 I am delighted that as our guides to the perplexed, we have two of the people who I think are really the best people in Washington to help us think through this. On your left, my right is Aaron Zellin, the Richard Barrow fellow at the Washington Institute. If there is a rising star in this field, I think it's Aaron. He has been writing about Jihadi groups, how they're adjusting to the new political environment. He has plumbed the social media. He has really, I think, done as good, if not better, a job than anybody, really understanding what this looks like on the ground, how it is being spread, what are the courses of its development. He is a PhD candidate at King's College London and also is a fellow at the Associated International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence. He is somebody from whom you will be hearing more. On my other side is somebody about whom, if you're paying attention, you have already heard a lot from. Paul Saddam is the Vice President at the Middle East Institute. I think he has established a reputation not only through his work helping create the Carnegie Endowment for a National Peace Office in Beirut, but also helping found the FATIS Foundation Office there, helping found the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. Paul is, I think, one of the people who really understands where the Middle East is, where it's going, how this all fits into the context. He has a very prestigious PhD from Harvard, which is almost as prestigious as an economics PhD from Harvard, much more prestigious than a history PhD from Harvard and has, I think, established himself. He really is somebody who brings an academic's insight and precision and a policymaker's need for relevance to the study of strategic issues in the Middle East. So I thought what we do, because we only have about 45 minutes, is to really dispense with a lot of opening questions and to just get into questions. And I thought we'd start with Aaron and then Paul and then try to quickly turn it over to you. And I think, Aaron, the first question really is, as somebody who has been studying Jihad and looking at Jihad, and you have a sense for the context, what are the unique elements we see emerging from Syria that mean we are in a different space? What's so different about this conflict? Well, first off, thanks for having me. What's so unique about Syria is that there's an unprecedented number of individuals who have gone so far. So just to compare historically speaking, from 1979 to 1992, about 5,000 individuals went to Afghanistan. And from 2003 to around 2007, 4,000 individuals went to Iraq. In Syria, we've seen upwards up to potentially 12,000 individuals go just in the last two and a half years. Obviously, a lot shorter time. So what are the factors that have led to this? The first one, as alluded to in the last panel, is ease of travel. It's a lot easier to get to Turkey than it is to get to, say, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, places like that. And of course, it's not necessarily weird to travel to Turkey to get into Syria. It's a huge tourist destination. Another factor is the legacy of the facilitation and logistics networks from past Jihads, specifically speaking about what many individuals, when they went to Iraq last decade, used the same logistics networks. And the fact in the Western European context is you've seen a build up a lot of social movements within Europe over the last five to 10 years in a bunch of different countries. And therefore, it's a lot easier to potentially recruit individuals. Another factor is social media, which was alluded to. I don't need to get much into that then. I'm going to get you into it, but we'll get there. Yeah. And then I think one of the most important factors is the emotional resonance of this particular conflict within the Muslim communities in the broader world. Look, the Assad regime is slaughtering a bunch of innocent people. And therefore, there's enough motivation just based off of that and not necessarily just ideology. There's obviously the ideological factor, too. Another aspect is the so-called five-star Jihad. And that Syria, unlike Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Mali is actually a relatively good place. Maybe not so much nowadays as it was three years ago, but comparatively speaking, it's not as rough of a place to go to. And then there's also religious aspects. Historically speaking, the Caliphate was in Damascus, as well as the fact that some individuals believe that the end times prophecies are starting to happen because within Islamic psychology, it all starts happening in the Levantine arena. And then the last one is just the sectarian angle. There's been a huge growth in anti-Shia sediment as a result of the fact that Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, along with a number of other forces, have been helping out the Assad regime in the past two years. So that's sort of the basics on that. That's a lot new. And we also have a Middle East context that is new because if we think back to how we initially thought this would go, this was part of an Arab Spring which was supposed to bring democratization to the Middle East. We have in some ways a new Middle East. We have a new Syria. Paul, where do you think this begins to evolve in a changed regional context and a rapidly evolving Syrian context? Well, I'd agree with a lot of the things that Aaron mentioned about sort of what's more, sort of what's special about the conflict in Syria. I would also add an element that particularly in the early stages, and still today I think as was mentioned by one of the people who asked a question in the first session, that the regime itself has also somewhat favored or facilitated at certain phases the rise of more radical groups in the opposition. It's sort of like the infected