 Good afternoon everyone, thanks for being here and There are still a few seats up front for those of you who are hanging out in the back and looking for somewhere to sit Don't be shy come right on up I'm Tamara Kaufman with us I'm a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy next door at the Brookings Institution and really honored to be over here at Carnegie today with Francis to To launch this incredible report that she has produced on dilemmas of stabilization in Syria and as we will discuss beyond We have an incredible panel of women who each in their own sphere have been deeply involved in the policy and programmatic decisions That the United States has taken over the years in in regards to Syrian stabilization. And so Francis is in many ways the perfect person to have written this in-depth study and We're very very lucky to have Melissa Dalton and Monia Kubian here to discuss the report and its findings with us as well I won't go through long introductions. You have information on the speakers in front of you but but just briefly Francis of course is a fellow here at the Carnegie Endowment in the democracy conflict and governance program and She worked Syria issues at USAID and on the National Security Council staff During the Obama administration Melissa Dalton senior fellow and deputy director of the international security program at CSIS around the corner and who worked in the Defense Department including on this issue set and Monia Kubian Who is a senior advisor at the US Institute of Peace and Was the deputy assistant administrator for the Middle East at USAID when many of these programs were getting spun up and And so I think you can see that we've got different dimensions different angles on the challenge of Syria policy And on the report that is in front of you and you should each have a copy on your chairs. I Want to I want to begin by noting that the reality that we confront looking at Syria today is as Francis says in the report a bleak one and And And so we have to begin from the question of whether this over a billion dollars that was invested by the United States and the UK and other actors in Governance and stabilization efforts in Syria whether it made much difference Because the outcomes that we see on the ground today are distressing As as Francis notes in the report International armed actors rather than grassroots civilian councils are the ones who are shaping outcomes today in Syria the moderate opposition has become less moderate and less relevant to outcomes and the horrific trends that we've witnessed over the years of this war the mass displacement of civilians and and the incredible death toll and Physical infrastructure destruction all of that has now been compounded by a resurgent Assad government which is imposing these reconciliation agreements and We also see in various areas the ascendancy of pretty extreme armed groups and so it's not a reality that On its face suggests that all of this work had much impact and yet the work was designed and done very very close to the ground and And I think that's one dimension that that requires exploration and we'll be talking about it today and the other dimension the one that The report really delves into in detail is the relationship between these programs and what they were designed To do in their local areas working with local populations the relationship between that and the high-level policy objectives That the governments and donors involved in these programs had in mind So I'm going to turn it over first to Francis Brown to go through the main findings and implications of the report We'll have a little back-and-forth then with Francis and Melissa and Mona And then we'll open it up to some questions from all of you as well Great, thank you so much And it's really a pleasure to be here with this terrific panel as well as seeing so many friends and so much expertise in the audience I know many of you have lived these issues every day And so I'm really honored to be here in conversation with you As Tamara says I I came at this project wanting to take a close look at US so-called stabilization assistance or support to local councils in opposition held Syria Looking at how these local level programs related to the big picture in Syria over the entirety of the conflict 2011 to earlier this year. I wanted to ask two really big questions going in one is how did these local level programs? And their objectives their assumptions How did that local picture relate to high-level US policy and high-level US strategy on Syria over the years and Second how did these local level programs? Relate to the bigger realities of the conflict the bigger political and security picture of the conflict over the years what I found is in in brief is that as the conflict went on from 2011 through 2014 to the present day we saw an increasing divergence between the assumptions and objectives of these local programs and US high-level policy At the at the national level in addition as the years went on from 2011 to 2014 to the present We also saw a situation in which the high-level military political security realities of the war had largely overturned the objectives And assumptions of local level stabilization programs so two areas of increased divergence With all that said for the second part of the paper I I probe into why these programs continued given that sort of bleak high-level picture and giving these a given these increased tensions And I find a lot of actually quite compelling reasons that these programs did continue that I will discuss I also found some less compelling reasons why these programs Continue that I will also discuss and then finally I give a few insights into What the implications are for future us and other partner donor stabilization efforts and other conflicts So first what am I talking about when I say stabilization programs? This is a shorthand term for a basket of different programs that all align with the US government's Definition of stabilization but had some variety So I'm looking at programs that were supporting opposition local councils and opposition held Syria trying to help these councils Provide better services Undertake good governance participatory governance be more legitimate in the eyes of their community and have better capacity all with the ultimate end goal at least initially of Providing the building box for a post Assad future the day after the Assad regime falls There I'm not looking at so-called humanitarian assistance Which is a different category of assistance which is provided in accordance with humanitarian principles on the ground There was some blurring between the these types of programs, but For the purposes of this analysis my focus is on local governance and stabilization programs in Syria other partner Donors such as the UK European partners also had similar programs my focus here is on US high policy But I do bring in and in the paper you'll see some examples from local council support programs by other partners as well Where it might be relevant So what did I find as I said? I found increasing divergence between this local level picture local level stabilization and the national level picture But it was not always thus in the early years of the conflict So 2011 2012 what I describe in the paper is that there was actually at the outside of the conflict a Pretty strong alignment between what these local council