 All right, well, good morning everyone, thank you for coming to the U.S. Institute of Peace. We are delighted today to have a distinguished panel to discuss the situation in the Kurdistan region in Iraq and in the wider region. My name is Sarum Hamas-Aeed. I'm a senior program officer with the Middle East and Africa Center of USIP. I also lead the Iraq program at the institute. So you'll be hearing today from panelists who have been in Iraq, working in Iraq, but also organizations that have been in Iraq, working in Iraq and continue to work in Iraq. The U.S. Institute of Peace has been working in Iraq since 2003 and continued our work since then. Most of you are familiar with our program, so I will not go into a lot of detail on that. We have two distinguished speakers from the Middle East Research Institute from the Kurdistan region. We have Professor Dlaura Al-Adin, who I have a lot of admiration for, for his work, for his ideas. He's a man of ideas and a man of action turning those ideas into action. I've seen him do that through publications and if well before going into the Kurdistan regional government, I have seen him do that while a minister of higher education in the Kurdistan regional government and I see him do that as a president and a founder of the Miri Institute. And his colleague, Samuel Morris, who is a research fellow at Miri, has been working there and working on the displaced-issued territory and other aspects of Miri. I'll let them in a minute to discuss and talk about their work. And we're also here privileged to have Dr. Ilya Buon, who is the Middle East Program Director for the Adin Institute of Peace. He was recently in Erbil and Baghdad, part of a senior USIP delegation that met with a range of actors, including top-level leadership in the Kurdistan region, meeting with President Barzani and also the Deputy Prime Minister and others in Baghdad, again the President of Masum, Prime Minister Abadi, Speaker of Jaburi and many others. So he is also coming with insights from the region and also a long-standing experience in Iraq and the wider Middle East program in his capacity as a USIP staff and also President of the Arab Human Rights Fund and well before that with other organizations. For today I think we have a diverse audience here from the think tank community, from the government and from USIP as well. And people who follow Iraq with interest, they are engaged in work on Iraq. So I think this allows us to get into really discussing in-depth what's happening. And Professor and to the panelists, the format of the day will be for about six, seven minutes per panelist to give some introductory remarks and then we'll dive into questions and answers right after that. And just for this meeting is on the record, so you are free to use the contents for publications or for your work. And we are also recording the event, hopefully, if the video quality turns out, we may also make it available on our website. And we are writing, our colleague Opal is writing a piece about the discussion as well. One thing as the delegation of the MIRI team was coming to DC, some developments happened in the Kurdistan region about the political discussions there led to a sort of a dead end at some point. And it triggered, so the turn of events demonstrations and a limited scope of violence started triggering a question for some, where are we going from here? So for quite some time, you would look at the Middle East and the wider region. If there was a lot of transition, a lot of instability, you would look at the Kurdistan region and Tunisia are the two places that would give you hope of where things might be going. So now with some of the recent developments in the Kurdistan region, those who follow the situation over there raise the question, okay, the political transition and then you have the fight against the Islamic State, how are they going to affect each other? And if you take a step back in the just in the past few months, you look at the south of Iraq, the demonstrations and the reform agenda that has been triggered there, you look at the developments in south Turkey, south eastern Turkey, and the peace talks basically reaching some sort of end in the violence that you see there, there are talk about a third intifada in the Israeli-Palestinian context. So then if you look at the region and said, okay, we had a big problem called the Islamic State. So we're ISIL and the ramification of that massive displacement, then we had areas that have been relatively stable that may be destabilizing for various reasons. Not necessarily related, I'm not trying to suggest a theory here, but for peace builders, for those who are working in the region, the landscape has just gotten more complex. So with that, I will leave it to the floor to Professor Aladdin. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. I'm delighted and but special thanks to USIP and New Kaksar Hangand, Dr. Ali Yabwan. It's always pleasure to be back here. I was here last year in your magnificent building and I know many people were envious of your spacious, beautiful facade here. And also I was grateful to meet with Ms. Nancy Lindbergh in Erbil that really renewed our interest and led to this meeting. I will briefly touch on a few things, some of which you alluded to. But to begin with, I'd like to introduce Mary to you. Obviously, my colleague was introduced and I have three more colleagues here for us. My name is Robert Smile and Sivan is our communications coordinator and we have Hogar, who is a research assistant here, right. And as an organization, we are indeed a policy research institute. We have been established for about a year and a half, our starting coincided with a lot of development and, of course, a new emerging nation aspiring to be democratic needs a lot of think tanking, a lot of policy research, a lot of direction, vision, strategy, evidence-based policies. And we found ourselves very busy as soon as we started. So our focus, although our mission is really to do with peace, stability, human rights, protection building and rule of law and so on. But we chose to engage policy makers, decision makers in the government, outside government, civil society, public, private sector. So we initiated a lot of projects ranging from reforming and institutionalizing Peshmarga forces, judiciary system, public prosecutors, all the way to protecting women from violence and legislating for that, as well as training police officers to be more accountable and more transparent. So that is really hands-on engagement with the government, as well as engaging the international counterparts, whether they are universities or policy research people, to do fundamental research on the ground, again designed to have practical applications and translating policy into practice. We also touched on many areas of conflict, and we tried to resolve conflict. For example, our report on Karkov, which Sam will talk about, as well as enshrining the minorities' right in the constitution and legislation and trying to ensure that they share the ownership of decision-making as well as the entire country. And that, again, Sam will talk about the details of that. So in many ways, we have been lucky to have natural partners in national and international, and we have been doing joint research with joint publications and joint policy reports, and I'd be delighted to talk about these in detail with anyone interested after this. In the Middle East, I'm glad that we're talking about, we're talking to a panel of experts, so you already know a lot about it. I'm going to assume a lot of knowledge rather than try and patronize everybody, but I came in at the top and dropped a few buzzwords and just to say that these are open for discussion. If you want, you can then indulge in greater detail. What we do see is that, indeed, not just the landscape is changing in the Middle East, but as you will know, the entire Middle East order that had been stagnant for decades is now in transition. And we are talking about a sudden, although it took a long time until it boiled and suddenly led to a kind of relatively chaotic descent, but actually we may well be witnessing a milestone in history that the entire Middle East order is now changing, taking new shape. But who's going to shape it is what matters to us. With the United States effectively keeping a long distance from events, keeping an arms length and not providing leadership after having been actually very directly engaged for almost a decade, especially after removal of Sudan until 2011, America was leading and dictating the agenda. But since 2011, there is a void now, which is filled by regional powers like Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and they are now shaping the new Middle East order. And left alone, we may see even more chaos, more violence and more disintegration and dismemberment of countries like Syria, like possibly Iraq and the region. So as we are in transition, we really think that superpowers, especially the United States and