 So I want to welcome everyone. We're very happy to be here. I'm Manal Omar. I'm the acting vice president for the Middle East and Africa Center. And I welcome you to the U.S. Institute of Peace. We're very excited to be having this discussion with IOM, the International Organization for Migration. About a year and a half ago, we also partnered with IOM. And I think that the discussion was very rich and very helpful. So we're looking forward to this again. We're hoping initially to have a public event, but because of the weather and because of other limitations, we weren't able to, especially over the holidays. So we're glad that this worked out. We're also filming and going to push out the video to a much wider audience. So I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of that. As most of you know, I think you guys are familiar with the U.S. Institute of Peace. Iraq was our first country office. It was our first presence in the field. We've been there since 2003. And we've always been very proud to say that we've never pulled out of Iraq. At particularly times when people were for very legitimate reasons, being forced up to the north or having to go out to neighboring countries, USIP is always making the presence in Baghdad and in other areas. And we found that has always allowed us to really strengthen our relationships with our partners, including the government of Iraq. Today, we have three distinguished speakers who are going to talk about the work from Iraq, particularly from a field perspective, being on the ground. We have Dr. Thomas Weiss, who's going to be our first speaker. He's the chief of mission for IOM in Iraq. Welcome to USIP. Thanks so much, Manav. We're also very lucky to have Dr. Ili Agaron, who's the director of our Middle East programs. He's based in the field in Beirut and he was actually in Iraq in December and travels all across the region. And we also have our senior program officer, Sarhan Hamasid, who's also our lead on all Iraq programs, who is also in Iraq in December. So really the focus that we're looking at is kind of inside Iraq, how is the programming developing and the political situation. The difficulty of Iraq has always been that the changing situation makes us a little bit lagging, us being the international community, often lagging and really being able to identify the trends and the patterns that are happening in Iraq. What we're hoping is through this discussion, we can be a little bit forward leaning and identify the trends rather than having to react to them. So that will be the primary focus of the conversation with a specific look into the security and political conditions, efforts to counter the Islamic State. We're seeing a growing militarization of the society, the difficulty in terms of programming gaps, as well as the challenges that lie ahead. So I'm gonna stop talking and actually turn over to the field and starting with Dr. Weiss, hear a few comments and then we'll move to the other panelists. Dr. Weiss. Thank you very much, Manala. Good afternoon to all of you. Very happy to be here to share this space together with you. I'd like to start, of course, by thanking very officially the US Institute of Peace for the great work that you do. Congratulations to your consistently very important efforts when it comes to preventing and mitigating conflict. I think this is a very laudable work that needs to be made known, that needs to be supported from all possible quarters, and we are certainly an international organization for migration. Very happy to be making use of this forum of the space that you're offering to us. I would also like to cease this opportunity to thank my colleague, our chief omission, Luca Daloglio, chief omission of IUME in Washington for together with USIP having arranged for this meeting and having organized this encounter. My presentation, as Manal said, is going to be out of the cuff. I did not really prepare anything formal. We did not want to formalize this presentation through PowerPoint, et cetera, et cetera, but really share with you a perspective from the field. And I am, as chief omission, only one of approximately 600 colleagues that we as the International Organization for Migration do have in the field in Iraq, operating out of what we call three regional hubs, Baghdad, Erbil, Basra. We have a support office in Amman in Jordan. And our operations, our colleagues are basically covering all the 18 administrative units of the country called governorates. So this is sharing with you a little bit of the very field-based, field-driven type of experience that we, as IUM, working in Iraq since 2003, over the last 12 years, have been able to build up to construct step-by-step. I suggest to articulate my presentation briefly around three particular points, kicking them off with a human interest story, a little experience that we have had recently with some of our beneficiaries. And then to give you some pointers regarding, first, the general situation in Iraq, where we stand from IUM's point of view at the present moment. Then to talk, second, about what I would call free peace, partnership, and programmatic priorities, strictly from an IUM point of view. And then to wind it all up, sharing with you some rays of hope, something that, in spite of everything you can hear and read and listen to regarding of Iraq and the current and prevailing situation, some small indicators that make us as one of the humanitarian players in Iraq believe that there is some modest grounds for optimism. So if you would bear with me with this specific structure, I would like to kick it off with a small story. And the story goes as follows. At the end of November last year, we as IUM distributed approximately 100 non-food item packages to 98 families, living accommodated temporarily in a very small village in northern Iraq, right between Dohuk and the border of Syria. So we arrived there with the colleagues and with the lorry containing the NFIs. And then we were surprised, where is the village? The displaced persons were supposed to be living at. So there were only a couple of houses standing there. And then we learned that these couple of houses were the village that was created, that was established, sometimes between the end of the First World War and the mid-1920s, jointly by a few families of question and of Muslim background. So today this is a village made up of 20 families, approximately 110 persons actually. And these 10 families, 110 persons, were welcoming, were accommodating, 100 new families, victims of the recent displaced crisis originating from the Sinja Mountains. So essentially, family is making up or made up of representatives of the Jazidi community. So we started to talk to the Mokta, the leader of this little village and then his counterpart, the head of the Christian community and expressing our surprise. How come that you managed to accommodate to welcome so many new people? And they simply said to us, look, it's an issue. If