 Welcome, everyone, to the sixth annual Resolve Network Global Forum to say a bit about Resolve's work and introduce today's event. The Resolve Network is a global consortium of researchers, research organizations, policy makers, practitioners housed here at the United States Institute Peace. Our research initiatives will span thematic and geographical areas, including Southeast Asia, focus on topics, including community-based armed groups, local peace building initiatives, and violent extremist disengagement and reconciliation. This includes original, originally commissioned research, capacity-building efforts, and convenings to provide key insights on specific aspects of violent extremism that enhance and inform preventing and countering violent extremism research policy and practice. For more on our work, please visit our website and follow us on Twitter. Our work would not be possible without our ongoing partnerships with the US Department of State, Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, the Global Engagement Center, and the US Agency for International Development, Africa Bureau. We'd like to simply recognize and thank them for their consistent support, partnership, and commitment to Resolve, and for championing the importance of research and growing the evidence base for policies and programs. We are excited to host you all today for the third public event in our annual virtual forum series. For discussion on conflict and violent extremism in Southeast Asia, we'll special focus on examining the trends in Malaysia and the Philippines. This event will include brief presentations, moderate discussion, and opportunity for you, the audience, to ask your own questions for a moderated Q&A. We're encouraged you to ask questions to the speakers. You can submit your questions on the USIP event page, where you're watching us webcast or on USIP's YouTube or Twitter using hashtag ResolveForum. The session moderator will incorporate some of the questions into the broader conversation with the speakers. As a reminder, the event is on the record and will be available on USIP's YouTube afterwards. With more than self-work on Southeast Asia, please visit our website. I'm going to introduce my fellow USIP colleague, Brian Harding, senior expert on Southeast Asia, to give opening remarks and to set the stage for today's event. Brian is kindly editing a series of articles on the peace process in the southern Philippines by local researchers and civil society. Please do check it out on the USIP website. Before handing it over to Brian, on behalf of USIP and Resolve, thank you again. We are looking forward for an insightful conversation. Over to you, Brian. Morning, everyone. I'm thrilled to be able to join my colleagues from the Resolve Network for today's event. I joined USIP nearly two years ago to lead an expansion of the Institute's work on Southeast Asia. This, of course, comes in the context of an increased focus at USIP on East Asia more broadly, including on China, US-China strategic competition and US-China strategic stability. I think we can say that interest in Southeast Asia and Washington has waxed and waned over the decades, but it's been really been on the rise for about the last 20 years, following a deep trough after the withdrawal of US engagement in Indochina in the 1970s. The wake-up call, at least for those who weren't paying attention, was 9-11 and the realization that extremist groups in the Southern Philippines posed an international terrorist threat. This was quickly reinforced by the 2002 Bali bombing. Washington's interest in the region expanded, starting in the mid-2000s in the context of a rising China. And today, Southeast Asia is the region of the world where competition between the United States and China is playing out most acutely, making it increasingly central to US global. But in my view, the issues of extremism in Southeast Asia and of Southeast Asia's geopolitical importance are not mutually exclusive. Extremism drives instability in several of Southeast Asia's most consequential countries, which both negatively impacts people's lives and tangible ways in these places, but it also drains resources that can be better deployed elsewhere and creates drags on economic growth in these countries. The United States has a major strategic stake in supporting the development of peaceful, cohesive and prosperous Southeast Asian nations that can be bulwarks of stability. We therefore need to invest in the work that drive, that could reduce the drivers of instability in the region. This is the context in which we're developing our new programming at USIP on Southeast Asia. And most importantly for our event today, we're excited to be in the process of launching a new initiative to support sustainable peace in the Southern Philippines. With the establishment of the Bansomaro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, there exists now the most promising opportunity in a generation to forge a lasting peace and remove persistent drivers of instability. And success in the barn would not only improve the lives of its residents, but it will also make for a more peaceful and stable Republic of the Philippines and ultimately a better partner for the United States. US institutions need to be more engaged in this and we hope to lead that way. With that, I'm pleased to introduce Haroro Ingram who's gonna be the moderator for the panel discussion today. It's really been a pleasure to get to know Haroro quite well over the last couple of years. He's been an essential partner for me personally and for USIP as we've conceived of this new work in the Southern Philippines. And I think Haroro will say a word on this himself when he gets the, when he has the floor. In the way of introduction, Haroro is also a senior research fellow with the program on extremism at George Washington University and a member of the Resolved Network's Research Advisory Council. His extensive experience in Southeast Asia, in particular on the ground in Mindanao. Thematically, he's a real thought leader on the role of propaganda and charismatic leadership and evolution and appeal of violent non-state political movements. Haroro will be leading a discussion with an extremely impressive group of scholars that he will introduce from the region. And I certainly look forward to hearing what they have to say. So without further ado, Haroro, over to you. Thank you, Brian. And well, firstly, good morning to our audience. And thank you, of course, to USIP and Resolve, particularly Alastair and his team for inviting me to moderate today's event. We have an excellent lineup of speakers, but before we begin, please send through your questions. There is no need to wait until the end. And I'm gonna make sure that we get through as many of those questions as possible during the discussion and the Q&A. USIP are doing really fantastic work through Asia and through Southeast Asia, particularly now under Brian's leadership and direction. I think that the work that is occurring at the moment, particularly in the Southern Philippines, that we'll be covering today, but is also, I think covered pretty extensively in the article series, will be of interest to everyone that's listening here. And I'm really looking forward to today's discussion, where we'll touch upon a lot of those issues, but also beyond the Southern Philippines to Sabah as well. And so it's on that note that I am really happy to introduce our first speaker for today, Dr. Samuel B. Henkin, a researcher with the Geospatial Research Unit, GU at Start, University of Maryland. Now, late last year, Dr. Henkin published a policy note with the Resolve Network titled Dynamic Dimensions of Radicalization and Violent Extremism in Sabah, Malaysia. So do take a moment to track down that publication. Dr. Henkin, thank you, over to you. Thank you, good evening and good morning to all of you who are attending live. So we know that terrorism and violent extremism in Southeast Asia are a highly complex phenomenon involving different groups with different origins, ideologies and causes. Yet I think the legacies of the unique and shared geohistorical contexts of the region continue to shape the security landscape, connecting states and populations across borders and gendering discernible trends, many of which I think we're gonna discuss today in relation to violent extremism peace building. Now, varying degrees of weak governance with high levels of political instability and porous border regions, coupled with already existing security and social vulnerabilities, draw our attention to the dynamic nature of radicalization and violent extremist risk in Southeast Asia and acutely in the Philippines and Malaysia. Now, despite the comparative rarity of terrorist