 Good morning everybody. Welcome to the Peace Game. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the President of the U.S. Institute of Peace and I'm delighted to open this up this morning. For those of you who are here for the first time, the U.S. Institute of Peace is in its 30th year federally funded, independent institute dedicated to a world without violent conflict. And so holding a peace game is squarely in our mission and we're delighted to have the opportunity to have such an incredible collection of policymakers and practitioners who are able to really move us forward on a critical issue that threatens global peace, which is violent extremism. I want to thank our partners in this endeavor for policy and David Rothkoff who is here with us. I'd also like to thank the Embassy of the UAE for sponsoring us today and being an important partner. For those of you who were able to join us last night, we had a wonderful start to this year's peace game with a video of a camp in Jordan, a zotri camp in that marvelous three, I don't even know what you call it, technology that enabled you to really be in zotri camp. And it was a very powerful and very moving film that really gave I think all of us an important choice point to start with this morning in terms of looking at the future of the region, either for a population of displaced Syrians who either can be a part of a positive future or could descend into the kind of hopelessness that would further exacerbate the many problems that we saw that we have in the region. We were joined by Tom Donilon, the former national security advisor for President Obama, and he really teed up for us a vision of a world that has higher threats than at any time since World War II in his judgment at a time where great power coordination was less than it had been for a number of decades, and poses within that mix with the dissolution of so many states in the Middle East, the importance of addressing the problem of violent extremism, and how important it is that today we really grapple with the kind of real recommendations that help us move to real action and a more nuanced, more complex understanding of the task at head. I'd like to also invite everybody to use your Twitter's is that how you say it? You tweet with the hashtag peace game, and we look forward to that. We will use the results of this event to help us inform policy, inform recommendations, and inform policy as we all move forward together. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to David Rothkoff, who's the CEO of an editor of foreign policy, and is today's emcee who will set us up for an important day. Thank you, David. Thank you, Nancy. It's great to be here. This is the fourth peace game. We try to do one of these every six months. We do one in Washington, and again, with the help of the embassy of the UAE, we do one in Abu Dhabi. So we try to bring different perspectives to this discussion. When this idea was hatched long ago, Kristen Lord, because there's Kristen Lord over there, she and I were sitting there talking about, wouldn't it be great if we could somehow bring the kind of rigorous analysis and tools that are used to plan wars, to planning, and exploring peace towards coming up with constructive ideas and solutions that can advance the cause of conflict resolution and do so in a way that would impact policymakers by bringing them concrete ideas. The critical component of doing that is a collaborative dialogue among people who really understand the problems. And the reason past peace games have been so successful is that we've been lucky to bring together groups of people like that. And the reason we are so looking forward to today's discussion is that the group of participants we've got here as role players is as good a group as we've ever had, is more diverse geographically, is more diverse in terms of their experience, and therefore I think is going to bring to bear a more sort of creative force in dealing with these issues. We use a lot of tools in the course of peace game. We use scenarios, which we will go through two different kinds of scenario exercises in the course of the day, which you'll see. We use wireless polling, some of you in front of you have these small blue polling devices. We'll get to those in a second so that even those of you who are in the audience can participate. We have panel discussions and guest experts. And very shortly we will kick off the first discussion with Steve Hadley, who's the chairman of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and also a former national security advisor. And I might add, since I've written two books about the NSC, and I'm a sort of accidental part-time historian of the NSC, Steve Hadley is among the very, very best national security advisors we have, and he brings and have had, and he really brings an extraordinary perspective, and so we're really lucky to start out with him. But before we do, because this is a collaborative dialogue, and before we get into the nuts and bolts of it all, I think the most important thing is that everybody knows who else is here. Now, one of the things that makes peace game successful is our sort of respect for the time and rules that everybody brings to this. And we start that by asking everybody to introduce themselves in 15 to 20 seconds, and sort of teach the discipline of respecting the clock, simply by saying who you are and where you're from, and who you represent in the peace game process so everybody gets to know what you're doing. And we're going to go around this middle table, this U-shaped table, and then once we've done that, we'll get right into the panel discussion. But let me start with you. I'm Nina Bakos. I'm a former Central Intelligence Agency Counterterrorism Analyst, and today I will be representing Al Qaeda. Hi, I'm Leanne Erdberg from the State Department. I'm a Counterterrorism Advisor, and I will also be representing Al Qaeda. Tony Verstandig, Chair of the Middle East Program at the Aspen Institute, and I will be representing business interests. David Gartenstein Ross, Foundation for Defensive Democracies, and I represent the Caliphate, and our Caliph Ibrahim the First. Shlomo Boram, a visiting fellow at the Center for American Progress, representing Egypt. I'm Michael Wahid Hanna. I'm a Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation, and I'm also representing Egypt. Dr. Catherine Brown, King's College London, and I'm representing the European Union. Edith Schlaffer, Women Without Borders, Vienna, and I'm representing European Union. Peyton Ahimi, I'm from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and I'm representing the Intelligence Community. Hello, good morning. This is Ahmad Qiyai from the American Iranian Council. I'll be representing the Iranian Administration, possibly Jabhat Zarif or Rohani. I'm Barbara Slavin. I'm a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. I'm also representing Iran. I'm thinking I'll be Kazim Soleimani today. Doug Ollivant, I'm a Partner of Manted International and a Senior Fellow at New America, and I'm representing Iraq. Tom Stahl, I'm an Assistant Administrator at USAID for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, and I'm also representing Iraq today. I'm Georgia Homer. I direct the Rule of Law program here at USIP, and I'll be playing Law Enforcement today. My name is Joergine Dillam. I'm Police Commissioner of the Second Largest Police District in Denmark. We've been running since 2007 different programs addressing radicalization problems, and especially over the last couple of years, the specific Syrian problem. And I'll be, together with Georgia, representing the Law Enforcement. I'm Nick Harris. I'm Research Associate, the Center for New American Security. Today I'll be representing local insurgent groups, and I'm your partner for peace on the ground. I'm Philip Smyth. I'm at the University of Maryland, and I'm representing the local Shia, La Baikia Zayna. I'm Tom Apire, a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and I'm representing local Sunni communities. Masut Farivar from Voice of America. I'll be