blanket to the Indian tribes kind of thing. That the rise of the radical groups, and indeed for example, the ISIS in Raqqa is not attacked by the regime. It's very calm. It's sort of a safest place to be. And that has been the case for much of the conflict that the rise of Al Qaeda affiliated groups has effectively decimated the Sunni majority opposition, has weakened it internally, has created huge splits. Now there's fights among them. It has also cut the road for any serious Western support to that opposition. So it served a certain instrumentality as well, and it still does. And I think that's something to keep in mind. What's of great concern to me obviously in this, I mean we've talked a lot about the groups and the various risks that they pose in Syria, in the region and in the first panel to Europe and the United States, is that to begin to address the risk you have to look at how this might end, when it might end, how it could be brought to an end. And the picture is extremely bleak. And that puts us in a perspective that this problem might continue to fester or grow for a decade or more. So we're talking about a big threat that is going to get extremely bigger. And at a time when these Al Qaeda affiliated groups in Syria and now across the border in Iraq are effectively establishing a state or a pseudo state with control of territory, resources, energy, oil and oil wells and so on. And without any apparent force to weaken them or deal with them in any foreseeable future. And when you look at the conflict in Syria, it's blocked at all levels. There is no domestic Syrian process to bring this conflict to an end. Syria as a nation is broken. I don't see how it can be put together again. Regionally you have various fault lines. You obviously have an Iran sort of Gulf fault line which is at the heart of it. But even among supposed allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, this has been a period of great division. Saudi Arabia has looked suspiciously at Turkey as potentially supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, something that effectively they've come to blows with. The GCC states have ganged up or have opposition to Qatar, a main player as well over the issue of Muslim Brotherhood. So even among allies in the region, there isn't a common vision. The new government in Egypt is, if anything, maybe a bit more favorable to the Assad regime than its allies in the Gulf are. And internationally there was the only glimmer of hope was U.S.-Russian cooperation over Geneva. That failed in Geneva too and now after Ukraine and Crimea there is no such track. So what is of great concern to me that the rise of this al-Qaeda state is just the beginning. It's going to grow further. I see no strategy to try to bring it, to contain it or to deal with it. And as I mentioned, some of the players like the Assad regime and Manik and Iran are not, yes they're enemies, but they prefer this enemy to other enemies and that complicates the situation. The only political process that's making some headway are the P5 plus one talks with Iran. And that's the only place if those come to some fruition one could imagine some diplomatic track to try to get a handle on some things. But at this point I see no leadership that will really address the depth of this problem which is only going to get much, much worse. I want to say thank you and then I want to say I wish you hadn't said that. Aaron, where does the foreign fighter piece fit into all of this? There is an internal radicalization that the number of foreign fighters is a relatively small number of the fighters. How, as you see it, what is the role of foreign fighters in shaping the trajectory of this conflict? Is this more important in terms of what happens in Syria or is it more important as we were hearing in the previous, not that they were saying this, but what the phenomenon they were talking about in the previous panel, people going, becoming radicalized and trained network and then going back to their home countries? Yeah, I think that both factors are important. For one, in terms of the foreign fighters and what they do internally, a lot of them are motivated by a really radical interpretation of Islam and therefore are willing to die for what they believe is a just cause. And as a result, they use suicide bombings, which in many ways does tip balances within some of the different smaller battles that do occur. For example, they just had four suicide attacks, one of them including the American kid in Khan Sheikh Yun in Idlib, just this past weekend, I believe, and that helped then go on for the rebels. This was Jabhat al-Nusra in Sukral Shem, which is a selfie organization not designated, to take the area. So their willingness to risk everything has definitely helped out on the battlefield, but it's also been at the cost of the more moderate factions within the rebellion. On the other hand, you have many individuals who are going there to gain training to then potentially go back home. So for example, you have a group of Moroccans there, Harqat Shem al-Islam, and they've said that while they are there to help out, you know, fight against the Assad regime, at the end of the day, they're trying to get skills to then go back home to Morocco and potentially start an insurgency there as well. And then on the other side of things, you have some individuals who aren't really worried about the Assad regime at all. They're just interested in setting up this Islamic State, which is many of the individuals that are aligned with ISIS, and that creates a whole other problem set because it's not just a Syria issue, it's also an Iraq issue, since they essentially have territory contiguous, more or less, from rural parts of Aleppo province all the way up through Anbar province in Iraq. So it creates problems, not just regionally