attacks in Malaysia to date, since 2013, the Malaysian government has revealed that over a hundred Malaysians have joined the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Radicalization and recruitment to violence remains a risk in Malaysia as evidenced by more than 430 tear-related arrests since 2013, and relatedly, the foiling of over 30 Malaysian tear plots, many of which expose the links to violent extremist organizations in the Southern Philippines in just a couple of months ago. I believe that Malaysia offers a unique lens to evaluate the changing dynamics of radicalization and extremism in Southeast Asia as the external threat and homegrown threat of extremism is deeply rooted in regional geohistorical legacies. The trajectory of militant Islam and its propensity to drive violent extremism in the region continues to aggregate political and religious tensions straining the region's complex social fabric as longstanding insurgencies, extremist violence and close intercultural relations interact to produce a threat landscape that requires a granular view to better understand. Often, violent extremism in the region is examined as a mere product of broader transnational jihadist activity rather than a multifaceted amalgamation of regional history and local political, ethnic religious and socio-cultural dynamics. This is just one of the underlying assumptions of violent extremism context in the region that shape how preventing and countering violent extremism policy and practices implementing. Challenging this assumption serves as the starting point for my local partners at the International Islamic University of Malaysia and the University of Malaysia Sabah and I's approach to understanding radicalization trends in Malaysia and particularly Sabah. Threats and risk of violent extremism trends are especially pronounced and manifest with severe consequences in the Malaysian state of Sabah which is located in northeast Borneo. Sabah suffers from decades of poor governance and lack of state capacity, economic and political marginalization, irregular migration and proximity to violent extremist conflict in the southern Philippines that pose great potential for radicalization and terrorist threats. In the past, Sabah was used as a staging area where regional violent extremist organizations like Demais Lamea trained and coordinated attacks. Today, violent extremist organizations not only use Sabah as a transit point but also actively exploit this unique geo-historical circumstances, clandestine flows and ethno-religious grievances to radicalize and possibly recruit and pop impressionable Malaysians and Filipino expatriates living in Sabah. Evidence suggests that Filipino violent extremist organizations particularly Abu Sayyaf group exploit these insecurities and are actively recruiting Malaysians and Filipino expats in Sabah. Illicit and illegal smuggling, acts of piracy and kidnapping in and around Sabah also add layers of complexity to these security challenges. Additionally, geographic proximity to the southern Philippines and Indonesia and the city presence of a significant number of foreign migrants has gradually reshaped the ethno-religious and cultural landscapes of Sabah adding further complexity to the social, political and economic relations that affect radicalization risk in the region. Of significant concern are poor border regulation along Sabah's porcelain and sea borders and a significant number of clandestine cross-border channels often associated with irregular migration. In political and public discourse, irregular migration in Sabah is often pejoratively linked to violent extremism and increasing criminal activities. However, long-standing trade routes and close cross-border family ties have facilitated highly unregulated migrant flows throughout the region for centuries. More recently, growth in economic opportunities in Sabah increased levels of violence and instability in the southern Philippines and Indonesia and Malaysia's industries that rely on foreign migrants have complicated the regulation of migration into Sabah. In the process of avoiding detection, the regular migration in Sabah occurs through clandestine cross-border channels. These clandestine routes incorporate complex waterways and jungle paths that prove highly difficult to monitor even with the establishment of the Eastern Sabah security zone. Although these clandestine routes are legacies of transnational kinship networks and long-standing patterns of migratory movement and trade increases in illicit and illegal services and smuggling activities actively exploit these clandestine channels as well. Clandestine channels have also facilitated advanced form of maritime violence including piracy and kidnapping for ransom in the Sewell cell of the sea. Since 2013, international maritime borough data shows that these territorial waters are one of the most pirate prone in the world. The dividing line between kidnapping for ransom, piracy and violent extremist activities are blurred in the region as violent extremist organizations, pirate gangs and so-called kidnapped for ransom syndicates who may or may not be affiliated with violent extremist organizations perpetrate maritime violence. Irrespective of the complicated nature of policing the waterways in the Sewell cell of the sea enhanced regional maritime security collaboration between Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia has great potential to reduce maritime violence and should be a priority. Regardless of the really important threats posed by the network of these clandestine channels and their growing shadow economies, narratives that blame irregular migration for increasing violent extremist activities in Sabah lack credible evidence. Effective PCVE programs need to address narratives that blame irregular migration, especially from the Philippines for increasing violent extremist activities in Sabah. A more fruitful approach to mitigating the dynamics undergirding radicalization risk in Sabah is to enhance research and operational strategies that distinguish between banal everyday life activities and the real threat of clandestine movement and flows that are advantageous for violent extremist and criminal organizations exploitation. Overall, the ongoing exploitation of existing vulnerabilities by violent extremist organizations and the growing presence of online radicalization informed by transregional and transnational militant Islamic ideology particularly related to the Islamic state and affiliates appear to be the most significant trends of violent extremism risk in Malaysia. However, trends and impacts of violent extremism in the region are rarely restricted to one country as we start to think more comprehensive and effective ways to support violence prevention and peace building specific regional challenges must be addressed. Moreover, there's a complex layering to the unpredictable security situation in the region especially now that the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced increased stressors. I'll conclude by saying that ultimately addressing these issues necessitates the prioritization of efforts to build local PCVE research capacity and programmatic implementation to foster individual and community resilience that works best for the local context. I truly believe in research and PCV programming that imagines alternative futures and trajectories for communities vulnerable to violent extremism. The work of my fellow panelists and many of you here offer a hopeful path forward as we continue the work of violence prevention and peace building in Southeast Asia. I'll end there and thank you and I look forward to discussing these matters further. That's great, thank you. Sam, next we have Mr. Joseph Franco, a research fellow with the Centre of Excellence for National Security at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. Next week, actually, Joe has an article out with the Asia Centre's Mindanao series titled Protecting the Peace, the Philippines Military in Mindanao and the Road Ahead. And I would definitely recommend that you drop by the Asia Centre website to check out Joe's article when it's released. Thank you, Joe, over to you. Hi, Roro, thanks for the introduction and thanks to USIP and the Resolve Network for inviting me. So I'd just like to continue through some of the themes that Sam will said. So in the Philippines in Mindanao, conflict is very much rooted in a very distinct history of sorts. So there's no monocosal source or perhaps a factor for violent extremism in the area. So just very quickly, the resolve policy keys that I'll be discussing here was based off, what's written in 2020, based off fieldwork in 2019. And of course, a lot of things have already happened. So