we had been the victims of the crisis, other Iraqis would have welcomed us. We share the little resources that we have. They receive each and every day from the municipality in Dohuk, there's a small lorry coming in with bread and with food items, other food items. And then we share, then we share. And I believe it's good to kick off a presentation about Iraq with this extraordinary example of generosity and hospitality, with this extraordinary example of humanity. Because let's face it, when we open the newspaper and we read news about Iraq, we certainly do not associate whosoever and whatsoever in Iraq with characteristics of generosity, hospitality, and humanity. And I'm going to get back to this point in my last of the three points in terms of the race of hope. So the general situation in the country is indeed dire. It's very difficult. We are now faced with the greatest and the biggest displacement crisis in the already very long and very often very tragic history of the country. To share a few numbers, a few numbers, I feel. There's an agreement among representatives of the new government and the international community in other nations that at the present moment, there are more than 5.5 million persons in Iraq directly affected by the ongoing displacement crisis. More than 5.5 million persons. 2.2 million of these represent the victims of the latest succession of displacement crises that started in early 2014, in June 2014, during what we call the Mosul crisis. This Mosul crisis was directly afterwards followed by an Anbar crisis, by a Sinjar crisis, and the succession of crises in the country last year, approximately early November and mid November was then finished by another Anbar crisis and displacement related to smaller, focused areas of crisis, basically. So all together we are now talking about 2.2 fresh victims of displacement due to the ongoing fights in the country. Then we have to add, and nobody knows exactly, another 500,000 to 1.3, 1.4 million victims of previous displacement crisis, the protracted victims, basically. Then we have approximately 230,000 Syrian refugees, victims of the ongoing military operations and the humanitarian crisis in Syria who have opted to cross the border and to become refugees in Iraq. Then we have quite a number of Iraqi returnees, returnees from neighboring countries but also from further abroad, approximately 70,000 persons. And then to all of those direct victims of displacement, you have to add host communities, like the 20 families in the small village between Dohuk and the border of Syria who for reasons related to geography, for reasons related to chance, for reasons related to humanity have been directly affected by the crisis. Directly affected because they are sharing their very scarcely available resources with these internally displaced persons. And this is another group of approximately 1.8 or 2 million persons. So all together we are talking about 5.5, perhaps a bit more persons directly affected by the crisis in the country. So this is unprecedented in the long history of the country. I will not go too much into detail when it comes to the range of IUM operations that we are implementing in Iraq. We opened our first office, as I mentioned earlier, 12 years ago and have always been implementing examples in terms of projects or programs covering the whole spectrum of migration management, technical cooperation, counter-traffic capacity building, movement-related operations. We are operating on behalf of the US government, the United States Refugee Resettlement Program in Iraq, which is one of the biggest sending countries for refugees regularly resettled in your country. But we also have a very important part of our operational portfolio, occupied by or busy with interventions in the area of humanitarian assistance, life-saving type of operations. Now the ratio of technical cooperation capacity building and the other regular type of migration management activities as compared to interventions in the humanitarian realm has, of course, been changing with the onset of the fresh series of crisis in early 2014. IUM is now approximately, well, we have at the end of last year, we had an operational portfolio of about 120 billion US dollars. 80% of this in 2014 was dedicated to life-saving humanitarian response activities. But of course we hope that at one point of time this is going to flip over again so as to enable us to focus more on migration management on longer-term type of activities. Regarding figures, and with this I'm going to finish my first point, we have a very interesting mechanism that we call the Displacement Tracking Matrix in Iraq and which is on behalf of the entire humanitarian assistance community, on behalf of the United Nations country team, providing all those humanitarian players with basic data, basic information, which is crucially and critically needed in order to do proper humanitarian planning. We employ at the present moment 600 colleagues in Iran, most of whom are local staff members and most of whom are directly involved in the operation of the Displacement Tracking Matrix through which we have field-based teams, these field-based teams roving around in the 18 governorats to talk directly to victims of Displacement, to talk directly to representatives of host communities like the Mokta or like the Christian mayor we spoke to in this little village close to the hook, in order to get an idea about numbers of people displaced, about patterns of displacement, whether this is a primary, a secondary or a tertiary type of displacement, and what are the particular needs, the needs in terms of food, the needs in terms of non-food items and other types of needs of these freshly displaced populations. This information generated through these interviews, direct interviews on the ground, is then channeled or is then sent by our colleagues to the free regional hubs, the hubs representing the central nervous system of the DTM of the Displacement Tracking Matrix, is then transforming this information every two weeks into a new set of maps, of statistics, of updated lists of needs. And these lists, these statistics are then being used by players representing the whole of the international, humanitarian response community in order to do their proper planning. This DTM is an IOM product that we have elaborated, that we have launched a couple of years ago, and it's now operational in all countries where IOM has a presence that is related to providing assistance to humanitarian and emergency situations, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, et cetera, et cetera. So this in terms of the general situation. My second point is the point related to the free peace, partnership and programmatic priorities. Our Director General, Ambassador William Lacy Swing, US Ambassador, when he started with his first mandate in 2008 as our DG, shared a list of top priorities with member states, stakeholders, and also his own colleagues in