or locally, but also for those that return home as well. Thank you. And Paul, as we look at surrounding countries like Lebanon, which have had small radical movements, what is the immediate impact on those movements to have this, it's not even smoldering, this flaming, this conflagration going on in Syria, how does that affect even the domestic movements in places like Lebanon? Well, first of all, I think, I mean, to comment a bit on the issue of foreign fighters and how they're different from some of the local or national fighters, I mean, one dynamic that we're seeing in Syria among local fighters, I mean, local fighters have families there, villages, towns, they're sort of responsible for the communities from which they come. They're not there as lone wolves who've come from another country and happy to die and don't have clear territorial interests or objectives. And a dynamic that's emerging among other opposition groups in Syria is there many of them beginning to basically operate as sort of village defense brigades and playing a very defensive game in terms of protecting their territory from attacks from the regime or other threats or even attacks from ISIS or Jubeh al-Nusra, a different trajectory. Many of them also have given up the hope that was still alive maybe a year, year and a half ago that the collapse of the Assad regime is imminent, that they can take Damascus and all of that. So also perhaps a divergence between these foreign fighters who are here either for the Islamic State or for the fight or for martyrdom or to go back and local players who are at the end of the day looking to their interests and their communities and some kind of future. And those things are going in very different directions. In terms of impacts on regional groups, I think it's interesting and rather varied. The biggest impact has been in Iraq, surprisingly or not, by far the biggest impact has been there, partly because of the contiguity of the borders between sort of Northeastern Syria and Western Iraq. Also the similarity of the fight there between an Assad-led government in Damascus, a Maliki-led government in Baghdad, grievances that are somewhat similar and Iraq's past with Al Qaeda and sort of vulnerability to it. Lebanon has surprisingly been somewhat so far, somewhat immune to that spark jumping the border in any major way. That might be because Sunni space, Sunni political space in Lebanon is already dominated by the future movement and by, which is at the end of the day, a sort of secular business elite close to Saudi Arabia does not have an Islamic bent. They have their martyr who was Rafid Haridi killed by probably the Assad regime and Hezbollah in 2005. So their narrative as Lebanese Sunnis in that space is largely occupied and has not seen much room for the rise of very radical groups. There are cells, there are, you know, car bombs that are going off, but much less than would be thought. The country beyond Iraq, which is most worried and has most cause to worry is Jordan because there, you know, there is a history of the risk being present and that type of message resonates among some in Jordan, the Jordanian government in cooperation with many other players is trying to sort of keep a handle on it, but I would say that's where the risk is greatest. Let me ask one more question and then you guys have to start working. Aaron, as I recall the development of Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda 1.0 was about sending these recruiters out to Muslim congregations and trying to bring people in. We have these very famous recruiters, Steve Emerson's written a lot about them and they went off and they tried to get people to come. Al-Qaeda 2.0 was sort of about people who autoradicalized. They saw things on the internet, they read them and then they showed up places. It feels to me like we are in and I think the first panel suggested this but didn't really address it. We're sort of in a phase of Al-Qaeda 3.0 which feels to be a little bit like a combination of the two that there is the broad radicalization happening over the internet and people seeing images and be motivated, but there seems to be a sort of personal touch too through social media, through the propagandists who are trying to reach out. You've looked at this a lot more than I have and perhaps more than anybody in this room. What are the ways you're seeing of the personalization of recruitment? What is the sort of cutting edge of getting people to identify so closely with these causes that they're willing to join in unprecedented numbers, a battle halfway around the world? Yeah, no, I agree in many ways on that. So what's happening on social media is really interesting. In the past, say only a few years ago and going all the way back to the early 2000s is that you had to go onto a password protected jihadist forum just to get in touch with sort of these individuals online or the networks and organizations themselves. Whereas now on Twitter or Facebook, more so on Twitter because it's more of an open ecosystem online, you can easily get in contact with anybody and it's pretty, based off of the algorithms that Twitter puts on there, if you start following certain people then recommend people for you so you can easily find all of the key jihadists within an hour and you're completely set up. So Twitter makes it very easy. And then from there, you sort of have this socialization process in that you feel this camaraderie with all these people that are believing the same things as you and you become friends with individuals all over the world. And the thing is that many individuals within this movement are multilingual so they can talk to each other in Arabic, they can talk to each other in English, French, Dutch, what have you. So, and the thing too is that a lot of these groups have put a larger effort