 Good afternoon and welcome all of you to the United States Institute of Peace. Before we begin our session this afternoon, I'm going to ask everyone to do precisely what I am doing and that is to disable your communication device or at least turn it down so that it doesn't interrupt our proceedings this afternoon. For those of you who are joining us for the very first time, the United States Institute of Peace was established just over 30 years ago by an active Congress to help prevent, mitigate, and resolve conflicts around the world. This afternoon, we will be talking about one of those areas of the world where conflict and civil unrest have ravaged the community episodically for far too long. I am extremely pleased that all of you have been able to join us for this presentation and discussion by Special Envoy Tom Periolo on his role in the Great Lakes region of Africa and also to discuss a little bit about his previous position at the State Department as the Director of the Department's Quadrennial Diplomatic and Development Review. A program initially started by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then continued under Secretary of State John Kerry. A little bit about the area that we're going to be discussing this afternoon. The Great Lakes region of Africa has been for most of the past 25 years one of the most unstable, deadliest, and conflict-prone areas in Africa. In that period, millions have died and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced as rebel groups and various governments have waged sporadic warfare in an area larger than the eastern shoreline of the United States. In an effort to end the conflicts in the area, the United Nations has deployed the organization's largest and most robust peacekeeping mission and spent hundreds of hours in security council meetings discussing the situation in the DRC, Burundi, and Urwanda. Although the violence in that region has subsided somewhat, the current political tensions in the area remain extremely high and potentially explosive. This is especially true in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where President Cabela's second term in office expires on December 19th and where efforts to work out an acceptable transition and election calendar have failed. This is also the case in Burundi where President and Curinthiza has defied the international community by remaining in power for a third term and where political violence has also been recurring and episodic. For most of the past two years, Special Envoy Tom Periolo has led the United States diplomatic and political effort to reverse the region's worst trends and to find solutions to the lingering regional conflicts and internal political struggles in both the DRC and Burundi. As he concludes his tenure as Special Envoy, we are all keenly interested in his observations about the region, but especially what he thinks about the current situation in the DRC and how it will evolve over the coming weeks and months, whether President Cabela will relinquish power and whether the upsurge and tensions in the DRC will lead to violence. We also hope that Special Envoy Periolo will share his views on the political continuing strife in Burundi. As I mentioned earlier, before assuming his current position as Special Envoy, Mr. Periolo was responsible for the development of the State Department's Quadrennial Diplomatic and Development Review, the State Department's main policy and resource guide. I hope he will share some of his views on whether the QDDR is an effective tool for defining and acquiring the resources necessary by the State Department and especially the Africa Bureau in dealing with the many challenges that it has around the continent. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Special Envoy Periolo's background, he is a former member of Congress from Southern Virginia, a Yale Law School graduate and also a former Special Advisor to the Sierra Leone Court Prosecutor. He has worked extensively across West Africa before he went into Congress and before joining the State Department. So it is my great honor and privilege to ask the Special Envoy to make some remarks here this afternoon. Thank you. Putting a stopwatch on here. Not checking Twitter for the moment. Thank you very much Ambassador Carson for the two kind introduction and for your tremendous, tremendous leadership over the years both inside and outside of government service. You have been a great mentor to me both in this and in the QDDR process and the country is much better for having you be in such a prominent role. I want to thank as well the US Institute of Peace for this chance to offer a few thoughts on my tenure as Special Envoy but also for the tremendous high quality and high impact work that USIP does every day and particularly under the great leadership of Nancy Lindberg. I also want to thank many of you in the audience who have contributed from even before I took the job and helping me understand the region better both those who are from the region and those who studied it for a very long time. I've certainly benefited from many of the people in this room. 18 months ago I had the honor of accepting Secretary Kerry's offer to serve in this role and at that time we were already headed into one of the most tumultuous periods for the Great Lakes region in over a decade. Burundi was already on the verge of civil war and the DRC was heading into a high stakes political showdown over prospects for the first peaceful democratic transfer of power in the country's long-suffering history. Against these odds I had a couple of major forces working in my favor. First and foremost President Obama had laid out a clear compelling vision both of atrocity prevention as a core element of national security something that had not been articulated in that way before and in his speech and at us a clear respect for constitutional transfers of power as a key component of our global policy with a particular interest in the Great Lakes region. Second we enjoyed great momentum thanks to the leadership of my predecessor Russ Feingold and his exceptional team that I inherited. I also had an invaluable partner in Assistant Secretary Linda Thomas Greenfield who had already been a huge help to me during the QDDR and truly epitomizes the best of the foreign service and American diplomacy. I have learned a tremendous amount from her personally both about diplomacy about life and about the world. So our priorities were clear from the beginning. First and foremost prevent a return to civil war and mass atrocities in Burundi and get the country back on a path that had been on for 10 years of post-conflict reconciliation and development. And second give the Congolese people their best chance to experience the first democratic transfer of power and the DRC's history. A first transfer that we have seen throughout the continent and around the world to be a turning point from when countries are more focused on the fear of returning to war or repression versus looking forward to great economic growth and prosperity. These and related goals like protecting open political space and security sector reform reflected not only the vision of President Obama but also the strong bipartisan commitment on the Hill in support of democracy human rights and rule of law across the African Great Lakes region and I'll return to the role of the Hill later. So on Burundi not long before my tenure began President Karanziza made the tragic decision to violate several key elements of the Arusha Agreement which plunged the country into a cycle of violence and disintegration. These violations included not just pursuit of a third term of office but reversals of guarantees about human rights, media diversity and other elements that had been essential for the country's shift from civil war to success story on post-conflict reconciliation. This period also witnessed the fateful decision of a number of opposition leaders to attempt a coup. An illegal action that only served to justify in the minds of the incurrencies a regime a systematic campaign of violence, repression and intimidation against all critics and all institutions of accountability. The result since April of 2015 over 325,000 Burundians have fled to neighboring countries as refugees. The economy has cratered and the government is largely bankrupt. My recent trips there include stays at empty hotels, dinners at empty restaurants and trips through streets with even less activity than when I began this job a year and a half ago. The government has isolated itself from the international community and strange relationships with its closest allies. As many as a thousand Burundians have been killed since 2015 and tens of thousands tortured and detained. All credible NGOs have been banned and over a hundred journalists have had to flee the country. Dozens of assassinations against both sides have been conducted or attempted including targeted attempts on nonviolent human rights activists. And we continue to worry that either side may escalate to mass violence or that the government may incite widespread fighting by pushing for a controversial constitutional referendum. Despite this for nearly two years now, the persistent high alert attention of the international community in the region has accomplished some victories in preventing a full scale civil war. Even more importantly, the Burundian population itself, farmers, businessmen, street vendors, weary of returning to their country's worst days of conflict, have consistently resisted cynical efforts to divide them. Such divisions in the past led to mass atrocities and ethnic war, but thus far have largely been avoided at least at that scale. We work and pray for this to remain true and not to erase the gains of 10 years invested in post-conflict reconciliation by governments, NGOs, and faith leaders. These efforts created a resiliency among the people and communities that has held relatively strong despite the onslaught, but cannot remain a bulwark against the worst for much longer. There's also been the partial success and thus very much partial failure of starting and restarting a serious peace process, a key element of our preventative diplomacy. The East African community led negotiations remain the only legitimate way to solve the crisis, and we are disappointed that these have not gained real momentum. The government of Burundi deserves the bulk of blame for blocking and delaying talks, but all of us, including myself, share some responsibility for not finding a more effective path forward. But even with the shortfalls of various rounds, their existence and the diplomatic pushes that forced them into existence at several key points did help create a sense of hope and, more importantly, deterrence against hardliners on both sides from escalating at some of the most tense