one of two representatives of the Fourth Estate. Viola Ganger. I'm a writer and editor here at the US Institute of Peace, and career journalist, and trying to soak chaos. I'm Sarnata Reynolds. I'm a Senior Advisor in Human Rights at Refugees International, and I'm representing NGOs today. I'm Rabi Torbe. I'm with the International Medical Corps and representing NGOs. I'm Mary Casey Baker. I work for the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. I'll be representing Saudi Arabia. I'm Manel Omar. I'm Acting Vice President for the Middle East and Africa Center at the US Institute of Peace, and I will be representing the Syria regime. Hi, I'm Tafiq Raheem, Director of Globeside in Dubai, and a non-resident fellow at New America. I am Bashar al-Assad. How are you, Qasem? How are you doing well? I'm Sasha Meinrath. I direct XLAB. I'm a technologist and policy hacker, and I'm here representing all tech and telecom. So what could possibly go wrong? I'm Jonathan Morgan. I'm the CEO of a data science startup called Pompoli and co-author of the ISIS Twitter Census for the Brookings Institute, and I'm also representing half of the tech and telecom industry. Good morning. I'm Gordon Gray. I'm the Deputy Commandant at the National War College, and along with Laura, I'm representing Tunisia. Good morning. Laura Talverdean, Associate Director for Research, focusing on North Africa at the Atlantic Council, representing Tunisia. Good morning. Dan Brumberg, Special Advisor at USIP, and I want to thank my colleagues for giving me the easy case of Turkey. Hi, Jim Jeffery, Washington Institute. I'm trying to represent the US government despite the uncoordinated elements to my left. Tough to beat that. Susan Reikli, I'm the Counselor at USAID, and we are a whole of government. I'm Tamika Tilliman. I'm the Director of the Bretton Woods II Initiative at New America. I will be representing both the Democratic and Republican voices of the US Congress. Hi, I'm Muath Al Wari, formerly with the UAE National Security Council, and with Ahmed here, I'll be representing the United Arab Emirates. Good morning. My name is Ahmed Al Hamli, coming from Abu Dhabi Minister of Foreign Affairs. I will be representing the United Arab Emirates. Good morning. My name is Tom Parker. I'm a counterterrorism strategist with the UN Counterterrorism Implementation Task Force, and somewhat conveniently, I will be one half of the team representing the United Nations today. Good morning. Lorenzo Vidino. I'm the Director of the newly established Programming Extremism at George Washington University, the other side of the UN for today. Good morning. I'm Jocelyn Cezari, Georgetown University and Harvard University, and I will represent Muslims in Europe. Good morning. My name is Farah Pandith. I'm the former Special Representative to Muslim Communities at the Department of State. I had the honor of working at the NSC under Mr. Hadley, where we pioneered CVE programs in Western Europe. Today, I will be representing a Western Muslim woman who is on her way to Syria, and I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for hosting us. Thank you very much. That was a great start. It showed great appreciation for the guidelines, which was great. It also showed that some of you were getting into the roles early, also great. It, I think, should be revealing to us, even at this early stage, that you are here representing the countries of the world and some of the most chaotic places on earth, and yet it's clear the greatest chaos is in the United States government already. So, we have a verisimilitude going for us. Anyway, what we are going to do now is to just give you a taste of what the polling feels like, and then we're going to turn to Steve, and then we're going to open up the discussion and frame the discussion. I'm going to get up just because I do that periodically during the day, so I can walk over here. These are the polling devices. The way the polling devices work is that periodically, questions will come up on these screens, and there will be a series of answers. Next to the answers will be a number. You can hit the number, and that will input your vote. You'll have eight seconds. At the end of eight seconds, we'll know where everybody is. Everybody in the audience can participate as well. That gives us a sense of a bigger group and where the group is. These first three questions are kind of simple, sample questions, but they have to do with our opening set of discussions. This morning, we are going to be talking about one of the critical elements in combating violent extremism, and that is countering the success many of the groups that are operating today, including notably the Islamic State, have had recruiting foreign fighters and others into their ranks. And so the question is, if we are trying to achieve more peaceful outcomes, one of the ways we may want to do that is via countering these recruitment, blunting the recruitment efforts, because that at the end of the day, of course, will reduce the number of people who are producing some of the bad outcomes that we're seeing in countries across the region. But how do we get there? I want to say this now, and I'm going to say it again, and Nancy will say it again throughout the day. Our objective is to come up not with 35,000 feet analyses, not with the kind of things that you see in op-eds or in some of the papers that you may have seen that are abstract. We want to come up with concrete ideas. And so that's up to you. And as you go through the day, what you want to be looking for, whether it's in discussions or whether it's in scenarios, when we take breaks during the scenario so you can collaborate with one another is what kind of ideas can realistically work. Now, that realistically is an absolutely critical point. We live in a world full of constraints. There are political constraints, economic constraints, there's circumstantial issues that have to be taken into consideration. We want to find the best possible path towards peace. So, emphasis on the possible. And that's what we're all here working together on. Let's start the collaboration and just to put our toe in the water with this polling to give you a little bit of a sense of that. We'll do this a couple of times through the day. But if we have the first question, you'll see how effective have efforts to stem the recruitment of foreign fighters been to date? You can see it on all four of these screens. There's a little clock at the bottom, pick one very effective, two effective, three you're on the fence, four ineffective, five very ineffective. Soon as I finish reading them off, the clock starts counting down, I hope. And you have now just a few seconds to put in your answer. You change your mind, just hit a second button, whatever the last button you hit is what will count. And then there's a moment and we tabulate it and you can see that 66% of you say efforts have been ineffective, 11% very ineffective. So, 77% of you are on the ineffective side of the scale. That gives you a sense of the challenge that lies ahead of us. Let's go to two more questions, which I hope you get acclimated with this. What recruitment counter strategies have been most effective? Now, we've said these have been ineffective, but has outreach to vulnerable communities been effective? Law enforcement, surveillance and prosecution, tracking and disabling of social media accounts or something else? That would be other. And so again, we go to the countdown clock and we shall see that you say 40% say outreach to vulnerable communities, 29% say law enforcement, 12% say tracking and disabling of social media accounts, and 18% of you have fallen into our trap of saying other. Because when you say other when we're polling, then I'm going to ask who said other so you explain what you said, okay? So, who said other? Why did you say other? When you talk, hit the button. Outreach to vulnerable communities doesn't explain that you have to look beyond just particular places. You need to go global and you need to build movements at the local level. Excellent point. Building on that, similarly that