 My name is Karla Koppel, and I'm the Vice President of the Center for Applied Conflict Transformation with the U.S. Institute of Peace. U.S. Institute of Peace, I hope since most of you are here know, but we are an independent, nonpartisan, congressionally mandated national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, practical, and cost-effective. I have to admit that I'm incredibly excited about the conversation this morning, because, first of all, I know most of the individuals on the dais really well and they're an incredibly smart, capable group of folks. But also because one of the things that we really focus on at USIP is how we bring together different communities to engage in thoughtful dialogue and conversation that doesn't happen elsewhere on a regular basis. And this is the kind of conversation that I'm talking about. I've watched in my career an incredible evolution in how the development, diplomatic, and defense communities work together along with civil society in a variety of settings around the world. And the variation in terms of that collaboration and coordination is extraordinary from the wonderful work that is done in partnership in providing humanitarian relief and where they've been working together over long periods of time. The coordination and collaboration that has been and was enhanced through the unfortunate experience of engagements in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, but has grown those relationships. And then the sometimes odd comments I've heard from unnamed people that NGOs should just get out of the way and allow space for others to do their work. That's a pretty widespread. And so I think what it points out is the wide range of views that exist, if we're being really honest, and the many questions that arise and how all of these essential pieces of the puzzle can come together in making sure that we are advancing US foreign policy and delivering for the people that we're working with in conflict and crisis affected states around the world. USIP has been working on this in a number of ways, and I offer this not as an advertisement, although hopefully it is, but more to give you a sense of the kinds of work that we're engaged in in really trying to build these bridges and enable this coordination. You will have seen there are three case studies outside that are released this morning around the 3D coordination. I'm going to use your copies, Monica, just to please. So folks can see these three, which were really about how the 3Ds came together in the Lake Chad Basin in Burma and in Jordan and what worked and what didn't, and how we can learn lessons of those recent experiences to improve that coordination and collaboration moving forward. That's part of a concerted effort to think this through in an evidence-based and historic perspective. We have a tremendous collaborative effort with the J7 around inter-organizational tabletop exercises. Some of you and some of the folks on the stage participate and lead those really around how the defense development and diplomatic and non-governmental communities can come together to learn and to think about the best next steps within specific areas of the world and around specific challenges most recently related to Somalia and the challenge of transformation, stabilization, and addressing violent extremism. We look forward to continuing those relationships. They are always undertaken in partnership with the combatant command. We've done work with ICRC, represented on the panel this morning, in their efforts that they're spearheading around humanitarian negotiations and how to really professionalize that and ensure improved coordination and collaboration. And we're working with the CT Bureau and others around the issue of foreign fighters and de-radicalization, which was something that actually emerged from an inter-organizational tabletop exercise as a critical component of how we chart a path forward as we defeat ISIS and other violent extremist groups. So there are lots of intersections, lots of programs to draw on, lessons to be learned, challenges to face, and questions to debate. And with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to my colleague Michael Shippler, who is one of the other chairs of the Conflict Prevention Resolution Forum, to lead the conversation this morning on behalf of USIP, Search for Common Ground Alliance for Peace Building. Michael, take it away, Michael. Fantastic. Thank you, Carla. Thank you for setting that up. You've done half my job already. Good morning, everyone. This is a really important and critical conversation, and welcome to the CPRF. We have a really quite distinguished and highly experienced panel of people here. And I'm going to start off just by introducing them. I'm not going to go through their whole bios. I think the bios were available outside, so you can see the vast wealth of experience all over the world that this group of people has. But I will just introduce them briefly. So on our far left, we have here Jim Shear. Jim is a senior political scientist at Rand Corporation, has enormous experience all over the world in this exact area, and has been focusing his studies on civilian military cooperation. We have Alina Romanowski, who is currently the Acting Principal Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the US Department of State, also having served in a host of different roles across the US government. Bob Schmidt is the Acting Director for Civilian Military Cooperation in Dacha at USAID. Stefan Bonami is the Deputy Regional Head of Delegation at the ICRC. And Monica Shepard is the Vice Director for Joint Force Development at the Joint Staff. So welcome, everybody. We're going to do this not as a traditional kind of set of presentations followed by questions, but rather really aiming to do this as almost talk show style. And we want to create some real opportunities for the audience members who probably bring enormous amount of experience yourselves to interact with our panelists, ask some questions, some probing questions as well. And so we're going to start off with just some questions. The panel will come to the audience. I'll ask some more questions. You even may ask questions of one another if you would like. And that's how it will go. And we will go for about an hour and 20 minutes from now. Jim, I'd like to start off with you. You've been studying this question for quite some time, of the importance of civilian military cooperation around all different kinds of areas, different theaters. I wonder if you could talk about why this is important and why this is still such an important topic to be grappling with. Well, Michael, first of all, thank you very much. Thanks to our USIP hosts and to the CPRF coalition for being a sponsor here. It's a great opportunity and it is a continuing issue of great concern. I have seen the dynamics here play out over the years and thinking back to critical moments in our post-Cold War history where civil military relations are absolutely key. I'll always cite the work of a small cohort here in Foggy Bottom. I called them combat ambassadors. One of them was the late Robert Oakley. He was a good, great friend and mentor. And Bob is actually on the shores of Mogadishu as the Marines were coming in in 91. And he actually waved off the warlords and said, don't shoot at the Marines. They're coming here to help. And there was actually a very successful humanitarian relief operation initially there. It morphed into something much more difficult and challenging, Black Hawk down later on. But it was an epiphany moment in civil military relations, I have to say. Broadly, I'd say why it's important. Why is it currently important? Well, we're still living through the era of post-OIF, OEF fatigue with large-scale stability operations. And that is totally understandable. I understand why there's a lot of fatigue about that and given the legacy issues and things we may not have anticipated. I tend to think, by the way, wars can be of choice or necessity, as a lot of you already know. I actually think whenever there's a war, whether it's choice or necessity, the stability ops are an operation of necessity. They're a follow-on piece. It has to be there. There's a lot of crafting has to be done right. But it's tremendously important and challenging. And why is it relevant? Well, I will quote Secretary Bob Gates back in 2011, his speech at West Point. He said, when it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagement, since Vietnam, our record is perfect. We have never gotten it right once. Zero, it's perfect. From Guatemala, Panama, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, we never had any idea a year in advance that we would be there. In 1989, we weren't learning Serbo-Croatian, right? In 2000, we weren't learning Dari and Pashto. So I tend to view stabilization missions as, right now, very low probability events. But if they happen, sudden onset and high impact events, they will have those attributes. So we just can't ignore the reality of stability operations. That said, we have to look hard at the lessons and we can talk more about that in the give and take. So that's just my two cents starting off. All right, excellent. Bob, I would like to come to