Europe, they need to come in and shape that future. For us, of course, we are in the middle of it. We are often said we are landlocked. Indeed, we are neighbors to many of these regional powers who are now trying to, through their rivalry, to shape the future, but none of them have nation building in mind, none of them have democracy in mind. And they are now tearing the place apart. And we, as a small nation, as an emerging nation, inevitably will either fall victim of that kind of rivalry and dynamic change, or we become part of it. But you will have known that Kurds have not and refuse to be proxies to regional powers. But they've always engaged the regional powers for their survival. They've always needed to have good relations, but they're all tough neighbors we had. Iran is one of the most difficult neighbors we've ever had, but we have to live with it. We have to engage peacefully so that we both are winners, or survivors, and have good neighborly relations. And the same thing goes to Turkey. So we need to have good trade relations, economic relations, political relations. And I'm glad to say that with Kurdish as well as Turkish initiatives, we managed to transform Turkish approach to Kurdistan from a security point of view to an economic and political one. Although tensions are rising, and this is not deep enough for it to be just permanently entrenched, but it takes time. And we're hoping that we do exactly the same with Iran, that relations would be more political, economic, rather than security-based. But then again, both Turkey and Iran have their own global agenda. They have bigger things to worry about, and we are not in the big picture, but we try not to be absorbed into their global rivalry with America, with Israel, with Turkey, and all of that. I would be happy to talk about these, but I want to remind you that at the moment in our neighborhood, there are so many hotspots that are like spanners in the work, that they are wrecking the place, and they are polarizing these nations and communities. And we need to deal with these ourselves directly, because everything happens on our land. Like, for example, in Turkey, when violence started again, when the peace process was ended effectively, then all these wars and violence and bombardments happened on Iraqi Kurdistan soil, as well as Syria and Turkey. So that wrecks or complicates matters for us in both sides of the border. Syria we all know, where it was and where it's going, and with the Russian intervention and Iraq's engagement with Russia and Iran and this new cooperation clearly will have impact on Kurdistan region, and we need to manage this well enough not to be affected negatively by it, but maybe positively by it. Syria we can talk about, especially with developments with PYD, but Iraq and Kurdistan region are of particular interest to us. So I have to emphasize, we are not behaving like a Kurdish policy research institute. We are Middle Eastern, we engage with Middle Eastern leaders, we collaborate with the Middle Eastern think tanks, but we are present in Kurdistan, we are funded by money coming from capacity building grant that comes out of the oil and gas council. It is unconditional, that keeps us impartial and independent, but it is actually coming out of the pot that is in Kurdistan. So that is why we are based there and our focus is there and that is probably our strength in having better insight about our own local issues, but engage in international community. I was in Baghdad a couple of weeks ago, up until about a week ago, and I met a lot of people including speakers of the parliament, president of Iraq and a few ministers and so on. I did develop the sense that Baghdad is going round in a vicious circle. They are under great pressure from the street as well as from the religious authorities there, Marjah and Najaf, to do something, to reform the system, but they are just not capable, it is just not possible, not easy. The relations between components in Iraq, Sunni Shia codes have not improved, the confidence building is rock bottom not happening and the government is now suffering or coming under the overwhelming pressure of so many crises, one of which for example is financial, with the oil price drop and the lack of economic structure and potential to recover, it has been really difficult and the prospect is grim. The security prospect is again grim because Iraq lost its army and now that void is filled by Hashir Shabi and militias and they are dependent on Iraqi money but answerable to other than state, i.e. answerable to people outside the state. That really undermines the state's ability to govern, to rule, to provide security. Politically Iraq is effectively, it is no longer a member of the international community, it has lost its ability to make its own decisions. So Iraq is now effectively not only dysfunctional but also unable to determine its own destiny and things are not improving and Iraq or Baghdad has not been able to provide alternative political solutions to re-engage the Sunnis, to provide hope for the populations that are now occupied under ISIS and for, and Baghdad has been like this and the indications are that they will remain like this for a long time to come. So broken Iraq and a broke Iraq as well as unable to solve or lead itself into out of this crisis and into solution. Kurdistan for a long time for well over 10 years was way ahead of Baghdad in every sense in terms of nation building and establishing democracy or aspiring to as well as rule of law. So in every way it was making better progress even economically. However, again you don't need to remind me I'm fully aware of my time but I'm reaching the crunch, I'm conscious of that. Kurdistan region suffers from the same kind of crisis as Baghdad's and it had the ability to do something about it still has but recently internal crisis rendered the KRG unable to deal with external. I believe external crisis is always opportunity like Daesh came allowed or provided the incentive to institutionalize Beshmarga and radically rethink the entire armed forces arrangements. The financial crisis provided incentive to restructure the economy, bad relations with Baghdad provided incentive for more economic independence but all these opportunities were not taken, KRG was very slow to respond to these and were effectively these were not seen what they were not used as as unique opportunities. Now external crisis as I said can strengthen you but internal crisis can actually undermine you and that's exactly what happened. I'll perhaps talk about the root causes of the crisis. The crisis is not what it seems is not what how it's displayed in the media and therefore even when friends came to help they came in help in the wrong way and they made it worse and I do not believe that the way forward is to tackle the subject as if it's a personal thing as if it's a one person wanting to stay in power or not. It's nothing to do that. It's all to do with power sharing arrangements is to do with the future and not to do with one person and I'll be happy to talk about that and that view may well be different from what the political parties say or the leaders tell you or the media people or even the ones who beat the Kurdistan and back it has nothing to do with that. And finally what I would say is that we cannot afford to watch Kurdistan lose this opportunity, lose the momentum and lose the ability to be a great partner to the rest of the world in not just the war against Daesh but also in democracy. Therefore our friends can do a lot and there's plenty that is expected of the United States. What can they do? Again I'll leave it for questions and answers but I do have very clear mind about what they can do. What are the priorities in Kurdistan? Again all to do with crisis, Peshmerga, IDPs, political, all of that. So United States can do a lot to help itself for its own national security reasons but help the partner to serve that purpose. And people around the table coming from the organizations that I just heard from Greg Serhan, I think there's plenty you guys can contribute in a very constructive way. What we want is one word, constructive engagement of our partners in America. That's actually a sentence not a word. So constructive engagement of partners, good friends with Kurdistan's leaders is what it takes to make sure that they do the right thing for that country, for our country and for the United States in the future. Sorry if I put too much to talk about. I'll cut it from Sam's shirt. So Sam, always after. Thank you, thank you. It shows if Tula was stealing my minutes he's no Bernie Sanders. But I'd like to thank you all for coming to listen to us speak. I'd like to thank our hosts at USIP for hosting us. It's very kind. I think some of the words said by our Chair Sahang in the beginning when he said that the situation is getting more complex for peace builders, I think is quite diplomatic. I think it's getting quite depressing over the last weeks and months. Things are really, really taking a turn. And