support programs were aiming to do and the presumed trajectory of the conflicts As well as US high-level policy, so in the early years of the conflict as you may remember There was a pretty strong assumption that Assad would actually fall pretty soon This was conditioned by the experience in Libya the experience elsewhere Mona has an excellent report for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum sort of talking Describing in some depth this analytic analytic error that the US government and I think some other partner governments as well made of sort of Assuming that Assad was quote a dead man walking And if you presume that Assad is a dead man walking then the logic of setting up stabilization Assistance very quickly makes a lot of sense. You want to get some local council processes up and running as quickly as you can Just have something ready to go should he fall that and there need to be a program for the day after so I think these programs were quite aligned with With the overarching conflict trajectory at least as it seemed they were also aligned with US policy President Obama and partner heads of state had said Assad must go in 2011 So this was this generally seemed aligned Of course during these early years there were real implementation challenges to local council support and stabilization This was about as textbook hard conditions as you can imagine these programs were being run Remotely from partner countries from neighboring countries all of whom had their own considerations as Tamara I'm sure is very familiar also these programs are being run in a really opaque environment oftentimes we didn't know The local partners with whom we were working on the ground. There were intermediaries who went back and forth issues of elite capture and Corruption overlapping mandates. There were a lot of implementation challenges, which for all the practitioners in the room You know will come as no surprise, but in short early years. I would say 2011 to mid 2013 We saw strong alignment, but some implementation challenges next the paper Pivots in the next time frame, which I put is very roughly mid 2013 to the end of 2016 And in this time frame is when we start to really see the tensions between what stabilization programs are trying to do at the Local level on one hand and the national level picture on the other During this time frame as many of you will recall. We saw a couple really key incidents One is the emergence of the Islamic State by 2014 The u.s. Has formally prioritized the counter Islamic State campaign with the global coalition to defeat ISIS Although u.s. Policy still appears to be that Assad must go as well in terms of military Resourcing and diplomatic have there's a clear revealed preference for a counter ISIS rather than a counter Assad Policy at the high level also during this time period of these three years We see the Russian intervention into the conflict in autumn 2015 This has the effect of tipping the battlefield balance ultimately back towards the Assad regime and makes the Hypothesized day after Assad a lot less likely so As these high-level Developments are happening. What does this mean for local level stabilization programs? What I try to show in this paper is that actually this had grave consequences for the local level programs specifically The lack of confusion a lack of clarity on whether the u.s. Have prioritized a counter ISIS Objective or a counter Assad objective had real ramifications at the local level You think about it many of the Syrians who'd signed on to support these programs signed on with a you know a fervent and passionate counter ISIS counter Assad, excuse me Objective they wanted to be part of the revolution and as as the programs pivoted or had a less clear counter Assad objective The local staff and the local councils whom they were supporting Were not necessarily enthusiastic In addition, there was a related confusion on whether the u.s. Is realistic policy after about 2015 after the Russian intervention There was confusion on whether the u.s. Is Realistic political end state for Syria was still a day after Assad a regime change outcome or Instead was a regime restructuring outcome So maybe the best bet that the best hope would be some kind of devolved political settlements Maybe some kind of managed transition eventually, but but no longer the regime change This also had ramifications on the ground because building up a totally new Bureaucracy versus building up a reformed version of an old bureaucracy are really different issues when you get to the local level and Stabilization programs that were attempting to build up good governance practices really had to grapple with that that confusion On what they were actually leading towards many practitioners Gamelay and staff Gamelay tried to sort of straddle this this confusion Saying that they were Really trying to build up good governance norms no matter what the ultimate political end state and I think there was some success with this But it was still as you can imagine a tremendously challenging implementation environment to not know what processes these good government This demand for good governance was all leading to Also during this time period with these big these big picture changes We saw real challenges in In in the ideas of helping local council civilian local councils compete against armed groups like asa like Isis and others a lot of the theories of change that these programs Undertook were predicated on this idea that service delivery will bring legitimacy that if local councils civilian local councils are supported in providing for their constituencies their constituencies will support them in return give them their loyalty and that will help these local councils sort of Stand up to the pressure from all sides And this in truth Didn't always work out this way on the ground many local councils many civilian local councils Alternatively had to cooperate or be co-opted by armed groups It wasn't really a competition in the same way these theories have changed presumed and then the final tension during this time period is just the The broader Syrian political opposition was ever more fragmented donors on their side were ever more fragmented So any ideas of sort of helping these local level but using these local level programs to build up and knit together Opposition ended up Foundering The final period very quickly 2017 to the present what I described in the paper is basically the conflict and the map has become so fragmented that it and the political and military developments of the war have Have evolved in a way that it's basically obviated the objectives the initial objectives of good governance and stabilization Programs you're seeing mass Syrian regime consolidation mass parts of the country seeing huge numbers of displaced civilians And you're seeing so-called reconciliation agreements that Tamara mentioned Reconciliation in this sense is a sort of Orwellian term of reconciliation. It's not the peace-building sense of reconciliation So the regime is basically Reasserting it forcibly reasserting its control what this means for the objectives of stabilization programs is that all of these good governance processes that were painstakingly Supported in earlier years many of them get completely erased as local councils are forced to flee their areas Or as the regime re reconstitutes control The one exception or the oh