 Welch i'n edrych – rydych i'n byw, rwy'n meddwl todaya'r gwneud i gael eich rhaid iddo i. Mae ddweud hynny yma, rwy'n meddwl, rydych chi'n meddwl weithio ar gweithio, rwy'n meddwl eich rhaid, dyneid i yn ffodol i'r llwy. Mae bobl erwyd yn ei saith o'r gwbl erdoedd. Mae rhaid i'n meddwl i'n meddwl eich rhaid i'n meddwl am)? Mae rhaid i'n meddwl i'n meddwl am tracing ar gyfan y Buddyllfford Gael ypa'i cyfrifol o'r Gael. a sy'n meddwl i'ch bydd ar hyn yn dda i'r gaelio, a mae'n meddwl i'ch gaelio'n tanxon. Mae'n meddwl i gaelio i'ch gaelio i ddim yn mynd i'r meddwl. Amgeddur. Ddwy'r gaelio'n meddwl i'r ddigon nhw. Mae'n gweld i'ch cyfnod i'r Gŵr Rhwng. Ac mae'n ceisio yma, mae'n cael ei gallu'r hyn o'r gaelio. Ac mae'n gallu'n meddwl i'ch gaelio'r gaelio i'ch gaelio. Mae'n gallu'n meddwl i mi. I'll be talking briefly on the Middle East as a region and then we'll move and talk about the rise of ISIS. Giving a brief introduction to the development of violent Salafism in the region. I hope I will be using some concept. I hope you understand them all. If you don't, Mr Google is always there to help you. You can ask me afterwards. Then I'll be finalising with some concluding remarks. The Middle East as a region is a competitive, fragmented and penetrated regional system by great powers. It is therefore in a constant disorder while the causes of peace and security, the Arab League, the region's largest international global organisation, has been mobilised in numerous occasions for a number of reasons. These efforts have often failed. The region is dominated by authoritarian regime types, and yet it's a drift of a hegemonic power able to impose its own will on the subsystem and therefore awash with rivalese. Power is a float, evenly distributed, and does not necessarily manifest itself in terms of such traditional indicator as the size of the population, territory, economy, GNP, geography, nor the size of the military budget of the armed forces or military heart where provides sufficient indicator of power and influence. The region is also characterised by multi-layer identities. The map of the region was drawn by the colonial power, mainly Great Britain and France after the first great war in 1918. This catalyst, a constant conflict in the region, thus the region is characterised by inter-state rivalese and increasingly exposed of identity politics, which manifests itself in the inter-conficial and inter-communial conflict. The Kurds, for example, are still suffering from the consequences of drawing of the map of the first world war. There are roughly 40 million of them are distributed among four countries, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. That was, of course, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Now, be in mind that the nation states system or the map of Europe was a genuine from inside. The map of Europe was drawn from inside. That's why the nation state arguably warred in Europe, while in the Middle East it was shaped from outside, as I mentioned. Of course, back to the Kurds, the victims of Psychys Pico, not only them of course, but the Psychys Pico agreement between the French and the British authorities in 1916. It was a secret agreement, exposed a year later after the Belcevic Revolution. Anyways, so the Psychys Pico agreement was later confirmed in the Sandrimo conference in 1920. Back again to the region. The regional system is vulnerable to the behaviour of sub-state and non-state actors, and many of its states are still suffering at the hand of violent jihadi groups who have stepped into the vacuum created by the weakening of the iron grip of the central government in several Arab countries. Indeed, in the 21st century, it seems to be the smaller Arab states outperforming their largest counterpart and non-state actors making waves. The region is still suffering from lack and alternative political forces to fulfil the expectation of the masses and the people and achieve development and prosperity eventually. The Islamic radical groups such as the Islamic state seems to have become the substitute for the past political forces for doing the mission. Now, violent selloffism, and I deliberately call it violent selloffism, seemed to be one of the most challenging issues that faces the region nowadays. Selloffism and the Islamic tradition, I hope many of you are now interested in political Islam and the region itself, so this will be hopefully very helpful for you. Selloffism in the Islamic tradition was actually a reformist movement. It emerged at the end of the Abbasid caliphate in the 11th century, and all what this movement wanted was the return to the true Islam by peaceful means, and the law of the divine is represented in the Quran and Hadith. Hadith is the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. Violence selloffism is relatively a contemporary phenomena. Violence selloffism was introduced arguably in the writings of the Egyptian scholar Sayed Qutub in the mid-60s. It also, interestingly, developed with the rise of left radical groups and movement