 If everyone could be seated please, if we could get everyone's attention. Good afternoon everybody. I'm Bobby McKenzie, I'm the founding director of the Muslim Diaspora Initiative here at New America. And on behalf of New America, I want to welcome you and thank you for coming to today's discussion on two new reports by the Omran Center. Launches of this kind are fairly typical in Washington D.C. What is not so typical is having two reports written by Syrian Americans who are running organizations that are doing an enormous amount of good to try and improve the lives of Syrians both in Syria and in the neighboring states. And I just want to take a minute to highlight first an organization known as ARC, the American Relief for Syria. This is an organization or this is an umbrella organization that includes 13 Syrian American humanitarian organizations. In 2015 they raised 51 million from private donors and another 71 million in grants. That's not an insignificant amount of money. With these resources they helped 6 million displaced persons, 120 schools, and they reached nearly 150 hospitals. They've done work in the frontline states, namely Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, and also more recently in Europe. So these organizations have stepped up at a time when Syria has gone through enormous tumultuous transition. Syria is by any standard an engine of enormous suffering. Half of the country has been displaced, half a million people have lost their lives. There are now 5 million Syrian refugees who are in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey with no end in sight. And so I am thrilled to introduce today Dr. Amar Koff and Yasir Tabara. They are the co-founders of the Omran Center for Strategic Studies. And just to put their organization in perspective within the wider ARCs organization, they have raised and distributed over $34 million in 2016 alone and 75 million in both aid and development since 2013. So they have provided enormous support to both Syrians and displaced Syrians, but also refugees in the frontline states. And it's worth noting just two more points here that I think are important is that they employ almost entirely Syrians. They employ around 1,100 individuals. And they told me earlier today that of that 1,100 only two are non-Syrians. It's not that they're discriminating but they're trying to do everything that they can to tap into the knowledge and expertise of Syrians but also empower Syrians to be the masters of their own destiny as much as reasonably possible. And I also was thrilled to hear that because of their efforts in Turkey, they have created 7,500 jobs in Turkey. That is no small feat. So I'm going to briefly introduce each one. They're going to come up here one by one. They are going to say some really smart things. But I'm going to ask that you hold off on questions until the very end. So first, Dr. Amar Kauff is going to come up and give a presentation. He is the executive director of the Amaran Center for Strategic Studies and the board member of the Syrian Forum, an organization that seeks to empower Syrians to take control of their own lives. He earned a PhD in political science from UCLA. His dissertation was entitled Syrian authoritarianism, persistence or change. And he has also served as the chief of staff to the secretary general of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces in 2012 and 2013. Following Dr. Amar, we're going to have Yasir Tabara who's going to come up and give a presentation. The second report, he is the board member of the Amaran Center for Strategic Studies and a strategic and legal advisor to the Syrian Forum. He has earned a JD or his doctorate from DePaul University in Chicago and is a practicing attorney in civil rights and international law and a managing partner at the Chicago based firm ZKT Law. I want to welcome both of them and I want to thank them for their leadership and their tremendous efforts to try and improve the lives of Syrians who have both been displaced but also refugees. Part of my initiative, the Muslim diaspora initiative is to try and identify less suits to use a crude term in DC and more folks who have deep knowledge and expertise and network like they have. And I'm really delighted now to introduce and to bring forth Dr. Amar. So please welcome. Thank you. Hello everyone. Good morning. So I'll be looking a little bit to the screen if you don't mind so I can share a few thoughts this morning with you. I will be speaking on security governance in Syria. There has been several attempts previously to look at the security sector in Syria and how it will transform during the transitional period and how do you tie this into the new context and the new realities on the ground. We at the Oman Center assembled a task force of former security agents of experts and have been working on this since last summer and have issued our first study which is with you today and also the additional study which is a shorter one that we have issued to look at the evolving new security realities post 2011. So the context of this all is that there has been a narrative or a perspective that is perhaps more idealistic and more wishful thinking type of dismantling and of those types of approaches that have called for a complete revamping of the entire system and although most Syrians would actually aspire to look for that many understand the realities today in the region and the need for a true security transition of those while preserving the structure of the archive many of the experiences that the Syrian security agencies in addition to the evolving security agencies within the opposition within the Kurdish areas, within some of the semi-type self-governing areas in the south also in the minority Druze areas in Sweden. So there has been some evolving realities on the ground and this required us to actually present a more of a pragmatic type of an approach that calls for a gradual but systematic change in terms of the doctrine, the philosophy of the security, the function of security itself from a doctrine of controlling society and controlling the minds and lives of the people to actually preserving security and preserving the, you know, promoting peace, civil peace but also countering terrorism and many of the security experiments within the opposition areas have been perhaps one of the most successful encountering violent extremism. So I'll start very quickly with some of the roles of the security agents in Syria has had in the past and this is very important to put this in context of why it is important to actually implement this change in the, in any type of negotiated settlement or any type of an agreement whether Geneva 5, 6 or 7 or 15 at any type of an agreement between the Russians and the Americans there has to be an agreement on a new security architecture that actually preserves the regional stability and this is what the regime has been very utilizing its many security apparatuses to actually destabilize the region to actually, you know, whenever there is pressure on the regime they would put people in jail whenever there is they want to impose some sort of security imbalances in the region they'd let go of thousands and thousands of prisoners and those end up in ISIS controlled areas and so there has to be a look at a real practical experience whether those agencies today serve the stability internally but also regionally in the regional stability this is a very, very, very simple type or simplistic type of what the current regime security structure looks like you have many dotted lines because there are four main agencies officially at least those are the military intelligence, the air force, the general intelligence and also the political security some report to the interior ministry, some to the defense ministry all have access to the president directly and all also report to something called the National Security Bureau Maktab al-Amin al-Watani which is headed today by Ali Mamluk we looked in our study in terms of how those four main official agencies have many branches that overlap one another that actually spy on one another that have overlapping jurisdictions that aim towards actually controlling the public sphere controlling politics controlling the thoughts and minds and there's just this great saying in the Middle East not just in Syria where the walls have ears and so this is, and then you have these auxiliary type of institutions whether it be on the security and military networks also official or semi-official something that stems, there is a security apparatus that stems from the Republican Guard from the Fourth Army Division the new Tiger forces that