moments over the last year. Full-time negotiations must begin urgently as demanded by the regional heads of state months ago. We welcome President Enkapa's goal of securing a peace agreement by next summer and hope that the opposition coalition scenario's recent withdrawal from the talks after Enkapa's remarks in Bujumbura will be quickly reversed. While the international community and its partners in Burundi and the region have prevented the worst-case scenarios arguably, it is possible that we have only delayed them. And I want to be clear, despite our intensive efforts, the risk of mass atrocities in civil war in Burundi remains disconcertingly high. It is concerning and disappointing, therefore, to see the Burundian government continue to isolate itself from the international community by rejecting the United Nations offer of an unarmed UN police force, announcing its withdrawal from the ICC, and pushing back against the Committee of Inquiry, the UN's Envoy Jamal Ben Amar, and other efforts. We also see worrisome indicators, such as a recent survey asking civil servants to disclose their ethnicity and reports of markings appearing on the hopes homes of Tutsi individuals. While the Burundian government often touts its diplomatic victories and blocking various efforts to help the country, I often ask them what prize they think they have won for these so-called victories. Has it, in fact, reversed epic poverty, the fraying of ethnic cohesion, and the stability of the country? Attempts by the government to force through constitutional amendments the reverse elements of the Arusha Agreement could permanently undo years of progress and exacerbate instability. International attention and the regionally mediated peace process may have so far prevented in ethnic civil war, but the country is perched on a precipice, and it is vital that all of our diplomatic efforts remain at the highest level. For those in the government of Burundi who claim that this crisis is over and stability has been returned, I urge you not to believe your own spin and hype. And for those in the opposition who believe that the right answer is through armed resistance and uprising to solve this situation, I ask you to think of the body count and toll that solving this through violence would take. It is vital that should our efforts fail, and Burundi does slip back into war, that we are all prepared to respond quickly and comprehensively. Next door in the DRC, we've worked hard to learn and apply lessons both from Congo's own long troubled history and from our own recent experience with Burundi. We've engaged early and meaningfully with all DRC stakeholders, leveraging a range of diplomatic tools well before the crisis was likely to peak in order to provide greater time and flexibility to escalate consequences and provide multiple off ramps for key stakeholders, thus improving the chances for a peaceful and consensual solution. Learning from previous eras, we also worked hard to maintain popular legitimacy and support for U.S. policy, grounding it securely in the Congolese people's own constitution, which remains a source of great pride and comfort for the Congolese people. This includes constitutional guarantees not just on term limits, but of broad political freedoms and access. The Congolese government and people believed in 2001 that this constitution was their best hope at a more stable and prosperous future. We still think it is. One of the striking oddities about the escalating crisis in the DRC is that this one, unlike most foreign policy challenges, is shockingly simple, entirely avoidable, and even at this late stage, almost instantly solvable by a few actions from one individual, President Joseph Kabila. He is the most powerful man in the DRC and he is the driving force behind the nation's historic peace agreement that ended the civil war and its current constitution. He's overseen the growth of impressive levels of political freedom and diversity in the country. But over the past two years, in advancement of the high-risk strategy of Gleesmal, he has overseen a 300% increase in human rights abuses and repressive acts. For months now, since it became clear that the DRC government would fail its responsibility to hold on-time elections, we have been pressing all Congolese stakeholders to engage in an inclusive process to reach consensus on a new electoral time table, recognizing that the greatest threat to the DRC's tenuous stability was reaching the end of President Kabila's second and final constitutional term on December 19th, without a roadmap for elections and a transfer in power. With a great deal of leadership from Pope Francis's Vatican and Angolan President Dos Santos and persistent and substantial pushes and support from the United States and European allies, last week saw the first fully inclusive negotiations begin. For the first time, since this crisis began to percolate, we have facilitation in the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, or CENCO, that is accepted by all sides. We have commitments to participation from all sides and a manageable, limited agenda of topics to finalize. The CENCO-led talks offer the best chance to reach a consensus roadmap for this country to avert mass unrest in the coming weeks and months and to secure the DRC the brighter and more democratic future that its peoples deserve. Perhaps this process has come too late, but that is no argument for why we should not give it its best chance to succeed, even in the very hours ahead. During this tense period, our top priorities are to support the CENCO process and all efforts to produce a consensus path towards alternance and to deter government repression and violence by all sides. To this end, we announced on Monday additional targeted sanctions against two top DRC officials, National Intelligence Agency Chief Kalev Motundo and Interior Minister Everest Boshab, both of whom were sanctioned for undermining democratic institutions and processes. Opposition leaders are also aware that as demonstrated by our sanctions in Burundi, we are prepared to sanction individuals on both sides if actions make that appropriate. This year should have been a historic turning point for the DRC. Instead of having an entirely unnecessary flirtation with disaster, the people of Congo want a chance to choose their next leader and to feel like the old rules of the past no longer apply. Something that was true back when I was living in Sierra Leone as well proved true here, which is that the political elites constantly talk about how the Congolese want national dialogue, because that is their tradition. But I've never heard that from Congolese outside the President's inner circle. The Congolese people see most past dialogues as utter failures at worst, and at best solutions are necessitated by the existence of war or lawlessness. That's not the situation today. There's a Constitution in place because of the progress made from those earlier eras. What the Congolese tell me they want is for their leaders to do their jobs, follow the Constitution, and stop excuses for repeating the errors of the past. The Congolese people have shown great courage and principle in keeping the focus on the Constitution even in the face of increasing repression. Civil society and opposition leaders have remained steadfast in their support of the Constitution rather than give in to bribes or threats. While elections and alternates in 2016 are clearly not possible, the United States shares the belief of the vast majority of Congolese that presidential elections must take place before the end of 2017. The United States has invested billions in the DRC's security and development, but what is truly priceless at times like this is statesmanship. The next few days, weeks, and perhaps months will determine whether the DRC will be defined by the worst of its past or the greatness of its future. President Obama's speech in Ethiopia in 2015 was a landmark defense of why we must prioritize strong institutions over strong men and why this requires respect for democratic transfers of power. This speech was and remains wildly popular among citizens across Africa, most notably among younger Africans who dominate the continent's population. But it's fair to say that the speech and advice was embraced with slightly less zeal by some of the continent's leaders. After 18 months of promoting this policy and receiving feedback on it, I want to offer a few reflections on what has become known as the U.S. term limit strategy. First, the policy was always framed as offering our best advice to our partners across the world and particularly the Great Lakes region because of its tumultuous history. It was never a declaration that we shall use all means necessary to block these efforts, but an honest assessment that we would make every effort to convince countries to adopt and comply with their own term limits provisions. There was no country in which we pursued a term limit strategy that had not already set that strategy within their own constitution. Where the United States threatened consequences and has backed that up, it has primarily been for state violence and repression to deny citizens the political space to shape their own future, and our most reads and sanctions were for the undermining of democratic institutions and processes. Second, President Obama did not set this baseline standard from pure principle alone. It also came from empirical research that showed countries allowing democratic transitions graduate to a much higher level of security and economic growth. When incumbents try to rig or change the system to stay in power, their countries are four times more likely to trigger an economic or security crisis. On the flip side, over 90 percent of African countries that have allowed their first democratic transfer of power have not had subsequent crises or backsliding during subsequent transfers. Allowing the first peaceful democratic transfer of power is a game changer, and too often blocking this step has disastrous consequences. Tragically, Burundi has proven the wisdom of this advice, even as it has shown the limits of our ability to persuade partners to take it. Even a very popular and charismatic president and President Kiranzeza was no match for the widespread popular desire of Burundians to see the constitution and historic peace agreement respected. President Kiranzeza dramatically underestimated the cost to himself and his country of pursuing a third mandate. The decisions of his government to systematically and brutally repress and eliminate dissent became a necessary corollary to his illegitimate extension of power, and had the inevitable consequences we so often see of making some opposition leaders feel justified pursuing totally illegitimate and illegal means to block his actions. Witnessing the bleak Burundi