forms of language so a lot of times it's classical Arabic when you look at dash not only they have you know like Spanish English and various languages but they also have dialects of that particular country and as i said they're very very much hyperlocal and our responses haven't been hyperlocal they're also very static religious leaders have been in their response has been more traditional you can see even if they take it to the online a lot of times it's the khutbah where it's the preacher who's giving a khutbah and it's very static so they the youth are not able to engage very much with the religious leaders there's kind of a disconnect between youth and religious leaders when you look at dash again it offers it provides an alternative it says to youth if you're angry about these sociopolitical grievances there's something you can do so we also need to provide an alternative to these sociopolitical grievances that you can do something there's also a problem with safe space for women can we provide safe spaces for women it could be in mosques but it also could be empowering young women in the muslim communities so they have also a voice if you see dash you can see a lot of young women even from europe going into dash and thinking and feeling that they're going to be empowered and some of the questions like well how are these young women from the uk or from france deciding to leave to dash but they provide them an alternative and we need to think the same way so let's pick up on that a little bit to hear you know this this question of empowerment in in settings where disempowerment is generally the rule whether you're living in belgium and you find yourself as an outsider because of your religious or ethnic identity or whether you're you know in egypt and you have no way in because you don't have a vote or you you know you're not able to politically participate what about the empowerment piece well thank you for that thank you to conference organizers for the opportunity and and welcome to everybody here the empowerment question is obviously an important one in the sense that we are dealing with young people who have a series of grievances which are not being dealt with there isn't a response on the part of the state to provide the opportunities and mechanisms for integration and participation so they feel excluded marginalized left out their voices are not heard by by those within their own communities nor the political elites at the center so this is an ongoing phenomenon we've seen this time and time again and we're not recognizing this for what it is because the fact that we've got at least in the case of say um british born young men who join various overseas campaigns we've had this happen since the 1980s onwards and so what we've got is an ongoing situation of division exclusion polarization deep politicization and we're not recognizing or accepting that young people are experiencing tremendous democratic deficits they're experiencing severe exclusion and marginalization on top of racism and discrimination and the slumber phobia which are wider societal factors and unless we begin to understand and appreciate and also do something about these issues we're going to get more and more of the same problems we understand the grievances are our driver but we don't do anything to address those grievances. Imtaz I mean I know you've had very different experiences I think the experience in in South Asia and I think Eliza probably could speak to this as well um there's a different set of motivations I think you know Daesh is is not as big a player in the way that you have in the Middle East they certainly are able to harness and capture messages but there are other concerns there that I think you've you've seen in your work tell us about that. First thank you very much and good afternoon or good morning still you know we have have been through various phases of facing religiously inspired fighters it all began in 1979 with the anti-soviet jihad and then the emergence of the Taliban and with that the narrative has kept changing so the narrative basically changed and it also diluted the social fabric of the society in Pakistan in which you saw the erosion of constitutional values the fundamental rights in Pakistan which and increasingly the prison that people applied to viewing the world viewing the others was religious more religious than than constitutional values itself so this is the context that basically prompted us to start a center of excellence counter-edicalization program at the center of center for research and security studies a year ago and that is basically anchored in fundamental rights rights issues like the rule of law equal citizenry and diversity respect for diversity and the issue that we are discussing right now about the religious identity that religious identity issue in Pakistan for instance reduces the non-muslims into second or third grade citizens you know we have like maybe hardly three three and a half percent of non-muslims predominantly is the Sunni Muslim state but according to the constitution only a Muslim can become the president or the prime minister so thereby I think the state the state document itself distinguishes between its citizens and it itself then flouts the very basic article 25 about the equal citizenry so there's a massive contradiction and when we in our programs try to highlight this contradiction we have often also confronted a lot of opposition questioning at times also problems despite the fact that the program that we are conducting is an engagement with university teachers now imagine they're all most of them the masters some of them are phd's but when you bring in this issue they're always then they are unruffled this discomfort among certain people like four days ago the trainees were taken in islamabad to a hindu temple and when they came out some of the teachers said oh we must now recite some verses from the Quran to cleanse ourselves you know that hindu temple or a church is seen as something that has polluted them their their belief and imagine these are university teachers agents of change so these religious identity issue particularly for the minorities in Pakistan has become serious in that in that respect but the larger issue is of course this deviation from constitutionalism that increasingly the present the people apply is Islam and not the constitution not the global universally practiced and acknowledged values of rule of law equal citizenry and that i think then also facilitates the extremist narrative whether it's coming from Daesh