Hi, and welcome to today's international law discussion. I'm Major Chris Kosnitsky, a military professor here at the Stockton Center for International Law at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Today's discussion is on Afghanistan 2021, specifically the international legal implications following the withdrawal of US forces in the fall. And then today we're going to actually, for this panel, drill down into two areas, the first being the rule of law and the second being humanitarian assistance. Of course, we'll touch on a few other areas. This discussion follows a workshop we held here at the US Naval War College. For the workshop, we invited approximately 25 experts from across the field and academia. We had representatives from across the Department of Defense, Department of State, NATO, the UN, the International Committee for the Right Cross, and international law academics from numerous institutions. The workshop was held under the Chatham House non-attribution policy. So today we'll be talking about some of the discussion points, but we're not going to be assigning them to any particular individual. And I should remind everyone today that our participants are speaking in their personal capacity, so anything they say should not be attributed to their organization. Today's moderator is Captain Tom Leary. Captain Leary is the Staff Judge Advocate for US Central Command. He's had a 23-year career as a national security law practitioner serving at the strategic, operational, and tactical level. He has deployed 11 times to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Etsy. Captain Leary, thank you for being here today. The floor is yours. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate that warm welcome. I'm privileged to be joined today on this distinguished panel by two folks who, in military parlance, we might say, have deployed extensively in their own rights, not just distinguished practitioners, but folks who have been there and done that and have important stories to share with us all. And I hope we'll benefit from some of that discussion today. To my immediate left is Professor Eric Jensen, who currently teaches at the Stanford Law School and the Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law for the past 35 years and visiting 40 developing countries. Professor Jensen has developed just a remarkable resume in support of rule of law initiatives worldwide and has a great deal, I think, to contribute to our discussion on Afghanistan, both retrospectively and perhaps also looking forward. To Professor Jensen's left is Ms. Natalie Wiseman, who currently serves at the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, herself a McGill, a product of McGill School of Law in Canada, but also decades of experience both in the field, including with the International Community of the Red Cross and other organizations. And so we'll have kind of a rule of law perspective from Eric and then a humanitarian assistance perspective from Natalie during our discussion today. And if I could, to both of you, just begin with a question sort of setting the conditions for the discussion. How do you assess the current state of play in Afghanistan, as of today, December 8th, first from the rule of law perspective for you, Eric, and then from the humanitarian assistance and affairs perspective for you, Natalie. Eric? Well, there's a rule in the social sciences that you should never make predictions. But I'm a lawyer, so I'm going to make a prediction. The conditions today are, I don't think it can be described in any way, but concerning. It's hard to know what will go on in the future. Most of the judges in Afghanistan actually come out of the Sharia School. So there's a chance that those judges may endure this regime change that we've just experienced. But how Islam is interpreted in the courts is really where the rubber meets the road. And there's a great debate within Islam about how the Quran should be interpreted. So we'll see. It looks like it's going to be interpreted in ways that I would say are un-Islamic and are more a result of customary law than Islamic law. But it's, I think, too early to tell how the courts, how rule of law institutions are going to function. And Natalie, from your perspective? To quote the Director of Operations of the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross only, I think, weeks ago or days ago, he said that Afghanistan is on the precipice of a man-made catastrophe from a humanitarian point of view. After decades of war, two significant periods of drought, COVID-19, of course, and now an economic crisis that we're all reading about in the news, over 22 million people are facing acute levels, crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity. Thousands of health facilities are now unable to procure medicine, supplies, or pay their health staff. 13 million children are either out of school or at risk of dropping out. And in rural areas in particular that have seen that are facing drought, something more than 7 million people whose livelihoods depend on agriculture and livestock are suffering the effects of drought. So the combined effect of decades of conflict and what that has done to the country, plus drought, plus COVID-19, and now an economic crisis, triggered by this change of control is really, if not bringing the country to the precipice of catastrophe, perhaps already there. And picking up on that point then, let me ask, in the context of a discussion on law, international law, what can international law tell us about how to proceed in light of us finding ourselves, or the Afghans finding themselves on that precipice? Absolutely. So it turns out that international law does have quite a bit to say about helping people who are in exactly this kind of situation. And there are around 160 humanitarian organizations ranging from local NGOs, international NGOs, the ICRC, and movement components in the UN working hard to meet those needs. And as I said, humanitarian law, international humanitarian law, which applies in armed conflict and human rights law, both have a lot to say about ensuring that those needs are met. Now, given that even with the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, there are still armed conflicts ongoing in Afghanistan, and it's reasonable to see a link between those conflicts and needs and impediments to humanitarian access. It's reasonable to say that IHL continues to apply to that in the country. And so this is where IHL, first of all, explicitly recognizes in any type of conflict that an impartial humanitarian body can offer its services to any party, state, non-state alike, without judging its status to bring assistance or other forms of humanitarian services to people in need, to those who are not fighting. That requires the consent of the state. And there's interesting debate over what happens when you don't get that consent. That doesn't seem to be the case right now, the issue right now. And then the most interesting and useful rule for humanitarians is the one that requires all parties, once there is that state consent. All parties, state and non-state alike, have to proactively allow and facilitate the passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need without impediment. And so this is the key rule that humanitarians need and use as they engage with different parties to conflict to ensure that they gain access. There's also another rule that requires that all parties ensure freedom of movement of humanitarians. That being said, humanitarian law strikes a balance between military necessity and humanity. And this is where it also recognizes that a party may well have concerns relating to military necessity, relating to where the goods are going, what's in your consignment. And so IHL actually foresees quite explicitly that a party may impose technical arrangements, limitations to ensure that military operations don't interfere and vice versa, to ensure that the goods are what we claim they are, that they're going to where we say they should go, but again, not to the point of impeding. So, and Eric, I'll turn this question to you. The description that Natalie provides of an international legal regime that would govern the delivery of aid strikes me as something that would require some institutions within Afghanistan to provide sanction for failure to abide by those important provisions, or at least some legal infrastructure to apply. And I wonder if you could comment on your assessment the last 20 years or so of effort that's been put into building some of those institutions that the Taliban or whatever government comes together in the coming weeks or months might utilize of a mind to try to apply that international legal regime in a meaningful way for the people of Afghanistan. It's interesting, Tom, because so much of what Natalie talks about, it's very important international humanitarian law, but the extent to which all of this will work on the ground is highly contingent on a political arrangement. And without the consent of the regime, things become really, really difficult. Now, if the regime consents and is supportive, and it seems to its, if you're looking at perhaps 97% of poverty within the next coming months, if that's the case, the Taliban have an existential question that they need to answer politically. And if they answer it, as one would rationally answer it, that yes, we indeed need this humanitarian assistance in an urgent way for a sustained period of time, I'm confident that the legal institutions that are in place and the sort of clearances and the like that are necessary to actually implement the humanitarian assistance, that the legal institutions will fall in line. But without that political arrangement, I have no confidence that there'll be an even application of international humanitarian law. Fair enough. To that point, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the challenges, some of the important lessons learned over a couple of decades worth