have appeared recently and also the auxiliary you have the Bath Party has also security apparatuses that operate in the 14th provinces and it's very important to look at this very wide network in every province there is something called a security commission that's headed by representatives from the four main official offices but also headed by the governor and also by the Bath Party branch in those governors and so you have this very complicated network there is absolute powers ordained by laws and the constitution awarding full immunity for any security agency to operate without being questioned and this is in the constitution but also in many of the presidential decrees and many of which are not allowed to be published for public distribution you have a competing sense of loyalty between these agencies so each agency trying to compete by having their loyalty to the head of the regime and this is where they have access to submit reports to straight directly to the president bypassing the minister, bypassing the Central Intelligence Bureau and straight to the head of the regime you have a compounded fear between the security forces impacting society and impacting each other actually in terms of this compound fear complex you have duties related to the ruling so there is this doctrine in Syria in the security agencies that their main objective is to actually protect and promote the head of the regime and that's why many of those agencies actually four but practically over 18 agencies it's more important of the person who's heading those agencies and not necessarily the institution sometimes the head could be a weak person from a weak family in the Alawite mounds and so the deputy would actually have much more power than its head and even sometimes the head is not important deputies might not important and the bath party security type office would be the one that's calling the shots today not many people defected from the security agencies because those are actually the ones that have been in charge of leading the opposition or the uprising file and those are the ones that have been commanding the military units that are striking at opposition or at civilians all over Syria and so there has been very minimal perhaps not more than 50 defected individuals from high offices within the security agencies there's an objective of restricting political activity to the minimum there's an exhausting and overwhelming human capacity and bureaucratic structures there's this thing called commission so you could be commissions outside of the HR books basically from one agency from one ministry to be commissioned to the security agency and there's this cross commissioning of individuals that are basically commissioned to go and serve in other agencies the Air Force Intelligence for example is mostly commissioners by members of the armed forces that are commissioned to become Air Force Intelligence and this is perhaps the most security agency that has committed crimes in the last six years the Air Force Intelligence and mostly unfortunately composed by one sectarian group that represents the Syrian population and that's also part of our study was looking at the composition of who controls power within those agencies and who are the ones that call the shots who are the ones that control the strategy if at any there was a strategy so there's like three layers of control within those agencies today one is again the official then the networks and then the auxiliary institutions there's a corrupt doctrine there's this security philosophy that is not a sustainable type of philosophy that is not able to survive itself after any type of transition and this is why it's important that any type of a settlement in Geneva or outside of Geneva has to include a security component not just to protect the West from refugee outflow and ISIS but also to protect the regional outflow of any type of security risk is that there has to be a security architecture tied in with any type of a political settlement there's this ad hoc provision overlapping legalizing legalized repression by law sectarianism is a very important element within the security architecture today in Syria these are there's this isolated type of islands within the security agencies that no one can touch are untouchables this is how today the security agencies basically commissioned security functions to new militias within the regime and this is when you talk about fragmentation of the Syrian opposition in western media look at the fragmentation of the regime where now it has no ability to actually take back those functions and so past we're not only talking about before prior to 2011 but also the last six years what has happened what has taken place is that the regime has decentralized many of those functions has awarded local militias the full control of those regions and those are just a few samples basically of some of those militias some are Syrians some are local Syrian Shias Syrian Palestinian militias today we look at a new reality at zones of control zones of influence you have military control layers if you look at the map and basically those controlled by perhaps the US in the northeast with the SDF Syrian Democratic Forces you have the southern front controlled by the military operation room in Jordan mostly Jordan and the US but also some other countries that finance that you have the Euphrates shielded in the north you have Idlib and the other areas that are very contested by many groups in those areas and it's not really a one-sided type of a control you have no monopoly over security functions who operates as a security agency in Syria is it the regime, is it the opposition I think it's a very fragmented and there's no monopoly at this point today so there is a lack of central authority and also this supports and weakening the security architecture all over Syria what we proposed maybe this could be called a very idealistic but perhaps a very practical type of an approach is that those four main agencies in Syria need to be cut down to a central security agency that has like a national public security agency a domestic arm and a foreign intelligence arm the military intelligence has to be merged with the Air Force Intelligence Agency and all should be today on paper they claim to be reporting to the Defense Ministry but in reality they don't and so they need to be strictly reporting to the Defense Ministry and strictly with a mandate of only protecting the armed forces and the bases and the related military apparatuses and not being involved in the politics not being involved in the civilian type in the civilian life of the people so we looked at scenarios of an ad hoc type of transition or an orderly type or semi-orderly type and this also needs to be looked at geographically is it going to be taking place at the same pace and speed all over the geography of Syria or is it going to happen at different phases in different regions so perhaps today that you're afraid to shield the Turkish controlled basically zone has initiated and established security agencies in the north the southern front has a security arm the SDF forces the self-administration or the northern federal self-declared federalism also has those agencies so how do we control how do you transition this into a future type where you have some sort of functions of security that are awarded to the periphery the localized governance structures and some that need to be kept in a central level those are the type of engagements and negotiations that need to take place actually so a sustainable transition process must be accompanied by a systematic change in those security services this is if we want a sustainable peace process if we want something that would work more than a day and then break out this is where a step-by-step approach whereby let's do just the ceasefire and then we figure out about the next steps is a very problematic approach because it doesn't deal with the realities on the ground with the risks, with the threats that are causing this very fragmented scene to actually not become uncontrollable and this is where it's important to have this deep connection between the security reform process and the Geneva or the internationally led process of transition positive engagement is required from both international and regional actors you can't leave one out of the picture because there are many spoilers as we see perhaps the most internationalized conflict that we have seen in the region there should be some monopoly in the central state has certain functions controlled by the center but there should be also the new reality of Syria as a decentralized reality at least