 Good morning. Please we'll get started. Welcome to this conference on militancy border security and democracy in North Africa and the Sahel. I want to welcome our live stream participants as well. Thank you for your patience. Those of you on the live stream we have quite a bit of rain in Washington D.C. this morning. Thank you for your patience. A little bit late but we'll get back to the schedule. I'm the director of the Middle East program here at Carnegie. We're delighted this event and this event is the brainchild of my colleague Dr. Anwar Bukhar who is an associate professor at McDaniel College and a non resident scholar here in the Middle East program. Most of you here in the room know Anwar Bukhar and are aware of his work which combines the African and the Arab realms and combines also the political and security realms in quite a unique way. And for example I really recommend to you Anwar's new paper on Mauritania which is available in print outside or on the Carnegie website which again combines security issues. Now Anwar told me some that he wanted to put together a conference on insecurity in the border regions of North Africa and the Sahel. I thought well we're in for something interesting and I think this will be a conference that will help us to really look at some frequently discussed issues like ISIS, Boko Haram and so forth in new and useful ways. So as a start I want to thank Anwar for having the idea and for being the organizer of this event and I also want to thank our co-sponsors. The Social Science Research Council has generously supported the travel of several of our participants from Africa specifically for this conference which will allow us to bring to the table perspectives that we could not otherwise have had here. I also want to thank the National Endowment of Democracy an organization on whose board is proud to serve which has also contributed to the conference today and is a co-sponsor and many thanks to our whole team at Carnegie particularly Tiffany Tupper who put a lot of work into this day. So we're going to get started you have an agenda you'll see we have we have two panels this morning a short lunch break we will then have a speaker from the US Department of State who will address issues and then we will return and have another panel in the afternoon. So with that I would like to turn it over to Dr. Cyril Obi who is Director of the Africa Peace Building Network at our co-sponsor the Social Science Research Council for a few words of greeting. Thank you Michelle. Good morning distinguished ladies and gentlemen colleagues. My name is Cyril Obi and I direct the African Peace Building Science Research Council based in Brooklyn, New York. I'm very happy to see all of you I really want to express my appreciation co-sponsors of this program to the indefatigable who has been able to bring all of us together. I'll just say a few words about the African Peace Building Network Science Research Council. What we do is to support high quality research by African based scholars in Africa. We also feel it is very important for research not to stay in the shelves but for research to interact with and engage with the policy making community and the practitioners. We believe are the but we need to bring some public and there is no better forum than this very beautiful forum found organization and interestingly the APN is funded by the candidate co-fessional career. So this is an extension of the family I'm really very happy about this we hope that we can help in more ways than one to bring meaning to the three worlds that meet here to the Arab world North Africa and the Middle East. Presently these borders are beginning to disappear. What transnational security is as you may know look at the conflict map in the world and in Africa one of the features that you see is some kind of bound boundless and seamless merging of geographies and complexities. One of the things that we do need to catch up with the changing dynamics on the ground and I believe that some of the interactions we're going to be having here today will be very meaningful and very productive to help us understand the complex dynamics that are unfolding and not just to understand them to begin to devise new ways of addressing them through engagement through conversation. So I'm very happy I'm very grateful and I wish you very productive deliberations. Thank you for your attention. And on that note I would invite the first panel which I'm told is to be chaired by ANWA to kick off the proceedings. Thank you for your attention. So I'd like to thank Michelle Dunn our director for her support and leadership. I'd like also to thank Cheryl and Dagen and also Tamisa from the National Endowment for Democracy. So as you know North Africa and the Sahel face a cluster of security challenges. The upsurge in social protests, ethnic radicalization and their growing overlap with violent militancy are only the most visible signs of troubles hanging over this region. The locus of insecurities is a mushroom at the periphery of national boundaries. In Tunisia for example the panopole of indignities from high unemployment to marginalization of the regions of the interior and south continue an abated deepening huge frustration and political alienation. So the persistence in Tunisia of strong territorial asymmetries has turned the embattled interior and south of the country into the powder keg of Tunisia. In Algeria the country south looms large in the country's security perceptions its wealth and size which encompasses more than 80% of the national territory have contributed enormously to Algeria's geostrategic position and to its economic standing but the south remains little understood it remains shrouded in enigma. In the last few years the region suddenly found itself in the eye of the storm. The dramatic deterioration of order on the periphery of Algeria's borders has raised the risk potential of spillovers into Algeria's treasure chest southern territory. Concurrently with this regional disorder and outbursts of terrorism the bubbling part of multiple frustrations and social violations seem to be coming into ahead. Same problems for Libya the Libya is much more complex so I'll defer to officer Rebekah Murray so we have the privilege to have three top-notch scholars and researchers to help us decipher the intricacies of this of these three complex cases we have Dalia Ghanem Yasbek joining us from Beirut office Hi, she's a research analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut she's an expert on extremist violence, terrorism and the radicalization process with a focus on Islamism and Jihadism in Algeria I'm deeply indebted to her for reading several of my writings on Algeria. She is my go-to person whenever I write or I need something on Algeria so thank you for Tunisia we're fortunate to have Amy Hawthorne the deputy director for research and the project on Middle East democracy Washington DC where Tunisia's transition and its interior and border regions are among research interests so thank you for joining us here today and finally there is Rebekah Murray freelance journalist and researcher she was based in Libya last year returning after living there in 2012 and reporting for publications like Vice News and Jazeera English. Rebekah has focused on Southern Libya making field trips from Kofra to Sibha Bari and Ghat over the past four years so I think we'll go ahead and start with our friend from Beirut Dalia, Dali Miasbek to enlighten us on Algeria and then we go to Amy afterwards and finally Rebekah Murray thank you thank you Dalia so I'll open let's try and see what happens okay good morning everyone very much I would like to Carnegie and SSRC for inviting me and I'd particularly like to thank on whose work his work I deeply admire and on whose work indeed I depend and I'd also like to congratulate Carnegie and SSRC for organizing this conference which is very important and very innovative to look at all of these countries together and the connections among them I'm going to talk for a few minutes about Tunisia and the border challenges and insecurities and related militancy and other problems that Tunisia faces borders and particularly peripheral areas in Tunisia the interior areas of the country were key to the revolution we all know that the uprising in December 2010 started in Tunisia's interior and without that uprising beginning in Sidi Bouzid and quickly spreading to other disaffected interior towns and cities Tunisia probably never would have embarked on its democratic transition but these border areas and the peripheral interior areas of Tunisia now today five years later are challenges that could deal Tunisia's