 All right, the microphone is working. Well, good morning, everyone. Thanks for tuning us and those of us also on webcast. We promise an interesting panel today, the Arab Voices on the Challenges of the New Middle East. You know, when Perry invited me to moderate this, and when I looked at the survey we're going to discuss, I kept thinking of the Arabic saying we use back home. The people of Mecca know its ways best. Ahlu Mecca Adra Bishahabihah. And it kept coming to mind as I was, you know, looking at the quotes from one or five experts from over 20 Arab countries quoted in this survey. To me, the study is raw, refreshing, unfiltered, and a nice break from what we hear in Washington. It questions everything, the legitimacy of governments, the role of military, the education systems, and definitely the US policy in the Middle East. We will go into details with our panelists who know very well both the Arab world and Washington. To my left is Marwan Muashir. He needs no intro. He is the vice president for studies at Carnegie and worked for over two decades in regional diplomacy and development. To my right is Perry Kamak. He is an associate in the Middle East program at Carnegie. And I can easily say that he worked with, he knows and worked with Secretary John Kerry more than anyone in this room. That would be seven years between the Senate and the State Department. We're also honored to have Dr. Shibli Talhami with us today. He's the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. How we're gonna go about it here? I'm gonna turn it to the panelists and then we're gonna get to the Q&A. If you do use Twitter as much as I do, the hashtag for this event is Arab World Horizons. So please feel free to use it and quote any of us. And I will turn the floor to Marwan. Thank you very much Joyce. And it's good to see everyone here. As Joyce said, this is an effort. This is the start actually of a long-term effort. Whereby we are trying to bring Arab voices to talk about the current turmoil in the Middle East and of course, the future discourse. This is by no means a scientific survey. As Joyce pointed out, we have sent it to around 350 thought leaders from across the Arab world. We have tried as much as possible to take into consideration the population in various Arab countries, gender, different political outlooks, et cetera. But of course it remains an indicative study rather than a random sample of the Arab world. Still I think it offers very interesting results because it is by Arab thought leaders who have been working on this issue in the Arab world for many, many years. And that's something we always try to do is as I said, project voices from the Arab world into Washington and into the decision-making process here rather than look at the problem that the Arab world is facing from a Washington perspective. And if I am to pick one major theme, one major result from this survey, it would be that the crisis of legitimacy which really led to the Arab uprisings in the first place, five years later has lost neither its resonance nor its urgency. Overwhelmingly, Arab thought leaders have pointed out the issues of authoritarianism, corruption, terrorism as the main problems facing the Arab world. They see it as a problem of governance or lack of governance. They do not see these issues as maybe many in the West see it and actually many in the Arab world, they do not see it as from a security prism. Unfortunately, the prevailing problem, the prevailing position here is that this is a security problem and it has to be fought through military means. And if the survey says anything, it is that bombing the problem away is not going to solve it. If you want to solve it, you need to look at the underlying domestic causes that has caused it. Arab thought leaders are not as interested in ISIS or Iran or the war on Yemen as they are interested in educational systems, in authoritarianism, in corruption, and in economic empowerment. So I think this is a central theme that we see over and over again in the survey that Perry is going to guide us through in some detail. They also do not see that political reform should be delegated to the future because of security concerns. They do not see this overwhelmingly. Thought leaders say that political reform is needed and it is needed now. It is not needed down the road, five years or 10 years down the line. I was very interested in the results on education. I mean, again, the experts overwhelmingly are dissatisfied with the educational systems in their country. 79 of 105 respondents said that they are not satisfied with the educational system. One Jordanian female said our education is basically a bootcamp for extremist groups. Something as stark as this. Another Egyptian respondent said the educational system in the Arab world is neither education nor a system. And so, I mean, these are very important, I think, issues that often get ignored in the Washington policymaking community here who only look at the security aspects and who so far have not paid much attention to the domestic challenges that the Arab world faces. One, I think also interesting question was we asked people to rate the most three, the three most successful Arab countries. And why? Open-ended question. And the results also I think are interesting. The number one country came as Tunisia. So despite the economic and security issues that Tunisia faces today, I think the political inclusion process that Tunisians have followed and the social contract they have been able to produce apparently is popular in the Arab world. It might not be popular among Arab governments who have not looked at the Tunisian model closely, but it's certainly popular among thought leaders who apparently think that political inclusion is a very important issue to pursue. The number two country was Morocco, again for similar reasons, but to a lesser extent than Tunisia. And the third was the UAE. So probably because of Dubai and the economic model that UAE has given. The number four answer was no one, no Arab country. And that's something that is also interesting. For example, we had 20 Egyptian respondents in the survey. Not one person, not one of them chose Egypt. In fact, no one chose Egypt among the 100 respondents. So once again, authoritarianism issues like that are important and come out clearly. If the survey is important in any way, I think it is important in the sense that it can be the starting point for an alternative discourse to what we are seeing in the Arab world from discourses like ISIS or other radical discourses. And I think the survey points out very accurately to the issue of state building in the region that is going to require building institutions that can protect democracy and nurture it. And so they have identified the main issues. The role