 various bombings that can change the course of history. And Tom also, let me repeat what Tom said this morning, when the late Soviet Union conceded defeat in Afghanistan in 1989, Osama bin Laden claimed victory for the Mujahideen guerrillas over one of the world's two superpowers. The Berlin Wall, as you heard, fell nine months, or were reminded, the Berlin Wall fell nine months later, followed by the entire Communist empire. Today, the successor generation to those guerrillas are the Taliban, still under the leadership of Mullah Omar, who is still hiding somewhere in Pakistan's Balochistan province. And US forces fighting the Taliban for the past 12 years are scheduled to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. That, too, will be widely perceived and interpreted as a defeat for the remaining superpower, which in turn will act as a powerful multiplier for al-Qaeda and its associated movements, AQAM, which have proliferated from Mali in sub-Sahara Africa to Syria and Egypt in the Middle East to Pakistan and beyond, as you will hear this morning. In fact, in Syria, as we all know, it's the growing influence of Jihadis in the revolution that triggered reluctance in Washington and NATO capitals in Europe to get involved against the Assad regime, seen as the lesser of two evils. The demise of Osama bin Laden and his image as a heroic figure enhanced rather than hindered the terrorist activities of al-Qaeda and its associated movements in what we call the arc of instability. Your first panel moderator is Juan Zarati, a senior advisor to CSIS, also the senior national security consultant and analyst for CBS News and a former deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor. Juan also advises companies and organizations on finance-related security technologies and investments. He also sits on the board of advisors to the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He served as the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism from 2005 to 2009. In this role, he was responsible for developing and overseeing the implementation of the US government's counterterrorism strategy. Prior to joining the National Security Council, Mrs. Zarati served as the first assistant secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes where he led the Treasury Department's domestic and international efforts to attack terrorist funding and build anti-money laundering systems. Juan, over to you. Arno, thank you for that kind introduction and for your remarks. Let me start by thanking you, Arno, for your consistent leadership, not just of the Transnational Threat Project, but here at CSIS and in Washington. There's no other academic with your memory, your experience, and I can't thank you enough for your tutelage. And thank you for your leadership on this report. I'm very proud to be here. I'm very, always very honored to be a part of events at CSIS as a senior advisor. Very honored to be a part of this project run by Tom Sanderson, authored by Stephanie Sinoak-Tom and others. This is an important report from our perspective and it comes out of the report that we did at the 10-year anniversary of 9-11 where we looked at the future of al-Qaeda and associated movements and tried to project forward to the evolution of these movements and groups and violent Islamic extremism. But as we looked at the landscape, we also understood clearly that there was an arc of instability, a swath of states from South Asia through North Africa that we had to look at completely to use the terms of the report and the terms repeated by General Flynn. We had to look at the whole board, the environment, the conditions in that region to understand the evolution of militancy and militancy writ large, not just al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda related groups but also militant groups in particular in South Asia with nationalist sectarian communists and other ideologies. And so this report forms the first part of three parts. It's a three-part study looking at this arc of instability. We started first with South Asia given the challenges of the region, the stresses that General Flynn talked about demographic, economic governance and others. And the point of this study and the point of this project which is a three-year long project is to look at the evolution of these militant groups not just for the operational environment but to look at the strategic impact of their reach and evolution. And interestingly, as General Flynn noted, their agility and interconnectedness. And so this report is the first part of this grand study of people. They're mentioned in the report and they contributed with their insights and connections. I also wanna thank the Singaporean government and other supporters and sponsors for this project. So with that, let me start and let's delve into the report to give the audience a sense of what's in it and Tom what it took to actually put this together. And so let's start by talking about sort of the methodology. What are we talking about when we're talking about South Asian militancy and take us through the research methodology, the number of field visits the research team took and what you found. Absolutely. Thank you, Juan. And thank you and Arno for your leadership of the project and for our senior advisor group, John McGaffin and Stephen Tankel, among others. And for all the subject matter experts we met with. And Stephanie, thank you very much for your partnership on this and thanks to Rick Ozzie Nelson for his great work in this as well. Special thanks to Zach Feldman and to Rob Wise who really kept this project going for the 15 months and they did fantastic work and everyone else in the research team. So let me point out a few things here on the project. As you can see the three different modes we are finishing that are difficult to interview for US government officials and we bring these perspectives back and we try to interview a wide range of folks. We began by conducting subject matter interviews with experts here in Washington and close to the region both foreign nationals and Americans who work on this region and we had such an excellent number of interviews dozens of them. Then we had our senior advisor group and these are 12 or so individuals from all different backgrounds trying to avoid group think by bringing in people who are from the region people who are from the private sector, academia, former intelligence and others to provide their perspectives. Then the field visits began after a tremendous amount of textual research, online, other scholarly engagements and we go out and again what we try to do is get everyone along the spectrum of violent extremism talk to the people who are actually conducting the violence so militants and surgeons, terrorists to the degree we can and we did on this report as well as the previous report and then we talk to people who are in their area for example in India we talked to a facilitator man who provides weapons, other support to the CPI Maoist groups that we looked at. Then we talk to community leaders, academics, clergy, journalists, community activists and others, foreign researchers who are in the region then we go and try and meet with the full suite of government officials who are looking at this from intelligence to police to military to foreign affairs to