very but very very democratic transition and one of the key features of Tunisia today indeed is insecure borders the threat, the real threat potential and actual threat of transnational jihadism coming from Tunisia's border with Algeria which is 600 miles long and then its other eastern border with Libya is about 300 miles long so on Tunisia's border areas there are challenges and threats and we also know that the happy and deprived and discontented and peripheral regions of Tunisia continue to boil I'm going to briefly describe some of the aspects of these problems and talk a bit about what could be done these issues are incredibly complex so I'm just going to touch on them very very briefly and then maybe in the Q&A we can get into some more of the details and I'll talk about three main challenges that I think Tunisia faces today related to its borders and its peripheral and interior regions and these are really all very closely interconnected the first challenge is the problem of transnational jihadist terrorism, militancy along both of Tunisia's borders Adalia spoke about what's happening on the Tunisian-Algerian border there is a small scale but nonetheless persistent patist insurgency taking place centered in the the area of the Tunisian-Algerian border this is something that has sprung up since the Tunisian Revolution and although the insurgency is relatively small it has proved very very difficult for the Tunisian-Algerian border to stand out a lot of the challenge not the only reason is the interconnection and the geography between Algeria and Tunisia in the region which is really mountainous difficult to fully penetrate for either government the insurgency that is based in Mount Shampe most analysts it's connected to AQIM there's a group called well I guess we could say remnants of the Ansar al-Sharia group that once it was repressed joined this insurgency its main target has been Tunisian security forces and state officials in the area surrounding this region but it's also a transnational movement I believe that it wants to establish an Islamic state across the Maghreb so it extends beyond local Tunisian demands there is also of course Libya and what is happening the chaos on the war and Libya and the security threats that is posing in Tunisia in terms of weapons being smuggled across into Tunisia after the revolution in continuing so the SAVEN and indeed training facilities that the insecurity and chaos in Libya provides for organizations like ISIS and others where allegedly Tunisian militants are being trained in Libya and then sent back into Tunisia to carry out attacks such as the SUSE attack in late June and these problems I mean they're very complex what's going on in the Tunisian Algerian excuse me Algerian and Libyan border of Tunisia but in general we can say that a few things happened after the revolution first the security forces the border forces withdrew after the revolution creating a security vacuum that many nefarious figures and actors took advantage of and then also politically inside Tunisia the opening up the lifting of control the demise of the authoritarian system the freedoms that were suddenly experienced in Tunisia in 2011 actually you know many positive effects but they also we now understand created open up space for militants and radicals to actually recruit inside Tunisia and to travel more freely throughout the region so this is a very mixed result of the Tunisian democratic opening freedoms and human rights but also more space and harder to control radicals who are plotting against Tunisia and able to use areas near or in the bordering countries to plot against Tunisia a second challenge of course is smuggling smuggling from along the Algerian Tunisian border and the Libyan Tunisian border is not new it has been going on for a long time but of course since the revolution with the weakening of the security forces the rise of many many security challenges Tunisia the collapse of a really pretty tight control that the regime and indeed Ben Ali and his family directly exposed these smuggling routes smuggling has proliferated along these borders and in some say democratized more people to get into the action. Smuggling of course is very complex it is an important part of the Tunisian informal economy which indeed represents about 40% of the entire Tunisian economy so there are a lot of Tunisians who are earning their livelihood from smuggling I'm sorry from the informal economy and smuggling is a part of this not all smuggling although it is illegal is necessarily linked or in any way linked to jihadism and militancy and terrorism there's a lot of smuggling that involves commodities going back and forth across the border and although it is illegal it is not necessarily I mean it's as I said it's providing a livelihood for a lot of Tunisians and people in the other countries as well without that economic activity the difficult economic conditions in the bordering and interior regions would probably be even worse but one of the problems of the smuggling economy is that first of all there is alleged to be complicity and corruption among some Tunisian security forces with this smuggling so that obviously poses challenges for security and also many experts have pointed out that as well as smuggling are created and developed to bring natural across the border used clothing, food yogurt, sugar et cetera energy smuggled across the border those same roots can also be used by terrorists and be taken advantage of these clandestine systems can also be used by nefarious people as well and so this is a real problem for Tunisia as I said this economic activity around the safety belt for many many Tunisians economically and the two authorities understand this this is one of the reasons why there hasn't been a really concerted to crack down on the smuggling economy but it also poses a long-term threat not just because of the potential and actual links with terrorism that I mentioned but also because many experts believe that smuggling really dampens economic activity overall a lot of Tunisians in these areas are involved in smuggling it's kind of a get rich quick type of economic activity and it can be very lucrative and it's harder to entice people into formal economy into more maybe less lucrative and less exciting yet legal jobs the third challenge that is related to Tunisia's border areas and peripheries really is the social and political and economic content that continues to exist in the interior regions I think most of us understand that Tunisia has always been marked by big social and economic disparities between the Tunis and the Sahel which is the wealthy northern coastal regions where political and economic power has always been concentrated and the much more deprived interior regions and these disparities are nothing new they've been excellent in Tunisia for decades but they have been exacerbated since the revolution with the economic challenges that Tunisia faces overall economic activity in these interior areas and near the borders has slowed down even more I think the poverty rate is about twice as high in these areas as it is in Tunis and the Sahel and employment which is a major problem in Tunisia in general is 2 to 3 times higher in these regions so they face very serious economic challenges and there's also a very significant kind of political psychological issue as well which is that the young people especially in these interior regions who led the revolution started the uprising they had a lot of expectations that with a new form of government in Tunisia would come finally a leadership that would address the inequalities and disparities that exist in places like Sidi Bouzid and in Gafsa and in Ghassrin and that hasn't happened successive Tunisian governments have basically not addressed these problems and so there's a lot of frustration in these regions we saw recently a couple of months ago another explosion of protests by unemployed young people expressing extreme frustration about the economic conditions and lack of opportunity in these regions there's also ongoing frustration with police brutality and why does this matter to Tunisia? It matters because these regions provide very very fertile areas for extremist groups located in Tunisia with transnational connections to recruit members and so it's a very very dangerous prospect for Tunisia and when I was there in November visiting some of these regions I talked with some young people about why in Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa and other places about why groups like ISIS have so much appeal among Tunisians and this is a very complex problem we know but one of the reasons that