in addition we've see armed group ascendancy in some of the areas in one area Idlib province That is still outside of regime Territory so that brings all kinds of complications for stabilization programming and most most support has stopped at this point The one exception is in the east part of eastern part of the country where they're under the SDF the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic forces there is a Potential area for stabilization programming to have traction. That's a separate issue. We will talk about The final part of the paper basically Asks why why given this increasing divergence between this local level picture and the broader national level picture and the national policy Why do these programs continue like I said there were some really good reasons these programs Continue to provide very valuable services to besieged populations many practitioners felt like Providing these services in an inclusive fashion that the stabilization programs had honed that was a good in its own right And that's quite convincing There was also a sense of loyalty to these local councils with whom the West had partnered for so long Other donors and the US felt like we should stick with these partners to the end even if the national level is bleak and Another reason that some of these programs continued is that some were able to pivot either pivot their objectives or pivot their Geographies to places where they could be more relevant first in the south and Doraya after that was reconciled to the east There was also however some less good reasons these programs continue continued and I detail these in the paper One is this issue of information biases and perception gaps What we saw in the reporting on Monitoring and evaluation of these programs was that there ended up being a heavy skewed towards anecdotal stories of success local councils that were successful And as fewer and fewer councils could be supported by the US there was The there was a hundred percent success rate and those that were left to be reported on if you think about it If you're supporting ten local councils five are overrun by the regime four are co-opted by armed groups The one remaining local council is a shining success And so we see the sort of pathologies of the information environment at play We also saw very compelling individual stories of local councils that were Truly courageous and standing up to the Assad regime and these Individual anecdotal stories ended up getting a lot of traction both in the social media sphere and within the policy reporting So the good stories ended up perhaps getting disproportionate coverage vis-a-vis the bleak broader picture The other reason that I see is that there was a tremendous amount of bureaucratic competition Organizational factors perpetuating these programs again not a surprise to many practitioners But with so many different invested stakeholders doing different parts of the puzzle there was both an imperative to Perpetuate these programs maintain flexibility and it was very difficult to give a holistic assessment of how the big picture was adding up Um Finally, I do think there were and we'll talk about this more. I will leave it here. I think we did see different views of these tensions Between those policy makers who are here in Washington versus the practitioners on the ground for practitioners on the ground These tensions that I mentioned earlier. Are we supporting counter Assad or counter ISIS? These were really central to their daily work. Whereas from the perspective of policymakers Sitting far away with who weren't steeped in this. Basically these programs were doing good things for good partners there were a lot of other big policy fish to fry in Syria in terms of potential military Confrontation confrontation with Russia managing the ISIS threats regional partner security So many policy makers I think here in Washington didn't really have time to interrogate the programmatic tensions that I'm detailing Um The final part of the paper does talk about implications for future endeavors I'm gonna leave that here leave that for later for now and turn it back over to the policy the panelists Great Francis. Thank you so much and I I really want to commend this report to you. It is Tremendously rich and thoughtful. It includes a lot of interviews with practitioners and Participants in these programs that give you the kind of insight into how this stuff looks and feels on the ground It's very very hard to get from Washington and and and very unusual even Among this the sort of analytical Communities are really want to commend you for the work that went into it And and I really think you should all spend some time with the report Francis before I Open it up to a broader conversation with Melissa Dalton and Monet of Kubian I have to sort of press you on one point, which is that you titled this paper dilemmas of Stabilization assistance and I think it's clear from the the short briefing that you just gave what some of those dilemmas are But I imagine that for you working on this after having dealt with these issues in government that that Challenge confronting these dilemmas thinking through these dilemmas Is a personal challenge as well So I I just want to ask you to reflect a little bit on the nature of those dilemmas as you see them having gone through this analytical process. Yeah, thank you and Precisely as you say it's sort of that it's When we are analyzing Syria I think it's and as I have done I think it's easy to get wrapped up in the analytics and the sort of this passionate research, but I think my Starting point of this paper was from a point that Syria is a catastrophe Syria is a catastrophe from a humanitarian perspective Syria is a tragedy from the perspective of those who supported the peaceful ideals of the revolution and It behooves us all to really dig deep in why and understanding why I think when we dissect Syria as in the story of Syria and how these stabilization programs played into it I think there's basically as an American as a non-syrian There's basically three stories we can tell three ways we can tell the story the first is is is an independent dispassionate researcher or academic who Can tell this whole story that I just told as a story of the fallacy of foreign assistance the folly of foreign interventions Good intentions go wrong. It will never work And can see this whole story as evidence of that I think there's some truth to that personally and I do wear the academic and researcher hat But I also don't think it's the whole truth because as I try to show these programs ended up doing important things There was a logic for why these programs continued and there was a personal stake and the people with whom they were working So I think that's part of the story But it's I don't think it's the full story the second hat we can wear and we can tell the story is that of the Practitioner and if you're a practitioner telling the story, it's it's very easy to say Problem was the policy makers, you know, these programs are doing great things But where was the military support? Where was the security support? Where was the high-level policy to make these programs a success again? I'm tremendously sympathetic to that side as well I've been in the practitioner role But I also don't think it's the whole story because I think if you play that out a higher level policy intervention High-level