ministries of religious affairs. You name it, whoever's relevant we try to bring all those perspectives together bring them back, put them in front of our senior advisory group talk to people like Stephen Tankle to Gretchen Peters and others to say this is what we heard, does it make sense? What can you add to it? What else do we have to do? What lines of inquiry did we not get or which ones were most important? And then of course it comes time to the production of the project and so that essentially is our methodology and I think we'll head on to the next question now. That's very helpful. I think one of the things that was challenging for this report was trying to account for the spectrum of militant groups and so it's everything from al-Qaeda related groups to the communists and so Stephanie can you talk through how the report and how the research group sort of analyzed the groups and what sort of categorizations you use to help think about these militant groups in combination? Sure, before I begin I would like to pile on with the thank yous to everyone who's sitting to my right and to your left from me. This has been a great team to work with and I really appreciated the opportunity to work on a project like this. Even though we did a lot of interviews I want you all to keep in mind that this is not a study based on individuals or individual groups really. We were trying to identify trends among a wide array of militant groups and it was very carefully posed as they are militant groups. They are not terrorists, they are not necessarily counterinsurgents. They're militant groups and so we wanted to examine trends, behaviors, characteristics along the spectrum of type of group that we were looking at and so we looked across borders, we looked across the spectrum of groups to identify the behaviors and characteristics that are developing what are the dynamics that pose the most significant challenges in that region in South Asia and for the international community. This is sort of what General Flynn referred to as looking at the big board. Not an individual or a group but the big board. And so with that in mind we developed four broad categories just in brief there. We looked at ideology, structure, sustainment and operations and if I could just beg your indulgence and I'll go into kind of the questions we asked in each of those categories. So for the first category we are looking at ideologies. Specifically what is the rationale for a group's existence and its actions? This includes an organization's goals, grievances and group identity. In short why do they do what they do? In the second category we looked at their structure. How are these groups configured? Here we examine the organization, their hierarchies, relationships and not only in and among themselves but throughout the broader region. Again across borders and across groups. Third, sustainment. This goes back again to General Flynn's comments on financial networks. I would prefer to call them resource networks. It's not always just financial but it's in kind support. You're looking at gray networks, black networks, black markets, gray markets. How do these groups ensure that they have the resources to survive and carry out their actions and operations? Who helps them and with what? And finally operations. How do groups execute their plans? This includes attacks but it also looks at other ways in which groups further their ideological and sometimes even political objectives. So I want you to think of operations not necessarily in terms of high profile attacks but also what are they doing on the local basis? And sometimes civic action is not a bad thing among these groups. So again how are they operationalizing themselves? Finally I want you to keep in mind that while we divided these trends among these four categories these are not neat categories. Looking at Millincency is not a neat endeavor. Sometimes what one person might consider an ideological trend another person might consider a trend in operations. So as you go through this report and as we talk to you about it just keep in mind that again it's not neat, it's very messy. The fact that we've categorized a particular trend under one of these four categories doesn't mean that it necessarily belongs neatly in that category. And so with that explanation Juan I turn it back to you. Well I think let's get to the heart of this which is what conclusions did we draw, did you draw based on that categorization and across the arc of Millincency? I was always very interested as we were going through this and talking to Arno about the interconnectivity as well. So if you could speak to what the prime conclusions are and then talk about how you view the environment itself I think that'd be very helpful. Thanks Stephanie I will divide the trend baskets up but let me just point out some of the illustrative pictures so you understand what they are. On the first one here this is a picture of a remote control detonation device inside the glove compartment of a car in Pakistan. I took the picture late one night during an interview and that points to our ideology. This car was going to attack Ashia Ashura festival parade during the holy month of Muharram. So here we point to one of the ideological issues we'll talk about in terms of increasing sectarian attacks. Next picture, Hafez Saeed from Lashkar Taiba. This is a picture of my colleague Zach took at the Indian Nepal border. We walked right across the border. It is not controlled and that is one of the issues we'll get to in the final one. This is a building in Afghanistan. The type that is favored by Taliban and others to take over from which to engage in firefights. Before there are guards in the building they go to buildings that are under construction that still provide them with protection in a firefight but there are no walls inside and windows so their command and control during the operation is much easier and this was highlighted to me. Number one was ideology. It occurred to us that South Asian militant groups represent a broad ideological spectrum. It's not just what the US has tended to focus on which is Islamism but South Asia is home to a wide variety of militant ideologies from Sunni sectarianism to Hindu fundamentalism, sociopolitically oriented insurgencies, violent separatists and ethnic agitators as we called them. However across these groups we noticed a trend in the incendancy of locally focused ideologies. From our research it appears that a number of South Asian militant organizations increasingly draw upon and emphasize local grievances and identity politics. In some instances this has taken the form of existing groups shifting toward a more locally based objective. At the moment for example the Afghan Taliban may represent the most obvious example of this trend. Recent Taliban rhetoric has emphasized the targeting of Afghan government and military targets rather than international forces. This includes a focus on both high profile attacks against Afghan government ministries and agencies as well as targeting particular government officials and functionaries. This shift towards more locally based objectives is evident in recent Afghan casualty reports. The number of civilian Afghan government employees killed by what is called anti-government forces has increased sevenfold in 2012 