landscape today, fraying ethnic tension, decimated public institutions, a shattered economy, a massive brain drain of the professional class, and elimination of dissent, it is difficult but important to remember how different things could have been. If President Kiranzeza had chosen to respect Arusha in the constitution, his party would have almost certainly won landslide elections. The opposition would have had to participate rather than boycott. The world would be celebrating the success story of Burundi's decade of post-conflict reconciliation, and in Kiranzeza would be a massively influential, not just political but religious leader in his own country, the region, and the world. The country would be focused on economic development and building on its many strong bilateral relationships across the region and beyond. Today, President Kabila clearly faces a similar choice, and frankly one that's even more stark. He lacks in Kiranzeza's popularity and has never fully consolidated governance over a vastly large country. He is associated, as was seen in the Bloomberg report today, more with mass kleptocracy, where in Kiranzeza was seen as a genuine man of the people, more likely to be associated with a weekend soccer match in the countryside. And Kiranzeza's army was a major contributor to international peacekeeping, whereas DRC still houses the largest international peacekeeping force on its soil. All of this is to say that President Kabila faces far greater risk of destabilizing his country by refusing to allow the transition. But President Kabila is a survivor and he is extremely smart and constantly underestimated. He has failed for two years to forge a political path forward, though, and the stakes keep rising. President Kabila could manage this transition and leave a rich man with a proud legacy of accomplishments and no serious fear of the ICC. But as Burundi should show, those options could be about to get a lot worse. Closed political space and questionable efforts to remove term limits continues to be an unfortunate part of the story of Rwanda as well, where despite remarkable economic progress and substantial stability, Rwandans cannot freely express themselves politically. In the long term, this policy is simply not sustainable, and stability that depends largely on a single individual can never be stability in any real sense. Rwanda will need to take steps to address these fundamental roadblocks to becoming an open democratic society and stable economic leader. Many here will consider the most important question to be why, if the policy was clear and sound, does it not succeed more often, defining failure as leaders still being in power? In many ways, this observation is fair, and I accept responsibility for that. Some very smart, dedicated people from the region and those who advocate from here think we should have focused more on persuasion and laying out the benefits of doing the right thing rather than seeming to threaten and lecture. Others offer the opposite critique, namely that we should have shown more concrete consequences earlier in these processes to back up the policy. I think there is truth in both critiques. Personally, I regret not having more personal time with a few of the presidents. My conversations with President Kernsiza, for example, were some of the most transformative and genuinely educational moments of my tenure in this job. They gave me a much better sense of the generation that lost their fathers and uncles in the early 70s that were purged from the campuses in the early 90s and feel that the world and the region have not sufficiently told the story and narrative of their experiences. I believe that if those had continued those conversations, a constructive dynamic could have emerged that could have positively impacted the trajectory of these leaders in our corresponding bilateral relationships. Ultimately, though, it is important to reinforce, as I have tried to do with heads of state as well as opposition leaders, that the fate of a country will always be determined far more by its own citizens than by our government. I'm proud of our policy and the extent to which U.S. policy in the Great Lakes has become synonymous with supporting democratic principles and fundamental freedoms. Lastly, I would encourage observers to take a slightly longer view, though it's hard when the costs, the human costs are so high. I have not given up on the idea that President Obama's policy has planted a seed that is still growing. More accurately, he and our policy have nurtured a seed that already exists indigenously to the region of the same desires humans have everywhere for a chance to choose their leaders, to enjoy fundamental freedoms, and move from war to prosperity. It is the hope and the rule of law over might makes right. Shocking many, for example, President Dos Santos recently announced his intention to step down from power. The situation in the DRC remains one that has every possibility of ending with a historic transfer of power in the near future. Other leaders in the region that extended their time and power have paid very real diplomatic consequences and we need to help them think through what a glide path to alternance looks like. The arc of history is long, but bends towards justice, and I've been so deeply inspired by the people of the Great Lakes, and I believe they are measuring success with a wider aperture than some here. This is not to deflect disappointment from our shortfalls, but it is to ensure we balance that against areas where we have been able to protect the space for and perhaps increase the odds of peaceful resolution and democratic futures. Before I conclude, let me mention five lessons I've taken from this experience drawing in part back to my experience with the quadrennial diplomacy and development review. The first is an old cliche that unfortunately remains as true today as it has always, which is that an ounce of prevention remains far better than a pound of cure, but our systems continue to make it exceedingly difficult to shift resources and attention from reactive to preventative diplomacy. The Secretary in the White House deserve real credit for making the Great Lakes, particularly in the case of DRC, a test case in giving more space to early diplomatic intervention. Sanctions were threatened and then applied early, which helped to create time, space, and pressure for late negotiations to have a chance. Our early engagement with the Vatican helped to increase confidence for Senko to take on a thankless task as Arbiter. Deep engagement with our European partners over many months helped to ensure consistency and forcefulness of message, and the Atrocity Prevention Board helped mobilize early attention to Burundi and keep conflicts in Eastern DRC on the agenda. And perhaps the most pleasant surprise has been the extent to which our analysis has converged with that of our African partners, particularly those who stand to pay the highest price for a destabilized DRC. As we wrote about in the second QDDR, we need to do far more to support our diplomatic professionals on the ground who are always ahead of the curve to use the levers we have earlier and not just once we see burned bodies and buildings on the front page. Second, Capitol Hill can be a major asset to U.S. foreign policy, particularly in those areas that still enjoy bipartisan consensus such as the Great Lakes region. The Congolese people consistently ask me to share with others in the U.S. government and in Congress their appreciation for the bipartisan support. House and Senate, Republican and Democrat, member and staffer, have impressed me thoroughly with their interest in the region, their willingness to both challenge and support our efforts, and to be a partner in advancing American interests. Third, again drawing on the QDDR, I observed the value of letting our diplomats do their job even in environments that are not entirely secure. Allowing our diplomats to get beyond the barriers of embassy walls to engage with everyday Congolese and Burundians produces the quality of information, and most importantly the quality of relationships that are the lifeblood of quality diplomacy and of conflict resolution. Having great public servants like Eastern Congo unit Chief James Little able to travel around the Kivu provinces, forge relationships across ethnic lines in areas of rising ethnic tension, and sit with everyone from the governor to the market women is why the best and brightest join the service and why we must let them do their jobs. Physical risk as well as programmatic risk has always been inherent to good diplomacy, but that has become a starker reality in an era of super empowered individuals and global terror networks and smuggling networks. We have lost more ambassadors than general since World War II because we are on the front line of every country as endorsed by Secretary Kerry and demonstrated by the brave teams in Burundi and DRC. America's strength is not determined by the height of the walls we build around our posts, but the depth of the relationships we forge. Fourth, it was struck consistently by how much America's strength at home impacts our strength abroad. In previous work overseas, this has been most pronounced in the extent to which the United States is or is not seen as the model for social mobility, a strong middle class and economic opportunity. But during the past 18 months, the clearest example has been the status of racial justice and reconciliation within the United States, a dynamic that was also present at certain periods in the Cold War. Not a week went by during my tenure as envoy that I was not asked about the latest video of an unarmed black American being shot, law that it was attempting to limit voting rights, or more recently incendiary racial rhetoric. This was not because my work happened to be in Africa. The question was at least as likely to come from our European partners, Vatican officials, or Chinese counterparts. Certainly some of this came from the diplomatic version of trolling. Leaders or tweeters from countries we have lectured about police brutality or minority rights. But this also came from countries and individuals genuinely struggling with the challenge of pluralistic democracy, who have seen us as one of the few countries that seems to take this seriously and seems to get it more right more often than we get more often than we get it wrong. This is a subject for a much longer conversation, but I noted here because of how prominently it featured in my work. In the same way that the strength of our middle class at home directly affects our soft power abroad, the way we value black lives at home has direct impact in the value of U.S. foreign policy. Fifth and finally, I want to note how much this mission I was honored to be asked to take on has reminded me that