of the military, they don't want a role for the military to play in domestic affairs. Education deficiencies, political inclusion, new social contracts, a new definition for citizenship in the Arab world that treats people as citizens rather than subjects. All of these are I think important building blocks that we are going to use in our effort to produce a report that hopefully can contribute to showing the way forward for an Arab world that is pluralistic, democratic, and inclusionist. And I'll stop there. Great, thank you. Thanks everyone for braving the weather. I'm gonna say just a few more words about just to give you a sense of who these experts, who these participants are. And then I have a kind of short PowerPoint we'll go through very quickly. There's lots more on the survey which should be online already. But this will hopefully spark a discussion and give you a flavor of the kind of main findings that we found. First, as Marwan said, this is not scientific. We don't purport, but this is kind of representative of certainly of the broader Arab public. I like to think of it as a kind of very complex and nuanced and even contradictory kind of composite of expert opinion. We have parliamentarians. We have a number of current and former advisors to heads of state. We have business executives, the CEOs of multinational billion dollar companies. We have former envoys, ambassadors, et cetera, et cetera. But we also realize that there is a disconnect between youth views. There's a definite age division there. So we also went out of our way to try to cultivate and find younger leaders, people that emerged in 2011 during the initial phases of the Arab Spring. So again, it's not representative, but I think it does provide really some interesting insight. These ultimately are the people and represent the people that if the Middle East is to become more stable, ultimately are going to have to engage in their societies and also be engaged by the US and the West. So let's go very quickly. I know people at the back may not be able to read that well or online, but this is just to give you a snapshot. So first question here, are you satisfied with the relation between the government and the citizens of your country? As you can see, only four out of the 93 that answered this particular question said yes. Those four included one from Egypt, one from Jordan, one from Lebanon, one from the UAE. But 84 said no. Next slide. Now, people in the back, even me, it's hard for me to see all these words here. So this is a word cloud. What are the most important steps the government in your country could take to improve governance? So we have kind of education, services here, transparency, management. I think even Tom in the very back can read this word, corruption. It jumps out. And again, this is the entire body of our survey from across the region and corruption really stands out, which kind of highlights what Marwan was just talking about. Do you think representative democracy is a suitable form of government for your country? Again, 80 respondents said yes, six said no. And to me what's interesting, this is not so surprising. I think most of us would expect, there's been plenty of opinion polling done on this, but I think two things are kind of beyond underneath these headlines. The first is that I think we in the West and Washington are kind of conditioned to think of democracy as its own reward as a kind of abstract good. But as we actually unpacked the answers for why they supported our experts in any way supported democracy, it became clear that it was much less about give me liberty and give me death, these lofty ideals, but really about these are instruments to address the overarching concerns that Marwan was talking about, authoritarianism, corruption, better governance. The second thing is, even though 80 of these 101 in this case said yes, we support representative democracy, they didn't come without caveats. There was lots of concern. Let me read you a couple quotes to give you an example. A Syrian male said yes, I support representative democracy, but authoritarian regimes in the Arab world have mastered the art manipulating democratic processes to gain legitimacy. Another thing that was kind of interesting among the Tunisians, it may be the case, it's a small sample size, but Arab seem to be more excited about the Tunisian model that the Tunisians themselves are about the Tunisian model. So one of the respondents that said, they were not sure, this is a Tunisian male, representative democracy, which offers everyone the right to do and say everything and elect anyone to power, may drive us to populist dictatorships in some form of anarchy. We need to rethink what kind of democracy we need away from the Western cut and paste concepts and the outdated post-colonial authoritarianism. So yes, our respondents are keen on democracy, but not without caveats and not without concerns. And frankly, there are concerns that many of them have seen firsthand. This again in the back, Marwan, I think talked about this. We asked, we gave the experts a list of 10 issues to rank order, sectarian tensions, corruption, educational deficiencies, female disenfranchisement, refugees and displacement, authoritarianism, regional conflicts, interference by outside actors, terrorism and religious extremism, unemployment and underemployment. Now I only wanna highlight two things here. First of all, the top line here, authoritarianism. This I found astounding. With all of the conflict, terrorism, regional tensions, et cetera, et cetera, as Marwan said, authoritarianism. 45 out of the 103 picked that as the number one issue. So almost half, with everything that's going on in the Middle East picked authoritarianism. Corruption was number two, with basically half of the respondents ranking that as either number one, number two or number three. And then rounding out the top three, which is one of these security issues. Terrorism and religious extremism came in third. But for the most part, these strategic issues that we're reading about in the front pages of newspapers every day really are kind of much further down for the most part. Next, are you satisfied with your country's education system Marwan talked about this? I won't go into any more detail. Nine respondents said yes. 79 said no. One other point though that I at least found was very interesting was the extent to which in their longer discourse, the experts really drew linkages between the educational deficiencies and the authoritarianism and corruption in their societies. So for instance, a Moroccan male said, are you satisfied with the system? No, because the educational system is deliberately chosen by the state to maintain the current situation. And this is from Morocco, which ostensibly does actually quite well