 Well welcome again to those of you just joined us to tonight's roundtable discussion on the Arab Spring 10 years on. My name is Jonathan Hill and I am director of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London. The Institute has been around for two or three years and provides a focal point for Middle East research and events across King's College. There's all sorts of interesting activities taking place in a number of departments and by a range of academics and PhD students. If you are interested in the region therefore I urge you to keep an eye on our Twitter account at King's Middle East or to check out our website for events that are taking place and are coming up, such as tonight's roundtable discussion. It is my very good pleasure to introduce the host of tonight's event Sir Mark Lyle Grant. He is going to chair the event Sir Mark qualified as a barrister before having a long and distinguished career in the foreign Commonwealth Development Office of the United Kingdom. He is serving as the UK's ambassador to the United Nations at the time that the Arab Spring took place. He also served as national security advisor to David Cameron and Theresa May, and therefore is perfectly placed to provide an expert view on what was happening in the region at this critical time. Just a few words about housekeeping and how the event will run. At the bottom of the screen you will see a Q&A function. If you have any questions or comments for the panelists, please can you type them into there and they will do their best to answer them once they've finished speaking. If there is somebody in particular who you would like to respond to your question, please can you specify who that is? The panelists are going to speak and then there will be a Q&A session, so hopefully all your questions and thoughts will be addressed. Great. So, without any further ado, I will hand over to Sir Mark. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much Jonathan and good afternoon, good evening everybody. As Jonathan mentioned, I was the British ambassador to the United Nations in 2011 and I can still remember the sense of excitement at developments in the Middle East and North Africa at that time. With Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, there seemed to be a clamour for democracy, a pushback by ordinary citizens against autocratic and often corrupt leadership. Parallels were drawn with the liberty of Eastern Europe in the 1990s and it seemed natural for Western democracies to be on the side of the protesters. With respect, I don't think we fully understood the dynamics or the likely consequences of the Arab Spring. In 2011, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Morocco looked to be the most likely candidates for political change. In the Gulf states, everyone thought that they would be able to pay their way out of the protests. The more securocratic ones like Libya, Algeria, Syria would be able to suppress any protests by force. And this analysis proved only partly correct. In the back, I find it interesting that the only countries in the region relatively untouched by the protest movements were all monarchies and it'd be interesting to speculate on the reason for that. Also, the West and or certainly the United Kingdom, didn't anticipate fully, firstly, that the Islamists were best placed to benefit from the sudden overthrow of long standing leaders in the region, including through the electoral process. And secondly, the inherent difficulty of a move to democracy in countries with such weak institutional history, because we had a belief at the time that democracy itself was such a strong motivator that that would be enough once the ball started rolling. And thirdly, I think we didn't anticipate fully that Western involvement and especially military involvement could actually make things worse. So looking back 10 years on the Arab Spring looks very much like a false door region looks less stable, more divided, and certainly not more democratic than it was in 2011. The Arab powers never have been weaker. You know, the traditional powers like Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Libya, all weakened for one reason or another. And it is non Arab players, like Israel, Turkey, Iran, even outsiders like Russia and China increasingly calling the shots in the region. There have been wider implications to as events surrounding the Arab Spring have actually weakened support for the post Second World War rules based international order, weakening it to the benefit of countries like China. Now that's just a practitioner's view, but to discuss these issues this evening, and indeed many others, we have a very distinguished panel of academic experts. They will make some introductory comments, and then we shall open up the discussion to include the audience. First, I'll turn to Professor Yeroun Gunning. But Yeroun is a professor of Middle Eastern politics and conflict studies in the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College. And his research focuses on political mobilization with a specific focus on the interplay between Islamist social movements, democratization, religion, political contestation and violence in the Middle East. So over to you, Yeroun. Thank you very much. And thank you for organizing this event. I, in the short time available, I want to highlight three points and I will focus on protest dynamics, especially in Egypt and Lebanon. Let me just share my screen for a couple of slides I want to show. To start with, there we go. I hope that this is visible. I want to say that the Arab uprisings are not over. The first wave was followed by subsequent protests, most dramatically in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq, where leaders were forced to step down. Syria, Yemen, and until recently Libya are still embroiled in civil wars. In Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf regimes have sought to stifle protests with tactics varying from co-optation to brutal repression. According to a clad, which is one of the most comprehensive protest data sets available. All Arab countries have experienced protests, small and large in the past three years, from a few in the Gulf, which you can see on the right, to many in, of course, Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan and Iraq, but also in Morocco and Tunisia, less so Egypt and Jordan, and then an outlier for the Gulf in Bahrain. Also, many of these protests are still ongoing. For example, in Lebanon, where COVID and the port explosion have exacerbated the financial collapse, and so you can see that protests have been leading up in the last couple of weeks again. Africa showed that they see their professional identity as linked to their political loyalties and they perceive their roles as preachers of the public opinion rather than mere reporters of fact. This is why this role is ambiguous as they act both as supporters of change, but also as supporters of autocratic, former autocratic structures. Finally, I can say today that the media landscape shows a continuous confrontation between structural constraints and an ascent agency of change, replicating very much the dynamics in the political arena. And the current gloomy condition can be understood as a victory for former autocratic cultures, but however, the resilience of the Asians of change, whether in the community of media or the civil society and the creativity of the expressions of dissent, the resilience, all this indicates that the struggle is still ongoing is not yet settled in one or in another direction. And I would refer here to one quotation from a journalist I recently interviewed from Tunisia saying to me, we are finally part of the public debate in Tunisia. We are not a strong agent in this arena, but we are supported by the few gains from the revolution, although they are very fragile to continue this fight. And thanks to this support, we are not alone in this battle. I would stop here, hope I did not, I was limited to the time allowed and thank you. Thank you very much indeed Fatima. And I'll turn back now to Yerun, who's back with us. Apologies that you were cut off in mid-floor Yerun, but do you want to continue now? I will. Yeah, I don't quite know what happened. But anyway, to continue, so I was saying that the Arab uprisings are not over and showing how protests were still continuing. But I think it's important to see that these protests share similarities across the last decade in the structural conditions that people face, and in the borrowing of slogans and tactics, both between protesters and between elites. There are of course differences between protest waves, the 2019 protests tended to demand more far reaching change, and between countries who protests, whether protests are party led or grassroots, the relationship between armed forces and regime, the type of political system, all of which affect protest outcomes. However, I would argue that there are enough similarities to see the protests as part of a regional series of revolutionary or protest episodes. And moreover, that they are part of a global wave of protests. In 2019, 41 countries experienced significant protests and 110 since 2017. These protests have