or whether it came from al-qaeda because they prey on young vulnerable people within the community to to explain to them to convey to them that you are being being wronged by the state a state which is colluding with external forces you know the sense that you are talking about this sense of humiliation sense of victimhood uh of the muslims by the west by this colluding west uh and then military interventions of course you know what has happened in libya in syria uh in afghanistan so this then very strongly impacts it their view on the world the weltanschauung and you know the world view that the germans call it and i think that is a big complication in countering violent extremism and another issue is that unless we diagnose the problem correctly whether it's uh whether it's just the violent extremism religiously inspired or whether it's politically inspired in in many instances across the world it will be very difficult to to get the right recipe and i think quality research the way you know you intend to promote encourage probably can help us find better recipes for countering extremist violence or violent groups regardless whether they are religious or political actually i'm reminded of if you give me another two minutes uh of a recent article uh recent paper by an indian kashmiri journalist um which he read at a at a conference uh if you allow me i'll just read it read it out from that a brief excerpt um and this basically why i'm forced to reproduce this so read read it in front of you because he was resonating what i said at a conference in kandy sirilanka in march it has nothing to do with the ongoing insurgency or violence in kashmir but i just stumbled upon it in my while researching and i had said so more or less the same thing to my kashmiri friends who were agitating that pakistan for instance is not doing enough that you know we need to go back to the religion you know that the kashmiri fighters you know should be supported whereas a lot of it carries a religious color so i cautioned them that don't do this and this journalist tophel Ahmed says says that uh and he wrote basically the paper was titled we're losing kashmir to islam ten ways to counter radicalization in india and this was recent actually a couple of months ago he says bear in mind in the age of the internet nations will be invaded by ideas tv debates about pallet guns reference to the ongoing violence in kashmir are more powerful than bullets fatwas by clerics molas are more consequential than the supreme court orders as we see in kashmir jihad could be more dangerous for militaries and we're losing kashmir to islam jihadism he says you know this did not originate among the masses but it originated among the educated elite it this is an idea that was coined and sowed by people who mattered so this is what he he's cautioning again that don't use religion in your fights in your political fights and i think this is a big danger so that's why it's very important actually to keep the religion separate from the from politics and also to find recipes but not in isolation of the political geopolitical factors that constitute a very important pillar of the extremist narrative thank you picked up on some very important themes there and i think alize has probably got a lot to say about that i mean just in terms of this this question in the in the narrative many narratives which is very multifaceted but one theme keeps coming up this is this idea of purity and profligacy and citizenship and righteousness and legitimacy which is something that you know you can talk about it in a in a briefing paper for icg or for crs s it sounds quite abstract but i think you know there are some environments like at the university level or in schools and school settings particularly in afghanistan where you have this extreme divide between those who kind of have a secular view and those who do not and this is the tug of war at the very local level thank you kandis and and thank you also i will i will echo the other panels to resolve network into usip although as an employee that may seem oddly self-serving so yeah absolutely i mean one of one of the really interesting things about working with narratives in the context of afghanistan is understanding how unbelievably contextualized they are not just province to province or region to region but village to village and it's something that valent extremist groups are extremely adept at exploiting and one of the more fascinating findings through our work has been that the taliban actually conduct essentially baseline assessments they go into villages and areas and they understand exactly what they what the very localized grievances are and play to some of these these issues that kandis was speaking to create narratives that will that will exploit local grievances as well as community identities and identity is an incredibly important community tool for community organization and even survival in afghanistan and for the most part really and this is not a phenomenon that's unique to afghanistan but religion is used by by these interest groups and and especially by valent extremist groups in order to further their political objectives and so i wanted to speak to you know one of the the first questions or the second question you asked which is one of one of the sort of pathways that works groups and and particularly populations and demographics that are living in more rural or isolated locations may never sort of interact with one another making them particularly vulnerable to narratives of othering and sort of general distrust and in light of this and and within the scope of of our cve work usip is designed a number of projects to try and bridge divides between these groups and to develop stronger social cohesion intergroup tolerance and intergroup trust and so i'd like to speak very briefly about one of these projects that we piloted beginning last year and that that is ongoing right now which was a project that sought to bring together two disparate groups students youth teenagers from madrasas and from public high schools in two provinces of logarr and wardak these students had at best very little to no interaction with one another and at worst they had already well developed and narrow stereotypes of the other and in our sort of baseline evaluations ourselves when we spoke to these students about what their perceptions were of the other group we heard like i said at best neutrality and at worst some fairly sort of extreme narratives with madrasa students referring to public school students as infidels corrupted