relative to other countries. Marwan also talked about this. Which three Arab countries enjoy the most successful forms of governance in the region? Again, not surprisingly, Tunisia, Morocco, UAE. First, as Marwan said down here at the bottom, 16 said none of the above. Saudi Arabia received one choice. Egypt received zero. But even here, when you actually read the answers as to why folks aren't necessarily enthusiastic about, even the countries at the top, it's not that people are really enthusiastic about it. Often respondents would say, well, if I have to choose, I'll choose Tunisia and Morocco. Or if you really forced me to choose, okay, fine, Oman, Jordan, UAE. But in most cases, these were relative choices, not absolute ones. There's lots more we could talk about. We polled about the military role. We polled about the role of religious authorities. We can have a discussion kind of about views on US policy, which I'll give you the headline is, just like Americans, our experts are very conflicted about the role the US should play. But where I'd like to end at least my portion of this, the big takeaway for me is really the thirst that's kind of permeating the entire survey is a real thirst for an affirmative agenda. And speaking of someone that has some experience in US policymaking circles, or at least trying to influence from the inside US policymaking circles, that the real takeaway, I think, is that we have to get beyond the kind of drone, the US policy just being about drone strikes, counter-terrorism. If we're missing the governance piece, the authoritarian piece, and frankly, if Arab leaders themselves are missing this, I think we're really missing the bigger picture. We have to find a way to kind of walk in Chugam at the same time. There are real security threats out there, but at least my takeaway is unless we get at some of these issues, these security threats are likely just to continue and further exacerbate over time. Great. Dr. Sath, how may you give us your analysis, your insight on this? Well, thanks very much. Thank you for hosting me and congratulations to Carnegie. I think this is a really useful exercise, and I learned from it, and I'll say why in a minute. But I want to start by saying what this is not, and we should be very clear on that. This is obviously not a public opinion poll, so this is, and not necessarily matches public opinion. Remember, these are experts, and this is a poll among experts, and public opinion may or may not match this, so keep that in mind that this is not a reflection necessarily of public opinion in the Arab world. And the second thing is, it is a very good cut of experts, but not necessarily universal one. Remember, these are people in the network of Carnegie solicited roughly 300 respondents from that network and got a really nice size response, almost one third, responding to it. So it's not necessarily reflective of all experts and thought leaders in the Arab world. It's those who have some tie or some connection to the Carnegie network, not necessarily four or against diverse, nonetheless, as Perry said, but we don't know what we didn't catch in this, obviously. So keep that in mind, first of all. But here's why I think it's important, nonetheless, and then I will tell you where I could probably add some analysis and perspective. It's important because it's not just this effort, now in the US, we always find it useful to look at expert opinion, not just public opinion, but people who are a little better informed or closer to the issues to see where they are on issues. We see that in a foreign policy type polling among experts, foreign affairs type, and those are very useful to tell us where people who are close to issues are following them closely, who are living them what they think. Now, we all know that those expert opinions often don't match public opinion here in the US either, so, but it's nonetheless very insightful and helpful when you're trying to analyze it, and we here in Washington as experts obviously need to be mindful of how the experts who are living this story in the Middle East think. I mean, we are living here and it's very easy for us to think, so it's very important for us to be mindful of those thought leaders in the region who have their own insight, who brings in their experiences into it. So I think this way is in very nicely into the conversation. Now, what I'd like to do is just give you a couple of thoughts both in terms of the results and in terms of interpreting them, so matching them against what I know of public opinion in the region based on polling and matching them more or less against what I know about expert or thought leader public opinion. Those of us who frequently go to the Middle East and in Marwan's case now lives there obviously have our own impressions because we constantly meeting with thought leaders. Opposition, pro-government, professors, journalists, workers, NGOs, government officials, the former government officials, we're always going in there. I just learned on Sunday from the Middle East after two weeks and obviously met with all sorts of segments like particularly in Egypt where I spent a week. And so we have, there are certain impressions of how well this corresponds and certain, and then we have the data from polling, polling that Pew did, that Zogby did, that Gallup did in the past two years particularly to see whether there's anything that we can learn from this. So let me just say one thing about the finding and then try to match it. That as noted both by Marwan and Perry, you know, it is striking that when you look at how people rank the issue, the concerns in among the thought leaders in the Arab world, the top cluster, particularly if you look at the results, if you have them, if you go online and get this study, you will find that if you cluster the top three choices together, then the number one cluster would be authoritarian slash corruption, which I call systemic factors. And then followed by the cluster of extremism slash terrorism slash unemployment, which I say consequences. But as I see this, this is really fascinating because those are the two clusters that a lot of people talk about constantly and they really generate the debate. So for example, we all know that the debate we have about Egypt and that Egyptians have about themselves, you know, what is the cause of what? So is the extremism slash terrorism pushing Egypt toward more repression? Or is it repression that is ultimately giving birth to extremism? That is a profound debate, I think. And I think even the moral issue stands on how we interpret this. So expert opinion matters, how we fall on this issue matters a lot. So in Egypt, I spoke with various segments of society across the board, including people who are against the regime, people or people