of rule of law efforts that the United States and our international partners endeavored in Afghanistan. I think one central lesson that we learned is that you need a capable state. And rule of law is highly contingent upon a capable state. And that is a capable bureaucracy, a capable judiciary, capable police, the whole infrastructure. And without that capacity, it's extremely difficult. And we are put in a position, I think, where resources were available. But those resources were going to weak institutions with weak human resource capacity. And as a result, there was seepage and levels of corruption that we wouldn't like to see. So I think state capacity, having a capable state, is central to rule of law. The way we tried to build state capacity, there were a lot of worthwhile endeavors. And I'm not going to say this is all a failure. Certainly won't do that. But we relied too much on short-term training programs. And when you've got a judiciary that is poorly educated in the first place, that has been existing within an institution that doesn't incentivize performance, trying to change their habits within the context of a short-term training program, I think, is an ineffective intervention. And I think we did far too much of that. And that's one reason why I turned my focus to legal education, to make sure that there was a foundation of critical thinking among legal actors so that short-term training programs could become more effective. I also think that I come from a perspective where there are serious technical issues in development and designing programs. But there are also serious politics that surround these programs. So understanding the deep political economy within Afghanistan, the political actors, the ethnic divisions, divisions along all sorts of lines is essential to being able to craft a program that some of these divisive actors might sign on to. And I also think that donors also have a political economy. And there's a pressure to push funding when maybe funding shouldn't be pushed. And so while there are a number of things that I could talk about, but maybe that's enough for now. Well, I'd ask a very similar question to Natalie. Eric's laid out a number of the challenges that we face from a rule of law institution building perspective in Afghanistan. I wonder, are some of those challenges similar or different to the challenges that humanitarians would face in their important work in Afghanistan previously and or going forward? I mean, I think that what you said about legal education very much applies to how we ensure in the long term that IHL is understood and followed. And so there's a constant effort by a number of organizations to disseminate across academic institutions, of course, forces and groups, and even the public to ensure that it is understood so that when it needs to kick in, the people who matter apply it. But the challenges right now are very practical when it comes to humanitarian operations. They relate to outright interference with humanitarian movements and activities. Levy requests sort of taxation or informal taxation, for example, interference with staff recruitment with the involvement of women in humanitarian operations, also movement restrictions. You could well imagine road blockages, attacks that interrupt humanitarian movements. And so military operations in themselves can impede humanitarian activities. And of course, there's also continued violence and threats against humanitarian personnel and assets. That being said, if we look at the numbers, the figures since mid-August, the numbers are going down. These events are still happening, but they are going down. No doubt as a result of the change of the fact that there is much less fighting. There is still fighting, but perhaps less of it. And there's been a shift in control. And so that's where we have to kind of keep our eye on control. It is often, in other situations, when control shifts and new parties begin to control territory, that those challenges increase first because fighting is likely to increase, but also because that's when parties will get nervous about humanitarian assistance reaching areas where they do not have control and they get nervous about where that is going to go and how it's going to solidify even sort of mindsets and fuel the war. So this is where international humanitarian law often needs to kick in to support and underpin engagement with the parties to ensure that that passage can happen. But as I said, right now, the access difficulties from a pragmatic point of view are those that I described, and the figures are actually going down. So in the military domain, and the political military domain and diplomatic as well, we often find ourselves talking about Afghanistan from the standpoint of leverage. What leverage do we have over the Taliban? And right now, I think a lot of the dialogue is about their desire for legitimacy and their desire to sustain their population so that they don't lose it. Are there any other important levers that the humanitarian efforts on the ground would benefit from accessing? How does the humanitarian tend to think about leverage in that context? So we tend to depoliticize our activities knowing that there are, in an armed conflict, multiple sides and that if we are even perceived to be somehow aligned or favoring one side, that will block access by the other side, right? And jeopardize community acceptance of humanitarians who are there to bring help. So we try to depoliticize it. So leverage, say political leverage, is something we try and actually steer away from. But often get caught in because states are the ones also very much involved in the bigger picture and also trying to help us. They often are the ones financially supporting humanitarian operations. So it's a tricky balance. I think that the leverage is, ideally, the law to the extent that parties respond to it. A lot of public advocacy, private dialogue. And then there are, of course, the contrary of leverage. There are some other political impediments. And I don't know if I should get into those now or later. But there are some political impediments to humanitarian activities that we're trying hard to alleviate as well. I could. So this is what brings me to sanctions. And this is a big point of political leverage that states are using and often use in other contexts against the Taliban. But as they intersect with humanitarian operations, they do impede them. And so if you recall, pre-August of this year, humanitarian operations entailed a lot of payments, taxes, fees, permits, airport fees, electrical and utility bills, also direct payments to certain ministries, like the ministries of Ministry for Refugees or Foreign Affairs or Interior running prisons, to carry out necessary humanitarian operations. For humanitarian operations to continue, those payments need to continue. The difficulty now is that those ministries, those utility companies, airport, are all run by members of the Taliban who are on sanctions lists. And those sanctions, both at the US level and at the UN, prohibit payments to persons and groups who are listed. And so this is where humanitarians are stuck, because they've been making these payments for decades to ensure that these humanitarian operations can be carried out and now are realizing that those same payments cannot go to these persons because they're listed. And so this is where humanitarians have been advocating long before this situation, because it's a common situation across other conflicts where there are sanctions in place. But in particular here, since August 15th, humanitarians have been quite vocal and loudly so about the need to carve out exceptions for payments necessary for humanitarian operations, which would entail accepting that those payments may still be made to persons who are listed or entities that are listed under sanctions, but strictly for humanitarian operations and to meet basic human needs. The US has actually already issued certain authorizations for that purpose. It issued them in September, so not too long after the shift in control. And we're trying hard to advocate for the same thing at the UN level, because of course, UN sanctions apply across the planet. And so this is, as we speak, something that's being negotiated at the Security Council and I think would allow a lot of banks that process payments for humanitarians, donors that give money to humanitarians, and of course, humanitarian organizations. A lot of would alleviate a lot of the impediment and a lot of the worry about breaching sanctions. So fingers crossed. Please react. The UN rightly has to do its work in core functions without regard or favor to any political group. But it does strike me that you're right in the middle of a central political issue that needs resolving. So it's interesting the non-political compared to the deeply political issues that you're having to deal with. Yes, and it makes humanitarians nervous to even have to ask political entities for permission effectively authorization to carry out their activities, because they want to depoliticize it. So ideally, we would say when you are applying sanctions, don't even consider applying them where humanitarian transactions are required. But it doesn't happen that way. We need something more explicit and that is something we need to ask for. And to illustrate that tension right now at the Security Council, while a carve out is being envisaged, nothing is sure yet, the flip side of that is very probably going to be a very heavy reporting requirement by the 160 organizations to show how it's going and where those payments are going and show that it's an acceptable balance. These are my words, but that there's an acceptable balance. And the flip side of even being willing to consider a carve out is that it will be very likely, if it passes, for a rather short duration, because states want to see how it's going to go, because they are that nervous about payments going to listed entities. So it really is a tug