in the governance and the local administration and this is what Yasser will speak in the next session that certain functions need to be so in Jarablus in the Euphrates shield in the north today they have a local police that reports and gets their salaries paid by the local council the local governance council and then they have a security agency that reports to the military at this point and will transition into a new security agency in those regions in the south in the southern front there's also a similar type of structure that's evolving in the regime controlled areas it's becoming even more fragmented and fragmented that it's become very much uncontrolled and this is where the Russian proposal to do a fifth brigade and try and join some of those militias together to reap any benefits in my opinion or my assessment and so it's important that there should be some attempts to make some sense and consolidate many of those agencies and basically the regime is unable from a functional type from a very pragmatic, sustainable type of an approach not an idealistic opposition type of an approach from a very need-based approach the regime is unable to make this balance unable to control those because it has let go it has given them so much power that they become a life of its own in the reality today one of our assumptions today is that there are one of the very beginning assumptions of our studies that there will be a severe resistance by those agencies and those agencies won't just give in and say okay I'm going to come and reform because any reform to them means that they're going to give up power and this is very threatening it's an existential threat to them and so this has to be forced somehow by a mutual type of an agreement on the political level and then implemented in a gradual process in a three stage that we propose in our study so transitioning to this new security structure there's a new doctrine that needs to be developed and this is not developed from day one but it has to evolve at least the path, the track has to be set in the early stages of negotiation and not just leave it to A, the Syrians will discuss it later on once they have a new constitution because it has a very strong spoiling effect in any type of settlement there's the need for professional training there's the need to have transitional justice tied into this there needs to be a rehabilitation of the entire structure of the security agencies the objectives of this future security agency has to maintain that it will protect the citizens first and not the persons heading those to state and it has to preserve state institutions and so the entire study that we're proposing is actually promoting the preservation of state institutions and not the regime that's controlling and that has hijacked those state institutions this is one of our premises, the assumptions of our study there needs to be a developing of professional capacities working with many organizations that have worked on developing the real professionalism and not having security agencies with you talk about the Air Force intelligence the highest degree is perhaps high school degree in there and this doesn't mean that we're minimizing the level of intelligence but you're talking about high ranking officials that really have no clue what in the early stages of the uprising you get stopped at one of those checkpoints and they tell you do you have Facebook with you this is the amount of, and this is 2011 this is not 10 years ago when Facebook was not very much known this is high ranking official saying do you have Facebook with you as if it's a thing that you carry with you and this needs to be a synchronization and collaboration with the justice sector so one of the results of our study is that we look at the security sector per se and we don't see a security sector in a definition type sector in Syria we see security apparatuses that are operating in a very complex web of a network and this network basically doesn't operate as a sector a sector has a definition, a textbook definition at least of a synchronized type of relationships of an engagement with the justice sector with judicial system you have the role of civil society organizations as a watchdog, as looking over the process of transparent you have a congressional parliamentary type oversight you have this type of separation of powers and this doesn't exist obviously in the Syrian case so what we propose in our study is a three stage type of an approach or three phases starting with the initial basically set of laws and constitutional declarations so in whether there is a new constitution or a declaration of the constitution there has to be some stipulations some statements pertaining to the security basically an incorporation the rebalance basically merging as I mentioned the military intelligence and the armed force intelligence merging the political security with the general intelligence into one agency those are the type of approaches that need to be done the early on stages some of the people need to be stationed in their bases so as to avoid furthering the bloodshed of what's happening and then the next stage would perhaps be a more structural development and developing the institution, the sector itself both in terms of human capacity but also in terms of the structure of the organization and how it operates the internal procedures and processes the first site of the parliament or Majid Shah and then you have the third stage perhaps very complex, I'm very simplifying a long process of security sector the third phase would be constructing the remaining components of a security sector of a healthy security sector and establishing complementary work conditions between security sector and civil society this is a long process but it has to start at least in the beginning first alphabets, the first elements of a security architecture within any type of settlement or resolution and again this is for practical reasons to make sure that this war doesn't break at any moment in the future and that at least you'll maintain the minimum required type of stability and security during the transitional period and I thank you very much for your attention good afternoon, thank you for having me thank you for New America and Dr. McKenzie for the introduction and for New America for hosting us my name is Yasser Tabata I'm going to be covering the second study that is the subject matter of today's talk but before I do that I wanted to make a couple of quick points about general points about perhaps the relevance of what we're talking about and about our perspective as a Syrian think tank the Umbran Center for Strategic Studies is part of a larger umbrella organization called the Syrian Forum as mentioned by Dr. McKenzie and the approach of the Syrian Forum a 100% Syrian organization is to perhaps bring back the agency of Syrian people against very very insurmountable odds in a very internationalized conflict and context and bring back some of the agency back to the hands of Syrians and try to empower them as much as possible we work on empowering the Syrian individual the Syrian civil society actor and the Syrian local governing council these are the three main elements of what we do the other thing that we really need to make clear as an upset of any presentation is the fact that the Umbran Center and the Syrian Forum has this approach or makes this vital distinction between the Syrian regime and the Syrian state and its institutions these are distinctions that the Syrian opposition in general has been described unfairly as incapable of making and I submit to you that there has been work over the past six years of many of the opposition actors including the Syrian Forum as a civil society actor and the Umbran Center for Syrian Study where we make that distinction we are vehemently against the criminality and the practices and the existence of the Syrian regime led by the shadow asset in this cohort but we are very much a pro the preservation of state institutions in Syria and we feel that that is very extremely important in terms of a viable sustainable political process moving forward and I think the nexus of what we have to say today and to what is taking place nowadays in terms of the latest semi-clarification if you will of the American New American Administration's position or plan on Syria obviously nothing is clear yet but that the missile attack against the Shahrat airport in Homs as a retaliatory measure against the chemical attack committed by the Assad regime provides some measure of clarification on where we are going and so within that context we see perhaps the administration is pushing