military intervention would have had some unintended consequences or unknowable consequences as well That's not any that's not the whole truth either and then finally I think there's a policymaker story you can tell as well on this and again. I've served in that role From my national security council standpoint and the policymaker story is again these programs are generally doing good things There were way bigger fish to fry and There there were a lot of tensions to manage and again, I see some I I see some Merit in that explanation as well The reason I wanted to bring all three of these perspectives together was to get at these dilemmas I think when we only tell one of these three stories We sort of exonerate ourselves from actually digging deeper into the tensions into the dilemmas The truth is that any future intervention or any future conflict is going to have tensions on from all three of these axes and that We have to grapple with in order to prevent another catastrophe like Syria I think it's almost too easy to just take one of these lenses blame it on the policy makers and Expatiate ourselves from any kind of you know future Sort of future grappling with what actually happened. So that is why I called it dilemmas Well, thank you Francis and I I don't think these are dilemmas that are entirely Resolvable, but we will try in our conversation over the next few minutes to dig into them a bit further and and Mona if I may I I want to start with you here because you were Sitting at USAID here in Washington and we're sort of in the middle between your implementers out in the field and the field office that was created to run these programs and ultimately to Two big offices that were set up to create and to run these programs one in Jordan and one in Turkey And you somehow had to translate this incoherent policy that came out of the interagency process into guidance Were your programmers? So I wonder if you could reflect on that a bit Yeah We're to start this is our group therapy Exactly first I just want to say what an honor it is to be on a panel among such esteemed Colleagues and more importantly friends and I also want to add my strong huge kudos to Francis This paper is terrific. You really managed to drill down on a very complex set of issues and and Provide some clarity and I think some some deep insights and I'm actually just bowled over even by your your response Just now to why dilemmas and you captured it so well I Was gonna say I enjoyed reading the paper. That's not the right. That's not the right verb to use because it was it was It's a verbally written paper It was hard to read because it did bring back so many memories of what we grappled with and I see colleagues in the audience Who were sitting around the table? All of us and so I think I'd like to sort of make if I could just two points right now the first is just to Really underscore How difficult it was this strategic incoherence? From on high that we were forced to contend with in terms of how exactly your question, Tammy how do you translate that programmatically and We had countless meetings where we sat and sort of Grappled with this question of you know, is it counter ISIS is it counter Assad? What does the assist? How does the assistance actually? Align with the policy and the strategy which in theory it should I think in particular a real turning point which you mentioned was the Russian intervention in the fall of 2015 when it became abundantly clear that There was really little to you know, zero chance that the Assad regime was going to be unseated. It was increasingly remote Not only that but you had this uptick in the aerial bombardment etc a barrel bombing and so forth. So it's very very painful to watch and certainly unspeakably painful for our Syrian colleagues on the ground From a stabilization or sort of political programming as you put it perspective it raised this big question though as well in terms of Okay, if we're doing this programming on the ground and some of it was done actually quite well, I think What it for stabilization programming to be effective it has to connect To a central authority to a higher government and in this case there were no answers as to what is it going to connect to? This became very clear as we had discussions with our military colleagues following the decision to train Syrian fighters to counter ISIS and of course one way the question was put is when these when these fighters are reinserted into Syria Are they going to turn left or are they going to turn right? Are they going to go for the regime? Are they going to go for for ISIS? But more importantly, I think a bigger question of Look aid and state we're counting on you to fall in behind us Once these areas are liberated But what do you what is all of this? What is all this work going to to tie into I? Was one of those hapless bureaucrats who at some point decided okay look we're not you know It's like waiting for good dough. We are not going to get clarity on the strategy. It's just not going to happen We're going to live in this weird limbo And so let's think of this let's think of this type of assistance as a bridge between the counter regime and the counter ISIS objectives because as you point out At the end of the day you are looking to provide good governance You're looking to provide essential services. You're looking to ensure local buy-in There are all kinds of things that that accomplish either goal if an area is Removed of the regime of the regime has receded and you're laying the seeds for a new Syria or if an area is liberated from ISIS Those are the imperatives But as you rightly point out, I think this issue was particularly difficult for our colleagues in the field who were dealing with not only an incredibly brutal and deadly conflict and rapidly evolving conflict on the ground but also working closely with our with our Syrian partners who were as You rightly noted Very disappointed in the United States what we were doing and they certainly many if not most did not buy in To the prioritization that the Obama administration had which was to favor counter ISIS to focus on countering ISIS Rather than on countering the regime However, I do think there is embedded in this a silver lining However, however fragile or small and that would be my second point Which is one area that I think has not received as much attention Probably for good reason, but and which I think of in some ways as an unsung success Is the work that was done in the south in Konaetra and in Dara Syria was a very fractured battleground as you all know and the Conditions that you described very well in your paper. I think very aptly described the north Shrinking space growing extremism a foreign fighters coming in highly fractured lots of barrel bombing The south by contrast Was I would say relatively I underscore relatively it was no picnic but relatively more stable And so you had this period from 2013 to 2018 when things dramatically change Where there was really interesting programming going on much of it and again I'm biased because it was undertaken largely by our bureau the Middle East bureau. It was the Syria essential services program and I think in that relative stability There were some interesting things that went on on the ground the focus of this programming was the entry point was the repair of Essential services. It was not a governance programming. It was essential