maybe that feeds into, I'll say a few words about why and how we approach our work and then lead into our reports here. But I will keep it short bearing in mind that you will want to talk not only about this but also about those key issues that Lauer has spoken about. We approach our work in a way that identifies that at the moment there is a clear lack of political solutions, creative, pragmatic political solutions across the Middle East. I think that's clear. You look at everywhere across the Middle East. In Syria, the focus is on military solutions. People are talking less and less about how to find a pragmatic political solution. In Iraq, the fight against ISIL, the same situation. Everyone's focused on military solutions but yet nobody is discussing or very few people are discussing how to come around with political solutions that really, really address the problematic social, cultural issues that are the underlying factors and the only way to find true peace in Iraq and find a true solution. Guns alone won't do that. Same in the Kurdistan region recently as you've seen small violent protests and sadly moving away from negotiations. All of these sort of stem into why and how we do our work. We identify that there are key issues, key issues that need political solutions. We work on, instead of being very broad and writing reports about the Middle East in general, we try to identify those key issues and come up with some creative ideas and try to think a bit outside of the box to try and actually find policy recommendations for international actors, for local actors and for local governmental actors as well as grassroots actors to try and find some sort of solution for these issues that are built upon progressing democratization, human rights, stability, security. So with that in mind, I'd like everyone here to take the opportunity. We have hard copies of two recent reports and also keep us in mind, we'll have more and more reports coming out on different topics. But since we brought these two with us, I'll discuss these two reports. The first is on the future of Kirkuk. I'm sure all of you know about the issue of Kirkuk and the fact that it's such a difficult, prolonged, complex ethno-territorial issue. I think it's probably one of the most complex in the world. The way we approached our work was identifying that the situation has changed since June 2014. In base issue is that the security situation has changed. It's gone from being in control of at least half of the city and half of the government being in control of the government to now being in control of the Kurds. So we went in almost immediately after then and spent a lot of time on the ground talking to all political actors, local actors from all multiple communities, but obviously the three main communities being Turkmen, Kurd and Arab. So what we wanted to identify was whether any change had really come in perception. So the security situation has changed, everything has changed, but attitudes have been quickly changing across Iraq. So had attitudes been changing towards solutions for Kirkuk? So we went in and had multiple interviews with grassroot actors looking at their attitudes towards top down political strategies. Unfortunately for Kirkuk, a lot of international bodies, a lot of local bodies have produced a lot of good work. I will also highlight USIP has done a lot of great work. I mean, some of the reports are actually referenced in our report. But however, things have stagnated. You have a constitutional article that is almost designed to not go anywhere. It doesn't tackle any of the tricky issues of voter eligibility. Board is referendum question. And technically it ran out in December 2007 anyway. So our approach was, OK, we will use a framework of Article 140 because that is the go to for everyone that references it. It also gives it constitutional legitimacy in some respects. And when we were down in Kirkuk and talking to a number of Kirkukis, they also said, look, it's imperfect. But hey, Article 140 is all we've got. So the report in front of you tries to navigate the Article 140, putting in some creative ideas of how we get to a referendum on Kirkuk. Because ultimately the future of Kirkuk is for Kirkukis to decide. And I don't think anybody can argue that. So we built in a number of mechanisms to try and get through these three-step process of normalization, census, referendum. We can go deeper into that. If people are more interested in Kirkuk, I will let maybe some more finite details of that be asked in that question and answer. But I'm also quite aware that people want to focus on the current events and other issues. So that is one report. The second report is about minorities. Obviously, Kurdistan, quite rightly so, is viewed as a sort of safe haven basting for the minorities, and it is. I mean, due to its tolerance to its security and stability since 2003, it is a hub for the minorities. But since 2014, what you see is these at-risk groups and bear in mind that, as you all know, Iraq is one of the last places where you have some of these fascinating, small, endangered minority groups, Yazidis, Khakis, Manday, and Shubak. These are ancient, ancient religions. It's the last place that they are actually indigency from based there. So I think all of us have to build some way to protect these minorities before they leave. Because if they leave, they never go back. And that's for the detriment of Iraq, for the detriment of Kurdistan. It's the detriment of the world for this to happen. So with that in mind, we identified that while Kurdistan is a protector of minorities because of its stability, there is an issue of getting the voice of those minorities heard in the Kurdistan region, the levels of representation in the Kurdistan regional government. At the moment, there are fixed seats for minorities in the Kurdistan regional government, 11 seats, I think, six for Christian groups, and five for Turkmen. But that, obviously, as I said, the number of minorities, all these interesting, amazing groups, are unrepresentative. And also, those representatives are MPs and active in the legislative process, but they're not really active in the decision-making process. And there's no real lobbying body for minorities. So our proposal was to build two councils, one for ethnic minorities, one for religious minorities, built on models from Eastern Europe but changed to specifically fit Kurdistan, where these councils would have direct links. And ministers from relevant ministries would be party on these councils. And also, we'd have community representatives part of that. So what you'd see is, hopefully, a greater level of influence and lobbying from minority groups at the highest level of government, not necessarily part of government, but at least a mechanism for their voice to be heard. Because what is clear is that these groups at the moment are not scared, they're terrified. They're terrified for their future, they're terrified of what's happened recently. So anything that can be, one, put these fears or allay these fears in any way, any mechanism would be beneficial to those communities. I think I'll probably leave it there, but I would say please pick up a copy of our reports and I hope that we can now discuss some of the topics that are mentioned. Thank you. I believe that publications are placed there with also some USIP publications, if you want to pick them up. And also, before I pass it to Elie, I forgot to mention that we have Bayan Rahman, the representative of the KRG to the United States here. So thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Sir Han. Good morning. As Sir Han mentioned, I was part of the USIP's leadership visit last month to Iraq. The visit was a good opportunity to get a better understanding of the situation and I'm saying a better understanding because I do think that anyone who claims having a full understanding of the situation in Iraq and the region is either naive, misled, or trying to mislead others. So the best bet is to have a better understanding and nothing more. I'll go through a few points that I think are important in today's situation in Iraq. They are not a comprehensive assessment of the situation, just a few highlights from the visit. So the first one is about the protests that are happening in Baghdad and other parts of the country. Despite the fact that these protests are an opportunity to build on, we think that there are two distinct dynamics. There's one dynamic that is very specific to the protests happening in Baghdad and these protests started as basically or they start around governance-related grievances. But until now, what we've noticed that they lack a unified vision and they lack a good understanding of the policy-making cycle in Iraq. And unless these two issues are addressed, we don't think that these protests will lead to significant policy changes. The protests that are happening at the provincial level have a slightly different nature because although many of them started as a genuine protest