towards again sitting back at the table and forcing Assad and his allies to reasonably come to the table and talk about a sustainable political process that we could move forward where prior to that there has been talk about rehabilitation of the Assad regime as a potential partner in the reconstruction efforts of Syria and so we feel that this is a major turning point and as such what we have to present basically becomes even more relevant and as my colleague Dr. Ammar Qahaf mentioned there is a major need for there are Syrians right now that have been working on very practical issues of talking about reforming the security sector in Syria talking about empowering local governance and these are the two main files that we chose as the Amran Center and as Syrians to present or to work on for the past few years and then to present our work to show that there is another way there are others, there are many others that are working on very specific files and digging in the trenches and being on the ground and observing and coming up with recommendations in terms of moving forward that we really need to heed these types of recommendations and so if anything if we are to you know come away with any particular idea what we want to assert to you today in terms of local governance is that for the past six years there has been a local semi-democratic or democratic governance experiment and experiences that have been taking place in areas that are not controlled by the Syrian region, by the Assad region and that experiment and these experiences are incredibly important tools to build on moving forward and I don't think many people talk about these experiences and we wanted to shed some lights on them so my presentation is going to go through three main parts we will talk about local administration councils LAC stands for local administration councils distribution in Syria in all of Syria so the areas that are controlled by the regime and the areas that are not controlled by the regime the areas that are controlled by the Kurdish forces and ISIS and other actors as well and then we will do an overview of the local administration councils and the opposition areas because that is sort of our specialty that's where we have our researchers and producing these types of studies and results and then the third final section is the local administration council position positions on some very important issues that are taking place as we speak so this is the map of Syria and as if it could not be more complex than this it actually can and it actually is so what you see here is in terms of color coding the military control the groups that control these areas militarily and so if we are to even be more accurate we would even include different areas of control here in terms of American presence, in terms of Russian presence here and in Afrin the yellow part supposedly is the Syrian democratic forces or SDF which are mostly controlled by YPG Kurdish militias and then the green areas are generally those armed opposition actors some of them include some areas include areas that are controlled by Nusrah which we do not count in terms of our studies as quote-unquote opposition and then you have the red areas that are controlled by quote-unquote regime forces which again is not very accurate because the areas that are supposedly controlled by the regime have been controlled by many different actors including many local warlords that belong to that manage militias that are allied with the regime and that belong to the regime super structure and then you have areas that are controlled by Hezbollah and then areas that are controlled by Daesh, by ISIS another layer of all of this and that is the administrative layer so all of this discusses the military sort of type of control areas and then you have areas for example in Idlib where some of the areas that are controlled by Nusrah are not controlled by Nusrah administratively they are controlled perhaps just militarily but then Nusrah came to the realization that they could not engage in the management of affairs of people and again due to a lot of populist resistance and demand against the Nusrah local councils were established in these areas and then you have other examples of different layers of control administrative versus civilian administrative versus militarized all in all in areas that are controlled by the opposition there are 406 councils prior to 2016 that number was larger but as the regime and the Kurdish forces and others took over some of the areas that are controlled by the opposition that number dwindled and that is sort of our universe Ambran Center's universe in terms of tapping into we have you know people on the ground we have researchers we have surveyors that have conducted many surveys and produced a lot of the studies that were producing a summary of today so in terms of a comparative analysis between the nature of local administration in areas that are controlled by the opposition versus areas that are controlled by more extreme actors and then we we have four main basically comparisons that's how we're describing local administration all of Syria so you have areas that are controlled by the PYD Kurdish forces and then you have local councils or local administration on the regime control areas going back to the opposition areas in 2012 as a state institutional vacuum basically was produced because of the lack of military control by the regime activists basically came together in areas and decided to form coordinating bodies decided to form bodies that would govern the affairs of people on the ground and that's sort of the grassroots nature of the the commencement of local governance in Syria and so we had many different experiments or experiences where you had areas that had a semi-elective process some areas that had direct elections some areas were appointed by had appointments of the main actors in the area to govern their affairs but all in all as under resource and underfunded and chaotic as it was it was the first time in Syrian history in over 50 years where you had local democratic experiment local democratic practices that never existed under the Assad dynasty prior where under our group areas the more extreme ones you have limited legitimacy you have ideological sort of type of objectives in terms of domination in terms of control and administration you have militarized governance similar to that of the regime of these areas we felt necessary to also include the Kurdish areas and what sort of local administration structure they have just in comparison to the general context and the opposition areas and as we know it's a very polarizing political discourse that's a lot of the Kurdish militias that are controlling that use especially in areas that have majority air populations with the exception of the canton of Ifrin there is a record of very poor management in terms of areas that are controlled by the Kurdish militias contrary to popular belief and then you have the areas that are controlled by the regime where you have a decreasing centralized control and then you have more chaos and more sort of security type of governance empowered by local warlords that belong to the network of militias that are allied with the regime this is just a based on one of the Ombran center studies I think you have that study outside basically that went through the 406 councils and determined the percentages of how they came to being in terms of the process and so 38% were actually the result of a direct election we have astounding experiments of a peaceful transition of power for example in Aleppo prior to it being overtaken by the regime and its allies and then we have Idlib is another example of several cycles of transition of power between councils that have been democratically elected and then you have 57% that were put together by consensus and then only 5% are appointments or activist individual efforts the general overview of the local councils these are the different layers that local councils belong to and they tend to be parallel to the structure that the administrative structure that existed prior to the revolution they are at the neighborhood level the municipal level, the village level and then the city level and then above that you have the governance level there are 14 governance in Syria as discussed before the emergence of these local councils came through the vacuum and through the realization that something needs to be filled in terms of this is again another study that was conducted by Ombran these are indicators or trends that we identified in 2016 and 2017 in terms of the trends of the local governance in general is moving forward