of war in that sense. And the people caught in the middle, as well as the humanitarians. Eric, if I could turn the leverage, the incentive question to you from the rule of law perspective, where it seems to me that there would be a similar question associated with encouraging or incentivizing a population, a government to engage in institution building and rule of law building. And I would ask you to look at that both retrospectively, as well as prospectively. And again, I know we hate to try to predict the future, but whether there are sufficient kind of shoots of encouragement bursting from the ground that could potentially continue to grow from a rule of law perspective. I'll do the retrospective and then the prospective. The retrospective, I know that there is a great deal of disappointment about how it all ended in Afghanistan. And I've asked myself, and I'm sure that many others who have worked in Afghanistan, Americans over the last 20 years and international actors have asked themselves, was it worth it? And the things that I was involved in in building human resource capacity through legal education for a younger generation that's trying to imagine a different future for its country was really gratifying. We had an opening. We had space. We seized that space. We hope that these young leaders will, at some stage, play a very helpful role in the development of the country. A number of students from American University of Afghanistan are now out of the country. Some are still in. But those out of the country, 90% of those out of the country want to return to the country if the political situation is welcoming. So I think that's some hope retrospectively. We made a lot of mistakes, and maybe we'll talk about some of them later more mistakes. But retrospectively, trying to, you talk about sprouts that we've left and what might grow, the next generation gives me some hope and their performance in international moot courts and superb performance. And especially among women. Women are top notchers in the law faculty at American University of Afghanistan. And when the best oralist prizes, the best brief prizes, there's a lot of human potential in my worry. Even as I say that is, if you shackle half the population that is women in the country, I'm not very confident about its future development. Women have just far too much to offer. And then I look prospectively, again focused on women, not in an international law sense, but the Taliban are looking for international recognition. And I've advocated that that international recognition should be conditioned upon certain treatment of women that begins to meet some international standards of treatment of women. I know that that's difficult. I think that the great Beards and Doha who have negotiated the agreement with the previous administration say all the right things. But I also know that the commanders in the field in Afghanistan have different views on that issue. So I think that's a story yet to be told. But I really hope that the US on leveraging, getting back to your question, Tom, exercises its leverage to the fullest to try to make conditions as good as possible for that population. And of course, that was a great accomplishment over the last 20 years is when we came in in 2002 after the Taliban fell, there was very little education of girls going on. Last year, 40% of girls were enrolled in school. That's not a complete success, but it's really on its way to a success. So I really hope that the Taliban come around on education of women. I think it's critical for the future. And that includes rule of law institutions. There's a general human resource capacity deficit across institutions, including legal institutions. But denying half of the population that participation is just really shooting the regime in the foot, if you will. Fair enough. And you spoke of failures. I mean, why don't we talk about that a little bit now? Where are some of the failures that, or the military, we might not say failures so quickly. Areas where we can learn lessons, some of the things that we got right, some of the things that we got wrong in our effort to build rule of law institutions in Afghanistan. And in particular, I wonder if you could comment on the military's role in that. And your overall assessment of whether we were helpful, somewhat helpful, not helpful at all. Did we contribute to success, or were we equal parts contributing to success and failure as a uniform force on the ground? Yeah, I mean, you know much better than I that there were mixed signals and mixed military priorities over the 20 years. And that included military efforts to do development work. And I'm actually not convinced that the military doesn't have a role in development. I know it's a little bit outside the military's wheelhouse. But the PRTs were doing some interesting work trying to connect with communities. And they had sufficient security in ways that civilian groups did not have in certain parts of the country to carry out those development activities. So I'm not going to sit in judgment yet. I think that it's very healthy for- On behalf of DOD, I thank you for that. I think it's very healthy. We all have to, I think, critically retrospect on what we've done and what worked and what didn't. On the civilian side, I think there's a natural tendency to focus on resource-intensive activities, building courthouses, computerization, training. And I'm reminded of a story of a friend of mine, former ambassador to Afghanistan, who was out for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a courthouse in a relatively rural area. And a missile flew over his head as the ribbon-cutting was going on. I'd suggest that building courthouses everywhere in the country is not a healthy intervention. I call it the field of dreams approach to rule of law, build a courthouse and people will come. And I think we didn't take adequate account of informal institutions, the jerga and the like, and what they do well and what they don't do well. And I think that deserves some critical examination, too. We went in and created a lot of formal institutions that cost a lot of money. And we knew that we weren't going to be there forever. And that's including legal institutions without looking at what jergas, what informal institutions might do well. We know that these jergas tend not to handle issues well where there is power asymmetry, where you've got a powerful person in the community and a weak person in the community economically. And we know that they don't work well on gender issues. So try to carve that out and try to think of another institutional arrangement so that you can mitigate the weaknesses of the informal institutions. But don't create formal institutions to just supplant the informality that is deeply embedded and deeply wired in Afghan society. That strikes me that your comment echoes something that General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, testified to with respect to a lot of the work that the department did in terms of building the Afghan military. And he openly questioned whether we tried to build it too much in our own image rather than looking at what worked in Afghanistan as an organic structure and kind of building out from there. So that's an interesting observation and one that echoes, I think, or will echo for DOD. And I think that cuts across civil and military institutions that we tried to create. We need to do a better job next time. I would suggest, and I know that I'm an academic and I'm accused of creating research projects out of life. But baseline research is really important to figure out in the legal domain, where are people going, what informal institutions exist, where are people going to resolve their disputes, and what's their level of satisfaction with the dispute forum that they access? That's just basic baseline research that I think in many areas we failed to do. And I wonder, Natalie, from the humanitarian perspective, this discussion, this colloquy here, reminds me of an observation that I've heard with respect to sort of the nature of Afghanistan as a country in the sense that you've got the urban, Kabul, Kandahar, some of the other larger urban centers, which are very different culturally, and I would imagine rule of law-wise as well, than the hinterlands, than the rural areas that are much more isolated. I wonder from the humanitarian perspective, is that what you're seeing now, is that the needs are very different in the rural areas than they are in the urban areas, and are the challenges similar or different, depending on where the need is located? Excellent question, and I don't necessarily have a full answer, because I haven't looked into that level of detail. What I can say is that the novelty right now that has not been seen in the past is that acute levels of food insecurity are now being seen in Kabul, whereas it was typically not seen there, but in more rural areas. So it really is more than half of the country's population that are now facing acute levels of hunger in cities and in rural areas. Of course, areas that rely on agriculture and livestock where drought has a significant effect, those areas are significantly affected, but I was looking at a map yesterday of where humanitarian activities are being carried out across the country, and with different shades of blue, you can see where there is more intense activity or less. Now, I'm not familiar enough to know what was rural and what was not, but I can say that there were only maybe three or four white areas which suggested that there was no such activity for whatever reason, the rest was covered. So it really is a level of need that is across the country in terms of food needs, but also medicine, habitat, water and sanitation, education. It really is across the country. Eric, for you, let me just ask, some commentators have argued that state building is just not possible, be it by a military or by a combined effort, military and civilian. I'd ask you to respond to that