been shaped by global dynamics, including the effects of neoliberal policies championed by the IMF and its national elites, which then are often carried out by kleptocratic local elites. Arab protests have influenced global protest and vice versa. And Arab regimes, meanwhile, draw international support, including for the security forces, and are embedded in transnational capital. So the uprisings must be seen in a global context as well. My second point is that although structural conditions may shape protests, protests need agency to work. The first uprisings showed the importance of networks, they're not necessarily as expected. In Syria, for example, the initial uprising in Daraa was carried by clan and cross-border smuggling networks, not the protest networks typical in social movement studies. Tunisia did not have the well-developed networks that Egyptians had built during the 2000s, but the networks that formed during the 2008 strike, women's groups and familial links facilitated the protests spread. Mass protests also need non-activists, but predicting when this occurs remains difficult as so much is contingent. Conversely, the Egyptian regime's clampdown on oppositional organizations has meant that today's dire structural conditions have been met with relatively limited protests, both in number and duration. The disruptive nature of the earlier protests have put off many non-activists, particularly where protestors occupied public spaces for prolonged periods. Where protests did reach hundreds in 2019, for example, it was often because of the presence of mobilizable networks that are not necessarily activists, for example factory workers or neighborhood groups. Organization is even more important post-protests. One reason that Egyptian protest networks failed to shape post-revolution politics is that they did not succeed in shifting from street protest to formal organizations capable of winning elections. This was part ideological, many were self-consciously anti-hierarchy, part organizational that emerged as fluid semi-underground networks specialized in street politics. In Lebanon, the 2019 protestors early on emphasized the importance of organization, in part because of the experience of those who have begun to shift from street protests to political organization during the 2016 and 2018 elections. The 2022 elections are one focal point to organize around, but much depends on whether they succeed in forging unified party positions from diverse protest networks and classes. This leads to my final point, tension between classes. While the protestors in 2011 Egypt were united in their opposition to Mubarak, they did not have unified political demands. The majority were motivated by economic grievances, only a minority by political reform, with serious implications for the protest outcome. In Lebanon, the 17 October revolution saw unprecedented participation of the poorer classes, crucial for protest success, but the poor are also most dependent on the clientelistic system that upholds the political elite. One reason that triply became an epicenter of revolution, with mass support from the poor, is that protestors set up revolutionary kitchens and provided second-hand clothing to make protest possible, and it helped also the local politicians initially try to co-opt the protest rather than suppress them. In Beirut, meanwhile, the roadblocks set up downtown became flashpoints for the poor who could not get to work, further complicated by political sectarian dynamics with some parties mobilizing the poor against the protests. The poor ended up selectively supporting protests that did not overtly go against their party bosses, thus limiting support for the more reformist demands of the protest movement. To be successful in changing the political system, protestors need to find alternative ways to provide the desperately needed services that currently are in control of the political elite, without creating new sectarian clientelistic dependencies. This is particularly important for winning elections, with which historically depend on clientelism. The establishment of crowd-funded grassroot networks providing food during the Covid epidemic, or helping rebuilding areas destroyed by the 2020 port explosion, may be an important step in that direction, as is reviving and transforming workers unions. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to discussing these things further. Thank you very much, Yerun, for that very important analysis of some of the different forms of protest that took part in the Arab Spring. I'll now pass to Dr Shiraz Mahe. Dr Mahe is a lecturer in non-state actors in the Department of War Studies and is director of the International Center for the Study of D-Radicalization and Radicalization, indeed. He is a historian by training and is primarily interested in the development of Islamic political thought, particularly the use of theology by reactionary and militant movements. And he has a particular expertise in the Syrian civil war. Shiraz, over to you. Thank you very much. Well, in my remarks, I wanted to focus very specifically on Syria, that's the country that I've been working on for much of the last 10 years, and to contextualize that within the context of the broader Arab uprisings, which a number of my colleagues are talking about today. I really wanted to, in that context as well, focus in on the word lessee, which is part of what we're discussing today. And Samarkand's opening remarks mentioned that there was an air of excitement and there was a sense of optimism and indeed momentum for the uprising in Tunisia. And I think those feelings became even more acute and accentuated once we began to see a Lutheran movement emerging in Egypt. And so once we get to Syria and we've seen a number of these uprisings begin and take place. And some places even conclude relatively swiftly across North Africa and even her that he was out by October 2011. Then there is a sense of momentum and feeling that that these regimes will fall. There was a sense that Bashar al-Assad would also have his time sort of numbers and there was various predictions being made that point about the extent to which the regime was shaking, and of course a number of very high profile defections coming in at that time. One of the things I think that you could see in the way that Syrian regime was able to begin and to maintain its crackdown against that protest movement was that it was quite successful in fracturing the movement and never really allowing it to develop critical mass as we saw come about elsewhere. So quite early on you began to see the movement from this nonviolent protest movement. I think it's important that we understand here in that context that what has happened in Syria since 2011 has not been one thing. It's not been static war or the uprising or the conflict, however you want to characterize it has not been one thing. It's been different things at different times and taken on different forms and shapes at different moments. And so to that end you saw this movement start to accept a reservation of violence in the first instance with things like the Free Syrian Army and then others sort of Syrians more broadly and ultimately foreign fighters as well. And so the first point was I think if we're looking at the legacy of what Syria did. We've already seen some recourse to violence in Libya, this became more pronounced and more protracted and much more wide scale in Syria. And so in that first sense you see that movement towards and that reservation of violence, as I say, in that context. The second point is that the enduring nature then of what took place in Syria and the way that the conflict became so protracted, and as I say again operating on scale that was pretty unprecedented compared to what had occurred in its neighbors. Syria really represented the open sore of those Arab uprising, the sort of contestation of where things might go hadn't immediately failed, had clearly not succeeded either, and there was this tussle taking place between two sides. I think and I'll finish on this point to give time to the Q&A. What we can see is that the sort of consequences on the legacy that comes out of this are multiple and they take hold then in a number of different ways. You have the breakdown of the chemical weapons taboo happening in Syria through the repeated use of those weapons by the regime and its ability to continue and persist down that road, particularly with very little pushback. So you saw a really significant moment in terms of, again, so Mark was saying in this opening remarks referring to the international rules based sort of this part of a much broader assault that we've seen on that international rules based sort of taking place by by a number of different states and actors in recent years and in Syria that was particularly pronounced and very obvious as I say in relation to the chemical weapons taboo. We also have the unprecedented and historic mobilization of foreign terrorist fighters who mobilized from all over the world to travel to join groups, Sunni and Shia, but primarily of course in the context of which we've looked at them joining Sunni groups on the grounds there. And again, in