in opposition areas you have a great level of inclusion participation from activists to technocrats you have participatory processes such as elections and so forth and then you have access you have transparency, you have relative access and transparency that was not there before these are perceptions back to the study that has been conducted that surveyed many councils about how many councils were surveyed in this study 105 councils that were surveyed across Syria these are the perceptions of people to the role of these local councils so you have 57% of people that were surveyed say that the role of local councils has been to provide direct services in terms of picking up the trash and maintaining schools and wash programs and then 42% basically say that they have both political and service roles in terms of taking political positions, issuing political statements talking to armed actors in the area in terms of how these locals want to manage their affairs only 1% saw their role as political which is very interesting for us this is the general functionality of these are the areas that local councils have been working through and then perhaps as an access to what Dr. Kahf was talking about in his presentation one of the services or one of the functions that were identified through surveying both the councils and the people that were governed by the councils is a security provision section which is heavily local and and happens to be in collaboration with other local entities by establishing local police or other current trends you have since 2012 2011 until 2017 you have a rising trend of expanding the provision of services by these local councils to the populations there is a move from just providing immediate relief to actually investing in infrastructure despite a lot of the aerial bombardment and a lot of really terrible conditions that they are working on there is a trend of focusing on long term infrastructure development the sort of the more negative aspects is that they still are heavily dependent on external funding although they are trying to move in the direction of revenue collection and we have a few successful experiments in that direction like local taxation and things like that in exchange for basic services they have played a major role in housing a lot of the IDPs the internally displaced Syrians that you hear about whether it's through a lot of the bombardment, aerial bombardment by the Assad regime and their allies or by the ceasefire agreements that are brokered between the regime and their allies in some of the opposition areas where you have internal displacements and demographic shifts so some of the local councils have been playing a crucial role in terms of managing the affairs of the IDPs they have an increasing political role at the provincial level at the governance level and then they develop new localised packs let me skip this because it was sort of covered I'm running out of time these are the three main this is the last part of the presentation these are the three main issues that were identified in terms of political friends of the role of local councils in the political process in any political process so the majority of the sample that we took supports the higher negotiations committee which is the body that is representing the opposition and the perspective in Geneva talks the majority agree that Bashar al-Assad and his circle of people who are responsible for the industrial scale criminality that has been committed in Syria the main issue of preventing the success of any negotiations and then more than two thirds of the sample preferred a more unified governing structure but with now an administrative decentralisation so as you know the decentralisation spectrum could be very wide anywhere from very light administrative federalism to a very heavy political terrorism and so the majority tended to go to the right of that spectrum closer to the right of that spectrum about 70% actually in terms of again access back to what's taking place and these are going to be my closing remarks the local administration councils and local governance in general has a very crucial role to play the local governance experiment really has to be looked at very closely at least in the areas that are controlled by the opposition forces and that could be used as building blocks in terms of assuring a semi-aquasi stable political transition in some of the areas that they control right now we have a de facto federalism where we have the de facto zones of influence that divide Syria and so a lot of the political discourse that we hear out there is all about the unity of Syria and bringing Syria back together local councils can be the tools to really stitch back that fragmented structure in very small sustainable long-term steps in terms of providing basic services in terms of strengthening the civil peace process between areas that belong between councils that belong on border areas between two different zones of influence for example we've seen them play a crucial role in brokering and maintaining they could play a major role in terms of transitional justice in terms of truth and reconciliation in terms of providing local security and disarmament of some of the local groups that govern militarily they could generally promote the political process that we all want to see Syria going in the direction of and these are some of the numbers that you see in the study in terms of what are the percentages of support or lack of support for the points that I've mentioned earlier so in order for us to have some form of a sustainable transition that really deals with the complexity of the Syrian context and what has been taking place on the ground at least in the areas that are controlled by the opposition we really need to look at this experiment this experiment can play a crucial role in terms of countering violent extremism in various areas it has been the catalyst of pushing away a lot of the Qaeda groups and a lot of the ISIS groups and a lot of the affiliated groups to these armed actors and as such it needs to be looked at we're not offering any instant solutions as some would like but at least we want to start the conversation on the importance the vital importance of the local governance experience that has been taking place over six years in order for us to build on it and move forward. Thank you so much for listening I apologize for making it long Omar, yeah sir thank you both very much for those very detailed presentations I'm going to kick it off here with a few questions but I should add before beginning that this event today was planned long in advance of the horrific chemical gas attacks last week and the reason I point that out is because these guys and their organization have been scope locked on trying to think about two big issues governance and security and sort of what happens when there is peace the day after and so let me just start with sort of a big question two blocks away from the White House is this administration ways its options if there's one big idea you have for them to think about the day after what should they be focused on what is that one big idea well as mentioned earlier the fact that there has been a local governance reality on the ground in Syria that provides potentially the essential tools to build on in terms of an electoral process that builds from the ground up that you could build on in terms of keeping any form of peace agreements that could be built on in terms of being a tool to fight extremism in some of these areas so that local governance experiment has to be looked upon very carefully I would say that there are reliable interlocutors there are Syrian American advocacy groups that have been very successful and there are experiences on the ground that cannot be overlooked and repeating the mistakes of neighboring countries should not be done in Syria for the mere fact that it will backfire on everyone you mentioned that today that there are 406 local committees can you give us a sense of how does the regime view these committees compared to say the opposition to ISIS to other groups how is the regime responding to them they form a direct threat to the philosophy of governing Syria for the past 50 years Syria has been governed with a very iron fist that has not allowed for any local participation of grassroots participation whatsoever and so these local councils these local governing bodies have been a manifestation of a democratic experiment and so that I think presents a major threat to the Assad regime so but I would have to add as well that any political process that moves forward that potentially naturally will have to bring