 Thank you for coming. It's nice to see such a large crowd. We're very excited to host and plan for this event. My name is Fareed Sinsai. I am the founder and president of the Center for Global Policy. It's my distinct pleasure to welcome all of you to our panel discussion today with our topic on extremism in South Asia and how we might respond. For those of you that have not heard about the Center for Global Policy, let me just take a few seconds to share a bit more information as an introduction to CGP. CGP is relatively a new think tank here in the constellation of think tanks scattered across the city. What makes us different is our emphasis on foreign policy issues with a particular focus on the most pressing issues impacting Muslim societies. It was with this goal in mind that we assembled some of the leading scholars to tackle these difficult issues. Today we're delighted to have partnered with the U.S. Institute of Peace to convene this event on this timely topic of extremism in South Asia. We certainly see this event today as the beginning of many more joint events to come in the future. As we look across South Asia, we see the rise of extremism taking root in many countries. From the Taliban in Afghanistan to Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka to ISIS throughout the region, South Asia today faces one of the most diverse and dangerous landscapes of extremist groups and ideologies. Our discussion today includes leading experts to discuss emerging trends on extremism across the region, how it impacts states internally and how those governments and the United States should respond. In Afghanistan, for instance, we're seeing a complex array of Islamist insurgents, including the Taliban, which has in turn prompted neighboring countries, including Russia, China, Iran, and the Central Asian states, to get involved in an unprecedented number of ways. Extremist groups in Pakistan and the realignments in the militant landscapes around Kashmir have created new challenges for India and other regional powers. The rising levels of Hindu nationalism stands to further inflame divisiveness in India, while Buddhist and other extremist groups continue to escalate conflicts in Sri Lanka and Burma. Within this tumultuous mix, ISIS has begun to take root by taking advantage of these violent conflicts across South Asia and attracting new fighters to further destabilize the region. Where do we go from here? Clearly, there are no easy answers. To defeat extremism, states in the region need a comprehensive strategy and a common narrative jointly agreed upon by the state in coordination with key civil society institutions. Most importantly, they need to ensure that their approach is strategic and not just tactical. And just as important as a broad-based and badly needed strategic effort to incorporate social reforms to counter the narrative against extremists, each state needs to provide and apply pragmatic and inclusive narratives that is strictly adhered to at all levels, one that can raise the public's morale instead of adding to their confusion. Of course, this is easier said than done. In our discussion today, our experts will share their thoughts and shed light on these important and complicated issues. Many of them bring years of experience as well as insight from their empirical research on the ground from the countries that they specialize in. In addition to what is happening in each country, we have also asked our experts to discuss how these trends regarding extremism affect bilateral relations within South Asia, as well as suggesting options for how the United States might engage more effectively on these critical issues so that we might contribute positively to ensure peace and stability in the region. Before beginning, though, I'd like to thank my friend and co-organizer, Moid Yusuf, who unfortunately couldn't be with us because he's traveling in the region. He's the Vice President for Asia Programs here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. As we initially conceived the outline for this event, today we felt that an opening discussion would be more interesting and fruitful rather than a long-winded presentation from each of our panelists. So what we've done is asked each speaker to speak for about five minutes. They may go a little bit over, but we'd like to let them give their opening remarks before we then have an open discussion with our moderator. Before continuing, though, I'd like to also thank my colleagues at the Center for Global Policy, and especially Sara Basha, who's our Director of Policy and Communication at CGP, and Lauren McNally, who's a program assistant on Pakistan and South Asia here at USIP. If you have any questions about CGP, please feel free to reach out to me or to her directly. I hope that you also had a chance to sign the signing sheet at the front so that we can continue to communicate and send you material about the institution. I won't go into detailed introductions of the speakers. Those have been provided, but I'll just give you just a brief one-liner about each. Our first two speakers to my left, to the left of Scott, are Ali Muhammad Ali, who's a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy. To his left is Kamran Bukhari, Director for Political Affairs at the Center for Global Policy. We then have Iman Malik, who's a consultant at the World Bank, as well as doing research here for USIP, and then Susan Hayward, who's Senior Advisor on Religion and Inclusive Societies here at the US Institute of Peace. To lead our discussion today, I'll leave that in this difficult task in the capable hands of Scott Warden, who has graciously agreed to moderate our discussion today. Scott is the Director of the Afghanistan and Central Asia Programs here at USIP. I'll hand the mic over to Scott to take it from here. Once again, thank you for coming. Thank you for that introduction and let me add my warm welcome on behalf of USIP to this event. For those that are not familiar with USIP, we were founded as an independent institute by Congress in 1984 on the basis that peace is possible, peace is practical, and peace is essential for US national security. And so we execute that vision through several robust programs that are represented in myself and in Susan. We have a large Asia Center program, which includes many of the topics of this discussion today, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Burma. We have field offices and do work in Central Asia, in Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. We also have a thematic center that looks at conflict resolution and religion and conflict resolution. And so those two issues really intersect in the theme of the conversation today. I'll turn over the panelists quickly, shortly, but just wanted to say I had the opportunity to be in Afghanistan two weeks ago and discussions there with a lot of the political leadership about the situation and echoing some of the remarks that Farid made earlier. I think that in Afghanistan, which also I think represents some trends in the larger region, there's an increasing concern about the export and then the intermingling and interrelationship of different extremist elements as security deteriorates in Afghanistan and elsewhere. I think there's concern also about, as ISIS being the number one extremist group that has international attention as they lose territory in Syria and Iraq, what happens with those fighters and commanders? I think there are emerging trends that for Afghanistan, they are starting to appear there, and they're mingling a number of groups together. And the overall effect of this, again for Afghanistan, but I think it has a regional implication that people were talking about very recently, is that it's eroding trust in the region between neighbors because they are assuming a more defensive posture as they perceive other countries being sources of extremism that can destabilize their own. And this has the risk of creating a downward spiral whereby when there's really needed additional cooperation against extremism in the region, you may have less so. And so that's kind of a few, I'll take the opportunity, a few notes from Afghanistan and some trends that are going on there. Ali may have a different view, but that's where I perceive that using that as an example, but we'll hear on many different countries in the region, we want to get from the participants their own perspectives on the different areas and then we can have a conversation with ourselves and with you about how does that all link together and hopefully some lessons and some actions to take going forward. So without further ado, let me turn to Ali for the first presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. I would like to begin discussing about the extremist groups in Afghanistan since I have five minutes. I'm sure I cannot respond to all the problems in the country, but I would like to say that after and then I would go and see what that means for regional geopolitical cooperation between these countries, particularly around Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and Russia, which are very much interested these days on Afghan issues. And then I would like to draw a question what that means for peace and reconciliation for