America matters. I think of the tireless work of our team in Kinshasa advocating and fighting for human rights, the young first term foreign service officer in Kinshasa who visits human rights activists in jail and fights tirelessly until they are released. This goes for the hearing on Capitol Hill that can be heard around the globe. And this is not just about those who represent the American government. This is the American NGO worker who passed up greater salaries and comfort to research the intricate details of human rights abuses or build an advocacy group that spent the last decade trying to break the resource curse of conflict minerals. Groups like enough that have taken every snarky critique as an invitation to do better for the people of Congo, not give up and move on to the latest headline grabbing crisis zone. And it is the standard set by American companies abroad. I was struck by my visit to the copper mine in Katanga managed at the time by Freeport McMorrin. This was not a company I had come of age celebrating but they were the gold standard so to speak of investing in the community investing in the human capital of Congolese workers protecting the environment and avoiding bribes. We ask a lot of our companies most notably through the vitally important foreign practices act and it does not go unnoticed. Dozens of Congolese working in the company living nearby communities and throughout the region pulled me aside to encourage the company to not sell the mine to the Chinese. They talked of the illegal smelting operations run by investors from other countries that wreak havoc and leave nothing behind. Thanks to corporate responsibility as well as corporate activism by advocacy groups and strong laws from Congress that reverse some worse practices from the past the United States can be and continues to be a tremendous force for good in the world. In a cynical time it was powerful to see America use its resources and influence to promote human rights rule of law women's empowerment security sector reform and other issues that were vital to the people of the region and help us directly and indirectly. Many continue to assume we have ulterior motives and our past gives some fuel for that fire but week after week Americans inside and outside of government proved that their purpose in the region was to help to invest the right way to fight corruption and forge partnerships human and otherwise that improve lives. To that end let me finish by thanking some of those inspiring Americans who made this mission possible for me. First I want to thank my exceptional team we were never more than six in number but you guys produced the work of 10 times that. Brennan Gilmore my chief of staff has devoted the better part of a decade to the region. He's the only guy I know who on 12 12 hour flights breaks out neuroscience textbooks and lands and plays bluegrass music while promoting peace in between. Ginny Fruska my senior advisor and also enforcer was both the brains and the muscle behind winning fight after fight both inside our government and beyond and she is a tremendous intellectual force and someone so committed to justice both at home and abroad it's been inspiring to see. She's also represented by her dear mother who's been another part of our team whether it's during our 10k runs in the park on a day almost this cold or in countless ways babysitting the team's dogs and other measures. Caroline Wadams has now been willing to bail me out in at least three different roles including the QDDR and this one. She's honestly one of the most talented thinkers and leaders in her generation and she will be available for hire as of January 20th so I encourage everyone to think into that. For shorter periods of time we were deeply blessed to have Nate Schaffron join our team and Rachel Schiller. Rachel not only was incredibly groundbreaking and looking at metrics to help us game out the Brundian negotiations that never quite happened but also insisted on coming to Bujumbura eight months pregnant and walking nine flights of stairs because the elevator was broken to have a meeting with Minister Bujoni I think the first one after the sanctions had been issued and then Chichi who's not here today but was the one that made every trip happen every invoice processed and every Byzantine State Department rule followed to make sure that these things happened and that I didn't get in trouble for it. Second I want to reiterate my thanks to Assistant Secretary Thomas Greenfield for her tremendous leadership that I mentioned at the beginning and everyone throughout the Africa Bureau. This close collaboration I think really did demonstrate the diplomatic dividends that can be demonstrated can be generated from a regional bureau and a special envoy working together to bring special attention to a problem spot. I learned a lot from her and I hope others will learn from some of the successes of that partnership. We've had an amazing a partnership throughout the state Tom Alanowski Sarah Sewell Dan Fried John Finer others who deserve the team at INR just unbelievable talent throughout this period. We also the benefit of great ambassadors not just in the region but at places like the Vatican and Addis and Pretoria and across Europe that we frequented so often. But Jim Swan Don Liberia Liberia Erica Barks struggle Mark Childress and more recently Anne Casper deserve particular thanks for putting up with unusually frequent visits often with too little notice and far too many changes in the itinerary. I was also blessed to have great partners across the interagency and Steve Pomper deserve some sort of special medal of patience for putting up with what was a very persistent and perhaps aggressive approach to the strategy getting it moved forward at key points. And finally let me thank President Obama and Secretary Kerry for asking me to serve in this role and for setting a visionary policy that reflects our best values. And the People's of the Great Lake Region I've grown to consider brothers and sisters please forgive me for my shortcomings and accept my thanks for all I learned from you during this mission. While I leave this post soon my commitment to remain a friend of the region does not end and I want to just say while much has happened in the last year and a half these remain very live situations. There's we could see a deal in DRC within the next couple of days and we could see great tragedy and Burundi we could see the peace talks begin to gain strength and get back to the great vision that we saw just a few years back or we could see the situation de-escalate. Those are matters of human choice of leadership but also of international diplomacy. So thank you to all of you from what I've learned. Thank you for your patience and thank you for having this conversation. Tom thank you very very much for a very very thoughtful and comprehensive speech on the work that you have been doing you and your team have been doing in the Great Lakes over the much of the last two years. I think that from beginning to end you've demonstrated a commitment to trying to find solutions to one of the Africa's most vexing set of problems and so you to be complimented enormously on the work that you've done. I'm going to start by asking you a couple of questions and then we're going to open this up to the audience. I know there are many among us who have spent time in the region know Burundi and the DRC and Rwanda and do have questions. I'd like to start with where you left off and ask about the DRC and specifically what do you think a good transition would look like after December 19th and if there in fact is no transition what do you think the immediate consequences will be not only in Kinshasha but around the country? It was interesting to take almost a time out today to try to exhale and reflect a bit when we're in the middle of an incredibly urgent period and that is the the ongoing Senko negotiations. I mentioned the good news which is really for the first time we have a process. Nobody questions the credibility of the bishops they have national reach well beyond the Catholic community. Every party is present even the MLC ended up working through the issues so everyone's at a table and the negotiations are going on. That's the good news the bad news is we needed to be there you know a year ago six months ago a month ago. We on one level our answer to the question of what does a good transition look like is whatever the Congolese people can accept. I think that this is not something we've been very careful not to put an American plan on the table for that reason. We know there are principles that should guide it. It should be as close to the Constitution letter and spirit as possible. There are things that we've certainly sensed from the street in other corners. People would much prefer 2017 to 2018. The polling would suggest most people would prefer that President Gabila leaves immediately. That's almost two thirds or three quarters of the population would like to see that. That would probably mean Kengo in the order of succession taking over. But I think that's unlikely to be the outcome of this process. So we're guided by what people want. I think that the civil society and opposition are unlikely to accept any deal in which President Gabila is still seen as having enough power in leeway that a few months from now he could call a national emergency suspend elections etc. and never get to elections. I think President Gabila is unlikely to accept a deal in which he feels his powers have been so reduced that it's humiliating or even not safe for him. So the question is, is there something in the middle of that Venn diagram? And I think there are. I mean, I think we can talk about some of the key elements of it. But ultimately, one of the things that people even inside the presidential majority have reminded me of is that in the actual Congolese constitution the presidency is relatively weak and limited. The prime minister really is the strongest position. It's just been in practice and based on personality that you've seen the power clearly concentrated in the presidency. So I think if there is some combination of a strong prime minister from more or less the opposition, President Gabila remains. There's a supervisory committee that is led by someone people feel has trust or gravitas. And then the independence of the Electoral Commission I think they've really lost the confidence of just about anyone. So even if you agreed to 2017 but you had the current structures and leaderships people wouldn't see that. The other problem we have now is that you can't turn off the momentum overnight. So we've talked about how really the 15th or 16th is the new 19th. It's not like we could get a deal on the eve of the 18th and all the sudden everyone could shut down the street. I think one of the things