some actors from the side of the regime that were not involved in the direct bloodshed would be interested these actors would be interested in bringing some form of centralization or some form of unity to Syria and these very actors that are very local could also be utilized to actually stitch back that fabric together that has been torn for the past six years to that point let me ask both of you this idea of organic local organizations that have sprung up as the result of the uprising and as you've mentioned that they are democratic to some extent and they are taking place at a very local level so they understand a full range of issues do you feel that the international community is engaging them to the degree that they should because it just seems like these are the kinds of organizations that could really provide deep knowledge and not just a political solution but also a way forward sort of the day after it's very important to first look at those formings not as organizations not as social gatherings or social clubs not as NGOs not as relief organizations but as local governance structures that represent the people that are able to manifest local government and local state institutions on the local level so this is perhaps a perception change that needs to be or a paradigm shift that needs to be worked upon and this I think changes the reality when you treat them as NGOs you give them aid or you award them there is no recognition here and it's very important to recognize that there is legitimacy rising from the elections legitimacy from the bottom up and this is very important for stability open it up to the audience now I just ask that you state your name please so the gentleman in the back we're going to bring you a microphone thank you I'm case Bouchard National Endowment for Democracy thank you for your presentation I have a question for Dr. Amarkov in terms of security sector consolidation and reform there are as you said a lot of presence of foreign militias now in the country and it seems that there is sort of a plan to make them a more permanent fixture within the country is there any way back in terms of reconciliating in only Syrian presence thank you I mean foreign fighters I don't think there is any way sustainable to actually integrate them into any DDR or projects but I think perhaps local militias need to be somehow included not those that performed crimes against humanity which is the majority on many sides of the aisle but many of them need to be integrated in future military structures security architectures but also local police local intelligence and so forth but foreign fighters really have no those are the destabilization elements within Syria and in the entire region and I think there has to be during the process of a settlement perhaps the Russians need to be to guarantee the exit of those elements Chris Davis retired Foreign Service Officer is there a role for the BATH party once the regime is gone thinking back at the experience in Iraq debathification it's very important not to dismantle every institution in Syria and many of the BATH party elements have defected or have sided with the people many of them have not committed crimes against the society and so it's perhaps too early now to detect but I'm at Omran we promote the continuation of those institutions perhaps the isolation of elements that were part of the process of the former regime but an Iraq example I think most Syrians would not want to repeat the same repetition of dismantling the army or the security or the political structures but there need to be an opening of political activity to allow all parties to be participatory into the system we'll start on the side and just maybe work our way around Thank you Steve Landy Manchester trade one always hears the argument on television that if we leave Syria it's going to be an unstable force and we'll end up worse if Assad leaves and the Alewhites will be in deep trouble the Christians and they discuss different minorities my question is that given the spread or the existence of the LACs which seems to be your building block for the future are they in all of the quote different ethnic areas and so on what happened for example in Aleppo when the what happened to the structure in Aleppo when the Syrian army occupied or whatever they happened to have done in other words is this a nationwide structure that we will build on will we start working in very local areas and then trying to expand them to the national area thank you so one of the before answering your question I want to tackle that myth that things could be worse when Assad leaves and it's not an if for us it's a when looking more and more it's truly one of the most destructive myths that have perpetuated the Syrian tragedy and one cannot imagine anything worse than hundreds of people being gassed to death or tens of thousands of detainees that are being tortured as we speak to death in Assad prisons areas that are under siege that have been under siege for months and years demographic shifts the major criminality that's being conducted on innocent civilians through air force and such and so a lot of people invoke the example of Iraq and Libya and we have come to the position or to this point in time in Syria that I could tell you as a Syrian the Libyan scenario actually looks like a very good scenario for me compared to what we have right now and so I wanted to address that particular point in terms of local councils are as building blocks one of the major roles that these local councils can play is the reconciliation of a lot of the differences and so when we see a de facto sort of divided Syria into different zones of influence you'll see that on the borders of these zones of influence you have a number of very important potentially very important local governance structures that could actually engage in some form of reconciliation and peace and we've seen some of these experiments actually take place in terms of these councils that have contributed to the preservation of ceasefire agreements and local stability in terms of I mean there are issues there are definitely sectarian issues and there's definitely sectarian undertone for a lot of the discourse that is being used but we see it more at the level of the militarized factions more of the armed factions as opposed to the civilian structures that are governing the bodies I mean we've seen a lot of excellent examples of coexistence for example and Homs our deputy director of the local council one of the Syrian forums main partners in conducting this work in supporting local councils is a Christian from Wahr and he was a member he was one of many members of the local council in that area there are several examples of Christians or Ismailis that are members of a lot of these council for example the councils in Latakia have played a very crucial role in Northern Latakia and Northern Latakia was with the opposition militarily played a very crucial role in terms of maintaining a peaceful and quiet relationship with their Alawites villages and counterparts in the areas that are controlled by the regime so yes this could be an experiment that we could build on for sure is it going to be incredibly complex and complicated absolutely but give me solutions that's what we're trying to do here thank you very much Michael Kurtzig retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and worked on food security issues in the Middle East so my question is does your study look at food security economic security jobs like this particularly with political side because this side could be even more important to feed the people to make sure that the economy functions thank you not in the study that I presented today but at Omran we have a track for economic development studies that with local administration so we have issued a report on water security on food security last year in 2016 and we definitely look at the security question in a comprehensive type of an approach that includes societal security economic security and the hard security type of approach that I presented today Namo Abdullah, journalist with Rudolph what are your thoughts on PYD's experience of governance in northern Syria in the Kurdish region of Syria some people believe that it has maintained a high degree of stability and order a higher degree of stability and order compared to much of the rest of the country do you see it as a model for Syria do you agree with the argument that Syria has to be partitioned along ethno-sectarian lines thank you there is a problem in the governance structures in northeast Syria controlled by PYD or YPJ or Syrian Democratic Forces is that there is