people said is you know joining ISIS and traveling to Syria and fighting one person said gives my peers a sense of identity and makes them feel visible whereas today in Tunisia they feel invisible neglected, forgotten, unemployed, languishing and without really any power and so this is something that it poses a really serious challenge for Tunisia so what can be done? First of all, why is all of this a threat to the democratic transition in Tunisia? Well, because it requires resources, time and effort of officials to deal with all these challenges that hurts from other problems in Tunisia and it also changes the national conversation in many ways to focus a lot of Tunisians' minds on security and stability and protection challenges other than democratic rights, human rights and democratic national building and as Bracey said after the suicide attack I believe he said if we have one more terrorist attack in Tunisia the state will collapse well that was a very very strong statement and I'm afraid a lot of people thinking Tunisia really is fragile but if there's one more terrorist attack the entire state will collapse the Tunisian government and people are stronger than ISIS and these terrorist groups well this was a very concerning statement but it shows the concern I think among a lot of Tunisian officials about how to face these complex problems so what can be done? In terms of border security Tunisia and Algeria have cooperation on dealing with their border and cooperating on their border and also jointly trying to address this insurgency in Mount Shambi along the Libyan border of course it's much harder because there's no government counterpart on the Libyan side and I'm sure all of you have followed what's been going on in Libya and the air strikes and the fighting in a town that's about 50 to 60 miles from the Tunisian border which is really now become a training camp for ISIS this is very very close to Tunisia a hard security approach is required the Tunisian authorities definitely need equipment and training to be able to secure their borders and fight terrorism more effectively which was never their role under the Ben Ali regime their role under the Ben Ali regime was to protect the regime not to protect the Tunisian people now they're being asked to play a very very new role Tunisia has never faced in its history all of these threats and the combination of them is very new for Tunisia but it isn't just a hard security issue border security it also has to do with economic development and community empowerment of the Tunisians of the people who live in these border areas and just going and building a fence and clamping down is not going to solve the problem both because there are very close connections between Tunisians and Algerians along the border and Tunisians and Libyans on the other border tribal connections, family connections people will resist efforts to completely separate them and stop economic activity across the border but it will also generate resentment a very heavy hand will only potentially breed more support for these radical groups that are presenting the problem in terms of smuggling there is a lot that the Tunisian authorities can do regarding improved customs tax collection to make it less lucrative to smuggle certain goods across the border but as I said this really isn't just about sort of a technical approach it really has to do with a larger strategy for economic development in general that will figure out what is going to give the people who are in the smuggling economy other economic opportunities that will be more beneficial and more negative to smuggling along the borders and smuggling will be more complicated but it can be managed better another issue is corruption there are allegations of corruption in the Tunisian security forces that they are collaborating or looking the other way with illegal and illicit activity that is going on across the borders this if is a major major problem obviously it decreases the effectiveness of the security forces that communities have in them which obviously poses long-term problems and finally in terms of the interior disparities this is one of the biggest challenges facing Tunisia how to deal with the unmet demands for social and economic and political empowerment in these deprived interior and peripheral regions this problem will take a very long time to solve it's been building up over decades but the Tunisian government has to start somewhere and so far they haven't really had any plan success of governments not just the current one to deal with these problems of unemployment and alienation and frustration other than offering more government jobs which is not a permanent solution in part because Tunisia simply doesn't have the money to bring more people under the government payroll so there has to be a holistic approach a long-term approach that really has to do with covering these communities and thinking about ways to improve economic opportunity through the private sector, through investment this is very complex we all know that in every country there are economic disparities that are very pernicious indeed in our own city, Washington DC we have areas of this city that are consistently poor and underprivileged despite decades of attention so Tunisia will never create a completely equal society to do so but they can certainly do better than they're doing now and what they really need I think is a strategy to address a holistic approach to address border insecurity smuggling, corruption and economic disparity in these regions that really tries over the long term to get at some of the reasons why Tunisian especially Tunisian young people are so unhappy and why they are proving to be such fertile recruits for the very jihadist groups that are threatening the Tunisian Democratic transition thank you thank you good morning thank you very much for the invite and to Carnegie as well as African Peace Building Network National Endowment for Democracy so I've just been in Libya for the past year and on and off since 2012 and I want to start I guess we're going to talk about the Libyan south I'd like to start with just a few sentences giving a general overview as you probably know this month February marks five years since the start of the revolution to overthrow Gaddafi and what we're looking at now we've got fighting happening in Benghazi there has been a major push by the LNA and Heftar into reclaiming some territory back in Benghazi there's fighting in Ajdabiya fighting around Derna these both are dealing with IS as well as other groups, Islamist groups and then last night in Subratha we know about Subratha, we know about the airstrike you mentioned this that happened earlier last week that killed IS militants at a farmhouse last night IS militants came into the center of Subratha and held some government offices in siege they've left now from what I understand I don't have the latest as of this morning but they did leave 12 decapitated security workers in their wake so one of the things that also occurred to me is that it's just over one year since IS first cropped up on this scene in a high-profile way in Libya only over just one year many of us remember in downtown Tripoli when IS attacked the luxury Qarenziya hotel and we heard a big blast early in the morning and that resulted in a huge siege and a Salafist police force who eventually eliminated them we also remember us journalists going to search where there was a black flag posted on the Wagudugu conference center and those rotten forces who had been tasked to fight them drove us through the town to show that indeed the town was under their control in early March since then when I've returned the front line has been pushed back first outside to the power station outside CERT and now all the way back to Abu Ghraim why I think this is relevant this last piece is because ISIS when they took control of CERT they took control of a lot of land around it including the turnoff intersection from the coast to Jufra and to Sebhub beyond this road skirts the oil fields the central oil fields which are Libya's largest and have enabled ISIS to mount these surprise attacks they have now pushed Misrata to Abu Ghraim Abu Ghraim is much further along nearly halfway between Misrata and CERT this is also another key intersection this one is the second road going to the south there are three main arteries and this one Misrata very much wants to hold on to I mean in Libya you've got planes that are flying cash to banks all across the country but some places you need a road to bring the gasoline down they have to truck all the gasoline down they have to truck basic goods to the south and they