by western morality and public school students using language such as suicide bombers and training to refer to their madrasa counterparts and this kind of aggressive stereotyping obviously results in deep divisions with these communities which are then exploited in a number of ways by by violent extremist groups and so one of the things that we sought to do was to bring these two groups together through regular structured and long-term interaction with one another and the way that we chose to do that was through a common learning objective and specifically it was journalism classes and the journalism classes focused on print journalism and documentary filmmaking and we focused or chose that particular subject really for three reasons on the one hand it was a subject where neither group had any sort of comparative advantage so both groups came together essentially as equals it was a sort of benign or nonsensitive platform which meant that it wouldn't necessarily incur objections from the community or from either participant group and also we kind of hoped that some of the products or outputs that the students would end up making together would potentially serve as their own counter narrative but the primary objective was really to break down some of these some of these detrimental stereotypes through the the weekly trainings and joint work and so the physical output was really sort of of secondary importance. The pilot lasted six months and on a weekly basis the students were brought together high school students were paired with madrasa students they were given certain skills in in print journalism and documentary filmmaking and then they went out into the community to gather stories so I'll just touch on a couple of really quick sort of findings from that before I conclude one of the more interesting things that we discovered of course we did sort of baseline midline and end line and this almost refers to one of the questions asked earlier about the potential role of journalism the nature of the training itself ended up providing an opportunity for us to gauge shifts in both attitude and behavior watching the students interact with each other we could we could measure the shifts in behavior in terms of the way that the students related to one another and in terms of shifts in attitude we were able to essentially look at the content of their writing so just to give a really brief example at the outset warduck and logar there's there's been intractable conflict for for decades through a number of different reasons but notably one of the things ongoing there is violent extremist violence and especially suicide bombing targeting government officials and at the outset the students from both madrasas as well as high schools would would use a very specific set of language to describe these they would say fidae bombings which meant instead of suicide bombing it implies sort of religious devotion and and the justification of of the act they would refer to the suicide bombers as martyrs or Shahid and the government forces that died as murdar or sort of soiled souls and i apologize to any afghans in the audience whose language i just butchered and the context of journalism allowed the trainers to highlight the issue of neutrality in language and allowed them to sort of deconstruct and think about sort of fact versus opinion they pushed them to interview other people to bring in outside opinions rather than interjecting their their own opinions into the language of the piece and one of the things that we noticed over time was that these same issues were then sort of mirrored in the way that these youth described events in their own lives or described other stories outside of the context of these journals and pieces the second was a sort of diminishing in other forms of intergroup prejudice so in a second iteration of this project we included there was about 200 students in the in the pilot in the second iteration we had the same number and we managed to get about 17 girls into the program and that was met outwardly immediately with hostility especially from the madrasa students who often had never interacted with with the other gender before and little by little we were able to diminish that intergroup hostility not just between madrasa and mock tub students between genders between the rural and urban divide which we had underestimated the importance of and so I think yeah my my final takeaways from this were first of all that you know not only are identities not incredibly fluid but they're incredibly localized they are not remotely monolithic and I think the other thing I'd like to impart is the sort of interesting notion of journalism as a tool to to sort of counter this notably because it impresses the importance of critical thinking of fact finding a verification and triangulation of information what is a primary source so on so forth but also for for focusing on neutrality and sort of the deconstruction of language and then very importantly for marginalized youth for giving the voiceless a voice thank you you know a couple things you said there that jumped out at me and I was thinking about something Imtiaz that we talked about a little bit about the role of Tbiligi clerics and and kind of their their influence today in in Pakistan I think you can say the same there are some in in Afghanistan elsewhere as well I just wonder though going back to your point about how bound up the idea of citizenship is with apostasy and this sort of this tension between the two disbelief can can you scale up an experiment like the Maktab Madrasa program as USIP has done in Afghanistan and hope that that would be enough to push back against a rather statist question around around citizenship do you must must you be a Muslim truly to participate in political culture in in these countries if so what is a real Muslim and who controls that that narrative it's a very divisive debate but I personally have come to the conclusion that unless we reconnect the citizenry with the constitution unless the ruling elites prioritize the issue of the rule of law indiscriminate rule of law as a top priority it will be very difficult to bridge this this cleavage between the Muslims and the non-Muslims we're being okay I think until this war on terror began unfolding and this extremist narratives usually gradually took over because out of the womb of this war on terror was born this Daesh and also local extremist groups who have also basically in the garb of religious ideology they are basically perpetrating terrorism terrorism as part of the