services programming. That was the entry point and by ensuring that local councils were Responsive to citizen demands for their essential services that things were actually working that people were getting what they needed That provided the entry point on the governance side. So it's technical folks providing essential services But in fact embedded in that were governance imperatives. There were lots of town hall meetings that were used There were I think ways to sort of assess local councils how well they were providing services provide training for those That clearly needed it and then I think toward the end my understanding and I had left government by this point Was a lot of work was also being done to connect local councils in those areas in data on Canetra up to the provincial councils of there on Canetra and to do a lot more which is sort of the vision we had it literally was like building a plane while flying it you're sort of building and Sort of strengthening the capacity of local councils at the same time Building the relationships among them and connecting them up to the provincial council And so I think that as well as some interesting innovations deploying solar technology They had a internship for women in the provincial councils, which I think is very important. The south is fairly conservative. There were some You know innovative uses of technology for monitoring and evaluation. So I think you know, there are some Useful lessons to be learned from the south that I think deserve actually deeper study as we think about and reflect on Syria Thank you, Mona and I I want to come back to two dimensions of that second point one is the kind of creativity and innovation in in the programming and what are the lasting effects of that and the other is Is What does this connect to? What's left So but before we do that Melissa I I want to turn to you and and you know one of the major turning points that Francis describes in this report is the The rise of ISIS and the shift in the American policy focus and then the thrust of American policy In countering ISIS in Syria That's what led President Obama ultimately to reintroduce combat troops into Iraq and and ultimately Introduce troops in a Syria as well. President Trump has escalated that effort and and Inevitably that sort of creates a whole new frame for these sorts of civilian assistance programs, right? whereas before they were operating without a Military umbrella, whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, but once it's in a counter-terrorism framework Then it's military in front and as Mona said civilians coming in behind to sort of stabilize and and and hold and build right after the clear so I'm curious from the perspective of someone who's Who was in DoD and thinking about it from that military side of the equation Does that does that work with programs like these that are inherently political And how much did it matter that the context here was a context of a civil war where the government Opposed by the United States was still ultimately in place Well, I am also honored and delighted to be joining this Distinguished panel today and really commend to you this excellent report by my friend Francis She described the the three different lenses through which you can examine this issue And I think we were lucky that Francis herself actually wears all three hats So she is indeed the perfect person to have undertaken this task So please read it lots of lessons to be learned about Syria as well as application going forward Tomorrow I will Get to the question that you posed because I think it's it's excellent and also Connects to where I hope will go with this conversation today in terms of thinking about the prospects for the Enterprise in the East and also looking ahead for for stabilization and the appropriate synchronization of civil and military resourcing going forward perhaps and in other theaters but I did want to take a step back first just to reflect reflect a little bit on some of the language that Francis used in her paper that that really resonated with me This this one quote supporting these programs was a relatively easy choice in an otherwise deeply contested policy environment This idea that local governance is inherently good Worth worth supporting laying the foundation even if the nebulous policy outcomes that we were driving to Where we're largely unknown or undefined or contradictory throughout most of the course of the effort And also useful at times in terms of justifying The prospect that Assad must go even when that reality You know past past us all by because as Francis notes in her paper eventually we will turn the corner So it was like we were constantly chasing chasing that idea. I would actually also go a step further You know at least in terms of what I remember in in hearing in some corners that there was almost a willing Obstification of what the intent for these local councils were that There was the cover purpose of the council's first stabilization In particularly post 2014 post ISIS to consolidate our security gains But that it would also be useful to putting pressure on or as a hedge against Assad in the years to come but without the broader mobilization and of strategy and Resourcing to meet that and I think that's the particular tension that we see playing out right now in in the East I think it's also important to invoke the the parallel story Throughout this conflict that Mona and others have written about Mona through her critical junctures work And that's the story of US and international support to the armed opposition Groups in Syria, which is again been fairly well documented the waxing and weaning of support Army that post Kambani Emphasis on the Syrian Democratic forces and trying to build that out not just as a Kurdish dominated force But also one that is Water sweep of Eastern Syria And and Francis talks about the dynamics between Local councils and some of the jihadist armed groups in particularly northern Syria how there was a competition at times In the delivery of services between militia groups and the local council governance councils that the US and others were supporting And how through the fog of war and the complexity of the conflict It was unclear who was actually delivering which services and who had the comparative advantages But I think there's actually a really interesting story to also be told and examined For the purposes of Syria and what we ought to ought to do in the East But also extrapolating out for future civil integration Stabilization and that's the intersection of security assistance and in stabilization How much planning was actually done? I'm sure it was done in some form in some sense to ensure that the actors that we were empowering through our Security assistance are the armed groups that we were empowering and incentivizing We're matching our local governance efforts and how well were those groups talking to each other on the ground to synchronize Delivery of services. I suspect that that story is is probably uneven But but certainly worth examining perhaps in a in a part for efforts Yes, you know, I'd be happy to we'll have to talk further about that You know and and where the where are the emphasis lay in terms of the relative prioritization of those Militia groups in certain areas and to achieve what ends particularly as Mona highlighted You know post 2014 that the recruitment was tilted