also have to send a lot of supplies to the Misrata as a stopgap measure and do tribal warfare down there so when I asked Misrata's one councilman what would happen if ISIS pushed them either further from Abu Ghraim he said this is the red line we cannot continue like this like the rest of the country people in the south are exhausted by all while fighting continues to flare up in Sabha and Khufra to the southeast one significant but fragile piece has been forged this month in Ubarri I was last in Ubarri in November and people were very tired the town was much worse off than when I spoke here last which was June of last year June last year the battle was raging many many people have been displaced this is a fight between indigenous tribes between the Tabu and the Tuareg tribes both were various marginalized and discriminated against by Gaddafi while the Tabu were kind of overlooked in the southeast in Khufra the Tuareg were mainly recruited as low level foot soldiers in Gaddafi's army when the revolution came most ordered and stuck with him he recruited many saying rights which was very important since many didn't as well as rights and as well money basically however since the revolution some chose not to go with him and have been struggling ever since with a stigma of being associated with Gaddafi anyway Ubarri is a very strategic place for a battle it strategically plays next to Shirara oil fields which is the second largest oil fields in Libya it's also next to most of the smuggling routes that go into the southwest now if we remember just after the revolution the Tuareg who were military supporting Gaddafi did crack open the weapons stockpiles and there was a lot of publicity around this of weapons leaving Libya and this was via Ubarri Awanat and then going through Salvador Pass into Niger and beyond a lot of times to Azawad the fight for Azawad in Mali since then it's noticeable that the borders have been very much cut off in this area that was mentioned earlier Algeria is very scared of the over spill of violence especially an animus was also mentioned and I believe they did through Awanat into Algeria so Algeria has really ratcheted up its border on that side you wouldn't know it from the Tuareg side of the border the Libyan side because there are so few border guards so few vehicles and even when you go to visit them and ask to take a ride in their vehicles they say they have no gas and on the other side which is also policed a little bit by the Tuareg and then it goes into more Tebu territory is also got the French military along that the Tuareg especially a very scared of the French military both for its present threats that it poses as well as having a huge history of French colonies in the area so since then since November it's great to hear when I was in Ubarri many many of the leaders were away so were the leaders in Gat I found out that they were all in Qatar and they were involved in negotiations there'd be many many negotiations between the Tebu and Tuareg and other tribes in this region and these ones worked they were in Qatar and somehow Qatar made it work the peace agreement was forged in November and in February it's taken hold earlier this month February 7 basically the Hassana tribe which is north of Seppar came in and has now started policing the contentious areas inside the city I want to make points about what I've taken back of the situation now first of all I think the population in the southwest is very weary of war as I mentioned with the battle of Ubarri it's next to an oil field the oil field is not working at the moment because of fighting up north the Zintana have cut the valve off as well as the road has been cut for so long to get really impacting the community in terms of movements there's only one road to get in terms of movement around Libya they can't go across the border to Algeria because the border is so amped up military wise on the Algerian side displaced people there are hundreds of displaced of Tebu and Tuareg and the other smaller tribes who were based in Ubarri you'll find them in Gat and a lot of them are actually kind of living in this construction site that a Chinese company was building housing for Gaddafi scared that the population was growing too big he was trying to build housing Gaddafi was deposed and you'll see actually a lot of these construction sites all around Libya Gat has one now displaced people from Ubarri have been living in it you'll find in Merzouk the Tebu from Ubarri have really moved in in SEPA and then up in the coast people on both sides of the conflict have been shot or killed, shot injured or killed and a lot of people really were asking in November why is this happening my former host in 2013 who is Tebu was shot in the head and lived this past year my most recent host who is Tuareg was also shot in the spine he's now lying in a hospital bed in Mizrata trying to have another operation to walk again and so the feeling really is what is this all for why are we fighting each other we both have a shared history and both were promised their rights by Gaddafi but they weren't realized an interesting point to note even though the Tebu largely sided with Gaddafi in the revolution the Tuareg mostly did not however they never turned their guns against each other and so they ask why most point to outside interests whether it's national or international interests they're convinced people are after borders, smuggling routes and oil my second point a real proof is in very bad shape one thing that you'll find is that Tuareg have IDs a lot of them and even though they're promised them they find themselves disenfranchised by the state what this means is no higher education real lack of jobs in an area that has really I think this goes to our conversation on Tunisia people have really benefited from this movement since those that Gaddafi in that little corner they're really impoverished right now the Tebu have a lot of them did get citizenship very recently in Mersuk and Sabha however and in Kufra however both of them are basically marginalised in terms of skilled work the combination of the displacement lack of work has really done a lot to make people just want to be brought into the state have a place and to say there finally point three that there has been a lot of focus on the south west in terms of looking at links to various terrorist movements having been there five times this past year you don't know what is not told to you and you have to be very observant but what I did see is quite it's a misunderstood people let's say very little media goes down there very little researchers and the Tuareg really feel like they are being smeared with their all terrorists rush stroke which I did not find to be true with a lot of my dealings with Tuareg sure people talk about bandits maybe live here and point to somewhere in the desert etc but I did find because I have been there previously too with Tabu Tabu who pointed out to me Al Qaeda lives over there and then I go to the place with the Tuareg and they are like this is us so I did find it was revealing going to different sides and seeing what's really happening however having said that I do think and tying back into the IS threat up north and their control of one of the roads coming from certs and you know this kind of flash points on another road which is going from Abu Ghraim to Jufra to sorry to Sevha is that I think that they could really pose a threat to the people on the south if you have an disfranchised population who has no work smuggling routes closed down and when I say smuggling routes I actually mean to just say a shifting of smuggling paths meaning in the southwest the Tuareg did benefit from smuggling routes after Qaddafi fell however these routes have shifted somewhat to the south of Qatrun which is patrolled by the French and the Taubu are now doing the lifting the transportation of the goods coming in when we say goods we're talking about people, drugs people, drugs and then petrol going out etc nothing to be proved when I say fighters or weapons so I can't prove that so finally if you do have disenfranchised youth I do worry that this could be fertile ground for ISIS recruitment in the future if this is not addressed thank you thank you so we have listened to three excellent insightful presentations so now we will move to the Q&A session and I will start with my privilege as moderator and start with asking three questions to the three panelists and you respond as you see fit the first one that interests me is what approaches and tactics that violent extremist groups use in approaching and in recruiting members of the targeted local is I'm interested in the perception of