a scale and tempo and flow that clips even Afghanistan in the 1980s. And in terms of the shit, 10s of thousands of individuals who progressed out there. And, you know, that is one element of the conflict which persists and remains with us today, although ISIS doesn't have its territorial caliphate. And we know that there are tens of thousands of women and children currently being trained in North Eastern Syria, and around 10,000 men, 2000 of whom are foreign, be also being detained by the Syrian Democratic Forces the SDF in the Northeast, Idlib in the Northwest as well, of course remains a pocket of control by Haida Sham, and so again a number of non state active groups present and maintaining presence there. And then the final point, again, as has been mentioned by my colleagues that you've seen a shuffle in terms of some of the state actors who have risen to the ascendancy as a result of some of the political turbulence that has occurred in the region after 2011. Then again, I think you can see that most clearly in Syria where Russia has of course emerged as one of the most prominent players and important actors in that conflict, a renewed presence of Iran, of course that pre existing connections, those ties have been deep and strengthened and in many ways to Iran has been instrumental in helping Pasha al-Assad perpetuate and maintain his government and then of course we have the Turks and other one as well, who are again incredibly invested in what is happening in Syria and so it does represent a kind of microcosm of the broader issues I think Syria that we're seeing taking place elsewhere and the consequences of what has transpired there have of course had global resonance. So I'll stop there and hand back to you Samarka. Thank you very much Shiraz for those insights into the Syrian civil war and linking it to some of the wider geopolitical dynamics as well. We're getting a lot of questions already in the Q&A, but please do keep those coming so that we can get straight to them after our next two panelists have spoken. We'll turn now to Dr Nina Musgrove and Nina's research focuses on the western approaches to Hamas following Hamas's political participation in 2006, including how Hamas navigated sectarian cleavages in the Middle East, following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and her latest book which looks at Hamas during the Arab Spring period is going to be published later this year. Nina, over to you. Samarka, it's very nice to see you all. Thank you so much for the introduction. Yes, so I'm speaking today about Palestine so not Hamas specifically and this is very interesting because I'm sure if some of you kind of looked at the agenda for today about the Arab Spring and Palestine, well it didn't happen there. So I'm going to talk to you about why the Arab Spring has still been important for the Palestinian territories, even though it did not quite reach. So I will speak about a few different things one about the conjecture about the Palestinian territories and the Arab Spring about you know, there were some questions about why it didn't reach the territories and whether it was going to and there was some in 2019 and 2020 more specifically that it would reach the territories. And so and then I'll speak about I have to go back to the kind of a landmark kind of time in 2006, and talk about why that particular date was important. And then I'll speak about two specific case studies, which are specific to Hamas, which kind of link to the Arab Spring. So I'll start at the beginning so the conjecture about the Palestinian territories in the Arab Spring. Yes, it was arguments that the Arab Spring that was going to finally take place in the Palestinian territories. And there are arguments in particular that it but it may not because of the pressure of occupation and how Palestinians were more concerned with getting rid of the occupation as they saw it. They were more concerned with their sort of general domestic politics and national unity than they were with actually getting rid of their own leaders. So there was an argument that there was a reluctance to remove the political elite through violent means. So one of the main arguments about came from Aaron David Miller when he quoted Yasser Arafat he said, you shouldn't wait for revolutions in Palestine, Palestinians will always be angry at the Israelis and the other be at me. And he said so far, our fits are that's been right on target. However, I don't disagree with any of these points but one thing that I think it's really important to go back to when we think about the spring is specifically the importance of Hamas's electoral victory in January 2006. And the significance of this was you had the example of a group which had been deemed terrorist. He went down down the political route and won these elections which were announced in January 2006. So significance was it was it was a group deemed terrorist going down the political route. And it was a group that was embracing political Islam. And there was a feeling in the Palestinian territories that the people had finally spoken. It would be a huge conceptual and factual leap to argue that the Palestinian territories had already had their version of the Arab Spring. But if we think about what the Arab Spring was for, rather than what it was against, then we can see that the Palestinians had already expressed their disfattifaction with inequality and authoritarianism, and very importantly and corruption. And so these are all things that during the Arab uprisings were the main bones of contention. But they did this and had the opportunity to do this through democratic rather than violent means. And they did this in the context where they were also supported by the West and particularly in the US, in the context of fostering democracy in the Middle East following 9 11. So if we look at this as the context as to why we had we had agreed to go down this political route and we cut forward to the Arab Spring. We can see them that Hamats in particular was extremely supportive of the Arab Spring. It voiced its support for all the revolutions. They considered itself a vanguard of democracy. So it could sort itself as a head of the curve from its own experience. And when I spoke to them, they would say, you know, we got there first. We've been doing this for a while. They consider themselves a more sophisticated organization than other jihadist groups. So they took particular umbrage in this regard about being compared to it would be compared other groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. So that was very, very important because they thought they'd done it already. So from some in some respects, while the Palestinian territories did not have an Arab Spring, they had their own process where these issues were addressed. So if we look at them, so if we look at Hamas specifically, and we look to two very different case studies, in particular, we'll talk about Egypt and Syria. With Egypt, when the Freedom and Justice Party came in Egypt, Hamas I think was slightly a bit naive here. They put a huge amount of affiliation on its Muslim Brotherhood affiliation and background, because we have to remember that Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood rather than a faction of it. And it was started to be the sort of the jihadist, the Palestinian jihadist wing of the Brotherhood in Palestine. So it put a lot of weight on this affiliation and thought that Egypt coming into power was going to be extremely beneficial for Hamas and for the Palestinian cause. And it turned out that it massively overstated the strength of this relationship and the Freedom and Justice Party had a lot less interest than Hamas had anticipated. So from that perspective, there was a lot of conjecture that Hamas has now isolated. But it turns out, in the longer run, it wasn't, but at the time it was a lot of the conjecture that Hamas has now isolated, because it had put too much weight on its relationship. But then with Syria, and Shiraz has just spoken to you about the case of Syria, but with Syria what happened was Hamas had had its external bureau in Damascus and took the view that it could not be seen to be supporting the Assad regime because it had turned against its own people. So it felt it would be completely hypocritical to stay and support the Assad regime when it itself had been such a pro-democracy had gone down the democratic route itself and could not be seen to be engaging in this. And also had a huge distaste for sectarianism, which did not want to get itself embroiled into. So there was a time where Hamas particularly seemed it was quite isolated and it got into trouble with Iran and relations at Syria are massively strained. Over time, these relationships have started to repair themselves slightly. So overall, while the Palestinian territories haven't had an iron spring, I think it's very important to see that it has been affected and a group like Hamas, for example, has not become the argument that it has been isolated, has become less of a, has become less of a robust argument over time, and Hamas's ability to maneuver in the region and to reformulate its regional alliances and particularly closer in