Afghanistan. So I would like to first begin and speak about the internal dynamics of the extremist, national extremist groups in Afghanistan, and which is particularly the Taliban, how that have shaped recently, not recently, but in the past two years, I would say. After the death of Mullah Omar, the movement has turned into different groups. We have the traditional Quetta Shora that controls southern provinces of Afghanistan and all the way, their operational base is Hillman province and they control over Zabal, Orozgan and Herat all the way to the north west. We have in the south the Miran Shah Shora or the Haqqani network, where they control Qunar, Nuristan and Kabul, Logar, Ghazni, all these provinces between south and southeast. And we have in the north the Peshawar Shora, which is the former Islamic people that they are in Tahrir province in Baghlan, Qunduz and Badakhshan provinces. And they all have one unified goal to destroy and defeat the Afghan government and the international forces, but they have different geopolitical aims in the region, different regions of Afghanistan. That is mostly the illicit economy, that they run their movement, their fighters and it's not like $100,000 or $1 million, it's a multi-million dollar illegal economy from illegal extraction of minerals to narcotics to extortion and subversion to kidnapping and all that. And we have beside that the international terrorist organizations, as Scott mentioned, the IS in Afghanistan, which is pretty much has a very geographical presence in different parts of Afghanistan, including Badakhshan in the north, in Nangarhar in the east, and in Zawal in the south, and one district, Khajaki and Hilman. So, and beside that we have the Al-Qaeda, which is, people are not talking about Al-Qaeda, which is still the most important threat to the security of the region and in the world, and they're active in Qunar, in Urestand, and in Hilman provinces, and Zawal province in the south. So, and we have IMU, the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, pretty much active in the north, in Kunduz, in Tahrir, in in Georgian provinces, and we have a splinter group of the IMU, which is the Jundullah, which has a lineation with ISIS. Sorry, Al-Qaeda and Taliban, the IMU, the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, are close to the Al-Qaeda, sorry, ISIS. And we have the TIP, the Turkistan Islamic movement, which is basically the Uyghurs, the former ETIM, the East Turkistan Islamic movement in Afghanistan, and they all have, and the reason I'm describing these, because there is a nexus between these local and transnational groups, the transnational groups cannot survive and work in Afghanistan. So, which is very important to know, and everybody speaks and keep talking about the peace and reconciliation, so how can we divorce the local groups from these international groups where we can speak and for political settlement or possible peace in the future. And of course, we have recently Russia, who has started flirts with Taliban in the name of ISIS, presence of ISIS, and secure situation in Afghanistan, which is probably not the fact, so the Russians have the concern of Chinese in Central Asia and the presence of their activities, so they kind of like speak about deterioration of the security in Afghanistan in order to increase their military presence in Central Asia, and through that they control the geopolitical games in Central Asia. And we have these different groups and countries, Iran and Pakistan, everybody knows they would like to support anyone who fights against Afghan government and international troops, and so by default they are supporting that. And the reason I'm mentioning these like regional geopolitical cooperation, because everybody has their aims and goals in the region, and whether it's China, whether it's Russia, whether it's Iran or Pakistan, and interestingly things have turned out to be for insurgents to be their clients, particularly for Russia and for Iran and others. They were Pakistan's clients before, so given all this mess inside the country and the financial lifeline of the Taliban and the insurgent groups is something that hasn't been addressed in the past 15 years. They have businesses in Arab Gulf countries, they have like everything running around the region financially, so given that like ability and their financial presence, I don't think we can speak about political reconciliation or peace. And that's something that I would like to emphasize on that, unless we don't question or target the financial lifeline of these insurgent groups, we cannot convince them to talk and speak about peace and reconciliation, which has been missing and everybody's about political settlement and peace, but that's not happening. And we do have international groups, which their agenda is to use Afghanistan as stepping stone to attack other countries in Europe and everywhere. So that unless we don't break the backbone of insurgency economically, we cannot convince them politically to come and talk and negotiate. And of course, there has to be a diplomatic presence of U.S. in Afghanistan and in the region, which they have, but more significant to address and discuss with Iran, Russia, China and Pakistan to let them know that they cannot achieve their geopolitical aims through using the proxy forces, whether they're Taliban or ISIS or Al-Qaeda or anyone. So I would like to just finish on that and I would love to take answers and questions. Thank you very much. We'll hear from the panelists just to set the table and then we'll have the questions afterwards. But over to you. Come on. Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for taking the time out to come. Thank you to USIP for organizing this event. So what can we talk about in four or five minutes? Okay, so I think that one of the things that is very clear is we've had a hyperfragmentation of extremism. So there is no one extremism. There are extremisms in the plural. And I'll get into that in the details here in a bit, because what we have are not just multiple groups trying to pursue the same goal. Sometimes, you know, competing goals, the Afghan Taliban, for example, do not want a global caliphate. ISIS does want a global caliphate. But there's also a much larger problem. So we started out, you know, after 9-11 talking about terrorism and that led us to say, okay, terrorism exists because there's a wider pool of extremism. I want to take that a bit, one step further. And I want to say that extremism is engendered by social and religious ultra conservatism and states using religion to promote national identity. And one of the problems that we are seeing from Saudi Arabia to Yemen to Syria to Pakistan included any state that claims itself to be an Islamic Republic or something else is setting itself up for competition with radical extremist actors. And it's in my opinion, and we can get into this conversation in the Q&A, in my opinion, this is something that states have not been able to compete on. This is a ground, this is a turf, unfortunately, where radical forces perform better. So there is that underlying problem of extremism. Obviously, that's not disconnected from the fact that you have countries, we're dealing with countries whose economic situation, you know, is in shambles. The degrees vary, but it's safe to say that there are large populations that remain, you know, outside the, if you will, the urban centers that most of us, you know, focus on, at least from a distance. But the bulk of population in many of these countries is simply unaware of, you know, things like extremism unless there is an attack. And even then, you know, there are conspiracy theories, there are different viewpoints on why it's happening. It's very fashionable to still, 16 years after 9-11 to say, you know, the CIA is behind some of this. You'll find people who look reasonable, but that's what they believe in. And that is because of the problem of the education system in those countries. And of course, you know, the haves and the have nots. We have another problem that has to do with what I call the hate speech versus open debate. So on one hand, there is an effort to crack down on hate speech. But then the question is, when you crack down on hate speech, then, you know, how do you then cater to open debate? And open, and if you go to open debate, you see that there is very little tolerance for open debate. And this is not just extremist groups, you know, militants carrying out suicide bombings or other forms of attacks. Now we're seeing mob frenzy. I mean, Mashal Khan's example, a recent killing lynching in Pakistan, and, you know, much earlier we had the case of Farhunda, the lady who was horrifically killed. Those were not at the hands of extremist actors or extremist groups, let me correct myself. That tells you that extremism and ultra-conservatism is very much overlapping, and you cannot draw that fine line. And this makes the challenge even bigger because when you say you're going to go after extremist groups, you can't go after them until you treat the wider problem in society. And the question is, how do you do that? And then, of course, the ideological rivalry. So while there are, you know, multiple versions of extremists, the opponents. So, I