border communities, what's their perception of borders and root causes of insecurity and then what are border communities own views about the appropriate mechanisms and the tools that can increase security that can increase social cohesion. First one is the approaches and tactics that you have seen by being on the ground that violent extremist group or ISIS or any other group use in approaching and recruiting members of the targeted local communities from a group in the 90s because of the extreme violence of that group so the GSPC created this role, led by Hassan Hassan in order to distance itself from this extreme violence that was targeting the population and created the GSPC that merged with Al Qaeda and their targets at that time were only the security forces and not the civilians so in a given moment there is this too that extreme violence is not going to be it's going to be counterproductive so this is why they shifted while because you know they were repudiated if I may say by the Algerian population and they lost momentum for for today Al Qaeda is doing the same basically it is targeting security forces and it is targeting you know foreigners kidnapping foreigners the question of how do they target the population as I said you know most of this group are born because of social and political affection in this different region today we know for example that you know only 56% of children have to go to primary school in the Sahel there is a huge problem when you cannot educate your population you cannot make it with this extreme because they cannot make the situation are also very different you know I talked to people who were former jihadists of the GIA in the 90s and they can tell you that most of their motivation were more economic logical than religious many people joined the GIA and it is also the case today for Akim because and also Daesh for economic for economic motivation today we do know from a fact that fighter in IS can earn between 700 to 1500 dollars and this is a pretty good amount of money under the current condition in Libya or even in Syria or in Iraq they do join also you know for psychological reasons because as my colleague said there is a sense of identity but also a sense of pride and of honor they are living in sorry in territories in which there is weak governance there is high level of corruption the state is not longer present and this small group offer an alternative and this is what we should work on we need to offer them alternatives and we need to repair if I say the social you know the social link between this population and their government saying a few words about Tunisia the phenomenon of radical recruitment in Tunisia is very very complicated and I'm not sure that we fully understand it in all of its dimensions but I can offer a few things that young Tunisians told me I haven't observed any terrorist recruitment directly myself but this is what young Tunisians in some of these deprived areas told me I think economic factors are important both in terms of some families or some individuals simply needing money or wanting to earn more money than they can earn from the really low paying very unstable jobs that exist along these border regions in Tunisia but it there also is definitely a psychological dimension and I think that has both to do with as I mentioned in my remarks expectations the expectations of a lot of Tunisians and especially young people had that after they forced Ben Ali out and there were all of these promises of democracy and also social justice which was one of the original demands of the Tunisian revolution expectations of things were going to get better and then disappointment that they haven't gotten better I think that expectations gap is a very important phenomenon in Tunisia because we see for example in Upper Egypt very poor and impoverished area of Egypt actually in absolute terms poorer than the Tunisian interior regions but I don't think that a lot of people in Upper Egypt they didn't participate in the revolution in any significant ways and they didn't their expectations were pretty low made to do to cynicism and realism about what might happen very different dynamic in Tunisia there is ongoing problems of abuse by the Tunisian security forces in their counter terrorism operations in these areas and in their general policing there are documented reports still of torture taking place in Tunisian police stations and prisons this is something that obviously contributes greatly to a narrative of injustice and unfairness that is very very appealing to young people who want to combat and also I think it does have something to do with the feeling of alienation and being invisible of one young Tunisian in Sidi Bouzi he's not a member of the terrorist group but he told me he's very worried about his peers who are being attracted to this ideology he described it as a cult that young people in their teens in early twenties around him are being drawn into and he said five years later in Sidi Bouzi and throughout Tunisia we can now speak freely under Ben Ali if we spoke out we would be beaten up by the police and arrested now we can basically say whatever we want we have complete freedom of speech however no one listens and so a sense of feeling ignored and alienated I think is another dimension to this I think Libya is pretty unique in terms of the Gaddafi system of governing for 42 years and I think that CERT is a very good example of how IS has taken root we've got CERT with a that was basically treated with favor by Gaddafi this was his hometown Gaddafi wanted to make CERT the capital of Africa with the Wagudugu conference center in the airport he really built a small village into a kind of little city on the sea however CERT suffering with the NATO bombing and then with the fight afterwards and Gaddafi's death violently outside CERT I think really created a sense of being disenfranchised by the certain tribes in CERT that were most allied to him and so I think you could really see how Ancer Sharia took root trying to give people who were then suffering a stigma after the revolution of not feeling like they belong in the new Libya Ancer Sharia kind of gave some people a voice and a feeling of muscle especially since there were no armed groups around CERT to protect it for itself but for Ancer Sharia I think a lot of people moved on to a bigger better brand which was IS there was also I think leadership crisis within Ancer Sharia at the time Ancer Sharia is different from Benghazi to CERT it kind of has different so I think it's a combination of tribe I think it's a combination of how people did in the Libyan revolution also when you see CERT you see a lot of foreign fighters so you see people from Tunisia and from Algeria, Morocco so people are coming to kind of have a base in North Africa what you don't see much of is we're touching upon the south is you don't actually see much of who I've just been covering is the Tuareg and Tabu I think probably the Tuareg may consider themselves quite fortunate to be living in Libya as opposed to other Tuareg communities and other African states Libya's considered a more rich country even though it doesn't feel it nowadays and so you get a reaction of laughter when you ask Tuareg do you think people would be attracted to extremism they laugh and they say we love our desert, we love our culture we love to dance, we love our music why would we join IS it goes against their fundamental identity you'll get Tuareg to say the same thing alright so we'll just open it up to the audience we have about 30 minutes for Q&A alright so let's get three questions so Michelle and three thank you Dahlia I'd like to ask you a question I hope you can hear me Dahlia you recently published an article on Algeria speaking about the diminished oil revenues of the Algerian government and how this might affect political stability within the country and so forth I wonder if you can connect that issue the issues coming from the lower oil revenues also the possible political changes in the leadership in Algeria how does that affect the ability to deal with security threats and economic difficulties within the country two more Hi I'm Rebecca with the Hudson Institute I had a question for Amy so there have been murmurings in the Tunisian government about decentralization project in order to sort of bring the rural communities into the fold in Tunisia so I'm wondering from the people that you spoke to in rural Tunisia what do they think of that plan is that something that's feasible is that something that people are already starting to do on their own thank you Jeff Howard I work primarily on Libya I think just two very quick points Rebecca