who are against Mubarak and now for the regime, people who have changed the mind. And what it ultimately boils down to is they know what we have is not optimal. They know something is wrong. Some of them say that's really the reason why extremism is being born. But some of them say, no, it's the opposite. This is a reaction to the extremism. This is a reaction to the rise of terrorism in Egypt and that the debate is vibrant on that issue. And I would say that among the people that I have encountered, you could say my network across the board, people are pretty divided on this. It's not an overwhelming majority on one side of the people are very divided on this issue. And I'm gonna come back to this in a minute, but the other thought that I had related to this particular finding, particularly the authoritarianism slash corruption is that when we look at public opinion polls in the Arab world, we see kind of the same tension, the dynamics. So if you take, for example, the pupil taken November 2014 in six Arab countries, corruption was actually the number one concern for people. So this resonates actually with that particular finding. Obviously, comparison have limits because the questions are not asked in the same way. They're not given all the same choices. You have to take that obviously with some perspective here. But nonetheless, corruption rises to almost the top in that particular poll. And what I have all been grappling with, particularly since the Arab uprisings and dealing with the crisis like the rise of ISIS or the rise of militant groups or there's in Iraq or Syria or elsewhere across the region is that the problem for a lot of people is that the same causes that fueled the Arab uprisings, wanting freedom, wanting democracy, wanting responsive government, being fed up with authoritarian rule that has prevailed in the region. That same thing is still alive and well as this reflects among thought leaders, but I think it's also reflected in public opinion. It's alive and well. This is a function of the empowerment that comes with the information revolution. It's not going away. It's only gonna expand. And therefore it gives people tough choices. So when you are saying I wanna defeat Daesh by supporting the Saudi government, well, if I was in Tahrir Square after Mubarak was overthrown with hundreds of thousands of people in Tahrir Square, and I saw the pictures of every sitting Arab ruler with a question mark. And if you're asking people to support Arab rulers to defeat the extremists, it's a problem for them essentially going back to the same order. So there's a lot of tension in this particular package of issues. And other polls, by the way, I mean, separate from the corruption, other polls like Zogby polls in the past two years and some Pew and Gallup polls shown nonetheless that when you ask people, and you give them a certain basket of issues to choose what the top priorities are for them, they choose the first two issues, they choose economic issues in dealing with unemployment, economic prosperity, and security, and local security, fighting crime, personal security. Those are the top issues pretty much in that come up in those two. And that's why I think despite of the expert opinion in terms of prioritizing authoritarianism, you have a lot of people who in the short term kind of rationalize or justify the repression or rallying behind authoritarianism because they are frightened by the immediate priorities for them of lack of economic prosperity and lack of local security, which is why almost everyone pitches those two issues, economic prosperity and security as the top priorities. So it's a dilemma for the region, it's a dilemma for thought leaders. I think it's a dilemma for public opinion broadly and I'm really glad that Carnegie has put this material for us to start a conversation that is far more complicated than we've been used to. Thank you. I mean, and when you look actually at the results, I mean, what I took away from it is we Arabs are not exactly exceptional as one of the responders also said. I mean, when you look at the top choices, that's so similar also to the exit polls that we saw coming from New Hampshire and Iowa and other places. People, I mean, if you just substitute authoritarianism for Washington, unemployment, and religious extremism, these are our valid concerns. My question to you, Marwan, is can we move forward across the bridge to democracy with all the, what we're seeing in Syria, what we're seeing in Yemen and what we're seeing in Libya? When you talk to average Arabs, some of them are frightened. Nobody wants to be Syria right now. So how much does the instability choke this tendency to move towards democracy? I think there's a big difference between being afraid of ending up in a state like Syria and therefore not going to the street and not proceeding with protests that you did three or four years ago and between the impression that the problems are over because people don't want another Syria in their own countries. The fact of the matter is as the survey says and as many public opinion polls show that the problems are still there and they're still as vivid and as deep as they were five years ago. Unfortunately, I think most Arab governments and as well the international community reads this as the Arab Spring has failed. What we need to do is look at the region once again from the same security mindset and prism that led to the Arab Spring in the first place. This is the danger just because people are not out in the street. Does not mean they are happy. Does not mean that the problems are over and if we don't really start a state building process that is going to take decades but if we don't, if we ignore this, I think we would have learned little from what has happened in this region or for that matter in any region across the Arab world. What the survey to me once again, why is it important is because it points out to the real issues facing Arab societies and they need to tackle these issues and these issues have to do with education once again, political inclusion, economic empowerment, new social contracts and new definitions of citizenship, all the issues that no one in this town frankly or in many Arab governments, no one is talking about. Everybody looks at the problem today as an ISIS problem and the way to do it is to bomb ISIS. We forget many times that we did bomb ISIS predecessor, you know, Zarkawi in Iraq and in fact, we thought that we decimated that organization only to find out that because of political exclusion, you know, a new form of ISIS came about that is far more barbaric and radical than the old version. This is to me the central message. It is basically a problem of governance that need to be addressed. If people are afraid to go in the street because they