 for international peace. I am very pleased to welcome all of you and our distinguished panelists in the U.S. launch of Carnegie's new report, Arab Fractures. I know that in this town you could probably fill your days going from one Middle East event to another. And that's only natural, since this is a region, as all of you know, as well as I do, that has bedeviled generations of policymakers. And it's a region that embodies the powerful political, economic, and political current and social currents reshaping today's international landscape. Sectarianism, authoritarianism, populism, and extremism are centrifugal forces pulling this regional part. When leaving in their wake the kind of instability and human tragedy we've not seen since the establishment of modern Arab states after the First World War. Today's report is part of Carnegie's Arab World Horizons project. Which aims to look beyond today's tumult to the long-term trajectory of this region, its people, and its place in the world. The project is not much interested in pronouncements and prescriptions through a purely Washington lens. It is far more interested in the often ignored and marginalized perspectives from the region itself. This is precisely why 75 percent of the contributions in this report come from eight different Arab countries. It's why we first launched this report in Arabic and in Beirut 10 days ago. And it's why we're so proud and grateful that support for this effort comes from extraordinary representatives of the region, I'm in the south of Asfari and their Asfari Foundation. For more than a decade the Asfari Foundation has helped empower people in the region to create change. Providing relief to those who need it most, investing in their promise and potential and helping them build a more pluralistic and prosperous future. This is the spirit which animates this project, and it is the spirit which animates the work of our Middle East program under Beirut Center. We truly could not be more grateful for their generosity and partnership. I'm also very grateful to my Carnegie colleagues who've coordinated this project over many months, many time zones and many countries. The report is unstinting in its analysis and its candor and lays out a very solid foundation for understanding the drivers of change and priorities for action. This weekend's executive order suspending refugee resettlement and restricting travel from a number of Muslim majority countries is an example of policy action divorced from and uninformed by rudimentary knowledge about this part of the world, and it lays bare the potentially devastating consequences of action without knowledge or action based on ignorance. We know this executive order implicates a number of our guests, and I know you made Herculean efforts to travel to the United States. I am profoundly sorry and deeply embarrassed, and I'm touched by your continued faith in us, in our work and in this institution's mission. I hope this report and your words today will make a meaningful contribution to a deeply polarized policy debate, and I hope it's one of many steps we'll take together to help build a more pluralistic and prosperous future in the Arab world. Thank you all very much for coming, and please join me in warmly welcoming our first panel. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. I guess the microphone is on. I'm Perry Kamak. I'm a fellow here at the Carnegie Endowment, and I'm really, really thrilled to welcome Dr. Basma Khudmani, the founder, co-founder of the Arab Reform Initiative and its executive director and also a member of the Syrian opposition. And frankly, any policy that would make difficult Dr. Basma's visit to Washington is one that is in serious need of reconsideration, because I can't think of anyone as Syrian American or otherwise. We're more committed to values, human values of pluralism and democracy. We're also thrilled to welcome my colleague and friend, Dr. Amra Hamzawi, who's of course a senior fellow here at Carnegie Endowment and also a former parliamentarian of Egypt. Before we get into discussion, and I know folks are really here to hear them, I thought I would take a few minutes and kind of outline the broad themes of this report, in part because this is the first time most of you are seeing it. This really comes, as Bill said, the idea was not to kind of reflect Washington to the Middle East, but to instead kind of understand the Middle East and the Arab world in particular based on the experiences of our friends and colleagues there. So we started a year ago with a fairly comprehensive survey of more than 100 Arab intellectuals, which we published in February 2016 called Arab Voices on the Challenges of the Middle East, and both of my colleagues here actually contributed to that survey. And we asked them basically, how do you, as Arabs and as folks that are inhabiting this region, how do you see the main challenges? And of course, they commented thoughtfully on issues like civil war, sectarianism, conflict, radicalization, terrorism, etc. But what really stood out for us is the underlying profound governance challenges that we've doubted. And in fact, the number two issues that these experts identified in the region were really authoritarianism number one and corruption number two. Now that's not to say that terrorism wasn't the key issue, but they generally, these 100 experts saw these security challenges as second order derivative challenges kind of based upon these profound government governance challenges, which we're going to talk today. So in this report, we really use that survey as the kind of starting point and tried to try to understand the turbulence in the region across three frameworks, as we call them, consisting of citizen, state and institutions, and frankly, and finally, the geopolitical kind of strategic issues or the terminal region. And we call the air fractures because in our view, all three of these different levels, citizen, state and region are coming apart, prevailing kind of order is coming apart. I think all of us here in Washington understand very acutely the kind of regional fractures, the conflict, civil war, transnational movements, extremism, etc. So I think what we're really trying to focus with our launch today is the first of these two layers, citizens and states. And if I could kind of summarize our report in just five words, it really would be governance and accountability still matter. So we looked at basically the authoritarian bargains, the prevailing kind of social structures in the region, which were based on an idea that governance almost all the Arab governance governments in the region for decades would provide security, they would provide jobs, they'd provide basic services, but in exchange, citizens were essentially asked to keep their mouth shut, and not and refrain from having a significant role in governance and decision making. And I think we saw all of us all very clearly in 2011 with the Arab Spring, that those authoritarian bargains are collapsing. There has of course been an authoritarian resurgence in many countries and including the countries represented here on the stage. But we strongly believe that this authoritarian resurgence is unsustainable. And the reason for that is that the second layer of collapse or fracture, which is the collapse of the rentier economic system, which essentially undergirded or underpinned these social contracts that we're talking about. So for decades, countries across the region could kind of transfer the easy oil wealth into these benefits for the citizens. But what we're finding with the extreme collapse of oil prices from over $100 a barrel to more like 50 or 60 now with no end in sight, that the governments themselves understand that these that the rentier system and authoritarian bargains are no longer sustainable. So you'll find on page five of the of the report, I think a quote that encapsulates really the central message of this coming from Antonio Gramsci in the 1930s. And many