 Mae'r cwestiwn ymlaen i chi i ni i gyd yw yng Nghymru 2018 yn ymddiol i'r rhagor ymlaen i'r cynnwys yng Nghymru islamic, yng Nghymru islamic yng Nghymru. Felly, mae'n cael ei gwybod. Felly, mae'n cael ei gwybod, a'n cael ei gwybod a'n cael ei gwybod a'n cael ei gwybod a mae'n cael ei gwybod i'r gwybod i'r ddweud i chi gydig ar y cwestiwn. Mae'n cael ei gwybod i chi'n gwybod i'r Cyryd Ysbryd ac mae'n rhan oedd yn gwneud yn ymlaen i chi, mae'n gweithio'r wych ac mae'n gwybod i chi ddefnyddio'r panhau i chi'n gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r ffarsgwr, mae'n gwybod i'r cyfrifau ac mae'r cyfrifau yn blaen, ond mae'n gweithio'r cyfrifau a'r rhai cyfrifau yn cael ei gwybod. Mae'r rhagor yn cyfrifau ar y cyfrifau cyflot. Mae'r cyfrifiau cyfrifau yn ymryd i hynny'r draes yn cwestiwni'r ddweud, y ddwyloedd, ac ymddangos wedi'i gweld, y gallwn gwybod, y cwestiwn i wedi mynd i ymddangos cyllid a'r ddyn nhw yn ymddangos, a'r ddwyloedd yn fwy o'r coulwn ffiyll yw'r cyflwyno a'r gwybod ymddangos yn teimlo'r cyllid o'r pryd. Yn ymddangos, mae'n fydda'r gwybod hwn yn oedd yn gweithio. Yn gwybod, mae'r cyfnodd yn cael ei gwybod, a'r amser yn cael ei gwybod. Mae'r amser yn cael ei gwybod, mae'r amser yn cael ei gwybod. Felly, mae'n cymdeithasol o'r panel o'r cyfeiri'r cyfnodd. Yn y ffyrdd ymlaen, rwy'n gweithio i'r ysgrifennu Erika a Rhyd, oed yn ymddi'r ysgrifennu ymddiadau o'r cyfnodd, o'r cyfnodd yn cyfnodd yn Syrion i Iraq, yn cyfnodd i Syria. Is that still with kind of provincial encompassing or that all these conditions to extend is the still driving what might might like a prologration of civil war? I guess I can start, based on the literature that I'm familiar with so should science as in political science specifically, the factors that gave rise to the conflict are actually worsen or being exacerbated as the conflict has extended. Now we know that conditions like poverty and lack of democratic governance of course are predictors of violence but as human rights abuses and all those things have harassed and since the onset of the conflict lives more displaced a'r wynau, rydyn ni wedi dod y parodyd â unigol yn y cofnod gweithio ac yn Ynys Gweithio, yma. Mynd i syrraeth, pa yn cael y dyma, y dyma'r ond wedi grannu arnos. Mynd i'n ddiwedd gan Eirach, mae'n sobyn yn gweithio, ac mae'n ddweud o'r Deirach yn addysgu ymlaen rwynt pobl yn Llaidio Mhysg, ac mae'n ddoch yn Oesor, ac rydyn ni'n bydd rydyn ni'n ddechrau i'r llif i'r llif i sirwyr wedi'u cael ei dweud o'r tyfn i'r gwestiynau'r gweithio? O'r Rhyg, mae'n dweud y llif i'r llif i'r gwestiynau yng nghylch y byd? Mae'n fwy o'r cyflwyfiad sy'n dweud, mae'n gweithio'r cyflwyfiad yn ddweud i'r drefn y cyflwyfiad, mae'n dweud i'r drefn yn ddiwedd. Mae'r ddych yn gweld i'r drefn y cyflwyfiad yn gweithio'r llif i'r drefn ac yn dweud i'r drefn. So this is certainly the case of this context, where it is hard to imagine... ...a moment of ripeness as you say because all of the incentives are for... ...all of the actors to keep fighting for their lives, to de-mobilize either... ...any of the different actors would mean ROF, and they will report that to represent. I think it's one of those really nasty Civil Wars, but... But, as I said, if you look at data over the course of the last 150 years or so, the average civil war like this takes about nine to ten years to run its course, the more actors become involved, the harder it is to resolve the conflict, particularly when it's not clear that any side is winning outright. So 30 years? Well, I don't know. There are confidence intervals involved of course. Absolutely right. But I would say that we're not close to the end. Right. Well, that's pretty grim. So Doug, we were talking earlier on about the differences. We need to think in terms of the difference between the situation in Iraq, the situation in Syria. We tend to lump them together. What's your sort of forecast? Well, the two cases are clearly different. It's one war, at least from ISIS's perspective. The Caliphate spans these two countries, but the conditions on the two sides of the border are very, very different. On one, we have a partner that we can work with. And the Iraqi army is certainly not the American army, but for the region, it's fairly capable. Likewise, the Kurdish Peshmerga, even the PMU's or PMF, the Shia militias, are a relatively organized, self-organized force that reports to some political body that we more or less understand. None of these conditions are true on the Syrian side of the border. The only forces that we believe that we can deal with, the regime left aside, are forces that we've kind of created ex nihila, brought about. The only reason there's really a Kurdish force on the Syrian side of the border is because we created that Kurdish force. Whereas the Iraqi Peshmerga are very much pre-existing, have a long history, are organized, have commanders, and report to a political authority. So very, very different. Now, as we move into the next phase, I'm very concerned because fighting a war is, as international tasks go, relatively easy. The American army knows how to fight a war. Fighting in Mosul is a task that the American army is fairly comfortable with. Once the fighting ends, we're going to move into a transition, into a peacemaking reconstruction phase that's going to require an intense amount of local knowledge of which we're not overindowed. So is there a difference? If the Iraqi stability has been backed by an American approach and Syrian stability will be backed by a Russian