don't want to end up like Syria, this is the perfect time for Arab governments to conduct reform in a smooth and systematic way and in a way that does not provide shocks, you know, to the system. Is that message being internalized? Absolutely not. May I follow up on this a little bit because you know, I think that, you know, first of all, this is not a Washington problem. I mean, Washington, we have a problem obviously in our foreign policy for sure, but even these experts don't see Washington as a central thing. So that's in fact one of the interesting finding in this is that the thought leaders in here don't see, you know, don't see the Washington as the central problem. They do want though a very different US policy. I mean, some of the respondents said, we need to know what the US does for supporting our dictators or... For sure, for sure. And I'm critical of, as you know, I write critically of US foreign policies, I'm not defending the mistakes that we make in the region, but what I'm saying, those kind of things that Marwan once done are not at the core America's issues and the US will not be able to get them and the US will not be able to do state building. We've tried that and it has failed. So this is really a regional problem, it's not a Washington problem as much. But the second thing I wanna say, you know, I think I'm 120% in agreement with Marwan on the fact that the public really doesn't want authoritarianism and they want reform and that is the core of what drove the Arab uprisings. I have no doubt about that in my mind, we're in full agreement on that. But the fact that people want it doesn't mean that it's an immediate option available or that they see it as an immediate option available to them on the table. And so that's why governments prevail when they say, if we open up right now in the short term in Egypt, we're gonna start looking like Syria and nobody wants to be Syria right now. And so, okay, so then what is the debate? The debate is about are they right or are they wrong? And people in general know that in the long term, that's not the way to go, but in the short term, they're rally. And that's also the choices for most governments around the world who don't even have the capacity to really build states or engage in a critical fashion. So we still face those choices that everybody faces at that level. And so I ask myself, for example, in Egypt, in a country that is so large and so diverse and you have people who had, who worked against the Mubarak regime and people who went to prison opposing the repression, why would they then turn around with that liberal moral view for which they were prepared to pay a price? And they're as liberal as I am and I'm for total human rights and democracy, so don't get me wrong on this, but for people who share my values and people who not only share my values who are living this day in and day out and who are prepared to go to prison for it. I'm not sure I'm prepared to go to prison over that, by the way, but they were prepared to go to prison for it. So why then do they turn around and jump on the overthrow of Morsi? I have to, you have to ask that question. So you can't say because they're just not human rights advocates or they're not liberal enough for the, you can make whatever argument you want to disagree with them, but there's something here that you have to take into account. That is that there's a debate, maybe they're wrong. I don't say they are. I actually happen to think they're wrong. I've had a problem with a lot of the steps that have been taking place, but for me, just like we are trying now here to look at thought leaders in the Middle East because it's not just us thinking in Washington, but those people who are thinking there, we also have to take that thought process for people who are sitting in there trying to make their daily choices and not jump into moral conclusions without listening to them. And thank you for making some of that available so we could listen to them. Perry, one of the respondents is an Egyptian male. He said the US should either become a real partner to help the region develop or let the region find its own way. You know, in this city we've gone and you've witnessed it from an over aggressive push in the region by the Bush administration to a very reluctant and shy one now from the Obama administration when it comes to democracy promotion. What is there a balance? And what can we really expect Washington to do here? Well, first, thanks for highlighting that quote. That stood out at me, kind of either be a real partner or stay away, really, you know, if you put these hundred experts together that kind of jumped out to really, I think, summarize that I think that particular Egyptian spoke for a lot of the participants, at least in our survey. I think the challenge here, I think we've had a healthy debate over the last couple of years on the use of military, US military in the region. Healthy in the sense, I think it's exposed that the issue is much deeper. It's not stay in or get out. It really is, are we going to, how to be pragmatic, how to be effective? And I think maybe Shibley was talking about the long term versus short term tensions in the region, but that's very much present, I think, in Washington's thinking as well, in that we know we've got these, I think people in government clearly understand these governance issues, human rights issues, democracy, authoritarianism, et cetera. But the question is, what are the tools at our disposal to address those issues and what are the time frames we're dealing with? So if we're facing an immediate terrorist threat from Syria, from Libya, for whatever, that is going to get every policy maker's attention and it should get their attention. But how do you infuse within that kind of counter-terrorism, CT security framework, an honest assessment of the issues that come out in the survey, that I think is a much, much harder thing to do. I think over the last year, over the last decades, the US has become in a very narrow sense, I think, pretty effective at some pretty lethal CT strategies. The intelligence has gotten better, counter-terrorism has gotten better, but, despite 12 years in Iraq, invasion of Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, all the rest, I don't know that we as a country are any better in 15 years later at addressing these kinds of issues. There are narrow military options that American leaders have for narrow military problems, but ultimately, and I think the survey highlights it, these are political challenges as much or even more than they are security challenges, and there, we're not even, we're nowhere in the sense, we're not anywhere, and frankly, I would say the Arab leaders themselves are nowhere in the sense of how do you tackle these issues? How do you