bottom line up front, I guess there are two big things that were not addressed by the resolve keys because it's, but I'll try to talk through it. So number one, in Mindanao, there seems to be very muted, if any at all reaction to the Taliban takeover. And a lot of the discourse online is more about what's gonna happen to debounce a more autonomous region in the face of the coming elections and during when it became extended into 2025. And of course, the COVID pandemic, which seemed to have affected the operational tempo of the violent extremist organizations. So when we talk about conflict, especially from an outsider looking in, there's always an implication that Mindanao is a passive theater for violent extremist violence. And it is implied there that there is some sort of contagion. But from an academic point of view, when you talk about contagion, contagion is as a literature, it's more based on ethnic and secessionist conflict in Africa. And it's not really that developed when you look at contagion in the field of terrorism studies. And I would hazard to say that when you talk about contagion, a lot of it was happening after 9-11. But how would you define something like contagion? And when we look at recent incidents such as the 2017 Xi Jinping Marawi, some analysts would immediately say like, oh, that's contagion right there. But I'm quite doubtful, so to speak. For example, I was able to talk with the late Chito Sugano, who was captured by the Maude group for 116 days. And he was not really impressed with the foreign fighters that he saw in Marawi. Far from being the guys spouting knowledge and funds, they were people who wanted to fight in Mindanao because they want street cred. So it flips the traditional picture, the traditional assumption that these foreigners are providing more capacity to these terrorist organizations. So there's always that, there's always analysis of Southeast Asia, sometimes simply cannot get away from these presumptions. So going into the resolved piece that I wrote, when there was talk about Wilayam Mindanao or Wilaya Philippines of a sort, this was around 2016, which was around the time that the ISIS Corps was already pulling back from their old Wilaya model. And I think it's very telling in some of the dispatches of ISIS Corps around the time, they never really looked at Isnilon-Hapilon as a Wali. He was an emir, a leader, and it may sounds pedantic, but it's a very important semantic distinction because the idea that Hapilon was a emir rather than a Wali means he didn't, ISIS Corps probably felt that he did not exercise meaningful control. And to be honest, if I was ISIS Corps, I wouldn't want to dilute my franchise, attaching my brand to these guys in Mindanao, Isnilon-Hapilon who did not advance their brand. So it's very critical, especially for policymakers, when you talk about ISIS and IS links or transnational groups operating in Southeast Asia to be very accurate with their reportage. When people talk about ISIS in the Philippines, it is often pushed that the ASG is a monolithic figure. But no, I mean, the Abu Sayyaf group, when people talk about the Abu Sayyaf group, I would always say what faction of the Abu Sayyaf are you talking about? Because when it comes to IS, it's usually, when you say that IS is linked to ASG, it's a faction of the ASG in Sulu in Western Mindanao, or it's a faction of the BIFF in central Mindanao. So that is something that needs to be carefully thought of. And then of course, there's the whole COVID situation. And before COVID, from 2014 to 2019, based on data from the global terrorism database, based out of the US and conflict alert based on the Philippines, there's been this downward trend from 2014 to 2019. Of course, Marawi is a bit of an outlier, but for the most part, it's a downward trend. And COVID has only exacerbated that. During the early days of the pandemic, people were saying like, oh, look, Filipino military checkpoints would become easy targets for the terrorists, but it didn't really happen to be the case. The same movement control restrictions that applied to ordinary people applied to the violent extremist groups. They have to show their identification to health or local government officials. So I mean, if you're a guy who's supposed to be operating so arctitiously, then yeah, that's not a good way for you to go. Very interesting as well. I did some remote field work with some traders, people involved in the barter trade in Western Mindanao, in Zambuanga city, Basilan province, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. And barter trade actually continued at the height of some restrictions. And they were quite aware, they operated at arms length. They didn't want to be mixed up with the business of the VEOs. Because imagine yourself, you're a barter trade, you're already in the gray market, operating in the gray market, bringing in VEOs, violent extremist organization members will only bring more heat into your operations. So now, so what's next, I guess, you know, given COVID is still figures much into the whole CB picture. When you look at the armed forces of Philippines, and this is gonna be the subject of the article that Haroro mentioned, the armed forces of the Philippines seem to be have been quite good in doing kinetic operations. They, for the past couple of months, they killed top leaders of IS link groups, and even leaders, top leadership of the Mindanao Communist Party. And it's a good indication that the armed forces is pretty much desiring to move out of internal security operations into territorial defense. So, but they still have a bit of trouble catching up when it comes to the soft power kind of thing. And if you look at the messaging campaigns that they run, it's like, it's business as usual. You still got red tagging, you still got like some very overzealous military officers saying partisan things, even though the armed forces are very stringent on paper, social media policy. So that's something that needs to be looked at. And of course, the big elephant in the room, pardon the pun, the cliche is the elections. The elections are coming up in the Philippines May 2022. And historically, the campaign period, the lead up to the elections often has a uptick in violence. So that's something that we really need to keep tabs on. So I guess that's it for me. For now, I'll be happy to look deeper into some of the other questions that the audience member or my fellow panel members will raise. So thanks. Great, thank you, Joe. Look, it's a real privilege to conclude the opening remarks for this morning with Ms. Amina Rasul Binardo, the president of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy. Ms. Rasul Binardo's achievements in high-level positions are too numerous actually to give justice to in this brief introduction, a presidential advisor on youth affairs and author, Harvard graduate, and broadly recognized as one of the most highly influential people in this field. So thank you, ma'am. The floor is yours. Thank you, Haroro and Salam to everyone. Thank you for having me on this panel. I'm actually on the same page as Professor Hankins and my friend, Joe Frankel. We're looking at the dynamics that have historically given rise to terrorism and violent extremism. But what I'll do is I'll give you a snapshot of this dynamics from the point of view of someone who comes from the community of a bank Zamoro. I am a tausug of Sulu. Today, that's a hotspot of violent extremism. But it wasn't always so. Growing up in Sulu, we were relatively well off as a province. Even though we were, as a minority group, neglected by a national government, one factor was the barter trade with Saba. Saba was always seen as part of the Sulu Sultanate. So the barter trade was seen as local trade. And working in Saba was like working in another province of the Philippines. So we were relatively well off before the imposition of martial law in 1972. We had better access to water and electricity compared to many of the provinces in Mindanao, which are now far richer than us. What happened? When my hometown of Jolo, the capital of Sulu, was bombed in 1974, we lost our infrastructure. Then we suffered capital flight. And then we lost our best and brightest minds. And the loss of these three of these crucial elements that are needed for economic growth and at the hands of our own government has not been replaced. The Liberation Fronts, both the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, grew from the abuses against the Muslims of Mindanao, a situation that the Organization of Islamic Conference at that time had called genocide. The Moro National Liberation Front, which started it all, fought a war for independence. And claimed that the Sultanates of Sulu were sovereign