you need an integrated approach, just throwing money at vulnerable communities without understanding the drivers that are happening at the local level will not prove effective. Somebody else say other? Okay. Well, I said other because none of the first three choices have, in my view, have been particularly effective. And there must be other methods that have worked locally in different countries that we would have to look into. Okay. Well, hopefully we will do that here and anybody else? Surely somebody did because the numbers don't add up, but okay. You are warned. If you say other, we are going to come back to and we have ways of finding you via your Twittering. All right. One more. Agree or disagree? Counter strategies targeting women recruits should be different than those targeting men. Strongly agree to strongly disagree. This gives you a sense of a kind of a range question. And in my head, I'm predicting the answer. Let's see how good I am at this. So 83% of you are on the agree side of the spectrum. That was kind of the obvious answer here. Strongly disagree. Who said strongly disagree? Okay. People are going to play that game where they're going to go and vote, not own up to their vote. Okay. We will come after you. So, okay. Steve, we've set the stage for this. Nancy will kick it off with the first question for you. Great. Thank you. And I'm delighted to have with us here today Steve Hadley, who is the chair of USIP and a wonderful leader and partner for us. Steve, we've already talked this morning about the dissolution of a number of states in the Middle East as having been a part of the equation. One of the very important exceptions to that is Tunisia. We just hosted President Assebsi here on a recent visit. You were just in Tunisia. Tunisia stands as one of the few states that seems to be succeeding after the events of 2011, and at the same time as one of the largest contributors of foreign fighters to the region. Talk a little bit about what you saw when you were there as to how those dynamics are in counterplay. Well, one, it's a pleasure for me to be here with you this morning, and I'm sorry I'm not going to be able to stay for the day. I think this is a very important subject. I think we're going to learn a lot, and I want to compliment Nancy, you and David for putting this together again and Kristen for being part of the original idea for it. I think you're also sounds like I can have a lot of fun today, and I think I'm sorry I'm not going to be a part of that as much as in the same amount as not being able to hear to learn what you're going to learn. Tunisia is interesting. The origin of the Arab Spring, a country that as opposed to its neighbors has done almost everything right, teetered on the brink of kind of a Muslim brotherhood takeover, stepped back, established a consensus process, got a constitution, has now a unity government that has 80% of the seats in the parliament and is committed to a reform agenda, political, economic, and social. Doing all the things right. Why? Really three factors. One was this vehicle of a national dialogue supported and really driven by civil society. Second, a decision that the country made in the 1950s to give women full equality with men and invest in the education of their people as their most important resource. And finally, interestingly enough, the Anata party, which is a Muslim brotherhood type party, that as opposed to their counterparts in Egypt, thought power was a vehicle to establish democracy rather than a democracy as a vehicle to establish power. And so this is a country is doing everything right. And yet, as Nancy said, 3,000 of their citizens are with Islamic State in Syria. So why is that? And I talked with the advisor to the president and his comment was, Tunisia has run the course of the national narrative and vision for the country that was established in the 1950s. And we need to come up with a new national narrative, a vision for our country. What is uniquely Tunisian? And what is the role Tunisia is going to play in the region that give our people a reason to invest in the future of their country? And I think he's on to something. Because if you look at the countries in chaos, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, they are countries, I think, that have also outrun their national narratives or really never had a strong national narrative in the first place. So one of the things I would hope you would do today is you'll have a focus on the technology. Why is it the Islamic State uses American made technology to beat us in the marketplace of our ideas every day? Why is that? How do you counter their visual images? How do you counter the grievance narrative? How do you deal with the real deprivation in their societies that is a recruiting tool? But I think you also need to spend some time which thinking about countering the vision of the Islamic State. And part of that is undermining their vision, which is tied to the Caliphate. That is what gives them a riveting narrative for the region, restoring the greatness of the people of Islam lost for over a millennium. Now coming back, that is a powerful image and phrases that we use like inclusive governments, representing all elements of society, accountable and responsive governance, justice and security. Those concepts, important as they are, the right concepts, pale in comparison to the lure of the Caliphate. So I think we need to think about, given that, how do we roll it back? And one of the things is we have to take that territory back so the Caliphate essentially comes to an end. But we have to at the same time talk about what is the affirmative vision, the narrative for these states that will give their people a motivation to pull together, to support their states and to fight against ISIS. I think that's really what we're missing. Thank you. Are there other, I mean besides developing a narrative in the context of Tunisia, are there, I mean they must be concerned about the 3,000 people as well, because not only do the 3,000 people originate there, but when they go off and they fight these wars, they are learning skills that if they bring them back to Tunisia, they can be extremely dangerous in the context of Tunisia. Were there in your conversations there, programs that they are working on to nip this in the bud that are particularly effective? Have they not gotten to that point yet, beyond simply describing a narrative? I think they have not gotten to that point yet, is my sense. They're focusing on what can we do to get the kind of effective security forces so we can catch these people at the border and not let them back into society. I think when they think about the broader problem, I think one of the great strengths they are going to have and going to use is that this sort of emerging social cohesion that is built heavily on civil society, which I think was prompted heavily by the role they gave to women here five decades ago, that that gives them a platform with which to deal with this problem that I think other societies really don't have. I think what they are going to end up doing is figuring out how to lever that kind of civil society. It is active civil society. The system the president basically said the constitution of Tunisia today was handed to us by civil society and we adopted it. I think their approach is going to be then reaching out to civil society and energizing the society as a whole to try to come up with a plan to try to reintegrate these people, but at this point they are very early in that process. One of the issues that president Assebsi seemed to be wrestling with in his comments was that balance between human rights and the security approaches that might in many people's minds be necessary to stem the flow or to deal with the return. How did you see that balance playing out in Tunisia? Throughout this conversation is the discussion of how to include security forces in an approach that is part of a productive partnership and doesn't end up further alienating communities in the process. One of the problems they have is, and it has echoes on the problem in Iraq, where