the Middle East, rather than more broader internationally. So I'll leave it there for questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nina, for reminding us that the Palestine, although not apparently from outside being directly affected actually was quite heavily affected by the Arab Spring Dynamics elsewhere. Our final panelist is Dr. Andreas Krieg. Andreas is a lecturer in the Defense Studies Department of Kings and a fellow of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies. And he spent more than 10 years living, studying and working across the Middle East, North Africa region. And his research looks in particular violent non-state actors in the MENA region and their competition with state authority to provide communal resilience. Thank you very much, Mark. So I only have five to seven minutes and so I was going to talk about more widely how the Arab Spring impacted the Gulf, but I will be more selective. So, you know, when we look at the Gulf, you know, the Gulf was obviously proven to be a lot more resilient in many ways than other parts, definitely the old powerhouses of the Arab world. And I would slightly disagree to say that the Arab world as a whole, all the powerhouses disintegrated. I'd say that the center of gravity of the Arab world has shifted from the likes of Syria, Egypt, Iraq, or Libya to the shores of the Gulf. And that had to do with the fact that despite the fact that obviously grievances existed and still exist across the Gulf, and also despite the fact that the rentier system, the rentier states of the Gulf, the Arab monarchies are struggling, were struggling to provide what they promised to provide in the beginning. They were still able to deal with the grievances that existed across the Gulf more effectively than those regimes that ultimately failed or are still struggling to cope in amid the weight of public pressure. And, you know, the grievances that exist, particularly in Saudi in Oman and also in Bahrain, are very similar to the ones that we already outlined here, mostly socioeconomic in nature, do with corruption, but also to do with participation and the feeling of being alienated by elites and not being able to contribute to policymaking. What happened, though, is with, you know, all these old powerhouses disintegrating, two particular players, I think, came out as the great winners when it comes to the Arab Spring from the Gulf. So the old powerhouses of the Gulf was Saudi Arabia, and the two smaller states like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates came out from the Arab Spring as more independent players, more powerful players in many ways, and more deterministic and a lot more proactive players. And there is something that I wrote about in my recent book, Divided Gulf, there is something that's dividing the Gulf, and that's particularly the two visions, two ontological predispositions about how to structure and rebuild the Arab world after the revolutions, and that ontological clash, this ideological clash is between Doha and Abu Dhabi in particular, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. And they have two entirely 180 degrees opposite visions of how to restructure the Arab world, how to provide for the needs of the Arab people. And on one hand you have that activism of Qatar, and on the other hand you've got this counter-revolutionary activism, almost the opposite of activism coming from the UAE. And initially UAE and Qatar were obviously on the same side, both of them were asked by the UK and NATO to support the operation in Libya, but very early on in 2011 both kind of went to opposite directions. Qatar ideologically, not very strategic, but very ideologically in support of the people as they said, they were trying to help, trying to build, trying to empower the people versus the old regimes. The previous emir was very much in favour of trying to usurp and overpower these old regimes, providing a more inclusive political system for the Arab world that he would describe as democracy, but I think, you know, most countries would also say today there's had nothing to do with democracy, but it's more about social justice, more about empowering the people, and thereby empowering the people also against the old regime. And the problem with that obviously was the countries weren't strategic, the countries were as blue-eyed in many ways as most partners in the West, in terms of thinking where this was going to go. Even their support obviously for political Islam and Islamic movements as somewhat a kind of placeholder for this vacuum that was created through the toppling of regimes was also very blue-eyed, very naive, not really thinking far ahead of where this would end up. And obviously ending up in a slippery slope that by 2013-14 seeing the countries withdrawing from the Arab Spring and withdrawing their activism and saying, you know, we kind of failed. And at that point 2013 we're seeing the Emiratis appearing on stage as the counter-rector, counteracting that activism that came out of particular from Qatar, but also obviously supported by Turkey. And obviously what the Emiratis are looking at, they're looking at the Arab Spring as not as an opportunity as the country saw it, but as a fundamental risk and threat to the old order of the Arab world. So they were very much and are still very much interested in restoring the old order of authoritarian stability. While the countries were thinking stability in the region could only be established by empowering the people and creating more sustainable social-political relations, which are based on pluralism and engagement, the Emiratis are looking at this as the exact opposite. They're saying empowering the people will lead to revolution, will lead to insurgency, will lead to terrorism and will lead to weak states. So, you know, the Emirati approach was very much a state-centric one, rebuilding the old state, and in many ways very much anti-Islamism, but anti-Islamism is obviously just one element of this. It's not just being against Islamism per se, but it's against being civil society, against the empowerment of the people and basically restoring order by creating and putting in place certain strongmen of the likes that were actually toppled during the period, because they're the only ones who can put a lid on what are essentially very, very unstable at times in the wider Arab world. And so this is basically what led to the divide in the Gulf, in the rift that caused the Gulf crisis between 2017 and earlier this year, but it's also something that divides the entire region. The entire region is now being polarized around, on the one hand, people saying we need to empower people, we need more liberalization. Part of that is obviously people also saying we need to also have a place for political Islam in this because they are representing part of that voice, part of the mood of the Arabs, so to speak. And on the other hand, we have those who say we don't want empowerment, we don't want political Islam, we don't want more liberalization, because more liberalization, more empowerment of the people will lead to more chaos. So we want to go back to some sort of stability. I think some of it we've been seeing in Egypt in 2013 in the aftermath of the military coup, where people were saying we actually want to go back to some sort of stability now, even if that means we're making some of the things that we developed and achieved are being made redundant or undone in the course of this. And I think this divide is somewhat, and you know I don't want to get into, we can talk about this in the Q&A, but this is kind of that divide that leaves the Arabs at the moment very, very divided on depending on you know what side are you on. And there's unfortunately through polarization of social media as well that there's very little middle ground of compromise. In most of these, and the counter-revolutionaries, in most of these crises, the counter-revolutionaries seem to be winning. And you know the idea of an Arab winter is pretty much reality for the time being, but I'm probably more optimistic to say that in the long run I don't think that these authoritarians that came back after the Arab spring are the ones that bring in sustainability in the region. They're probably going to bring more instability and eventually will probably lead to another Arab spring 2.0, 3.0, you name it. I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, Andreas, for that oversight on the Gulf Dynamics. There are some questions coming in about regionalism and we'll come back to that a bit later. I have a question, a broader question, which perhaps for Yerun to answer, which is coming from Mohammed Tawfiq Ali, about the impacts or non-impacts perhaps of the COVID-19 pandemic on the uprising and the end game for Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the sort of popular uprisings that are still going on, the remnants of the Arab spring. Will the COVID-19 pandemic, do you think, have any impact at all? I think it is a very good question, but what's interesting, if you look at Lebanon, for example, you can see that COVID has exacerbated the financial crisis and inequalities. And so it has given people more anger and