and should never have become part of the Republic of the Philippines. The situation was so bad that thousands of Muslims from Sulu and other places in Mindanao fled to Sabah. The fact that Malaysia at the time was suspicious of then President Marcos because of the discovery of the plan to invade Sabah made the Malaysian government more welcoming to the refugees. Today, of course, that welcome has really worn thin as we now have hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in Sabah, not just Muslims, but Filipinos from other parts of the country and they're all considered illegal migrants with very little rights. My family, like many, many Muslim families, lost our home during the devastating bombing of Hulu in 1974. This is the same situation in other Muslim communities in Mindanao where the military attacked to drive out the Moro National Liberation Front. So from a relatively well-off community, Sulu, Lanao del Sur and other areas, we Muslims of Mindanao now belong to the poorest 10 provinces of the Philippines. Marcos, knowing that it was a no-win situation, even with superior military power, initiated a peace process with the Moro National Liberation Front. And decades after, the peace process between government and the MNLF and then later with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has succeeded. The Liberation Fronts have accepted autonomy in lieu of independence. That's why Joe was talking about Barm, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, but the memories of those horrible years and the martial law remain in spite of the success of the peace process. Humiliation, discrimination, poverty, add fuel to the fire. Thus the entry of Al-Qaeda and then ISIS found welcome in some areas in Muslim Mindanao where poverty is overwhelming, where public services and governance are very weak and where transnational crimes mentioned by Professor Henkin, such as gun running, drug smuggling, kidnapped for ransom or human traffic, these are economic opportunities that are readily available if you are linked to the right armed group. Now the idea of an Islamic caliphate has found acceptance in this group, such as the Abu Sayyaf. Particularly since it had already been raised decades ago by the Jama'a Islamya of Indonesia. This is the situation we are in now. History has developed the foundation and we haven't really changed the situation to effectively counter or prevent violent extremism from further taking root or growing in such fertile soil, we have to consider this dynamics inherited from the past. We also have to consider the impact of the growing acceptability of ISIS, Taliban, interpretation of Islam. And this we have seen in some of our own Muslim religious leaders which distorts attitudes towards other faiths, curtail the rights of women. What is worrisome to me is the trend for young women, young girls even to be married to extremist leaders, to extremist soldiers, to secure either security or power. Such marriages connect families in Zulu with violent extremists in Indonesia and Malaysia. So your families become enmeshed in violent extremism and they become very loyal parts of the base. Thus we have to consider this cultural aspect. We have to consider the role that women play both in peace building and in conflict. My government has already developed and implemented a national action plan for the prevention of violent extremism. It has a plan for women peace and security. But my worry is that these plans are not really integrated into the local government plans and still has weak links to the civil society. It is the implementation that has to be strengthened. So let me end the snapshot here. Thank you. Well, thank you. That was fantastic. And thank you of course to all the panelists. I think that perhaps now we can begin the discussion. I'd actually like to start by asking Mr. Minner a question. Could you speak a little about the role that women have played in peace efforts in Mindanao, both historically, but also looking to the present and into the future? You know, Muslims in the Philippines, Muslim communities in the Philippines, like the rest of Muslims out East Asia, have always historically been pluralistic. Historically, we have never had problems with women's participation, whether it's in business or politics. That's never been a problem. So the role women play traditionally can be in a way harnessed if we are going to implement effective strategy for the prevention of violent extremism. Because they have the knack. They know how to deal with conflicts. They know how to talk to their neighbors. They monitor what's going on in their communities. But the basic problem now with the entry of these radical thoughts, the distortion of Islam, especially with the win of the Taliban in Afghanistan, this has given, shall we say, more power to some religious leaders, ultra-fundamentalists, who are looking at the role of women severely curtailed. And this is why it has become more acceptable to marry off even young girls, to marry off daughters, so that you could secure a political base or you secure economic base. And when you look at a real effective plan to prevent violent extremism, you now have to look at the roles that women used to play, playing now and can still play. And see how do you strengthen their role so that they can become the peace builders that they had always been in Muslim society? Thanks. I mean, it certainly, many of your insights there reminded me of an article that was actually just published this week by Ms. Aliyah Adam by the Asia Center. That covers a lot of those issues about the role of women in peace efforts. I must say that in my own experiences, and particularly in Lanell, the survey I've spent, I guess, the majority of my time, the role that women have played in civil society has been really extraordinary and very impactful, particularly in the aftermath of the Marawi siege. I mean, Sam, I know that gender dynamics has been a real focus for your team, the kind of research that your team is focused on over the course of your projects. Could you add your insights to this, the trends, I guess, in the gender dynamics that you see in Sabah and their broader implications for our policy audience in particular? Yeah, absolutely. And I think Amina kind of summed up some really great points. And I just briefly like to add that one of the things that I think is really beneficial to gender inclusivity in PCV programming and violence prevention more generally is we have seen a general trend of women perpetrators of terrorist violence across Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia, and more over those acts as being drawn from so-called lone actors, which I think is a problematic term, but for the purposes of this conversation. Thinking about radicalization processes online and then how that filters in. And one of the things that I think is most relevant when we're thinking about gender inclusivity in violence prevention and then, of course, in peacebuilding itself is acknowledging that violent extremism and radicalization into violent extremism practices, risk and vulnerabilities impact individuals differently regardless of their subjectivities and identities. And so acknowledging that there is a group of individuals, women, particularly in Southeast Asia, who have been embedded in peace processes and violence and so on and so forth for a very long period of time. We'd be remiss not to take advantage of the institutional knowledge that can spread from local contexts, not necessarily a top-down approach, which we've seen a lot of when it comes to gender-inclusive PCV frameworks. Sam, Joe, I mean, you've spoken quite a bit about the different groups. I mean, I think it might be a chance for us to kind of dive in to some extent. I mean, the role that women have played in the various kind of... Well, let's take the Marawi siege, for example. If you could perhaps reflect on the role that women played in the siege. I know that that's actually been a topic of a lot of kind of analysis. Some of the really high profile kind of matriarchal figures that were there. I mean, you're one of the experts in these groups. If you could reflect on, I guess, the role that women played in those groups. Sure. Yeah, of course, in the Marawi siege, the big caveat there is that there's probably a lot of stories and a lot of accounts that we'll never get. Some of them may be, you know, some of the material content that's out there might be, you know, in archived, in military archive. So we wouldn't be able to know. But for the most part, I think women played a key role in the lead up to the fight. And I guess the most emblematic or the example is Farhana Mahute, which was like the matriarch of the late Mahute brothers who led