we have talked a lot with our regional partners about is the fact that people need to see in Congo. I think that the people and the opposition is two separate forces. There's interrelationship. But there's been a lot of assumption that somehow President Chisaketi directs the street. I think what we've seen particularly over the last few months is the street has a mind of its own. And therefore if there is a deal it's going to take some time to there has to be time to explain that to people. And I think this comes back to one of the key problems and I'll just end with this which is that the crisis in DRC is probably as I noted one of the least complex I've ever seen in foreign policy. The number of technical details are extremely simple. And Burundi really yes we can go back as I did to a year and a half ago and President Kurinsi's decisions. But you really do need to understand the context of 1973 the context of 1994 the ethnic class and political dynamics. In DRC it's actually really clear there was no complexity about what the Constitution called for and the holding of elections the government just didn't let it happen. And the reason I mention that is that one of the challenges we have is the issue of distrust. It's the invisible elephant in the room is the issue of distrust. So there's a deal you could put together that would technically solve the problems and be a decent compromise. But people in the street and the opposition so don't trust President Kabila that he doesn't have some way to break it. And I think President Kabila feels that Chisaketi's broke in every deal they've ever made together. That this issue of enforceability I think is one of the other challenges. Let me do a quick follow-up on this before we open and ask if in fact a deal can be done for elections sometime in 2017 perhaps early 2018 not presuming what they will agree to. Do you believe that it is in the interest of the international community to help provide the funding and the technical assistance to make those elections as successful as possible? Given the failure of the past electoral efforts out there the vast size of the country the inadequacy today of the registration of voters and the inaccessibility of many parts of the country does the international community bear the need to put resources into this effort to put democracy as a priority as greatly as they put money into the UN peacekeeping forces in the eastern part of the country? Yes. To give a slightly longer answer I mean I think the international community needs to be and I think is ready to contribute what we can't allow is this chicken and egg game to go on which is as long as the electoral commission is putting forward a $1.8 billion joke of a budget that nobody's going to fund because it's so clearly bloated and corrupt that then they'll say oh well nobody's funding the budget therefore we have an excuse to not move forward you know even with the voter registration time period that everyone is working with that's based on a series of absolutely absurd decisions the electoral commission made to have 10 finger biometrics which no other country uses that's massively expensive takes a ridiculous period of time and means you have to go village by village so even the technical things that have been settled are really kind of a joke so if you actually brought someone in whose goal was to hold elections good elections quickly you know I think the budget and the timeline you'd see would be different and we know that because all the technical experts come and tell us that so I think it's going to have to be a given a take and then I think it comes back to your metrics point this was something we went through in Sierra Leone the budget let's just say you got the budget down to 600 million dollars that's still a lot of money right if you look at that and you compare it to many things that sounds like a lot of money but if you compare it to Manusco's budget it's relatively small and if you believe that this is one of the crucial things that moves the country dramatically forward in terms of addressing arms groups economic development etc it's a good payoff we went through this with the budget of the special court for Sierra Leone which was if you compared it to the rule of law budget it was very very high but if you compared it to the Unamsil budget and believe this was something that was going to go after Taylor and a few others of the people most likely to restart the civil war then this was pennies on the dollar so I think that that if you buy the relationship to stability then those are very smart investments to make very good let me throw this open and I will ask some other questions as we move along we've got a couple of microphones on both the left and the right I am going to say one thing identify yourself your organization and keep your questions succinct and your comments less like phd dissertations and more like very very short pieces of poetry Mark first thank you very much for the identify yourself Mark Schneider international crisis group thank you very much for the presentation and the work that you've been doing and work that the themes have been doing I think and I know that this is a hard moment to do this but I'd really like to ask you to look back a year a year and a half ago and what is it that you regret that wasn't done either by us or by the rest of the international community or the regions now there's looking back what would you have done differently in order not to be in the situation where we are now we're 15th and 16th we're two days away three days away from potential disaster we'll take three of these at a go yes sir Hi my name is Gustav Envella and I'm with the committee for free and democratic Equatorial Guinea so at my at my home I have a picture of my father with Patrice Lumumba and we know how that ended Equatorial Guinea like the Congo is a country full of deception and corruption I'm wondering the inertia that you encountered and by you are by far in the 25 years I've been doing this the most precise forward-thinking person that I've dealt with and I go back to days when Erika Bark ruggles was at the NSC Don Coran Pamela Bellamy for those of us who are committed to democracy rule of law in countries like Equatorial Guinea or Condoleezza Rice referred to President Obiang as a good friend that's disastrous to us so I'm asking with President Obiang supporting terrorism Boko Haram a kleptocrat who kills opposition and is now dealing with the multinational oil companies how do we move beyond the inertia of many of these folks who shouldn't even run a general store let alone a country how do we vociferously work with the US government and those entities like yourself and I commend you truly I came here very cynical but you've changed my perspective how do we move forward in bringing about change in countries like Equatorial Guinea where this guy is playing games like others have we've got a third question all the way in the back Hi Tom John Manila-Kiza from Burundi I'm with the Burundi and the Asperger here in the US the question as the previous participant asked the Faustian bargain that is being done with these people who are running our countries go against the values of the US and yet still we still see the same dynamic over and over again how do you break it and what is the geopolitical reading in the Great Lakes region from the former Cold War counterparts because it looks like they are also investing a lot in the region how do you or what is your take on that thank you all good questions some of which I can answer or try to answer some of which I can't even attempt regrets I've been thinking a lot about and you know we'll one some downtime to give you a better answer but I'll say a few because one of them relates I think to the last question which is as cynical as it sounds it's a managing expectations I think trying as I said today to make more clear the distinction between setting a US policy and saying therefore somehow we're going to magically make this happen in DRC right now there are people on the president's side who think we could snap our fingers and convince the opposition not to protest on December 19th there are people in the opposition that think if we wanted to we could snap our fingers and make president could be able to leave power December 19th I think one of the legacies coming out of the Cold War both the realities of it and the mythology of it is the sense of you know certain puppet masters pulling strings behind things even back in that period while there was more truth to some of that even then I think we've oversimplified a lot of the narratives of how much that was driven from dynamics and splits within from without and I think that has led to a what can be a self-perpetuating sense on both sides now I did I was very clear particularly with opposition leaders in various countries that we were going to protect political space we were not going to take sides we are not pro ressemble mont or udps or anything else despite what some people think we've been clear about that publicly and privately and that ultimately the Congolese people are going to have a lot more influence on what happens next in drc than the outside the international community can affect things on the margins I think second regret as I mentioned and and I don't know how to fix it is that I do think depth of personal relationships matter particularly given the complex histories and you know without betraying too much about the conversations I had with President Kernsiza beyond what I set up here you know that's the kind of thing where I would love to have you know 10 hours I would have loved to have three weeks of going back and forth because relationships are about building trust you have to understand and hear the other person's perspective you need to find which parts of that you learn from which parts you want to push back on and it's difficult in diplomacy both because time is short there's always an urgent thing right well that's all well and good but you know 20 people were captured and tortured yesterday I'm not going to not bring that up and talk about it right so I think figuring out the space for that the second barrier is the policy is set you know and I happen to like the policy we had but it wasn't like I was showing up with a clean slate I was showing up very much with a message and ultimately I think figuring out that balance between how much personal relationships matter versus the two of us could be best friends and you know want to go play soccer together but ultimately if the primary existential goal of one government is to stay in power as long as you can and the primary issue in our government is how to to make sure there's a constitutional transition their their attention's there on equatorial Guinea part of the reason why I can hopefully be concise and