movement, but then later on they turned out to be kind of a settlement of accounts between Shi'a political parties in most of the cases. And this is something, this dynamic has to be observed as well. When it comes to the reform packages introduced by the prime minister, we think that they induce a positive shock into the political landscape in Iraq. However, getting these reforms to the end will require legislative amendments, financial resources and a large political constituency that are not available at this stage. And we think that the prime minister needs to work on these three elements before raising more expectations about these reforms. On decentralization, and this is a positive note, is that decentralization seems to be the only consensual issue in Iraq right now. All of the actors agreed that there's no way they can go back to a centralized government. So everyone sees decentralization as a way forward. However, this is being expressed and interpreted in many ways, ranging from demands for full independence by the Kurdish political actors to autonomous regions by some Shi'a actors and to simply a decentralized government by other actors. So there's a need also to synchronize a little bit on what do we mean by decentralization and what form can it take. One important development that we notice is the emergence of a new Shi'a political dynamic within the Shi'a constituency, which is now obviously led by Prime Minister Abadi and Marjaya through Said Sistani. But we've noticed that it has some sort of a constituency at other levels. And this, if I want to describe this new dynamic, I would say that it's a dynamic that is not necessarily adversarial to the Iranian agenda, but at the same time, this dynamic is very keen on showing a distinct Shi'a, Iraqi Shi'a identity. So that is not adversarial to the Iranian agenda but also clearly distinct from the Iranian mainstream. And we think that this dynamic deserves a lot of attention and possibly some support. There are a lot of efforts to set up a Sunni political platform in Iraq as a prerequisite for national reconciliation or national dialogue, and this makes sense. However, what we've noticed so far is that the efforts didn't lead to any positive outcome. We think that the attempts by themselves are positive, but we hope that this will lead to one outcome at least. And as I said, we consider this as a prerequisite for any national dialogue or any national reconciliation that will happen in Iraq. At the time when we visited the Kurdistan region last September, we came out with the impression that despite the presidential crisis, the actors accommodated themselves somehow to the idea that there will be a kind of a status quo for a couple of years at least. The recent events last week made us question this assumption. But Dr. Dilawar, just before we started, confirmed to me that things couldn't escalate more than what we've seen last week and that things will stabilize somehow. And that was our understanding from our interaction with the Kurdish political actors last September. One thing that we've always raised as a concern is the increased militarization of the communities in Iraq. We think that this is one of the biggest threats that Iraq will face in the near future. And it is very important to work on mitigating the effects and averting the consequences of this militarization. And we think that it should be a priority for the international and local actors as well. We tried to raise the awareness of local actors during the visits about the danger of this trend. We hope that we manage to do so. One other issue we raised also during the visits is what is being understood by the concept of stabilization. For many international actors in Iraq today, stabilization means clearing areas held by ISIS and then providing humanitarian support and reconstructing facilities and infrastructure. We think that these are very important, but stabilization should go beyond these two aspects. It should include working on building resilience and social cohesion to prevent backsliding as a result of unfinished conflicts. And the best example we give is a pilot intervention that USIP led in Tikrit. We call it, just to simplify, we call it the Spiker Initiative. Basically, it's an initiative to mitigate violence, sorry, to prevent further violence that could have happened because of the Spiker base massacre. And the outcomes that our initiative and that we implemented in partnership with our local partner Sanat for Peace Building are quite indicative that this kind of work is needed in areas that have been cleared from ISIS. National dialogue and reconciliation is a recurrent theme and it was a recurrent theme during our meetings. We think that any national dialogue attempt should go beyond the technicalities of constitutional amendments or power sharing. It should really tackle the issue of the social contract among Iraqis. We have a strong conviction, especially after this visit, that the social contract among Iraqis is not valid anymore. It needs to be redefined and the best way to do it is through a national dialogue process. Displacement, as you all know, is a huge issue in Iraq and in KRG specifically. Everyone acknowledges that we're in a context of a protracted crisis in Iraq and protracted displacement, but I think the international community has the duty to make sure that this protracted displacement makes demographic changes in Iraq. Any new demographic change in Iraq will lead to more conflicts. The topic of minorities was also a hot topic in our visits. It's very hard to recommend what should be done for the minorities in Iraq and probably the best sentence is the one we heard from one of the minority leaders in Iraq who said, we really don't know what to do. In Iraq, we would have left our land, our history, our identity. If we stay here in this situation of displacement, we are also losing our identity and history. He basically said, we don't know what to recommend. We don't know what we want anymore. I think that one of the mistakes of many minority leaders in the past year was to come to the U.S. and other countries requesting a military protection for minorities. I think that was neither realistic nor relevant, but definitely the international community should think about an international framework to make sure that the minorities can go back home and can preserve their identity and history. Just to end on a positive note, I like the statement that says never waste a crisis. Iraq and the Kurdistan region are in a crisis right now. I'm really looking forward to know from Dr. Dilawar what USIP can do in terms of the engagement that you described. We think that USIP and the U.S. government should upscale their engagement in Iraq because we don't want to waste this crisis. We want to build on it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Elid. Just a quick note that I'm told that USIP president will make an effort to step out a meeting and come and say hello. So it may happen during the conversation. I want to pick up, ask the first question as a moderator on the common theme that came up with, you mentioned social contracts. You mentioned the decision of the Kirkukis to be done by themselves. Professor Dilawar, you also mentioned about how a change, it takes effort, it takes interaction of institutions and you spoke about the changing order in the Middle East for quite some time. Many people felt it was an imposed order and you talked about power sharing and all these ingredients, power sharing, social contract, many people advocate from a bottom up how you build it up from the ground. So whether the Kurdistan region building itself up and then you have the Shia and the Sunnis building and you tie that through some sort of power sharing. I'll leave it to you whether you want to talk about it through the Kurdistan as an example or Iraq or both. I would like to pose this to both of you. And then you said the constructive engagement of others and tying back to Elid's question. For those who are outside who want to be constructive, to have a constructive engagement, what would that look like? I know the extreme from this part of the world was military engagement that gives you leverage but the conversation from the Middle East and from that part of the world, it's not about military, it's about so many other ways that the friends could be helpful. How does the bottom up look like and what help will be specifically helpful? Whether in the political transition or in the capacity building of institutions. Thank you. I'm sure people around this table will have their own ideas and different people look at the same picture in different ways. I personally think that we are experiencing new trend, new development, new dynamics and people in the Middle East including Kurdistan need to learn new tricks, how to then stabilize the region, how to reach stability, coexistence as well as democratization. The depth of democracy, depth of nation building and institutionalization is not that great for it to tolerate southern twists and turns. The AK Party in Turkey for example worked for the last 10, 12 years on making Turkey more democratic, building better economy and initiating peace process and all that was destroyed over 3 weeks. 