the organization. And on top of this list, he had decided to put partnerships because simply based on the understanding that migration and its management is larger than life initially. Migration has so many issues of interaction, is so much cross-cutting with development, with gender, with labor, with environment, with health, that it is simply too big in order to be handled properly by only one single player. So if you want to be efficient in working in migration management, you work hand in hand with partners. And Iraq is a fantastic terrain or territory, or laboratory for working in partnership on migration management issues and especially on issues related to responding to the humanitarian crisis. I have very little time left. And this partnership that we have with UNHCR, with UNICEF, with many other agencies has also been fomented and aligned very strongly by a huge amount of funding that last year, middle of last year, the UN country team received from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through OSHA. And we have to report joint to OSHA and to the Kingdom in terms of the use that we made of these funds. Programmatic priorities, because of the situation and because of the very difficult definition of what is the priority now, because we are now in winterization and then we have summerization, then we have community stabilization, social cohesion, et cetera, et cetera. We work on all of those issues at the same time. When we ask about what your priorities are, we simply say the priority is to save lives and then to make sure that people are given the necessary means, the necessary elements in order to recreate sustainable livelihoods. And we hope to be able, of course, to continue working on these different focus areas. And this leads me to my third point, which is the race of hope. Together with the government of Iraq, we have been very much encouraged by recent political developments. You all know that the formation of the new government in the following election last summer was a very lengthy, a very thorny process. Now it is done. There is lucky enough a participation on the part of representing the different sectarian, the different ethnic groups. And this government has, at the end of last year, organized two very important events that I wanted to share with you as two examples of these race of hope. The government has, for the first time in many years, called for a humanitarian dialogue, humanitarian dialogue with representatives of the international community, representatives of diplomatic missions represented in Baghdad, to talk about what is going on, to talk about the difficult and the dire situation of so many persons in Iraq directly affected by the crisis, and to talk about joint race in order to address these issues. So this was interpreted by many of the participants representing the international community as a very sound and a very hopeful step into the right direction. And this step has then been in parallel and matched with the first interactive session between representatives of the new government and the United Nations country team at the level of heads of agencies. We started the day after this humanitarian dialogue to organize our own bilateral dialogue revolving around four particular issues that were predetermined, two of which have a direct bearing on the humanitarian situation in the country related to social cohesion as well as sustainable responses to the displacement crisis. So we all believe that this expression of interest on the part of the new Iraqi government to actively dialogue with the UN, with representatives of the international community, with donors is a very positive step going into the right direction. And this has then matched with the example of generosity and hospitality that we all have as colleagues working for IOM, as colleagues working for other agencies. I could give you plenty full of additional examples of this generosity and hospitality. And therefore we believe that in spite of the currently very difficult, very dire situation that the country is in, there is some ground for optimism. If we continue to all work continuously together in partnership, if we continue to all work continuously together in engaging the government in making sure that the government is acknowledging responsibility. And if we continue to work together also with the donor community. We have just today, yesterday, since the beginning of the week had a number of discussions with representatives of the United States, donors, PRM, State Department, the USAID of the. If this dialogue also can continue and will be crowned from time to time with fresh funding, I believe that there is an opportunity, a possibility to help Iraq overcome the current crisis situation. So thank you very much again to the US Institute of Peace for this opportunity to dialogue with you and of course, very much interested in hearing your comments and questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Weiss. And thank you also for ending on a note of optimism. I think it's very difficult when we're looking at the situation in Iraq to heal back a lot of the political elements and be able to see. And I think most people in this room are really sympathized with the idea of our priorities are moving in parallel. It's very hard to put one above the other, especially because they're so interlinked. We'll move on to Dr. Ili, who is our Middle East Director. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I'll steer a little bit away from the displacement and the technical aspects of displacement and responding to the humanitarian crisis. I throw some ideas to the discussion about radicalization and the increasing militarization of the communities as we're trying to call it. Until very recently, everyone was talking about radicalism and radical groups. I think now, if we look at the region, especially the Levant, we should be more concerned about the fast-growing militarization of the communities, not only the militarization of radical groups, but also of communities that are not labeled as being radical. In the 90s, I was always offended when I heard about the libanization of the Balkans and then offended also when I heard about the Balkanization of the Iraq and then now the normalization of Syria and other dramatic analogies. I think that we're set to live with more dramatic analogies, unfortunately, in the coming years. The existence of radical groups in the region is not new. They've always existed. What is new, nevertheless, is the fact that we've noticed that they are able now to build smaller constituencies from among the local communities around them, and this is the dangerous trend. Controlling territories and some resources by a radical group is not by itself a dangerous or as dangerous as being able to infiltrate people's hearts and minds in some cases. That's true. It's slow and limited until now, but if it's not addressed at these stages, then it becomes beyond control. So, and