I would perhaps caution against believing too much that the Tuareg and Dubu would be totally impervious to Islamic State advances they might like their kind of dancing and singing and campfires and so on but you know they are largely transactional and I think if IS cannot offer them something more attractive thought they have presently I think there's a risk that they could certainly turn but I think there's a second point linked to radicalization and this is brought across North Africa perhaps not as much in the Sahel but I think it's been missed and that is the role of the treatment of political Islam in the kind of high level political transitions I think that's certainly been seen that's historically be in the case in Algeria with the civil war and so on but also with post-Arab spring political transitions particularly Tunisia and Egypt and I think we've seen the knock-on effects of the way in which political Islam has been treated following the removal of Morsi in Egypt we saw a real increase in the intent to visit the missed to use violence across North Africa particularly in Benghazi we saw increases in these groups and I think their willingness to engage in those groups was damaged I think we certainly saw that in Tunisia as well with the divisive rhetoric the need of Tunis increasing accusations against I think we saw a real increase in those so I think that is also a really key aspect of North Africa Thank you I will start with the question of leadership today this question of leadership and who is running Algeria is more like a western obsession if I may say Algerians are not worried about that you know Algerians are more worried about their wallets if I may say and the price of oil and the subsidies so to come back to the leadership we've already seen that in Algeria just to give you the example of when he died after 39 days in the coma 39 days in which the Algerian people went where when he died there was a real problem of succession between and a real struggle between and because the military were scared of the explosion of this fight and a faction of the military led by at that time and a faction of the FLM decided to bring a third candidate which was a consensual candidate to remove and they brought so I do believe that it's not a problem for them today it varies the problem between cause of succession I don't know some people talk about another candidate I do believe that the military had already chosen a candidate what we need to keep in mind is that is that the political system of 2016 in Algeria is the same political system of 1965 so whoever this person is according to be he will be the full product of the Algerian system the same system that kept the country into a state of permanent transition and did not allow for any generational renewal so the question of leadership for me and transition is really not a big question the question of oil and economic and fiscal challenges of Algeria is more important in 1986 when Algeria witnessed the crisis of the oil and the oil prices went down Algeria faced a big problem a big challenge so the Algerian government had to cut into subsidies and this is what led to the riot of October 5, 1988 that were one of the most important factor that led to the black decade so today the Algerian authorities they do know that there are dangers in also the head of the population this is why the Algerian government is not really touching to cut these not really deeply because they are scared of the the aftermath however the question is that today in 2013 Algeria was had the 8th biggest or largest exchange reserve and this question today the Algerian government can sustain itself if I may say for the 3 next year so the question is when this money will dry what will happen in Algeria it seems like this is a very strong country that we are talking about unfortunately no it is a fragile state and whenever the money will dry what will the government and the Poubois will do they used to have the habit of paying social buying social peace and this is what they did and this is one of the reasons for which we didn't witness the Arab Spring in Algeria but when the money will dry they cannot buy social peace anymore so what is the other solution the other option is repression and at that time we can see again the military stepping up and having a big role you know calming the situation and calming the people unfortunately I might be of pessimistic I do not wish that for my country however the question for me is not whether the violence will erupt but more when the violence will erupt violence is cyclical in Algeria one of the best books that describe that is the book of Omar Calier called between nationalism and jihadism and he described how violence is cyclical you know when Algeria gets its independence in 1962 right after that summer 1962 there was a war between different factions then in 1982 we witnessed the first jihadist violence with the group of Bouyali in 1988 we had the riots of 5th October in 1990 we had the blood decay right after the blood decay we had the 2001 one in the Kabili region so violence is cyclical and it will come back unfortunately the question again is when this will erupt yes decentralization question thank you very much for the question on decentralization it's a very important issue in Tunisia Tunisia has an extremely highly centralized form of government this has always been one of the features of its ruling system throughout successive leaders to the extent that power and decision making is highly highly highly concentrated in Tunis and some Tunisians would say to get a new pen they must get the approval of the interior minister Tunis that may actually not be an exaggeration in some cases all decisions and appointments are basically made in and flow from Tunis so decentralization changing this system and empowering local communities more is a critical critical element of a genuine democratization process in Tunisia and indeed decentralization is mentioned in the new democratic transition albeit in a very vague and somewhat confusing way so because this is one of the provisions of the constitution the Tunisian authorities, the Tunisian government have already started recently working on decentralization they have the Ministry of Interior which until recently has been the lead on this issue since they run local government there is a new ministry for local government but really the power and control still lies in the Interior Ministry they have drafted a law on local administration and there is also a draft election law for local elections which have not been held since the time of Ben Ali when of course the elections were not free and fair so there's a lot of I found a lot of interest and anticipation and excitement in the decentralization process one Tunisian described it as in one of these places we've been very disappointed he said by the democratization process so far by the Interior this fall the transition it hasn't really brought us anything that we wanted except freedom of speech and we're now counting on decentralization so expectations are high among a lot of Tunisians however the process is very very very complex and I would say that there is understandably a lack of knowledge and solid information about how this process is actually going to work the Tunisian authorities have proposed a gradual process of devolving power over several years and several stages from the center to the governorates and to municipalities but to me which is of course very important part of democratic nation building but to me the key question about decentralization is in Tunisia is will it be real will it truly devolve and deconcentrate power from Tunis to these communities will it actually empower decision making on the ground in these communities allow people who live in these places not bureaucrats in Tunis to decide about their development plans and how they want to run their affairs and indeed to be able to gain resources locally right now there's very limited ability to tax locally so they depend on Tunis also for their resources for their national budget or so will it be a genuine process that could really go a long way to helping Tunisians in these places address some of the problems that I mentioned in my presentation or will it merely be a shift in personalities an election process some cynical Tunisians worry that will be divvied up between Nidatunis or remnants thereof and Anahga where the local councils sort of power sharing deal between the two major political forces and they'll decide who's going to get which council and then you have elections and basically you have national parties controlling power at the local level rather