and the number of Afghan military casualties doubled. As ISAF forces continue to withdraw removing both the opportunity and incentive for Taliban, the Afghan Taliban to target foreign forces this trend seems likely to accelerate. In other instances groups with locally focused ideologies have simply become more prominent. They've always existed but they are stepping it up. In India the Indian Mujahideen, an Islamist group which emphasizes very specific local grievances has grown in popularity and power over the last decade. Rather than jihad against the West, IM's ideology focuses on enacting revenge at the local level for widespread discrimination and violence against India's Muslim community. Further, while identity based conflict is not new in South Asia, sectarian violence and the hardening of religious and ethnic identities is cause for concern. For instance in Pakistan, sectarian ideologies put forward by groups like LEJ seem to be driving an explosion in anti-shia violence in recent months which could well spiral into further violence as sheer groups mobilized to protect themselves. Keep in mind this does not mean that every group in South Asia is necessarily reorienting towards local targets and away from international ones. Furthermore, this shift is not necessarily a good thing for the US and its international allies. We've been the target of a massive amount of militant energy over the last decade. I think that is a truism. It remains to be seen whether local governments and populations are able to withstand the energy when it's refocused on them. Thank you Stephanie. So let's shift to number two please. Let me also point out that some of the trends we point out are not new trends. They are not emerging trends. They are trends that have emerged in the past but there may be changes among them or certainly they persist and they continue to have tremendous impact. Some of those are found here in the trend of structure and the focus on structure including this transition ongoing continued transition away from hierarchical structures, the integration of militant and political social structures and the network of networks, the partnering that we're seeing quite a bit. Trend number one talks about this ongoing phenomenon of flattening structures that limits targetability of these groups which of course is to their tremendous benefit. You don't operate by going around in seven vehicle convoys. You don't use the same kind of comms you did in the past and there's tremendous operational autonomy that comes with this. Along with some of the for-profit militancy we'll discuss in the next issue provides for a lower profile for these groups and greater operational autonomy and as the general mentioned earlier when he referenced the criminality and the nature of illicit networks that Juan and Gretchen have worked on so hard over the years. This gives them the ability to not only conduct operations where they are but to sort of loosen the leash of any potential state sponsor or others who are exerting control over these groups and that's very important to keep in mind as we look at 2014 and the change that may incur with that. The second trend there, this is the Hezbollah playbook, the Hamas playbook of having an above ground social network, social service network that provides cover. If your group is outlawed as many of the groups in Pakistan have been you establish a new group. Lashkar Taiba did this with Jamatu Dawa. Stephen Tancal will discuss LET to some degree in the next panel and has a lot to offer in that but these give greater exposure to the group, legitimacy, the ability to connect, convene people, move goods, material finances around with this patina of legitimacy of an above ground group in LET and the region that we're talking about is one of the best. It's something that Al Qaeda never got into in the way that Hezbollah in LET did and it's a shortcoming I would say of theirs. The second or the third is the network of networks and that term has been around for quite some time but time and again as we talk to our folks on the ground in the region and here as well, they said please focus as much as you can on the fact that groups on both sides of the AFPAC border, groups within India because the CPI Communist Party, India Maoist groups that we looked at are not one group with 500 chapters. These are all different types of groups looking at one another and integrating here and there and so they do network, they have a common enemy, it allows them to cooperate, it allows them to share techniques, tactics and procedures and to move over borders. One of the ironies that we learned of and that I'm sure you've all learned of is that much as people often speak about Pakistan's desire to, accurate or not, Pakistan's desire to develop strategic depth in Afghanistan, the irony is that some of the Milton groups targeting Pakistan, including the Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda have strategic depth in Afghanistan. They can move into Qunar and Nuristan and other provinces and attack Pakistan from there and that is coming in part from the ability to network with groups that are on both sides of a border that means nothing to these groups but certainly means something to us as states. Moving on to sustainment. There are two trends that I'd like you to keep in mind. One is the growth of for-profit militancy and the other one is interesting, I find especially interesting, which is renewed efforts to exert external influence and the role of state support. So for the first one, for for-profit militancy, it appears that a number of South Asian militant networks are developing increased capacity and structure to conduct new and additional forms of illicit profit-driven activity that will give them more financial autonomy and stability. These new funding streams make them more vigorous, more difficult to cull from wider criminal populations and less accepting of patron influence. Their criminal activity largely takes the form of exploitation and extortion, kidnapping for ransom, and just general trafficking. The Haqqani network, for example, engages in both extortion of local industries and construction projects within Afghanistan as well as the trafficking of chemicals necessary to process opium into heroin. In recent years, some groups have moved into more expensive criminal roles. The Afghan Taliban, for example, has transitioned from largely providing protection for heroin rings, and if you say that three times fast, it's difficult, heroin rings to actively engaging in production and smuggling itself. The pursuit of such activities often becomes an end in and of itself, driving groups to focus on sustainment activities, thus limiting their motivation or ability to conduct ideologically driven operations. Again, they increasingly focused more on the sustainment operations as opposed to their ideological operations. For example, the Indian Maoist movement originally founded to fight for the rights of oppressed indigenous people, has taken to actively extorting those very same populations, intimidating and murdering villagers during forced recruitment drives. Further, the Maoists have increasingly focused on profiting from the extortion of local mining operations and other businesses. While these groups are embracing for-profit militancy, it seems