contested legitimacy within the Kurdish population that most of the Kurdish society does not agree with the governance structure that is actually controlled by non-Syrian elements most of the leadership most of the crucial decisions are not from within Syrian leadership in those areas on the administrative level which we have issued we have studied the Afrin governorate for example that is quite different from the governance structures that are in the northeast part mostly governed by the PYD Afrin is always looked upon in a very different type because it's the northwest tip of Syria and it's quite different meaning it's more successful perhaps because of a lot of local because there is ceasefire there is local agreements within society and perhaps the foreign elements are not very much interfering on the northeast tip I think it's very problematic I think it's there's no elections taking place there's no I mean one of the things that in opposition areas local councils operate within very similar administrative laws and procedures to that of which the regime operates in the northeast PYD governed areas those are run by new laws that are just uniquely their own and this really further fragments Syria and further develops I mean they operate under the commune type communist type of a governance structure there is huge problems in terms of service deliveries water public construction we looked at the education sector in the SDF controlled areas a lot of problems in that more than what the opposition areas are facing in terms of curriculums in terms of funding in terms of number of students enrolled we looked at the construction industries how many construction jobs have it created and also there are problems in terms of basic public services within those areas and I think there's and then the societal security type where the practices of the PYD in those areas have been very much there has been many reports on human rights violations there has been many reports in terms of oppression of the Kurdish national councils groups and parties and there's no room for any political activity by anyone except that of which is approved by the foreign elements within the PYD I mean if it was Syrian elements that are reconcilatory with the local elements then that would be a different type of an approach but those are the foreign elements within this region that is controlling the shots that is gaining basically the use of force excuse me I mean Turkish Iranian basically some of the PYD leadership that from Kandil that are basically calling the shots sometimes on the local level there's a split between local administration that is not very authorized to do a lot of the decision making processes from day to day the governing structures where you have ministries multiple ministries and you have this overlapping a mandate within those ministries the commune system if you're familiar with that a very old type of governing on the local level those are very problematic and those are not conducive of sustainable societal peace or societal security Olivia Barrett George Mason School of Conflict Analysis more of a historical question in terms of the interagency hostility you talked about between intelligence agencies was that more of an accidental progression or do you think that was a conscious effort by Assad to sow instability so that the other like the only constant would be his leadership I think the security architecture in Syria was mastered by Hafez Assad the father and he was the only one who controls the code to understand how it operates and so there are certain branches that are reserved to certain family members within the Alawite sect and I'm sorry to speak from a sectarian but this is how he appointed certain branches to certain or allocated certain branches to be headed by certain family members within the mount that he comes from I mean even within the Alawite there is contested legitimacy also that very few Alawites are involved within the regime and so it's not an Alawite regime perhaps it's an element within the Alawite that are selected by the father to formulate this architecture and basically that all have some sort of loyalty to the head of the system which is the Assad and so yes I think the father architecture did in a way to preserve his rule and that's one of the ways that he was able to sustain his rule for 40 years and the son perhaps did not understand this code very well and that's one of the reasons why this system basically broke down Issam Kayyar from SAMS organization so looking at your both studies actually so one focusing on the security how it stands today and the other one is about the civil society build up and I'm going back to your first question is the day after is there any vision because I think when something major happens let's say you're going to replace leadership or you're going to replace regime the first question comes is how is because security is the first thing is going to be disrupted and you're saying even though the regime has so many sacks and so many fragmented but at least it looks cohesive at least from the outside they're able to maintain security and the operation whatever that system is like but the moment something happened then that fragmentation is going to be like massive so I think the first thing is how do you address the security situation and day off is there any plan or what would be the practical way is like okay this is the security how it's going to be because I think one of the concerns that one of the gentlemen said is what's going to happen to the areas which are right now relatively safe or there's no conflicts but then security is disrupted then what's going to happen on the local level when you don't have centralization so what kind of is there any vision for how the security going to be addressed one that major things happen and how you can build on it because I think that's the major things I mean building civil societies and governance those are kind of like comes after like you know on a long base long-term basis but the biggest concern is that security and instability because that's when you kind of lose control of everything you know and sometimes could be irreversible so can I just tackle the first part of this question and then maybe I mean what I want to do is I want to challenge the assumption that you're building the question on and that is that the Assad regime actually has a the ability and the capacity to ensure some form of societal security in areas that it controls and I submit to you that the capacity of Assad to continue a security hold on certain areas is comparable to for example Jishan Islam's ability to keep security in eastern Ghouta or Nusra in certain parts of Idlib or other armed groups let's say the southern fronts in these areas the most threatening element to people's security are the barrel bombs that are dropping on their heads from above and a lot of the military belligerence that has been taking place by the other side obviously there are internal fights and things of that nature but we've seen a number of different experiments of context that do not belong to the regime and the control of the regime where the type of security is maintained that's one thing that I want to challenge the other thing I want to challenge is that we don't see a scenario where you have a day after the scenario of a day after is I think long by gone now what we potentially will see is some form of a transition that would include different elements of different sides potentially working focusing on certain areas and then bringing these areas back together I don't know if you want to that's one of the assumptions that needs to be looked upon is that will there be a day after in the traditional type 2012 a view of a day after where there will be a clear day zero and a day after whether horizontally geographically at the same time or vertically in terms of all state institutions transitioning to a new phase I think what we see now today at least at the trend is that there are isolated zones within Syria and those have developed security apparatuses to ensure security transitioning there has already been a transition of power and of security and of governance in the southern front for the last two years maybe there has been a transfer of security and governance in the north in the Euphrates there has been also perhaps a contested one but a reality also in the northeast in the SDF controlled areas with all the problems but there has been some sort of a transition and so I think the trend that we're seeing is that those zones will come together during a political process where all of them will you have these five security