than a process that allows new actors to come in so there's a lot of question marks about this process and I think that the international community needs to focus on it very carefully and not just praise Tunisia for the success that it's had so far but also hold out expectations for a really more genuine process of a power shift not just administrative and bureaucratic changes that would put the elite back into power in new ways so about the Tuareg yes Jeff can you just remind me what your question was yeah it was a general point that I think you made a point yeah you know a tendency to rely on what we say concerning the SOE so I think if we were talking about shift towards ISIL I would say the moment a sight like those ISIL won't often that much so if it was often the local council can't That's an excellent point, and I'll just add, the illicit smuggling trade is a lot of what the Tuareg and Tebu have been traditionally doing. They are the transporters, I tend to think, that they travel across the region and kind of can go without GPS, so to speak. I've actually travelled with the Tebu across the expanse of Libya, from Merzouk to Kufra. It's completely off-road, Gaddafi did not build roads because he was scared about revolutions, and so it's across the sand dunes. I do hear what you say, and what I mean is for now, I don't know what it will be like a couple years down the road, because – and this is to the question of oil and leadership in Libya, it's very intertwined, as you know, that the oil fields are mostly out of production, and they're relying – most of the gasoline used domestically is actually refined and brought in from Italy. They're in a precarious state, it's trickling down to everything, it's a procterostate, and so you basically get people who were benefiting from smuggling and bringing out gasoline, and now it's very hard times. I can imagine in the future, but right now, I would say transportation is probably what they are primarily doing. So, sorry, another round of questions, so three, and then Dr. Musmidi. So we'll start with the lady in blue, yep. Hi, I'm Ruth Sherlock from the Telegraph, and thank you so much for a fantastic presentation. I was wondering, on the question of ISIS and Libya, looking at how they evolved and as you very well explained so well, you know, that a lot of this was an organic evolution of people who had domestic reasons for joining ISIS, if you like, for poverty and displacement. So, looking at the solutions of how to manage ISIS, there's been reports of increased military involvement of the US looking at escalating sort of airstrikes in the region. I'd like to know sort of what your thoughts are on how useful that would be in stopping the ISIS threat. Yeah, what can be done, I guess, is my question. Hi, thank you for an excellent presentation. I'm not a busacook with the National Endowment for Democracy, and actually my question is tying to exactly what you introduced, the topic of ISIS in Libya. For Rebecca, can you give us a sense of what the numbers are? I mean, I've read anywhere between 3,000 to 5,000. I know these are very political politicized, but what's your sense on that? Second, what is the breakdown of nationality of these societies in Libya? In other words, how many of them, what percentages are foreign nationals versus Libyan? I've read reports that it's upwards of 65% of foreign nationals. And then to go further, amongst the foreign nationals, what is the ranking there? The majority of them are coming from Tunisia, from Algeria, Morocco, Yemen. And if it is from neighboring North African countries, then what are our strategies? And this is for the rest of the panelists, but Amy and Dadya, and I will also have a moment. What strategies can foreign security forces within these respective countries do to control the traveling of the movement of their nationals into Libya for training purposes? And lastly, on to the point of international intervention. There's been a lot of talk about this. We've seen the attack on the training camps about that last week. What interventions will this have for the rest of the panelists? I've had them at Harvard University at Rebecca. I'm wondering if there's something we're in the context of how I see this. There's so many ways in which we're pivoted, and I usually act on the language. And then there's Amy and Dadya. And the fact that they seem to be a team in music and in people who were privileged, and who now have lost a very, a kind of access to their music, so some of that will be at the point. Yeah. Good morning. My name is Radwan Mishmoudi with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. My question is about Tunisia, and specifically the role of the U.S. and the EU in helping Tunisia, or lack thereof. Why do we always are willing to pay billions of dollars in wars, especially against ISIS and other groups? But when it comes to helping Tunisia, the only success story out of the Arab Spring, to offer an alternative to ISIS, to show that democracy is possible, to give hope to young people, to give them economic growth and prosperity and all that, then we find nothing or close to nothing. The very minimal help that Tunisia has received in the last five years really has hampered the ability of the government to offer help. We can all say that there is a strategy, that there is no strategy. In fact, there are many strategies, but there are no means. The Tunisian state is broke, has no means to create anything. And then the three hits, the three attacks on tourism last year, basically destroyed the tourism industry, which used to employ 400,000 people in Tunisia. So that adds at least 200,000 or 300,000 unemployed people since last year. And then say, why the government needs a strategy? The government cannot do it. And the problem is getting worse. And the West is doing nothing, instead of helping. And just as an example, the Tunisian army is very small, does not have equipment. Its equipment is from the 50s and the 60s. And it's only 40,000 people. Tiny army with very tiny equipment. And doesn't even have helicopters that work. So, I mean, there is very little support for Tunisia. And this cannot continue, otherwise we're going to lose the fight against ISIS. Not only in the Middle East, but also in North Africa. Thank you. Any questions on Algeria from the audience? Alright, so there is one, and then there is... Yeah, let's start with... Thank you. This question is, of course, for Dalia. She talked about the leadership. I think my question would be about the leadership in particular, the leadership in the intelligence services. As she knows, as most people know, recently the world is shaken up in the hierarchy of that intelligence service. And of course, we know from studies of people like Jeremy Kennan that they do play a major role in what happens in the Sahara region. I wonder if she can comment on that. And what layer ahead, given the fact that a person who was there for a long, long time. Thank you, James Cohen from US Institute of Peace. Thank you for the great presentation. On Algeria, I'm wondering if you could give an assessment, Dalia, and Amy, on the quality of the relationship for security between Algeria and Tunisia. And Algeria playing a larger role in Tunisia. Junior partner, is it cooperative? Is it Algeria calling the shots? Is it part of this continuous? And then for Dalia as well, and maybe also Amy, where does Morocco fit into this other than the difficult relationship between Algeria and Morocco? Do they see themselves as quite far apart from the other concerns, or do they see a potential creeping of concerns through the region? Also the connection between, or a disclosed connection, or different assessments of the connection, but the narco-terrorist alliance, or convenience alliance, as some people say, and how that plays into that. Thank you. So I guess we'll just end the way we started. So we go with Dalia, and then Amy and Rebecca. We'll end this panel with that. Thank you for the question. I'm not sure I get all of it, but I will answer, and if you have any addition, do not hesitate. Regarding the leadership and the shake-ups that the colleague talked about the DRS, you know, I do believe that these shake-ups between codes are more aesthetical than real structural change. And I wrote a piece for WPR World Politics Reviews in which I give an assessment about the situation. Just to talk about the latest one, let's talk about the dissolution of the DRS in Algeria. I do believe, again, that this is a marketing plan, just as a reminder, the SM, which is the Security Militaire, used to be called the SM, the 90s Algerian government decided to dissolve it and to call it the DRS, that