what worries me also is the fact that we're seeing an increasing hatred speech and discriminatory statements and behaviors coming from non-Muslim communities as a reaction to the radicalization of some Muslim communities. So it is becoming a worrisome trend in the region and I think it has to be addressed somehow. The response so far has been focused on the military and security aspects which I think is short-circuit with all due respect to the proponents of this strategy. I think that train and equip programs, providing weapons and other military responses to the crisis can cover only some aspects but are not wise and are not sufficient, definitely. And what we're seeing as a result of this strategy is that it is leading to a massive distribution of weapons among people in the region. And in many cases, it's being done in a very chaotic way. The emerging non-state actors with a lot of weapons are now being manipulated by local and regional players. So we have Shabbat strained by Shi'as, we have Shabbat strained by Kurdish, by Kurds, sorry, we have Christians strained by different parties, we have Yazidis strained by these and Yazidis strained by others. It's a bit worrisome how this will unfold in the coming phase. We are seeing an increased use of violence in non-political conflict. So we're reading more and more about shooting incidents or violence used in tribal slash civilian or conflicts of tribal or civilian nature. We're seeing an increased number of child children involved in the military groups. And we're seeing as well some extravagant and dangerous political agendas being put forward such as minority leaders, especially minority religious leaders requesting an international military protection for minorities, for example. I think this is by itself a very dangerous trend that some communities might be taking. So today the region is living with around 1,000 groups in Syria, 1,000 military groups in Syria. Iraq, we're seeing an increased number of Shia militias. Before we were struggling between Al-Sadr and Al-Badr. Now we have a lot of new names, a lot of new trends within the Shias themselves. We are seeing Sunni tribes or Sunni tribal groups being trained by Jordanians, by Qataris, by Saudis. We're seeing Lebanese Shia from Hezbollah fighting in Syria. We're seeing Iraqi Shias coming from Iraq to fight in Syria. We're seeing Kurds going all through Turkey to fight in Kobani. All these are new trends to the region. And if they are not new trends, the scope of these trends at this stage has become really dangerous. So the focus from my perspective should not only be limited to the military and security aspect. We need to look into other aspects as well, including education and economic development. These groups might be defeated militarily or they might cease to exist at some point when their patrons decide to stop their funding. But the consequences that the events are leaving, the scars they are leaving at the communal level, are not easy to handle. So we are consistently observing a thrive for revenge in Iraq. And even if we are optimistic and we hope that some regions will be liberated in the coming future, the seeing the IDPs returning to this region is not granted. There are a whole set of challenges, including the possibility of seeing revenge operations being carried out by some actors. There is somehow a change in the set of social values. The violence is more accepted nowadays, especially at the level of youngsters. And we have scores of youngsters who are not able to go to school because of their displacement or status as refugees. Just as a highlight, the offspring of those who started fighting in Iraq in 2003 are today, they are 12 years old. In a few years, this generation will start fighting itself as their fathers did. So I don't think there is a lot of time ahead before we look into more comprehensive solutions to the trends that I described. And again, I sincerely call on looking into aspects related to education and economic development. In addition to the military response, which I'm not denying the value of, but it shouldn't be the exclusive approach to look into the situation. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Ili, and I think some of the points you brought up kind of push us to think. I mean, particularly the idea of the difference between radicalization and also the militarization of entire communities. It really goes beyond just one particular individual, also kind of bringing out the non-state actors and what the role for us to really think about that. Most of our program traditionally is built bilaterally. So what do we do with this emergence of non-state actors? I thought it was important kind of the note that you kept talking about the region. It's very hard to talk about Iraq now in isolation, tying it to the region more and more is becoming really important, not just because the borders are literally being blurred, but the way the conflicts are actually feeding one another. I think a lot of us are aware of the pitfalls of the train and equip alone. And I think that cautionary note is very important. But I think also kind of on the note of optimism is just this realization that we have a lot to do in the prevention mode. It's not just responding to conflict, but we can actually prevent further conflict. And I think the point of the 12-year-olds today, compared to 2003 when we started, is a very strong way to drive that home. So thank you for those trends. Turning to you, Sarah-Hung, our lead on Iraq programming. Thank you, Minna. And I'll be talking about the nuance in a couple of areas that Dr. Weiss and Dr. Lee mentioned. First of all, when we were there in December, I'll add the long dimension, but also tie it to the meetings that we have done in December. It was the last time I was there in June. Actually, I departed a couple of days before the so-called Islamic State takeover of Mosul. At the time we were looking at Iraq, we were looking about prospects for reconciliation and see what we can do on those and two days after the dynamics completely changed. But I think some of the long-term issues will remain the same. Before I get to those, one more long term, just to give you a feel of the change I have seen in just the six months. The calmest elements of the Iraqi society I have seen in my life was the Yazidis and the Christians of Iraq. And actually, today, probably they are the most angry and they have the right to be so. Talking about calm, talking about tolerance will trigger more reaction, emotional reaction from somebody than talking about revenge and violence and killing and all of that. And that's something that Lee also touched upon. It was very striking about how in six months so many things have changed in people. And there were positive things at the macro level and there were things that worry some that will give us the indicators for the future. At the national level, I think there was, the macro level, there was a welcoming