mean, if we were to use, and this is, you know, not an accurate description, but for a lack of better vocabulary, let's just look at it from the lens of Islamist versus secularist, although, you know, secularist in the Muslim context doesn't really apply, and that's an entirely other debate. But for our purposes, if you look, we already know that Islamists come in many shapes and forms. There are people who are not even Islamist, yet they harbor extremist views and radical views. There may not be formally Islamist. Likewise, on the other side of the ideological divide, you have different types of secularists, and there is, you know, a growing radical, if you will, attitude towards secularism. For example, in Bangladesh, the current government is going after, for political reasons or historical reasons, it's going after groups, particularly the Jamaat-e-Islami that was involved in the 1971 war for war crimes. But what that's doing is, and I'm sure this is not the intention of that government, but it is one of those unintended consequences, very glaring unintended consequences, where you're pushing those who opt for, you know, I'm not saying that they don't have radical agendas, but they're using constitutional means to pursue their political goals. Those are being pushed into the, you know, further right to groups like Ansar-ul-Bangla, you know, Jamaat-e-Mujahideen-Bangladesh, which is many of the elements within both groups have become, if you will, within the IS orbit. It's very difficult to say, you know, how much of IS presence exists, because I don't think that IS just exported fighters into a third country. I think local actors join ISIS and then make those connections. In India, we have a very different kind of extremism emerging, which is essentially the support base of the current ruling party, the BJP. Now, the BJP may not want this, but this is a trend that has been set into motion because of the political campaign of the current Prime Minister and his party. And now you have that kind of extremism where people are going after those who are consuming cow meat. There are, you know, vigilante action against people who are, you know, selling clothes from, for example, from Pakistan, you know, garments. You have all these reports coming out. And what that does is that it feeds the narrative of the Islamist extremists and vice versa. So we have that situation. And, you know, if you look in Afghanistan, you have a situation where, as Ali mentioned, there are multiple groups. But those multiple groups exist because there is tolerance for extremism within society. Pakistan has the same problem. And add to that the national identity factor, where the national identity somehow cannot be disentangled from the agenda of the extremists. So I think I've been told that I only have two minutes. Have I used up my two minutes? Maybe, maybe not. But I'll stop right here. I just wanted to sort of throw all these points out to get the juices and the thoughts flowing. Hopefully we'll have a good conversation in Q&A. Thank you. Thanks very much. And thanks for keeping the time. And I'm sorry to be the bad guy on this. We have a PowerPoint presentation. I think we can lower the screens for the next. Oh, there it is. And apologies for the small view for those in the back. But let me turn it over to Iman. Thank you. Thank you very much, Scott. Thank you very much, everyone, for coming in today. And that is to make us realize that how important this discussion is. I want to talk about the general trends. I don't want to go into the groups what's happening in South Asia. I mean, Kamran has just talked about some groups and Ali as well. To sort of dig into what's happening in South Asia, we have to revisit Middle East for a while. So we have to actually see what happened in the Middle East. We had this movement, which actually started in the wake of a 2003 U.S. invasion in Iraq, a disenfranchisement of the Sunnis, the Shiites, fighting the Kurds, the rise of the Shiites and Kurds, and then also the lack of good governance and reconstruction and development issues and all grievances and all that. We have to go a little bit to revisit the background of this group. What is ISIS? Basically, it started in 1999 by its founder, Abu Masab al-Zirqawi, and then had its phases. I mean, you know, from 1999 to 2004, it was Jamat al-Tahidwal jihad. Then it went on between 2004 and 2006, and it became al-Qaeda in the land of two rivers, which was basically a new title for the new leader. And then you move on into the 2006 and to 2013 phase, and then you see Islamic State of Iraq, which was the ISI, and then Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and you know, move on and you become familiar with the present situation of the Islamic State. It is globally known as Daesh. I just want to revisit this 20-year plan, which was written in a book by Fouad Hussain al-Zirqawi, the second generation of al-Qaeda. When we try to gauge and analyze ISIS, we often, you know, forget about al-Qaeda. And if you revisit the statements of al-Qaeda that are very recent statements, you would see all these phases, the awakening, the opening of eyes, arising and standing up. All these phases, we have witnessed. I mean, you know, this plan may not be a plan which would be implementable in the near future or, you know, maybe like after a few years. But if you look at the chronology of the events, I mean, we have witnessed all these events in the Middle East. And I just want to go back to Middle East, why? Because you know, there are ties in South Asia. All these events that happened in the Middle East, their backyard was South Asia. You have trained fighters. You have training camps there. You go back and revisit the Afghan, Soviet jihad. You have all these ties over there. So that is very important to understand. Second, once we go into South Asia, we have to look at the broader perspective. What is it all about that we are dealing with once we're trying to gauge the ISIS? Around 1.74 billion population in South Asia. 40% of the global Muslim population resides there. Abject poverty, lack of good governance and development and reconstruction issues. You have religious, ethnic, tribal identities. There is a lot of conflict. You witness that conflict in the Middle East, Sunni Shiite conflict. It's embedded in the South Asian society as well. I mean, they have long emotional attachments with that conflict. And it's till they're playing a very crucial role in this security and, you know, the non-stability of the area. Then we have to see the border disputes. We have two nuclear rivals in South Asia, India and Pakistan. They are fixated on each other in so many different ways. You have terrorist outfits that actually go back and forth and attack in these countries. Then you have ties within the broader South Asian perspective. You have groups that are operating in Bangladesh, but then you will find some ties and linkages with the Pakistani militant organizations. So, all things are there. One of the things that I really want to emphasize on the extraterritorial attachments, romanticism with caliphate, it's very much embedded in the Pakistani society. Whether you are looking at the Pakistani society or looking at the Bangladeshi society, you look at the history of the Indian subcontinent Muslims. You will find these narratives, these attachments everywhere. I was in Lahore a few months ago and I met this lady in a salon and she probably had lived in the U.S. and she thought that she was a U.S. citizen. And she saw an ISIS book in my hand and she was like, oh, so they have sent you here? I was like, sent me here? What? And she's like, so you're spreading this message? I was like, no. And she believed that their methods could be wrong. Their strategies could be very crucial and severe. But at the end of the day, she believed in the fact that there is going to be a force that will rise from the Khurasan and they will have black banners and they will come and rule the world. And then the final battle will be waged in Hind, which is called Ghazwa Hind. So you have to understand that this is the large environment that these terrorist groups are sort of operating in. Now, I want to go back to the romanticism with Caliphate Point. Why it is so important to understand once we look at South Asia? This phenomenon is not new in South Asia. If you want to understand the movement of Khilafat or Caliphate in South Asia, you have to revisit 19 to 20, 1924 period where they had the Khilafat movement, where there was mass mobilization in the Indian subcontinent. And basically the reason was to go and save Turkey and save the Ottoman Empire. So this narrative has already been there. This has been practiced. This has been executed. And you had mass mobilization, which actually showed that the Muslims can get together and they can actually go outside their territorial boundaries and they can go and, you know, they can fight the war for them. And this is what is happening. And in my research, I actually, you know, like sort of been looking at the recruitment models and like, you know, what kind of recruitment has been done by the ISIS? Who are these groups? Who are these peoples? Why the families are moving? You know, you will find very educated people. If you look at the backgrounds in Bangladesh, Pakistan and elsewhere, the people that are joining and have been to Syria or actually, you know, been going to Afghanistan are very educated families, between 18 to 24 to 45 years old women and children. And like, you know, they're just moving to make sure that their whole, you know, agenda is met, which is to find that governance under the Islamic State or all these, you know, extremist organizations and to have that caliphate that they romanticize with. So I've been looking at their profiles. I've been looking at, like, you know, why there's such a mass mobilization. What are the trends? What are the linkages? And then what can be done in order to cater the idea or counter the perception that they have in South Asia? Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Last but not least, Susan. So Newton's third law of physics. Anybody? Every action has an equal and an opposite reaction. It applies very neatly to material objects, maybe less neatly to politics and conflict. But I think when we look at extremism, as Cameron was noting in the India context in particular, we do see the ways in which these extremisms are fueling one another. My job is to speak about where the Buddhists are in all of this in South Asia. So I'm going to focus a little bit on Sri Lanka and Myanmar, talk about their, the dynamics domestically, also their regional relationship and how they're responding to regional dynamics, and then try to offer some recommendations in five minutes without speaking too quickly. Bear with me. So step one, Sri Lanka. Many of you already know that the modern forms of Buddhist nationalist movements emerged out of the colonial context and have evolved in various ways over the 70 years since independence. They have taken the form of Buddhist monk-led political groups like the Jatakahela Urumaya, which emerged to put forward monk parliamentarians into the parliament. But the most recent iteration of it, which emerged in 2012, was the Buddha Balasena, or the Buddhist force army, or Buddhist power army, which emerged with a five-fold agenda, which included encouraging more Buddhist births, passing one civil law, thus getting rid of accommodation for personal status law, for example, for Muslims in the country, increasing resources for Buddhist education and reforming and strengthening Buddhism in the country, particularly Buddhist practice and the Buddhist sangha, or monastic community. But their most well-known mobilizations have been primarily the political ones, and particularly those that have targeted the Muslim minority group in Sri Lanka. And so, for example, the Halal certification mobilization, which sought to get rid of the process of Halal certification, arguing that it required Buddhists to pay taxes or pay fees in order to get food certified for the minority community that was an undue burden on Buddhists. But, more nefariously, they felt it furthered a Muslim agenda in the region and in the world. And then, even more ominously, they've been connected to various violent attacks within the country, including the most well-known one is in Aluthgaman, in the south of the country, which killed several and displaced many and led to injuries as well. Now, following, the Buddha Balasena was seen to kind of operate with the good deal of permissiveness, if not support, from the former regime, the Rajapaksha regime. When there was a political transition and Sarasena took power in January 2015, there was seen to be a less permissive environment for the BBS. And so they are perceived to have gone a bit underground in recent years, although they still operate a Facebook page. They still come out with statements every once in a while, and in particular respond to global events, which I'll get back to. Now, just quickly, in Myanmar as well, the movements there arose in 2012 with the opening of the country with the military-controlled democratic transition, beginning with a movement called 969, which then led to the arise a year later of a movement called Mabatta, which stands for the protection of race and religion in the country. Again, these movements are led—they're very decentralized, but to the extent that they're led, they're led by Buddhist monks who claim to be operating on behalf of the protection of the Buddhadharma, the Buddhist religion, under a situation where it's facing both domestic and external threats, and in particular, focusing on the threat of Islam within the country and within the region. So Mabatta has focused especially on Muslim-owned businesses around the most famous Buddhist temple in the heart of Yangon, Shwedagon. They have focused on passage of laws that seek to protect Buddhist women from being converted or forcibly married by Muslim men and so on and so forth. Again, oh man, okay. Again, they have in the—with the election in Myanmar last year, the year before last, that brought the NLD into power, they have been operating in a less permissive environment, but still very much there. And again, also focused on both political action and legislative action, as well as support for strengthening Buddhism as cultural and religious practices in a situation where traditional Buddhist cultural practices are seen as under threat by modernity. So a couple big points. One is this extremism's feeling extremisms. These movements in both Sri Lanka and Myanmar make a lot of reference to geopolitical narratives about Islam. They reference a lot of violent extremist movements that are defining themselves within Islam and present that as the face of Islam, is what Islam is and what Islam teaches. They use a lot of social media campaigns, bringing in provocative images and statements and videos that groups like Daesh or Al Qaeda and others have used. They see—they have a lot of historical narratives that see Buddhism as under threat in the region. So I don't know how many times I've had Buddhist monks tell me that Afghanistan used to be a Buddhist majority country and the destruction of the Buddhist statues by the Taliban in Bamiyan doesn't help with the argument that Buddhism is under threat and it's encroached, it's closing in on Myanmar and Sri Lanka, some of these last vestiges of Buddhism in the region. But it's also fed by geopolitical narratives, including some of the forms of more Christian-oriented nationalisms that are emerging in Europe and the US and others. So they're all feeding off of one another. Just a couple of points I want to make about some of the countervailing narratives and strategies that are taking place. One is there's a number of intra-Buddhist discussions that are taking place that are incredibly crucial. These are—the Buddhist monastic communities are not monolithic by any means in any of these countries. And so there's a lot of discussions taking place between various Buddhist scholars and Buddhist monks about what it means to defend and protect the Buddhist religion and about how to respond to minority rights and so on. There's also a number of dialogues that are taking place on more of a scholarly level about Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist teachings, Buddhist laws when it comes to minority rights, as well as Buddhist peace education. And then finally there's a number of regional Buddhist-Muslim discussions that I think are going on, where Indonesia has really been kind of called out as playing—is potentially playing a particularly important role as mediating between some of these Buddhist majority countries and Muslim majority countries in Asia, but also drawing in the Middle East and elsewhere. And I think there's some potential there, but we can talk about that a little bit more in the Q&A. Great. Well, thank you very much. And it was a challenge to restrict opening remarks because I know the speakers all have a lot more they want to say, so please ask them questions. While the mic runners get the mics, please use those because this is being recorded and so other people can hear. Also, I'll say please just identify yourself in any affiliation. While you're thinking of your questions, let me ask a follow-up one. There's a fair and an unfair version. The unfair version is okay. So I've heard in these excellent presentations that extremism is about religion and ideology. I also heard that it's about politics and governance. And I heard that it is essentially a cover for criminal activity, I mean particularly in Afghanistan, which I know well. So which one is it? Okay, right. So it's a merger of all three. And then the more fair question is when you have a multifaceted problem like this and each of those categories is its own deep challenge for any state or society to deal with. How do you prioritize? How do you systematize so that you can tackle this in an organized fashion in the respective countries? I don't know if anybody wants to volunteer, but maybe just a couple thoughts and I'll start with you. That is the challenge. So each government will prioritize a strategy and we see this in Afghanistan. It's working with international partners to try. Mostly, Afghanistan's efforts are on the battlefield because they probably have all of South Asia. Afghanistan faces the most vicious form of insurgency, most vibrant and most strongest insurgency. I recently published a