likely that the state patrons of militancy will attempt to increase their influence through the provision of resources in the coming years. As ISAF leaves Afghanistan, external actors will have strong incentives to either continue or increase support to militant organizations that are best positioned to serve their interests. This state support may come in the form of direct contributions or through states providing access to renewable sources of funding. However, if militant groups are able to establish their own sources of revenue through for-profit militancy and criminal activity, the ability of external patrons to re-exert control through such resources, provision of such resources is increasingly questionable. So from a sustainment perspective, I found this to be a very interesting category to look at, the criminal networks and the nexus between militancy and criminality countered against state support will be an area that I think I'll be watching closely in the coming years. Excellent, thank you. So operations, a very big category. And again, I'd like to remind people that as we look at these trends, they apply to some of the groups in the region. As Stephanie said, this is a messy issue. They don't apply to every group and a lot of this is convoluted in the other issue. You often get diametrically opposed viewpoints on some of these, but nonetheless, let's share some of them with you. So in operations, one of the bugbearers to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency and all of our efforts over the past decade and more has been the prevalence of sanctuaries and safe havens as some people call them. Combine this with weak state capacity, local political collusion and militancy and this oxygenates a tremendously complex problem. Weak states are one of the issues on the sanctuary issue. You have both weak states who are unable to provide security in the sanctuaries and then you have state complicity in other areas that provides other sanctuary. We often think of sanctuary as a barren area, for example, between Afghanistan and Pakistan or in the Sahel region in Africa or in other places, but there are sanctuaries in cities. There are sanctuaries in small communities where police don't tread. Arnau often speaks about neighborhoods in Paris where police do not tread at night and sometimes even during the day where you can operate and conduct a lot of activities. So for example, weak states, let's look at India on the national level failure to address this Maoist problem, but on the local level you have sanctuary as well. Through our research we read and understood that the India's MI5 known as the Intelligence Bureau actually eavesdropped on a conversation between local politicians and Maoist insurgents where they discussed how to conduct a fake battle. Okay, to make it look like there was an engagement, there's a tremendous amount of money coming from the center from New Delhi to provide assistance to these states as they battle insurgents, and so here was a fake battle that was happening. The other phenomenon in this level is that local politicians are always concerned with vote banks. What happens on election day? The Maoists control the rural areas and on election day the local polls say, listen, we keep the security services out of your neighborhood. Don't attack us at the senior level and on election day, make sure the rural population shows up because in India the rural population votes, the lower classes vote, they show up. So there's a collusion there, a deal. So it's not just about not being able to control your territory, but finding an arrangement between politicians and some of these actors. Weekstates extend all over this region and of course as we know all over the world as the general mentioned, the Northwest Frontier Province, Khabar Pakhtunkhwa, other areas in Pakistan. I just mentioned Qunar and Nuristan, other areas where you do not have control exerted or again where there is some degree of collusion. And as we went into Nepal, we witnessed ourselves down in the Tarai Valley. This open border as you saw in the picture that Zach Feldman took, there's just an open area and when you have the kind of paralysis that you have in Kathmandu right now over the parliament and over the constitution and over ethnic representation, who's minding the store? And so this is quite a big problem. Trend number two is the enhanced attacks at the local level and Stephanie touched on this in the ideological element. And this is part of what we feel is in the conclusion and that is, as ISAF leaves the region, how do these groups pivot? What is it that they find at the top of their targeting hierarchy? Well, there's no doubt about it. The day after I arrived in Pakistan, January 11, January 10 was that huge attack against Shia in the Snooker Hall and not a couple weeks later another attack and then another attack on the Shia marketplace. So brazen that these groups towed a 2200 pound bomb to that Shia market, which shows they're not concerned about the police and that they have the run of the place. So these escalating attacks against local targets make us believe that at least some of the groups are turning their guns back to some of the groups that they focused on locally. And that is very significant. Another finding we found in the operational area, which we found is interesting, is that drone strikes and other strikes that remove, kill senior leaders in these groups, which we believe of course are very effective and very helpful for reducing the degree of threat out there have ripple effects. They have second and third order degrees. And what those were that we heard over in Pakistan were that once that senior leader is gone, once he's killed, the deputies are not as disciplined, they fight among one another for control and they engage in spectacular attacks in order to draw attention to themselves. They also don't retain the same links to funders around the world, some in the Persian Gulf, some in other areas. So without those traditional funding links, the prestige that their father or uncle or a senior leader had, they need to find new funding. Well, where does that lead us? It leads us to where Juan and Gretchen work and that is the world of criminality and illicit finance. And so that's another element of this enhanced local attacks means that you need to pursue more local funding and if you've lost senior leadership, you're led in that direction. I wanna pivot off that last point because I think it's incredibly important and actually connects some of the conclusions from the various categories because what's interesting to me in that is that you have an interconnectivity between the loss of hierarchy, the localization of both the ideology and the operations and the focus, the fluidity of the environment where you have networks of networks interacting, demonstration effects, technology, amplifying that, of course. And then the element of, I like the term for-profit militancy. I think it's very interesting in part because of not just opportunity, but again, the demonstration impact where organizations have seen how others have been able to profit and sustain themselves. But that interconnectivity of those factors and how that impacts in the environment in South Asia given the lack of governance or weak governance is, I