approach, does that tell us anything about the future? Well, it is certainly interesting to watch the two approaches. I've often called the Russian intervention in Syria kind of the dark, bizarro cousin of the American intervention, because they look remarkably similar. In both cases, you have a great power come in, they make sure the capital isn't going to fall immediately. You then start training, you provide some special forces, you give them some air power. These two cases do look remarkably similar, although obviously we're less a fan of one than the other. Well, absolutely. Caleb Wilson, you've had to give, like many of us on this panel, actually advice to those in sort of senior positions of leadership, to the civil leadership. If you were now in that same role and you were having to advise, what would your priorities be, looking forward, forecasting for our political leaders? What sort of advice would you be looking to give now? I would like to start by saying that I think part of the problem here is making sure that you do due diligence in getting the framing of the problem as accurate as possible. I do have concerns, and these are concerns that go back to 9 June 2014, when ISIL crossed the border, violated the international boundary, basically opened up that space and turned the situation into at least a merged conflict of Iraq and Syria. Frankly, that erasure of that international boundary, I would offer and I would forecast, as we did about two and a half years ago, at the end of the day, this could prove to be one of Daesh's greatest strategic errors of erasure of that border, of that international boundary when they did it. Because what that did is it unlocked the boundary, the physical boundary, expanding the space that was increasingly permissive for US and coalition forces to actually congeal the common denominator threat that transcended both territorial sovereign states, Iraq and Syria. So it actually opened up the aperture to allow us to conduct operations which were necessary for actually grappling with an ISIL problem set that by its nature and by its physicality on the ground was already defying the traditional boundaries of how we define an area of operations, a theater of war versus a non-theater of war. If that erasure had not happened, it's interesting to think of how limited we would have been able to, how limited we would have been in terms of our opportunities to prosecute what has essentially become a US coalition supported, indirect, by with and through conditions-based campaign with SOF married with precision fires and ISR in support of indigenous ground forces on both sides of this international border. That was very permissive. So I think that's something we have to consider and that was some of the advice that we offered early on. The second piece I would say is you have to understand and get a good sense of what the fundamental source of power in generation fuel for the threat is. At the end of the day there are a lot of causes that give rise to Daesh, Al Qaeda and ISIL 2.0. But the one thing you have to start with is a disharmony of interest, a disharmony in a disgruntlement among Sunnis region-wide, principally in Iraq at the time, but certainly in Syria and frankly across the Great Levant. In that really being the fuel, Sunni disenfranchisement and a lack of trust in terms of Shia dominant governance in the region. If and until those conditions are not rectified, which bring me to the political settlement in the conditions that you can bring forth with military power as well as other forms of power, until you get to that point where you are setting conditions for a true move forward for political settlement to remove those root source fuels. We can find ourselves winning all of the battles and engagements along the way. We can see ourselves on the doorstep of winning the retaking of Mosul, or assisting in the retaking of Mosul and on the precipice of doing the same in Al Raca in Syria. But that could prove to be a catastrophic success because we may find ourselves like we were in 0203 without a lack of a phase four stabilisation reconstruction plan. Kevin, you're taking us from what we hear in the headlines about military issues to the one of politics and governance. That brings me nicely into the ambassador. We all agree that war must return to politics and there is an issue of governance which arises in Syria very different from the situation in Iraq. But would you be able to contrast for us how you see, again, looking ahead, the governance of Iraq and what your observations might be about your neighbour in Syria in terms of the way that is going to be governed in the future and how that might help us to see a way through this conflict? I think what you have in two situations as Doc talked about, but one organic entity which is able to adapt to the situation. The issues of sectarianism is one layer. The same problem in Libya, others, which is not a sectarian problem. You have issues of international tourism, jazz and cellophism. So I think you need to look at it in a more nuanced aspect of it. There are clearly issues to do with governance, which is to do with understanding services, providing services, and so on. And this is a regional problem as well in the Arab Spring countries. You could see that. You also have high population growth, which is another phenomenon in the region. You have an underlying, quite few complicated, messy issues you need to address. My concern about all of this is you need to, what I call, manage