into translating a lot more of their content online. For example, there's this huge video released by ISIS about a week or two ago called Clanging of the Swords, number four, about some of their activities inside of Iraq and they've already translated the video into English, Russian, Turkish, German, Spanish and a number of other languages as well and therefore those who don't necessarily know Arabic can read the subtitles and get into it and of course just the fact that these individuals are not just talking to each other but they can ask questions to top leaders in these organizations. For example, there's this one individual, Abu Suleiman Al-Muhajir who's an Australian but a top Sharia official in Jabhat al-Nusra. He knows Arabic and English so therefore he can communicate with a varying number of audiences about questions related to what's going on whether it's with the battle with the Assad regime or whether it's the battle between Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS and everything related to that. So you get a lot more personalization the same way that teenagers might feel when say Justin Bieber might respond to something they say on Twitter or something along those lines. It's in many ways very similar even though it's obviously completely separate worlds. The record world before like you just compared Justin Bieber to a jihadi. That was you, not me. You can get all the angry email. From Bieber fans. That's right. No Liebers. And Paul, how much of the mind space in the Middle East is this taking up? There has been an explosion of media. There's been an explosion of information available to people. Clearly everybody isn't paying attention. Everybody's not aware of what Aaron's paying attention to. Is this something that is seeping into the broader discourse? Is this something that young people talk about the way they talk about soccer and dancers? Or is this what we're talking about suddenly a tiny phenomenon can be globally important even if you're only talking about a few thousand people out of a global population of several billion? Well I think what's been interesting over the past few years both in the Arab Spring, phase one, phase two and phase three in the different phases of change in various countries as well as the trajectory of Al-Qaeda and the assassination of bin Laden and the reaction or non-reaction to that. That in the Arab world I think you can have a fairly solid mapping of public opinion in which radical whether it's Al-Qaeda affiliated or close to it is certainly a narrow fringe. Now a narrow fringe in a group of several hundred million people and if they're militarized and mobilized as an enormous security threat but it is the case that it is a fringe it is not something that is liable to be popular or to become popular even in the areas that they control. I know many people from Raqqa, ISIS is there they control but they're not popular other than the fact that they can't get rid of them the regime doesn't want to get rid of them the population can't get rid of them. That Arab public opinion I think is has expressed itself as being the majority is pretty mainstream and wants what everybody else in the world wants which is stability, some kind of decent accountable government. The flirtation with the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderate version of Islam was thought at one point that that's going to be the future and that they would be dominant that has turned out not to be the case neither in Tunisia nor in Egypt and in many other places. The areas where radicalism has played a powerful role has been in areas of course where there is armed conflict and that is in Iraq and now Syria, Oninoff and Lebanon and worryingly as Egypt has gone from politics to sort of a more militaristic crackdown you have a very serious threat of increased radicalization of course you have it in Sinai, you have areas across the Libyan border and a radicalization because of the militarization of the conflict there. So yes it's a fringe it will never be majoritarian but it's a big fringe and in areas where conflicts are left to fester they are the most effective and in other words in an area of high fever you will have a certain type of virus be most effective and that's why when I think about this threat I think about how to address the conflict and bring it to an end because it's very hard to control the symptom which is this high fevered performance you have to bring an end to the deep, deep dysfunction that is Syria today and I see no efforts now neither locally nor regionally nor internationally to bring it to an end and that's what worries me most. I'm going to early retirement I'm going to turn on you guys so if I could ask people to signal to have a question if I could also ask you identify yourself that you only ask one question till we've been able to go through and third that you ask your question in the form of a question which is not to make a long statement and ask our panelists what do you think of my statement? So that warning, sir in the back, yes sir. Hi, Dr. Khawar Iwaz Abassam Barabendi former Syrian diplomat. Actually I have comments or remarks and I have a question. My remarks that please don't over exaggerate the Syrian radicalism. We are Syrian, I'm not here to make a lecture. Syrian are very peaceful guys. For Dr. Salim, he's my professor at the university. Do you think that rags too that many NGOs, many think tanks try to do between Syrian opposition and Syrian regime can lead to somewhere? Thank you. The question was would track two talks among Syrians between Syrian people close to the regime and close to the opposition. Is there a chance that it will lead somewhere? I mean looking at other conflicts next door like the Lebanese conflict, the Iraqi conflict and so on what worries me very much about the Syrian conflict