the siege. And she was known as a kingmaker in the Lanao provinces. And of course, there are different accounts. I mean, some people would say that she was a legitimate businessman woman. And some would say that she was like this kingpin or queenpin kind of figure. So, and I think it's a reflection. I think in the Philippines, for instance, it's an equal opportunity conflict zone. I know that sounds quite flippant. But hear me out. I mean, if you look at the Philippines, if you take a step back and you look at the other groups, other non-state armed groups in the Philippines, you look at the new people's army. The leadership of the new people's army, I would have to say probably nearly 50% of them are women. At the tactical level, their medics, their logistics people, women. I remember talking to some old timers in the armed forces, they would tell me like, oh, the people who are listening in to Philippine army radio frequencies, they're women. And then I asked him, Sarge, how so? And then they said, oh, they've got that beautiful female handwriting, whatever that means. So it's an equal opportunity kind of thing. So I guess building upon what Samuel and Amina said, women are not just passive victims. Whether it's in Mindana or in other places in the Philippines, it's an equal opportunity game and you're losing out. If you cut out women from, I mean, I'm not saying it's happening, but if you ignore it at your own peril, if you don't bring in women into the table, because I mean, they can't be just peace builders. I mean, they can be tapped by the other side as well as fighters. And just very quickly, I mean, you look at the armed forces of the Philippines. I mean, a lot of the civil military operations people of the civil relations people, intelligence people, they're women. There's women tank commanders who, yeah, who fought even in Marawi. So yeah, it's an equal opportunity kind of thing. May I add the Haroram? I'm pleased to. Yeah, now that we're talking about Marawi, Farhana is a really interesting case. She's the new poster girl for Muslim women as perpetrators. She was, she belonged to a very influential political clan, but somewhere along the way, her sons and men in her family who were connected with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and had gotten indoctrination, I guess when they were in Egypt, veering towards the violent extremist side, she got indoctrinated. And because she was politically and in a business savvy, she became the financier of her sons. So the Mauti boys would not have succeeded without her. And this is not strange because like I said, women have had a tradition of being accepted as leaders in our communities, both in Muslim Indanao and Indonesia, Malaysia. In Marawi, in Lanaudel Sur, for instance, the one woman who stood up against then President Marcos and won the election for governor, Princess Tarhata Lukman, and defeated the crony of then President Marcos, won overwhelmingly supported even by the religious leaders. And she was well known for her ability to mediate clan conflicts. Elsewhere in Muslim Indanao, you see women who have been supported by men in their community to assume leadership post. My mother won twice as a senator of the Philippines. And she got more votes than the men who ran for the Senate. But that I fear is changing a little bit because of the rise of influence of groups like the Taliban. When they got Afghanistan, that sent such waves through communities. And they may not be apparent in many of the social media sites that we frequent. But I have been at the receiving end of some of these thoughts. Recently the government passed a law. The president has already signed into law, a ban, a law banning child marriage, increasing the age of marriage to 18. And there's a backlash from some leaders from the Muslim South saying it is not culturally acceptable and it's not Islamic. And there is a movement trying to get government to change that, this cannot be. You have to find a way to get any kind of an action plan we have for the prevention of violent extremism, for women, peace and security, for clean and honest elections. You have to find a way to make it in a way work within the Islamic framework because there is so much wealth of knowledge coming from Al-Azhar, from the Islamic universities in Indonesia, from Nadlatul Ulama, from Muhammadiyah, that strengthen these rights and these strategies that we have to secure our communities by preventing violent extremist thoughts from coming in. That's my worry, Harora. Thank you, Matt. I also should take this, I think it's a perfect time to mention the She Talks Peace podcast. It's available on A-Cast. I'm sure it's available on other podcast platforms. I'm hosted, of course, by Mr. Minnesot Bernardo. So do subscribe and everything else you need to do. It's available on A-Cast. She Talks Peace. Thank you. No problem. I actually wanna move away a little bit from this set of threats. I could have brought in our threat spectrum a little bit. We received a question from the audience, actually, for Sam. How does the rural communist terrorist activity in Sarawak and other areas of Malaysia that was so devastating in the 60s and 70s fit in with today's violent extremism? So that's a really great question. And I think one of the most important aspects of thinking about the distinction between what we're seeing or trends what we're seeing in Malaysia currently is the distinction between Peninsula Malaysia and East Malaysia of Sarawak and Sabah and kind of the increasing ethno-religious policies that are kind of shifting attention to perhaps cleavages between East and West Malaysia, right? And I think that there is a lot of discussion in kind of national policy levels of kind of what the role of Islam is in kind of shaping discussions about violent extremism. And so what we see is that we have a lot of tendency to kind of place, whether it's in communist insurgencies or other types of extremism on the back burner in Malaysia. And a lot of those conversations are kind of happening in kind of smaller research centers or university settings where we're kind of thinking through the ways in which historical legacies of kind of those grievances which still exist, if not are amplified today, how those shape kind of conversations. But we are seeing kind of a real intent focus on the Eastern borders of Sabah less so internally or at least in presently that kind of shifts back and forth as kind of news and context shapes the way that this discussion occurs over time. But I think that we'll see an increase of interest in kind of refocusing the lens of what violence and violent extremism entails in Sabah in the next couple of years or at least I hope so. I mean, I really have to follow on your comments to then ask Joe about the NPA. I mean, that's the obvious follow on question after that. I mean, whenever I've met with Philippines military officers, you know, this is always an issue that emerges in those discussions. And so I guess, how do you position, I guess, the NPA within the spectrum of threats that the Philippines needs to deal with and which direction are they trending, I guess? Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think that's when people look at Minda now, especially if you're not a Filipino or you're looking at it from the outside, people tend to forget that there is an active communist insurgency. And I guess it's been very hard to resolve the communist insurgency because they've embedded themselves in the rent-seeking behavior of some politicians. I mean, it's an open secret that a lot of leaders, some of them have gone on to become national leaders, were chummy with the communist insurgency. There is also, especially in Eastern Minda now, there's a lot of plantation operations. There's a lot of mining operations which the NPA can target as sources of finances and weapons and explosives, sometimes IT equipment. What is interesting is that what happens is that if the NPA, it just adds on into this, what I can say, like a permissive milieu, right? I mean, here is another entity that contests the government. And the reason why V groups, Islamist groups are able to stay on, have a lot of staying power and the ability to get into communities, it's because there's this vacuum of governance when there are multiple contesting sources of coercion are happening. What is surprising though, is that in spite of the decades of the NPA and some of the liberation fronts for being in close proximity with each other, they haven't really, they don't have a lot of alliances on the tactical level. You'll see an odd B-40 anti-tank weapon in the hands of an NPA produced out of by the MILF, by the then arm doing of the MILF. You would see liaison officers of the revolutionary fronts