complexity rather than simplify it. And that requires substantial amount of knowledge, time, away from the guns and the bombs and everything else to be able to have that. Plus the politics we talked about, which is not an easy task. My concern as well is that you're looking at these issues, which are all layers, and you're trying to say, let's get this, initiate things, everything, sort of that. It's not like that. It requires a substantial amount of meticulous approach in better services, education, healthcare and so on. And to me that's where the clock is ticking and how much are we being able to address that, how much are we being focused on it. The world element is the easy part, I would say. The peace element dealing and getting the right foundation for sustainability of the peace is what we need to work on. And here I think World Bank and other international organisations need to look at this as a totally different paradigm shift in a war effort. It's non-state actor as well. So you've got a lot of elements you need to worry about. Governance is an important breathing space for the politics to help for people to see the future. The two situations here in Iraq are totally different in the governance sense as well. Because in Iraq you have already a government where you have some kind of local problems. In Syria you have complexity where even international partners are not clear what their roles are. So I think to me it needs to be looked at differently from the solution, but it's only one organic entity, which is ISIS, able to adapt differently. Is it too simplistic to say that war is about and strategy is about accumulation of power and peacemaking is about distribution of power. One of the accusations against Iraq has been some of the problems we've seen have arisen, the accusation is, because there was inadequate sharing of power, of distribution of power. Do you buy that or is that something? Our is an important element which is and people are clocking themselves in sectarians and other isms, nationalisms and all kinds of things. I agree with, I give you that. But I think it's a bit more fundamental than that. It's a bit of long-term approach in sustainable politics. So let me give you an example. You need to create an environment in the region where dialogue can really take place. At this moment, no platform for dialogue, no international platform for dialogue. Even sponsorships in the Syrian situation, my perspective is US Russia need to agree that in the region, the local. Having this diagonal view of trying to solve it out, I'm afraid the situation. And to me, I still don't see a solution for Syria. I still don't see a strategy for Syria. I think that's been... Let me give you an example for that. Let me give you a very quick example. Would you be surprised with one Syria or three Syria? Once you answer that question or two Syria, then you can have something to talk about. Yes, indeed. One of the things that sometimes comes up in the panels of specialists is that quite often there are questions that come from the media, there are headlines that we get to talk about and then there are things that the specialists say, I wish this was asked, or this is the issue that I think is the burning issue that never gets talked about. Erica, could you just kick us off and say, what do you think is that sort of burning issue that we never get around to discussing? Okay, so I think all wars end eventually. We can argue about when we know that they have ended, but all wars will come to an end. And for me, the United States has repeatedly shown in this context that it is not willing to sort of muster an overwhelming political or military approach to finding a solution to the Syrian conflict. And so, for me, the question that nobody then asks is, well, is there anything we can actually be doing in the meantime to manage the suffering that's been produced by this conflict? And so I wonder about any types of resources that can be coordinated or developed on the part of international actors. And then I also wonder about who's in a position to deliver them and implement this type of approach. So I've long been thinking about, you know, not just the crises produced by population flows and forced migration and the refugee crises, but also just about what is happening on the ground in these countries and who is actually mobilizing effective civilian support. Who are the sort of non-state actors that are engaged in this work? Is there a role for private sector? Are there creative ways to try to alleviate some of the suffering while the war ends? Which it will. So, Rhiann, I was thinking about to you and this question of, you know, is that too optimistic to think of these frameworks we can create. I mean, your research shows just how rapid this explosion of violence took place. That gives some idea of the scale and does that tell us about the resilience of this conflict that we're not going to see and end anytime soon? Well, there are a lot of questions there. I don't necessarily know that how quickly the conflict and the severity of the conflict escalated is predictive of how long it's going to last. Some conflicts are quick and intense burn and others draw out over a very long period of time. But a related question to, I think, get back to what you asked Erika and while she was responding, one of the things I thought about was that the media and to some extent policymakers are often really fixated on this idea of, you know, are we winning or losing? How do we know when a group