you. Sorry, I'm not going to go in order of the panel, so I'd like to come to you, Bob. From USAID, within USAID development space, what are the most significant challenges that you face when seeking to collaborate with the U.S. military? Thanks for that, Michael. So I guess I would echo what Carla said right up front. It's a wide spectrum of how people in the agency view the relationship with AID. But I'd also go to what Carla said and talk about evolution. We're still in changing times. So in AID, I still have a lot of colleagues in the building who've either made full careers or have had mentors who did full careers without really engaging the military in the field, and that's changing. But it is new and it is evolving. So if you look in the Office of Civil and Military Cooperation, I think we're about 12 years old now. So we're still learning. So I think that's our biggest challenge is getting a complete understanding of what it is, what the opportunities are, and then how to do it, how to do this civilian military cooperation. How do we better understand what DOD is all about? And again, it's a big agency out there. So how do we inform people? Because I think a critical first step is that understanding of each other's culture, each other's organizations, each other's interests, and each other's objectives when we get into the stabilization sorts of activities. Because it's important that we stay true to what we do. We in AID will stay true to our development core, but that very neatly aligns in stabilization environments or unstable environments, very neatly aligns with the DOD community. Objectives may be a little bit different, but they're not at odds with each other. So then given that what the DOD wants to achieve and can achieve, what we as an agency want to achieve and can achieve, we need to think creatively, understand how we can bring these two things together and really make best use of our resources. In this, just as Jim said, this incredibly important environment that we're working in. Alright, excellent. Thank you. I'd like to come to you then, Monica, from within the Department of Defense as you look at the civilian agencies with whom you're collaborating on the ground. What are some of the challenges that our military faces when engaging with civilian agents? Thank you. I'd like to approach this from a very practical perspective. We need mechanisms to help develop and train our officers and our government civilians to understand that there is no such thing as a single organization called the interagency. Each organization is different, each organization has its own objectives. Likewise, there is no such thing as a single organization called the non-governmental organization, although some would argue that the ICRC is close to being this very large group. So the first thing is education and understanding that civilian agencies have their own missions. As Bob said, they have their own priorities. They have a role and a focus that is extremely important to the stabilization of the mission set and that non-governmental organizations are individual. They have their missions. They have their framework in which they will be able to work within a certain area and what their red lines are, because every single organization has its red lines. And many times it's as important to know what they can't do as what they can do. So my challenge, frankly, is preparing Joint Task Force Commanders and military leaders at all levels to be able to operate in that world to create a framework where they are able to learn those things and understand them and to develop an understanding. That's the first thing. The second thing is finding a way to create the relationships. I think both Jim Shear and Rob Schmidt, both of them have really accurately described that we are at a point in our history evolutionary where this relationship is developing in very important ways but our processes that each of us uses to accomplish our mission, they are different. And the way that we bridge those gaps is through relationships whether it's on the ground or here in Washington or wherever it happens to be. So within the Department of Defense figuring out how to create systems that allow us to develop those relationships that allow them to be sustained over time when our military leadership is changing every two or three years and doing that in a constructive way, those are my two big ones. Understanding and then creating the framework for the relationships is sustainable. Excellent, thank you. Alina, coming to you and drawing on your diverse experience across USG I wonder if you could speak to the specific benefits or the results from an effective civilian military cooperation? The results. I think the results are still out there but I think it really depends in many ways on how a specific effort has achieved or overcome a lot of what I think my colleagues have been saying in terms of the challenges. And I say that and I want to go back to what Carla said in her introduction which is there's been a huge, huge progress in I think helping to change the culture in the way in which the military and the civilian agencies and I say civil and I include the NGO community because I'll tell you as someone who started in the intelligence community and then ended up at AID and back at the State Department bringing the NGOs in on the conversation about how do we stabilize a conflict zone or how do we work together in a conflict zone and how do we accept each other. I mean it's light years now than it was back in the early 80s. I mean we have to acknowledge that there's been a lot of stove piping and a lot of cultural shifts made and that has I think resulted in the fact that when you get on the ground you have a very different way of people interacting in many ways than you do then back here in Washington where we're still living in these stove pipes despite the fact that our political leadership and I'm not being political in this context at all says we got to do this as a whole of government approach. So I think we have a long, we still have a lot of work to do in terms of working on those cultural changes and I think we'll be able to talk a little bit about how you go about doing it. I think Monica started to talk about first of all how do you within your own organization give people the experience of working together across a lines of effort how do you learn to respect each other's mission and understand each other without saying I do it better or I'm bigger or I have more money or I have this or I have that or you know I'm impatient because you can't get this done fast enough all of that you know that may be anecdotal but it really comes to the cultural way in which we interact so that we continue to try to break that down. I think because we have now for the last, my math is probably pretty bad right now but maybe 15, 20 years we've been literally in conflict areas together with our NGO community, the Humanitarian Assistance alongside the military and I'm looking at this also from the CT perspective. We have you know we probably have mixed results but at the end if I have to say to bring my own judgment it's more positive than it was negative it's always, we can always improve it. We are doing more on tabletop exercises, we are doing more on integrating civilian and military aspects of the mission into real exercises that DOD is doing that's critical. We are finding ways especially in the CT community on how we turn this entire effort in longer term into law enforcement which means that you've got to get the military and the law enforcement community to work together and civility inside of the government. We have a long way to go but I would say on balance we're doing a better job than we did 10, 20 years ago and I can add more as we go on this conversation. Thank you, excellent. Stefan coming to you know I wonder if you could speak about from the ICRC's experience how you navigate the fundamental principle of neutrality and the way in which you balance that with collaboration or engagement with military forces on the ground. That's a good question. So I might be the decent voice in the room not only because I speak French but also because obviously the ICRC let's say is in a different framework Well just to say upfront the ICRC was founded actually by militaries Swiss militaries were getting out of a civil war in Switzerland so they know what they were speaking about so the ICRC has really a long tradition to cooperate and coordinate with the military and also part or for mandate to talk and act and be in cooperation with military and armed carriers. Nevertheless, and your question is I think is fundamental to understand the framework in which the ICRC stands when it interacts with armed carriers wherever they are whatever affiliation they have and wherever they are working I think that what we need to understand is the different objective city and armed forces they have an objective which is to bring peace and stability in countries which are affected by war that's not at all the objective of the ICRC we are there to protect dignity and to save lives so we're not there to bring peace and contribute or let's say bring stability to a country and that's very different in the sense that for us it's extremely