a lot of people said, you know, you shouldn't have allowed the Iraqi security forces to disestablish themselves, which really would have happened and you should have called them back and restored them. Tunisia is very interesting because we've spent some time with the minister of interior. They took an approach that they fired all the heads of the ministry of interior, but they kept all the soldiers, all the people in the ministry and they thought they could retrain and reeducate. And it is a very divisive issue at this point that they are only now beginning to address through a truth and reconciliation device. And it has vignettes like the following, a gentleman I talked to, he said, you know, I was incarcerated by the Ben Ali regime and I walked into the ministry of interior and I saw a man who was my jailer and who raped my wife in my presence as part of the torture that he imposed upon me. And I said to myself, why is this person still part of the ministry of interior? So there is a huge issue in these transition societies. If you fire all the existing structures, you invite the risk of chaos. But if you try to preserve them, you don't address the underlying grievances that the population have against those people. And I think it'll be very interesting to see how Tunisia now handles that problem. They are early in the process with their truth and reconciliation commission. And I think this in a way can be a case study of how you deal with a very challenging problem. You know, there's a clear echo in what you're talking about of Iraq and in some respects kind of the mirror image of what we ended up doing with the bath party, right? And there's a lot of prescriptions, you know, sort of Monday morning quarterbacking about how we handle that that said, well, if we'd only done it the other way, everything would be fine. And clearly you're saying, maybe not. It may not be it may not be the case. But let's turn for a second to Iraq, because clearly you had a lot of experience with that and clearly the genesis of the Islamic State is within Iraq. As you look back, what do you think were the factors that fed into the to the growth of the Islamic State so that we can sort of use those as guideposts in the in the in the efforts to resist such developments in the future? I'm probably not a I'm not a disinterested witness on the issue of Iraq. So, you know, you should take that into account in these comments. Look, I the where we were through the efforts of two administrations in 2009 and 2010 was that al Qaeda in Iraq had been defeated, not destroyed, but it had been defeated. It had been so beaten down that while it could maintain a low level of violence, it did not threaten the state and the state building process. So that problem was done. Then what happened? Well, people will say the US went home in 2011 did not leave a residual force and we can discuss how significant that was. Two other things. The sins of the Maliki regime I think began to come into fruition and it was it basically subverted what was a unity government in favor of a more sectarian agenda and the response to that was very predictable among the Sunnis and the Kurds. I think the big thing was Syria. And when that civil war got started in 2011, a number of Republicans and Democrats were saying if this is not addressed, four things will happen. More people will die. It will become more sectarian. It will destabilize the neighborhood either because of refugee flows into places like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey or because of terrorist flows into places like Iraq. And finally, it'll open the door for a resurgence of al Qaeda. And that's exactly what happened. So one of the challenges we have to learn, there are sins of commission, mistakes people make a lot of people think going into Iraq in 2003 was a mistake. There are also sins of omission, a failure to act and sometimes the consequences of those can be even worse. So on the topic of whether to act or not, when we talk about the critical importance of creating a narrative into the future, a new Tunisian narrative, a Libya, a Yemen narrative, should they get to that place, what is the role of the United States? How are we helpful or not helpful as those narratives are born and created? The narratives obviously have to come from the people. And it is, I think, a principal burden of the leaders in a country like Tunisia and Iraq and elsewhere to, while all the day-to-day pressures they have, which are enormous if you're leading one of those countries, have some time to step back and think strategically about what is a narrative that is right given our history and culture and they could inspire and motivate our people. They have to find it themselves, but I think one of the things America can do through organizations like USIP and also through our diplomats is to be in dialogue with those national leaders and help them to understand that that is a critical part of their leadership challenge if they are going to lay the foundation for a stable, prosperous society going forward and to engage that dialogue with them and share our own experiences because we have a national narrative reflected actually in the Declaration of Independence in our Constitution about freedom and democracy that is held up for over 200 years and still compels and motivates not only our people but attracts people to our shows. So we know, sure, so we know something about the power of narratives and I think we can be in dialogue with these national leaders to help them appreciate that this is an important part of their leadership challenge and then to be in dialogue them, help them try to define it. Okay, so what we want to do at this point is open up this conversation a little bit, turn to some of you out there either for comments or if you have questions for Steve or just to throw it out and remember the title for this session is the search for an effective counter strategy. Steve has talked about some of the parameters and some of the challenges you know it's very common for people to say well we need a counter narrative but in the case of Tunisia there's a strong counter narrative and it doesn't reach everybody within the society so the question is what kind of counter narrative for whom a counter narrative about what is an economic counter narrative, a social counter narrative, political counter narrative, an ideological counter narrative, a theological counter narrative, you know how backed up does that have to be by results, where does that fit in this continuum of things that we do and we're not going to come up with a precise prescription here for among other reasons the situation in Tunisia as we've just discovered is very different from the situation in Iraq and the situation in Iraq is very different from Syria or Yemen or Libya or some of the other places where this is manifesting themselves. What we want to zero in on is what have we seen that's actually effective or what might we consider that based on what we know might be effective and look in those directions. Now we've talked to Catherine Brown and Jonathan Morgan beforehand to think about this a little bit so they could offer you know in three or four minutes some thoughts to help trigger this conversation and then we may go back to Steve after they talk and then we'll open it up a little bit to you in the remaining 30 minutes we've got in this session. Can I turn to you Catherine first? Of course, firstly it is of course a pleasure to be here as an academic to be surrounded by so many practitioners as well we usually stand on the sidelines looking in and sniping so it's a real pleasure to do something that might actually be productive. Well here the practitioners stand on the sideline and snipe too so you'll have something in common I'm sure. Okay so in terms of what do we know about effectiveness or otherwise of counter narrative strategies the first thing I think that was picked up on this morning in terms of Islamic State and others and we mentioned the idea that they have an effective narrative themselves but I would say that's only part of the issue if we deconstruct