of you will have heard this describing the kind of interwar period. In Europe, the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying, and the new cannot be born in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid systems appear. And I think that pretty well encapsulates the moment that we find ourselves that our guests find ourselves in the Middle East. Lastly, let me just say very quickly about the structure of the report. Obviously, we're talking a lot of kind of 30,000 foot view of kind of frameworks and concepts. We realize that we wanted to make this report also relevant to policymakers who are dealing with specific crises across the region. So we've also interspersed in report. In addition to this broader framework, a series of eight case studies, including Syria in Egypt, which I think both kind of provides a specificity to the issues that we're talking about. But I think hopefully it will also demonstrate that these are issues that are working both horizontally and vertically. And what I mean by that is you can't understand what's happening in Syria without understanding some of the trends across the region, but neither can you understand what's happening in Syria without understanding the very specific context in which these factors that we're describing play out. Lastly, we also are thrilled to have a number of commentaries by nine very prominent Arab authors of which we were thrilled to welcome Basma is one, which I think, again, provide a kind of granularity and specificity that hopefully helps to ground this report, not in the experience as we understand it in Washington, but really, I think hopefully in an experience that resonates with the Arab world as well. So we intentionally did not make this a paper about Washington. We did not make it a report about US policy in the region. But I would like to think actually as a result, ultimately, we'll have more staying power results. So I think for a Washington audience, what we're hope exactly as Bill understood, for those struggling to make policy over successive administrations in a very traumatic region, until I think we in Washington can understand the region as seen by voices and eyes in the region, these struggles will continue. So I've already spoken too long. I know we really want to get to our panelists here. But but thanks again for your heroic efforts to come over the weekend and difficult circumstances. But maybe I'll start with you and ask you first to reflect a little bit about the short article that you wrote for our paper. It's an extraordinarily difficult situation. It's a horrific situation. And yet I don't want to call your piece hopeful. But you do note that there is a resilience to the Syrian people that there's even a certain resilience to Syrian institutions. So maybe I could ask you to reflect a little bit on your contribution. And where do we go from here? The Syrian institutions are under tremendous, tremendous stress. What are the other building blocks that we can imagine for the future for a more hopeful Syria? Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you, Bill. And thank you, Marwan. And the whole team for me is it's an opportunity to come and celebrate the work of the Carnegie Endowment on the Middle East. I opened the report electronically and read it all. But I also started by saying, okay, maybe if I don't have time to read all of it, I'll go to the recommendations. And there are no recommendations, which I found, in fact, more interesting. So I went back and read the whole report. And I think that is where we need to start. I think we need to start with a serious diagnosis of what has happened and what is going on. I think the narrative in each of our countries, whether it's Egypt or Syria or Yemen or Iraq, of course, or Libya, these are narratives that need to be agreed upon. Bill Burns was saying earlier it's about sectarianism, authoritarianism, and other big challenges. I tend to say it's about authoritarianism and authoritarianism and again authoritarianism. Because in the case of Syria, if I may say a few words about that, I think because this is where I guess we need to look for the solution. It is about the sectarianism issue. And I think we have worked a lot across different societies on the issue of sectarianism and come to the conclusion that this is just a question of governance. It has nothing to do with the differences among communities, with their history, with the level of tolerance, intolerance, racism, sectarianism. That is not the issue. The issue is about the governance, how you manage this diversity. And what we have had is a total failure of management. In the case of Syria, it goes much further than that. It is the mobilization of sectarian differences in order to maintain a system in power. And that includes the most extreme measures, such as, of course, exclusion of certain communities, domination of the whole security apparatus. But it's also demographic changes on the ground. And this is currently continuing at a pace that is very worrisome. So we have seen this issue of the management of the diversity. And I think it applies to any society. Take a European society, two million Muslims become too many Muslims for them and they look for solutions. And we have racism and we have extreme right movements and so on. So that really illustrates the fact that it is about how you manage those relations, what laws you put in place, what guarantees you give communities, what institutions you create to enforce those laws and rights, and what kind of a public policies in all different sectors you implement. And I think societies, having seen leaders not only fail but manipulate sectarianism, find that the onus falls on them. The onus today is on societies to lead on how they can manage this relationship between communities. So the problem is within societies and the problem needs to come from within the society. And that is the case of Syria today. There is no government, of course, to help us because it is at the origin of the problem. Unfortunately, there are very few external partners who still look at Syria as a country that needs to come back together. But this is a society. These are people who imagine themselves as Syrians. So we need to look for a solution that brings them back together. And I challenge anyone to tell me that Syrians say anything but that they are Syrians. Before anything else. They're not Sunni, they're not Alawi, they're not Druze. They are Syrians because if they want to be Druze they belong elsewhere and they want to be Sunni, they go to Iraq or they link with Iraq. So we lose our borders and we lose our entity. This is a recent nation but it's a nation that has an identity. And I think where we have to deal with the issue of sectarianism is about what kinds of renegotiation of arrangements can be brought to where the communities can come to terms with a new social contract as the report very effectively analyzes. It is about a new social contract. How does that translate? It translates into a renegotiated balance within the army and security forces. That is certainly the starting point where communities would feel that they are protected by trusted security forces. That is not happening in any of the countries of the region. Iraq has been one big failure so far and our fear in Syria is that we will be on the same pattern of what is going on in Iraq. The presence of foreign sectarian militias has fueled radical Sunni against Shia jihadis because these are both jihadis on both sides. You can't call them anything else and if that is going to continue it's obvious that we will not end the conflict in Syria. So unity of Syria is a starting point. Rebuilding the army and security. Negotiating a decentralized political system. When I say decentralization here again we have people saying give a name to a de facto partition. No, it is not about de facto partition. It's about devolving power from the center to the regions but it's about a strong and effective central