respected and conversion oriented is that I talk about things I know something about and I know nothing about not nothing but I do not know enough about equatorial Guinea to speak to it what I can say is to talk analogically from where we've been situations are complicated we need to figure out how to get beyond some of the well how to deal with the messiness of the world every time we rightly push a government that is abusing human rights people will cite another government we seem to get along with awfully well and not criticize human rights and that's a legitimate critique it's something that people struggle with all the time but ultimately it doesn't mean that the values change whether or not we're always fully consistent but again I don't know the case study in terms of the the you know I somewhat answered or hopefully answered some of the last question in that I think you know for one thing we do live in a world where we have to continue to work with governments even if it's a government we disagree with strongly I think it's important keep lines of communication open and I think this goes in both directions I think with a few exceptions when the U.S. decides to not recognize or not engage with the country the track record of those the success of those is pretty limited obviously where there's a existential threat or other things there there can be times for that but generally speaking President Obama has made clear through his Cuba policy and even the Iran deal that we're better off even with those we disagree with having lines of communication and being open in negotiation and I think that goes in the other direction too I think leaders who think they somehow or governments overseas who think that they accomplish something by not meeting with the U.S. government or not meeting with me when I show up I have yet to find an example where that actually helps a country I think there are several leaders in the region who would have been much better off and their policy would have been much better off by actually taking meetings whether it was me or others I think almost every single time a meeting happens there ends up being at least a slightly more sympathetic view of the perspective of those individuals same thing is true with opposition but I think that generally speaking you can open lines of communication you can sit down with each other without it being something that means you don't still believe that fundamental freedoms need to be restored in a place like Burundi I know we've got three more out there I see hands going up but I'm going to jump in with a couple and then I'm going to come back to the to the to the audience and I'm going to ask to what extent does the behavior of other leaders in the region and even in neighboring states influence President Kabila and some others in their political actions you made mention of Rwanda and the decision by Paul Kagami a year ago backed up by his parliament and legislation to eliminate terms we saw the elimination of terms and the renewal of the mandate in Congo Brazzaville we saw some time ago the elimination of terms in Uganda and the continuation there while you mentioned Angola and the decision of President Osantos to step down to what extent does the fact that we've got so many leaders in the region who have committed themselves to staying on as strong individuals give Kabila the sense that he can do it and the second question is do the conversations that are underway right now by the Sinko and under the the auspices of the bishops indicate that President Kabila is now decided that he is going to leave or do you sense that this is just another opportunity for potential delay maneuver and exit exit from the process to stay on do that and then we'll come back to the questions on the screen so I I'm going to speak with the voice of a slightly liberated person as I'm closing up I think there were really two separate axes that people saw the issue of leaders staying around the region one was what you might call the constitutional axis and the other was the realist axis and on the constitutional axis where we laid really our marker we were consistent across the region and I think we even got marks for that for many quarters not all quarters which is we thought term limits should be respected even where a country has the right to change a constitution we didn't think it was a good idea because we think that these these have values for the reasons that I mentioned and so for us it was just that simple respect the constitution don't change them to stay in power longer for other people though in the region they couldn't care less about constitutions they only care about stability and what I think has been the biggest variation has been that in some cases the regional leaders genuinely believed extensions were pro-stability and other places not pro-stability and I think this is where you get into the frustration if I were a close friend of president Kabila's it would be very frustrating to look around the region and say why is everybody else staying and not me I think the difference is that if president Kabila you know if I put my realist hat on this isn't our policy if at any point over the last two years he'd been able to pull it off I think Angola and others would have been fine with it the problem is he hasn't pulled it off and I think the belief is that he's fundamentally weak he's got seven percent approval rating that you can debate that within the polling name but I think everybody would agree this is a guy who's deeply unpopular there's a bad economy right now our inflation is ticking up and even a good incumbent get blamed for inflation even if it's not their fault so if you look at you know that and a number of other factors I think the region basically said to each other hey everyone go go figure out your strategy and as long as you figure out a strategy will support you and president Kigami obviously did it in what was a very decisive and relatively clean way we still condemned it I caught a lot of grief in Kigali for condemning it but we did and we continue to believe that a country if the stability of a country is one heart attack away from not being there then that's not stability like you have to have a plan of succession and plan of transition so I think that people do people in the region see this in a different light than we do and for that reason I think that president Kabila has continued to pursue every option to show that he can find a way to extend his stay in power which is clearly his preferred option but he's also been careful to keep his exit option open he's never really shut the door on the idea that he's leaving and some of his recent statements have been slightly more constructive in that regard in terms of whether leaders matter to each other I think they do in some ways I think they matter more than the United States position and I think this is where president Dos Santos has deserves a lot of credit for twice calling together the regional leaders to make clear that they don't think president Kabila that he needs a plan and they're not all going to get sucked into a regional destabilizing war just because he wanted to stay in power but didn't have a means to do so on the Senko process I think it relates to that I think that there is a middle ground that the parties could be forced to but I don't think they're going to negotiate their way to that ground both sides have hardliners who believe that they can win this thing in the street I think there are people around the president who absolutely believe they've already split a lot of the opposition they can crush them in a couple of days look at name your country there are definitely people around Chisaketi who believe that the second people go to this why would we give Kabila an extra year when the people don't want to give him an extra day we'll call people out but I think there are also pro-deal people on both sides who see that the risks of that to the country and perhaps more importantly to them to their personal wealth is big enough that they should be looking for every opportunity for a deal so I think that there certainly has not been a permission well there's not been a permission slip from the president down yet to get a deal done that involves his leaving him shutting off the options to leave and as I said before I think if he did that today we literally could have a deal in an hour we'll take three from the audience okay we've got three in the front row we'll go here then Herb and we're going to go to the young lady back here and we'll get all of these again and I'll make my answer shorter okay okay I'm going to get a couple more rounds and don't I'm Dr. George Alula I'm from Congo what I would like today I feel a little bit better comfortable more than few years ago and I'm taking this opportunity to say thank you to all of you to many people here around for what we have been doing trying to solve the mess in DRC we know that it may be late but we feel comfortable at three days of the hand of this mandate that we feel like the international community this time really side on the Congolese people and we hope that you will do your best to give us a chance next week to have another figure this is the only thing I wanted to say I say thank you for everything you're doing Mr. Dickerson more than 35 trip in Congo that's why I say you must be tired but God be with you all and really all the NGO and all the people who just give their time and take the risk on their own life to travel to this country I'm here just to say thank you thank you we'll take thank you very much we'll take another question then I heard be I think Professor Weiss Jennifer Weiss CUNY when you make your assessment of what could have been done a year or two years ago I would suggest that the situation then was not that different from now and one thing that could have been done then is what we're doing now and I still don't think that that would have made heaven instead of hell but it if the argument is that sanctions are a useful tool today I think it's fair to say sanctions would have been a more useful tool earlier I suspect that that was your position you don't have to answer that but I'm allowed to have my own opinion about my representative in the region and as you may recall I have been rather critical of the timidity and the limited limitation to verbal opposition to dictatorship and authoritarian rule in the region and I was sort of a mosquito against the elephant there for a while I would like to say now that your term has in effect ended that it is my impression that you pushed as hard as you could and I really do want to take this opportunity to applaud that if you if you didn't get as strong a representation of American power in the area as certainly I would have wished I don't think that was your initiative but the timidity