is it's already three plus years into the conflict and there is no real Syrian negotiation taking place. Yes, there's some NGOs that are attempting this and that but the regime so far really has not been serious about any real compromise or negotiation. It now feels stronger than it was a year ago. It's stronger on the ground. Its allies have been much more effective than the opposition's allies. It is in a strong position. It is now likely to try to focus on Aleppo and try to get Aleppo in which case it will have all the main areas. The regime is holding a presidential election next Tuesday which Assad will win. The importance of that is that it further puts a nail into international efforts to negotiate a resolution because even among Assad regime's allies, the Russians, Geneva one and Geneva two is based on the premise that Assad has to go at some point. I think the importance of Assad's elections is for him to tell his allies that I am the regime and the factions in Syria who support the regime, they support me and hence you cannot negotiate my departure which will make any negotiation all the more difficult. Right next door the Lebanese conflict took 15 years to bring to an end and it was why I would say much easier than the Syrian conflict. One dynamic that we're seeing now in Syria is that the regime has been able to solidify its presence in Damascus, the west, the corridor, maybe even might get Aleppo or might not but it will not be able to regain the rest of Syria. Everybody as you know is beyond exhausted and not able to really fight major battles too far into the future. I think the Assad regime has blocked the way for a real transition. The only thing that I can see being negotiated whether it's formal or informal is a kind of de-escalation in certain areas, limited ceasefires, a kind of coexistence that we stay here, you stay there. Which is what happened in other civil wars until such time as the situation in general is ripe for a grand bargain or a grand resolution. So I'm at least would say that de-escalation in itself is valuable, it will save lives, it will avoid further bloodshed, it might enable deliberated areas at least to have some stability, some people go back to school, get their lives back together until such time as a bigger resolution can be made. But I think we're talking in years, maybe decades, certainly not months. Yes, ma'am. You're waiting for a microphone? Sasha, Christian Chant. I was wondering if you've noticed any socioeconomic trends among those people who are prone to be radicalized, both in terms of HVEs, but also people within Syria and the neighboring countries. There really isn't any trend that one can talk about. We have people that are from lower socioeconomic status, we have people that have high level college degrees, we're in business and fine. I mean, there is no profile for a jihadist. Anybody can be one. It doesn't really have to do about whether you have no education or whether you have poverty. I mean, there are very well educated individuals who are involved in this movement as well. So I mean, that's one of the reasons why it's very difficult, especially in the Western context, to try and figure out how to handle this issue when some of the individuals do return home. Well, and one of the things that I've heard, this is the beginning of a question, is I've heard that there's greater differentiation in roles and there are people who are taking on roles as sort of more task specific propagandists and logisticians and it seems that in some ways the jihadi enterprise is becoming more professionalized and therefore there are more openings for more people from different backgrounds or different skill sets the same way that the US military has people trained in different specializations. How does that look from where you sit and where you watch? Yeah, I mean, I guess one of the trends is that you see a lot of individuals with backgrounds in engineering or people that are doctors or a lot of individuals that are good with graphic design now. A, for bomb making, B, for helping out individuals after they get injured, and C, for a lot of the propaganda efforts. If you look at any of the videos they put online, it's in very high quality HD. They have a lot of slick graphics. They use a lot of different types of Anashid or Islamically sanctioned music according to them. And therefore, depending on the skill set you have, you can be involved in a variety of activities or you have somebody that has background in religious education. There could be, for B, a Sharia official within the organization. And then you just have individuals who are more frontline types of soldiers. And then of course you have the people that are more interested in strategy and tactics on the battlefield and therefore deciding what should be done. So a number of different people can be involved in these types of organizations with different levels of experiences and skill sets. Let me ask an unfair question, which is we talk a lot about foreign fighters and you said maybe 12,000 up to that. But that's people I assume on the battlefield. In terms of people who threw propaganda, soft support farther away, would you suggest that the sort of legions of non-combatant combatants who presumably can do this anywhere in the world is a roughly similar number or a small number? I mean, when we're talking about the sort of the long tail of this, what does the long tail look like now? It's difficult to say. I mean, one potential measure is how many individuals are following, say, an ISIS Twitter account or Jabhat al-Nusra Twitter account or an individual. But the thing is, is within that you also have people that are following these accounts that are journalists, researchers, people that are just interested in the topic. So it doesn't necessarily quantify who's an actual