more grievances. And you can see that in some areas there's more protests on the back of what happened with COVID. On the other hand, COVID has also made inequalities worse. And so people who were poor are even poorer, which means they're more dependent on the clientelistic systems that are in place. Therefore, it is more difficult to protest against those systems because then you would have the kind of the source would be cut off from you. So I think a lot will depend on whether the grassroots opposition will manage to kind of create the structures that can sustain protests, that can sustain the poor and help them also in the kind of the workplace, and whether therefore they can sustain this mobilization, or whether the kind of the existing system will just throttle it and therefore the protests will run out of steam. So I think there's a kind of a two-split there. Just thinking sideways about Jordan, I mean, one of the reasons that we had to do this recent sort of coup-proofing, where the king sort of house arrested, the crown prince or the former crown prince, that was partly to do with the reactions to COVID and particularly where people died because of lack of oxygen and Prince Hamza went to visit them days before the king visited them. So you can see how COVID can provide flesh points, and if these crises are then being kind of mobilized by the protesters, then they could sort of fuel further protests. But I think the key issue is still the economic structure underneath it, that people who get poorer will want to be more, they would like to protest, but they might also be more dependent on existing structures. Thank you very much for that. We have a question from Madeline Mezegopian, sort of two linked questions actually about the media, which perhaps for Fatima to answer initially. She points to the fact that the financial independence of the media is very important if it's going to not be captured by particular sponsors, and what are the prospects for a seriously sort of independent media in the Middle East. And adds the point about the European Union's flirtation with Turkey, which is one of the worst abusers of journalistic freedom, and what is that is doing to the supporters of a free media in the region. Fatima, do you want to try that? Yes. It's very difficult. I mean, economic sustainability for independent media is extremely difficult. From my research, most of media stakeholders are interviewed in this sector. And I am funding from international organization that are supporting media freedom. Again, it's a very dangerous game because in countries like Morocco or Egypt, you can be accused of being a traitor and of all kinds of conspiracy. I mean, it's by law not allowed to have external funds. So it's a very precarious situation. And unless they build sustainability, it's very difficult to continue. Especially that the regimes in most of the places they are able to manipulate the advertising revenues in places like Algeria or Morocco, there were directives to sponsors, to advertisers, that if you put money in this kind of media, then your business will be cut off from the country. It was even in the media, so it's not something secret. Now media development agencies are trying to help and they are trying to bring a kind of coalition of these voices for change to work together. I would say, I mean, it's a very difficult struggle. Some of them had to leave the region and or their countries and to work from abroad. And some of them like Mademoiselle, they are in Egypt, they are facing tremendous pressure, including potential detention and rest. In Egypt, we have at least 20 journalists in prison and definitely situation is not better in Turkey. Unfortunately, my research is very much focused on North Africa, so I cannot give more details about the situation in Turkey, but it's not very much better than what it is in other regions in Zamela, in other countries. It doesn't sound as though you're very optimistic. I am optimistic because I mean, the struggle is ongoing. It's not, it's not yet the end of it. And people like me, like your guests and yourself, we know that there are, I mean, the counter-revolutionary forces are fierce, strong, entrenched. It's not an easy fight. And I think what the second, if we can call them the second wave of uprising, what they learned that this is not an easy battle and it's not enough to go into social media and to have online activism, to change the situation on the ground. We need more, we need planning, we need organization, we need coalitions, we need to be able to negotiate. So it's very difficult. Thank you. We have a question from Hassan Fawaz, which is about Syria and saying that, it goes wider than Syria though, in fact, whether the link between the Arab Spring and the genesis of ISIS and whether one spawned the other or how that interaction worked and how it will develop in the future. Shiraz, do you want to have a crack at that in the Syria focus? Sure. Thank you. I suppose there's a few things and there's a few different ways to unpack the phenomenon of ISIS if we want to put it in that way. There's clear antecedents in obviously the 2003 war in Iraq with obviously not just the Raqqaida in Iraq but also other Sunni groups, Taddis groups that were fighting at the time which began to recognize the need to work together and coalesce in order to be able to resist the surge and various gains that the US was making in trying to push them back. But the real moment of, you could say, hybridity and coming together for these groups was their capture and detention and bringing together in Kambuka where a number of these individuals had the opportunity to strategize about what life would look like if they were able to get out and to regroup. As it happens, of course, that that is precisely what happened. They had the ability and I think it's important in the context of, in other things, not related to this topic, talking about a potential US withdrawal from Afghanistan or elsewhere to think beyond the immediacy of a political cycle or something like that. They were able to sit in Iraq and to simply wait to capitalize shouldn't opportunity present itself and of course that's precisely what happened in 2011. Across the border in Syria you begin to have this breakdown society that's moved towards. This was a decreasing desperation, the unraveling civil society, a greater sectarian turn in that conflict, as I said, causes to and reservations for violence within the context of that uprising and it was a perfect opportunity for ISIS to go in there and to exploit that situation which they did to to great effect so I'm not sure, you know, to what extent events maybe elsewhere in the broader region, Egypt, for example, or things had a direct impact on ISIS, I think the move towards violence in Libya showed that there may be instances because you'd had Tunisia and Egypt up until that point which had gone on largely without violence there were obviously sporadic instances of violence in Egypt but nothing of intensity that we saw in Libya and certainly not what we saw later on inside Syria. So that sense of okay maybe it may be acceptable to fall back on a violent response and there may be a legitimate moment in which to fight and here's what the contours look like. I think all of that benefited ISIS the final point I'll make is, and I think this is really important for current understanding is if you look at the two major urban centers in which ISIS has as a foothold in the past obviously in Mosul and in Raka, then the sorts of underlying structural issues that the population of those places were feeling and were exposed to have been accentuated not diminished as a result of our own military coalition and its activity but also in terms of everything else that has followed and that is, whilst you can't characterize these conflicts and the situation in Iraq or in Syria as a straightforwardly ethnic issue as a straightforwardly sectarian issue as a straightforward jihadist issue that all of these things are present in different forms and interact with one another in different ways. Certainly the story of Mosul and Raka is of the vulnerable Sunni poor in those in those cities who have largely seen those cities blown up who are as desperate if not more desperate than they were prior to the rise of ISIS. And we have once again brought all these guys together in the SDF detention camps in northeastern Syria and housed them in a pretty insecure way with no long term plan. So just as the way they reappear and reemerge from Kambuka, they could get again reappear and reemerge from these camps in northeastern Syria and reimpose themselves over, as I say, these desperate areas with the vulnerable and poor Sunnis are based and it seems, you know, to that extent we haven't learned really the lessons that we should have learned after 2003 and that's very dangerous precedent. Absolutely. Well, thanks, Charles for that. I'm hasn't actually asked a second question about Palestine which Nina might want to tackle which is that had there been a sort of successful Arab spring movement in in Palestine would the Palestinian movement itself have advanced its cause any more than it has the date. Thank you for the