make the first step? How do you even start moving in the right direction? But at the same time, I'm gonna push you a little on this one. There isn't one positive quote in the survey about the United States policy. That's very interesting. I mean, what is missing, and we are in an elections now, what can the next president do to rebalance things with the, I'm not saying with the governments of the Middle East, but with the people? Is it? I personally, I think the most important thing the next president, he or she, will have to do is to articulate an affirmative American agenda for the region. I think there will be quite a bit of continuity, regardless of what happens in a lot of areas, but I think Arabs understand pretty clearly what we're against, but I don't know that Arabs understand what the United States is for, and so I think articulating a positive agenda, going back to exactly what you said, either become a partner or stay away. Can we continue to do these things on the security side, intelligence, et cetera, while also being a partner? That's a very difficult balancing act, but I think it's essential unless we wanna keep having the same discussion next year and the year after that or a decade from now. One last question to Marwan before we move to the audience, the component on education is very interesting in the survey. The Jordanian female who said it's a bootcamp for extremism, you've worked on this issue. I mean, is there any hope? And when you look at ISIS schools, what ISIS are teaching, the new generation and Mosul and Raqqa and Deir ez-Zur, is this also a product of a broken educational system in the Arab world in general? I mean, I'm convinced that the rise of organizations like ISIS is partly due to the education system in the Arab world. Doesn't of course answer all the reasons why they're there that as I said, are reasons relating to political exclusion, lack of empowerment, et cetera, but education systems and I'm one of the very vocal people about this. We need to confront this, head on. Our education systems suffer from many things but they suffer particularly from two main deficiencies, the absence of positive values that tolerate, that promote tolerance and acceptance of the other and respect for different points of view and understanding that truths are not absolute but relative. There's a clear absence of these values from our education systems, but more dangerously there is a presence of exclusionist values that depict if you are basically, and I hate to simplify but I will, if you are a Muslim Sunni Arab male, then you are better than any other sect. You are better than women. You are better than non-Muslim people and you are better than non-Arabs. The exclusion of the other is extremely dangerous and that other is not always the outside world. It started as the outside world. Today the other is not just the outside world but your fellow citizen. If your fellow citizen happens to be a woman, happens to be somebody with different political views than yours, happens to be somebody with different ethnic or religious background, then that other is explicitly ridiculed in the curriculum. And I don't say this slightly because I've been studying in detail the curricula particularly in my own country. There is a need to confront this fact which is still ignored, denied by governments and who still do not want to do anything substantive about it. And this goes for the governments that have not undergone transition as well as the governments that have undergone transition. Nobody wants to admit that the value system that we are giving our children is dated and needs to be fundamentally changed if we are to build truly pluralistic and democratic societies. Yeah, I agree with Marwan on the need for educational reform absolutely and one of the reasons I was in Cairo actually I'm a founding member of the Education for Employment Foundation which is trying to transform part of the education and elevate the skills. But I want to make just a quick note on the American role, it's really important because we talked about it and Perry mentioned it. And I think we have to really try to be a little bit more sophisticated about how we read regional interpretations of the American role. Look, the US is not going to win the Middle East in public opinion or thought leaders. It just isn't, it might reduce the tension a little bit or more, it's not gonna happen. But despite that, every single party in the Arab world wants the US to be on its side because it's a powerful nation that can make a difference. So there is a, everyone is trying to win the US and so they're gonna be critical to try to lure the US to take their point of view. It's a polarized region and the thought leaders are also a group that wants reform, that wants this and that, that they can't do it on their own, that they are also focused on trying to get the US to do it. So we have to keep that in mind that we have a public sentiment in the region that is highly polarized, that despite their frustration with the US, they still see the US as a critical and powerful player and every body would like to win them on their side. I mean, of course, but again, when you look at, having covered many administrations now, there is a component missing in the Obama administration and it's the people to people relations. We've seen many secretaries of state before, go to town halls and Doha and Cairo, that's no longer there. And as I think Perry noted, very few in the region know what the United States now stand for. So I think we can improve the message that at least would be a step forward. But now we're going to take some of your questions. Wait, maybe Ambassador. Good morning, Gluckman-Feller, Iraqi Ambassador. First of all, congratulations on keeping this key theme of understanding the Arab region specifically to Washington. I have a couple of comments and the question. The question to start with is the role of ideology. Did you cover it as a problem or not in the region? Because the surveys are talks about the governance rather than the ideology. I think it's an issue. So please tell me if you did cover it. From a US perspective as an ambassador, I think the key problem is, as Marwan said, in a way if you try to contain the problem in Middle East, it will not be contained because of what we saw as ISIS is one example of why you cannot contain it. But at the same time, I may be wrong, but I would say the key problem at this moment here in this town is define, give me a problem statement, scope of the problem. I don't think that has been defined yet. All the policies and others are talking about different issues than identifying the problem, scope it, and then resolve it. That's, I think, is missing. I need to know who that Iraqi, who that person who voted for Iraq, by the