important then to gain access to the people we tend to protect and the people we tend to try to save and when I mention people we try to protect I'm talking about detainees for instance and civilian population which are under the control of armed groups or armies which sometimes are qualified as terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, FARC used to be the military side of the FARC not the political party anymore but that's a good example so it's something where we need definitely to keep a neutral stance in order to gain acceptance so neutrality is not a tool to isolate ourselves from a space that we share with militaries and armed groups it's a space that actually draws in the sand the red lines in the cooperation we can have with militaries and armed groups and there are many and we can talk about that later I'm sure but there are many places where we do coordinate and you mentioned training for instance with militaries especially the US one Excellent and I would just say you know I think a lot of the international NGOs who are operating in these kind of environments at least strive to maintain their own principles of impartiality my organization Search for Common Ground has sacrosanct the principle of impartiality and yet we're taking USAID funding and funding from other donors who are involved in whole government efforts of stabilization and so I wanted to pick up on this question of red lines because I think you're pointing very clearly to you have a distinct objective from the objective of the militaries with whom you're engaging as do we and most of the other international NGOs and in many contexts I imagine that's true about USAID so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about this red line question and what those red lines might be for the development agency yeah so I think I wanted to come back to this I think red lines are okay we talk about them often with a negative connotation I think we need to be clear minded that red lines are okay we AID will stay true to our development core we will do development activities we'll follow USG farm policy we'll implement as policy dictates but at the base of it we will do what we do and what we do best we won't do things because the military wants us to in the civil space we talk a lot about the Dacia Bureau a lot we don't do civil cooperation for the sake of doing civil cooperation we do civil cooperation to achieve better development outcomes to advance US farm policy interest to carry out the policy guidance that's given to us so we would be very clear minded in that and you know we take it up sort of to the strategic level then what do we do at the policy making level and I take a term from the joint staff where the chairman provides best military guidance we as an agency at AID have to provide our best development guidance and there's a whole sausage making process on how we get to policy we need to be very clear and very vocal as an agency about second and third order effects of any sort of military activities sometimes policy will dictate that they're going to happen regardless of what we say and is that we have our voice heard policy makers are able to make decisions but I would go back to we as an agency strive to achieve our best development outcomes we try to advance US national security policies and that red lines are okay what's important is that we understand what those are and we don't go forward setting bad expectations where well in stability stabilization stability operations something stops something grinds to a halt because we came to a red line it's important and coming upon us to identify those upfront early in the planning process in the interagency if there is such a thing in the interagency process and be very vocal about what those could be I mean would you like to comment on this? Yeah I have to agree that I think red lines are very important and I think they're okay to have and they're important to have because not everybody should be doing the same thing across the board and it's really important when you bring the various different agencies to and entities to focus on a problem is what are those red lines and understand them upfront there is one red line that I think or at least a framework maybe it's better of a framework, call it a framework that I think people often forget when they look at this issue that you're trying to address here and that is and maybe Monica is in a better place to talk about this but I deal with it pretty much every day is the fact that the policy decisions and decisions to engage our military are done in the context of international law and the law armed conflict and the ability for decisions to be made in that context and I'm not a lawyer but the legal framework for doing what we do is really important to remember that that for us especially in the counter-terrorism and the kinetic engagement piece of it is a very important framework that is applied and we spent a lot of time talking about it and thinking about it and it helps to construct how we do other parts and how we bring other agencies to bear on the problem and I think sometimes we overlook that that's a really important construct when decisions are made in policies or framework but I do think that red lines are important I think that oftentimes there is a huge frustration as you were saying that you don't, you know, why can't this agency do more on this part and the other but I think that again is an exercise in a conversation of understanding what that agency's mission and why they do it from the State Department's view I think we tend to try and pull all of this together and we try to better understand all the different red lines in the mission but they are important and but they're okay to have you don't want everybody doing the same thing and crossing into each other's red lines because they don't have the capability that's the most important thing you wouldn't want AID doing what DOD does in a place they don't have the capability but so I think red lines are critical but understanding them are also important Marika and then I'll come to Jim Thank you Anne for bringing up the decision to use military to use the military to accomplish an objective is not made by the military it's made by our political leaders and all of us in the department all of us in federal service swear that we'll preserve and protect preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States so all military actions are under the leadership and at the direction of civilian leadership so thank you for bringing that up I take it so much for granted that having the opportunity to remind myself and to speak about it is important so thank you for that I think red lines are not just okay they are absolutely critical I believe that each organization is most effective at their mission when those red lines are clear when they are articulated and when organizations act consistently with their red lines because it creates among for non-governmental organizations or charities it creates confidence among the donor base that those organizations continue to do their work for USAID it creates constancy in a framework where they can continue to do their work so I'm I'm rabidly supportive of red lines I think what is important within the Department of Defense is it is helpful for us to understand those red lines up front and it is extremely important that when there are red lines they are articulated clearly and sufficiently so that understanding is generated too often the conversation about red lines occurs and people talk past each other so for those of you who are working in the field for DOD when you're dealing with DOD personnel it's sometimes helpful for you to use in articulating your red lines to use some scenarios or use some what ifs or intellectual exercises to describe it so that we don't end up talking past each other DOD wants charities and non-governmental organizations in the field to be successful because quite frankly the mission that those organizations perform is not DOD's mission we want USAID to be fully successful in the field because the mission that they perform is not the military mission nor should it be so red lines are absolutely critically important to the Department of Defense staying true to your objectives and to your donor bases for charities and non-governmental organizations is absolutely critical for the success not only of that organization but also of DOD and being able to communicate clearly and unambiguously so that we're not talking past each other is really very helpful and the big successes have been when we've been able to do that Excellent I absolutely agree that red lines are a key challenge and oftentimes helpful even though sometimes they can be rigidly drawn and then flexibly implemented which is an issue that I ran into a lot on things like non-combatant evacuations when do we go to authorized departure when the rebels are 50 clicks out from the capital city when do we go to order departure when they're five clicks out and when do we fly in to do evacuations of U.S. and third country nationals big challenge rule number one on the red lines understand DOD lawyers really well okay because they will say and picking up Monica's point DOD is not a development agency you cannot