power. Otherwise this is a failed state. We are just giving a different name to a failed state. We're talking about rebuilding a central state in the capital that has the capacity to devolve power and to build relations with its different regions otherwise it's failure. So it is about renegotiating also that the political system and how it is and where power is distributed. I want to say also that I think I made clear that we will not have a solution if we have foreign militias on the ground in Syria and we may come back to that in a minute but I want to end on one, I think I'm trying to be as positive as possible here that the security issues are major but I would also say that there is one silver lining to what has happened in Syria over the last six years and that is the experience of local governance which has not only managed people's lives the regions where the state has withdrawn its services to punish the population have managed beautifully. It is amazing how these communities have organized their lives and offered services provided services in transparency accountability in a democratic way. It is a fantastic experience to build on and we need reconstruction to take to acknowledge that and build on what has emerged at the local level. Do we have national big national leaders that have emerged? No but whether we are building new leadership and that is certainly happening at the local level. The young generation that rose in 2011 carries a vision and they are implementing this vision at the local level. They can't do it beyond that local level but they do it in the schools, the hospitals, the local governance institutions and the democratic elections. They've just held democratic elections for Aleppo council. It is unbelievable. It's also for Idlib for different areas of Syria under extreme hardship. This is still continuing to happen because they realize that is the experiment they want to keep and that is what they rose for. They really rose for this participatory system where they can lead their lives and be in control of their destiny. So we don't want to take the old to build the new because you've never built or you'd never build new with old ingredients. You don't build good institutions, new institutions and innovative institutions with the same old people and I'm one of those so I'm saying we should be passing on to and nurturing the new generation that needs to take over. In Syria they carry the vision. They don't need to tell us what it is. It's their practice, everyday practice that shows where they want to go and yesterday we had one Egyptian speaker. I don't know if Hafsa is in the room but but she was protesting. We are we are expressing ourselves differently. We have something else to say. We have a different way, an alternative approach to all of this of political engagement and mobilization. The challenge is definitely whether from these social mobilizations that we have seen through the uprisings and other social movements that continue how do we go to political organization or to organization period. That is the big challenge for that for I think whether it's Syrian society we're finding answers at the local level but not yet at the higher national level. It is also in other countries the same issue of how we organize and I think the the report focuses on institutions and governance that obviously came out from the Arab Horizons survey but but I think that is touching really where we need to dig and and and work hard and the answers are not quick fixes obviously. Thank you for that. I'm going to resist the urge to ask you a number of follow-up. You've given us a lot of provocative thoughts partly because I want to bring the audience into discussion but first let me go to Amr and talk about basically the same question I asked for Basma in an Egyptian context. Obviously the situation not as grim but this issue of authoritarianism corruption even which really were the focal points of our Arab voices survey they are clearly very present in Egypt. So I'll ask the same question. Essentially are the institutions still there given the turmoil of the last five years that even if the situation now seems pretty grim if spaces have been closed off that we can imagine building blocks for a kind of more pluralistic institute. Thank you Peri. Let me let me as a side note start by expressing my gratitude to as an Egyptian as an Arab to the great efforts that have been unfolding in the United States in the last days to help protect and practice solidarity. There's a different America away from the executive order and I believe it's a great moment for Arab public opinions to realize this is not simply about a government it's not about a president this is much more and I'm proud to be here I'm proud to be part of an institution where I have enjoyed throughout the last years with their ups and downs many rounds I have to say great solidarity for my colleagues so I'm really grateful that it seems however the shades of populism angry nationalism there I say authoritarianism are following Egyptians no matter where they go and so I was advising some colleagues last night in a long conversation we are shifting to signal in the U.S. as well which is remarkable and I was saying fine so we should maybe manage our travel itineraries by avoiding two sets of countries one countries where armies have had a traditional disrupting political processes we should not go and the second set of countries western democracies which are approaching election soon so it seems we are bringing bad luck to elections so I am not going to go to Germany anytime soon I'm not going to France I will advise Basma as well to avoid France in the next few months if she can so a second side note today is the first day of February this is a day we in Egypt are commemorating for a massacre which happened on that day in 2012 74 Egyptians were killed in a massacre in a soccer stadium in the northern city of Port Said 74 Egyptians was killed I was back then in parliament I was one of the members of an investigation committee which was sent by parliament to Port Said to investigate what happened and let me start by sharing a scene from that investigation which I still remember vividly to come back to your question on institutions so I went a delegation of 10 parliamentarians we went to Port Said to investigate what happened in the soccer stadium why so many Egyptians were killed 74 civilians simply following a soccer game and what you clearly heard what I clearly heard and Port Said was a sense of deep mistrust of state institutions people could not locate who was responsible but in their eyes in their minds the responsible agency was cleared it was a state a state institutions be it it was a security services be it some services which were not named publicly but a state apparatus facing that deep mistrust among its population is a state apparatus which cannot deliver cannot deliver to security needs cannot deliver to social and economic needs cannot put forward meaningful developmental strategies and implement them and definitely cannot deliver to any sense any legitimate sense among the population wanting and demanding an accountable government so when I look at Egypt as of now and I'm not only factoring in the last three years between two less four years meanwhile between 2013 and today but even prior to 2011 and in the two years of a brief democratic opening which we had or brief brief democratic experiment which we had in Egypt Egyptian state institutions are embattled with a clear sense of mistrust among the population and these institutions are not working in any significant manner to regain trust this is the legacy of authoritarianism and therefore Egypt as a social fabric does not have a serious sectarian issue however you are seeing the same set of state institutions which no longer have credibility or legitimacy popular acceptance in a place like Syria or in Iraq the same set of institutions do not have credibility and popular legitimacy in Egypt but