what Islamic State saying there are three effective elements to what they're doing the first is they offer a critique of global politics and I think in order for a counter narrative to be effective we have to look at that critique that they offer as well and recognize that there are some elements of truth within that and challenge how we might respond to that. The second bit is what was picked up on their vision their solution to that critique and that solution appears inspiring and it appears authentic and therefore what we might want to consider is how then do we inspire ourselves that narrative from our young people and I have to admit a little bit of anxiety around this notion that individuals like ourselves need to be coming up with the counter narrative rather than empowering the next generation to find their own narratives regardless of who they're meant to be countering and that therefore means empowering them to ask difficult questions of ourselves as well as of Islamic State and others and then thirdly one of the issues I think is important is the question of what it means to be living in this world as ordinary citizens rather than as elites and in terms of that Islamic State attempt to provide a way of life that perhaps we have yet to really figure out how do we give young people motive to carry on living and what does that mean how do you find meaningful life and that might be where the theological solutions might be found as well as the social economic and political ones which leads us then to think in terms of counter narratives how might we break this down to look at evaluating them so firstly we might need to consider at what point do we seek to intervene at what point do narratives need to be engineered are we talking about individuals who are seen to be at risk or are we looking at vulnerable communities and how broad do we target that secondly where does that intervention occur is it within communities or within schools or is it on the battlefields themselves second thirdly the question is who who should be doing this is it a matter for government or for civil society if governments are actively involved does that undermine the legitimacy of the programs and the good efforts that civil society might be putting in but if they're not involved does that not reinforce the idea that governments of the west in particular the illusion that they think muslim lives don't matter and i think that's something that islamic state have been quite good at presenting this idea that somehow for western governments muslim lives don't matter and i don't think that's true but that's an image that's being put forward that needs to be counted and then thirdly of course of course there is the question of well what do we do should there be a militarized response which was discussed last night at the talk how important is the use of force in countering the idea that islamic state are successful militarily or will that merely fuel the idea again that western states are more than willing to use the middle east as a battlefield for their own ideological games and i think that's really important in thinking through some of the ideas around islamic state because as well this question of a global versus a local agenda is really important and i think that's where this new form of islamic state is really interesting and about countering violent extremism dealing with the global and the local is something that we really need to tackle especially today okay so that's very useful right is a very useful structure because essentially catherine's provided us with the five w's here which which narrative is it is a political social economic is the military narrative where they're not gaining um uh is it a theological narrative uh when at what point in the timeline do we intervene um uh and where will it be most effective where um who does the intervening uh and what what specifically do we do and i think the what has a as a double meaning because it's not just what do you do to establish the narrative it's also what do you do to prove the narrative what you know words alone won't do it you know you have to actually demonstrate that you can deliver a result or deliver uh whatever is promised within the context of the narrative i just want to um i i thought that was very helpful um and i wanted to ask a question about what i didn't hear you see say of a potential fourth criteria and that is um you know this this very powerful call to give your life and you know the the fact that if you join isis you are committing to potentially die or to die in in a way that we see with you know samurai cults and other places around the world how do you factor that in to the power of the vision and the find a way to live because it's actually a bit counter to that it is i think what's been really interesting is a shift in uh islamic states dialogue and their narratives to begin with it was very much about generating a fighting force that this was a warrior type initiative that you could be a hero and fight the jihad in their language and therefore your sacrifice would be worthwhile um because you'll be fighting for a higher cause however possibly since the declaration of the caliphate you also see a change in the narrative which is saying we are more than a fighting force and so we talked about yesterday we are a territorial state and they're not just asking for people to sacrifice their life as fighters but to provide a life that can create this new state and i think that combination is what makes them incredibly powerful because it's not just about providing fighters in some militarized society although it is actually quite militarized and death is a way of life but their narrative very much focused now on creating the institutions of statehood okay jonathan thank you also of course it's a pleasure to be here it's actually nice on the opposite side being a practitioner and always being focused on doing things all the time to actually take a step back and talk about perhaps why um so i think what we see a lot in the technology industry um is that these narratives that we're discussing are actually playing out online so directly from person to person in social media so we see this on a global scale and i think it's important for us to discuss what we're actually countering what's the point of the counter narratives that we're talking about and for us there's a couple different things that are very specific and very actionable are we trying to stem the flow of foreign fighters or we trying to stop recruiting or are we talking about the capacity for ISIS in particular to radicalize its scale they have access to a communications platform that is being used in a way that's unprecedented and i think not only encouraging people to leave their home countries to go participate in the conflict on the ground but then also to perhaps self radicalize and commit acts of terrorism where they already are um with that in mind uh while we do of course want to talk about the content of the narrative that uh that we might use to counter the ideology of an organization like ISIS um i think it's also important to talk about the actions that we can take immediately these narratives are difficult to coordinate um there there's a number of different actors who may want to contribute to what that narrative ultimately is is it local actors is it state actors etc etc we're in an interesting position in the technology industry that we are the conduit for this messaging so we're in a position where we can take we can we can take action um we can take very specific action and so what i think it's interesting that everybody was voting on the different ways in which we might establish an effective counter narrative i think we all in this room tended to side on engaging with people directly and having a dialogue and i understand that that is it's effective and it's nice and it's popular particularly perhaps in a more academic context but what we've seen i mean and we're twitter we know is that it's effective when you stop people from having these discussions online um we are able to effectively degrade the