build back better to cite a former presidential quote civic assistance does not mean you build up new stuff you can repair stuff but if you get into that then you break the second red line which I often have seen and that is no mission creep please and you can sometimes get in humanitarian deployments where the military is kind of sort of like with the AID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance which is let's leave while we're still liked and before we are asked but there may be folks over here in Foggy Bottom say well but your presence has a certain calming effect it provides ambient security well that's mission creep so that can be an issue too that's why we have something called the mission tasking matrix the mitems which we developed actually Pacific Command developed at first was used in the Haiti earthquake response where we're actually tracking specific requests for military taskings to do stuff and when there wasn't much on the spreadsheet and most of the uniforms were working their smartphones in the tents and not doing anything time to leave right well that was an issue we worked through it we got through it it was fine but there were some tensions there so I would agree broadly red lines are important and fundamentally an agreed division of labor if we're going in in a civ mill presence who's doing what typically on an HA mission it's DOD low distitions they do the wholesale delivery and the civilians and the NGOs do the retail distribution that's a pretty good division of labor you get the stuff to the airports or through the seaports and then it goes into distribution now there have been problems sometimes with that but it's broadly that's a constructive division of labor which you can use across the mission set now Bob let me ask you for the NGOs who are getting funding from USAID in stability environments how do they navigate with you their red lines and their principles of impartiality whether they're delivering humanitarian assistance democracy development assistance and what kind of costs do they face if they draw a clear red line around their own impartiality that's a great question that's a tough nut to crack so I guess right again I think the NGO community just like AID has to be true to our core values I think the NGO community does as well and needs to understand as we're writing grants or agreements what those things are and I think the most important piece is the communication up front of what it's going to be that we avoid mission creep but very clear minded in the initial discussions about what can and can't take place what we may and may not be able to do we would always strive to serve as a buffer between the military and our implementing partners it's even in our policy on cooperation with Department of Defense that we would serve as that interlocutor we would help translate we would help one organization understand the other but I think the most important piece and the price that's paid is the scope of what can be done but it has to come up front manage expectations clear minded what's in the realm of the possible and then stick with it excellent did you want to comment? yeah I just want to I don't know if you're moving on to another topic but I did just want to not quite on red lines I think also defining red lines is something that's going to be really important as we bring in new partners and new voices and to solving these some of the stabilization and the return to some normalcy in some countries and I'm referring largely to the work that I think we're all beginning to grapple with on the deradicalization and the reintegration of foreign terrorist fighters and their families this is a community of largely you know border security and law enforcement and all of a sudden we're turning around and realizing oh wait a minute we've forgotten the social services folks we've forgotten the child psychologists the psychiatrists those who are trained and how do you deal with deradicalizing or changing someone's mindset and it's interesting to listen to those people who are that community that is going to become being asked to participate in conversations about how we do things on the ground and I think we're going to have to again it's one thing to come to the table and define your red lines on that as institutions but we're also going to have to find sort of what that community's red lines are and then maybe our red lines begin to shift so while we're all sitting here saying they're really great and red line always sounds very definitive and we can define them clearly in some places where you're trying to build a larger community to solve a problem you may end up shifting your red line a little bit so I leave that as kind of out there I don't know the answer but I know we're going to be looking at it excellent one of the challenges of this conversation and I think of the whole exercise is that we're talking about a really wide range of contexts Burma the three contexts that the reports are issued on Burma is an environment where you have on one hand a reform effort democratization effort going on and a peace process trying to bring an armed conflict to an end while you also have very striking levels of violence in other parts of the country that are not actually being tackled by a peace process but one awfully different context from Afghanistan where you have ongoing hostilities in which US forces are directly engaged you brought up the operations after the earthquake in Haiti that's also a very different kind of context and so the red lines in those environments may also have to be a little bit different and defined I think this is very important though to put forward very clearly that there is space to identify or articulate those red lines and processes that are relationship oriented but also institutionalized it seems for people to actually share those red lines and I would just add as an NGO practitioner it becomes something that you know if you talk to NGOs it becomes something that feels like a very high cost conversation with USAID or with other donor institutions to say well we're going to put this red line around to information sharing we're going to access insight into the dynamics in this community where foreign fighters are reintegrating but we can't actually share that information up how do we you know and that seems like a highly costly potential red line if we're going to be working with the counter-terrorism bureau of the state department for instance yes please I'd like to follow up on this point in addition to the red lines that we have institutionally and organizationally there are also red lines or limitations that have been created by legislation in the various countries so for instance we may know that reintegration and stabilization should occur in a particular area yet there's a legal restriction on NGOs being able to operate with that particular group for any number of reasons so in addition to the institutional and organizational red lines you know the current limitations legislatively on NGOs being able to operate or USAID being able to operate with an organization that may have some elements that have been identified from a terrorism perspective also creates its own limitations you may collectively we may get together and know that reintegration of the individuals requires us to do something and yet the organization that's best qualified to do that the non-governmental organization that's best qualified to do it is not able to engage this is a big issue in our community Elena and I'd love to hear you comment on this as well Stefan I was just going to add to that briefly and in fact we've done a lot of work in the last couple of years through the multi lateral and international organizations to figure out to help countries figure out how to change their own domestic laws to address the terrorism issues in terms of prosecution how do you protect privacy laws we all have different views of that in the international community the EU is a collective the individual countries and others but to Amonix's point part of getting the group together and having these conversations and figure out how do you address a situation that has resulted in countries changing their laws to be able to accommodate what is sometimes perceived as a red line or an inability to do something we have our own authorities even within government agencies that we're even looking at how do we change those so that we can do things that we realize that we should be doing either as an agency or as a whole of government approach because people actually do have the resources or the mission to do it they just don't have the authorities to do it Stefan would you like to comment on this it's more of a general comment and I was happy that you mentioned Alina the international humanitarian law as a framework which is not a framework for international organization or humanitarian organization it's a framework first and foremost for state and parties to conflict which may be non-state actors as well and they are the first one to be concerned by impartiality which is the most let's say prominent red lines that you may find when you try to implement humanitarian action and we must understand as well that organization acts only as a substitute when the