proxy war between the two or three countries within the region of Afghanistan Pakistan and India so that's why it's extremely important number one to for the ruling elites to go back to the constitution number two the extremist the the diagnosis has to be correct are we talking of professional hired assassins who are disguised as Daesh or TTP or Al Qaeda or are they really really religiously inspired fighters so and therein comes the role of the Tabletis the preachers that they appear to be very pacifists peaceful preachers of Islam but if you look at the narrative that they peddle all all along it's hardly different from what his butari talks about it's hardly different from what Daesh talks about this anti-westernism this conspiracy of the U.S. Israel India nexus against the Muslims for instance this is common to them all and this they use as oxygen as adrenaline practically for most of the people and people unwittingly also walk into this trap they embrace this ideology as something sacrosanct and this has a huge pull factor as I told you one of our very famous TV anchors recently has gone a little the other way a very liberal socializing lady has just returned from Hajj Hajj in the company of the country's top preacher who has galvanized tens of thousands if not millions of people just because this because of the absence of critical thinking it's not enough critical thinking because our curricula doesn't provide for provide this for and also the ruling elites you know wouldn't like the people to think critically and then the space for critical thinking is also shrunk that they're not they are the people who object to our way of life maybe small in numbers but the nuisance value is big because they are brainwashed politicized and they're just ready to their cause so they can do anything they can take any life anytime if they think that this guy or girl is opposed to our way of life it's like apostasy you know the issue of apostasy so this way your life becomes vulnerable there that's why it's very important for this thing to come from the top the I was a little quite encouraged last year when the prime minister some opposition leaders started talking about the equal citizenry for the first time in so many years Aamir I think can vouch for that that on the floor of the parliament one opposition leader picked up the article 25 that is so close to my heart it's about equal citizenry the prime minister eventually went to a Hindu temple you know so we have these other examples as well and this probably can set in motion a new dynamic so for that the ruling elites need a little more proactive approach courage and I think we can overcome this would I suspect you're going to want to push back a little bit based on your experiences with Salafis at at sometimes I think there's sort of a conflation as you noted with the Salafis kind of theological framework which has actually three or four different levels right you have the quietess who are a bit more passive in their in their goals and their in their stretch for engaging with the state and then you have other you know perhaps more extreme or more violent variations but I mean I think that there's something in between here that we're missing and what are we missing in the conversation with Salafis or others and I think also important to make a distinction between Salafism, Tablighism you know and and Wahhabism because there are differences there are distinctions that I think that are also important to note thank you for this question so absolutely I think one of the issues I am going to a little bit push back because there's also different schools of thought even within the Salafism and so for example when we were trying to think of organizing a workshop and we were going to have a separate workshop for mainstream religious leaders and then a separate one for Salafi conservative religious leaders we realize this is problematic and we heard from them that the competition within it's not between mainstream and Salafi but it's between Salafi and Salafi because of the different schools of thought within Salafism as well but Salafism does not mean militancy at all I mean Salafi means like returning back to the Prophet like the way they did things so that might be conservative we might not agree with their ideologies but that doesn't mean that this is going to lead to political violence I would say the worst enemy for Daesh is citizenship that's the worst enemy I mean so if we're trying to fight Daesh to counter that other than counter narratives and online and offline media strategies if you really look at the proper agenda of Daesh you would see that what they are giving to the followers we have youth coming from a hundred different countries we focus so much on the Muslim countries the Mina region but their youth have been coming from Europe from North America from Latin America why why are there these youth coming from all over and that's an important question we need to ask and so the the the inclusion the political participation you see in many of the I mean many of the Salafi religious leaders that were involved in our workshop are participating in the in the incoming elections in some of the countries where they're from so the fact that they feel that there's political participation they have a huge following and they feel that their voices are heard is very important and then when we look back and say well if you know if citizenship is the worst enemy for Daesh because that's what they say like if you are a Muslim and you believe for example I'm a Muslim and I identify myself as an American and I identify myself as a Moroccan it's a completely like I am a very bad Muslim I can be killed so if that's the worst enemy but if you look at them and reverse the coin and say well then what can we do to ensure if what they are providing the services that they're providing the fact that they can bring justice so we need to reframe in terms of our fight against Daesh and say how can we how can we strengthen how can we make sure that our citizens feel that they are included in the political process that they are not marginalized why are these youth leaving and how can we make sure that we hear from everyone and try to respond and that's also the role of the government and so it's not just in terms of counter narratives and I think this is where we have it wrong there has been a huge focus but a lot of these followers for example they would see youth would see counter messaging from various governments and they know it's coming from the government they will not belie