 Good afternoon everyone, thank you so much for coming to this panel, I'm very honored of being part of, so the paper that I'm going to present today is entitled Rebel Governance during COVID-19 describing and explaining armed groups responses to the pandemic in the Middle East. So as COVID over the past two years has been spreading worldwide, not only governments but also armed groups and especially those armed groups that control territories and the population living in those territories have inevitably been called to address this crisis. However, still very little is known when it comes to how these armed groups have been dealing with the crisis and this was before I went through the presentation of Siobhan. And this lack of knowledge actually inserts itself into a broader gap because in the literature on Rebel Governance, despite we know a lot thanks to the work of many of the people here in this room also about how armed groups have been providing governance, there is a kind of a gap when it comes to how external shocks that are not related to the conflict dynamics in which these armed groups are part of. We do not know exactly how, thank you so much, how these external shocks affect the kind of decisions, the preferences and the strategic choices that armed groups make as providers of governance. And in fact over the past two years while we've been reading a lot of studies about states and governments responses to COVID-19, we have a comparatively less deep knowledge when it comes to armed groups responses. So my research aims in this paper were to first describe the different responses that different armed groups have been providing to address COVID-19 looking specifically at the Middle Eastern region that over the past decade has been a laboratory of Rebel Governance. And the second step proceed to explain why armed groups have responded to the pandemic as they have. And from this point of view, COVID was an opportunity to really look at how different groups respond to the same emergency because previous studies could only look at our groups in a specific context were dealing with emergencies occurring in that specific geographical context. For instance a tsunami or a mine, while COVID really gave us the opportunity of adopting a global approach and outlook. So this is the academic relevance that I believe the study has, but it also has a more practical relevance and I became increasingly aware of this working for the past year as consultant on Syrian Yemen for an NGO that is trying to bring humanitarian aid in areas under the control of armed groups. Because understanding how violent news detectors address the COVID-19 pandemic and potentially other emergencies can inform our approaches to dealing with violent news detectors and approaches to intervene more successfully with realistic approaches and strategies to provide humanitarian assistance to the civilians that live in these territories under the control of armed groups outside the control of governments. So when it comes to the descriptive side of my work, I built this very simple but I hope clear COVID-19 governance response continuum that goes from null to extensive. By null I refer to a situation in which the armed group takes no action to address the crisis for instance denying the presence of the virus in its territories or engages in disinformation for instance conspiracy theories. Minimal response means that the armed group engages in preventive measures for instance instructing the population on how to behave to prevent the spread of the virus, but nothing more than this. Intermediate means that besides engaging in these preventive measures, the armed group also engaged in proactive joint measures, joint for instance cooperating with foreign governments or humanitarian organizations to distribute vaccines to make an example. While on the other end of the continuum we have extensive responses that means that not only we have preventive measures, proactive joint measures, but also proactive independent measures. So the armed group has the willingness and the capacity to engage in proactive responses independently for instance providing training to the medical personnel. While proceeding to the explanatory effort of my work, referring to the literature on rebel governance and armed groups behavior, I identified four factors that might help us to identify the reasons why some groups might be on one point along the continuum and others on another point. So ultimate goals I assume that secessionist and ethronationalist armed groups are more likely to engage in emergency governance because they need to prove their governance credibility in the case of secessionist groups to the international community, in the case of ethronationalist group to the specific ethronationalist constituency that they are aspiring to represent and to govern upon. While non secessionist and non ethronationalist armed groups are less likely to invest in emergency governance because they are more free from this need of proving their governance credentials in the eyes of the international community, excuse me, or internal domestic constituency. Financial resources, so I assume that armed groups who depend on civilians to access financial resources, for instance through tax stations, are more likely incentivized in times of emergency to provide governance because they need the population to be alive first of all, healthy and economically productive. While armed groups that