states or the parties to the conflict cannot anymore ensure impartiality and that means something when we talk about red lines that means that for an organization like the ICRC when we are called in because parties the conflict cannot ensure which is a legal requirement the principle of impartiality we must do all efforts to create an environment for us which is conducive to have access to all territories, all parties all places of detention and that means in terms of perception that means in terms of red line that means from a pragmatic point of view try not to be caught into decision action that could affect this perception by the Al-Shabaab in Somalia or by Al-Qaeda in Yemen or Baboko Haram in Nigeria and that's the only way for us because we don't use armed escort that's the only way for us according to the modus operandi that we have to access those people so I actually have a question for Stefan the humanitarian space issue is often described as a civ mil conundrum and that sort of close association with the military is sort of encroaches on impartiality what about differences within the civilian NGO community you have humanitarian organizations impartiality is key but human rights advocacy groups do naming and shaming and that's their mission to point to bad behavior that violates humanitarian standards so how do you work that internally within the civilian community there are tribal aspects in the civilian side and on the military side and we're not all tree-huggers or knuckle-draggers but there are differences so if you could describe the civilians that would be helpful thank you well first and foremost there is no the notion of space a humanitarian space there is no such physical space it's a symbol we all share the same space so all actors, NGOs, human rights international organizations armed actors, political authorities we all in the same space de facto we have to interact but nevertheless you have two extreme you have isolationism that you understand it yes on one side and you have on the other side you have proselytism when it comes to principles the framework of human interaction we in the ICRC we are on neither both sides we are not an isolationist organization nor a proselytism proselytist organization that would promote for all organizations the need to respect independence neutrality and humanity somehow humanity I hope we are in the middle we are much more ecumenist you say that, ecumenist in the sense that we accept that other organizations have different principles but when it comes to humanitarian action there is one that must be respected because it's a legal requirement it's not something that has been invented by the ICRC some years ago whatever it's a legal requirement which is in the law and this is impartiality and that concerns all actors that share the space so we have no problem with human rights organization blaming and shaming and we have no problem at all with other organizations being embedded with counter-terrorism actors or with military actions we have chosen a different path which is the path of acceptance which is the path of neutrality to ensure that acceptance what we see it as complementary in the sense that for us sometimes it's good to have human rights organization blaming and shaming on things that we see every day but upon which we have to remain silent because still we need to access the Kurdish places of detention or the Boko Haram territory and we must shut our mouth and sometimes we're very happy that others take the lead and voice out so it's complementary yes please and within the Department of Defense it's important that we recognize everyone's equity in the Department of Defense our objectives are to accomplish the military objectives established by the political leaders and we do that using a whole host of tools including weapons so each of the organizations represented here and in the audience I think it's really important that everybody recognizes that what Stefan the point he's making that we are in the same space that we have very different tools that are at our disposal to accomplish our objectives and that we are able to communicate those very clearly and have the conversation openly it does not mean that we need to diminish I'm sorry you're better with English than I am diminish each other or vilify each other it is important that we understand the various roles and that if within the Department of Defense in order to accomplish our military objective we have to train people to be able to be effective to use weapons and to when necessary kill people but that is part of the mission and that is controlled by the civilian leaders of the government just to illustrate what Monica says we have here in Washington we have two delegates, ICRC delegates who are called FAAS delegates which is in French force army service armed forces services and they do travel around they go to and they go to all those places where you have special operations forces or armed forces which are going to be deployed to the field deployed to Iraq and to other theater of operations and we talk to them so those two delegates they go and talk to them they participate to exercises where they play the role of the ICRC because the military are going to to have to interact with the ICRC in the field be it for detention issues, be it for protection issues when I say protection in respect of the law when they do strike military target so we speak to them we tell them well look you're going to see the ICRC big Red Cross so first we're not a target, second you have a law to respect and third we're not we're only three hungers we're there to support you in making sure that you respect the law but we have you have to respect certain red lines when it comes to interacting with us so you're not asking for military intelligence we're not going to be embedded with you whatsoever so there is a dialogue and it's a very solid and robust dialogue with the US military forces which is somehow and I'm finished with other groups with which we have difficulties to interact obviously my sense is that this is vastly more developed between the ICRC and the US military and other militaries than it is with other sectors of the NGO community some humanitarian organizations are able to really effectively manage those relationships but the peace building community for instance of which this forum represents this is a much more substantial with a lot more gray fuzzy area I want to open it up now to the audience for any questions that you may have if you could just say your name an affiliation not a whole background and my colleague here is going to have a microphone so she is going to go around and really let's take questions as if you are calling into a talk show and not speeches please so we have a friend in the back please and I will ask your permission ahead of time to cut you off if you start into a speech and that is done with the utmost of respect for the vast experience that you surely are bringing good morning ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for your presentation my name is Rosemary Segero I'm president of an organization called Hope for Tomorrow we focus on conflicts and violence I'm based here in Washington DC and I'm from Kenya initially you say it is just a comment I had talked about what we are talking about the former general of AFRICOM I said AFRICOM now that you are in Africa how can you collaborate with civilians civilians on the ground know a lot of things we just need coordination, collaboration and working with them how can we work I never got that answer until we are speaking here now civilians, NGOs are the best people because they know a lot of the ground thank you thank you very much this is a really critical question I see our faces with US military and Fort Bragg and some of this very high level interaction but really where the most substantial level of challenge exists on the ground how do you liaise with connect with that local community based organization a local youth association who may be actually doing some of the most important front line work I guess I will volunteer first I think the answer to your question is both a complicated and simple one on the one hand you have it goes to the personalities of the people on the ground first and foremost which is critical you have to have people who are willing to reach out whether they are in uniform or whatever their uniform is they have to be responsive to the local community and the other way around is that the local community also has to and there there is a little bit of a mixed message sometime about the local community wanting to find the right form to have a conversation with the United States military in uniform versus the State Department versus USAID so that becomes a very tactical issue about how you actually do those interactions I will say a couple of things which I think I said earlier I think the ability to actually get across these communities to bring them together on actual exercises in the community or table top exercises or bring them to a neutral space like USIP or some place in the region where you have these conversations and discussions that break down the stovepipes so that you begin to that I think is important I think the sense that just because the US