for different reasons for a track record of human rights abuses for a track record of human rights violations for a track record of an overly dominant executive branch of government monopolizing the legislative branch of government and the traditional branch of government these are not new systemic deficits of of the Egyptian political orders they have been with us since the 1950s they have been coming back and haunting us several times and the attempt which was made in 2011 and 2012 to fix them failed failed for different reasons which are not going to to to address right now but keep in mind that key power holders in Egypt those who are in charge of the state apparatus of the military establishment of the security services of the state bureaucracy and their affiliates because it's a corporate system which has been placed since the 1950s and affiliates are even to an extent liberal and secular elites which have always walked in and supported the dominance of the executive branch of government and the dominance of the military security complex these power holders never took the demand the popular demand to fix the system seriously they did not take it seriously prior to 2011 leading to the democratic uprising after the democratic uprising they maybe were caught off balance for a brief period but then they regain power and they reinserted themselves not only in a manner similar to prior to 2011 in fact even more harsh and you cannot compare Egypt today to Egypt prior to 2011 the crackdown is worse the crackdown in civil society is worse civil society Egypt faced prior to 2011 a great wave of repressive measures legal judicial and otherwise right now it's a war of extinction right now it's not simply about cracking it down so it ending the existence of independent autonomous civil society so when I go back to what you said Perry about Egypt and Syria and while I really as an Arab and Egyptian I have come to hate any comparisons across the region because Egyptians are being told every day well be grateful you are not as bad as Syria or be grateful you are not as bad as Iraq we are keeping the order in place this is only an excuse to disguise the terrible track record of the last three years now go into the details of it from from a state apparatus perspective what is the great difference between countries like Yemen Egypt Syria and Libya in all these four countries maybe you have collapsed states and you have fragile state institutions but from a citizen perspective citizens have lost trust and you cannot build new arrangements building and capitalizing on simply only the new elites I am a realist enough to know that they will be part of any new arrangement but you have to figure out ways to inject new new trust into the system by renewing it and so far these attempts have failed in Egypt secondly and away from that grim picture what gives me hope is not the state is not the ruling elite what gives me hope is the social fabric itself it's misleading to believe that in spite of the wave of repression unprecedented wave of repression you can count at any level a number of of individual and institutional casualties which we never had the number of detained Egyptians is horrifying the number of Egyptians killed in the last three years is horrifying a massacre different massacres took place in the last years unprecedented so at many levels a great wave of depression unprecedented for for for for Egyptians however the social fabric is still resisting it's not true that every single warrants has been silenced we just need to shift our attention away from what we knew prior to 2011 it's no longer about networks like the enough movement or april 6 there are new networks emerging on the ground not focused on politics but away from politics they are not interested in pushing for an opening in politics because they have lost faith in formal political arenas they are pushing for openings elsewhere freedom of expression freedom of association freedom of choice for for for Egyptians even in their personal lives because the current regime current government we have but not only claim to have a monopoly over public morality but even over morality in the private sphere I mean it's inducting Egypt introducing to Egyptians how to behave in their private sphere than their personal lives so there is an emergence of a new wave of activism which gives me hope back to the question of what is it that we can find on the ground to promote pluralism this will not come from a ruling establishment it will not come from a state apparatus which has lost a great deal of popular trust it will come from activism on the ground of young Egyptians a revival of labor union labor unions and trade associations an impressive revival of labor unions and trade associations in the last three years away from the crackdown on on civil society an interesting revival of student politics I mean the real place for resistance in too many different ways in Egypt is public universities it's not in the media it's not in only in social media it's on university campuses I mean one has to realize what's what's going on so these are the elements of pluralism which are emerging and here the demand is for a new social contract without imposing too much on the report and without maybe many activists using that same word that same phrasing of a new social contract what's being put forward is a vision for a different Egypt for an accountable government for citizens unable to participate not only in elections but to participate seriously in decision-making processes because the demand is for a new social contract a social contract that addresses the gap between rich and poor a society was one third living below the poverty line with a terrifying gap between rich and poor social justice is a key issue freedom of association expression are key issues and so even if the label is yet to be discovered widely in Egypt this is where we are going we are going in the direction of a state apparatus a ruling establishment which once again is not listening to popular demands popular demands are organizing differently not like prior to 2011 are organizing a different manner demanding a new Egypt demanding and putting forward a vision for a different Egypt and this is what gives me hope when it comes to pluralism not the state it's society and the social fabric which has endured great crises in the last years and continues to endure a severe economic and social crisis and an unprecedented polarization due to politics in the last years as well thank you very much for those of you that are hearing Basma and Amr for the first time I think you can now see why we're so excited to have them both here today but also as partners and contributors to the report so I'd like to open it up to the audience I think I anticipate and hope there'll be a lot of questions so maybe we'll do them two at a time if we have about 35 minutes so if you could keep your questions brief and your comments in the form of a question we would appreciate it and please interview yourself maybe we'll start over here there are microphones coming we'll go here and then here and then maybe to the back after that I listen oh to Aberdeen as I listen to the three of you it's me that they show here by imposition closer to the point can you speak up thank you yeah yeah so so the the the the essential comment there was that we need we've had kind of imposed stability that going forward and I think this is this tracks nicely with theme of our report that we need stability by consent the gentleman here we're going to do two at a time thank you very much Michael Kutig who retired from the Department of Agriculture you need stability you need government you need jobs and the question is what is the economic future with a country that in Egypt I understand 40 percent of the women who have college degrees have no jobs maybe it's the men and 60 percent of the women have no jobs so hey I'm not going to talk about this going on over there but you have to