is being pushed back and is an increase in violence indicative of growing strength or growing weakness? I don't actually have an answer for that question specifically, but what I will say is that we know that often when violent non-state actors like Daesh, for example, or the other factions in Syria face substantial setbacks, there's an increase in violence at least against soft targets like civilians. Not to say that they weren't using that violence before, but groups often switch strategies from a conventional to a non-conventional or from hard targets to soft targets when their strategic position is weakening and one of my concerns is there's often not enough thought put into if weakening is suggestive of the group failing, that's a good thing, but how do we protect the civilians that are likely to suffer the backlash from those losses on the ground? The question that should be asked is, I think, when the tide turns against the group, that's not all good, right? There are ramifications from that. There's collateral damage that oftentimes is underappreciated and doesn't receive a lot of forethought at least in the military strategy planning stages. The pursuit of victory always comes at a cost. Now, we have about, I think we have 10 minutes, almost 10 minutes, so if there are any questions, so if you could, I'm sure there will be about sooner on, yes sir, you were the first person if the microphone could go to you. Just say who you are and if you want a specific address question to someone, please tell us. Sure, Rob Levinson from Bloomberg Government. I guess for whoever is willing to entertain the question, the President is going through a strategy, we're all talking about what we should do. If you had to describe a desirable end state for the situation in Syria and Iraq from the US, what would the US like the end state to be that's actually realistic and achievable within, you know, again, whatever your estimate of a reasonable investment of time and resources and troops on the ground might be? What's the end state look like at the end of the day that if you were advising the President that this is where we're going and now I'm going to give you a path to get there, what is that where we're going look like? Can I get, Doug, and I, could you answer that question? Sure. Sure. Thank you. Simple. Simple. Again, I think the questions are very different on each side of the border. I mean, what's different about these two states is in one, the United States has very real national interest and the other, it simply does not. It has only humanitarian interest. So I think our interest in those two states is very, very different. In Iraq, I think we're very vested in something very functional, in something that can be an ally, and I think we're on a path to going there. My concern is that as we move from war to peace that the number of Americans who understand how to do war on Iraq is myriad. The number who understand Iraq well enough to make peace, the number who've seen Iraq other than from the military or embassy bubble who've gone through passport control in Baghdad or Najaf is actually fairly minuscule and I'm very concerned about really having the granular level of knowledge to help with the peace. On the Syria side of the border, I think we just want the fighting to stop and I think we're fairly agnostic as to what the aftermath looks like. On Syria 3, again, as a human being, I'm deeply concerned about the Syrian people. As an American military analyst, how that ends up looking, I'm fairly agnostic. Can we get a vision for the future? I'm going to take a slightly different angle than Doug. We're probably going to end up in the same place, though. I think we're on the precipice. On the one hand, I agree with Doug. We have two different scenarios here. We have two different states, we have two different condition states. I think in Iraq, arguably, I think, certainly militarily, we could be at the beginning of the end of the major combat operation piece of this long campaign and going into the peace. The big question there is, particularly as things turn at Mosul and the big question of after Mosul, this is what concerns me, because if we have not set appropriate imbalance conditions on the other side of the fictive border at this point, on the other side of the merge conflict, what is compromised still in, I would call, a four wars in one, compound war in Syria, just a civil war. It's an insurgency against Assad, and until that's settled by the local population, then and only then, I think, do you really get to the full fight for who governs next and how, and that, I would say, would be the civil war that we're only at the beginning of, not to mention the humanitarian weaponization of migrants and that contagion war in and of itself, and then, of course, our international fight against ISIL, al-Qaeda and similar violent extremist organizations. Until that is brought to a commensurate, relatively balanced, stable condition state, I think we've got to compromise of the conditions that Iraq needs to seal the peace beyond the battles and in the engagements. And so this is a concern I have. So I would say when faced with an intractable problem, John Monet said this, enlarge the context. And so I think you find existential threats, not just to the U.S., but to, for lack of a better term, the Westphalian community in the merged conflict of Iraq and Syria in terms of what that combined set means for, frankly, solvency and legitimacy of the Western liberal idea itself that