10 years work, 10 days violence and deterioration. Kurdistan region, since the end of the internal fighting in 1998 it took about 7, 8 years until the two administrations united and then the last 10 years there have been serious investment in confidence building, institutionalizing and uniting the two administrations and it genuinely did because parliament, government obviously it's a permanent coalition status because there's no single party that can win, outright and rule but this 10 years process suddenly 10 days of debt, log and deterioration violence as if we are likely to go back to two administration days and threatens to take us back to the 90s. Now in Iraq 10 years of constitution, adoption, democracy, legislation, all of that and then suddenly ISIS emerged within a few weeks this way. So what does that tell you? It tells you that we need to go bottom up as well as top down. We need to be horizontally as well as vertically working on this institutionalization. It will take time, it will not be easy but one thing I'm sure about is that left alone we can't do it, we have failed. Left alone Iraq has failed to sort Iraq out. Left alone Kurds may well fail to sort it out because it's complex. Left alone Syria will not sort itself out. Turkey will not sort it out. So a superpower that is seriously interested in peace I'm not saying democracy though but seriously interested in peace in the region should be more closely engaged rather than leave it all to its own accord and then other superpowers to say okay we are not the only superpower in the world. Well that approach has been detrimental. Accepting that left alone we may not find our way easily given the complexity of region we are in a very, very tough neighborhood. No other neighborhood is as tough as that. Over the last what centuries has been like that. Now the United States approach as a superpower has been really in many ways dealing with real politics of the day over the decades but now the way that the current administration handled Iraq's complexity has been really the consequences of that have been very expensive on us too. In Baghdad in 2011 the decisions that were made renewal of Maliki's second term all of these were, they happened after a judgment made here that this is the best thing for the US and Iraq. So a lot of these things happened and in Kurdistan again the engagement of arriving at the last minute do a little bit with minimalistic approach is not going to help it has to be sustained. Now everybody in Kurdistan is grateful for United States sacrifices, contribution, engagement and they have been really vital for survival of this nation. Last year Daesh could have occupied our bill had it not been for the American intervention and the allies but saving them from that danger and establishing some partnership a limit partnership is one thing but actually making this partner better democratic, better institutionalized, better established and have better future is another. At the moment United States approach is too distant, too minimalistic and too remote. We need for the sake of both the United States and Kurdistan we need greater closer engagement because we think that whatever happens in Kurdistan and Iraq is directly linked to the national security interests of the United States of America. And again the same thing happens to Iraq rather than say in black and white you guys must deal with Baghdad is in a mess but you have no choice but to go there. That's again not helping. So my point is whether it's USIP whether it's NGOs and funding bodies those who are interested in peace or it's government people in Kurdistan need closer mutual understanding and joint approaches. You mentioned Karkuk, we mentioned Karkuk IDPs internally displaced people they're short and intermediate and long term approach to those. Kurdistan government is very new although people think it's 20 to 23 years old but actually the experience of governance with the current setup is only 10 years old and before that we were never a state we never had the experience of running or self-governing a state that had institutions that might have been derailed but come back. No, we never had that. And our leaders are the same leaders who were people in the mountains fighting for our freedom and they were professional destroyers of Iraq state. Suddenly they were in charge of establishing new state establishing institutions. So does that not tell you that we need help? And if we suddenly face crisis, face challenges that are often regional or global we cannot handle them on our own. So we are actors, strong actors on the ground but we are not global or regional actors to the level of trying to find our way out of every crisis. So friends and allies need to be there helping each other in a sustainable manner over the long term. Thank you. Yeah, I'll say a few words. I mean I think the key phrase that you mentioned was constructive engagement and I think there is a gaping chasm for that at the moment. I think if you leave it alone you just get destructive engagement. And if you just say let's get you it's up to you to get your house in order and I'm going to watch it happen I don't think you should expect the house to get in order. This you can make equations obviously in Iraq but in the Kurdistan region there is a genuine with all the wholesale changes that have happened there's a fear for change, a fear of change politically. So in the Kurdistan region politics has not evolved I think that's the problem. A lot of things have evolved since 2003 for Kurdistan a huge amount of benefits but the politics stayed the same and I think you're seeing that now play out. And for the US I think the US forgets or maybe doesn't forget but it has a huge level of influence politically militarily huge amount of influence and support and you see that Kurdistan region it needs air cover it needs military support and it is hugely reliant on that to a massive degree but also politically the influence is there and the US as such up to now its engagement has politically has not been hugely constructive I would say as it came into certain meetings and whether perceptions were correct or uncorrect it was seen as taking a side and really didn't help the situation at all. Kurdistan is a stable hopefully in the future a stable region that is an ally of the US it is a great supporter of the US and the US should have a symbiotic relationship with it not only militarily but politically they should really try and study the ship and they can do that through constructive engagement the US will view it as an internal issue this is an internal political issue that we don't want to get involved with that's very understandable but when that starts impacting on the US's main strategy which if it is to degrade and defeat ISIS well then you need a steady partner in Kurdistan you need steady partners on the ground in Iraq across Iraq so therefore there comes a point where we go this is an internal issue for Kurdistan but also this is an internal issue that we're going to have to get involved with in a constructive manner to try and build stability and confidence on the ground. This discussion reminds me of my 7 years old daughter who a few months ago was really upset with her mother so she told her I wish I can live alone so my wife decided to step out of the door and then my daughter ran to her and told her no no please come back 10 years ago we would have heard the same local actors addressing messages to the US and to the international community saying please don't interfere anymore in our internal affairs leave us alone imperialism, colonialism etc but that is all or none that doesn't work there is something between all or none so I would say we need to be very careful in lobbying for this strong US and international re-engagement in the region I do think and I mentioned this before I do think that there is a role for the international community to play but we really need to be careful on how this role is designed and what's the scope of the scope and I think one of the missed opportunities and again I think it's unfair to blame only the US for the failures in the region I think many international actors bear the shared responsibility of the situation today but anyway two or three main ideas for any possible re-engagement of the international community and the US in Iraq and the regions that first there should be a focus on empowering and building the capacities of local actors so it should be a midterm re-engagement aiming at empowering and building the capacities of local actors I'm talking about political actors I'm not talking about civil society only or other actors I'm specifically talking about political actors because the past period was basically the international community coming to establish proxies for