question Hassan. Okay, so again, I can unpack this question if the Arab Spring had taken place on a successful. Well, that would depend, first of all, in what kind of trying to pick pull up the question again sorry. That would depend on how that would have would have come about. And so if there had been an Arab spring movement and democratic and cohesive organization. Well, it's just hard to see how that would have played out so it's quite hypothetical. But what did happen was that, while they had democratic elections they had a split between the two between Hamas and the incumbent political party butter, which resulted in kind of a mini civil war about a year and a half after the elections, which resulted in them having fought out of the Gaza Strip militarily. They became sort of two separate kind of parallel governing bodies and they took a long time to really sort of form will still have to form a functioning unity government, which means that they have been completely split. Anyway, so in theory, it was supposed to be a democratic system but hasn't worked out that way. So, some will a lot of people now will say that yes, one of the reasons that they're not making the kind of headway they would like to be is because of the split within their politics. But your question about if they've had an Arab spring movement is harder to answer because it depends how that would have played out and what how that would have emerged and I can't quite answer that part of the question. Thanks Nina. We have a question from on we bring up about regionalism. This is perhaps for Andreas, because he asks whether the threat of popular movements, the threat that that pose to the regimes across the region, has it actually promoted increased cooperation between the Arab world and any sense of regionalism. And I'm interested in this question particularly because I've been struck by the Arab world being further apart from unity than it's perhaps ever been. I mean, the Arab League seems to me to be completely absent from the international age at the moment. And although the the Gulf Cooperation Council has sort of patched up its differences, nonetheless, other splits, particularly between the Sunnis and the sheers have opened up even in the Gulf. So, Andres, do you think this has been made worse by the Arab spring or is there still any chance of some sort of pan Arab unity. That's a great question. Like I said, I mean this division this ideational division is something that is divided the Arab League but it's also divided the GCC frankly, despite the fact that we've had some sort of reconciliation happening over the turn of the year between December and January in the in the Gulf Cooperation Council, you know, none of it is has really been fixed. While Qatar is now talking to Saudi Arabia the, the ultimate fortline and division is still remains between Doha and Abu Dhabi and actually no real communication going on. Both sides do will not concede on, you know, ideational grounds on on where they think the region should move. And obviously the two. I mean, Qatar is obviously being a lot less activist than they were in the first phase of the Arab spring and in many ways they've withdrawn, but the UAE are probably the most powerful Arab country I would say, at this moment in terms of how they use the capacities that they have and the capabilities that they have, and how willing and assertive they are and actually putting them deploying them elsewhere outside the region. So in this respect, in this respect, I do think that this clash over ideology of not having a strategy or grand strategy of where, you know, the country should move to or where the region should go to will lead to more has led to more polarization will continue to polarize domestically as well in each single Arab state, and have definitely completely divided the region I think there is not a single. So that's ideology if we look at interest and geo strategic interest as well. I don't think there is a common geo strategic interest that unites the Arab world there's not even a common threat perception that unites the Arab world at this point in time, and obviously extra regional players such as United States Russia Iran and also play a very role in this because they don't really bring about a certain umbrella that anybody can or anybody is willing to unite under, and then there isn't a common threat perception even when it comes to Iran you know there's a lot of Arab states who see this as an as an opportunity to actually deal and reach out to run. There are others who wouldn't reach out to run at all. And there are some who somewhere in the somewhere in the middle. And then obviously and I don't think that has necessarily something to do with the Arab spring that the Arab spring comes at a time when the intent international order as a whole is disintegrating. And you know state centrism has somewhat ceased to exist and states compete with non state actors and you know gray zone operations are continuing across the region as we speak I mean you know Israel is attacking Iran and vice versa their cyber attacks going on. And that is contributing to a sense of states and countries, no longer being as powerful as they were in the past, and then obviously many regimes being weakened by by by by social mobilization on the ground so on on. So what what were the constants in this Arab world for for many decades have now ceased to exist or when they still exist they have to compete with a lot of other constants and other units of analysis, if you will, which are no longer based on states territory but they're based on you know being transnational organization. What have you not. So the Arab spring has just contributed on top to what is already a disintegrating regional order. I'm Paul arts has asked a question specifically to your room, asking him whether you're going to elaborate a little bit on the organizational deficiencies and on the tension between classes that you touched upon in your tool and the background to his question is around the whether one of the main causes of the social failure of the uprisings is the poverty of protest, I it has been lots of protests but not much social content. What's your take on that you in. Yeah, I think it's very interesting. I think that phrase that poverty of protest is my mind and it's based on on a on a Gramsci analysis. What's interesting I think is that if you look at the Middle East. Middle East is not unique in this but but a lot of protest movements of the last 20 years have been overtly sort of non ideological, and they've been against one big thing but then not entirely clear what would be in its stead so for the global justice movement has been sort of anti neoliberal globalization and it's on this anti kind of label it can mobilize a lot of different groups that may not agree on anything else but it may they all agree on they don't like anti neoliberalism. But then what do you do when you want to build something is in its stead and the same you can see in Egypt you can see in Lebanon, in other places in the Middle East that it is easier for protest movements to mobilize around this sort of non ideological core. It's much more difficult to then develop a program for what to do next. And I think one of the things that that one do or mentions in his article by talks about this poverty of protest is that there hasn't really sort of a clear ideological development of thinking beyond the immediacy of we don't like this regime, we want some more say in politics. There's been no thinking in terms of the kind of structural changes that need to happen in order for sort of a more democratic extreme urge and I think this goes back to my early point about the importance of clientelism and how to become the political parties are very much kind of in control of society because of these these patron clients relationship that can go vertically, unless people become less dependent on those, and you have alternatives and you have therefore structural changes that make it possible for people to come to vote more independently, you will not have this kind of change that a lot of these protests will want to have. I think that's probably my point. Thanks very much. There's a question here, perhaps best for Fatima to answer about Tunisia and saying how did Tunisia escape an increase of authoritarianism it's an anonymous question that's coming. So it is, it is a successful change of regime or transition or transformation but it's a very precarious. It's a very precarious one I mean many different element help this transition first you have a weaker army and security forces compared to Egypt for example. You have a solid elite good education system, relatively small country with no sectarian divides as you can see in Iraq or Lebanon. It's a very fragile process, it's Tunisian suffer today from corruption from poverty from lack of economic solution high level of unemployment, continuity of elites, a new system of consensus between political party is, is undermining democracy in a way that is not about ideology or political leaning is much more about interest and about having a part of the cake and media is also engage in this new system of this part of it. So it's