have some type of an economic foundation in these countries and I don't think you have that and would you would you comment on that thank you so two issues here stability by consent are the ingredients there if not now kind of conceivably in the future and then the economic basis for both countries that's my I don't know if you'd like to start with the second question for how much it's more stability by consent I think is exactly what I meant by saying negotiate renegotiated terms of the togetherness what what population is in one country and I insist on one country because we have an order that may not be perfect it definitely isn't perfect but if we break it up we have to have an alternative we don't have an alternative so it's safer to keep societies as they are defined within the current borders the the actual consent needs to be participation and needs to be as I said recognition of the specificity of communities and in recognizing the specificity you set those institutions and and laws and guarantees but one finds that very quickly you move towards discussing interests people exactly would want you know if they are Kurdish and they have a television channel in Kurdish and they're allowed to teach Kurdish at school and they have their their official language in their own regions that is what is currently discussed for example about Syria I think this example just to say that the next question or this the immediate question is what resources do we have what jobs do we get how much do we get of the central government budget the the identity issues suddenly disappear they become irrelevant but we need to set those terms first and we will move very quickly towards interest-based negotiations I think right I mean on the economic foundation for democratic change or political reform this is of course as you know not a new debate this is a recurrent theme it's emerging once again I believe the context of its re-emergence in the US but even in European and in Arab discussions comes again in the background of this crediting the very idea of pushing for democratic reform that well listen these societies need to prosper economically need to put in place a sound democratic sound economic foundation before considering how to open up their critical systems now what really saddens me is the fact that at least six decades of political history and economic history in the region get completely ignored we have been experiencing and experimenting in exactly that wait on democracy push forward economic development first and then we can open up the system since the 1950s these were the dominant ideologies since the 1950s and they never worked out they never led to economic prosperity so the question will have to be why why is it that these military led governments or military security led governments or not military led security but autocrat autocratic governments why why is it that they failed in producing and delivering economic prosperity and my my response to it is simply because they have always lacked accountability you cannot get to sustained economic development to sustain economic prosperity unless you are having accountable governments in place and the question of accountability cannot be reduced to side accountability in some services in some sectors of society so fine so the market is accountable enough no it's not enough because the bureaucracy the dominant autocracy comes back and disrupts the market look at Egypt who owns who owns the biggest share in the Egyptian market as of now i don't have to name it right so but but you can you can assume safely it's it's a dominant institution who owns the biggest share of financial and economic transactions in Algeria is it an accountable institution no it's not it's not in Algeria it's not in Egypt it's not everywhere labels are different but as long as you do not impose accountability on key actors even in the economy you are not getting in any meaningful manner close to economic prosperity so to reinvent the wheel and say well fine ignore i understand the frustration this is not a high time to discuss democracy anywhere right however i'm i'm once again and this is one of the objectives of the report to remind those interested in the region that these labels if even if you would like to take them out of the democratic framing accountability still matters pushing back against authoritarianism still matters getting to rule of law and independent judiciary still matters because this is a tragedy of Egypt as of now is very much related to state institutions official institutions being controlled by one branch of government by the executive unchecked executive branch of government so unless it's framed that way we are not approaching any stable sustainable solution if i could just give a very quick plug for our report this kind of one of the central themes is the kind of consolidation of political and economic control in almost every country across the region and the inevitable kind of cronyism and corruption that results so if there is a silver lining in the kind of collapsing or pressures facing the rentier system it is that governments no longer the old model is over so that they'll be forced one way or the other through tremendous turbulence one hopes to kind of either begin to address these issues or face the consequences at their own peril let's do another round we have joe there and then maybe the afterwards the metamatar yeah thank you peri in fact it's very a good coincidence that we have more or less i mean syria and egypt on the panel in fact these are the two cases that are a delight for anyone wanting to really refute the possibility of any change in the arab world because they take the example of egypt and say look they made a revolution and then it led to neo authoritarianism and etc the thing that you very well described damar in syria they say okay there was a revolution and then it turned violent and now it's maybe a civil war a regional war and etc so let's not touch anything if now we take the five last years that happened and taking also the opportunity that you are both analysts and actors because you are both i mean amar was a parliamentarian basma you are a member of the opposition let's take a look in retrospect and make a kind of assessment of of your action what went wrong i mean what went wrong from the part of those who are contesting the authoritarian system the broken social contract and everything that is in the report what would be your assessment of what went wrong on your side of the action hi my name is matari brahim and my first question to basma on which basis you think that the authoritarianism is the core cause for all oldenness in the region so if we have assumption for example let us assume that there is a democracy in syria and election and a good representation of the people why you are so sure that democracy will be able to handle the sectarianism and conflict between liberals and slms conservative and why do you think it will be many my my question to amar you spoke about university can you elaborate more why do you think that change will come from university and i assume that you have a problem of literacy in Egypt or of people who join university that much so why do you think a small group of youth can have the potential to have a major and the final question about the the team of the report for you peri um i i was looking at the arabic version where the conflict between conservative and liberals and the sectarianism on the address and the corruption my question i didn't see a lot about us foreign policy it's obvious for me that us have a major interest in this region for different reason one of them is that us have the major ally which is israel and has the most important enemy which is iran have terrorism you have the issue of oil production so all these issues don't you think that it has a major impact on the entire policies in the region i got two questions that keep you fake at night what went wrong that answer is the second question why