and skewed heavily towards fighters that would be willing to counter ISIS first and you know, it just layers an additional Complexity on top of the dynamics that that Francis has so well laid out So, you know, we'd love to dig into that a bit in the discussion, but I think it does also Connect to tomorrow's Really interesting first question about how how can this work, you know Given the enterprise in in East where the first move has been to buttress the the SDF and Stabilization being layered in to follow that, you know, they're they're the hard realities of how you have to actually clear Areas to make them secure for civilians to be able to deliver Governments both from from the local perspective and then the technical and funding assistance that needs to go into them They're just some some hard practicalities of that But I think you know from from a DoD perspective and you know as somebody that used to work there and you know Observes you D from the outside. I think there has been a fundamental shift post Iraq and Afghanistan to recognize the the enabling function Thought to provide in these environments again recognizing there's the practicalities of war and conflict that DoD has to be the first in but that basically taking a step back and letting first and foremost local partners lead and then being supportive USA and state and international colleagues and an NGO implementers on the ground So I think that that awareness that recognition is is there at the policy level. It is also very much I think in the the muscle memory and Connective tissue of the military organ if you will coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan But we'll take some some time and probably several iterations to actually Bear bear fruit. So I think I'll stop there But I think a lot of really useful fodder for our follow-on discussion Great. Thank you. I I want to pick up on that last point But before I do for the folks who are standing in the back I see at least two or three chairs up here if you want to come on up There are if you have a chair next to you maybe raise your hand. That would be great I see one here one here Okay, great. Um, so following up on that point, you know It strikes me that there that as we work through the dilemmas here I Want to come back to this fundamental dilemma that that lesson which you say now is well embedded in DoD Melissa that The military has to be up front, but it has to create an enabling environment for the civilian effort That's all within the framework of a counter-terrorism mission. Okay, it's about defeating terrorists and then making sure they don't come back And in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, that was also in the context of having displaced an adversarial government and Trying to put into place and stabilize a friendly government that agreed with the counter-terrorism mission And of course, that's not what we had in Syria, right? and so when we talk about these programs in the context of Syria in a way that the the political equation is Civilian programs that are designed to support bolster strengthen articulate the will of civilians on the ground citizens of Syria Versus the power of a coercive state, which has already demonstrated its readiness to slaughter civilians for the sake of remaining in power, right? So if I frame it that way, which is harsh, but I think accurate I guess my question to all of you is if if those funding these programs US UK others are not willing to confront the power of that regime. Is it worth doing this or is it just as You know as some of your interviewees suggested Francis creating false hopes But no, that's you've gotten to the crux of the challenge absolutely and without putting too fine a point on it So I what I say in the paper and this is really what I truly believe The story is still being written. This is this is chapter one two and three of a very long story and what we don't know is what the long-term Effects might be in sort of shifting norms of more inclusive governance more accountable governance I did hear a lot from practitioners and Syrian counterparts on the ground About how impactful sort of just shifting their conception of what was possible in terms of local governance was and then that was important Part two of that is you can also ask with all that great success all that new demand for good governance that has been drummed up What has it gotten us in the face of a regime that is forcibly violently reconstituting control and I actually think Mona your really informative Narrative about the South is kind of a case in point. Unfortunately, there was the South during as I conducted my interviews early this year. It really was a inspiring and exciting governance story to hear about And as you say it sounded like some of the efforts that were attempted elsewhere of sort of connecting the local to the provincial level We're getting quite good traction and yet the lesson of Syria has borne out in other conflicts as well is Security force trumped all you know that Eventually this was wiped out and so it's it's an open question What is left what I say in the paper is that as the story is being written who knows what what The effects will be in the diaspora for example or or in the east where there might still be a hope It's it's possible that some of the norms that have been shifted will transfer into another generation of thinking so in some ways It is too soon to tell Well, can I ask you to pick up on that because I think you know you and I over a lot of years have spent a lot of time talking about The expectations among Arab citizens regarding governance and how shifts and expectations can create new realities so I mean how much how much do you think that holds in this case? Look, I'm fascinated by this discussion and I in what's going through my head is you know, there is no answer to this That's unknowable and You know even in the south I I have not in completely given up hope that there is not Some reverberating impact down the road that may make itself felt. I mean I think you know confronted with The complexity of this conflict, I mean if you if you look at it as a binary choice Do we stay or do we go I op that we stay we do what we can now in the case of the south Yes, a lot of a lot of very successful work may have been wiped out But what of you know, I think the south is a really interesting laboratory because bear in mind There was no US military. There's no US military in the south So this was completely and no US presence civilian presence on the ground. This was completely Syrian driven And for me that is a huge takeaway for how we think about the east It's locally owned. It's Syrian driven. It's Syrian designed And it's very powerful and I guess, you know I'm an eternal optimist that you kind of I think have to be if you're gonna work on this part of the world And so I refuse to believe that all of that just got wiped away and it never existed I do feel that Overall and particularly with the Syrians that I've met the implementers that we dealt with our partners on the ground They're extraordinary. I don't think that goes away. I think part of this as I was listening to this discussion this US engagement on Syria has often been a waiting game Waiting for something waiting for the situation to clarify waiting for some way to see how this may go forward I think we're still on in that posture in this case Waiting to see