comment. Yeah, I know that that's a popular debate in Washington these days, that we can't do state building. And at the outset, I want to distinguish between state building and nation building because those two terms are frequently conflated. State building is the creation of new institutions or the reformation of existing institutions to try to make a state work. Nation building is about developing a shared vision of the country, common values, historical memory and the like. That's quite different, and that's hard to do with international interventions. I'm not going to be so pretentious as to say we can create that common vision for any given country. But I think we can, if we do it right, contribute positively to the creation of new institutions or the reform of existing institutions if we do our homework. And I think in many ways, we didn't do our homework and we created a wide scope of state functions that are now reliant on a lot of funding to support public institutions. And I don't know where that money's going to come from in the future. Okay, thanks. I think maybe the last kind of round of questions here. Natalie, let me ask you, we have two somewhat disparate disciplines represented here on the panel, rule of law and humanitarian assistance. But I think they are not unrelated. And what I'd ask is, and you can answer this retrospectively or prospectively. If you had Eric Jensen sitting on the panel with you 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago and were thinking about an Afghanistan humanitarian assistance requirement, what sorts of rule of law efforts or institutions would you be looking for to make sure that the humanitarian assistance might be delivered or deliverable in a meaningful way? And then I'll flip that question around to give you a second to think because I realize I'm just pulling it out of thin air. But I'll flip it around and Eric, I'd offer, thinking about humanitarian assistance and it as a potential ongoing requirement in a place like Afghanistan where there is certainly need. What sorts of rule of law initiatives might we have focused differently on or better on perhaps to ensure that need is made available? Natalie, thoughts on that? And you can also fight the premise of my question that they're- No, I think the premise is absolutely correct. And I think that in parallel to these very practical and urgent activities, a lot needs to be done and is done across all situations of conflict or even pre-conflict or post-conflict to ensure that the system incorporates international humanitarian law, also human rights law of course, but incorporates it. I mean states, all states are party to the four Geneva conventions and many are also party to the protocols. That means that it needs to be incorporated into legislation, into manuals, into education at all levels, even starting quite young. And then of course requires educating even those maybe not in the military but with say security functions, but also judges because what IHL also requires is of course the investigation and prosecution of war crimes. So we've been talking about narrow humanitarian activities but respect for IHL more generally can actually sort of preempt a lot of the need that we are answering. If fewer medical facilities had been harmed, we might not be facing such an extreme situation in or disruption of health care. If I mean I don't want to be accusing but you can imagine that respect for IHL in protecting food sources, livestock, fields, medical facilities, schools, all that if protected in line with IHL prevents a lot of the need that you see otherwise. And that's where I think building it into institutions, into education, into legislation, into training plays an enormous role. It's actually not an easy question to answer but I'll give her a shot. There are basic functions of state, right? Monopolizing violence is sort of at the core of it to have the security and that was the overall greatest challenge to doing good development work in Afghanistan. Raising revenue, some progress is made on that for a period of time. And then delivering public goods, just really stripping down the state to its functions. And on the delivery of public goods, and this is where humanitarian assistance comes into play, we did make some progress and let's not beat ourselves up excessively. Child and maternal mortality was halved during this period and life expectancy was increased by nine years. So there was some progress on health and on education. It's just these things take more time. And I think I mentioned yesterday that the World Bank has done a great empirical study of a few years ago where they concluded that conflict affected areas probably take about 30 years to normalize. That's looking at the history of conflict. And so I think we perhaps more than anything, if we're going to get into this, we've got to be prepared politically for a longer game and American politics isn't optimally set up for that longer game. But we shouldn't be surprised that a longer game is necessary to embed habits and the like. And then looking more specifically at the role of lawyers in development. I mean, all of these public agencies had legal officers. Some of them performed okay, but I think focusing on the nexus between legal officers and bureaucratic function is something that is needed to consciously pursue development objectives, understanding that lawyers are a necessary part of that process. Great point, great point and a plug for the community. Well, we're coming towards the end of our time together. So I'll offer the floor to you, Eric, for any final thoughts that you might have and then pass it to Natalie. Okay. I think what we've all been wondering about was was it worth it? And I think some activities were worth it. I hope that we learn lessons. And in my writing about this, I say lessons we may learn. I don't assume that the lessons are learned, but there were, for example, in 2011 or so, 2012, there was an idea about engaging informal institutions. But the design of it was rather incredible. It was informal institutions could function if they had state oversight. Well, local leaders are not going to like that sort of institutional arrangement. So my takeaway is that development and the military activity and the like really requires an interdisciplinary approach to be able to figure out what matters most and pursue objectives that we can actually achieve with more modest expectations than we ever had. It's been said that we didn't fight a 20-year war, we fought 21-year wars. The turnover and personnel, I can't have that. You've got to have an accretion of knowledge and you've got to have a lot of local knowledge to do, I think, good military work and good development work in countries like Afghanistan. Thank you. Natalie, final thoughts. For decades, humanitarian activities have been carried out in Afghanistan to meet very high needs. And the political shift that we've just seen should not really make a difference, practically speaking, even sort of as politics influence humanitarian activities should not make a difference going forward. As I said, it's very important to remove politics from everything humanitarian. And so there's a lot of talk about this shift and what it means. And I would like to argue that for humanitarian activities really it should not make a difference. I mean, we've seen needs actually rise in particular because of the economic crisis caused by this. But I guess, yeah, the main point is everything needs to be done to remove politics and remove the political leverage being exercised against the Taliban from humanitarian activities. And that's what IHL aims to do. It's also what you derive from human rights law when it comes to meeting basic needs. So I think it's important to look at humanitarian activities through that apolitical prism. Well, thank you. Eric Jensen from Stanford. Natalie Wiseman from the United Nations. Thank you very much for this candid discussion. And thanks to the Naval War College for hosting this discussion.  Thank you, sir. Well, on behalf of the Naval War College and the Stockings Center for International Law, I want to thank our panelists. There aren't many institutions where we can get together a Staffordage Advocate for a Combatant Command, a professor from Stanford, and a member of the United Nations. But I'm thankful that you took us up on the offer to have this very interesting discussion. We see here the discussion on the role of attorneys and on how international law is something that when it's applied, the facts on the ground really matter. And I think that came out today. If you'd like to learn more about what happened in the workshop, please tune in for our other panel featuring Colonel Chris Ford from First Special Forces Command. He has a conversation with Professor Lori Blank from Emory University. In that discussion, they talk about classification of conflict, rules of engagement, detainees, and non-combatant evacuation operations. That's it from the Naval War College. Thanks for watching.


But, looking now at the issue of nationalism, this kind of sense of pride in your country and your heritage as such. Now, there are some schools of thought in Islam, specifically looking at the Wahhabi sect that are very vocal in their beliefs.  You cannot have any kind of pride in your country whatsoever. You're Muslim first and foremost. It doesn't matter. That's your only identity as such. Now, do we agree with that view in the school of the Ahlul-Bayt al-Ahmad as-Salaam in some ways or do we completely oppose that view? No, I mean, that's not correct. You can have pride in your country. It's natural that an individual loves one's country. They've been born in that country or they live in that country and they love that country. They've got safety and security there. And so, love of country and being pride of the country is not something which, as you mentioned, are the schools of belief in. No, we don't believe in that.   So, yes, no, we don't have that attitude.


Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live here in theCUBE in Las Vegas. For AWS re-invent 2021, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're in person this year. It's a hybrid event, online, great action going on. I'm with her role of the vice president of AWS analytics at AWS. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. It's great to be here, John. Thanks for having me again. So you got a really awesome job. You got serverless, you got analytics. You're in the middle of all the action for AWS. What's the big news? What are you guys announcing? What's going on? Yeah, well, it's been an awesome re-invent for us. We've had a number of serverless analytics launches. So Redshift, our petabyte scale data warehouse, EMR for open source analytics. And then we've also had manage streaming for Kafka, go serverless, and then on demand for Kinesis. And then a couple of other big ones. We've got row and cell based security for AWS lake formation. So you can get really fine grain controls over your data lakes. And then asset transactions. So you can actually have inserts, updates, and deletes on data lakes, which is a big step forward. I saw Swami on stage in the keynote. He's actually finishing up now. But even last night I saw him in the hallway we were talking about, it's not just about AI. Of course, he's got the AI title. But AI is the outcome, it's the application of all the data. And in a new architecture, he said on stage just now, like, hey, it's not about the old databases from the 90s. There's multiple data stores now available. And then he's got the unifications, the big trend. And he said something interesting. Governance can be an advantage, not an inhibitor. This is kind of this new horizontally scalable kind of idea that enables the vertical specialization around machine learning to be effective. It's not a new architecture, but it's now becoming more popular and people are realizing it. You can share your thoughts on this whole, not shift, but the acceleration of horizontally scalable and vertically integrated. Yeah, I think the way Swami put it is exactly right. What you want is the right tool for the right job and you want to be able to deliver that to customers you're not compromising on performance or functionality or scale, but then you wanted all of these to be interconnected so they're well integrated. You can stay in your favorite interface and take advantage of other technologies. You can have things like redshift integrated with SageMakers, you get analytics and machine learning. And then in Swami's absolutely right, governance is actually an enabler velocity. Once you've got the right guardrails in place, you can actually set people free because they can innovate. You don't have to be in the way, but you know that your data is protected. It's being used in the way that you expect by the people that you are allowing to use that data. And so it becomes a very powerful way for customers to set data free. And then because things are elastic and serverless, you can really just match capacity with demand. And so as you see spikes in usage, the system can scale out. As those dwindle, they can scale back down. And it just becomes a very efficient way for customers to operate with data at scale. Every year at re-advent, it's always kind of like a pinch me moment. It's like, well, that's really good technology. Oh my God, it's getting easier. As the infrastructure as code becomes more programmable, it's becoming easier, more Lambda, more serverless action. You got new offerings. How are customers benefiting, for instance, from the three new offerings that you guys announced here? What specifically is the value proposition that you guys are putting out there? Yeah, so the big one is that, as we've tried to do with AWS over the years, customers get to focus on the things that really differentiate them and differentiate their businesses. So we take away, say in Redshift serverless, for example, all of the work that's needed to manage clusters, provision them, scale them, optimize them, and that's all been automated and made invisible to customers. So customers just think about data, what they want to do with it, what insights they can derive from it, and they know they're getting the most efficient infrastructure possible to make that a reality for them with high performance and low cost. So better results, more ability to focus on what differentiates their business and lower cost structure over time. Yeah, I had the Accenture guys on, they had brought this whole cloud continuum, which is their word for what Adam was saying, is clouds everywhere. And they're saying it's faster to match what you want to do with the outcomes, the capabilities and outcomes kind of merging together where it's easier to say, this is what we want to do and here's the outcome it supports. That's right. With that, what are some of the key trends on those outcomes that you see with the data analytics that's most popular right now and kind of where is that going? Yeah, I mean, I think what we've seen is that data's just becoming more and more critical on top of mind for customers and the pandemic has also accelerated that. We found that customers are really looking to data and analytics and machine learning to find new opportunities. How can they really expand their business, take advantage of what's happening? And then the other part is how can they find efficiencies? And so really everything that we're trying to do is we're trying to connect it to business outcomes for customers. How can you deepen your relationship with your customers? How can you create new customer experiences and how can you do that more efficiently with more agility and take advantage of the ability to be flexible in what is a very unpredictable world as we've seen? I noticed a lot of purpose-built discussion going on in the keynote with Swami as well.  I mean, tools are great. You see a lot of tools in the data market. Tools are tools.  But there seems to be a new trend where this connect phenomenon was showing me that you got these platform capabilities that people can build on top of it because there's a huge ecosystem of data tools out there that you guys have as partners that want to snap together. So the trend is things are starting to snap together. Less primitive, roll your own, what you can do. But there's now more easier ways. Take me through that, explain the unpack that phenomenon of rolling your own primitives, which has been the way. Now too, here, here's some prefabricated software, go. Yeah. So it's a great observation, John, and you're absolutely right. I mean, I think there's some customers that want to roll their own and they'll start with instances, they'll install software, they'll write their own code, build their own bespoke systems and we provide what customers need to do that. But I think increasingly you're starting to see these higher level abstractions that take away all of that detail and mark as Adam put it and allow customers to compose these. And we think it's important when you do that to be modular, so customers don't have to have these big bang all or nothing approaches, you can pick what's appropriate. But you're never on a dead end, you can always evolve and scale as you need to. And then you want to bring these ideas of unified governance and cohesive interfaces across so that customers find it easy to adopt the next thing. And so you can start off, say, with batch analytics, you can expand into real time, you can bring in machine learning and predictive capabilities, you can add your natural language. And it's a big ecosystem of managed services as well as third parties and partners. And what's interesting, I want to get your thoughts while I got you here, because I think this is such an important trend and historic moment in time. Jerry Chen, who's one of the smartest VCs that we know from Greylock and Coincastles in the cloud, which kind of came out of a cube conversation here in the cube years ago, where we saw the movement of that someone's going to build real value on AWS, not just an app. And you see the rise of the snowflakes, the data bricks and other companies. And he was pointing out that you can get a very narrow wedge and get a position with these platforms, build on top of them and then build value. And I think that's the number one question people ask me. It's like, okay, how do I build value on top of these analytic packages? So if I'm a startup or I'm a big company, I also want to leverage these high level abstractions and build on top of it. How do you talk about that? How do you explain that? Because that's what people kind of want to know. It's like, okay, is it enabling me or do I have to fend for myself later? This kind of comes up a lot. Yeah, it's a great question. And if you saw Goldman's announcement this week, which is about building their cloud on top of AWS, it's a great example of using our capabilities in terms of infrastructure and analytics and machine learning to really allow them to take what's value added about Goldman and their position in the financial markets to build something value add and create a ton of value for Goldman by leveraging the things that we offer. To us, that's an ideal outcome because it's a win-win for us in Goldman, but it's also a win for Goldman and their customers. That's what we call the super cloud. That's the opportunity. So is there a lot of Goldman's opportunities out there? Is that just these unicorns? Are these like, I mean, that's Goldman Sachs. They're huge. Is this open to everybody? Absolutely, I mean, that's been one of the core ideas behind AWS was we wanted to give anybody, any developer access to the same technology that the world's largest corporations had. And that's what you have today, the things that Goldman uses to build that cloud are available to anybody. And you can start for a few pennies and scale up into the petabytes and beyond. When I was talking to Adam Slepsky when I met with him prior to re-invent, I noticed that he was definitely had an affinity towards the data. Obviously, he's Amazonian, but he spent some time at Tableau. So as he's running that company, so you see that kind of mindset of the data advantage. So I have to ask you, because this is something that I've been talking about for a while and I'm waiting for it to emerge, but I'm not sure it's going to happen yet, but what infrastructure is code was for DevOps and then DevSecOps? There's almost like a data ops developing where data as code or programmable data, if I can connect the dots of what Swami is saying, what you're doing is this is like a new horizontal layer of data, a freely available data with some government governance built in. That's right. So it's data is being baked into everything. So data is an ingredient, not a query to some database. It's got to be baked into the apps. That's data as code. That's right. So it's almost a data DevOps kind of vibe. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And you've seen it with things like MLOps and so on. It's all the special case of DevOps, but what you're really trying to do is to get programmatic and systematic about how you deal with data. And it's not just data that you have, it's also publicly available data sets and it's customers sharing with each other. So building this ecosystem of data and we've got things like our open data program where we've got publicly hosted data sets or things like the AWS data exchange where customers can actually monetize data. So it's not just data as code, but now data as a monetizable asset. So it's a really exciting time to be in the data business. Yeah, and I think it's so many tools. So I got to ask you, I got you here since you're an expert. Okay, here's my problem. I have a lot of data. I'm nervous about it. I want to secure it. So if I try to secure it, I'm not making it available. So I want to feed the machine learning. How do I create an architecture where I can make it freely available yet maintain the control and the comfort that this is going to be secure? What products do I buy? Yeah, so, you know, great place to start it as three. You know, it's one of the best places for data lakes for all the reasons that Swami talked about, durability, scale, cost. You can then use Lake Formation to really protect and govern that data so you can decide who's allowed to see it, what they're allowed to see, and you don't have to create multiple copies. So you can define that, you know, this group of partners can see A, B, and C. This group can see D, E, and F and the system enforces that and you have a central point of control where you can monitor what's happening and if you want to change your mind, you can do that instantly and all access can be locked down. You've got a variety of encryption capabilities with things like KMS and so you can really lock down your data but yet keep it open to the parties that you want and give them specifically the access that you want to give them. And then once you've done that, they're free to use that data according to the rules that you defined with the analytics tools that we offer to go drive value, create insight, and do something remarkable. That's lake formation and then you got Athena querying it so you got all kinds of tooling on top of it. That's right. You can have Athena querying your data in S3, lake formation protecting it, and then SageMaker's integrated with Athena so you can pull that data into SageMaker for machine learning, interrogate that data using natural language with things like QuickSightQ like we demoed. So just a ton of power without having to really think too deeply about developing expert skill sets in those tools. So the next question I want to ask you is because that first part of the great description. Thank you very much. Now 5G and the edge is here. Outpost, how is the analytics going on that as edge becomes more pervasive in the architecture? Yeah, it's going to be a key part of this ecosystem and it's really a continuum. So we find customers are collecting data at the edge. They might be making local ML or inference type decisions on edge devices or automobiles for example. But typically that data at some point will come back into the cloud, into S3 it will be used to do heavy duty training and then those models get pushed back out to the edge. And then some of the things that we've done in Athena, for example, with federated query, as long as you have a network path and you can understand what the data format or the database is, you can actually run a query on that data. So you can run real time queries on data wherever it lives, whether it's on an edge device, on an outpost, in a local zone, or in your cloud region and combine all of that together in one place. And I think having that data copies everywhere is a big deal. I got to ask you now that we're here at Reinvent. What's your take? We're back in person. Last year was all virtual, finally. It's not 60,000 people like a couple years ago. Still 27,000 people here. All lining up for the sessions, all having a great time. All good. What's the most important story from your area that people should pay attention to? What's the headline? What's the top news? What should people pay attention to? Yeah, so I think first off, it is awesome to be back in person.  It's been really nice. You know, I think from an analytics perspective, there's just been a ton of innovation. I think the core idea for us is we want to make it easy for customers to use the right tool for the right job to get insight from all of their data as cost-effectively as possible. And I think, you know, I think if customers walk away and think about it as being, it's now easier than ever for me to take advantage of everything that AWS has to offer to make sense of all the data that I'm generating and use it to drive business value. And I think we'll have done our jobs right. What's the coolest thing that you're seeing here? Is it the serverless innovation? Is it the new abstraction layer with data high-level services? In your mind, what's the coolest thing? And it's hard to pick the coolest. It's like a kick in the candy store. I mean, I think the, you know, the continued innovation in terms of performance and functionality in each of our services is a big deal. I think serverless is a game changer for customers. And then I think really the infusion of machine learning throughout all of these systems. So things like Redshift ML, Athena ML, QuickSight Q, just really enabling new experiences for customers in a way that's easier than it ever has been. And I think that's a big deal. And I'm really excited to see what customers do with it. Yeah, and I think the performance thing, to me, the coolest thing that I'm seeing is the Graviton 3 and the Graviton Progression with the custom stacks with all this ease of use is just going to be just a real performance advantage. And the costs are getting lower. So I think the EC2 instances around the compute is phenomenal. No, absolutely. I mean, I think the hardware and silicon innovation is huge. And it's not just performance. It's also the energy efficiency. It's a big deal for the future. We're at an inflection point where this modern applications are being built. And in my history, I'm old, my birthday's today, I'm in my 50s. So I remember back in the 80s, every major inflection point when there was a shift in how things were developed and mainstream client server, PC, internet work, you name it. Every time the apps change, the app owners, app developers all went to the best platform processing. And so I think that idea of system software applications being bundled together is a losing formula. I think you got to have that decoupling large scale. We're seeing that with cloud. And I think now, if I'm an app developer, whether I'm in a large ISV in your ecosystem or in the APN partner or startup, I'm going to go where my software runs the best, period. And where I can create value. I get distribution, I create value and it runs fast. I mean, that's what it wants. That doesn't cost me a lot. I mean, it's pretty simple. So I think the ecosystem's going to be a big action for the next couple of years. Yeah, absolutely right. And I mean, the ecosystem's huge. And I think, and we're also grateful to have all these partners here. It's a huge deal for us. And I think it really matters for customers. What's on your roadmap this year? What do you got going on? Can you share a little bit of trajectory without kind of breaking the rules of the Amazonian confidentiality? What's the focus for the year? What's next? Well, you know, as you know, we're always talking to customers and I think we're going to make things better, faster, cheaper, easier to use. And I think you've seen some of the things that we're doing with integration. Now you'll see more of that. And really the goal is how can customers get value as quickly as possible for as low cost as possible? That's how we went together in the long term. And yeah, we've always saved every time we see each other. Data is at the center of the value proposition. I've been saying that for 10 years. Now it's actually the value proposition powering AI and you're seeing because of it, the rise of super clouds. And then these super clouds are emerging. I think you guys are the underpinnings of these emerging super clouds. And so it's a huge trend. I think the Goldman Sachs things are validation. So again, more data, the better. That's right. Cool things happening. It is just, it's everywhere. And the diversity of use cases is amazing. I mean, I think from the Australia Swimming Team to Formula One to NASDAQ, it's just incredible to see what our customers are doing. Can't wait to see the great route. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for being here. Pleasure to be here as always, John. Great to see you. Thank you. Thanks for sharing. All the data is the key to success. Data is the value proposition. You're seeing the rise of super clouds because of the data advantage. If you can expose it, protect it, govern it, unleash its creativity and opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses, of course. You got to have the scale and the price performance. That's what Amazon is doing. It's theCUBE coverage. You're watching the leader in worldwide tech coverage here in person for AWS re-invent 2021. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.