networks the capacity for these organizations to reach the large uh audience that they currently enjoy um by suspending people's accounts and so while we again want to talk about the words that we're saying and the content of the narrative i think it's also important to talk about the direct actions that we can take in the digital space not just the actions that we can take on the battlefield but the direct action that we can take in the battle of ideas to um ensure that we are sort of limiting the extent to which these organizations can share their message online and protect the communities that we've established in the digital space on social media like twitter and facebook and youtube from the kind of voices that are a direct threat to um ideologically the way of life that we enjoy uh and uh and and that is part of the counter narrative this is part of this direct opposition to the idea the ideology of these organizations like isis thanks thanks very much and i think jonathan built naturally on catherine's comment by going or restating the what as the howe and looking at the technology component of it and saying you know we have ways to degrade them through taking specific technological steps last night you heard tom donlan and today you heard steve hadley sing another one of the houses actually defeating them on the battlefield and while that's not you know directly in the ambit of us and talking about a peace game here it it does pertain to the narrative right if if if they're unsuccessful then that degrades their narrative and and so this big question of how what are the steps what are the tools is something i think we'll return to throughout the day um you've heard now both of these comments and i was just wondering if you had a reaction to either both i have a reaction each on catherine crowns very good points there's one thing i think we need to clarify in terms of how we think about it it's very um easy and common to say there is no military solution to the problem posed by dash there has to ultimately be a political solution and that is true but when you're dealing with somebody like daish with the brutality of their uh their tactics there is no political solution that does not have a military or kinetic element and the trick is to have a kinetic element that is reinforcing of the other elements of your strategy political economic social and doesn't run counter to it and also doesn't get in the way of your being able simultaneously to conduct your own kinetic operations and discredit daish for the brutality and inhumanity of theirs so it's a tricky business my point is the conversation doesn't end when you say well there's no military solution that's the beginning of the conversation of how you use the military element of what should be your solution and johnson morgan's point a very interesting point there we all talk about how you rebut the narrative of dash the other question is if you were a chinese if i was a chinese official sitting here i would say well you where you counter the narrative of dash is you cut them off you you know you control the internet you control social media you don't let them to get their message out and i think our solution has to be a combination of both but there is a dilemma when in the early days and jim jeffrey will remember um part of the military came to us and said there is a social media internet channel that is being used as a recruiting tool and it's resulting in fighters who are killing our men and women in uniform please shut it down we went to the intelligence community said oh don't shut it down it's our principal source of intelligence on what al-qaeda is doing so there are dilemmas and trade-offs in this business but i think we've got to be you know we're all sort of you know marketplace of ideas and you know free flow of information i think we're going to have to be hardheaded about this and both flow and affirmative narrative and look at measures we can do to cut off the access of dash to um the tools of communication go ahead well it's it's a balancing not only for that reason but we're seeing in malaysia for example we there was just some uh reporting on how malaysia is starting to do greater control of certain aspects of the internet for exactly this reason um and the question is how do you balance the uh the ability of young people to create their own narrative to have access to those those tools uh and not feel alienated or repressed against that other effort so it's it's a number of balancing acts it is and there's another one which we have to put on the table which is the role of religion and if you talk to the moroccan's for example they have basically used state control of religion to establish an infrastructure of training facilities and certifications of imams who will put out a counter narrative to the terrace from the mosque now that's not our view of how you do church and state relations but you know a hard question in this part of the world is do you use a religion affirmatively in that way through state control to really institutionalize a counter message very tough issue yeah and i in fact i think all of these had there is a there are tough issues embedded in all of these that i think we need if we are going to be intellectually honest to deal with today you know if we if we take a strong military action um in order to degrade them on the battlefield and undermine their narrative there we may feed their narrative by saying look here is the us in here or here is western powers in here doing this that proves they are trying to manipulate our world on the other hand if you are a country and you are an imminent risk of destabilization because of an extremist group you may not seek to choose the most democratic solution openness may not be your primary issue at the moment because the alternative destabilization loses all control and and and will give an opportunity to the other side meanwhile if of course you crack down you create a different kind of narrative for them and so you know this is part of the complexity that we want to deal with here but we don't want to not acknowledge these factors we won't you know we want to be as practical as possible now we've got about 15 minutes here um manal is going to lead the way with bringing this open and and and and and then i'll go to toni and we'll open it up so manal i guess just a few points one is with the with the phrase countering narrative extremism it limits it almost to two sides recognizing that there are several narratives both in terms of the extremists i mean isis is only one form of the extremism there's other groups that have different types of narratives that we have to also be aware of and those lines continue to blur as we're looking for allies on the ground but also on our side you know it's it's not a matter of in my opinion creating counter narratives they exist they're there they're on the ground and i think particularly in terms of the question of the role of religion finding those connections between state being involved in religious institutions i think has always been a dangerous road in that context not only for the issues of legitimacy but also it will then stunt the organic narratives that are emerging most religious leaders have come out to condemn the type of violence from isis um but the the other challenge that i think and particularly what is the role of the international community because i fully believe that it has to come from local voices in terms of the narratives but the international community might need to really do a better job of role modeling if we're saying that we don't want to see violence if we're saying that there has to be alternative solutions then what are the techniques that we can introduce that don't resort to violence it's not just a matter of the military intervention it's also a matter of who we talk to who we bring around the table it is often armed actors and if that's the case then those who are choosing not to have a violent form of uprising is is missing and so i think the international community needs to role model in a much stronger way how to work with nonviolent