of people above you I will only once say one thing and that is really directed to the Congolese opposition but very much connected to your role and you've heard this before I think that many members of the opposition do feel or pretend to feel that we can control the situation and in effect put them in power and as a result of that they have not done what opposition leaders in authoritarian regimes ought to be doing and those that have succeeded have done throughout history they have been seduced to a certain extent by what you call the international community and incidentally that word needs especially today in my opinion further definition what is this international community of the Chinese and the Americans the same they're all parts of this international community so let me just end by congratulating you thanking you and saying that what I was pushing for throughout your tenure is different from what I appreciate today You've brought griots and praise singers to usip and put them in the front row now since we've not had any questions just praise which I go along with we will now we will we will get those three questions in but you've brought the praise singers ma'am Thanks Alexis area for the congressional research service thank you for your remarks today you mentioned the role of the hill as we look ahead to a new congress as well I wonder if you could flesh out a little bit some of the actions that you think would be most useful from congress in the months to come especially under certain scenarios you know maybe there are multiple scenarios that we could imagine coming out of the Senko talks and especially along lines that as you know are most under congress's control that have to do with us aid to drc us security assistance to drc and related restrictions okay sir we'll do three questions these are applause thank you very much applause comes on Kimby and I'm from drc my question is really do you think you have been feeding the beast in terms of I saw you and the U.S. Ambassador and Kishasa you have been spending more time calling for the population for peaceful you know peace for the population and putting much more pressure from what I saw on the opposition when at the same time ignoring the elephant in the room which is in fact calling Kabila to step down that was the main problem this is the the the the gist of the problem that we are having in Congo so you appear like much more as somebody who's being I would characterize it as a closet supporter of the status quo I'm talking from I'm talking to Congolese because the main issue is for Kabila to respect the constitution because the constitution has to be respected no negotiated thank you thank you Steve and microphone back here Steve Weisman I also want to add my thanks to everybody's for your efforts you raised the kind of a broad question I felt that is related to some of the questions you're getting today in your remarks what I heard and maybe maybe I was mistaken is that the U.S. should threaten consequences for human rights violations but should not threaten consequences for violation of democratic nor other democratic norms such as I suppose holding elections on time when you're a very unpopular person in your country my my question about this is is this really counterproductive to preventing violence because if you don't prevent people from trying to stay in power when they clearly if they try to stay in power violence is going to come then the only thing you have left is to sanction their cops when they bust heads and related to that I wonder in your role of the QTDR whether that really is U.S. policy in other areas of the world is it U.S. policy in places like Burma for example or has it been U.S. policy in other areas where we've had sanctions certainly it has it been U.S. policy in Libya or Syria to say to dictatorial governments we only oppose your use of the your bad use of force rather than the fact that you are trying to prolong yourself in power over a restive dissatisfied population so I'm sort of question is really about the general stance of the U.S. government thanks lots of great comments particularly the thank you comments I will say just a word about Professor Weiss's comments because I think you hit on something that's important we believe that control of a country should be determined through elections which means some in the opposition believe that you get to December 20th in Congo and it should immediately go from the president to the opposition but nobody's elected the opposition so there's a difference between believing that you should immediately flip power to whoever's not in power versus a power sharing arrangement genuine or a protectorship or some sort of a you know an entity that exists to see the country through to elections but I think there have been some of those who feel like oh well we're just going to sit on the sidelines wait till December 19th and then declare ourselves a president or what have you and I think there are a number of of challenges with that and I think many countries have gone through tense periods of what it means to you know if a president flees the country or if a president is seen as illegitimate etc what that looks like so lots that's much longer conversation there but but thank you for all of the the aggressive pushing over the last year and a half as well as educating on the hill I mean first of all you know I used to work on the hill and I wouldn't by no means ever tell them what to do and I think that's probably not a proper balance what I can commend them for is what they've already done I mean I think from holding hearings to passing unanimous resolutions during a very key period this fall where I think there was a false narrative in Kinshasa and some circles that somehow this was just an Obama issue and they just needed to wait out President Obama I think you saw that narrative start to fade a few months ago in part because you saw such strong frankly more aggressive than then the State Department position in terms of speaking specifically to President Kabila's assets and the family assets I imagine that noise is going to grow considerably after today's Bloomberg story with a year of investigative journalism into the the country the family's you know extensive financial networks around the country obviously the OXIF case and other things that have come up in that period of time so the attention is important the showing of bipartisan support is important and I do think you know this has been a subject of some chatter and and true you know frankly one of the from a purely political tactical standpoint one of the biggest places President Kabila shot himself in the foot was the adoptions crisis last year and this was something by holding essentially a thousand infants hostage for no cognizable reason you saw an enormous upswell of knowledge about President Kabila in the DRC among Republicans and Democrats and none of that knowledge was good frankly I think President Kabila does not get enough credit for many of the good things he has done but when you do something like that you're pretty much just inviting Capitol Hill to have the worst imaginable impression of you going into this this now political crisis as to the gentleman in the front I hope if anyone is here from President Kabila's lobbying firm that they will relate back this notion that I am a closet supporter of the status quo and secretly clearly just a friend of President Kabila and and and the like if you are here I also appreciated that bit in the newsletter last week it was nice picture I appreciate all that but it's a serious question you know I think the you know in some ways it's easy for me to make a to hide behind the idea that when both sides are mad at me I must be doing my job well because certainly the government side feels like I spend all my time with the opposition the opposition feels like I spend all this time with them yelling at them about why they're protesting and being disruptive and there is some sense in which you know we're we're not trying to be partisans in this fight we have been allies of the Constitution it is true that for much of the last year and a half the vast majority of the opposition has simply been asking for the Constitution to be respected which means there can be a fair amount of overlap between the things that we're pushing as a matter of our policy and what they're pushing but when those things diverge they diverge because what we're pushing for is this path to alternance now I think it's also something where I do think that it can be I sort of referred to this a bit in the speech and if we were doing one of these deeper dives I would talk about it which is how the call for dialogue is used and abused in Africa and in international relations more generally there is a norm in any diplomacy that that you can never be anti-dialogue but dialogue is of course used constantly as a trap used disingenuously and therefore it can be a very frustrating situation when for much of the last year and a half I mean we all know Chisaketi put out the road map before President Kabila called for the national dialogue so he could never quite understand why people thought he was anti-dialogue and their point was we don't why do you need a dialogue we have a constitution etc so if we had more time I think it is one of those interesting questions the second is and I think this is one of the very real questions right now is the extent to which the international community does or doesn't take a position on the issue of calling protests on the one hand I think everyone in the international community understands that's a fundamental constitutional right you can't ask people not to exercise that right and particularly when a government has actively tried to limit any other option that the opposition has you can't get on the national radio or tv you can't do a smaller rally you can't do a sit-in if you block all of those efforts you've basically backed people into that kind of a corner on the other hand it is true that in similar situations there's a very high likelihood that a call to protest is going to be something that ends in violence and likely fatal violence and I think this is one of these places we are clear with the government they not only have a obligation to respect people's rights states have an affirmative obligation to create a safe space within which those rights can be exercised and that means we do hold the government to a different standard than we hold the opposition in terms of the exercise and protection of citizens in their rights Steve your point again one of those things that can be a much longer conversation but you were as always right to laser in on that distinction and I think it's one that remains a live question what I would dodge to as a process answer is whatever it is we are going to sanction people on