became eventually more powerful. So I do believe that this is what we are witnessing again today. Algerian government and the Pouvoir is very aware of the social and political instability, so this is why they are trying to calm down the situation. The dissolution of the DRS was one of many means. The other was the revision of the constitution. There is also very aesthetic because it doesn't really tell us anything. We do not know who will enforce it, when, how. So this is all very blurry. Regarding the assessment of the security between Algeria and Tunisia, I would say it is co-operative, but Algeria called the shot. Meaning Algeria sees Tunisia as, you know, a buffer from the instability in Libya. So it has all interesting to helping the Tunisian neighbor to beef up its own border. So they've been cooperating a lot. They've been, you know, exchanging military intelligence and information, but again, as I said earlier, I think the insecurity in the Sahel won't be possible without a real cooperation between all the neighbors. If we take, for example, the SEMOC, which stands for comité et un major opérationnel de liaison, it was founded in 2012 and its headquarters were in Paris. If we take just the example of the SEMOC, which was a beautiful initiative, it was wrong in many levels. The first is that it excluded the Tunisia and it excluded Libya, and of course Morocco. How do you want to have security in the region if you do exclude your other neighbors? Of course the SEMOC also said that they will have regional patrol to control the border. But that regional patrol was never, was never established. We are still waiting for it today. So there is really a lack of trust. There is this feud between Morocco and Algeria that is going on and on and on. And I think the security in the Sahel won't find any solution, except if these all countries really will sit on the table and decide to solve the problem. Also one last point is that, you know, Algeria is, how can I say that? Algeria, you know, has this opposite incentive. It wants to fight Akim and a different other group in the Sahel. But it knows also that if it gets rid of all of them, once for all, it will lose its strategic and pivotal security role. So this is very hard for Algeria to decide to take. Thank you. Well, I think Dalia said it very well. There is cooperation between Tunisia and Algeria on border security. It is Algeria that calls the shots. In many respects it is very interesting that Algeria overall has played, I would say, a fairly constructive role in Tunisia's democratic transition. It has actually not been a spoiler. A spoiler that many expected, given how some thought that the Algerian authorities might feel very, very threatened, not only by a democratic, a grassroots democratic revolution in its smaller neighbor, but also, of course, by an Islamist party and Nahdah coming to power through free and fair elections. I would say in general the Algerian-Tunisian relationship both in terms of border security and more broadly has been relatively constructive. This is something that has been lucky for Tunisia. Tunisia is not so lucky to be going on an eastern border with regard to Libya, but things with Algeria could be a lot worse. With regard to the U.S. and European role in Tunisia, I completely agree with you, Radwan, that the level of support, although it is not nothing, really falls far short of what Tunisia needs and deserves. In some ways I would say it is both perplexing and at the same time, especially Europe. Tunisia is very close to Europe and is extremely important for Europe. Haven't stepped up to do more. However, I also believe that it is not simply a question of resources and pouring in money. Tunisia needs to be a partnership between Tunisia and the donor community and the international community. And I think, in my view, after looking at this issue very closely over the last year, two reforms in Tunisia. Tunisia needs support. I'm not talking about harsh conditions and pressure, but I'm talking about a partnership through which the international community supports Tunisia on these border security and terrorism and economic and other challenges based on an agreed set of changes because you know better than I do that if Tunisia does not reform its security sector, does not change its economic system and does not progress politically, the revolution will have been for nothing and it won't succeed. So it's not just, in my view, about pouring in resources and giving weapons and equipment to the Tunisian military as much as they do need that weapons and equipment. It's really about a process of change, changing how business is done in Tunisia. Great. I'll be brief because I'm mindful of the time. So to one point is actually in Ramadi in Anbar province, Iraq in 2011 the U.S. had just withdrawn troops. I was visiting a security building. We did an interview then back to Baghdad. The next day a bomb was set off at that building a huge bomb and the people who claimed responsibility for that were part of the Sunni tribes in Anbar who had basically been laid off from the America, their special program to pay them and then kind of police their neighborhoods they were feeling extremely marginalized at the time and they have these are the beginnings I would say of perhaps ISIS and if you do look at, you're saying the comparison between Iraq and Libya I think there are a lot of similarities I think a lot of the people who were living in Syria were probably part of Gaddafi's security apparatus and then there are the tribes who just feel that maybe they've been looked over since the revolution and then you combine that with a lot of foreign presence which leads me to the next question I think I have no idea how many people are I I have no idea but I would actually assume there are more rather than less because Ansar Sharia has been on the ground in various different, you know it's not all connected into one chapter but different chapters and whether it's in Benghazi or Ashdabi or Kufro or you know all these different places and I can imagine a lot of them are just turning turning over to ISIS who's better financed than you know this kind of thing I would say that the nationalities that have been quoted to me have been mostly Tunisian and as you pointed out it's all political right so the government in the west may say something different to the government than the government in the east but what I do understand Tunisians are Sudanese people coming from east Africa through the southeast people coming from Tunisia and by the way a lot of times through regular border crossings people keep on saying there could be truth to it that people smugglers also tend to smuggle a lot more things than just people and this could be one way of going through I do know that Tunisia has built a ditch I believe and you get people laughing at that going well we were never going to use it anyway we're just going to go around the border so you have all of these aspects to Ruth's question are US strikes advisable the people I've talked to on the ground is most have been based in west Libya so that makes a difference what I thought was astonishing was how the government the GNC actually said great the US did a strike the more Islamist we should point out where the HOR condemned it I do think issues of sovereignty are huge and the US or anyone else should probably I think strikes are probably not the way to go I think that working on the ground enabling Libyans to claim ownership of this is the best bet the GNA at the moment this unity UN broke a unity government feels very much foisted upon Libyans at the moment Heftar has just made gains in Benghazi in Ajgabiya also doing this past week and I really do feel like the attitude there is Heftar is our leader at the moment he's the best man to combat this however Article 8 is one of these contentious issues inside the GNA agreement that would basically enable or not enable Heftar to gain power is the sticking point especially with the western government they'll say no deal so you've got many various moves to that I would have to say it's going to be a long road either to implementing a GNA even past agreement in by the HUR they then have to move into Tripoli and I don't see how that would happen security wise right now and then the other thing airstrikes, unilateral airstrikes I don't think that the Libyan people will be worried about for very long without feeling again like they're being imposed upon very bad way Thank you very much with this we're going to enter this path before you joining me in thanking our three distinguished panelists we'll have a very very short break through June at 11 for the second part