themselves and not to build the capacities of local actors the second thing is to acknowledge the realities of the region one of the biggest mistakes is to try extrapolate from other context to the region and one of the recurrent examples that I always give is that there is no way any secular model would work in the region at least in the coming 50 years there should be an acknowledgement that identity-based politics whether we like it or not is now the prevailing trend in the region and any re-engagement, any political framework by the international community should take into account this year so these are a few examples of how this re-engagement should be looked at instead of just a blanket call for re-engagement which is scary somehow Thank you Lili I will open it up to questions from the participants and I've had Rahman first and Mona second so let me know if you have questions Rahman Djibouti, National Endowment for Democracy you presented or promoted two partnerships with the US one is the Fighting Isis and the other one is the Democracy How do we trust the system that the speaker of the Kurdistan gets sent back to Suleymania and he is the speaker of the people the minister gets kicked out of the government and literally was told by individual, not institution not court, not whatever go back how do we trust you or I'm talking the system how do we trust democratization Kurdistan's first age government I see a different question can you answer that this is a very Iraqi way of asking the question basically if one episode where two people did not do the right thing therefore not trust the system and say Kurdistan does not deserve our help because two people were fighting that is probably putting a very big grim blanket on the whole thing Kurdistan just like Iraq going through a tough period of transition they are evolving, democracy is evolving the current crisis is a serious one because it's about power sharing and had this happened 20 years ago they would have killed each other we are lucky to have these people behaving this way today one says you go home one says you're not a minister that is better than having bullets and destabilizations and then emerging radicalism and leading to ISIS so essentially when when you see the way these negotiations have been conducted none of us are happy or proud of the way they did it is Kurdistan emerging out of the past which is violent into a more civilized debate remember the last three months uniquely Kurdistan debate this issue within the parliament they were voting one party winning one day debates behind closed doors in open doors in front of the camera the way it happened was absolutely a wonderful promising sign that Kurdistan has moved away from resolving conflict via bullets and violence and now it's a difficult justation period needs good midwife but difficult justation period to lead to a proper democracy we do not have the deeper institutions of democracy with the legislative and the judiciary and all these independent so we are this difficult phase and the symptoms of the problems and the era that we are experiencing the symptom of this milestone is just that kind of debate that negative debate we were unhappy the way politicians polarized the nation we were unhappy about the way they dragged people into a negative atmosphere but think about it in evolutionary terms this is a dream for them to negotiate these things in this manner in the Middle East especially Iraq everything is solved through guns and through bloodshed so for us to say well a democratically elected speaker of the parliament was told by one individual to go home therefore we as United States should not trust Kurds that is slightly over the top the state the state that is the Middle East Kurdistan is not individual I didn't say these are parties these are parties these are parties between them having problem finding their way to a win-win solution so this is an entire not just party but their followers as well so it's actually it's much bigger than individuals but these acts tits for tats happen in Kurdistan anywhere else but that is not a justification to say forget about them keep a distance let them to their own accord because we are talking about far bigger issues at stake and maybe we are not by the way blaming anybody other than ourselves we are not blaming the United States but we have to remember that we are talking about an important area of the world emerging out of mayhem trying to stabilize and establish democracy here is a partner on the ground anti-ISIS war for anti-aridiculism for keeping some balance and if you want to help yourself you help the partner to do the right thing and it is a difficult period I mean remember the United States went with big army to Iraq to do just that it wasn't because the Arabs deserved it or the Iraqis deserved it it was the right thing to do for the world so my reference early on Sam's was that when the United States looked at this crisis brewing what did they do they left it drag until the deadline of the 20th of August and two days before that or a day and a half before that the delegation came from here and said right let's see who is right who is wrong they stayed awake until 6am in the morning exhausted everybody we think this guy should stay and you guys should accept and they caused problem they polarized them even further they did not help that was actually the wrong approach to conflict resolution this is what we say earlier engagements more serious engagement more constructive engagement and making everybody trust that you're actually stabilizing and then stay with it until the crisis over the crisis is not over and it continued I think it was a good thing that it continued because it was itself a solution for the time until a better environment comes up, better negotiation but the problem happened is that that deadlock then led to more deadlock and then now eruption of certain violence and then this threat of dismantling the coalition government so all of these are incrementally if you look back could have been avoided I said it, left alone our guys will not deal with it they are incapable of conflict resolution on their own but who is better in a better position to help them than the United States trusted friend, superpower has leverages, has everything the United States has leverage to say you need my help to help you survive while in that case do the right thing and I will do more how about that, simple I would say it's your problem and you don't deserve it because you guys dismiss the speaker of parliament it's just wrong approach from a friend Thank you, Mona Yeah, I'm Melinda Yucubian with USAID My question is actually along the lines of this conversation but let me preface it first with a comment which is at least from the standpoint of USAID our level of engagement in Iraq certainly it was on a glide path our mission was on a glide path to closure pre-ISIL and in response we've actually not only maintained but we're actually expanding our involvement we're very engaged on the issue of decentralization very engaged on stabilization we work very closely with the industry of oil recommending reforms that could actually result in significant revenue that the government will recoup so I think it's important to put all of this in context in terms of how we're engaged I think what we struggle with is how to engage more effectively you started to lay it out a little bit but at the end of the day we can't want it more than the Kurds or the Iraqis themselves and so you know at least comment I really associate myself with one doesn't want to be patronizing but it's really hard to understand what that balance is of how the US can engage and engage effectively understanding the history of our involvement and from a US perspective a trillion dollars 170,000 troops on the ground etc where is the balance and again I think what concerns us is there has to be some level of ownership on the other side and I guess I would add one more note which is some real concern about what's happening in the KRG right now there is violence associated with these protests and our folks up there have witnessed it firsthand and it is actually impacting our ability right now with the KRG but it's impacting our ability to work there so I think that there are some very real impediments but I also think this question of what that balance is and how the US can engage in a way that's effective without owning it because it's not ours to own it requires a little more nuance and a little more frankly guidance and insight for you all sure I don't think we disagree on the principles on even the approach and I don't think anybody could say here America come and do it for us put it on a plate and then go this is a typical Iraqi approach I know in Baghdad that's what people say America is not doing anything when America was sacrificing lives when America was spending so much money what I'm suggesting here are two things there's a lot of excellent reason why not to do anything let's give ourselves the same