way. Oh no. Don't go on then. Let's say, for example, take an example. In Iraq we say we have democracy. We have elections and votes one person. However, people still don't understand what democracy is all about. They associate it with one person, one vote. Not the culture, not the governance, not rule of law, not others as well. So I think we need to have, we need to go through an education process. To go through that education process, we need to go through a trial and error. Because of social media, problems highlight straightly and therefore people don't want to be associated with other countries. We don't want this model because, look at the chaos they're in. And therefore people will go back to the Italian because they don't want to go through the trial and error problem. That's the key issue because of the social media. So here, awareness is not useful in one way but you need to go through a very painful process. I'm not sure whether our region do want to go through that painful process with understand the scope of it. You need to go through certain level of governance before you want to go through a democratic system. That's another issue. For us democracy has to be a stage rather than the, might be an end solution rather than the immediate solution for us. So that said, because at this moment in Iraq, when you talk about democracy, you see this is the problem of democracy. We need to go bring back authoritarian systems. Egypt, they have better problem because they've gone back to the authoritarian system. So we need to understand the extent of this challenge as well. And final point is in relation to basic assumption where specifically when you have surveys, these are the problems and this is what is needed to be done. I'm afraid they have to go through a long process before you identify their need. Don't expect that there is a need, therefore there will be a solution. They may not be an environment for the solution. Therefore you need to talk about them providing an environment to satisfy our needs. I think that's still missing. I can say very quickly, it wasn't Iraq, you may not be happy to hear it wasn't Iraqi citizen who identified Iraq as one of the models for the region. So we were admiring his fortitude. We did not specifically ask questions on ideology, but they did permeate the survey, particularly on the education, questions and others in terms of challenges. I'll leave it there, there's lots of questions. Well, we did ask a question about the role of religious institutions. That's not all of the ideology in the Arab world, but it's a religious ideology. And people again were clear that they do not want a role of religious institutions in decision making. If anything, they might be, some people said we need an advisor role, most people said, but that's expected because of the sample itself, okay, that they want a separation between religion and state. Ambassador, I think that the scope of the problem has been defined by the survey. And if I summarize it in one sentence, I would say the lack of good governance. This is it. Oh, no, in Washington, I'm sorry. Okay, no, no. No, okay, in Washington, I'm like Shibley. I'm not that concerned, frankly, with what Washington thinks, okay? Because whether Washington does good or not, whether it interferes or not, in my own view, it's going to be in the long-term marginal to the state building in the Arab world. Either Arabs do it or nobody else is going to do it for them. Washington can play a constructive or a destructive role. Frankly, what it has done in terms of interfering in the region has not had a very positive historical record. I don't think any of us disagree on this. But whether Washington improves its record, I mean, I'd like it to improve the record, but I still think it remains marginal to what Arabs themselves have to take on in terms of state building. I agree with you that identifying the problem might not mean that we have an immediate solution. And I think that, frankly, a place like Syria might take 50 years to be reconstructed. I don't think the problem of state building in the Arab world is going to be solved through a period of five or 10 or 20 years. But in fact, no other region in the world that has attempted such a transformation did it in five, 10 or 20 years. So I don't understand why we want to hold the Arab world to a higher standard than any other region in the world. This is a historical transformation. It's not a transient phenomenon. It's going to stay with us for a long time. And some people are going to understand the right lessons and start state building. Some people are not. And so not everybody will be successful in the Arab world either. But to me, the process has started. It's a process that should have started, maybe, after independence in the Arab world. It didn't. At least now it has started. But we shouldn't expect it to be a smooth or linear or quick process. Since we're running short on time, we're going to take three questions at a time to get as many answered. Why don't we start from the back, the gentleman and then the lady and then have the gentleman also at his hand up for a while. So let's do this. All right. Thank you so much. My name is Alex Norris from the National Endowment for Democracy. This has been great to learn about the survey. And I'm curious to know, from either the survey or from your own experiences, how do thought leaders and experts in the Arab world feel about their own ability to influence sort of the public opinion, both in terms of their own safety to safely express opinion or their ability to influence sort of the crowded public sphere? Hi, thanks for this wonderful study. But I wonder if we have comparative, disaggregated opinion like I do. I want to know what other things, like when you said the Tunisians are not as enthusiastic about their country like the others. Are there other things like this and how can we see the different opinions from different countries to compare? Are you more interesting to know about Saudi Arabia because we hear nothing about Saudi Arabia and the US media hears? So I don't know how people there think. Thank you very much, Hisham Jaby from MSI. I have a question and a comment. The first question is about the youth bulge in the Arab world where you have two-thirds of the population below the age of 30 and neither local government nor private sector nor even foreign direct investment will be able to absorb this number of young people. And you look at deferred even employment where young people go and pursue master and PhD because they know they won't get a job, especially in the Gulf. The comment is about the governor's structure. The question, I think the framing question, Dr. Muashir, is definitely it's about governing structure, but the question from my perspective is what