actors people who are more interested in bringing the national dialogue or the peace activists together um and i think we tend to really marginalize those groups and see them as ineffective the yeah and i think manal has brought up another point here which i'm glad she brought up early right the the our focus here is not countering daish it's not countering the islamic state it's countering violent extremism because we've seen what happens if you say let's eliminate core al-qaeda you know you you make progress towards eliminating core al-qaeda and you end up with al-qaeda in a bunch of other places and the islamic state you know and all the other manifestations of violent extremist groups here and so one of the things we want to try to do and again it's highly complex because it differs country to country it differs region to region it differs uh uh in sect to sect and it differs in a lot of other factors is periodically step back and stay what are we doing against the broader problem because if we defeat this group we are going to end up with five other groups do you want to respond to that there's uh we had a usip board meeting here in april and georgia homer who's here with us today made a very interesting distinction on language and it's something that seems to me the group might think about she said there's actually two meetings of countering violent extremism countering violent extremism conjures up sort of kinetic responses directed at the terrorists how do you counter the terrorists themselves she said there's another interpretation and if you'll correct me if i get this wrong preventing extremist violence which actually talks more at the societal context and how do you build resilience against the narrative and attraction of the extremists i think in this conversation we're going to have our our eye on both of those elements that's true and particularly since the second one is leads you towards more practical solutions very very often as opposed to saying if only we offer a nice counter narrative and everything will be fine well i mean we're delighted that the ua e is sponsoring this but offer them up as an example for another reason but there is a poll just done of the middle east and of young people in the middle east and said where where would you like to live and they said well i'd like to live in the ua e there's jobs there it's growth it's a tolerant society in many ways it's you know it's changing it's evolving there's lively cultural life there's a there's a counter narrative right there yet this is still happening so it's not that there are the absence of narratives that's not the whole problem and i think we have to sort of go go to the next point tony um thank you i agree with you there's not an absence of narrative i'd like to sort of focus on some practicalities tom last night referenced and steve you also picked up on the fact that the Arab world is steeped in a legacy of weak governance and institutional structure let's go back this isn't new it's um the Arab human development report of o2 and the for deficits we are all keenly aware of it i think we need to build a toolbox that is that underpins a narrative tunisia is a great case study and having just also returned and done a conference there we have an opportunity there both in terms of the civil society space the role of women and now this new government but you can't just talk about narratives and if you look at the white house press statement uh that the whole first part of it is about counterterrorism you have to look at the waiting generation and what is the and how that provides a funnel of opportunism for recruiting and radicalization so it's interesting for us to and i am i i look at it as a tripod and it has to be integrated and part of our problem and i look forward to engaging with our government colleagues the concept of a coordinated comprehensive integrated approach that deals with these issues that underpins on the economic level we we've seen poll after poll after poll you have a robust economic space you have an involved in your incentivizing a government to do reforms that are corollary with civil society and the business world that then is reinforced by a robust counterterrorism strategy you cannot do one without the other and i'd like to put a big idea on the table early on david and uh and our colleagues uh and i know it's difficult i'm keenly aware of the difficulty but the issue is emerge national security budget as long as we have no tools in the toolbox uh of a one five oh account and we are constantly piecemealing whether we're going to our friends in the emirates or the or others or we're looking at the private sector to underpin uh a public private partnership to help fund some of these other economic and civil society spaces we're going to constantly be facing these dualities and not able to leverage an impact on the ground so i'd like us to start you know moving down the path of um considering some new ideas that will help because we've got to tackle this it's not going to change and we keep uh it's the legacy of charlie wilson's war frankly easier to vote on the f-16s and the counterterrorism strategy strategy much more difficult to have a robust um non as i call it a hedge fund approach to this early four year return on your investment high yield and nobody wants it they want to have show me now what are the matrices and then we can move forward but it'd be interested in having you all three of you comment do you want to offer a comment on it we uh in my time when i was national security advisor the 150 account was underwater uh and we basically got it reframed as a national security account we didn't merge the accounts but we got it reframed and and framed as a national security investment and it helped it helped save the account um i think we've got to have a broadened understanding of what is our national security interest and what are the national security what are the tools we need to protect that interest and you know a lot of people around this room reflect some of those tools tools so i think you're exactly right but it's a little uphill because you know it's the hardware you know that people love to vote for i would just add to that and there was an effort with the oko funds to use that strategy to augment the 150 and with with some success but with some vulnerabilities as well and what what i think the biggest threat is making sure that the hardware doesn't overwhelm and creep into and subsume what would what what's in the 150 account otherwise so it's really about having national security understood in a broader frame that would enable us but if i could suggest there is no understanding i think you can do the firewalls on the hardware but the 150 account is not only underwater it is there are no tools and that's i think what we have to underpin the narrative with the tools in the toolbox okay we're gonna go around and take take a couple more questions i'd like to just add one thing in response to what what tony said um first of all it's useful to have a practical idea thrown out on the table because it's going to be very possible for us throughout this day to list the reasons why the challenges we face are profoundly complex and just as very often we see the perfect being the enemy of the good frequently in washington and in other capitals we see complexity being the enemy of action uh in other words we see extremely you know we could sit there and we'd say well there's so many things we have to do that we either do tiny incremental things on all of them or we don't do anything at all uh and one of our mandates here is to focus on actions we can take now this was a very inside the beltway washington dc oriented action um but it's an action and i you know there there are no points off here for coming up with concrete ideas i see tom and then i see down here so it's just guess i see i see tom susan jocelyn i see several people go on tom thank you um i wanted to echo a couple of things first off um the first is this issue of narratives i have to say i'm a real skeptic that this is a big question or a big answer um i'm here