think, fascinating and a very important conclusion of the report. Tom and Stephanie, let me turn you for last time before we open it up for Q&A to talk through kind of ultimate conclusions. And Stephanie, maybe if I can hear from you about kind of how the report talks about recommendations. So what does this all mean? I mean, this is all messy. It's hard to define how should governments, how should military officials, how should policymakers, how should academics and others who are interested in these issues be thinking about what this all means moving forward? Thank you, Juan. Let me hit conclusions. We'll turn to Stephanie for recommendations and then a little bit about the way ahead. Thank you again, Juan. One thing I always like to remind folks of and I know this is foremost in many people's minds is we have become, we meaning counterterrorism forces in the West and our local partners have become very effective. Certainly at the tactical level. I mean, 12 years of doing this, you hone some serious skills and we have excellent people, some of whom I see in the room today. And this is great, but let's not forget who's on the other side. Those who have survived 11 plus years of counter-network activity, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, these are the best of the best. These are people who survived everything we've thrown at them. And we need to think about that as we look at the threat going forward. Sanctuary, one of our biggest conclusions here. No region of the world is associated more with this term than South Asia and I've listed some of those areas. A sharp increase in sectarian attacks primarily against Shia in Pakistan. Criminally oriented and capable groups. This is even more intractable when police and local politicians are involved. The role of government on the one hand, weak states in ability, not providing socioeconomic benefits, but also complicit as I mentioned earlier cooperating with militants. The corruption of very, very big issue. Underwriting those conditions, the socioeconomic hardship, political marginalization, ethnic and sectarian divides, long, unsecured borders, increasing populations, higher urbanizations where there's less elbow room, a lot of opportunities here. A lot of these problems that we mentioned are local or regional, but their implications are clearly global. Weak governance in South Asia has ripple effects around the world. But more specifically, I think what the U.S. led withdrawal underway, terrorist insurgents will almost certainly tout the end of this deployment in this work by ISAF as a victory over yet another super bar, the British, the Soviets, the United States, and its Western allies. This will embolden groups and I think that's a tremendous concern of ours. Thanks. I'm gonna go through our five recommendations very quickly in the interest of time. For further information, I refer you to the report which is out in the elevator lobby. But we ended up with five general conclusions or rather recommendations. The first is intelligence related. Understanding as U.S. and our intelligence sharing partners withdraw from Afghanistan, there's gonna be an inclination to reduce intel resources and analytical focus in this area. But I think we need to hedge against that. We need to actually refocus some of our intelligence resources here. Given that the U.S. and our partners, we can't afford to be everywhere at all times looking at everything. We're gonna need to work together as a team with our international partners to come up with a defined list of the greatest strategic, or a defined list of where the greatest strategic risks are in this region where they're likely to originate and to devote resources primarily against those threats. It's nothing new to recommend that we need to focus our intelligence but the fact that our findings and conclusions in this report pointed without question to that made this our first recommendation. Second, we need to work with our regional allies to rebalance counter-militant activities. We need to leverage resources to work with each other, to come up with counter networking that makes sense for the region and have a U.S. role in that where appropriate. Third, given that international terrorism and militant activities will likely become more difficult to conduct, it's sensible to develop and maintain cooperative relationships with organizations, not necessarily just governments, that are looking to counter-militant organizations. Fostering such relationships will help mitigate the threat that these organizations pose. Fourth, because we are a think tank, we always recommend more research. I'll just say this is one of those areas where we've identified several key points that we would like to pull on those threads a little bit. So again, as a think tank, it should be no surprise that that recommendations up there. And finally, the diaspora question when it comes to South Asia is a fascinating one. You will find people of South Asian heritage around the world, whether they are in a guesswork capacity, whether they are immigrants. But as with many moving populations, they have strong ties back to home. What we would like to look at is further research into what is the relationship? How do these militant organizations affect the diaspora? And again, how does the diaspora affect the militant organizations? We've seen evidence of resource flows back into the region for good and for ill, but I think this is an area where focused attention to look at the role of the diaspora and how it affects and is affected by militant groups in South Asia is key. And again, those are our five general recommendations and I'll turn to Tom as the project director to wrap things up. Great, excellent. Thank you, Stephanie. You bring up a good point about the diaspora if I can just make a comment. During the conduct of one of our previous studies, we were meeting with folks in Indonesia and they were talking to us about students who were in Yemen, many of which were at madrasas that were of no concern, but a couple of dozen that were at an institution that was of great concern. Think about these young men, some young women who go to these places that are in the midst of a revolution or other conflict and they cut their teeth on these revolutions, they come back, they're emboldened, they're empowered and they're inspirational to locals. And so that's something to be considered. We move into phase two or module two now with the study and that is on the Middle East and North Africa with two primary focuses or goals. One, mapping the extremist landscape, and number two, looking at the context in which these extremist groups operate and not just armed militant groups that we're familiar with but also very hard-line, militant movements, political movements that we'll consider and we'll do that with John Altiman and Heim Malco from the Middle East program and we look forward to any assistance that people can give us, any ideas and your participation is always welcome. Great job. What I'd like to do is now open it up for questions. Again, as Tom advised in the last session with General Flynn, please identify yourself. Let's keep to the topic and to specific questions and we look forward to them. Right up here. Steve, you got a microphone coming, Steve. My name is Steve Engelken. I just retired from the