are not dependent on the civilian population to access financial resources for instance because they have the support of an external patron will have a less incentive to invest in emergency governance because their financial survival is not dependent on the well-being of the population. Thirdly, conflict in intensity, so armed groups engaged in high intensity conflicts, I assume are likely to divert resources from the military battlefront where their priorities are towards governance even in times of emergency, while armed groups engaged in low intensity conflicts are more likely to engage in emergency governance because they can allow themselves to redirect resources from the military effort to the governance effort, especially in times of crisis. Governance experience, finally, armed groups with poor governance experience, especially in the specific field that is affected by the external shock, in this case, health governance are likely to lack the capacity to offer a governance response to the emergency. While armed groups that have a significant governance experience or at least intermediate have the know-how, the manpower, the facilities to address the crisis. I, to conduct my study, I looked into Hayatari Rasham in Northwest Syria, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis or Ansarallah in Yemen. I selected them because they are engaged in some form of at least minimal governance. They, from my preliminary reading of the data, so that they engage in different responses to COVID-19 and they displace some differences with respect to these explanatory factors that we were just looking at. And to collect my data, I looked at the materials that the armed groups themselves publish that are videos, images, newsletters, reports and that are available online and that are in Arabic mostly, but also in English. And then secondary literature, so journalistic articles and reports by humanitarian organizations on the ground. I will not go deep into the case studies, but for instance, it's interesting to see how Hayatari Rasham from the very beginning instructed civilians on how to behave, for instance, wash hands. It cooperated with the humanitarian organizations to bring vaccines into Northwest Syria and the interactive systematic medical checks on people coming from Turkey to Northwest Syria. The Houthis, on the other hand, engaged in a disinformation campaign from the early days. They accused the United States and Israel of having fabricated the virus purposely. They intimidated journalists preventing them from spreading information and they even recruited youths saying that the only way for them not to contract the virus was to fight alongside the Houthis. While Hamas engaged in an extensive response, as we will see, because it closed public's places, it enforced a general lockdown in Gaza, it prohibited large gatherings and open quarantine centers and provided training to medical personnel in Gaza. So going back to the continuum that we saw before, I called the Houthis as providing a new governance response to COVID. Hayatari Rasham, an intermediate response, possibly leaning towards extensive and Hamas as providing an extensive response. And proceeding to see which of the factors that we discussed before can really help us in illuminating this picture better, I find that armed groups that depend on international recognition to reach their ultimate goal, and this is the case of Hamas and Hayatari Rasham, have an interest and incentive in providing governance in times of emergency. While a group such as the Houthi that is uninterested in international recognition, thanks to its military upper hand in the war in Yemen, is not incentivized to provide this kind of emergency governance and invest resources even in times of emergency. Secondly, armed groups that depend on civilians to access financial resources such as Hamas and Hayatari Rasham that derive most of their finances from the taxation of the population, are incentivized in investing in governance in times of emergency. While the Houthis, a group such as the Houthis that derives its financial resources from other means, for instance expropriations or the version of humanitarian aid and sold on the black market, does not have the same incentive to invest in emergency governance. When it comes to the conflict intensity, I find that armed groups engage in low intensity conflicts such as Hamas, simple to invest resources. However, what was my expectation when it comes to high intensity conflicts was not confirmed because in the case of Hayatari Rasham the group is engaged in a high intensity conflict against the Syrian regime and the Russian allies, but nonetheless it found it convenient in its interest to invest some of its resources in governance during the COVID-19 pandemic. And finally, armed groups with a poor governance experience, and this is the case of the Houthis, do not seem capable of engaging in extensive governance responses in times of crisis while armed groups with some degree of governance experience such as Hayatari Rasham and even more so Hamas have a greater capacity when it comes to facilities and personnel and know how to address the emergency. And here I put these observations in this table that I hope can be the beginning for having a clearer picture than we have now of how armed groups behave when a sudden emergency comes and they are left to deal with it. I thank you for your attention and I'm looking forward to the discussion.