in Europe in the 60s and the 70s. Now, Sayed Qutub himself presented pan-Arabism policies of a president, Jamal Abdel Nasser, and called for a regime change. He was later arrested for plotting against President Nasser and was executed in August 1966. Now, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the current leader of Al-Qaeda, was heavily influenced by Sayed Qutub. Violence selloffism was also materialised in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, yet the milestone arguably is the Kuwaiti crisis in 1991. The occupation of Kuwait divided the Arab world between those who rejected the occupation, mainly Syria and Egypt at that time, and those who accepted it, such as Yemen and the PLO. The American soldiers were not welcomed in the Holy Land by the Arab Mujahideen in Afghanistan. They offered the House of Saud, Saudi Arabia, to come and fight for them and drive the Iraqi army outside Kuwait, but not to bring the Western power in the region. Now, what happened is that the House of Saud rejected Osama bin Laden's offer to defend the Holy Shrine the latter then vowed to attack the US and its ally in the region. Another development you might find interesting, and perhaps nobody speaks about it sadly, is the Algerian Civil War in 1991 up until 2002, and also the Bosnian War in 1992 until 1995. Those two events had their own share in the rise and the development of violent selloffism. The establishment of al-Qaeda in 1993 in Afghanistan witnessed the boron of the new trend of global selloffy, radicalism, or violent selloffism. While Taliban, grwp islamic arme and front islamic disalw had locally based agendas in Afghanistan and Algeria, the last two were operated in Algeria and France, inside France, al-Qaeda itself transformed the agenda of jihad or violent selloffism from local to global to the international level. Al-Qaeda began to attack the US and its ally in the world. The first attack was the US army residence in Goldmohor hotel in Adan in 1992, followed by the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The disastrous attack, of course, was the attack of 11 September in 2001 in New York. Having said all of what I was talking about now, the perfect representation of the disorder of Arab regional order is the rise of what's so called the Islamic states in Iraq and Syria in 2014. The occupation of Iraq in 2003 was yet another turning point of the development of violent selloffism. It gave the birth to the Islamic state. The grwp, though, is one of its kind. It does not only use violence to achieve its goal, but also rejects the nation-state system and divides the world into two groups, the House of Islam, Dar al Islam, where all the Muslims are subjected to their version of Islam, which is a selloffism, and the House of War, Dar al Harb, basically those who are against them. Be Muslim or not Muslim, by the way. Unlike some other Islamic movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan in Egypt and elsewhere, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which believe in the political engagement, such as election and democracy, parliamentary accountability, Daesh or the Islamic state, does not intend to engage in this political life or contribute to the building of such order. It's exclusively used violence to achieve its utopian ideal caliphate. Although it has lost much of its territory by now, the grwp will continue to pose security threat, not only at the regional level, but also at the international level, too. Now, to conclude, and I hope I didn't take much of your time, the region still lacks regional leadership to solve this regional problem. The subsystem lacks a security system, and it is unique for the absence of region-wide architecture. The region's contested states seem to be unraveling into smaller communities and sects, religious affiliation, tribal groups and ethnicities. Now, as a consequence, the region inhabits signs of deep social trauma and crisis of identity at both state and the society level. The region still suffers from the lack of an alternative forces to fulfil the expectation of the people, as I said, and eventually we will see in the future that those radical groups will still be appealing to the public to take over as an alternative forces to achieve change, whatever that change is. Thus, violent sylwfism is a phenomenon that will not cease at any time soon. Not only that, violent sylwfism catalyst on other sub-state actors, mainly the Shi'at militia, Iran proxies in the region mainly, namely Hezbollah in Lebanon, that is recently being active in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen. I hope you all followed the news. Just two, three days ago there was a rocket, there was lunch from Yemen against Saudi Arabia, and we also have this recent phenomena of the popular mobilisation units or forces PMU in Iraq. Those Iranian-backed militia pose a threat not only to the security of these countries they operate in, but also pose a massive threat to the stability of the entire region. I'll stop here. Thank you very much.