supporter. That being said, you do have a number of individuals, whether they're in Arab countries or in Western Europe or the United States, that they're creating their sort of own videos at home. And therefore it's a force multiplier, whether they're reposting it on Twitter or reposting it on Facebook. And therefore it exposes individuals that they might know within their own social networks that are not necessarily jihadists yet, at least to potentially be drawn in, ask what's going on here? What's the deal with this? Why are you involved in these types of activities? And that's how some people might get drawn in that might necessarily been in the past. So you do have sort of these social media jihadi entrepreneurs in terms of spreading the message and about what's going on based off of the narrative that say ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra is trying to put out there. Yeah, I think I'd like to comment also on a number of things. I mean, it's an interesting question. How do you link the economics to all of this and the socioeconomics? I mean, one thing to reflect on is that the Muslim Brotherhood as a mainstream Islamic movement sort of represents an older sort of middle class, urban middle class, whereas Salafists and more of the radicals certainly represent an underclass that's been an underclass for a long time, whether it's in Syria or Egypt and other countries. So even within the Islamic movement, you have these socioeconomic sort of histories that might play out differently. But I think something that's very relevant in the Syrian case that I was mentioned by Sam in the first session is the fact that ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria today are winning, are winners. And that's part of their great attraction. Now, that is the result really of two things. One, the lack of serious support regionally or internationally for other members of the opposition, hence they are not winners, they are effectively weak, divided, they don't have much money, they don't have much military capacity and are seen as such, seen as losers. And secondly, that the regime and its supporters enable and make sure that it's the radicals that appear as the winners in this case. So the context within which ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra are emerging and being in this sort of attractive position has to do with other variables as well that made it so. And the importance of that is those variables with proper politics and strategy and so on could be upended or could be reversed. A, by serious work with allies in the region. And as I said, the allies themselves, Turkey, Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt are on different pages, they're not united. And the U.S. and its allies in the region have not been united and there's been no real leadership, hence things have festered. In the meantime, we've seen the most impressive rallying of Assad regime allies, something that is to see Russia and Iran and Hezbollah on the same page in such a massive way is unprecedented. So the context matters and to address the rise of Al Qaeda it might be most important to address other things that have enabled the situation to fester. Thank you very much, Munzer Sleiman with Al-Mayadeen TV. I just wanna follow up on your comment, Dr. Salem, but this is for the panelists and I hope I have a better chance in answering my question than the last panel with all due respect to them. If Al Qaeda and their affiliation are winning and the other opposition that is being supported by U.S. and others are in a difficult situation, the announcement of the president does it, we can consider it as really new direction, new policy that the opposition, the moderate opposition can be hopeful that they're gonna get the kind of military equipment that they're looking for like anti-aircraft missiles and then they're gonna change the calculation on the ground and then have Al Qaeda and others be on the descending instead of the ascending. Do you think adopting the language of the Senate Armed Services provision about authorization of the Pentagon to conduct the training and the military support a shift in the policy and how successful it can be? Well, I mean a couple of comments. I mean, following the president's speech two days ago and he made it very clear that things that are direct threat to the U.S., the U.S. will respond to and try to act, but that doesn't to my mind jibe with two things he did do in the Middle East. One was the threat over the use of chemical weapons which if you look at it doesn't fit his speech directly, it wasn't a direct threat to the U.S. It was about a global norm of not using weapons of mass destruction and so on. It doesn't jibe exactly with the action in Libya even though maybe Europe played an important role, the U.S. played a critical role as well. So even in this last speech, it doesn't exactly jibe with actions that this president did take in the Middle East recently. My, well, what came also quite clearly from the speech and previous statements that for Obama administration now, the main threat is Al Qaeda, not the Assad regime and that if there are any initiatives in the future and so on, certainly Al Qaeda and the threat to the homeland which is all real is a key part of U.S. thinking moving forward. What troubles me about that is, as I've been saying, the rise of Al Qaeda in Syria is the result of a broader conflict and trying to eliminate Al Qaeda in Syria or even in Iraq without addressing the context within which they have emerged and thrived and will continue to emerge and thrive. To my mind, it's not gonna work and I am somewhat dismayed that I certainly understand that the Obama administration doesn't wanna get involved militarily and so on but as I've indicated, there is no political leadership not in Syria, not in the