military has a ton of money and a local NGO doesn't have a lot of money it doesn't mean this is understanding the red lines and what the mission is it doesn't mean that the United States military can all of a sudden turn around and fund a local community so there isn't understanding but how do you get to that that is by bringing and having communities come together without too much rancor over what you're doing and what you're not but simply having a conversation in probably a neutral and safe space so I would encourage those on the ground to do that and to find opportunities and again that goes to the personality of people on the ground. Yes I think what we have to keep in mind when it comes to the interaction of military with the civilian community whatever they organized in a conflict situation I'm not talking in a peaceful situation or in a natural disaster but in a conflict situation is that the military whatever the means have an objective which is to win the war so they can do it either through enforcement or they can do it through winning hearts and minds and that includes humanitarian action in this regard so when they do interact with the civilians and I've seen that myself in Afghanistan I think that there is a framework of action which needs to be respected which is the do no harm principle which is dear to humanitarian organization which means essentially whatever the action you're going to do try to assess the risks not for you but try to assess the risk and consequences for the civilian population and I've seen myself when I was in Afghanistan in 2004-2005 the PRTs the provincial reconstruction team that were going into Taliban held territories and bringing schools and teachers and then they had to get out because they had no military support to make that sustainable and at the end of the day you had either the teacher being killed or the schools being destroyed because that was a symbol for the Taliban of the enemy so I think it's possible and it's good to engage with the community but that's where humanitarian organization and military could not cooperate but could exchange on good practices such as the do no harm principle. Excellent thank you sir. Thank you my name is David Smith I'm with the Forge Center for Peace Building and Humanitarian Education and we train graduate students and professionals in military in simulation work to look at what's going on on the ground and ultimately the question is what happens on the ground so looking at training really between communities, NGO communities and military communities what are the best practices and the best results you've seen in the types of training that can take place we're talking at a policy level but at the end of the day we're looking at infantry men we're looking at junior NGO officers we're looking at people who are in the field what can we do before they train them best before they work in the field? That is part of what we are focusing on over the course of the next year one of the best practices that we've seen is has two parts the first is some sort of blended learning let me explain what I mean by that it is the use of all of the technologies that are available and the assessment of a stream of training so it might start with an e-learning capability then maybe some personal dynamics then exercising those ideas in a framework then assessing it and then doing assistance at the end so it's this five step process that we have seen is highly effective and that has been coupled in several of our by several of our military leaders requiring a specific kind of training before people arrive in theater so if a 2,000 person force is going forward and this is required then 2,000 members would go through that training before they arrive so that has been is a best practice we've seen it in our assessments we've seen it be highly effective I had a conversation with Carla couple earlier today about how we might be able to expand that and how we might be able to take best practices from usip's case studies or frankly from anyone's case studies about best practices and make them available to the entire spectrum of military leaders in advance of a deployment so I agree with you completely your primary assertion the golden nugget was that what matters is what happens on the ground and that's how we prepare in addition what we're trying to do is set the framework with the very senior military leaders so that strategically they understand that's important for them to articulate this requirement for them to establish a minimum entrance standards are when someone goes into their theater of operation and I have 2 members of my staff here Lieutenant Colonel Brett Clark is in the back I will tell you that Brett has had experience in theater working with the various communities that are represented in theater and if anybody has ideas we would love to explore this further I would just add also that the need for civilians particularly in the NGO side to have training on how to engage with and work with militaries both state and non-state military actors is critical and I've had this experience myself I was in Nepal at the beginning of the peace process there were military advisors from the UN it wasn't a full UN keeping operation and at the beginning I literally we have presidents everywhere in the country I couldn't get them to take me seriously because I didn't have a shared frame of reference or understanding of the core principles that were guiding them or how to relate in an effective way and so the importance for those of us on our civilian side to be able to learn how to engage is there please Bob so if I could speak not so much to the NGO community but for the USG folks sort of working in this space some things that we're doing some training specifically that we're doing that I think is showing fruitful so one of our USFAR disaster assistants AFTA has a course called the J-Hawk Joint Humanitarian Operations Course where it's a course for the military to help our DoD colleagues sort of understand how AFTA is going to lead the US and how the military fits into that and this all goes back to the just like we started the biggest challenge is understanding how do we understand each organization so the J-Hawk is a great opportunity we from our office provide to all civil affairs officers all civil affairs soldiers going through the qualification course at Fort Bragg a one day training on USAID how we do things what we do what our objectives are how they can interact with us how we work with our implementing partners it's not about the NGO community but so they get a better understanding of how AID works and how AID works is through our implementing partners and that comes out crystal clear so at least the folks in the civil affairs community are getting that tomorrow after I'm headed out to paycom we're going to do a few iterations of this course for military planners again if you get it right in the plan it might come out right in the executioner at least it would be a good start point when civil affairs team rotate when they're going out to their six month or nine month rotations by and large they'll come through USAID and we'll link them up with our desk officers and they'll understand kind of what USAID's interests are in country before they get on the ground and again you know our if they remember nothing else what we tell them is stop and talk to your USAID mission and again that's going to be it's not the direct training about the NGO community but it's going to help them start to think think about that absolutely and you know Monica at the very beginning you brought up this question of how do people formulate relationships with each other which are meaningful based on mutual respect mutual collaboration that's at the center of this exercise even if it's a soft skill let's come over here sir thank you my name is David Wood I'm a journalist here in Washington the conflicts I've seen in conflict zones conflicts between military and NGOs and USAID is over the issue of security so I wonder if you could address that both from the standpoint of the military which is to what extent do you want to and can you extend security for people NGOs working in the field for example and journalists in my head and from the other side from the NGO and State Department side how much security do you want thanks for the question and it's a really hard one broadly speaking the array of actors in the conflicts on military and civilian don't often have a lot of choices you could stand out like a sore thumb you could drive a white vehicle with a blue helmet and that's how the UN funded it for many years as neutral peacekeepers you could blend in which is to camouflage and I saw that vividly in the Balkans when a certain unit driving down Mount Igman in a white vehicle with blue helmets were suddenly fired upon and they started to smudge their vehicle with mud so it would blend in it would be camouflage well there goes neutrality it was your a partisan actor suddenly a farmer up and that's really those are the really the only three options I think the key issue for working together in a conflict zone is to understand especially on them for the military to understand how the civilians feel they need to accomplish their mission if there are