of the steps that the minister about to use taking. I think there was, it was that time when we were there that the KRG and Baghdad entered their agreement. So that also injected even more hope that actually the country may be going in a good direction. So that was, and everybody equally, Kurds, Sunni, Shia, minorities all welcomed that direction, the crackdown on the shadow soldiers and many other steps are very, very welcome. The Sunni communities, especially the tribal leaders are also very welcoming of the direction that the government is taking. And here I don't wanna lose the excitement and the points that they are expressing, but also I need to point out that, okay, what is the metric against which they are measuring that excitement? That excitement is measured against their time and the policies of Prime Minister Malik. And that if that is the measure, then we'll have to remember, okay, what was the level of frustration and dissatisfaction that were there? So these steps are positive steps in the right direction, great steps, but maintaining them, maintaining the momentum and going beyond just the news and initiatives to actual practical steps that leads to change in the life of the people will be the critical test that the Iraqi government, that the international community should maintain an eye on. The second thing is I'd like to talk about is, I think it was great after the Islamic State to cover that there was, okay, wait a second, Iraq exists under a lot of problems that could affect the region, could be a global problem. And seeing an international community forum and actually the Iraqi politicians come together, the region welcoming the new government and all of that are great positive steps and getting the attention to Iraq is very important and that's very much welcome. But again, in December, it was an opportunity to see more closely where is the gap between where the need is and where the help is coming. I think the magnitude of the displacement and those people who are affected is so great and beyond what has been offered by the Iraqi government, by the international community and also by very generous Iraqis. Actually, before the international community, it was the Iraqis that Dr. Weiss spoke about that actually saved the day in so many ways for itself until the International Community acted and set up operations and translated the Saudi money into programs and assistance that can reach people. But even then, with that, through the meetings that we had, we were told that still the majority of people are not in camps. Those who are in camps, the kind of tents that they have, the kind of assistance they have is not sufficient, is not helping them to cope with the harsh winter of Kurdistan region. So help there are other issues that may come. Second, the gains against, perhaps in some gains, but also on the positive side against the advances of the Islamic State, those gains have been in the Nineveh Plains of Iraq. They were in Diyala. They were around Baghdad. They were in Anbar. But also it's important to see the limitations of those gains. I think by June, July, everybody was hoping said, okay, this was a shock and a surprise. We will regroup. People will regroup and then we'll counter. But that has not materialized. And statements like this will take a long time. What was floating around? But this time in December, what was that long time? I think people start throwing years around, say, okay, it will take three to five years to liberate Mosul. And these are coming from coalition and non-coalition sources. And if that is the case, then what does that mean? So what three to five years to take, what, to push out the Islamic State? If that is the case, and if we are looking at the areas that have been liberated so far, what do we see? We see a lot of destruction. And to point to what the previous speaker mentioned, that people go back to what? Reconstituting society and social division around what? When people go back to areas that the Zomar had been liberated, probably announced three or almost four months now. And the clearance of the amount of explosive set and booby traps has not been finished. Parts of the villages around Jalola, which has been also liberated for some time, it has not finished. So any liberation will be very, very slow. And when you go back, you have large parts of those houses, infrastructure destroyed. So the economic viability in those areas will be really difficult and it will be slow. And we don't know the gains that were made in the areas that have been so far, it's to be watched over the long term because these are areas that the Islamic State would have been vulnerable anyway. Wouldn't it have been difficult to keep anyways because there were mixed population areas that they did not have a lot of constituency and a lot of support. Whether in the Ninoa plains where most of the minorities were or in the Jalola, where you have a mix of Shia, Sunni, Kurdish populations. In Anbar, there were more gains in the past three months, then reversed, some of it reversed, but still a major challenge. The true test will be in the Sunni areas and where a purely Sunni areas. And this is where I have seen, we have talked to people who were more welcoming of an Iraqi government and even a Shia army and even sometimes for some of them, the level of desperation was even welcoming a Shia militia, which they did not accept even in the past. That is changing. And then the issue of revenge that Elie also mentioned, when you go back to this area, even the minorities that we're talking about revenge because their biggest surprise that they say, we know the Islamic State was bad, we know what they will do, but our biggest surprise, it was when our neighbors, the tribal, they accused the Sunni or tribes of a lot of what happened to them. You say the word tolerance in a room and you would have it easily explode and say, how do you not point it to him, just word in general? Would say, okay, how can I be tolerant with somebody who I raised, who I took to school, who I cared for at the time when he was sick and was that person who looted my house, who took our women and is raping our women. So there are very raw emotions that will take time for healing. And the longterm, I think we have a sense now of even if the liberation, military liberation happens quickly, even if it takes another year, then speaking of fear, force and time change people and this is what is happening in those areas. There's a lot of fear against the Islamic State and there is a lot of force killing people and forcing their way. And time is on their side now. And this is what also Elim mentions that this is where in addition to the generation who only knew violence, this is where it gives them time to indoctrinate. And this cycle of violence of 2006, 2007, even though there were a lot of violence and there were a lot of ideological issues, but the Iraqi army and the US military kept Al-Taeda in Iraq on its feet and on