linking up with the NPA, but there was never really solid, meaningful linkages between them. And that's fairly surprising. I would ascribe that, that maybe the CPP is quite puritan in their ideological ways. But again, I think it's more a reflection of Mindanao. Mindanao is actually rich enough to sustain different violent armed groups, right? I think there isn't the literature, there isn't conflict literature. There are some areas that are just too poor to revolve, right? I mean, at the end of the day, it's logistics, right? Whether you're the NPA or the ASG or the BIFF or the MILF, you need resources, right? So Mindanao has those illicit economies that you can tap on into. So I think what's happening with the NPA, I think it's a bit of an exaggeration. Of course, it's quite a political play when people say like, oh, the biggest threat of the Philippines is the NPA. Not really. Even if you look at the NPA doctrine, it's about the overthrow of the republic and the installation of the people's dictatorship. I don't know. Communism has never been that popular in the Philippines. So, yeah. Unless they've got some big rebranding going on, but I doubt it. Well, this might be a chance to kind of broaden the discussion now. Even more, I guess. I mean, to what extent very practical, financial, for example, drivers, you know, that human security, but particularly financial drivers, to what extent are they, you know, the most prominent in terms of recruitment efforts and propaganda efforts, influence efforts by violent extremist groups? Perhaps we'll go with a bit of a reverse order here. Sam, could you start and maybe reflect on that a little? I mean, these kind of very impoverished communities often seem to be certainly in the places where I've worked seem to kind of provide, often provide the fodder for these groups. What's the situation in Saba? So, I think that's a really good point. One of the things that I think that's most really interesting and relevant is we talk about violent extremism as a security problem, but we know that it's also an economic problem, a social problem, a cultural problem, and a political problem. And the economic aspect, I think, is that there's some ambiguity there, right? Because there's discussions about differences between absolute poverty and relative poverty when it comes to radicalization factors and risks. And I think that that's important, right? Because just because an area or individuals poor doesn't mean that they're more vulnerable to violent extremism. I don't think that that's kind of the direction of your question, but I kind of wanna start with that, right? And one of the things that I think is most fascinating about kind of the economic opportunities that Saba offers, and then, of course, the kind of infusion of these illicit economies that both Fiona and Mina had talked about as we're starting to see kind of the traditional rise of trade, but shifts in kind of how violent extremism actually, violent extremists, excuse me, actually kind of earn income, whether that is through, say piracy, whether that is through smuggling and kind of what we don't necessarily associate with violent extremist organizations, but more kind of criminal organizations. And that blurring is kind of fascinating in Southeast Asia, and particularly in the kind of tri-border region of Indonesia, Southern Philippines, and in Saba. And one of the things that I think we examined a lot in Saba is whether or not kind of the relative deprivation related to migration and irregular migration, we're talking anywhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million irregular migrants in Saba who do face a lot of stigmatization, marginalization, and increasingly so, particularly since COVID-19, but the evidence just continues to show weak connections between both absolute kind of poverty and relative poverty. But what I think is really worth kind of engaging with is now that we know that those necessarily might be causal, but what's the kind of the correlations there, right? So is it kind of living arrangements, grievances, and then increasing exposure to kind of more extremist Islamic literature in a variety of ways or on landspaces? And so I think that that's a real important question when we're thinking about the economies and political economy of Ion Extremism in the region in Saba more generally. Yeah, I mean, Mr. Mead, I think I'll turn to you next. I mean, I remember my colleagues and friends in Lanau speaking to me about these young men dressed in black with backpacks on that were full of pesos going into the jungles on these isolated kind of communities and villages. Professor Akram Latif actually has published an article in this Mindanao series that recounts a specific engagement with one of these villages. It says, of course, in the Sila Capellago, the, you know, again, my friends from there will talk about Abu Shabu, you know, they'll talk about the role of drugs there and those factors. I'm curious as to, I guess, your take on this question and also these linkages with broader criminal activities and transnational criminal networks. Yeah, well, you know, there are two strategies here. One strategy, which I think the NPA, NDF, has implemented extremely well is what they call the tax, right, Joe? The rebel tax. And plain and simple, it's extortion. If you want your mining company, you want your bus line to be able to operate in peace, you pay attacks to the CPP, NPA, NDF, and the accounts by our defense establishment is that it's annually, it's in the billions. And I always thought that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the other groups could actually have workshops with the CPP, NPA, NDF and learn the tactics, but that's one. And it's very systematic, very organized, but it is by region or by province. Then there is the tapping of criminality. And here, even during the time of President Estrada, if you remember, Joe, there was an infamous woman named Marimar, do you remember her? She was the war lady, the drug lady. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well known, drug lady of Lanao Sur. She was, she started as a shabu dealer in Chiapo, was able to parlay it into an empire and even made her husband mayor of her town and the town loved her because her town had electricity, paved roads, et cetera. So you have that kind of money in a poor community and if you want to secure your business, then you'll share it with the extremist groups or the armed groups that are around to give you protection. So getting money from a poor community is not that much of a problem. They get the money from trades like this, from criminal activities such as this and then they play Robin Hood and they use that money to give the poorest of the poor and that's how you buy the loyalty of the communities. And that's a cycle that we have to find a way of breaking. And then of course there's the money that comes from abroad, remittances from relatives who knowingly or unknowingly are funneling remittances into the operations of violent extremist groups. So I'm glad that Joe remembers Murray Maher. Joe, do you have anything that you'd like to add? I should also just clarify for the audience that shabu is methamphetamine, Smith. Jared? Yeah, just a few points. Like number one, the new people's army and again, including the idea that it's the election soon. So the NPA actually has a specific category of election-related taxation, right? So if you're a candidate, you have, there's what they call a permit to campaign. So you pay a PTC fee so that the guys putting up your posters are not harassed or your posters are not taken down or your campaign headquarters in this rural village doesn't get burned down. So there's permit to campaign. And then they also have something more ingenious called like a permit to win. So, but I'm not sure if permit to win actually works right now because the Philippines has transitioned into electronic voting machines because before like old school voting in the Philippines, there are literal ballot boxes that have to be brought using four by fours or walking through jungle tracks. So if you don't pay your permit to win, your votes, your ballot boxes will end up in the river or in the drink or burned somewhere. So there's that. Looking at trust national links, right? Like groups like the ASG and this has been covered by the international media, by the Malaysian press, cross-border kidnappings, it's an industry of sorts, right? You get people, you get spotters telling the people who actually grab the hostages, like where are these people staying? And it sometimes happens that some people, some kidnapped victims are kidnapped by criminal organizations and they pass them on to the ASG. Why? Because the ASG again has the street