does democracy why is it better to have democracy uh i think what went wrong is uh on different levels first of all the uh i will do the self-criticism part first which is that the opposition figures from the traditional opposition thought that this was the moment when they could come up with the alternative to the that regime uh they had a legitimacy based on the sacrifices because yes they had opposed the regime at a very high cost most of them were former prisoners had been for over a decade that's the the average is over a decade for each of them what they failed to bring in is the younger generation which rose up and that is that is an absolute mistake that was and it was fatal really where did the young people go they went into civil society groups and organizations and worked on the ground when they were inside so the the vision never came to be managed by those who had power it wasn't in fact in place within those institutions of the opposition that is i think the first benign mistake which appeared benign but which also played a major role in building the credibility of an opposition now i would never have called it an opposition anyway i would have said this is a population that has risen against a dictatorship and you have to find we have to find ways mechanisms for organizing the expression of course that was systematically prevented by the Assad regime in the most brutal ways and the elimination of whoever within the system was calling for a political management of a form reform-based approach to those demands to diffuse the popular anger that was systematically also implemented so as to go towards the hundred percent violent response to the movement and that response through massive arrests disappearances torture and killings systematic systemic i would say torture in prisons led to a message across society we will crush the whole society if need be in order to remain in power and that of course has brought in and bred the anger the radicalization the violent environment in which all of these young people and we have witnessed that at a after six months of uprising killings going on in a extraordinary dilemma do we go home and stop the movement or do we pick up arms those who picked up arms to defend their communities their villages the demonstrations etc these were then captured and manipulated by outside people outside forces but the the radicalization was you need to go you have to go radical you have no other option that peaceful movement will be killed and forgotten and the narrative has to be built in order for that to be forgotten and it is forgotten because everyone speaks of iso speaks of nosa speaks of the security vacuum and the chaos and the terrorism coming out of syria and that makes a regime like Assad very happy and very comfortable and allies coming in to defend this regime being a the most toxic ingredient that is fueling fueling also manipulation of radicalization and and the actual entry into the country of foreign fighters from different countries who have no business in syria and who have transformed the movement and hijacked it that's why when i say i i i believe the military confrontation is over because you know the opposition has faced if we count the enemies we have the regime russia iran iraqi militias hezbollah anisis and the Kurdish pyd pkk affiliated movement that's a lot of enemies for for an opposition which is national the legitimate opposition those who rose so i say that military confrontation is over where we need now to get things right is to defend the civil institutions that were developed particularly the local governance and the local councils that emerged over the last five six years and and if we have a strategy to defend those then we were we are saving the legitimacy of the original uprising if we don't put our energy into really defending those then we have lost a lot and and and the model of an alternative organization of the syrian society and political system which needs to be forget the word democratic democratic it needs to be accountable uh how much of syria's resources have gone to the pockets of these people uh why did people rise actually in in the beginning do they know what a democratic election means if it's proportionate or relative majority or they don't know any of that they rose against injustice so democracy is about accountable governance uh mechanisms to fight and to fight corruption it is about organizing diversity in society and building consent a system that is built on consent that is what if you break down democracy don't just take it as a concept that is it better is it useful is it necessary we're just saying that people need to have the minimum freedom to organize and to be to be human beings we're in control of their lives and with the minimum resources the word has of these are germs that have rose against this regime tells you what kind of vision the Assad regime had of its own society all of these people are germs who then became all terrorists of course that is the the approach and that's the vision and that is what Assad has tried to convey and transform the narrative and so holding on to these uh civil institutions to say it's with these that we need to build the future uh consent on on a political order is i think the way to go uh and and to rectify the wrong there are many many wrongs Joseph so i i will leave it at that okay uh thank you Joe for for anyone who even for a brief period in time has been part of unfolding dynamics on the ground this is especially for someone with an academic training this is a very tiring question and it's tiring because you cannot help but spot yourself committing tactical mistakes committing strategic mistakes i'm at least satisfied because i i confessed i mean i wrote about it i'm i did not keep myself criticism for myself let me let me however um sort of i mean so my tactical my own tactical and strategic mistakes were in the two years 2011-2012 where we could shape some of the events unfolding on the ground was at two main levels one i guess there was no appreciation of the significance of building democratic institutions in the real difference between Tunisia and Egypt is why Tunisia managed to get democratically legitimated institutions to get to build them relatively quickly and to sustain them we could not and the appreciation of how important democratically legitimated institutions would have been to manage a change in the configuration of Egypt's political system was important we saw a parliament dissolved after a few months we saw two constituent assemblies dissolved after a few months we saw different democratically legitimated institutions dissolved and unfortunately many segments within the secular spectrum liberal and leftist did not appreciate much the significance of institutions even as imbalanced as they were as imbalanced as they were in terms of Islamist and non-islamist representation so appreciating no institutions the value of institutions was a key mistake a second a second issue i keep saying it at that level which was a devastating mistake is the obsession in Egypt try it after the removal of former president ubarak with identity debates instead of debating key issues pertaining to people's lives social justice how to do it even look at the details of the taxation system how to improve it how to get a better distribution of the country's limited resources among rich and poor instead of getting into policy questions egyptian representatives of the democratic change were preoccupied with identity debates the place of religion in politics the place of religion in society is a so-called discussion about the civil state the civil nature of the state of dawla madana this in total has been a huge waste of time a huge waste of resources and it in fact has empowered the military security complex to do what it actually did starting 2013 to come back and appeal to egyptians listen these civilian politicians cannot deliver bread and butter to your dining tables i hope we can do not