the run. This time, they have the luxury of going into Mosul and actually recruiting some 10,000 estimates, put it at 10,000, some 10,000 in Mosul, some another 10,000 in Salah-e-Din. And for training the new Iraqi army, whether after 2003 or in this recent round, the maximum that you can afford probably is an eight-week training and before you send those people to fight. This is mostly a militaristic fight for the Islamic State. They have a much longer time to train jihadists and they are not quite under pressure in that sense. So giving them another year will create a different problem, a different animal that we don't have. So I will say that to my last point, which is about decentralization in Iraq. I mean, before this recent trend of talking about reconciliation and different actors coming together, Iraq had a decentralization law that there were efforts to decentralize services and powers due to the provincial government. And now with the direction of the violence and the governance is going, that will be probably accelerated, go more even political, more security. But if we project against that, the layer of the militarization that we're talking about is that even if you fight, if you have tribal leaders or militias, they will have a sense of legitimacy that they liberated the land. After 2003, most of those actors could not go to their communities and say that we liberated because the U.S. Army was the coalition. This time around, they will claim more legitimacy. They will have a more say on how resources will be allocated. Those who did not win in the elections or were stepped aside, they will be seeking or retaining a foothold at the local level. So getting ahead of the next provincial election cycle now is the time for that. When we're talking about militarization for that, for the 2003, and of course we want to be happy to make this comparison, but I think that some context is similar. When the Peshmerga were said, they were the militias, that was an offending statement to them because they saw them as their liberators and as their protectors. For the Shia today, the term militia, they may use against certain groups, but they have used the term al-Hashdashabi, which is a socially mobilized force. For them, that is protection. That is what prevented the Islamic State from advancing on the holy land. So their appreciation and their wanting to retain that. The feelings about it is different from what the international community may feel about or what the Sunnis or what the Shia are. That will have political implication. And sorry, just on the economic route, reconciliation and as this division and militarization happen, the barrel of oil at 40 plus dollars is not gonna help. Before we've been hearing about how the Iraqi foreign reserve was wiped out, Iraq did not pass a budget in 2014. Even when they projected the budget at $60 a barrel, the 2015 budget has a deficit of $35 billion. Now that deficit will even grow. So fighting, recreating in military, paying for economic reconstruction will have a lot of tension, not only over land and revenge, but also over economic resources. I'll stop here and I'll come back to what the international community developed in this question. Great, thank you, Sarhan. Again, very useful and I think particularly just reminding us again how Iraq is shifting in the last six months, the viewpoints. But I think it was also helpful to think about the benchmarks or the metrics that people are comparing to compared to the Maliki. But I think really going kind of feeding it back to full circle to Dr. Weiss's presentation on the numbers, the staggering numbers that have only been to increase in terms of displacement and the idea that no matter what, we're really kind of behind when it comes to the magnitude of what's happening on the ground and that need for the coordination that you were speaking about. I think one of the other challenges as Sarhan pointed out is when we're talking about this numbers, we're talking about urban refugees, not the traditional refugees, which most of our programming in the past has always been designed for. So how do you identify, how do you prepare and how do you work with them? All very good points. I think the panelists, with your permission, what I would like to do is open the floor for questions and answers. I think it would probably be good to take three at a time. We only have about 20 minutes. I want to make sure that your questions are fed into the panelists. So we'll do three at a time, a response, and then if we have time, take another three. I have like 10 questions. So if you don't raise your hands, we're going to jump in. Who would like to ask the question or comment? Good. One of the questions that I wanted to talk about there seemed to be a current theme about revenge. In the past, there was a lot of conversations around reconciliation. Is there any appetite, and I know, Sir Hung, you already flagged that the resistance to the kind of tolerance in those conversations, but without using the word reconciliation, is there an acknowledgement or are there conversations happening on the ground that that is going to be one of the primary issues that will have to happen? I think particularly with your question of back to what, I think the only way of really defining that is to understand that line between revenge and reconciliation. I can start with that. I mean, reconciliation has different dimensions, and there is a national level for many actors. It was before the elections, you had Alawi, Maliki, Barzani, and others out of the government were not working with each other, were not speaking with each other. Now they are all part of the government, they have senior positions, so that is inclusive, that's the direction that is going to work. That is, I think, that does not capture the reality because it is not about having people in senior posts, it's about the performance, it's the function of the state and the situation of the people's life. For that, there are efforts that people are focusing on legislation and thinking about, okay, who do we have in the government? There isn't serious effort, and at the national level, there is still, for six or seven months now, there isn't, on one side you can hear that Vice President Alawi is going to be the national reconciliation effort, he's needed, he's going to lead it, and then you will come across senior officials who would say, well, no, not quite, not official, not final, that who runs, who takes ownership of this and gonna do it, is not settled yet. You have the Prime Minister who has a senior advisor on this and I think is working on that through some initiatives, you have others, but it has not quite come through a framework that explains what is reconciliation, what do we mean by that, what do we need? That explanation has not happened, let alone, okay, who is who, what about that? What has changed in the past six months is that reconciliation probably six months ago was needed at the national level between the national political actors to get the government going, or between the Sunni-Shia general political direction, but now with the amount of feeling of anger and need of revenge, reconciliation will need to happen village by village, city by city, tribe by tribe, you have in Anbar, the Boonimer tribe on one side and the Wassaf tribe on the other side, you have the victims of the Spiker military camp who were killed, you have the Sunni, you have the Shia tribe saying actually it was Sunni tribes who killed our sons so we seek revenge, that is the level of complication that reconciliation has gotten to, but unfortunately there isn't resources, the situation is so overwhelming, it is not taking traction to pay attention to those. I believe it is fairly early to talk about reconciliation. Let's look at who are those who are displaced. 