cred, the reputation that they can wrangle a fee, right? So if I'm like the two-bit criminal gang operating out of Sandahan or maybe out of Bonggaw, I do the spotting, I do the grabbing and then I transfer it off to the ASG. I get my finders fee. The ASG handles the, you know, the multi-million peso or multi-million dollar handoff. So it is an industry. But of course, again, context matters. You know, if you're a kidnapper, you wanna make sure that some of the people, the people that you are grabbing have the capacity to pay. So it's a differentiated paying scale. If you're a Westerner getting kidnapped, million dollar ransom, if you're an Indonesian sailor, maybe a couple million pesos or a hundred thousand pesos of sorts, but there's also what you call express kidnapping and it happens sometimes in Sulu. It's pretty much, they take you to an ATM machine, an ATM, sorry, that's redundant. So an ATM and then they make you withdraw something like 10,000 pesos, 20,000 pesos, which works out to, that's not even a thousand US, right? No, so like maybe 200 US. So express kidnapping. So like those little, little tiny sums and those kinds of incidents, they don't really get reported. They don't really get into the whole, into like terrorism incident databases because it's petty theft, if you think about it. But it is a way for groups like ASG and some of their affiliates to cover, the day-to-day expenses of running an organization. So yeah, and I believe someone mentioned something about local extremist leaders, you know, passing out being the Robin Hood figure, Radulan Sahiron, one of the most notorious commanders of the Sulu-based ASG. He was, he's literally Robin Hood of Sulu because he's quite generous with the ransom payments that he gets from the industry. So there was a line that Joe Contex matters. And I just wanted to kind of throw another factor into this discussion of Contex, which is climate change. And I'm very curious to hear how, well, firstly, the impact that climate change has had and will continue to have in the tri-border region and more broadly, and I guess how it's gonna affect these security threats in the region. I mean, I don't know whether Joe, you wanted to start off and we'll move kind of back through, but climate change has come up several times in the question from the audience and there have been a lot of questions. So yeah, very interested to hear you. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. And it somehow reminded me about how there was, I believe reading something about how drought in Syria pretty much cost the initial unrest there. And there's actually a very specific, I believe it was like several years ago in North Cotabato, there was a drought and it led to some sort of farmers uprising and new people's army who use it for their propaganda. And I believe for some of their operations, I believe it was government catamco. It was a drought in North Cotabato, which is adjacent to where the Bangsam border is. But for, I believe you mentioned something about the tri-border area. I have not seen anything yet specifically, but I can understand where such a question would come from because if you look at say cross-border kidnappings, a lot of it happens during, it doesn't happen in the moon soon season for one. So because it's very rough for boats. So when the Southwest moon soon blows, there's a bit of a downturn when it comes to transnational plot, simply because the seas are too rough. So I don't know, maybe climate change would disturb those patterns. That can be one way, you know, affecting the operational tempo just because the weather doesn't make up for good kidnapping and snatch and grab. The other thing that I would think of is, again, it would probably be the impact of subsistence fishing or subsistence farming, especially in Western Mindanao. I remember when I was still working for the armed forces in Basilan in particular, the areas where there were more attacks by Abu Sayyaf in Basilan at that time, where areas where the fishing was bad. Again, it's not causation. There's this maximum correlation, it's not causation, but it's something that should be looked at. So if climate change leads to prop failures or people not being able to do subsistence fishing, when people go hungry, they'll probably be more receptive to guys in black pants and black shirts with black bags full of cash. So I guess that's how indirect and a roundabout way. I think climate change will not do us any favors when it comes to a violent extremism. I don't see a case where climate change will positively affect efforts to address VE. Yeah, I know that the impact that natural disasters, which seem almost seasonal in the South, whether it's typhoons or there's earthquakes, it's flooding and the impact that it has on certainly the communities that we've been most engaged with. So Sam, could you reflect on the impact of climate change? And feel free, by the way, to broaden it out to Southeast Asia in general. We've got several questions about the broader region. So it would be good to hear from you. Yeah, I promise not to completely nerve out here because the geospatial research unit has actually just opened a massive research portfolio on climate change and violent extremism. So I'll try to keep my remarks as brief as possible, but I think that there are kind of, in the broader literature, three areas in which climate change impacts violent extremism, right? So Joe already touched on the first, which is climate change as an indirect contributor to terrorism. And I think that that is kind of where we see a lot of information based on macro and kind of mesotran. So looking at climate variability, looking at the ways in which climate shocks impact, whether that's a natural disaster or increased exposure or issues with agricultural and fishing, but we also see kind of issues with climate pressure, so that long-term aspects that can lead to factors which make populations more vulnerable and therefore could increase grievances and so forth by competition, feelings of kind of subjective deterioration and kind of your livelihoods. And then I think the other two, climate change is an ideological driver of terrorism and climate change as a means for terrorist exploitation to control our course populations are also relevant, right? So if we start to think about the ways in which environmental insecurities, political insecurities and human insecurities in Southeast Asia all kind of coalesce, right? So as the rising cost of living is kind of shaping the ways in which agricultural practices are happening, whether it's in Saba or to Lwesi, right? And how then the kind of the scarcity but also abundance, right? It's not just about scarcity abundance of resources shift the way in which intergroup tensions function. And so I think that there are some really interesting connections between this kind of climate terrorism nexus that we see not just in Southeast Asia, but more broadly, Joe mentioned Syria and of course there's a lot of discussion about the Sahel, but Southeast Asia I think is an area of the world in which these conversations are just starting to happen. So I think that we're going to get a lot more data related to kind of whether or not frequencies of natural disasters prolong monsoon seasons, trices and so on and so forth kind of impact livelihoods, right? In the end it comes down to kind of livelihoods as violent extremist organizations diversify as they become more dense in their activities kind of going back to our conversations about criminal organizations, but also becoming more agile. And so I think that those are really interesting ways in which to examine kind of the climate security nexus in Southeast Asia region. Excellent, thank you, Sam. I think the next question is actually several questions here directed towards Mr. May and I thought that I'd kind of bring some of those together, giving me about 10 minutes left. A recurring kind of theme here is the National Action Plan, the NAPP CVE. And perhaps you could begin by talking, I guess broadly about the plan and then about, I guess, the rollout and your thoughts on whether it's been successful. We've had several questions kind of asking if you could talk a little bit about the NAPP. Thank you. Well, to begin with, having a national action plan for the prevention of violent extremism is by itself a major thing. Because prior to that, it was always counterterrorism, in which case it was state security, it was really defense, it was at the hands of the military and government. And with this National Action Plan, you opened up the links with civil society, with religious leaders, with women, with youth groups. My worry, but then it's still early days, my worry really is in the implementation. It is not as