a very complex scene and when I asked my interviewees about how they see the future of this transition or or democratic consolidation. There's lots of anxiety, lots of question mark about how it could survive. While there is insisting that, although we have lots of voices of nostalgia to the old regime, a lot of capture of politics and media. Tunisian are still very much attached to the freedom, and they consider this is the main gain from the revolution. It can be said today in the public debate. We have a kind of revival of journalism, a very pluralistic political scene but it's a very fragmented one as well. I mean, there are real threat about the future, especially within the economic difficulties that are very, it became even worse during the pandemic. Another anonymous question here about the Syrian Iranian alliance and how it has changed over the course of the civil war and Arab spring. One for you, Shiraz, I think. Yeah, I think as I said in my remarks in relation to the Syrian Iranian relationship, it has intensified and deepened and strengthened as a whole. It's been a historic relationship that's obviously been there for a number of years and for those who are not watching the region or who are so familiar with it. It's obviously one of the key points and I suppose countries with which Iran has been able to use an air bridge Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a very important proxy for Iran. And it's been one of the primary ways that as they say by Syria, you've been able to see the Iranians, sorry, the Iranians maintained this air bridge. So Syria has always been important. The maintenance of that air bridge has been important since the conflict began. But, you know, again, there are multiple dimensions to this conflict. There is a religious component to this. And clearly we saw the rise of very, very sectarian millenarian movements, ISIS, Jabhat al-Husra, attacking Shia shrines, Shia holy sites. As you've seen in the past after 2003 in Iraq, so obviously Iran had an interest in protecting both sides and having fighters on the ground in order to protect both sides and have relatively successful in doing so in Syrian context. And then it's obviously, as I say, about maintaining and enhancing those structures of power that it's been able to enjoy the increased intensity of tempo in Iraq and obviously in Syria as well. So I'd say that's the primary issue we've seen obviously the need to rely upon the Russians and to bring them in, but clearly there's a good relationship there as well. So I think Russia coming in has been a single most dynamic factor in helping Bashar al-Assad. You know, turn the tide of this conflict and turn it away from the attritional phase that it was in in much of 2013, 14 and 15 to one where he's been able to wage a more revanchist element of the campaign. I think Iran was primarily able to stop the rot. It was able to stop the march on the maskers that had looked potentially possible at one point, but it wasn't able to reverse the gains. And that's where again, Iran's, I think, goodwill and relationship diplomatic relations with Russia were able to say, you know, have have a piece of this by two and reverse. That's when you saw the reverse of the conflict. So I'd say that's the primary way it's changed. I haven't been, I'd suggest fundamental changes but enhancement and the deepening of pre existing relationships that are already there and interests that were already there for Iran to pursue. Thank you very much. And there's a question here about Libya. What do you think Libya would look like in the present had the West not militarily intervened and is any way to predict this. That's a question I might try and answer myself because personally having been there at the start as it were in New York. I mean I'm convinced that had there not been any military intervention by the West. There should have been a great deal of bloodshed in Benghazi and almost certainly a start of a more or less full scale civil war in Libya. How that would look 10 years on of course is a much more difficult question to answer and I would be very difficult for me to put my hand on my heart and say that Libya would be better or worse off than it would have been sort of 10 years later and I'm certainly convinced that many, many people would have died who hadn't died. I don't know whether anyone else for tomorrow anyone wants to say a better answer to that question. I think it's difficult to answer this question to predict. Is it, would it be better to keep Kazafi and the old regime I mean I would say no. Definitely not how the operation how the change of regime happened. I mean this is where we should look back to lessons learned and to see whether the international community has provided real genuine support for Libya for the civil society to help them go through this difficult time and to avoid the outbreak of civil conflict but I think Andreas had something as well to say. If I may adjust a very quick one. First of all obviously it's an hypothetical one. And I get this question quite a lot at the Royal College of Defense studies, especially from our African members who are very much in favor of saying we shouldn't have removed Gaddafi should have stayed in power then we would have had more more more stability. I say to that. I think this is the one case where the West actually took a, at least initially a very decisive approach in trying to say we're willing to obviously in a bit of mission creep saying first we want to protect the buildings and then saying we, we want to we want to help the regime as well and support the opposition, and actually doing so militarily. In other cases such as Syria we set we thought it would be too costly to actually do it and we didn't. And all we did is a bit of salami tactics here and there without getting into the details of it. And I think the, the alternative to Libya the way it has unraveled would have been a Syria to which would have been I would argue more messy, because the regime was already collapsing anyway it was on the brink of collapse. And obviously, you know, it would have taken a lot longer to topple the regime the regime would have been able to to reinforce using mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa and so on so forth. I think Syria is a good case study of what happens when the West stays fairly out of it and looks from from the onset and just, you know, gets involved whenever it suits them in a very tactical or operational but never in a strategic way. And the mess of the Civil War of Syria although I don't want to compare, I think is a lot worse than the mess that we're seeing in Libya despite the fact that Libya is obviously very messy. That's why I have five cents to that. We have about 10 minutes left now so I'd like to ask the panelists all to chip in on some final general questions that have been coming in from the audience. What is around US American influence in the region. How crucial is the United States to sustaining current regimes is the US losing influence and will the Biden administration be any different from the Trump administration in that respect. And the other question is a broad one around the Arab Spring. Would you personally characterize it as a failure, and will there ever be an Arab summer. Who wants to kick off on that Nina do you want to have a crack at those questions. Thank you so much. Well, thank you about US involvement because I was going to put my hand up. And then I remembered that actually when I think about the Palestinian territories it's not it's a bit of a different angle to the question. One thing about US involvement, which has been very pertinent to the case of the Palestinian territories. Back in 2006, the spring has been the opposition to Hamas as a as a Democratic elected political party there so that has been very pertinent. But I'm not speaking to the US kind of more broader than that. And then the other part of your question is whether the Arab Spring has been a failure and will there ever be an Arab summer. Not in the near future, I would say. Anyone else who wants to go next you really put me on the spot with that one. Why didn't you have a go at those questions. Fatima or Shiraz I mean I will be very short. I don't like the expression of spring or summer or winter. It's a movement of transformation that was led by an appeal call for dignity from people. It was not expected to be easy if we understood as the time that is spring and it's easy. That's our mistake. And it's only 10 years. So I think it's still very early to to judge and say it's a failure. It's a transformation and a continuous movement of struggle and it's not finished and I mean Shiraz would maybe say the same but if you look to see there are some protests still ongoing in Syria under some worst condition in Iraq and Lebanon and Algeria they are every week out in Algeria despite the pandemic. It's still very early to say it's the end and whether summer or winter, we will survive. Yeah, good point. And thoughts on the American influence. I think I would leave it to Shiraz. Okay, Shiraz. I think it's, you know, Fatima's point is right. The question is so broad as to it's it's very difficult because this is the