trust them trust us we are the one stable institution in place they are occupied with debates which are of no use to you away from that and here is where i would see my responsibility at these two levels part of the dynamics a little part a small part in in the dynamics in 2011-2012 however the real break of the egyptian experiment did not come in 2011-2012 up up to the moment where the army decided to perform a coup i believe a coup was always expected in egypt i mean these guys were the power holders and so that they were bound to come back and try to hijack the process anyone should have expected it i mean it wasn't everyone's mind seriously it wasn't everyone's mind the real break came with regard to the configuration of forces which sided with the army against the democratic process so the real disaster was as liberal and secular and left us and by the way young and old egyptians because the myth of young egyptians defending democracy should be deconstructed this is not true many young egyptians in liberal and leftists outspoken liberal and leftist activists sided with the army on july 3rd did not say it's a coup they turned a blind eye to a massacre which was performed on august 14th in 2013 Egypt close to 100 1000 egyptians were killed double standards everywhere you go so the real turning point was not the coup was the redness of secular elites to walk in with the army into disrupting the political process putting forward double standards with regard to human rights abuses and violations unprecedented in Egypt and the second turning point is which i'm very afraid of as of now when i look at egypt is to substitute the demand for democracy with populist politics now we have a a master of populism in chief in the presidency and he is using religious and nationalistic populism now it's disastrous for any democratic opposition to play exactly the same populist game i am referring you to the two island debate in egypt and the injection of populism instead of focusing on rights and freedoms issues egypt has become reduced to the two island issue i am not against the nationalist nationalist sentiment i am against any treatment of nationalism in a populist manner it distracts it disrupts it turns away democratic sentiments from being democratic and focus on accountability and anti-corruption onto populist like structure this is the game we are in and this includes once again old and young and middle-aged egyptians so the drive to populism populism and counter populism what a great political environment we are living in so these are the issues which we have to to look at on on on universities where i can give you sort of the standard egyptian response to that where we are 90 million even if you factor in 40 percent illiterate we still have a huge bulk of students going to public universities every year which can spearhead a democratic movement away from the standard egyptian response based on quantity no egyptian universities have had a very long tradition of political activism since the 1920s and this is the tradition which is being revived because the regime has cracked down on every single space elsewhere civil society being a civil society activist means that you would either face travel ban or court proceedings or your accounts will be frozen your assets will be confiscated there are huge risks associated to civil society the two relatively safe places and it's not that the repressive government is not trying to capture them as well are relatively speaking labor unions trade unions as well as universities in the two spheres the repressive regime is coming back to home people there are the number of civilians referred to military tribunals because these are labor unionists who protested demanding better wages for social and economic issues has been on the rise a number of students referred to military tribunals and where sentences have been passed very quickly has been on the rise too so here a battle of resistance unfolding in universities in trade unions in labor associations against the repressive crackdown coming from the regime but these are the only spots where I see some organized resistance emerging and by no means in critical parties by no means along the same ideological line as prior to 2011 this is not about Islamist and not Islamist dichotomies or debates it's no longer that so why didn't we consider american foreign policy in the report and i'm very glad actually you asked that question because i think it it strikes to the core of what we were trying to accomplish first the this is a three-year project the airworld horizons and we always intended first to build a kind of foundation the intellectual foundation for looking at the region we i'll give a little kind of secret of the project we actually had roughly drafted kind of a recommendations and thought we would end have a conclusion of kind of recommendation section i think as we're developing this kind of as basma was saying and alluding to we actually felt that it took away from the narrative that it actually undermined the report that the report was kind of starker and stronger by presenting this kind of narrative of fractures across the three regions so we have we definitely have thoughts on this in terms of how to go in a policy prescription but we really wanted for this first stage to focus on a kind of solid analytical core and frankly it emphasized that this is not a story about washington this is not a story u.s is of course an important actor in the middle east or remain so but this really is a story we're trying to tell about the region kind of by the region in some sense for the region i think we have just about 10 minutes left so we'll take a short break so let's do two more questions and then maybe have a very quick wrap up maybe to you miss first and then the gentleman here has been i know waiting and i apologize to those that didn't get to please my name is donna amati i wanted to kind of address the distinction between democracy as being yes a process in which free and fair elections that are competitive are had but also the the pillar in the foundational principle of constitutional liberalism which emphasizes the fact that people have the right to practice free and fair their religion the the right for them to practice free speech free press and things like that and i feel as though that aspect of democracy is not being addressed as much within the middle east as we focus more so on how we can be more representative within the governing institutions in the case of syria you know you you mentioned that the opposition groups have been hijacked by these radical islamists and i mean tulsi gabbard congressman tulsi gabbard she just visited syria and she she was on the ground speaking to multiple individuals and families and it's quite clear that the moderate opera opposition is is not really represented in a powerful way or in a i suppose impactful way on the international scale my question to you would be how could we foster governing mechanisms that could enable society within syria to remain secular to practice their constitutional liberal rights in terms of their civil and political rights and not just you know forget about that aspect of the syrian population while we focus mainly on just democracy and free and fair elections my name amin mahmoud the center for the american relation the question to both speaker great speaker really is how you can carry this recommendation to the policymaker in the united states and in the west in general and is is it you think that cc or asset a fool in the west by saying we protect the protect you from terrorism or or what how you see it thank you thank you so maybe i'll ask basma you start obviously with the two questions and then any kind of final thoughts you have and then we'll end with amin okay well one of the most controversial pieces in the report is written by former prime minister of the palestinian authorities salam for young and he ends his piece by saying elections have brought mediocrity