security concerns when do those arrive when does there have to be medivacs or evacuation procedures how are those done how is information shared broadly who's going to be going down to what village or what district tomorrow to do stuff that our local military presence needs to know about so knowledge in advance I think is critical but it's really a hard problem Stefan you mentioned earlier that ICRC does not take armed escorts and could you talk about why that's so critical yes but first let me when we talk about security and security for our organization it's the same and for civilians there are obligations and those obligations are not on the civilians or on the humanitarian organization the obligation to protect are on the shoulders of the armed carriers so it means for us that we there are obligations especially for the Red Cross that we should not be targeted so what and it comes to your questions what to do when we are targeted and we have unfortunately the sad the sad story of this week where we had two staff killed one in Afghanistan one in South Sudan so what happened for the ICRC when we are targeted when we become a target there is the question of armed escorts should we use armed escorts to go and go where we would like to go there are countries where we use armed escorts in Somalia we have armed escorts but it's not because of the threats posed by Al-Shabaab or by other groups it's because of the criminality environment which has imposed on us the need to have armed escorts but we must control them but this is mostly the sole context the sole context where we have armed escorts what is important for us is to keep our independence and to keep our capacity to go where we would like to go according to our own criteria which means that we have delegated to the field to delegate in the field to assess their security environment and they have to on the basis of this security environment they have to come up with strategies how to address those risks and whether and with the knowledge that those risks can be addressed then we go they have to accept as well when we are in the field that there is a certain amount of risks that are incompressible you can die, you can be killed that's part of the job I would say that's unfortunate but that's how it is so now the use of military assets to protect us can be can be can be as well a strategy from the state in place to control our movement so we have to be careful about that we also can infringe our perception of a neutral organization and then we may be not well received in Al-Shabaab territories for instance if we had the Amisom escorting us because of course they are fighting against each other that's the same for Boko Haram territories of that's the same in Syria when we make cross line cross line front line crossing if we are escorted by the Syrian government or the Syrian army or if we are escorted by some armed groups then the other side might see us as well look guys you're working with them so that's bad so that's why the ACRC as a modus operandi is trying to really enforce the question of acceptance by armed groups so that we can deal with them about our security guarantees and we can get security guarantees coming so we're not a naive organization going in the dark without knowing the environment the first requirement of any delegate in the field is to know its environment and it comes with the security environment and if there is no confidence good level of confidence that we're not a target we don't go it happens sometimes and that's my last word on this question it happens sometimes nevertheless that in extreme situation we have to count on certain forces to evacuate us this is the last resort the French army for instance evacuated the ACRC in the Central African Republic two years or three years ago because of what was happening there and we had no means we had lost everything so we had to go with a safe structure to be evacuated but it's always the last resort so I want to turn us to the notion of peace building so we've talked a lot here about humanitarian access humanitarian assistance but in fact our subtitle of this panel is how US agencies and non-profits can collaborate to reduce violent conflict and underneath this title we have that kind of central premise that US agencies military civilian agencies and non-profits should collaborate to reduce violent conflict and I want to start with that does that core premise hold up is there actually a joint collaborative opportunity to transform conflict in places like the Lake Chad basin or in Myanmar would you like to start? well as I said at the beginning for the ACRC the objective is not that the mandate we have is not to build up peace and achieve stability nevertheless it doesn't mean that what we do does not contribute to it if we look at what happened in Colombia with the FARC for instance should the ACRC the FARC was able to travel to sustain negotiation political negotiation that has been successful because they were able to go to Cuba a neutral space somehow but they were able to go to Cuba because the ACRC provided the flight, well first the car to go and to bring the FARC leadership from the jungle to the airport and in the airport they were able to fly with an ACRC plane to Cuba and we did that 150 times it was under the radar not seen but that's the kind of contribution that we can do while still delivering our mandate that we can do to the peace peace process when as an ACRC we engage for instance with the US Armed Forces in Iraq about Mosul or about in the Ninawa province and we ask them to respect or to put pressure on their partners to respect the law when they do target military objective so that there is no there is no huge collateral damages it also contributes to put a hold development hold in the sense that it does not damage so much the public services will be then afterwards available for the civilian population and so they will have a certain level of access to water so that's useful as well when we talk about exchange of prisoners as well it builds trust between the parties to a conflict and we contribute as well to that by doing so so that's the kind of contribution we have so these are excellent specific examples of interventions thank you very much for that Alina I'd love to hear your comments on where the opportunities exist for that collaboration and where we should not be pursuing it well I think if you if the question was really how do you go about peace building and is that our mission I would say that the United States is much more interested in pursuing peace and building peace than encouraging violent conflict so if that's the statement you're looking for I mean obviously there are conflicts in the world and we're all engaged in it if you're asking the question about how do all of us from different agencies contribute to it I think Stefan actually started the international NGO community has an important role to play because in many cases whether they are a recipient of US assistance or other international donors they have a role in stabilizing the level I think the real issue though is that that's a policy formulation that's what we at least at the State Department and our interagency colleagues here are spending an awful lot of time on which is how do we bring peace and stability to Iraq to Syria to Afghanistan to all of these places where we have conflict potential even North Korea so there is a diplomatic engagement backed up by a whole series of development options of military options I mean it's sort of as they you say it's all on the table but everybody who in our international partners are part of engaging to help deescalate conflict or build peace in certain regions so I think that's something at least that we're all doing in the international community I think there is a role for everybody especially if you look at conflicts that have been going on a long time in Iraq and Afghanistan maybe we're you know this is a subject for a lot of another discussion which you guys do very well also which is how do you do it in Afghanistan how do you do it here do we have the right policy are we putting the right emphasis but but I mean I think that's what we're trying to do and sometimes you have to lead again others can debate this with military engagement against the armed actors and then at the same time you're trying to bring in our development resources at the same time one of the things that we've been experiencing at search for common ground over the last few years is security forces of all from all over the world approaching us asking for support as recognition of in particular context where kinetic force is going to be limited in its effectiveness there's pursuit of other tools or other kinds of partners to engage and we face consistently a question of where is that an appropriate thing to do where is it not where does that engagement compromise our impartiality and where does it actually complement our objectives of building peace in a particular society if I can just add one more component to I think which we have tried I think as the US government for quite a while which is to to put the to bring bring the as much of the engagement of the host government and others in a country or a region to address the I hate to to root