90% of all the displaced are made up by four communities. Sunni Arabs, half of all the displaced are Sunni Arabs, Jazeides, Christians, and Turkmen Shia. If you were a pessimist, because the focus, the focus of hatred, of violence, of ISIL is very much on Jazeides and Christians, if you were a pessimist you would say, this continues a little bit longer, there won't be anybody to reconcile with, left in the country, which is really very sad if you look at it from a perspective of a historian, the first, some of the first Christian communities in the Middle East were established in what is today Iraq. And then, yeah, talking already by now about legislation or longer term responses that would facilitate the process of reconciliation, is good, but again, I say it's perhaps a little bit premature. So we in IOM have recently started thanks to generous funding from the United States of America government, with an activity that we call psychosocial support, which is a combination of capacity building, which is a combination of capacity building clinical assistance and other types of personalized follow up and care activities, focusing on the most traumatized parts of those who were forcibly displaced. And our main target populations are indeed representatives of the Jazeides and the Christian communities. So before talking about legislation and about longer term perspectives, we look at shorter term and immediate type of interventions that would have kind of the first hand healing type of effect. And it could, let's be optimistic also, then prepare the ground for some longer term reconciliation type of activity. That's a very good point, Dr. Weiss. I think you're right, and it goes back to the idea of on the individual level, you really have to be able to address those needs. Viola? Can you follow up on that? I mean, can you even think about national reconciliation when there's still an open question about whether there may be a nation? I mean, is that his talk of Iraq dividing? Is that subsided completely in the midst of this crisis, or is that still an open question? Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. There is no definition of what is reconciliation, reconciliation towards what. And without that lack of, it's difficult to translate into action. So that's why a legislation alone is not enough. Working on trying to reconstitute life in those areas that will be liberated if people go back will be positive steps. But again, in the lack of a framework of, okay, where are we? Where do we want to go? Which is the exact question. What will this country look like in practical terms? I think the efforts so far is, okay, let's fight this enemy that we have now. And then we will come to those fundamental questions. But this is where I think the Iraqi leadership and the international community will be missing an opportunity because the pain you feel now could distract you from the reason why you got there. And unless you think now, when we focus on the political track that got the country because it was the shape of the government, the powers, the authorities, who rules what, who controls what, if those are not part of the discussion, then you don't know what to discuss and agree on and be consile about. And that is not happening. And the fight is overwhelming. The humanitarian situation is overwhelming. It's taking attention away from that real fundamental question. This is what the international community will do the Iraqis a great favor if it keeps hammering that question and stays with it as they sort out these issues. And I would just add that if you're not having those conversations, even if you do talk about a divided Iraq, which again, there's not so much appetite because of what was described, you still have the problem of potential conflict of neighboring. And so that's where that process is so essential. It's not a simple divide. It really is about finding out how they'll be able to work with one another decentralization. But I think the most important thing is in the last six months, we've seen that that national dialogue process isn't what Iraq needs. It really is the village to village. And the psycho individual to individual to move beyond the trauma and to move beyond the revenge. I'm gonna just turn to the speakers because I wanna leave some time for interaction, maybe one-on-one versus just the panels, just for final wrap up. Any final comments? Yeah, one final comment about reconciliation. I think it's not anymore or the priority is not in the short term to work on these fancy national conferences where leaders convene. It's more to start working on reversing the consequences of what has happened and what is still happening actually over the last few years. And this is where working at individual level is very relevant as was pointed by Dr. Weiss. Working at grass root level as pointed by Sarhan village to village or tribe to tribe or house to house is also important. So it's not the national reconciliation and the conventional form that we know it. But at least this kind of effort will lay the ground for the day when the different constituents of Iraq will decide to re-discuss the political system and their administrative system and agree on something they would like to live under. But under these conditions, there's no way any political discussion can go further. Thank you, I actually have one adjustment. There's one more question and then I'll go to the panelists to answer in final remarks. So I have a question going back to Sarhan, your comment about the local leaders and how they're now in a position where they can claim legitimacy for the raiding the areas that they are living in. And you talked about getting ahead of that control before the provincial elections. We know that a lot of the players at the national level have changed. Some of the faces are the same under the CEO of Kosovo-Korela. Are at the provincial level those leaders who are taking responsibility for liberating those areas the same that we would have seen years ago in the political scene and in the political environment as running for these provincial council