report on going by district level and it was shocking that Badakhshan province that was outside the reach of the Taliban during their heyday, during the days of the regime, now nine of the 15 districts are either under their control or they have free reign there. So I mean that is very disturbing. So that's one way in which governments prioritize that. In Pakistan, obviously, there are the military offenses that are taking place. The names keep changing, it's hard to keep up with them, but there is an ongoing offensive since 2009 and there has been significant progress, but the road ahead is still very long, partly because on the flip side in terms of dealing with extremism, which is the nonviolent form of extremism. I mean, we talk about countering violent extremism. CVE has become this sexy term, which not for this administration perhaps they want to change it. That's a different discussion, but nonetheless, we talk only about violent extremism. I contend that we cannot deal with violent extremism unless we have, unless these governments have a plan of action on how to treat latent extremism. So that is the other facet, but these governments don't operate in vacuum. These governments, they do one thing and then geopolitics hits them. So obviously, Pakistan is a sanctuary for Afghan Taliban and therefore whatever the Afghan government is trying to do, unless Pakistan and Afghanistan are on the same page. And we've been struggling to get those two countries to be on the same page, and I don't think that they're going to be on the same page anytime soon. That just makes matters worse. I can tell you that transnational jihadists previously Al Qaeda, still Al Qaeda, because Al Qaeda exists in South Asia, in Pakistan as well, but ISIS as well, like nothing more than a war between India and Pakistan. Why? Because that will create those conditions in which these elements then become more empowered. They flourish in those circumstances. And so you have these, the right-wing Hindu extremism is feeding this Islamist extremism on the other side of the border and vice versa, actions, imperatives and constraints of governments. Prime Minister Modi was elected by a certain segment of the population. He can't ignore them. That is a constraint on him politically speaking. Likewise, there's only so much that his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif can do beyond which he loses support in the public. Political imperatives, political considerations, and then geopolitical factors then mesh with that strategy and really undermine it. Great. Let me open the floor to questions. Siraj. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Abdul-Ali Siraj. I have the honor of being a member of the family that ruled Afghanistan for almost 200 years. I have been involved in Afghanistan's affairs for more years in the combination of those two young ladies' ages. Since 1978, I have lived through the Soviet invasion and the Communist Party takeover in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, then the outcrop of the al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and then now the involvement of Daesh in Afghanistan. I've been attending meetings such as this over these years, and at every meeting I go to, I'm hoping that, I mean, I've heard the problems that you have stated over here so many times that I can keep my eyes closed and say, think of who's going to say what. I'm looking one day to come to one of these forums to understand for somebody to say what is the solution. The problems we all know when the problems are, but what is the solution? We know that the Daesh is not very much active. I know for a fact that Daesh is trying to create Afghanistan into a Khalifat because they're losing ground in Libya and in Iraq and Syria. Why don't we find out who is supporting the movement? Why don't we go after the godfather? Why don't we go after the people who are funding this? We say radical Islam and we draw a broad line condemning 1.6 billion Muslims, but why don't we separate the good Muslims from the bad? The bad Muslims are not true Muslims. They are members of the Wahhabi sect of Islam. So why don't we go after them? Why don't we identify them that? The solution to the area is not through the governments, it's not through the military. The solution is between the people. We have forgotten two important segments of Afghanistan. I'm not concentrating on the nation. I'm addressing Afghanistan. The two important segments in Afghanistan, which is the tribal base in Afghanistan and the young generation. You cannot build a house by starting from the roof. You have to start from the foundation. The foundation of Afghanistan are the tribes. The walls of Afghanistan are the young generation. Nobody has paid any attention for the past 16 years to these two segments. We have started building roofs. Oh, this round roof doesn't work. It collapses because the mold is imaginary. Now let's build a square roof. You cannot build a roof. You cannot build a house without a foundation. Why don't we talk to the people of Afghanistan, to the tribes and the young generation and let them participate and bring peace to the nation? Outside of that, no amount of money of soldiers will succeed. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to react to that? Well, I agree everything. We actually, the U.S. in 2008 and 2009 and even seven, they relied on the tribes. But unfortunately, the tribes were systematically assassinated for advocating peace and reconciliation in their provinces. So that's my reaction to that. And I definitely agree. How would you protect the tribes, I would say, because they don't have the leverage and the power they used to have in the past. But I don't think the tribes, they are influential. They are powerful. But the transnational ideology of al-Qaeda is or ISIS does not believe in this. And they systematically have assassinated, and they're going to assassinate in the future, too. That's my reaction. Thank you. Can I add something to that? I will pick on your governance and development point and also, like, you know, to your point, going back to the people part, because he talked about the tribes part. I had a conversation with, had a chance to speak with Dr. Habiba Sarabi, the first female governor of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in Australia a couple of weeks ago. And we sort of like revisited Afghanistan. And yes, we make fancy policies not here in Washington but also back home as well. You know, our governments do the same. And we have to understand that all these projects, all these CVE things or like construction or development or governance, whatever we are doing, it has to trickle down to the people. I will give you another example. One of my colleagues, he was one of the first ones to land in Iraq after 2003 regime collapse. And he said, when he went to the Sunni communities, he was dealing with active conflict. He had a plan from Washington to go and work on the active conflict part. But when he reached there, he had to actually change his design part to implement according to the will of the local communities because they said that emergency or hot active conflict is not our problem. Our problem is lack of governance and development and other grievances and other issues. So he said that I had to literally re-strategize everything to make sure I can work on my original design so that, you know, the people can be given goods and services and all that that they're requesting for. I'm going to say something that I don't think is going to satisfy what you're thirsting for, but that is that there is no easy solution and there is no one group, or two groups even, that is going to fix the problems that have developed and evolved over many, many years. And so the solution, no, I agree with you, the solution is not just going to be with the governments, but it's also not just going to be with the people, too. The governments have roles that they're going to need to play from the top down. And then there's solutions that are going to need to come from the bottom up, too, that the young people and different tribal leaders and religious leaders and civil society groups and so on have to be playing incredibly important roles on it. And it's where these things meet and address issues of governance, primarily at the beginning, issues of security and stability and getting needs met for people. So that some of these larger institutional issues can be addressed as well, will come. But it will take time. These are problems that have evolved over a long time and will take decades, including some of these, the narratives and the social prejudices and the global narratives and so on. There will be time, there'll be time to discuss afterwards. I just want to make sure everybody else has a chance. I see a hand just immediately. Hello, my name is Nero Desham. I am from Ambassador Bangladesh. So I would like to, far with the remarks you made with regard to the trying Zamaat Islam in Bangladesh. Actually, the government has set up the court to try the crimes against humanity, not to try Zamaat Islam at all. And there is no link between trying Zamaat Islam and Ansar Islam. In our experience, we have seen that most of the terrorists in their life, they are linked to the