In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Today we're going to look on before I could start the session. I'm very sorry due to some technical issues. I could not start the class on time. But then praise God that everything is fixed. We can start the class. Yeah. So we are we're on the fourth chapter in code of honor, fourth chapter. It talks about the conduct. Conduct is very important. Conduct is very important. And can you all share about why conduct is important for us? Why do you think conduct is important for every believer? Yes, brother Lubega, please go ahead. I think everything starts from within, not in without. And somewhere I read, they say that the only discipline that exists in the entire world is self-discipline. So when you don't have conduct, I think everything is lost. Thank you. Thank you, brother. Thank you. So as the word of God, as ministers, as Christian leaders, we all need to have this conduct within us so that when we follow a conduct, we will be blameless in our life and we would also be an example to other believers. So this is what qualifies us, you know, to have a good conduct. So as a ministry leader, we may be serving as a pastor or as a teacher, preacher, whichever area we are serving in code of conduct is very important. We need to follow that in our life so that we can be an example. So here we see how we can be an example, how we can understand it. In the book of First Corinthians, can I request one of us to please turn to First Corinthians chapter 11 verse 1 and the other person to take up First Timothy chapter 4 verse 11. Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ. First Timothy 4-12. Let no one despise your youth but be an example to the believers in work, in conduct, in love, in spirit, and in faith, in purity. So we see that Apostle Paul was very clear that as a man of God, our life should be extremely important and thus it can challenge people to follow the life example. I would wonder like how many of us can do this in our life because we need to set our life as example and we need our life to imitate others like, you know, like how Paul is set an example, like he said, imitate me as I imitate others. So it is something very challenging. We actually, you know, how it is something a very daring statement, a bit bold statement that Paul made like so close that he followed Christ, that he could boldly say imitate me as I imitate Christ. So you and I, we need to follow Christ in such a way that even we could be like Apostle Paul to make such a statement. And we also see Apostle Paul challenged young Timothy in the ministry to say, lead the church with an example. So first we need to apply the teaching to ourselves. We as a leader need to apply all the standard to ourselves. So in the way we lead our life, we try to set an example to others. For example, in our speech, how we talk, what kind of things we talk about matters. So in that way, we actually set an example and also a conduct, how we lead our life, how we live and how we manage ourselves with the time, with the money, with our own relationship matters. So even in that way, we would be setting an example in the area of love, how we love and care about people because ministry is all about people and then spirit in matters of, you know, the heart, the motives, our attitudes matters, especially in the ministry. And moreover, we need to have a strong faith. We need to be trustworthy. We need to be art and our defense could be on the Lord so that we can walk and obey the word of God. We also see we need to be in purity. Our life of holiness and godliness matters in our day to day life. So in our everyday life, even the little things matters. It gets noticed, it gets reflected back. So people, when we are leading people in our church congregation or in our ministry, people watch at us. People watch at us how we are behind the pulpit, how we lead our self, how we lead our family, how we conduct our life matters. So people keep watching at us. For example, there's a very beautiful example in our book given where a Christian, where they have noticed in a Christian meeting, a very respected Christian leader was sitting on the platform, but he was using his mobile phone for texting and messaging and answering calls when the meeting was already in progress. So what example would this Christian leader be setting to the congregation? It is very important that we need to lead by example. So we need to be very careful in how we conduct ourselves when the service is going on or even behind the pulpit, how we lead our self because in 2 Corinthians chapter 6, 4 says, our work as God's servants gets validated or not in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post alertly and unsparingly. And we also see our life example speaks the loudest. We see that in the final words of exhortation to the efficient leader, the Apostle Paul finds them to his life example. He says, you know, we need to, we need to conduct ourselves in a good manner. We need to see to that people, how we conduct ourselves matters. Our life speaks much louder than what we preach or teach because we may preach one of the best sermon, but it, you know, people may forget the sermon that we preached, but then people look at our life, how we treated them, how we set ourselves in a long time. So our life matters. And one more thing is we need to work hard. And can I request one of us to turn one Corinthians chapter 15 verse 10, please? 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 10, but by the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them yet not, but the grace of God that was with me. Amen. So God has given us the grace and the gift. We need to handle this grace and give in a very well manner. So when we have received this grace and gift, we need to work hard at the same time. We need to stretch ourselves beyond what is expected. We should not be satisfied or very comfortable in the place where we are, but then we should always be mindful of people who can go do that extra mile when we work. For example, as a Christian leader in a Christian ministry, we need to labor unto God. Paul also says that Apostle Paul made it very clear that we labored more abundantly than the other apostles. This could very well be one of the reasons why God used him so powerfully to expand the borders of the early church. So when we say labored means what more than what is expected, going an extra mile, doing more than 100% work, labour means something who really works hard and does that extra mile. So in the Christian ministry, we should not be lethargic. We should not have any kind of laziness set into us. It is not that we should be a leader setting an example who is laboring, who works without a time limit, who is ready to walk an extra mile when it's needed, who is ready to do that extra step when it's needed beyond our position, beyond the credibility. We need to be ready to do any kind of work. So once as a Christian ministry, take things easy, we should be ready to walk that extra mile. And the second and the next point here we see, walk humbly. Matthew chapter five verse five says, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Therefore humble and in 1 Peter chapter five verse six says, therefore hum yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. We see walking humbly is more important. Humility is the heart attitude. Where we walk in submission to God and it is that heart attitude that does not allow us to think more highly of ourselves or we ought to. We see that in Romans chapter 12 verse where we should humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God that in due time he will lift us up. So that we don't move ahead with our own pride, but then we wait on God with the heart of humility. This is very important especially in the ministry, we need to learn to be humble. Wait, give all the glory to God and wait in God's timing for God to move in and through us, you know, to give us any kind of position or whatever it is, but then we need to wait on God and not in our own strength. So humility is a true strength for a man of God. It is a place where God releases more grace only when we humble ourselves, God also increases the grace within us. And the next point we see here is pursue peace. Can I request one of us to please turn to 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 23 and 23.  The Lord's born servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all able to teach patient when wronged. With gentleness correcting those who are in opposition if perhaps God may grant them dependence leading to the knowledge of the truth. Yes, so avoid, as a minister of God, as a ministry leader, as a Christian ministry, we need to avoid getting into arguments, contentious strife with people. We need to keep ourselves strife free. Some Christian ministers get so consumed with strife that they are ready to give an argument for an argument. So here, as a leader, we need to be, we need to stay away from strife. We, you know, as much as possible, we should not be quarrelsome. We need to be peaceable. We need to bring peace with each other. Thank you very much community. Yeah, so as much as possible, we need to set ourselves focused on God and see, you know, try to keep ourselves in peace and peace with others and do not stir up any strife with anyone. Even if someone, you know, comes with quarrels and mood with us, but we need to, you know, be in peace and see to it that there is no strife or quarrel among anyone among us. So we need to conduct ourselves for, you know, peacefully and see to it that there is no strife in our ministry or among any individual. Always we need to be teachable. In 1 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 2 says, if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing. Yet, as he ought to know, always be ready to learn. We always should be ready to learn and we need to keep learning. There is no end for our learning. We need to keep our spiritual eyes and ears open all the time to see what God is teaching us in different seasons of our life. Some of our Christian ministers, sometimes we pretend as though we know everything, but then that behavior itself shows that we do not know. So we need to come to a point to say that no matter how big we have grown, the ministry of how many experience we have, no matter how educated we could be, but then we need to come to a point where to be ready to learn from anyone, even if they are young or old, we need to be ready to learn from anyone that teachable attitude is something that has been appreciated as a leader and we need to have that. No matter how anointed we could be, we need to have the patience to sit and listen to another leader's teaching. So that is very important. Next point is, as far as possible, keep your word, do not, do not promise it. As far as possible, keep your word and do not promise it. Sounds between words both. Keep your word even when it costs you. Like our Heavenly Father, we must take our own words seriously. Our word must be something like a bond, a promise that we keep. We realize that at times we just give our word and we see it when sometimes it fails, but then as much as possible, if we have promised someone something or even it can be a simple word that we have given out of trust, we as much as possible, we need to keep that word. Let our word be like yes to and yes, no to and no. Do our best. If you have given our word, let's do our best to keep up that word. If at times, due to some reason, we are not able to keep that word, make sure that we apologize to that person who unable to keep that word.  