kind of governing structure that works within the culture in the Arab world? And another question like, how does average young person receive public servant in the Arab world? There are issues are not well defined still there. You go to an Egyptian young person and he will tell you, oh, you know what? I did so and so in this public entity. And he talks about Russia in a sense of being shorter, meaning like smart and clever, he got it done. So there are another issues related to culture that is missing in the discussion about governing structure is the issue of, for example, take the early marriage or how does the production unit in the Arab words within the family work? So there are cultural dimension is missing when we talk about culture. What kind of governing structure that works within our culture and rules and norms that average person feel proud about? Maybe you want to take the first one. Let me just address a couple of one, one about the influence of thought leaders and the youth. Obviously that's not directly in here but the fact that people think that authoritarians are the main problem or that corruptions are the main problem tells you how helpless people feel. So these are people who have served in government, many of them. In fact, many of the people who participated in this are former high level government officials who feel very frustrated by their inability to do something. So that tells you something about how much influence they think they have. But the youth issue I think is really important for the following reason. I actually, we all have a point of view and Ambassador Mascher and I agree on the inability of the US to really make a huge difference. But one issue where I think it could make a difference is this one and let me tell you why. Because I think from the US point of view, there are two things. One is the opportunity cost and the priorities that Middle East has not been necessarily always a top priority for the US. And certainly the bringing about democracy is not likely to be. And the second is to work with the powers who are there. I mean, basically the US can't operate in vacuum. It can't do it all. It has limits. So it has to have to work with people who have power on the ground. Who are these people? They're going to be the governments or the militaries or the security services. If you're going to fight ISIS, you're going to have to make a deal with the Saudi government. You're not making a deal with the Saudi people. You're going to get the check to pay for the weapons from the Saudis or you're going to get the intelligence cooperation with the security services of all the people that you're dealing with. That's obviously the problem for the US, particularly on the issue of democracy. On the youth issue, here's the thing. I think almost every single government recognizes that this is something that is going to come back to haunt them. I mean, Dave, it's not that they, for self-interest reasons, they know this is going to come back to haunt them. The unemployment issue, the education issue is going to come back to haunt them. And they are prepared. They don't know how to deal with it. They don't know how to prioritize it. They have broken bureaucracies. They have broken systems. They have corruption in the system. The educational system is so troubling. It is very hard to fix, and you don't know where to start. But that's where I think they're open. They're open to working with people, whether it's NGOs, whether it's private sector, whether it's governments on the outside that could help them to create, to upgrade the skills of their population, to link them up with employers, whether they're global employers or local employers. And I see that actually the place where we should put most of our energy constructively when we're thinking about the Middle East. I'd like to make two points. One is, in response to Amy's question about comparative studies, this study is not the end result of this project. It's actually the starting point. So we have not attempted to, of course, provide all answers to all problems. This is a study that we hope will guide us as we embark on this three-year project, actually, to do two things. Go in depth and identify the problems that the Arab world is facing in depth. But not stop at that. We want to also, hopefully, guided by Arab voices be able to provide an affirmative agenda. Buy Arabs, an affirmative agenda for their future that would deal with all these issues. So this is just a guiding study to help us as we embark on this. To the youth issue, my own experience with youth tells me two things. One, they have no trust with governments. I mean, I pity any public servant in the Arab world today because he or she are starting with being seen as corrupt, with being seen as ineffective, with being seen as advancing their own personal welfare at the expense of others, et cetera. They don't believe anything that the government says. Now, what do most Arab governments do? They say, oh, yes, we have a problem with youth. What are we going to do about it? We're going to establish a ministry for the youth. That's the bureaucratic, they don't get it. They don't get it. There is a gap of trust that is extremely worrying to me. Because once again, the unemployment rate in the Arab world for youth is 30%. It is just not sustainable. No ministry is going to solve this. But there is not yet that understanding that you need to pay more attention to what the youth are saying. And the other problem with youth that I fear is many of them are being radicalized. You look at the youth in Egypt. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, they're being radicalized. They looked at what their older generation did and they said, if peaceful change is not possible, we're going to go to the street. They're not even listening to their elders. People in my own part of the world, more people are being influenced by ISIS than anybody would want. And it's not just because of ideology. It's because of empowerment, both economic empowerment, as well as personal empowerment. They feel they're now being offered a voice when their own governments are not offering them a voice. These are the issues that need to be addressed if you want to really talk about youth empowerment. They move away from rentier systems. And this does come out in the survey. The Arab world has suffered from a rentier system which has not promoted productivity, which has been based on the WASTA system, on patronage versus in return for loyalty. You cannot deal with the problems of unemployment anymore if you keep the system. Well, on that note, I'm very sorry, but we are out of time. The study is on Carnegie's website. Stay tuned for more on this project. Have a great weekend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.