Zamaat Islam. So I think they should consider this point while addressing this trial process. Thank you. I'm sorry. Just to ascertain correctly what you're saying, are you saying there's no linkage between the government? No, there is no link because trying crimes against humanity and terrorist, there is no link in our country. Our experience was that most of the terrorists at one point in their life, they are linked to Zamaat Islam rather. I would just respond to saying that I didn't create a linkage. I use the word unintended consequences. I actually said in my talk that it's not the intention of the government to have these problems because it wants to bring 1971 to a closure. There is popular demand that is something that the government has to satisfy. But having said that, the law of unintended consequences is brutal. It doesn't wait for anybody, it comes around you, and it doesn't matter who you are, there are unintended consequences. And those unintended consequences are, let's say if you are from Zamaat Islam-e-Bangladesh and you were prosecuted and you're bitter, you go to jail, you get hanged, there are a lot of family members and friends who are saying, this isn't working. And maybe Daesh has the solution, maybe killing is the solution, maybe becoming far more extremist is the solution. That's what I was saying. I wasn't saying that there is a necessary linkage, but there are unintended consequences and this is one of them. Thank you. Point taken. Let me see if there are hands over here. Hi, Dan Killian from Management Systems International. I just wanted to contextualize this in terms of the recent developments in Turkey. I was wondering if there's a scenario where Turkey might start giving messaging about them being the resurrection of the Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire type language. Will this affect the transnational appeal of groups like Daesh? You see, we have to understand that this narrative is very embedded in the society as I was talking about. And if that kind of call is given, yes, you will have mobilization from South Asia. And a lot of families have gone to Syria. I mean, you know, I was looking at their profiles, they're educated, they have bright future, they have things to look up to, but they still abandon their lives and they went for a cause that they wanted to be a part of that Caliphate. So if that kind of call is there, there is going to be a movement in South Asia. I'd just like to add to that and I want to pick up on the fascinating point you made about romanticization of the notion of Caliphate. Most people have a very ahistorical view of the Caliphate. When I say most people, I mean the extremists and even popular discourse, they think at one point the whole Muslim world was some utopia, it was unified and nation states is just what the British and the French did to the Muslim world. That's absolutely, patently false. Muslim lands were divided into competing Caliphates, Sultanates and Emirates. And so this idea of the Caliphate has not evolved intellectually. What does it mean to be a Caliphate? I mean, if you look at the history of the Caliphate, how it originally involved, people had to make up things as they went along. It wasn't sort of something that was divine brought by the Prophet or in the Quran. And these are things that it's part of political learning. You move on and you advance. One of the problems that has happened in the Muslim world is that political thought has not advanced. What is the role of religion in politics? So I think that unless this issue is addressed, people are going to take up and subscribe to the simplistic views of ISIS and Al Qaeda and other groups about terms like the Caliphate as if the Caliphate is going to solve all the problems. So I think that Turkey should not be doing that and Turkey should actually move the discourse further and say, what does a Caliphate look like? Could it be like an EU style institution for the Muslim world? We already have the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. There are 60 member states. It's not really effective. But the Caliphate is not one thing. It's what you make of it. Hi. Thank you. Yes. My name is Sarah Reckless and I'm with USA. It's Office of Transition Initiatives. And so I actually wanted to say I appreciate hearing a little bit more about the need to address the broader context of violent extremism, because I think this is a point that definitely hits where our programs are trying to hit. And we do work much more at the community level. And my question is actually going to go to the bigger kind of regional policy questions that I think you guys have raised. And it sounds like if you're looking at South Asia and you're looking at the way that extremist groups, one of the ways that extremist groups gain traction is through conflict and through kind of insinuating themselves into conflict, exploiting their narratives, which are very simplistic about the Caliphate, but they can use conflict to do that. Is there anything at a regional level that you think that governments or capitals would be galvanized behind to try to address the issue in the region of violent extremism? What would that be? What would be a few things even that might be something that could be encouraging? Because it sounds like they're pushing them towards a conflict that people already or that countries already want with each other. So I'm curious if there's there any thoughts about opportunities. Thanks maybe Iman start and then others join in. So you see like for the Muslim communities in South Asia or the governments, they have to realize that you know this is an irreversible process. And I would be careful in saying that when we say reform Islam, it's a loaded word. Whether in the South Asian context in the community context or whatever you say, we have to or they have to sort of revitalize, energize, synergize the Muslim communities and they have to go back and literally study what Islam is. Because you know the narrative that has been going on, for instance, I give you an example. I was in Afghanistan originally from Quetta. There were 1700 madrasas at that time post 9-11 and now there are 2700 or more. And when I went there to interview those kids, they had absolutely no clue what Islam was. What was the narrative? All they knew that yes, they will get bed and breakfast. And you know it was like a very grass root level. Once you go back in the educated lot or like you know people who are like you know much aware of what is going on, still they don't know what exactly Islam is. So probably on their own level they have to revisit Islam to make sure that they can cater violent extremism during the present times. I want to turn back the question that I had asked earlier in my comments to the other panelists as well, which is do you think there's a role for Indonesia in this? I mean one thing that I hear a lot from, one thing I note in the countries where I work Sri Lanka and Myanmar is that the Muslim communities there have been very very pacific even when you know caught in the midst of violence in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. They by and large haven't respond with mobilized violence or creating insurgency groups and so on. And they often turn to Asian forms of Islam as providing something of an answer and an antidote to some of the rising extremism that are happening across different religious traditions in Asia. So they're saying instead of looking over to the Arab countries to find a vision of Islam that will be appropriate for us here, we should be looking to our brethren within Asia for Asian forms of Islam. So I wonder what role you see for the various Asian Muslim majority countries that are east of Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere as partners in this. I'd like to answer to your excellent idea. It would work if Pakistan takes the lead in this project. Yeah, that's it. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. One of the things that we have to notice is that in the Arab world is a mess, does not offer a model. The Arab world is searching for a model of what does it mean to mix religion and politics because that is the question at the end of the day. I mean you survey after survey from Pew shows that a majority of Muslims want, they don't know how, they don't know what it looks like, but they do want some religion to play some role in politics and it varies from country to country. So yes, the model that the Indonesians and the Malaysians have to offer is far better because they have problems. Yes, they have extremism but the magnitude is far less than what we see in the Western quadrant of the Muslim world. So democracy does function. There are problems with people, alleged voter fraud and whatnot. Those exist everywhere but I think that Indonesia and Malaysia do offer a model to emulate and it's for the governments to go to your point. I think that there are political imperatives that prevent different governments from cooperating but I think that there is still space in which they can cooperate. A, that each one of them should make it a priority that they will allow and protect speech. If you do nothing else, you know, if you can just and I have a hard time believing this is not possible because the coercive instruments of each of these states is very capable of doing that. That if you use coercive elements to say okay we will protect free speech and we'll go after those who are stifling debate and people will be protected speak. I think then that generates debate within each country, allows for a healthy discourse and that's where you can marginalize the extremist narratives. At the bilateral multilateral level stay out of each other's way, you know, as much as possible. It's not, you know, totally possible. That's what geopolitics is about. You can't ignore what your neighbor is doing and you have competing interests and divergent interests but try not to step on each other's toes. I mean Afghanistan and Pakistan is one of, you know, the clear example. At one point Pakistan was pursuing a strategic depth in Afghanistan through the use of non-state actors. Well guess what? Those non-state actors have now had strategic depth against Pakistan in Afghanistan. So you have that problem and so it's best to sort of give each other a lot of room because each country has a lot of domestic problems. This gentleman in the glasses right there. Thank you so much for your thoughts everybody in the panel. Something that's coming up throughout the discussion is the lack for model for Islamic nations to adopt to. And in my belief the model that exists is one propagated by Saudi Arabia at least in that sense of Islam, for Wahhabi ideology, for Salafist ideology and without the lack of a secular Arab ideology or Islamic ideology. Turkey's gone down the drain in the past couple of years with the dictator and then you see the Arab Spring taking over a few of the secular states that were left over. So do you think that unless the main root is kind of considered or is dealt with, which is the ideology that is propagated, the Madrasa building that he was talking about in Pakistan is propagated by mostly Saudi Arabian funding or by Qatari funding. You have these links to these extremists in the Middle East, peace in Syria and Iraq that come back from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Even for say the 9-11 attacks, the war happened in Afghanistan but the people who were coming were educated Europeans with background and ties to the Saudi families. So unless the United States turns a blind eye to that, it talks about human right violations but won't talk to Saudi Arabia on these issues and deal with the problems that are coming out of the rich Arab states that model the Islamic ideology. There can't be any conversation, especially with the Sunni Shia fight going on elsewhere. So how do you think the United States can attack this latent extremism if I might call that is coming out clearly but nobody addresses it? I just have to agree with you, that's it. It's not the job of the United States to go into every single country and say, okay, take care of your latent extremism, this is the job of those governments. Yes, the United States can put pressure. We've been putting pressure for 16 years, 17 years, we're not really making much headway because there are limits to power and ISIS exists in a military form because there are limits to power. At the end of the day, the narrative is not a problem that the United States can solve. If it attempts to solve it, it'll only make it worse because then any attempts at discussing ideology, that's dangerous territory. I mean, it's not the job of a secular state to talk religion and if you do that, you only strengthen the ISIS narrative that this is a war against Islam and Muslims. You see, going back to your point about U.S. getting into the affairs of other governments who are having these problems or countries, we also have to understand that ISIS did not invent terrorism, right? Al-Qaeda did not invent terrorism or Taliban did not or other groups. It has been there and why it has been there. There is a very inherent, embedded internal fight within the Muslims and I think once we look for policies from other countries that have technology and power and wisdom to solve certain issues, we also have to look internally and see where the problem is and going back to his camera's point on free speech, I think while we are looking at the negatives of South Asia, we also have to acknowledge the positives of South Asia. There is a change, no matter it is very slow. I mean, you have just witnessed in the Supreme Court decision in Pakistan, you have just seen in Afghanistan after this attack on the military base or elsewhere, people are questioning. They have started to ask questions. I mean, you know, and if a governor of the Punjab province can get up and sort of like, you know, side a poor Christian woman on a blasphemy issue, if he is intelligent and compassionate enough to support her, he must have calculated the risk as well. So, going back to one of the things that, you know, after the 9-11 and the emergence of Al-Qaeda, we had an avalanche of audiovisual and policy products on Fidain attacks, right? And we said that they were not rational or like, you know, we had all kind of like psychological analysis and all that. Well, in some part, yes, they are rational because they are pursuing their own cause. And when I see people like Sabine Mamoud or Mashaal Khan or Governor Tassir or Sunita Ali Zada in Afghanistan singing for child brides or a woman getting up in India and saying like, you know, okay, I'll convert to Hinduism if you don't fix the tenants of Islamic divorce process, it's a bold change. And we have to acknowledge that, you know, these governments, military and political leadership of South Asia and the intelligence community, they must realize that this process of questioning is irreversible. They have to make sure that they address these issues. You know, transgender is still trying to recognize, get recognized as a human being back home. These are very basic issues. I mean, it's not for the United States to go and sort of like, you know, give them a lesson on humanity and dignity. Thank you. Let me go to this question next. But, you know, one thought that occurs to me, I very much endorse this is the US should not have a role in trying to intervene and engage per say on these religious debates. On the other hand, I mean, what I've experienced, you know, in Afghanistan, I'm sure it's elsewhere is because of the constitutional restrictions on the establishment clause in the US, depending on what government lawyer on what government agency at what time there's a real allergic reaction. And it's to engaging in any kind of dialogue or programming addressing religion in other countries. And, you know, that is a far way away from intervening destructively. And I think, you know, acknowledging the problem on a policy level as religion as one component of it and then being able to have a dialogue and have programs on understanding would in fact help the situation tremendously because we kind of close our eyes and ears to the problem for some constitutional reasons that are actually flexible. So there's room for improvement there, in my opinion. I saw the gentleman behind you. Thank you. I'm Johnson Yuan, and I am from Hong Kong and a youth fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. My first question addressed with the youth engagement, the role of youth in the peace dialogue. So structurally, South Asia and Middle East are the youngest regions in the world. In Bangladesh, for example, 50 more than 50% of the population are people under 30 and same thing in Middle East. So what are the current progress of engaging and mobilizing youth in peace dialogue? And what should be done more by the international community? And my second question, the panelist mentions that the model of Malaysia and also Indonesia is more effective in containing extremism in their institutions. So how did they do it? What are the factors that helped them to contain the extremism? And regionally, what are the factors for Indonesia to facilitate discussions of Buddhist community among their regions? Thank you. Those are great questions. Let me start with Susan, and then we can work back. On the second part of the question, so Indonesia in particular I'm going to focus on has an incredibly diverse population, right? And you have pockets of the archipelago where you have Hindu majorities and Buddhist majorities and elsewhere. And yet in the modern era, since independence, aside from Aceh, which isn't a big aside, but for the most part, they have been able to manage the religious diversity at the same time as having a majority Muslim population, which goes back to some of the nationalist visions and legal mechanisms they put in place at the beginning with Panasila, the five components. But you have, you know, when I hear things like in Pakistan, there's a lot of madrasas and there's been this explosion of madrasas and so on. You have these same kinds of madrasas in Indonesia, but they look very different. So not all madrasa is the same. And madrasa is not always a bad thing, right? There's a great deal of Islamic education that many children go through within Indonesia. But the content of that Islamic education is very different, particularly in how it talks about other religious traditions and how to relate to other religious traditions. So it provides some