strong as we need it to be, but at least we have it. And those who are in civil society and who are working on trying to prevent violent extremism, strengthen democracy and protect human rights, I know are doing their best to try and get more support for work that can be done, especially at the community level. Especially giving a role, as far as the Muslim communities are concerned, giving a role for the Muslim religious who are still highly trusted by communities. But in the case of the violent extremist groups that's known as the CPP, NPA, NDF, that's another strategy altogether. A National Action Plan cannot be the same for both groups. It cannot be the same for all countries of ASEAN. It has to be really tailor fit to suit the needs. That's why the women had been lobbying from the time of President Aquino to really have another action plan for the participation of women, which is why you now have a National Action Plan for Women, Peace and Security. Again, just having it is excellent, but again, it needs to be strengthened so that there is actual resources and more collaboration, more participation from women in the, not just the planning, not just the policy side, but the implementation. At this point, let me just say that I have reason to be encouraged, to be optimistic as far as ASEAN is concerned, because it's not just the Philippines. Indonesia has done so much fantastic work in developing their National Action Plan for PVE. In fact, my government might not like it, but I think the Indonesian National Action Plan has better links with civil society and the religious than our own. Indonesia is also looking at how do we deal with children who have been caught in the net of violent extremism. The Philippines, we've got laws already looking at the child soldiers, but Indonesia is trying to do a little bit more. On the ASEAN side, what is extremely encouraging as far as I'm concerned is not just the fact that the countries are cooperating on the state side, on the security side, but there is actually a lot of lobby effort and it's making impact for ASEAN to have a regional action plan for not just prevention of violent extremism, but for women peace and security. Just last month, the ASEAN Commission on Women announced that it's already going to start consultation so that we will have this ASEAN plan for women peace and security. So many reasons to be optimistic, but I'll just keep my fingers crossed. Thank you, Joe. I think we need to follow on from there and really go to perhaps, and perhaps I'm biased when I say this, really one of the central issues, which is the banks and moral authorities, the recent extension of the transition period. I wonder if you could perhaps reflect a little bit and we don't have much time, but if you could reflect a little bit about how the extension to the transition period may affect kind of perceptions of the authority, but also I guess counter violent extremists across the region. Yeah, I mean, the issue with the BTA, right? I think the extension, it's the kind of thing that it's a policy intervention that manages to, it wouldn't satisfy everyone because a lot of people, some groups are already gearing up we know to contest the seats in the parliament and then suddenly, no, some people are quite concerned, right? Because the whole idea of the barm on the BTA is that give locals the authority, the power to change their leaders. I mean, but if you have like a BTA or a barm where the leadership comes from Manila's blessings, and it's inimical to the intent of the barm, but of course it's also valid that it was in the midst of the pandemic. I mean, I do not envy members of the BTA, the people who are running the barm who had to build a regional government in the midst of a pandemic. That's not an easy task. And I believe you alluded to like what does it mean for the region, right? I think a lot of foreign governments, there's a lot of, there's recognition that like the barm, they need all the capacity building, they need all the resources that they could get. And I think that's a great step, not just from a VE perspective, because I mean, if the barm fails, then there's a lot of disillusioned people. There's gonna be a lot of disillusioned people. There's gonna be a lot of people who would think that, you know, they got the short end of the stick that they were, that there was really no sincerity for Manila to end conflict in Mindanao. I guess the only, my take is that, you know, especially from, you know, regional organizations and like funding agencies, is that of course it's not enough to just throw money at the problem. You need to look at, you know, the absorptive capacity. Before the pandemic, I was doing some field work and some of the concerns, especially among the younger officials in the BTA and the barm, they were like, look, you have people in the parliament who spent decades of their lives fighting. They may not be that quick to pick up on, you know, on the nuances or the intricacies of budgeting and preparing big documents and whatnot. So, I mean, sometimes I'm a bit of pessimistic about how the barm works, but at the same time, the absorptive capacity, you know, of some of the people who are there, it has to be like some sort of reality check, right? You know, it's no rainbows and butterflies, as they say. Yeah, thank you, Joe. Look, we're gonna, I guess, finish today's session with a very quick round. And it's the myth buster. I really have to ask, you know, there are so many assumptions and there are so many myths about this region. And when global attention turns to the region, all those myths and assumptions come flooding back. So, you're gonna be restricted to one myth, to one assumption. But if you could bust one myth about your particular area, your particular area of expertise, your area, your region, what would that myth be? And Dr. Hinckin, you're first. Absolutely. Right away, kind of the idea that, particularly with the reorientation of security specialists on Southeast Asia with the rise of ISIS, that the activity that we see from violent extremist organizations in Southeast Asia are kind of built upon Jihadist activity that are transnational nature. But in fact, we are focused on local and regional contexts that always matter most. Fantastic. And thank you for your time as well today. Sam is really great. Joe, would you like to go next? Your myth. Yeah, I guess the myth is that when people talk about groups, especially in the Philippines, when someone said like, a group did this, it's always a great, it's always a wise thing to like look at that there's always factions within them. When people say, IS link, like, what do you mean IS link? Because they use the flag, they use like orange jumpsuits or whereas they're operatives and MDs. So I think it's always to look at, these are not homogeneous groups. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. And to the audience, please look at the Joe's article that is out next week. And this is me to the final word to you. And of course, remember, the She Talks Peace podcast. And that's what's going to bust my myth. The myth I want to bust is that Muslim women, particularly Southeast Asian women need to be protected. They can take care of themselves for second class citizens. No, we're not. Southeast Asia, the Philippines, the Muslim Mindanao. We have a history of very active women who have assumed leadership roles. That's a myth that has got to be busted right there. That's why thank you, Haroro. Do listen to She Talks Peace because we bring on board peace builders, particularly women peace builders who have done so much at the community level from Southeast Asia to Syria, Yemen, Palestine. That should bust the myth right there. Thank you. Okay, and thank you. Fantastic way to wrap up for today. Thank you to the three panelists. And yeah, over to you, Dr. Reed. Thank you very much, Haroro, for more of a great discussion. Thank you so much to our speakers today, Sam, Joan, and Mina. It's been really fascinating and insightful discussion. And we'll say thank you to the audience for joining us and being part of this conversation and asking all the questions. But unfortunately, our time is up, so it's for me to bring us down to a close today. But before we go, I'd just like to say if you'd like to know more about our work, please do visit our website. And if you'd like to read any of our research on Southeast Asia, including the different publications that we mentioned today, please visit the Resolve website and also the USFP website. And keep your eyes peeled on social media for upcoming information on future Resolve events. And we hope you'll be able to join us again. With that, I have to bring today to a close. Thank you, once again, everyone, for joining us.