reason to do a lot but enough to stabilize enough to make the partners on the ground do the right thing and to me what is the right thing insist on rule of law and nobody is doing that insist of controlling corruption America is not doing any of that insist on democratization and strengthening the institutions of democracy when you help with the Peshmarga when America helps with covering aerial cover, aerial bombardment war against ISIS and so on so forth they're doing just about enough to help the Kurds contain ISIS but not even enough to liberate areas liberate new villages and the Kurds are doing it at their own expense they are losing more lives because they are doing that they are absolutely clear about this strategy tell the Kurds we want you to degrade ISIS therefore go and liberate those lands and we give you what it takes and that's whatever equipment but I believe that has not happened but importantly when you give them that help make it conditional on our leaders to do the right thing and that's institutionalized Peshmarga why can't the United States say okay Kurdish leaders you ask me for so much weapons and more and more and more and you're shopping with grows how about you in return doing what it takes to become an excellent part of the world I'm speaking as a as a think type person or as an individual I'm not speaking as a KRG person I've never been a KRG person I was in the government yes I'm not in the government and if anybody speaks for the government I don't think she would agree with me when I say make this help conditional Kurdish leaders doing the right thing but if you don't do that it's quite clear that America needs partnership with Kurdistan America cannot afford to lose Kurdistan as well as Baghdad because America has lost Baghdad no matter what you think of the relations with Abadi this is not America and Abadi is not pro-american that's not fool ourselves Iran is in charge therefore losing Kurdistan and no major influence over Turkey no major influence over Syria serious characters or actors on the ground very minimal influence in Baghdad what are the leverages that America has now with Baghdad very very minimal so you lose the Middle East and to say okay we don't need Middle East anymore now Southeast Asia is more important well what have you done in Southeast Asia to actually secure great interest essentially we're saying Middle East with the globe with the radicalism affecting everybody terrorism affecting everybody and oil and the well-being the stability of the peace does that not mean we need to be more on the ground and helping the partners now nobody says come on rule Kurdistan for us and we do not want you to okay but actually to say grow up you do the right thing then I come and help you well it will not happen because we know our people they come out of a background dictatorships this area no two communities trust each other Sunnis don't trust the Kurds for ruling them and don't trust the Shias and then the Shias are now they have good relations with the Kurds are not as much they don't like each other anymore so nobody, it's a fragmentation what I'm saying as an individual rather than as anybody associated with any government we are impassioned in us we in Kurdistan as well as in Iraq what unites us and what devices are equally strong left alone one day we unite, one day we divide and we have not yet done enough to go deep bottom up to unite our communities our two administration are united at the top it's just the the top but deep down they are still divided, finance is divided decision on governance on finances on economy, on security on Peshmarga, on intelligence everything is divided now when you have a divided nation they are determined to unite and when you are saying Kurds should do more what else can they do when they came out of a complete internal almost civil war but in 1998 they stopped that and then there was a strategic agreement between Taliban and Barzani between KDPPUK and guess what that strategic agreement built enough confidence last 10 years that dose of confidence last 10 years where they could rule together have a coalition, agree on everything it doesn't matter how good or bad that strategic but it did stop fighting it did lead to some unity now is the time to redefine the strategic agreement redefine the future find a new formula for the next 10 years and that has to be assisted if not the factors of division are there waiting for further escalation so the Kurds have done what it takes to put the violence behind us we have done enough to actually just look at Hamas and Fadah it's been 10 years or something they have been divided and how long more do you think will they ever unite well the Kurds actually managed to in 1991, issued an amnesty to every mercenary that would 200 or 300,000 of them they could have been slaughtered but there was an amnesty saying no we need to unite these communities and then in after the 2000s there was a strategic agreement now everybody is committed not to let this go downhill but it can go downhill because we have seen what happens in Turkey we are capable of making it go downhill but a friend, a stabilizer to be in the middle and you use them and say right you either do what you preach or the consequences are there so you could see that it is sophisticated, there is a balance yes what you said I don't disagree but actually that doesn't mean we should withdraw and leave it all to them because it may never happen that's why we need engagement and of course the question then is what can we do, plenty we can debate this for another hour exactly what you could do without really losing your impartiality and without being involved in a quagmire that has no end without you really sacrificing anymore but as things stand we think that it is absolutely minimalistic approach and we as people of Kurdistan are suffering because our leaders are not doing it we want rule of law, we are not getting it we want more democracy, it's stagnating we want more human rights they are slow institutionalization, reforming of the Peshmerga, reform of the police they are slow, they are not happening restructuring the economy, not happening America can do a lot more to stimulate that and help with it as well before I take Rob's question I want to make sure that Ely or Sam have anything that you want to maybe quickly flip it as a reverse question since we are not here very often I think you are right it's up for the US to really understand what their engagement would be it's going to be fun when you want to and it's going to be very subtle in a lot of ways but what I would ask to these people maybe just a point is what I've heard sat in our bill over the last year and a half with all the internationals coming through is a catchphrase from every one of them is territorial integrity territorial integrity and talking to some very senior level military trainers working with the Peshmerga they were very clear on their view of the engagement these are not necessarily Americans I would say they are very on their level of engagement with the Peshmerga is this is going to be under the umbrella of the Iraqi army because we don't want to be doing anything that can possibly contributing to the independent state of Kurdistan in any way like that so what I would ask is is that a shackle to US involvement in the Kurdistan region is that something that they have to bear in mind because the thinking of Iraq as a whole and that constructive engagement there there's a worry there if they build the democratic system rule of law if they assist in those levels will that over contributing to an independent state of Kurdistan I'm just going to pose that as a question to the room because I'd be interested to hear your views as people based in Washington on that that's just a related well I think that the formal answer would be one country one territorial integrity I think the answer to that is I'm not representing the US government here but the answer is mostly the question is how do you change that and I think many people around town haven't tried to say look, fighting ISIL is not is a limited scope the US not being present is a limited scope there is far more in between as a professor said and that change of policy takes probably so many conversations like this to expand on why is there is a benefit of changing the scope to more Ron I'm Rob Jenkins I worked with Mona at USID and it said last is very interesting I'd love to hear others people answer it because I am representing the US government I'll let someone else answer that question it's surprising to hear people talk about the US government responding in Iraq in a nuanced sophisticated subtle way we're thinking that we can do that that's a nice challenge for us to engage in a way that's constructive Ali you talked a bit you mentioned a conversation you guys were having before this that things cannot things will not escalate further and that they will stabilize themselves somehow which sounds a little bit contradictory to what you were just saying