Foreign Service where I was working at Pakistan. I was curious why the study doesn't include Bangladesh. There are militant groups that operate there. We knew for years that they were trying to infiltrate into India. There's all problems along that border. It's another poorly secured border. Can you explain that? Actually, you might have noticed one of our field work trips was to Dhaka. We did go to Bangladesh. We talked to a lot of officials as well as to attorneys who represent people who are brought up on charges. And to be honest, when we were identifying trends in this research, we found that our examples from Bangladesh when viewed along the spectrum of what we were finding out in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal actually paled in comparison. So this is not to say that it's not a real issue in Bangladesh and I think a lot of the trends that you see identified are applicable there. It was certainly part of our research. But at the end of the day, when we looked at, again, the panoply of examples, and we had a lot of examples of militant activity, ideology, structure, and sustainment, the Bangladesh examples really did just pale in comparison. And I don't know if Tom has anything to add. Thank you, Stephanie. The report preceding this also included Bangladesh. And we went there, conducted field visits. And again, as Stephanie said, we did not find a lot of activity there. In the past, there's no doubt about Hujib, AQ, others, very active, including setting off several hundred bombs in one single day all around the country and almost, I think, every single municipality. So in the past, there has been issues there. We went there, we investigated it on both studies and did not find enough to bring into the report. If I could just add one thing that struck me when looking at considering Bangladesh and looking at our four baskets or categories, the locally driven element of ideology was really apparent in Bangladesh. And I'll say that it seems that the militant organizations have not necessarily turned away from violence, but they haven't manifested themselves violently in the very recent past. And instead, they appear to have turned to helping local organizations. They've gone from the big cities out more into the countryside. The one exception is their presence in universities. And again, it's not manifesting itself in violent militancy, but it is manifesting itself in ideological trends. And so I take your point, and it's something that we will consider going forward. Thank you. And thank you for your service. Thank you. Young lady right there. Is this on? Okay. Katie Kealy, State Department. Thank you for this excellent report. Speaking to the third component on sustainability, I was just curious as to whether you looked at, are you evaluated membership trends, drives or the turn toward to criminality alongside any domestic or local economic indicators? And whether or not, if you did, whether or not you saw any causation or correlation. Thank you. I think certainly we saw correlation. We didn't conduct a demographic or economic analysis as part of this study. So I would be hesitant to say there's any causality among those trends, but we did look at sort of when you look at causes for militancy or terrorism or any of things that manifest themselves violently, you notice high unemployment rates, a certain youth bulge. And I think just on its surface, you could say certainly there is correlation. But again, not having done a socio-demographic or economic analysis, I can't say for certain there's causality. In a lot of the field interviews, we heard time and again about the extortion, the racketeering, the kidnapper ransom, the movement of illicit and illicit goods. I mean, criminality was everywhere we looked and associated with melting groups. And though Gretchen will be speaking on a slightly different topic, she did write the definitive piece on the Hacani Network financing. And there's some great examples to be pulled out of there. One of the questions we looked at and we need to consider as we move towards 2014 is what happens to the thousands of young men that Hacani recruited into its group on the basis of confronting ISAF and the US-led powers in Afghanistan, yet Hacani Network is involved in so much criminality. If they move towards more criminality or even all crime all the time, what do you do with those young men who were driven by ideology who were recruited or driven into these groups either out of a madrasa or out of poverty or simply out of a desire to engage in jihad in their minds? What do you do when criminality seems to be the larger goal for these groups? Very, very important question. Let's go with this gentleman right here. Curtis Buzzard, military fellow here at CSIS. Great report. I'd just like to ask a question on the trends you see in South Asia. I'd be curious how you see those affecting and particularly the ones you just talked about, Central Asia. Is that the next black swan? Will these guys move up to there due to the natural resources and other things? I'd just be curious what thoughts you have on that region. Thank you, Curtis. And Curtis, thank you very much not only for your service to the country but for your help on the field visits to the region. Very, very helpful. Central Asia is an area we've spent a lot of time on other projects with the Transnational Threats Project and there's no doubt about it. You have a very weak around 800 kilometer border with Tajikistan and Afghanistan and then a very small border with Uzbekistan where Termez is. And then of course other borders in the region that are very weak. Central Asia, 60 million people on the rooftop of one of our biggest global problems right now with authoritarian governments, militants, corruption, narcotics trafficking, about 20% of the heroin produced in Afghanistan goes north through Central Asia. This is not a formula for success at all and we're very concerned that with 2014 coming and though the general said there's not going to be a fall off the cliff here for the region, I think there are indicators that we're gonna have big problems coming in this region. My sense, I think our collective sense and others may have similar or different opinions is that some of the militant groups will move back into Afghanistan who may have been chased out of there during the initial operations and seek to return to the Furgana Valley. Now the makeup of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan down to a few hundred actors in North Waziristan, South Waziristan is not made up of the original leadership that came out of the Furgana Valley though there are still Central Asians there. Whether they seek to return to attack President Karimov in Uzbekistan or whether they go through a very weak Tajikistan that never really fully recovered from the civil war in the mid 90s remains to be seen. But I think it's a weak area, it's a sensitive area and we will be redeploying forces, not forces but material through the region on the way up to Ligur-Latvia and so this plays a very important role. It could also be a base from which we conduct some of our future operations. We don't know what it's going to look like in Afghanistan and Pakistan post 2014. It could be that bases in Uzbekistan could end up being a very solid place from which we launch