if you may say security agencies there will be 600-700 local councils from the different controlled zones those are the ones that will form the general assembly of local councils perhaps and form a higher council of local administration so this is the type I think these are the scenarios that are in the foreseeable future regardless of how this evolves whether Geneva 515 or whether it's an international agreement outside of Geneva and then Geneva is just a vehicle that will move that agreement through so the first one is when the city of Idlib was kind of got out of the control of the regime so you can take that as a day after and then Aleppo but maybe more clear is the Idlib example and when you look at yes eventually the local governance kind of like kind of stabilized but when you look at the days after you have a massive refugee and people migrating out of those areas you know running out of their lives you have looting for people like kind of like take advantage of each other properties and you have chaos so I don't think you can ignore that and these are small examples in the local areas where a lot of people that we know and we talk to that they say things are really bad and chaotic and people they just leave and go to different areas the villages so they evacuate and some of them they don't come so you lose some of the population so I don't think it's fair to say that the day after doesn't happen that the locals are ready to take over unless you have a seamless plan or something that really ready to take over you're going to have to accept that there's going to be a period of unstability and chaos and which could be dangerous because you can never guarantee the outcome if it's really major scale if you look at the major scale of these local areas I guarantee you there's not going to be any seamless transition anywhere and there's going to be a lot of chaos in any but the two examples that you gave in terms of the day after are not applicable to the general scenario because what you assume is that armed opposition will take over Damascus and I don't think that's a possibility at least not anytime soon so again I would challenge that presumption I mean but I understand the point that you're making in terms of having some form of a structure some form of a plan to preserve some form of security in a transition of power period what we're assuming is that if a political process actually produces a plan of maybe assuming the status quo right now in terms of zones of influence and then working up from that reality towards a re-centralizing the state slowly but surely and I think that's where the local governance structures can play a role in terms of that stitching that long-term stitching of Syria back together if that makes sense it's time for two more questions the gentleman in the back actually can we take the questions before you respond maybe we'll take we'll take three just one Stanley Kober I keep hearing this term political process and it puzzles me look at the American Civil War Abraham Lincoln tried to prevent it by appealing to the mystic chords of memory that would bind Americans together didn't work United States was held together not by a political process bloodiest war in our history the North one not a political process but I look for a parallel in China to what's going on in Syria it's China that wasn't a political process after their revolution which seemed very democratic you had warlords Mao Zedong said political power grows out of the barrel of a gun that's how they ended all the civil wars it was a decisive military victory by the Chinese Communist Party can you have can you provide an example of this political process you are talking about just a few more questions and then we'll get no problem the gentleman right behind her first and then start and then you Warren Coates retired from the International Monetary Fund I was a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq as senior advisor to the Central Bank of Iraq the scariest thing I heard while living there occasionally too often in fact was whoopee we have a blank slate so we can just put in the right institutions so I totally applaud your perspective your approach to preserving reforming the leadership of existing institutions I wish to speak a little more about how the interest of outside powers like the US around Russia is going to affect any political process you might implement and also I haven't heard any discussion about what we do about all the refugees and displaced people what plan there would be for returning some of them if you can respond to those well in terms of the first question I mean no one would want a decisive victory against a regime that practiced industrial scale criminality for the past six years more than Syrians more than us Syrians with conscience as I'd like to describe because I cannot speak on behalf of all of Syrians and yes I find it very appropriate to judge here Syrians that do not have that position but the reality of the situation that's not going to take place anytime soon and the conflict has been heavily internationalized to the point where balances of power have been we've seen it over and over again we've went through cycles of opposition getting close and then somebody getting involved Iran getting involved and other actors to sort of re bring back the balance of power we've seen it even when the first chemical attack happened in 2013 and when we all thought that we're very close to that transition and because of the obsession with the Iran nuclear deal that administration was very willing to negotiate away the lives of hundreds of thousands of Syrians that they could have preserved in my opinion but in terms of an example you have the Dayton agreement you have examples of civil wars or internal conflicts that have been resolved via political process not necessarily a very fair one but a political process nonetheless when international powers decided that enough is enough and we need to move forward One question that the lady had in the front about refugees that we talked about earlier that maybe one or both of you could just touch on which is maybe something that might be overlooked is the role that the local committees could play in trying to help refugees repatriate at a time when they want to voluntarily repatriate One of the major examples that we have right now as I said in my presentation local governing structures of local councils have been playing a crucial role in terms of providing services for internally displaced Syrians from areas that either have been demographically forced out of or areas that they suffer intense bombardment on but also we have a very unique experience or experiment that is taking place right now in the Euphrates shield area where close to 50,000 Syrians have been reported to be repatriated back into towns like Jarabless and Bab Azaz Rai where you have now heavy investment in the building infrastructure for a lot of these immigrant communities or refugee communities to go back to it. An organization like ours is heavily invested in keeping Syrian talents and Syrian brains as close as possible to the Turkish border should a moment of repatriation happens and for example Dr. McKenzie mentioned one of our projects called RISC for professional development we have caused the employment of over 7,500 Syrians across Turkey arranging from day laborers all the way to doctors and engineers and anywhere between males females from all over Syria placing them in the Turkish job markets these people are going to stay there they're productive members of society now they're not going to chances of them leaving and going to Europe and the West are a lot less and chances of them being repatriated and participating in the rebuilding process is a lot higher so these are some of the thoughts that I have on that issue. Thank you. We're going to have to conclude right here but I want to thank both of our speakers for a very bracing conversation but I'd also like to tell you that moving forward we certainly hope to have you back and personal notice is the director of a new initiative looking at Muslim diasporas. I certainly have a personal and professional interest in trying to do everything we can to tap into the wider Syrian American community to hear their voices and their experiences because they really do have profound ideas on how to move forward and they might not always agree as we saw today but I'll tell you I think this kind of healthy dialogue and these kind of ideas in exchange of ideas that we need more of and I certainly think our government would profit from these kinds of ideas so please join me in thanking our two speakers.