I don't know how it would happen if there is some more decentralized form of governance that comes about as a result of political negotiations pressure put on the regime and in that instance a More decentralized form of governance. I think you have communities that are very very well Set and prepared and have the capacity to do extraordinarily well Melissa, can I ask you to reflect on that a bit too? And you know not only in the Syrian context, but in Iraq and Afghanistan as well We've seen that central governments in this post-conflict post civil war environment Struggle even when they have a lot of international support Struggle to reach out across their territories establish effective connections to local communities and And then they face choices about how that governance relationship is going to work. Is it Is it going to be patronage driven? Is it going to be driven through coercion? Is it you know, is it going to be bottom-up and decentralized in the way that Mona pointed to as as a hopeful potential In in the Syrian case, of course, this is a government that's got strong support from Iran strong support from Russia It's probably gonna get a lot of physical Infrastructure reconstruction, but it's not gonna have a lot of resources from the international community Be that kind of state-building. So what do you think are the limits of what a government can do? That's it's a great question. I mean, I I think it there's not a cookie-cutter Solution set for this and I think you know, it's There are certainly best practices to be extracted from Iraq and Afghanistan Experience that I think we all carry forward But I think Syria is unique and arguably, you know, perhaps with also some sub-Saharan Africa cases Southeast Asia is a new way of approaching Stabilization, but I think it's important to almost make a frame Recognizing that there are lessons to bring forward from Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's it's almost a fundamentally different enterprise because it's the injection from the international community is targeted and selective and is intended to be low-impact with the partner really being in the lead. I think in that lays some lies some some hope In terms of what Mona was describing in the South that if these are locally designed locally implemented solutions then in theory That they'll be more sustainable. I think what we learn from the southern Syria example though is in the absence of the overarching Political diplomatic effort that puts pressure on the other players involved and the political will to actually back that up with leverage, there are limits to how far Local partners can go in driving that enterprise and I think one of the key Frame shifts to make you know and linking back to Tamara's earlier point about Viewing this through the counter-terrorism lens followed by consolidating gains Stabilization is that whether you're talking about Stabilization, counter-terrorism or security assistance. These are all ways of Accomplishing your objectives too often we treat them as strategies unto themselves Because we have ready-resourcing ready authorities It's the lever that we can pull in the situation that are incredibly complex that You know in some cases make make us feel good because we can actually do something But but are also tangible things when there's a need to show Resolve our political commitment But too often we rely upon those ways as the as the actual strategy And and falter in terms of our ability to really deliver because the the ultimate outcomes are undefined the the connecting objectives or milestones to get you there are Unarticulated and you know to think some of the questions that Francis raises at the end of her paper What are the criteria and? You know shorter term milestones that that gets you to those objectives We we fail too often in mapping that out thoughtfully from the get-go and adapting them as as we go Just to quickly add on to that. Yeah, what was remarkable to me when doing this research of having Served in Afghanistan previously and sort of seen the advent of the counter-insurgency era and the Amazon best-selling counter-insurgency manual as this audience will remember ten years ago counter-insurgency was all the rage the US government put a tremendous amount of Programmatic and policy effort into doing counter-insurgency better And hopefully learn some lessons when we came to Syria. We were actually no longer fighting a counter-insurgency We were fighting a counter-counter insurgency. We were supporting an insurgency and What was remarkable to me is that we took many of the defined templates and programmatic Paradigms directly from the counter insurgency playbook and dropped them into the counter counter insurgency playbook Think about this another way. We were Used to a state building endeavor We took that playbook and transpose it directly into a counter state building endeavor With sort of the same programmatic approaches, so I think there's something to be said there Thank you. So I want to shift now We've we've done a little bit of discussion about what this means more broadly for mission and strategy I want to talk a little bit about what it means more broadly for assistance and Francis let me start with you some of the the challenges that That you talk about in the persistence section of your report why these programs persisted despite the Disconnect with policy you talk about the pathologies of the information environment you talk about Five-year-olds on the soccer ball, which was a phrase. I feel like I heard a lot managing assistance in crisis situations But it's those challenges the the tendency to sort of keep things going because they've developed their own constituencies to focus on the anecdotal success rather than the range of failure These are problems with all assistance programs, aren't they? So how do we learn from this? How do we overcome these? Yeah, precisely and I To show my hand I think my next big research project is on this exact issue of measuring and defining success and stabilization because I do think it Bedevels us across engagements. I saw a couple Patterns in Syria that really matched other engagements. I've been involved with as well this sort of the prevalence of the anecdotalism The idea that there's a couple Really compelling and successful local councils in the Syrian case District councils in the Afghan case and these are the stories that we hear over and over again in the Syrian case It's Sarakib and Marat Numan. I heard about these really compelling stories over and over in Afghanistan I see some Afghanistan hands here. It was Argendab and Nawa and Marawara you would hear about these and or sort of localized successes So often that it sort of crad crowded out a more holistic assessment of the bigger picture. So that's one Shouldn't you focus on those and see if they're replicable? Absolutely. Yeah And I think that was perhaps what was lost is that what the social scientists and us would say is that we need to see What is more broadly applicable and what what factors in these localized areas actually could be generalized out to a broader Structural shift. I think the answer to my mind is that often it was particularities of those places a compelling leader You know really courageous cadre of activists and not all of these aren't readily Applicable some maybe and I don't mean to be entirely glass half full on this But I do