counterterrorism operations in the future so it's a difficult area to deal with but they have their own raft of troubles including being on the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. For those who may be listening or watching keep in mind that on our website csis.org the number of reports done by CSIS on Central Asia are available so that goes in depth. Let's go right here and we'll shift this way. Christopher Gribling, German Embassy. I just wanted to ask you if you got a feeling during your travel through the region how much or how many of these militancy trends had been created through our Western presence in the region in Afghanistan and maybe you can draw a line and describe how much of these trends have been or would have been developed anyhow. Derived for example to population growth as General Flynn mentioned it. Well I'll begin and then I'll turn to Tom to either correct me or add to what I say. I think as Tom mentioned these are not all new trends and by new we mean they haven't just popped up in the last 10 years due to a coalition or an international presence in the region. I think as General Flynn mentioned and as Tom mentioned just a few moments ago I think what the international presence in the region has done is provided let's say it's weeded out some of the weaker militant organizations and the ones that are left are operating smartly within that construct of the international presence in South Asia. Now the question that we were asking during the study is let's identify some trends over the last 10 years and let's project them forward. Given the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan what impact will that have? And so from a forward looking perspective our real research interest was can we take the trends that we've identified and apply them for a new international construct in South Asia. And so the question for me became who are these people? Who are these militant organizations? What are they after and who is supporting them? Again the ones left standing to me appear to be stronger. Would they have been as strong if the international presence had been there? I don't know, I don't know. I can only judge the strength of where they are today. That said the presence of the international coalition within Afghanistan and throughout the region with support networks has really been a lightning rod for some of these militant organizations. It has become the focus of their ideology. What was surprising to me in this study was they are now evolving back to or revolving back to locally based ideologies and going back to their communities and looking at how can they operate, how can they recruit, how can they sustain on a local basis. And so I think the presence of the international community within the region has changed things a few years ago but already the militant organizations are anticipating their evolution and looking more at what they can do within their region. Tom? Great, great. We have a mixed record, there's no doubt about it. But let's just look at the region itself. Prior to September 11 this is an area right with militancy. You had a lot of battles pre-existing and safe havens, sanctuaries were there already. Of course, Al-Qaeda planned its attack from Afghanistan among other places. But look at the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan again. They moved from the Furgana Valley down into Tajikistan to fight in the civil war then into Afghanistan once they were bounced out of there. And then when we came in we pushed them into Pakistan. So this is a group that was already there but then our intervention had an impact on them. A lot of money has come in in the region. It has gone to some very good things. But the problem is that some of it definitely went into the pockets of militants. There's no doubt about extortion providing security for some of the projects that we funded. A lot of money came in and as Arno has written in his columns many times a lot of it is unaccounted for and we know it went into the hands of militants and then was used against us. So that's a real problem with what happened there. But nonetheless we did go in, we did fight a lot of people that drew people to the regions just as it drew people to Iraq. But it's there that they met their end. And again the ones that remain are highly talented. Hi my name is Daniella Carlin from Booz Allen Hamilton. My question is in light of these changes that we see in light of the planned withdrawal and the shift in focus back to a more local ideology that you've noticed, do you see any opportunities for possibly countering these violent extremists at this point? You know the move back to these local ideologies and local grievances I think is a very expected move in some ways because so many of those grievances whether it's a sectarian issue or whether it's socio-economic issues or the fact that someone is mad that government helped the United States in counter-terrorism operations draws them back to fight for example the Pakistani government. These grievances, these factors, these conditions they are not going away unfortunately. And being able to interdict that flow in that trend is very difficult. It means good governance. It means socio-economic development, education, rising standards of living, lowering corruption. And I'm afraid that every single one of those trends is either staying as bad as they've ever been or getting worse. If I could just add, three of our recommendations actually point to new opportunities for countering violent extremism in the region. One is to work with regional allies on their existing efforts and leverage resources with partners within the region. And from that perspective we were talking mostly about state and even sub-state officials. The other recommendation we talked a little bit about it was the first recommendation about intelligence and that really is a state function. Although I would say some of our opportunities at using human intelligence and creating relationships on the individual level is something that is worth exploring. And the third one is really to come up with some cooperative partnerships not with state or sub-state officials but with organizations that are interested in the region that may mean the U.S. has to partner with NGOs in a new way and looking at who has, it's gonna be hard, I'm not gonna lie. This is something that we've talked about, whole of government, whole of nation, whole of everything approach. But I think when you're looking at countering violent extremism you really have to get at the root and it goes back to what our State Department colleague said earlier, which is what are the demographics, what are the economic trends, what are the social needs and if the militant groups are really focusing on the local level, if we wanna counter violent extremism through, with the militant groups, we have to look at the local level. And NGOs and other organizations are often really good organizations and people with regional interests, with very specific interests. But the caveat I would offer is that you have to be careful from a U.S. government perspective which organizations you work with. You have to be very aware of the baggage that they bring as well as the assets that they can bring. And they may not be willing to work with the United States government for