in many cases and his advice his recommendation is don't hold elections too early make sure you keep them towards the end of a transition process now his experience he cannot be suspected of not being a democrat he's a he's a genuine democrat and yet he has his own experience has shown that you know considerations along which people are voting and not necessarily the ones that will bring the right people into governing that is a huge discussion and i have no answer to that i think uh uh you know some countries and i take tunisia really because of the popular vote bringing partisan attitudes into into government there was a decision a deliberate decision to say there are some key ministries that cannot be left to partisan politics we will put technocrats independent figures to head those ministries and these were ministry of interior if i'm not mistaken interior defense and foreign affairs okay just this is just an example of how you combine representation and also competence basically at the level of government given the huge challenges that any government in a transition period needs to go through but every country has built itself through negotiations and tensions and instability and and you have to go through that phase you again it is no quick fix there is no quick story that makes it work immediately uh i always remember this very nice sentence by a bosnian woman who uh after how many years it was 20 years uh and she said you know transition is the rest of our lives and it's true it is about the rest of our lives because we are not democracy is a horizon towards which we need to work and we will make those mistakes uh and and and i think the the key factor is in in the genuine respect for all components of the society we have lacked the the basic respect from our leaders we have been treated like as i said called germs and treated in the most horrible way i don't talk about myself i haven't suffered but the anger that any family any family member carries because of what has been what has happened to a son a brother a husband and sometimes a mother and a sister is is incredible and impossible to imagine what i want to say here is if if we if we look back and say and see what has happened in Syria i want to repeat something that is just inaudible to anyone Assad decided in 2012 to release a bunch of very dangerous jihadis who he had used to send to iraq to defy the american occupation then he brought them back as part of a negotiation with the americans so that he those those he released he brought back into prison and kept under control and in 2012 decided that's the right moment now i can unleash these guys and and and i think that is the starting point of what brings to syria terrorism that's the sunni terrorism and then he brings along the movements that are based on sectarian shia branch of islam to say these to defend him to protect him physically and everywhere in different regions and to fight for him because his army more than a hundred thousand people in his army left defected they're not there anymore so he has an army that is reduced now in size to 80 000 instead of 300 000 that tells you how much he you know he is able he was able or he managed the security of the country and he left those areas to be captured by isis we have numerous examples of how the syrian army left some areas peacefully without fighting and allowed isis to take control that's a long story it's difficult to say it here there are wonderful reports including by american brilliant reporters and i refer you to uh roi gutman who uh wrote in mclachie is it a fantastic report about the relationship between the regime and isis we're running on the end of times if i ask you just a few minutes yes in response to amin's question and in general first of all thank you very much for all your questions and they definitely will help us look ahead and move from from the first report to the next products deliverables which we are planning here at carnival thank you very much once again i have in closing two final comments one on the issue of terrorism and i'm restricting myself to Egypt and once again this is a a narrative which has been put forward by the government by the military security led government that this government is doing its utmost to counter terrorism to fight terrorism in Sinai and the mainland while this government is definitely fighting terrorism the question that needs to be put to that government meet as a government to government level or from Egyptian civil society to that government is are you fighting it right so the question is not about whether they are fighting terrorism or whether we have a security threat in Egypt in relation to terrorist groups operating in Sinai primarily and in the mainland whether we have a radicalization process or not because we do have a radicalization process in place due to of course polarization and human rights abuses and so on and so forth the question is are they fighting a threat and if you measure it at the level of deliverables clearly they are not getting the results they are looking for on average the number of terrorist attacks unfortunately and while of course every single Egyptian and human being would condemn terrorist attacks anywhere the number of terrorist attacks has been has not been declining it has stayed more or less on average the same in the last close to four years secondly at the level of the rule of law no if fighting terrorism means that you wake up and find local communities in Sinai misplaced in Aarish and in Rafah and elsewhere this is clearly an issue a policy which creates more of a conducive environment for radicalization and terrorism you are not fighting if you are adding into the conducive environment for violence for terrorism for radicalism at the level of social and economic policy measures which have to be added to the security component of counter-terrorism to help the Sinai population move beyond an enduring economic crisis that they have always been having there is not much happening on the ground so the question is not whether they are fighting terrorists but not the question is how they are fighting terrorism the second and this is my final closing word on terrorism once again I get skeptical once I hear the narrative of we are fighting terrorism used exactly in the same manner as the narrative of we are fighting for Arab liberation or for national liberation was used in the 1950s 60s 70s and 80s 90s to silence voices of dissent once these narratives are used to say well here is one government its authority should not be contested no matter how many human rights abuses it commits how many economic and social crises it creates and presides over because it's fighting terrorism or it's fighting for Palestinian liberation or national liberation we get nowhere so the question is how to deconstruct it how how can Egyptian civil society deconstruct that narrative of do not question the government because it's fighting terrorism and in order to do it young middle-aged and all Egyptians have to move in the opposition in the democracy movement have to move beyond the populist notion have to move beyond the preoccupation with nationalistic populism the way it has been in the last year this is my frustration when i look back at Egypt and once again i'm not claiming that i can answer from here answers will be coming from the ground in Egypt so in humility to those who are enduring the repressive regime i'm just alerting to the danger of submitting to populism and entering the game of government populism government sanction populism and counter populism in the opposition instead of calling for accountability anti-corruption measures and democratic demands thank you very much well thank you very much we're going to take a short break we'll be back in about 15 minutes and we're please stick around we have a Tunisian perspective coming so there's a glimmer of hope maybe on the rise in in the next panel but first help me join Basma and Amr for just a fantastic fantastic