It is better to say no. As a ministry leader, we should learn sometimes to even say no. Then getting our plate filled and overloaded and we're unable to balance anyone, anything, it will only get us and others into trouble. So even as a ministry leader, we need to say yes in certain season and when we say yes, we need to keep it and certain season when we are unable to take up any assignment on our plate, we should also learn to say no. The next point here is respect other people's time. Be punctual always. I'm very sorry today, we got a little delayed due to technical issues, but then as much as possible, we start on time. But I request everyone, anywhere we go, any church service, we start, any meeting we start, we need to be punctual. We need to people who respect time, we need to respect other people's time as well. So whenever we give a time that we're going to start at this time, we need to exactly start at that time. It can be a church service, it can be a conference, it can be a meeting anywhere you can start it. For example, sometimes we tend, sometimes we say, our service begins at 10.30, but we will give an advertisement that we start at 10.00. So that people will come on time, even if they are late, they won't be late for the service. So in that way, we are actually encouraging people to come in late. No, we should not be doing that. We should give the right time if a service or conference or meeting is starting at 10.30. It is better that we give the right time at 10.30 and we make sure that we start the session at 10.30. And even if people come on time or they may be delayed, even if they are two or three who have come on time, we need to respect them, because they have come on time, we need to start a session on time. Our conference, our meeting on time. We don't have to delay that, because we need to respect other people's time and be punctual always. The next we see here is be blameless before God and man. Second Corinthians chapter 6 verse 3 and 4 says, we give no offense in anything that our ministry may not be blamed, but in all things, we commend ourselves as ministers of God. Second Corinthians chapter 8 verse 21 says, providing honorable films not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men. But the best we can, we must conduct ourselves blamelessly before God and man. We need to see ourselves that there is no barrier in between God and us. If you think there's something hindering us, make sure that we correct ourselves. If we have heard or we have any kind of barrier between a man or between God, we should be the first person who are sorry to us forgiveness and see to it that we are blameless before God and before man.  So we in our daily living, we need to see ourselves that, you know, we are blameless. We don't have any offenses with any man or even with God himself. So that in that way, we can enjoy your life and avoid any kind of, you know, negative things coming up our way. And the next point we see here is enjoy life, but avoid loose talk and foolish jesting. Very important here is to avoid any kind of loose talk. Loose talks can, you know, get us into a lot of trouble. Ephesians chapter four verse 29. Can I request one of us to please read Ephesians chapter four verse 29 and then chapter five verse three and four, please. Let's know unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment so that it will give grace to those who hear chapter five verse three and four. But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. And there must be no filthiness and silly talk or cause jesting which are not fitting but rather giving of thanks. Yes, thank you. Thank you, John. So here it says, no correct word should proceed out of come out, but what is good, what is necessary, what can edify us so that will impart grace to the hearer. And also in the next chapter, we see that, you know, fornication and all kind of uncleanness or consciousness, let it not even be named among you as it's not fitting for the saints. It cannot be good with us nor any kind of filthiness nor foolish talking or cause jesting which are not fitting but rather giving thanks. We need to give thanks to God in all area and not to entertain any of these kind of gestures with us. Do not demand comfort or luxury, very important in our Christian ministry life. What happens here is, can we turn to second Corinthians chapter four verse 8 to 10? Can I request one of us to read, please? Second Corinthians chapter four was 8 to 10, we are heart pressed on every side yet not crushed. We are perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always caring about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life of Jesus also maybe manifested in our body. Thank you. So what we see here is, we as a ministry leader, we need to get ourselves adjusted to many areas. It's not a place of luxury or a comfort that we need to seek when we go out on ministry. We should not be demanding because Apostle Paul never demanded for any such luxury or comfort when he went out to, when he went on to sharing the gospel. So here when we go, it is a common trend these days like mighty man of God or anointed servant of God, they go out demanding a huge offering or they wanted a very spacious air-conditioned car to be picked up and brought and they need a five-star hotel accommodation to stay and they need this superhero kind of treatment but then we need to be very careful. That is not what God is asking us to do. As a minister of God, we need to be simple. We need to choose things. If we have to pay for our own stay, pay for our own transport, what option would we choose?  If they are giving us this comfort, praise God, enjoy it but then we should not place a demand for our visit to their place or to share the gospel. We should not have any kind of demand. As a man of God, let us be simple. Let's enjoy whatever has been provided for us but see to it that we share the word of God without any compromise. We should minister the word to the people and that should be our focus on, not on the other. Because Apostle Paul actually set an example for himself when he shared the word of God. Yes, he went through a lot of hardships but what he was focused on, despite those hardships, he was focused on preaching and sharing the gospel to others and strengthening the believers in the church without any expecting for or without any even demanding for any luxury or special treatment from the churches or from the believers wherever he went. In fact, he actually stayed in the other believers house and he ministered to them and to the others in the place wherever he went. There was no demand as he had said for others. Maybe that was one of the reasons also that Paul encourages us to imitate me as I imitate Christ. So these are some of the basic context that is required in our Christian minister's life that we need to hold on so that we can set an example for ourselves, for our family, for our church, for our congregation and for others without any demand but then just setting a focus on Christ himself. So with this we are completing this chapter and we can move on to the next chapter preaching. I'm just thinking or to just give me a minute please. I'll stop the recording.


Welcome! The following training will show you how to use a 2GIG GC3 panel or 2GIG SP1 keypad to acknowledge trouble alerts in smart areas. Trouble conditions may arise in one or multiple smart areas, monitored by a 2GIG GC3 security system. When a trouble condition exists, the Smart Areas button will turn yellow, and the panel or SP1 keypad will periodically beep to let the user know there is a trouble condition. Periodic beeping will continue until the user acknowledges or resolves the trouble conditions. Users can acknowledge trouble conditions that arise in any one of the smart areas, all in one place, using the GC3 panel or any 2GIG SP1 keypads connected to the system. To acknowledge an alert on a GC3 panel or SP1 keypad, first press the Smart Areas button. Enter the user code. The Smart Areas will display on screen. Note, each user will only be able to view the smart areas he or she was given access to. You'll notice a message icon next to any smart area with alerts. Press this message icon. Then review the list of alerts. Scroll down if needed. Once you're done reviewing all the alerts, press acknowledge. Note, the message icon will continue to display until the issue causing the trouble alert is fixed. Acknowledge alerts for any other smart areas if needed. Note, global system-wide alerts, which affect all smart areas, will generate separate alerts in each of the individual smart areas. Global alerts must be acknowledged one by one in each individual smart area. Finally, press return to home screen. The alerts have been acknowledged and the panel will stop periodically beeping. However, the Smart Areas button will remain yellow until the issue causing the trouble alert is fixed. If the issue causing the trouble alert is not fixed, the periodic beeping will eventually reactivate in order to let the user know the trouble condition still exists. The user will then need to re-acknowledge the trouble once again.