that very reason. Two other concerns, one, our fingerprints. And I mean specifically the United States fingerprints on any project, any aid, any effort is often sounds the death knell for a project. We can give aid but we don't wanna put the American flag stickers on it. The other issue is our own budget restrictions. I mean we're just facing a tighter future and less support to be able to offer. Let me just add one note of optimism here because I think the move toward more criminality offers advantages in the context of leveraging law enforcement resources that have heretofore not been so central in the context of classic counter-terrorism activity globally. And to the extent that there's a dependency created by these militant groups on financial networks for profit militancy and to the extent that that becomes a core part of their operations and ideology, there's also an opportunity to undercut their financing. And so with all of these evolutions, I think there are opportunities to think differently about networks and the tools that we've developed in the counter-terrorism context to evolve those forward to deal with these evolutions. And those are embedded in the recommendations. I would recommend those to you all. All right, we just have a couple more minutes. We'll take three questions in combination. We're gonna start here. Gonna go with the patient gentleman here and this gentleman here. Thank you. Shariah Ahiyudi, great work on sanctuaries. Have you looked at virtual sanctuaries as well? Under a blanket from prying Western intelligence agencies, Iran is having a national network. What is the Rotspiget doing wedding a financial transaction capability to social networks under that? Since Stephanie says you're a think tank, how about more research on that one? Next question here, please. Jason Paul, UK MAD. I think Tom mentioned about the oxygenation provided by political conclusion important to the lifeblood of some of the militants. But perhaps on a more positive note, did in your analysis, did you not detect any suggestion of any desire to engage in the political process? Obviously key for our international efforts in Afghanistan. And then last question. Actually, we'll take two if you do them quickly. Promise me you'll do them quickly. Both of you. Thank you. I'm Lu Xiang, a visiting fellow here from China. My question is about to the distinguished panelists here. You don't mention the kind of militants which I can categorize as secessionist militants like that in Beluchistan. So what kind of impacts of this kind of militants could make to the regional security? Thank you. George Nicholson of StratCorp, 45 years in special operations. You keep talking about counter-terrorism. When you went out and did your interviews, did you have an interface with SOC PAC, Major General Rosnick out there, with SOCOM, with JSOC, and particularly Adam McRaven's new initiatives about enhancing the theater SOCs, the balance between direct missions and indirect missions, and the reach back intelligence capabilities. And also his embedding of over 100 special operations officers and other government agencies here in Washington and the 100 that are down there at SOCOM. Great questions. I'm gonna demand quick answers. Quickly, I'm gonna tackle the first two and a little bit on the fourth. On the first one, the virtual sanctuaries. That is something I would love to dig my teeth into. The Homeland Security Counterterrorism Program, the one where I'm the acting director here, we have a little bit of interface with our technology policy program, the cyber folks. And so I think the virtual sanctuary idea is fascinating and it's increasingly important, the financial, the social networking. We saw the power of the social networks repeatedly over the last few years. It's an area that is, no one quite completely understands and can wrap their heads around. So I think, again, it's an area for future research and I'd be happy to take that on. The second question about the political aspirations of some of the militant groups, it is there. I go back to my visit to Bangladesh where some militant groups are actually have political arms to their organizations and they are very viable political candidates. They're putting forward people who can talk on the local level and talk about local grievances and group identities. And I think that is an area where at least from the US government perspective, we don't have a really good understanding. Now the country teams that the embassies do and the State Department has a far better understanding than folks that you might think typically counter militancy, which is the DOD kind of the strong arm, the hard power types. But I think you make a very good point about the political process, the militant groups involving themselves in the political process. I would argue it's not always a bad thing because you can learn a lot about what local grievances are through that arm of the militant group. But you again have to be very careful with whom you work. And on the SOC PAC issue and the SOC SENT issue, we did a study here at CSIS a year and a half ago looking at the role of the theater special operations commands, authorities, resources and responsibilities. And I think it's critical to talk to the special forces or the special operations force community about this issue. But I would argue when we talk about our recommendations, intelligence, working cooperatively with non-traditional partners, working with regional allies, the special operations community has a great history with those issues, but they're not the sole player. And so I think I take your point. It's very good to work with them. We didn't interact, I don't think as much, Tom may have. I did not talk much to the SOC SENT, special operations command, central command, or the other folks, you might have had a different experience with them. Okay, very quickly now. On the political aspirations, I encourage you to ask this question to Stephen Tankel. One of the interesting things I heard in Lahore was that many in Pakistan were thinking about taking Hafiz Said from Mashkar Taiba and making him the poll around which they would bring in and demilitarize militants and turn them into a political entity in Pakistan. Now people think that's very controversial. I heard it a number of times from a number of different angles and I'd encourage that subject to come up in the next part on the secessionist groups. Shanglu, you mentioned that on Baluchistan. I engaged the Pakistani security services before going over and while I was there, there are a couple of areas you do not discuss and there are certainly places you do not go. Baluchistan was off the table for us. It was off the table. And on the SOCPAC issue, first of all, the Special Operations Command was the co-partner with our friends from Singapore on the first study. On this study, they provided us with some great insight. We did stop at SOCPAC on the way out in Hawaii on a trip. We've engaged their folks in Tampa and in here. They have been superb and I would also comment that our own military fellows here at CSIs provided tremendous help to us. With that, Tom, Stephanie, thank you very much. Arno, thank you again for your leadership. Let's give a round of applause to the authors and to those in the room. We'll start the next panel at 10.30.