should be clear ahead of time and we should communicate it so if the answer is going to be if you're in December 20th then you know all assets and travel will be frozen then communicate that and be clear about that if it's not that then I think like many things you don't want to get it you want to be clear about that I think we do have the right under the executive order for for DRC to sanction individuals for undermining democratic institutions and processes and I think you could certainly make an argument that the kinds of things you're talking about about blowing through a term limit could qualify within that I think we have done a lot of our messaging around protecting open political space but the most recent sanctions as you know were for undermined undermining democratic institutions and processes so whatever we decide is the right measures there I think you have to communicate it and this is what I would end this round on is saying we also have to remember individual sanctions is only one tool in the toolbox and you want to use those as part of a broader strategy and here's a place the Europeans have been ahead of the U.S. because they signaled at the last ministerial that there will be no business as usual after December 19th so that brings in a broader set of questions we don't know what the answer to that is we don't yet know what they mean but they do mean that there is going to be something different about how they interact with the president and the government on December 20th than before so I think you know individual sanctions are just one piece of that we've run over by about 10 minutes and I don't know how tight you are keep looking down at your to trust me you're the enforcer genie is hasn't given me a hasn't given me a time a timeout sign yet nor has Brennan sort of tapped her to give the sign so between the two of them now they're giving me signals now they're giving me signals and I've worked with them both and I know they're not reluctant or shy let me do this if we can do just one more I've got a another Steve in the room who is my colleague here and I was going to ask the Steve Hage if he wanted to ask his question and then we're going to close this close this out if you unless you want to take that's good you know if you want to take two I know there's another hand here definitely not if it's Gambino Tony Tony is a reluctant last or the or the or the I mean I'm gonna let Steve if you could ask your question Tony if it's short and then we're going to going to close it out okay great thank you very much Steve Hage from USIP two quick quick quick questions you mentioned the Bloomberg report just wanted to get your sense on how you think that that might enter into the whole plethora of business affairs might enter in the calculus and considerations of President Kabila moving forward on the second regarding but how would you respond to potential criticisms of sanctions of the last round of sanctions on individuals like Kalev and Bushab who feel that this may radicalize them even further and and get them thinking that they have no future outside of Kabila and therefore try to bring down the ship or take down the ship with them thinking that there's no other way for them to get out and what strategies would you recommend for individuals like them around Kabila outside of the family thanks Steve Tony identify yourself and then question and then we'll wrap up here two strong players on the Congo and this off thank you Tony again being a consultant there's a lot of rumors around on the Congo but I believe this is accurate that I'm looking at a release from the government shutting down Facebook WhatsApp Skype and all social media as of midnight on December 18th if that's accurate and I believe it is looking at this I'm just interested in your comment on that and how it relates to the broader points that you and Ambassador Carson have been discussing I just also say in that context Ambassador Carson will remember that this is precisely what they did in the context of the 2011 elections they did so the same group did shut these things down and of course this is increasingly a tactic used by such regimes great stuff all right the Bloomberg article and everything that it represents I mean I think you've already seen some investigations and cases on mass corruption going forward in Europe I mentioned the case here in the United States I think it's a well-known situation that these investigations may you know the more evidence there is the more basis there is for pursuing either criminal and asset kind of reactions to that I also think it affects I mean I talked a little bit before about the fact that we applied a single standard to all leaders but I do think that there are you know one of the things that's scary about where we are in DRC is that President Kernsiza while we think he made a tragic decision nobody disagreed with his popularity no one accused him of being some grand kleptocrat this was a you know a populist in the good sense of the word is deeply religious guy and even then you saw that I think he didn't understand just how much this constitution and accords meant to so many people President Gabile I don't think anyone mistakes him for President Kernsiza in terms of you know popular support or not being associated with those things and to be honest and we we've tried to communicate this publicly and privately I mean I do think that there are there are offers that everyone is trying to make to get this deal done now that probably will not be offered once this thing starts to move to the streets the street does not offer go live you know with all your assets and everything else and we're never going to bother you that is not what happens once these things are decided in the streets this isn't about US policy this is about analysis and I think the Bloomberg is a is a good reminder to the family that this stuff is not as hidden as people think it is in today's world yeah and you know if this gets to a point where they are seen as having given up a very very generous deal for a small extension and a guarantee they're going to leave later the deals are going to start getting worse for them not better and I think that speaks to that now Kalev and others will probably give a different view which is we're going to crush these guys in two days the international community will move on to Christmas etc I think the idea that we are going to turn Kalev into a hardliner is something that is probably going to be a tough case to make given his track record but I will say that any any policy move has risks right but the risks of inaction also matter as well you know we've done this with the barundi talks we would rather set a date in a place and have the possibility that the government's not going to show up but at least you have an action forcing event that can call that out it is our belief and I think we're very clear about this as I said earlier that on both sides there are hardliners and there are pro-deal moderates and our hope is that our policy a variety of things that we're doing are helping to empower the pro-deal folks and one of those messages is there are going to be real consequences for the people in power of moving forward with a strategy of extending power through bloody repression and you know I think that that's become more clear and I would say that goes directly against the advice that Kalev and others have been been giving in that case on the shutdown of media obviously you know it's it's a strategy people are using but the strategy of shutting down social media and DRC is a dangerous one for the government to be honest they have seen the most disruption not from well-organized top-down protests from Chisiketti in the opposition it has been when the street takes on a life of its own with no direction so I think if the government thinks that it's going to work well for them to shut that down I mean they know their country better than I do so I offer this unsolicited advice to them what it means is the ability to shut down a protest gets tougher and tougher the idea of the opposition to call it back gets tougher and tougher people getting accurate information about what's going on a blackout on information given how much build-up there's been may not be in their interest but that's a tactical question from a policy question what we have said to them and to other governments is again if you limit people's legitimate forms of dissent if you limit their legitimate ways to organize and express themselves you will see people go to illegitimate means and we will hold people responsible for those illegitimate means if there is armed violence or resistance from the opposition we've been clear but we will also hold the government responsible for creating a repressive environment in which basic constitutional freedoms under the Congolese constitution could not take place. Tom thank you very very much for what has been an extraordinary presentation and a very very lively and informed question and answer period I'm going to join Dr. Lula and Professor Weiss and Steve Weissman in the praise singing as well I think that you've done an extraordinary job in picking up the baton on handling Great Lakes regional issues over the last two years and like in many relay races it is the last runner who is the swiftest and the fastest and the one who is thought to be the more reliable in carrying a team or a project to success I think that as this administration finishes its last round on this I think they had in you the strongest of the the racers and the most committed and the most philosophically agile in terms of dealing with this issue I applaud you for your real work I applaud you for your really really strong defense of democracy good governance civil participation and desire to have people be able to exercise their constitutional rights and I hope that the praise singing that was done by several people here in this room is also reflective of the high regard that people in the region on the ground hold you in and even if they disagree with you the leaders in the region the respect for the commitment that you had in pursuing your task it is not a an easy one the DRC has been in perpetual conflict since 1960 I'm constantly reminded of the fact that only six months after independence the first UN peacekeepers went in there the only secretary general we've lost in the UN died trying to resolve the crisis and probably there's probably no big crisis in the world that is absorbed more security council time and more UN peacekeepers over the last 50 years in the DRC and I think we hope that this time around these sets of negotiations led by bishops will make everybody have a little bit more faith and maybe come out with a little bit more sanity and reason but you've contributed and I think I join everyone in applauding you and please join me