it can actually solve big problems together in American leadership in particular. And secondly, I think that in large context lets you understand that failing to contain, at least from a U.S. perspective, the politics by other means that are going on across this merged conflict space is a direct threat to the breaking of nations of the EU. It's a direct threat to the southern flank of NATO. And again, we're right back to the real existential problem of what I might call, provocatively, a growing globalizing insurgency against the Western liberal order. Thanks very much, Ken. All right. I'm going to show you another question. Yes, sir. You had your hand up. Thank you. This is Hassan Abbas, Professor at National Defence University and a fellow at New America. My question is for Erika about the situation in Iraq and your work on the importance of nonviolent movements. And I was thinking two major developments in Iraq in the last few years where one was this Urbain where hundreds of thousands of people go in a peaceful protest. It's a religious connotation. But similarly, what happened in Baghdad, pushing back against the judicial officers, yes, there were some thugs involved in that, but overall that was peaceful. Somehow, neither in the academia nor in the policy avenues, these peaceful movements in Iraq have been given any preference. So any thoughts on that and a related question to Ambassador, if I may, is about the future of Hashtar Shabi. After the November 26th new law, are Hashtar Shabi forces becoming a more cohesive force or not? Right. For me, I'll see you to be brief because we're short of time. Sure. Thanks, Hassan. So, nonviolent movements get underreported all the time. And as somebody who collects data on this, it's maddening and makes my job very difficult. But my best guess for why this takes place is that things don't blow up and so we're not watching. And I appreciate the question because in fact, if we look at what is happening in the world, how people are mobilizing to push for change in their environments, it actually turns out that we live in the most contentious time recorded in the last 117 years at least in terms of people mobilizing in mass movements to produce change in their environments. There are more nonviolent mass movements in the world ongoing right now than in any other decade that we've seen since 1900. But that's not the story we hear if we turn on the nightly news. And so what I would just briefly say about the four things that tend to make these movements noticed is they often win when they get very big, when they get very cross cutting in terms of who's involved in the movements, when they are able to elicit defections or loyalty shifts among the opponent elites, when they are able to withstand repression and sort of absorb major moments of state violence and turn them around to their advantage. And then when they shift methods so they're not just protesting and rallying, but they're also striking, they're engaging in different types of stay-at-home demonstrations of creative nonviolent action, which was the case in Iraq and Baghdad. And in relation to Hashidwch's PMEU, the Popularization Forces, I think it came up because of the situation. The army wasn't able to control. That army is now becoming strengthened, getting more momentum and development and other aspects of it. The self-control you could see in areas that have liberated that's praised as well. So the more you strengthen the army, the less you need an army. So that's one aspect. The other aspect of it is politically, there's a lot of engagement to de-politicise these entities and focus on that. There is a need for the Najaf Grandatollahs to get fatwas to remove that. There are what you might call strong plan put together as how do you make this entity only a security entity rather than a political entity which threaten the security of it. There's a lot of work there. There are other entities, such as Christians, Sunnis and others. So it's not just here, my point is. And there's a lot of work going on. Nobody yet knows exactly how to go about it, but there is an overall plan and everybody is saying terrorism is enough. We had that and we need to move into political solutions. Which is a good sign. Thank you very much indeed. Well, we are coming to the end. Believe it or not already. So in about 30 minutes, we have solved the crises of both Iraq and Syria. If anyone is looking for a job in government, here we are. What I can say is just for I thank our panellists. You will all know, of course, it's the 366th anniversary of the publication of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbesian world is the one we fear. The anarchic world. And it's worth reflecting on the panels that we've had so far today and indeed our panel today that civil wars don't always end very well. Often in dictatorship and retribution, if my own country isn't to go by, with its Hobbesian world. Political experimentation with violence extremism and civil unrest. Another option is military rule. There's the Sri Lanka model, which I won't articulate any further. You know what I'm talking about. Or indeed there's regional war escalation. And I think whether Iraq at least, we are through I think the worst. And it's very encouraging to hear you being broadly optimistic about the future of Iraq. An uncertain peace, but a peace immersion, nevertheless Syria far less certain and far more uncomfortable. Ladies and gentlemen, would you join me in applauding these wonderful speakers? Thank you.