part so dynamics that it's it's it's more as impossible for us to to give a meta answer and Fatima is absolutely right in fact you look even areas in Syria now that are nominally reconciled with the regime there's still been ongoing protests against Bashar al-Assad so that tells us something just at the very micro level. But when we look at the US involvement then again, you know, the calibration of American involvement American policies well we're looking at 10 year period here and we've had three different presidents in the United States. During that time, one of whom I think you know we can describe as a highly unusual president. But in one sense, but in the other sense was very, very close to the Gulf powerhouses Saudi Arabia UAE, and restoring the sense of confidence and reassurance that they had wanted after the Obama years. In that sense, actually it was a return to a kind of status quo feeling for some of those governments and in fact maybe status quo plus because in fact they were getting more of what they want to particularly after having felt a degree of exposure previously and now with with President Biden and his administration. I think you can again expect to see a slight recalibration in a way that leaves countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Sweden slightly more exposed again slightly more jittery I think is a better term. Again, as they will seek to engage the Iranians there and that might lead to more trade offs in other places, i.e. in Syria, or, you know, it's worse. I tend to think of this as if you think, you know, US interest, what's the Russian interest, the Iranian. Like the air in a balloon at different points different administrations will grip the balloon in one part and what happens areas displaced to others the balloon itself hasn't popped it's not going anywhere. And therefore the particles molecules are moving and different areas are becoming emphasized different parts of this structure are becoming you're coming under great distress because of the way that you are clamping this balloon but again a number of those actors in the region whether the monarchy is the Iranians are this, you know, are there and they see out multiple administrations and so there's again that that lopsidedness of time and event horizon in the way that some of these actors are thinking and operating. Thank you. Sure. Do you have any thoughts on those wider questions. Yeah, just to go back to the point that this it's too soon to tell me these are long transformations that can take decades to kind of come through. But also I would say that there's, there's learning I mean there's learning on both sides mean you've got authoritarian regimes learning from each other how to be more authoritarian which would not help the region to get to more kind of transformative politics, but it's also learning on the inside of the protest if you look at the Lebanese protests for example, they've learned from, from what happened in Egypt in the sense that they're much more focused on on how to build posts, protests, structures, you know that that can engage in politics that they're, they're thinking about how to come how to transform society how to create alternative services, etc. So I think I'm, I'm mildly optimistic in the long run, in the sense that that's the for a lot of people in the region. But once you've had these these mass protests. This is something that you don't think this is possible. I mean, before 2010. This wasn't so deemed a possibility within the Middle East. And now you have had a decade of mass protests. So I think this is not something that will go away. It's a very long, slow process of building things on the ground and as I said, not just on social media or the social media have to have their role to play, but materially sort of on the ground. Thanks very much, Andreas. Yeah, I agree with everything that's been said I think there is it's difficult like Shiraz said to come up with a macro picture of saying this is the Arab Spring and this is where it's successful, and this is why it's not successful. And there are a lot of there's a lot of evidence locally that it has been successful and continues to be successful. I think there are a lot of achievements that you know the Arab world can cherish. Even though at the moment, like I said, we are it's somewhat some somewhat the at an Arab winter where the, where the regime seems to win where all three terrorism wins seems to win and to come back to Jeroen's point about authoritarianism. I think authoritarianism 2.0 is is winning at the moment in those countries that are authoritarian obviously Tunisia, I think has is a great success country where authoritarianism has lost. I think in Libya, we're on the on the brink of seeing a bit more pluralism way from authoritarianism. But if we look at Syria, I think the regime in some areas again some areas seems to be winning. Not very in a not very sophisticated way but you know when we look at Egypt, for example, I think Egypt for me is kind of the embodiment of the new authoritarian regime very similar to the UAE, where authoritarianism is learning how to do repression in a 21st century way. And here I think despite the fact that civil society has been empowered and that mobilization has been empowered, the tools of demobilization and repression have also been modernized to such an extent that at this point in time, regimes are winning. And there was a question about China and China's influence in the region. And I think one very powerful relationship that's been forged at the moment that nobody's looking at is UAE and China. The UAE have become one of the most important, not the most important client state for the Chinese in the region, in terms of procuring information technology procuring means of subversion that are being used not just domestically in the UAE because in the UAE civil society no longer exists at all, but they're exporting it to other countries they've tried to export it to Libya they've definitely exported it to Egypt, they're exporting it potentially now to Syria with new relationships being forged there. And so there is a authoritarianism 2.0 it becomes increasingly powerful. And despite the fact that obviously we always talk about the media, but the Arab Spring was mobilized through social media social media was immensely important in this. And obviously continuously important, but it feels like that the regime has completely conquered that domain for the time being. And I think that's something that makes me a bit more worrisome about the United States, I do think that the country fell into a bracket when Arab when the when the Obama administration wanted to withdraw anyway, and it's it fell into a bracket of withdrawal US withdrawal from the region the region is no longer. We look at three administrations, and we see that the Middle East is no longer as important as it used to be. So I think in this kind of context, America has withdrawn, and when it re engages in some some areas it does so in an entirely different way than it has throughout its history and I think that is a very important thing to consider because it has created a vacuum that now, and to one extent the Gulf countries are filling because the Americas told the Americas have told the GCC that they have to now bear the burden of conflict in the region more more directly and so they're doing it in a very divided manner. And it has allowed others to come in Iran, Russia, Turkey, and to an extent China as well. In this respect, I think I'm slightly optimistic in some areas but also very pessimistic in others. Yeah, for my own part I would agree that it's a bit too early to say because the power structures within individual countries and the power structures within the region are very much in flux at the moment. But it does end with a more geopolitical wider point. It strikes me that what's interesting about the region one thing that's interesting about the region is that at a moment when external involvement is probably greater than it's been for some time from countries like Israel, Turkey, Iran but also Russia, China, the US now coming back. It's happening at a time when arguably in geopolitical terms, the Middle East region has never been less important in the sense that it's always had a very small population it's got a minute economic contribution to the world economy, but also as the world is safe on dependency on fossil fuels and relatively few of the countries have diversified their economies, and everyone's focus is on the US China relationship. It's going to be interesting to see what that means for the dynamic in the Middle East, North Africa region going forward, because what is absolutely certain is that the geopolitical future, the prosperity and security across the world is going to depend over the next years on the US China relationship, and that relationship will have a direct impact on every region in the world including Middle Eastern and North Africa. I think we'll end it there because we've reached 730 but I want to thank all the five panelists for their fantastic contributions, and I want to thank all the audience for joining us this evening. Look up, look back at the 10 years of the Arab Spring.