region and not internationally today after the failure of Geneva II and all of that to try to bring this enormous proxy war to an end and trying to address Al Qaeda threat without addressing the broader context is understandable but I don't think it's going to work and what the president indicated about increased support to the moderate or, quote, acceptable opposition or vetted opposition is important. It might have some relevance but it's certainly not announced to be or intended to be a game changer or something that will shift the balance of power to any great degree. Certainly it's not something so far that will seriously worry the Assad regime. I think it won't have a major impact. That's why I'm worried that it's enough to keep everything going and the conflict to keep going without serious pressure to force somebody to make a concession or some other major political initiative which is needed and I don't see it coming from anywhere. I agree with that. I think I would expect the status quo in many respects if you look at the speech a lot of the language used is pretty much similar to the narrative that the Assad regime has been using in that it's a terrorism problem when in fact this didn't start as a terrorism problem at all and in many ways the same motivations and reasons for why people were uprising in the streets peacefully in 2011 are still there and the fact is that the main motivation for why the jihadists or foreign fighters continue to go in is the Assad regime being in power and still massacring people. So if you only focus on al-Qaeda that doesn't change that you'll still have individuals going in and if the US more forcefully does something related to al-Qaeda whether it's drone strikes or the like then it'll just add another motivation for potential individuals to go to Syria to fight against not just the Assad regime in Iran but whatever the United States and their Western allies are doing. And indirectly it's enabling Iran in the region they're helping build up new proxies in the region whether it's strengthening Lebanese Hezbollah whether it's strengthening Iraqi Shia militias within the Iraqi context which they could then use and that's I mean we're talking mainly about Sunni foreign fighters here but there's just as many Shia foreign fighters that are in the Syrian conflict as well and they're actually organized it's not informal which I personally think even though I primarily focus on Sunni militancy is probably we'll have far more ramifications going down in the future in relation to Iran's ambitions in the region so unfortunately it looks like we'll continue with the status quo but there will be consequences I think. All right for the last question my here is Senator Warners in the front row and I can't turn you down sir. Pick up on Mr. Salem's comment here he said there's just no political leadership and that's reality and I'm not here to fault the president at all. I felt that he did lay down some hope in the West Point speech and we'll see what develops but what about the not-for-profit organization such as CSIS has been a leader. I remember when they stepped forward in a similar vacuum in our problems with the second Iraq war that is when we went in there they stepped forward and they helped organize the framework we sent it around the Baker Hamilton Commission we finally got the peace institute involved and Congress actually appropriated money to help finance the private sector to begin to show some leadership. Is there any coalition building within the framework of the not-for-profit institutions and CSIS is they considering a leadership role in trying to bring together that voice today to fill the vacuum that we all acknowledge and they don't have the constraints you see of the nations that have to deal and to formalize political arenas of Geneva and so forth they can get out and freelance their own type of solution. I think that's to me. Senator I remember when you were still in the Senate some of the conversations we had about Iraq and I think that one of the differences that we have then and now is there were courageous voices in government who were looking to at least seed some activity of course the Baker Hamilton Commission had legislative support that I don't see building for Syria but what I will tell you is that I sense in the think tank community here an increasing sense of unease with where our policy is going where this conflict is going picking up on Paul's observations that the way this plays out not over months but over years and decades is very dangerous not only for American interests but for the region in general. I can't predict where this will go but you know politics much better than I do. My guess is it's going to be very hard to get traction on this until two things happen. First we somehow get through these midterm elections and second we have some greater resolution on where Iran is going where there is a coalition is on the Iran agreement and a number of think tanks the SS is not one of the number of think tanks have come through to have come to unite to try to move forward on getting some sort of broad acceptance on Iran's strategy. I think depending on where that goes you may see in the winter an opportunity to move something forward perhaps with a new congress perhaps with a new Iran environment but quite frankly where I sit now I don't sense a governmental receptivity I don't sense a congressional receptivity and I think where the center of gravity in the think tank world is more on Iran than on Syria but I see a lot of signals that people who think deeply about the region are saying as Paul did this is something we must devote more attention to I am grateful to all of you for sitting through we will clearly have you back thank you for coming and thank you to our panelists for such insight Thank you very much Thank you