causes drivers whatever you want to turn whatever term you want to use to describe what is bringing on this conflict our engagement is very much to try and see if we can do this in partnership with the host government if there is one or other means so I think that's an important and we're doing trying to do more and more of that which is something we really haven't talked about either the resources that a host government and a local community have to bring those resources together and how do you mobilize those absolutely I think the peace building community as a whole is confronting the question of how we step up to this challenge whether we want to and I think there's you know me to you spoke to the diversity of the NGO space it's a hugely pluralistic universe but I think our community peace builders are grappling with these questions fundamentally in some ways this is the moment we've been building to for 30 years as a field say wow security forces are saying how do we use peace building tools to actually advance our stabilization and security objectives and then we want to run into the question of whether we jump through that whether we actually have the tools yet are we really ready to rise that challenge Monica a couple of thoughts first of all the peace keeping community finds itself faced with the same complexity of actors in its space that the military finds itself in different ways so just as the military has to deal with the complexity of the challenges the peace keeping community has the same level of complexity that it's dealing with now I would suggest to you that the peace keeping community uses the military every single day 24 7 as a framework as part of the peace keeping community's tools with regard to deterrence we often don't think about having a military in any nation as being a way of creating deterrence and sustaining peace but in fact it is you're much less likely to have critical nations state kinds of conflicts or conflicts within countries where you have competent successful objective militaries following their the rule and civilian leadership so first of all we use that all at a time and we don't often talk about it keep in mind for the united states and for many militaries the decision to use a military response is a policy determination that is made by civilian leaders when they determine that that's the best course of action there's no military leader who wants to send troops into into a situation and they won't without the full backing of the civilian authorities who sit over them constitutionally we follow the directions of the civilian leaders and on the ground there's not a single military member who's being deployed who doesn't want to find some way of operating in that space so many times on the ground the conversations are extremely fruitful you know how your point about somebody going into a particular area that's really helpful for a patrol to know for a company commander to know because they know now what's happening I also think that the dynamic that everyone described about going to your question about security peacekeeping is about is a very complex operation that deals with things like security that are not part of the are often not part of the plan for the use of the military and it's very complex there I don't think there's any more courageous person that the person from the NGO non-governmental organization who goes into an active conflict area without a weapon without personal security to perform their mission in an objective way applying as best they can all of their tools that they have available that is tremendous courage by the organization tremendous courage by the individual I don't have to tell you how I feel about our military members who go into harm's way with the specific purpose of bringing all the tools of the US military to bear this personal courage it's just expressing their moral and ethical frameworks hopefully in ways that are true to themselves as individuals and are operating well in an environment so that they can each be successful and that's our goal. Monica before you give up the floor you know you've been involved in the tabletop exercises that Carla mentioned at the outset and I wonder if you could pull out one or two of the takeaways from that exercise till now that might be useful some specific examples the tabletop exercises have been absolutely critical and the candor with which the civilian agencies and the non-governmental agencies have approached that dialogue have been absolutely critical Red Cross has been a partner from the very beginning in those exercises whether we look at a situation and see it the same way or not is irrelevant we're able to have the dialogue so that now as a result of these engagements the Red Cross now engages with our troops before they go forward to honestly evaluate and to give them and to train them and that is part of the dialogue that grew out of this partnership with USIP another area Melanie Greenberg has participated in almost all of our tabletops and Melanie's one of her comments was that you have to think about reintegration from the beginning now that sounds awfully logical but I can tell you that when we went back and said we need to include in each of our operational plans the evaluation of reintegration from the beginning that was an insight that came about as a result of the work that's being done here at USIP and in the international tabletops let me give you one other example Doctors Without Borders one of the most extraordinary capabilities that collectively we as human beings provide I can't tell you that our conversations with Doctors Without Borders have always been without conflict they they see the best and the worst in all of us but it has been hugely helpful I'm just very grateful to USIP for sponsoring the international tabletops and all of the organizations that participate Melanie Greenberg is the president of the Alliance for Peacebuilding representing our community from a NGO perspective so we have just a couple minutes left and I just wanted to offer if any of you have any final parting thoughts or anything that just sort of a sum up summation thought that you might want to want to share in back to you so I if we have any members here of the legislative branch staff members I'd like to make a pitch for continued funding of USIP they have done extraordinary work that has had immediate benefit to the Department of Defense otherwise the Department of Defense cannot be successful and unless USAID and the State Department receive the funds that they need in order to be successful thank you do you have any final thoughts Alina yeah on a very I guess very practical level I would continue to encourage you know USIP and other organizations that bring that provide the space and the opportunity for the different communities that have to address the you know Peacebuilding or the conflict areas together to again create best practices publish those best practices ensure that the best practices are not just created at a working level but get to the highest levels of the decision makers because so much it depends it can shape a strategy or a policy or an approach if those good practices the other point I would say this is going to take a long time I think a lot of stovepipes have been broken a lot of communications across many lines have been have been bridged and created and it's a community that these are communities that are feeling more comfortable talking to each other I think you've made that point and we've made that point on this we need to keep doing it and the conflicts in the ground are going to get much more complicated and they're going to be more costly and they're going to be more civilians that are going to be really the victims of this and it's incumbent on those of us who focus on this and bring resources to the table to get together and make sure we know what we're doing and how we can do it together great Jimmy we'll have our last word thank you just to chime in on Alina's point in terms of the lessons let's confess up front we're all prisoners of our own experiences okay what we really need is a comparative knowledge base so we can be informed but not trapped by our own experiences we can understand broadly how peace building strategies can play out in various geographical parts of the world that's really important for policy makers too that's point one point two on the funding side we need to work out ways to find support for what I would call causally focused funding right now a lot of our funding goes to the symptoms of conflict humanitarian assistance you know we don't use humanitarian assistance to fix tectonic plates when they erupt right we feed people provide food water shelter and medicine stabilization and peace building you have to really focus on the deeper causes and there's just not a lot of funding for that there's a particular set aside for Syria at least local forms of destabilization and there's you know the larger thing in wartime settings SERP and so forth but and arguably that can be a usurping problem but causally causally focused funding is really important and I will leave it at that that is an excellent final point thank you very much and thank you all for attending appreciate it and thanks to our panelists