representing an organization today which has the alliance of civilizations we believe in a culture of peace global citizenship we spend a lot of money promoting these um i think they're good things um but whether they're a solution to the one percent of the one percent that actually wants to go out and commit violent acts i'm deeply skeptical of that we've heard tunisia held up as an example of a success story but i can't help but note they had a major terrorist attack just two months ago um and that's not the only terrorist attack we've seen in tunisia it's very very hard to reach extremists with narratives it's very hard to change people's opinions when they've been made we know this from cognitive psychology so while i think it's good to have narratives it's good to know what you stand for it's good to promote positive values i'm really drifting towards george's point and i know the secretary general um within the un we've had a shift in thinking from countering violent extremism towards preventing violent extremism at the um we think a lot about conditions conducive um i know a lot of people in the academic community might take issue with our list of conditions conducive as actually having real causation for terrorism um but addressing those conditions is an absolute good improving people's quality of life in those countries is an absolute good and that might be as much as we can accomplish um i always love a reference to the geositical the concept of sins of omission and sins of commission um i started out life as an intelligence officer and as an investigator and i'm going to offer you up another thing though in forensic science we call the lookards exchange principle which is the idea that you cannot interact with a crime scene without leaving a trace and as actors we face that anything we do has an impact it doesn't necessarily have a positive impact i could take an american positive narrative and destroy it with one tweet of a picture from abu grabe right it's very difficult for us to promote these narratives so the question we have to ask ourselves is when we do something are we doing good are we doing harm and i think that's a really good starting point okay susan and then jocelyn we only have four minutes so i encourage everybody to be crisp okay i'll be i'll try to be very crisp um first thank you for putting on the table the idea of a march 150 account you know as representing the u.s government but also having spent a couple decades with usa id i i would put on the table that we do have the tools um we don't have the flexibilities and the ability and i think that's what you were getting at in order to iterate to respond in a way that really uses all of our tools in our toolbox and we have in different countries i served in columbia for four years and obviously we used all our tools in our toolbox and and looking at a country that was on the verge of being a failed state at the end in 90s and where it is today is uh truly transformative as far as just a couple of the points on the narrative we've been talking a lot about a counter narrative but really having an affirmative narrative and picking up on your point about prevention as a matter of fact we uh we chose very specifically not to use cve when we issued our policy four years ago we talked talked about a development response to violent extremism and now changing that frame to prevention i think it's something we need to keep at the forefront as we move forward okay jocelyn yeah briefly um if we are aiming to counter extremism um talking from the point of view of people who are living in the west uh extremism is not the major trigger for joining groups like al qaeda or isis the first demand on the ground is about religion and it came in your presentation the people who go online first go to look for answers to religious questions so we have to address the fact that there is a theology of hatred that is circulating and it's bigger than i would say the strategy of group like al qaeda and isis so if we do that it is an international community responsibility it cannot be the responsibility of state whoever they are western or muslim state it has to be about empowerment of groups in a different civil society context that are already conveying or carrying a narrative that have nothing to do with this theology of hatred the problem is when we think in in terms of counter strategy we are already weak the problem is how do we reach out a level where the global market of ideas is not dominated by theology of hatred some of it uh even uh brought out by the so-called friends of the west these are questions that we're going to have to address very very helpful remark okay i'll take one last comment here we are right at the end though so you could get 30 seconds um we talked a lot about i mean there's many solutions and it's multifaceted i think that's why we have all these different perspectives it's not just one truth but we've talked a lot about the supply of foreign fighters you know in this counter strategy and i think less and we need to talk a little bit more about where they're going and the fact that when you have failed states and places where these fighters can congregate and you have an increasing number over the last three years that augments the problem immeasurably and you know when we're talking about the UAE they're doing as much as they can and in protecting their area preventing let's say Emiratis from going in different strategies but you have these places such as Libya Sinai Afghanistan Iraq failed states vacuums of power and i don't think we've had the discussion of where does that fit into the counter strategy where does aggressive diplomacy fit in for example Libya nothing is happening i think that these things are more shameful we pontificate in that summit in february on cve and yet nobody's going and saying let's actually solve the situation in libya at all you know so put that back to you guys that is a profoundly important point because the narrative is fed by opportunity or sense of mission and so if there are places where there those exist or where they crop up or they can be created it draws people in and it gives them a sense of of a role and a purpose we've now come to the end of this opening session i'd like to turn to steve for last comment nancy for last comment then i'll explain to you what happens next i have nothing more to say i think this is going to be a terrific conversation i wish i was with you i would just note i think the conversation has brought us to a really important place that will tee up for the rest of the day about exploring more deeply with more nuance the motives uh for why people are motivated to go uh especially in some of the places that are so failed as tafik just said and and how they search for meaning and what forms that meaning and just having that deeper understanding may better inform what we may or may not do and i'd like very much tom's phrase conditions conducive as i think a good shorthand for what tafik and and several others were we're bringing forward just to have a shared vocabulary going forward thanks absolutely superb opening discussion i think everybody's joined into the discussion because you've set the stage that i hope everybody follows the peace game is as good as your contributions it says rich um as you make it so if you do not intervene if you do not seek to bring your ideas to the table there is no other way for them to get there and what you've had here is a series of examples of people framing ideas and putting them out there and advancing the discussion and we are enormously grateful for you doing that we're going to take a 15 minute break at the conclusion of that break we're going to come back and we're going to do our first scenario focusing on some of these questions of recruitment and i'll explain what the structures are and how that'll work when we get there uh please respect the 15 minute break which means that we will you should be back here and in your seats and ready to go at 10 but before you get up and before you go please join me in thanking steve for helping to kick this off in a break