elections as being the ones involved in the process of these budget allocations and the actual state running of those areas or are these also new players that are coming in freshly with a different sort of banner and history of taking care of those areas? I think there's a combination and it varies from one area to another. If we are looking at the Sunni areas, you have the known leaders still in government. Usam al-Nujafi, even al-Nujafi, you have others like Saleh al-Muqla. But those do not have access to the ground now. So there are other leaders who did not participate in the elections and because they were either did not believe in the political process or they were eliminated through the debatification or the just as an accountability question not qualifying for election are, these are the people who are holding the guns and if you get into any settlement you will need to bring those into the fold of somehow and that is these people will come to legitimacy telling their people to be resisted. This we gain ground and they go in a certain direction. And on the Shia side, you have new militias or new fighters, new forces who were not there before that have arisen in America today. So by 2010 or 11 probably. So the political process brought most of the armed Shia forces into the government. Even part of the organization started to become a political party from being the armed wing of Iski. But now you have more forces who were not either who were at the time junior players in those forces who did not quite accept the political route and they have formed their own thing or they have just now revived. So Muqtad al-Sadr has created Saraya Salam again because he's among peers who needs cause to survive and that is he sees the next in the next stage. So there's a combination of old and new but those who were on the political moderate route it will be the time. The trend so far is not great but unless serious work is done and the development that could change in not in a good way unfortunately. And the military development is still very much open. The kind of tactics and attacks that is possible. One thing like the Samara or the Hauija could spark a major event that lead to this collapse. So it's really a mixed situation. Dr. Weiss, any final comments or response? Yeah, more of a final comment than a direct response to the last question. There is lots of competition around. Competition for by definition scarcely available funds. In the United Nations, IOM we are part of the de facto United Nations family. We categorize emergencies in three different levels. Levels of gravity that would then entail levels of or mechanisms of response. L1, L2, L3. L3 is the worst case scenario. At the present moment we are working we as the humanitarian community simultaneously on five L3 emergencies. Iraq, Syria, South Sudan, Chad and West Africa affected by Ebola. So when donors ask us which area do you prioritize? As a humanitarian organization, the response is always we prioritize the well-being of affected populations. So we cannot say you should give more money to Iraq than to Ebola affected West Africa. So there's lots of competition around. And in spite of the fact that Iraq is a middle income country as Hange impressively demonstrated the declining price of the barrel is not really helping at all. So at the end of the day, it's this famous issue that we often talk about in Germany of the tree or the forest. Sometimes you don't see the forest because there are too many trees. We have to see and we, I mean the international community that there is a need for longer term sustainable and predictable interventions. Predictable from the financing from a resource mobilization point of view in order to be able to really support and assist Iraq in order to recreate a situation that would be sustainable, that would be representing an improvement for the daily lives of the peoples. So as a humanitarians to wind it all up, we see the process of, let's call it healing. The process of healing in Iraq in three different steps but three different steps that in an ideal world would all be rolled out at the same time. First step or immediate short term saving lives, continue to save lives through the different interventions of all the humanitarian players and first and foremost the United Nations country team. Then midterm you look at social cohesion and livelihoods at the recreation of an environment that would enable people to stay where they are and to recreate their own lives. And then longer term or if you want extended midterm is then as Dr. Ely mentioned, education and development. As humanitarians we cannot fix it all and as my colleague Lado would always say we can especially not fix the situation with the jerry can and the mattresses that we distribute to beneficiaries. So there has to be a holistic and approach that sees the forest rather than the individual trees rolled out by all the players sitting around the table and that's why my second point you recall partnerships is so very, very important. And you in the US, you as the United States Institute of Peace you are part and parcel and element and an important player of this partnership. And therefore I thank you very much for the attention that you have given to us and to Iran through this round table. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you very much Dr. Weiss. It's not very round. It's not very round. Thank you very, very quickly briefly. I think there is a sign of hope for me. It was very inspiring that many people that came to see us from very dangerous areas. So in the Iraqi politics that tried many people's side as a constant that over the years and decades have been a player for stabilization. Since 2003, the international community invested in civil society. I think this is the second factor in Iraq as a factor for stability that they are partner, good partners for us to work with them and they need help. They are in this place yet their families and came to meeting and they were discussing a future for this country. Before everybody was saying Iraq is a rich country and it should use its own resources but with the barrel oil at the $40 plus dollar that statement is difficult to be true. Therefore, the international community needs to help Iraqi civil society rise on its feet again to regroup, rise on its feet and engage with it as a partner. The Iraqi government will not spend on that. The regional actors will not spend on that. This is where the United States, Europe, the UN and others have this responsibility to help. People in this room can contribute to that. Thank you and I want to thank you Dr. Weiss in IOM. Like I said, we did an event about a year and a half ago it was one of our best events. It really helped us. It gives us a lot of insight as did this. So thank you very much for your time and please there's a little bit of time if you want to have some more conversations we invite you to speak with the panelists. So thank you. Thank you.