so if things can't escalate because of whatever what are those dynamics that are built into this should we be worried or should we think it's just part of the transition that you guys are going through and with a friend who maybe conditions some assistance you can make your way through this or is it as frightening as I've been watching the region for a long time yesterday I sort of woke up to the fact of what's going on right now in Kyrgyz in the Kyrgyz and it's frightening for us should I be frightened okay well I think that what I tried to tell you is that we have the equal strength as a factors of the unifiers and the our confidence in our leaders was that they are very experienced they have suffered from the dark days of the 90s now they have grown out of these things not just from experience and political maturity but also their interests the businesses that are out there they cannot afford to ruin it all their houses are built in glass all of them could what happened in the 90s even at one percent of that happening will ruin their infrastructure so they all know they are the the first losers from this so they can't afford but yet nevertheless they do because they bargaining and using cards and strength there is exhibition of muscle it's not so much how clever you are in tricking it it's more like if you poise and if you are seen to be in a strong position of strength then you are more likely to get what you want but the other thing is that when the United States came in at the point to do something about it they did the wrong thing let me just be very frank they approached it the wrong way whereas they could have arrived early and understood the subject dealt with it more sophisticated stayed with it and seen through it but of course that doesn't guarantee that everybody would have done exactly what the United States says but at least the United States would have been engaged in a constructive way and not had been mistrusted by half of them and trusted by one half so I'm more than happy to indulge deeper into these details after the meeting and I did not hesitate to say that when I met some officials in the State Department so I believe in this and I say publicly the key thing about this latest episode I would like to give you some background about this to help you understand where we are with the Presidency issue and I mentioned it a couple of people here might have already heard me saying it the crunch or the root cause of this current crisis is nothing to do with the President it's to do with power which we share what that means is that over the past four decades the dynamics of power sharing has not changed PukKDP between them commanded and owned the decision making process even when Goran emerged Islamist emerged that has not changed it's now time to change that's what people say that's where the issue is what happened in 2007 PukK broke away to two arms 2009 Goran came to the parliament with 25 votes four years later they gathered momentum and support from Islamist and they secured one third of the parliament together everybody's bet was that they will disappear because they don't have money they don't have armed forces but they didn't they survived two terms and came to the government they promised their followers in their manifesto that they will introduce major changes uninstitutionalized PRG but a year and a half later why? because the barriers were much greater than that what they realized is that entering the government is not the same as entering power because power and government are two different things in Soleimani they came first they were not allowed to even inaugurate their own governor so that is PukKDP that came third stopped them from having a governor and PukKDP that came third still owns 50% of decision making so Goran in three years time would have disappeared if they had carried on waiting for that unable to change unable to translate manifesto into real delivery yet they are in the government in a coalition government and KDP stopped Goran through bureaucracy through whatever other means from actually being able to radically change the system irrespective of just because they promised in their manifesto what happened? Goran was losing support, losing voters disillusioned voters and then they were waiting for an opportunity to reverse that trend and that opportunity came in the form of president wanting this term renewed so they took him by the by the collar and said okay you want to be president for the two years? how much? how much power would you be happy to devolve? the president was happy KDP were happy to relinquish some power by the deadline of 20th of August but not all of what the opposition wanted and the opposition wanted not that but they wanted all so they could not reach the middle that polarize the nation they put themselves they coordinate themselves in a place where they could not tell the public okay now we compromise because they pushed everybody to polarization the deadline was passed they reached a deadlock and then suddenly it was all personalized this personalization meant KDP said okay nothing you lost the momentum I'm not going to give you anything and Goran says okay if you don't give me nothing I can make you and that's where these show strength and exhibition of power and eruption of violence here and there these are all threats I was confident and I'm still confident that the leaders would not allow this to descend into absolute chaos because nobody wants that and everybody's committed to the process of democracy still everybody's committed to election everybody's committed to having government, parliament and so on but you never know with us they can incrementally gradually but definitely let this deteriorate gradually and then all it takes is a bunch of crazy radicals to and all it takes it could be that Iran comes in and say okay right well that's around and we have enough potential for having radicals emerging why should we let that happen and Iran suddenly became a good guy and came and said let me mediate and then everybody else comes in now do you see that there's no contradiction between saying our leaders would not allow this to deteriorate but then again it can do because that's what we thought about Turkey that's the story of the least we hope we've learned that but you can't rely on institutions we are in a completely different phase power the nature of power itself has changed and so to say that leaders and institutions aren't interested in descending into chaos unfortunately it's not enough because the depth of the institution and the solidity of that is not sufficient not grown enough not matured democracy has not arrived long enough to make them play within the rules of sovereign law you need to assist in that over a whole decade maybe it's not like a one episode I told them so it is an evolution should we be with them should America engage with them to make it evolve in the right way and that's why I said shape the future shape the new order or should we say they are big enough grown-ups let them do it and they know where we are if they need help it doesn't work like that you need to shape the future with them stabilize democratize every leader in Kurdistan as well as every individual on the street are committed and aspire to have democracy in Kurdistan but none of them know how because they only know one way of power dynamics and winning what they want well if they are committed take them by their own word and help them along the way and they do trust that's important it's different from the old Iraq where every American was a potential spy until proved otherwise in Kurdistan every spy is welcome until they are bad guys on that note I want to be respectful of people I know that you're just warming up to the discussion but I want to my personal conviction and take away from this conversation is that I think a shared responsibility of what the Iraqis the Kurds and the people in the Middle East can do and should do and the help of the international community is a shared responsibility and finding that formula has been a tricky one so I think this is an area that needs work and second thing the depth of institutions I think that is important I have seen that where genuine desire could be shocked and taken by surprise and I think that is important to continue building that institution not just moments of emergency to jump in save the day and leave another emergency happens and the third thing I would stress is that just looking at what is the hot spot may distract from focusing on areas of stability that may change, their situation may change for other reasons we have to have a better lens to look at what is happening if you really want to win against ISIL you have to preserve what is stable and help it grow to support what you are doing and as a model that you contrast with others so with that I know Ray had a question I probably after this let me conclude the round table and ask you a question and please join me in a round of applause and thanking our panelists for