models there in terms of creating legal frameworks that allow for religious protections, religious freedoms, and managing religious diversity, not to say that there aren't problems that arise. And there have been some problems even more recently that have arisen between religious discrimination between groups. But then also you have, you have educational, Islamic educational and social narratives and contexts that protect and even celebrate the diversity within the country that I think service models. Sorry, I didn't answer one part of that. Why would why would Buddhists be okay with Indonesia? In part because they see Indonesia as Asian, as opposed to, you know, Arab Islam, which has a lot of connotations for them that are not positive, but but also a place where religious minorities have on the whole thrived. I would just add, I totally agree. I would just add that the trajectory of Indonesia and Malaysia is very different. Islam from the very beginning was very different. The way it grew evolved. So, you know, it's essentially path dependency. So the more closer you get to the Arab core, you see, you know, the more austere and more medieval sort of prescriptions. The other thing is that political instability has not evolved in the same shape that it has in South Asia. You know, civil military relations were not really off the charts. Say, for example, in Bangladesh and Pakistan. And of course, you know, the Arab world and the authoritarianism there. So I think there are a number of factors. And then, of course, these are, you know, they're not thriving, but they're not, you know, economic failures. They're they've had their successes on the economic front. And as Suzy mentioned, you know, diversity. People have learned to live with people of different faiths over centuries. And that that's that says something. Whereas on the other hand, you have, you know, majorities that just want to sort of snuff out, you know, the minorities or at least keep them in a corner. Thanks, I see. Let me just take original comments. I see two more hands and then let's wrap up because we have about seven minutes left. Let me start with the woman on the inside here. And thank you. I'm Anne Sweetser. I'm a social anthropologist. My question is a reaction to an idea that's percolating to me that government has been treated sort of as a black box so far in this discussion. That's that's increasingly less true. But as an anthropologist, I see the government is full of people who bring their Islam and their Buddhism and their Hinduism into government and then their roles. To what extent are the governments in this region actually unified? I know what ISI and the military and other factions in Pakistan have have worked very variously with terrorist groups in the past. But how unified are governments? And let me take the gentleman in the dark suit there. Do you still have a question? Let's take that as the last question. And then the panelists can all have responses and closing comments. Thank you. My name is Ulfik Arhan. I work for State Department. I have two questions in the comment. Question is for Kamran and the lady, Man. For Kamran, you pointed out that extremism, okay, extremism and ultra-conservatism are overlapping. And I would like to know how because I grew up in northwest Pakistan, the probably the most backward and the most conservative part on the planet. And I have never seen anybody in my religion, my district, going out and blowing up themselves on the name of religion. And for Iman, you pointed out that from 1919 to 1924, people had this tendency to go into Ottoman Empire or kind of strive for their halafa. I mean, historically speaking, Pakistan and India was under a rule of, I think, burs. And they did not even have access enough food to eat bread. And how would they travel from all over from South Asia into Turkey and to be part of the Ottoman Empire? Because my understanding is they were kind of part of allied forces fighting against Ottoman empires. And the third point is it's very important for folks to understand that today's madrasas are not actually producing tourists. It was the case in the past, but what we have seen is it's mostly the college and university students that are actually going into very good schools, very good colleges. They are the one actually that are kind of blowing themselves up and leading more towards extremism. We have seen cases in the past, like in the 80s, when there was a jihad in Afghanistan. We have seen some madrasas were kind of actively recruiting folks for that jihad. But if today's research shows that madrasas are actually involved, I would like to see that so that we can go and counter their narratives, their messaging. Thank you. Thank you. Iman, do you want to start, Kamran, and then? So as far as that movement is concerned, I mean, we have to see the trends. It mass mobilized, it fetched the attention. People did go out. They literally moved with their families. They could not reach probably their destinations. They moved in India inside the subcontinent. Some went on their way to Afghanistan to other countries. But what it shows is that this trend has been there. Yes, even the Indian counterparts did support the movement. And of course, it was for a larger goal for them that they were suppressed under the British Raj. But at the same time, once you look at and compare the trends and you analyze the movement, you will find traces that would be actually connected to today's environment. And as going back to the romanticism with Khilafat concept, it's there. I mean, you know, they're still associated with those movements. And this is the baggage that the South Asians are carrying. When I said there's an overlap between ultra conservatism and extremism, look, so there's analytical categories, and then there's reality. We use analytical categories to model. And how do the two relate? So when I say latent extremism or ultra conservatism, I mean people who are willing to turn a blind eye to what you're doing, people who are willing to put money in your pocket, people who are facilitating you, giving you shelter, people who are your support network. Because there's overlap in ideas. So as Iman mentioned, there are a lot of people in Pakistan and we're not even talking ultra conservative. We're talking about people in urban areas who will tell you, look, what's wrong with the idea of Khilafat? Daesh is wrong because it's brutal. It does this. We don't like its methodology. We don't like it. But there is the attachment to Khilafat. And this is just one example. So if you look at the basic ideas, so what should the role of woman be in society? That's the kind of thing that the violent extremists can latch onto and it provides them with that appeal. So if the government forces come in and try to take out a terrorist cell, why are they not successful is because they have support from within that ultra conservative segment of society that is not necessarily extremist. And as I mentioned, the line is very fuzzy. You don't know when you're on one side or the other. As for Madrasa, you may be right. Look over the years, things change. I'm a big supporter of continuing to refine the net assessment on any issue. But the fact of the matter is that we do have a discourse and you're right. Urban educated, western style education institutions are also producing extremists and terrorists because the narrative, there is a master narrative that there is no escape from. So unless the master narrative is addressed, we're still going to run around in circles. And then we also have the previous question and Suzy, I'll give you the last word regarding this. You know, religion has come up a lot and that's the world in which I operate with this connection between religion and violence and peace building. And when it comes to violent extremism in particular, I would want to say that it's not that it has nothing to do with religion. I actually would disagree with Comron in terms of it's purely instrumentalist, it's purely movements or governments that are trying to use religion in order to mobilize forces. At the same time, I don't think it's all about religion. And so while I think there are religious ideas and motivations and interests that do compel some people to join these movements and so on, I also don't think that you're going to eradicate violent extremism, whether in Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism or Christianity by simply, you know, getting imams or monks or pastors to tweet nice things about their religion. I think it's going to be a much more complex discussion that has to happen within all of these religious communities and also between these religious communities. And it's going to need to make civic ties and other kinds of connections that can lead to institutional changes, that can lead to state protections, that can lead to nationalisms that are inclusive and so on in order to address them. So again, no easy, no easy or fast solutions to it, but I do think that there are pathways forward and examples that currently exist within the region and world. Great, that is a perfect note to end on. Please join me in thanking the great panelists for their presentation. And thank you all as an audience for the great questions and your presence