think that our own information structures tend to amplify these successes as a result my colleague Andrew O'Donohue was really helpful in going through some Program documents from one other donors Local council program and he found that as that donor could program in fewer fewer councils It just dropped reporting on those local councils from its metrics of success So again, it was a hundred percent success rate as you continue to bring down the population of cases so I think that sort of That's sort of phenomenon is something we really need to wrestle with I Know you want to respond and then I have an additional question I want to respond because I think this was this was something that really also was certainly disconcerting inside government, which was the the extent of bureaucratic infighting that was enormous and It is certainly the nature of bureaucracies in some way It's also I think the way the assistance was structured the way the assistance coordination was structured it sort of It made rivals and competitors out of the key elements of State and aid and frankly even within AID on this and so it was kind of Initially quite discouraging To to sort of I was certainly part of it too, but I think as if the problems in Syria aren't enough We're we're kind of we're engaging in a lot of bureaucratic catfights that I think are not Effective not not taking us where we need to be I want to sort of highlight though to I think useful Responses to that one is the stabilization assistance review star, which really I think is is a you know I know that it has yet to really be implemented But just the idea that we all need to really think about these complex challenges and I do my feeling is Syria is Emblematic of 21st century conflicts We need to understand what happened in Syria if we all want to be better prepared and better postured for future conflicts in the region and elsewhere in the world and that kind of complexity in my view cannot be addressed effectively when bureaucracies remain stove-piped and Fighting and competitive with one another and so I think the SAR has been an incredibly important step forward by Delineating very clearly and it's a it's a it's an interagency document Delineating those roles being very clear about who should be doing what and how the interagency should be working together Which is I think extraordinarily important now the proof will be in in the doing But at least it's an it's an important first step. Secondly, I think another thing that was pioneered in Syria I don't know if it's pioneered in Syria, but it certainly has started to take place With the assistance in Syria is bridging the humanitarian and development by and so there's some really interesting Programming that's going on as we speak that brings together often and food for peace of the Humanitarian actors with the development actors in Middle East Bureau in particular Because we understand that there is no neat sort of continuum where one stops and the other the other one begins and in fact Given the humanitarian catastrophe that is Syria given the donor fatigue that has set in now nearly eight years into this conflict It's essential that We build on resilience programming We figure out how to bridge that divide between the Humanitarians and sort of the more strict development Experts to find new kinds of programming and again, this is what's being pioneered in Syria It's very much focused on livelihoods and market development and other things That I think offers some important thoughts and steps forward on this. Thank you, Mona I think that's a really interesting point and I I want to ask you if you can just take one step further down that road of thinking about changing practices and changing thinking in the assistance universe here because at the time the Syrian Civil War erupted and These programs got underway. This was a time when the Middle East Bureau itself was undergoing a transition I mean, this is a bureau that had been Focused on big government to government traditional development programs right at the country level for years And all of a sudden it had a Middle East that was looking very different and the Syrian context in particular Challenged the bureau and challenged us a ID to think about how to deliver programs in very complex circumstances And to innovate The kinds of work it could do and how it could do it And so I'm curious to hear from you whether you think that shifted the culture at all within USAID and and does that facilitate the kind of bridge building That you were just talking about well, I you know, I believe that in every challenge is embedded in opportunity and so You got it, I mean and and and in fact I do think you're absolutely right Tammy this was a moment now. I came in in 2013. So the Arab Spring was well along to becoming an Arab winter But we certainly did take a step back as our successive numbers of our missions were either had to Evacuate or dramatically downsized to say wow, we are in the midst of tectonic change in this region Anywhere close to being done with that and are we well postured to operate in this environment? How should we be thinking differently about it and a colleague of mine Dave Harden and I did some Some quick and dirty thinking and did wrote a short white paper internally on exactly this question And and I think one of our key takeaways was precisely that we have to start operating differently We have to start operating differently within the Bureau And I think actually much more broadly within within aid and as I've said before I would argue our government needs to posture itself differently in this case what was interesting for me is we started thinking a little bit more about how our missions are structured and They are very stovepipe and they're very much kind of technical this the water office the governance office Etc. And and I think what would be important going forward is to to focus on the problem define the problem and then bring everything you have to bear both within a bureau across Bureaus across agencies to address that challenge or that problem and might be a simplistic answer But I think that's sort of the way I think of it Thank you. Okay. I am gonna open it up to all of you for questions We have microphones that will come around when I call on you, please identify yourself And ask one Single question with a question mark at the end of it. So we'll start in the fourth row right here in the plaid shirt Right behind you There this is an excellent panel. Thank you so much Sasha Siminoff with the PDC for an implementer in Syria and a few other places Just from my experience and from our experience on the ground part of the challenge was as mentioned the bureaucracy and trying to get approvals and The result is that the speed and fluidity of the conflict made it difficult to Compete with non-state actors on the ground Jebets and this will show up and be like here's 50 grand go fix your bakery We would be on the ground saying fill up this concept now in in three months We'll get back to you and let you know and figure out which piece of the government will fund you So do you think this can be sort of a referendum finally on the way in which US? Government is doing aid and development work in complex so conflict zones of this nature. Thank you Thank You Sasha agree totally. This is something that I do mention in the report at some point of sort of When you've got the multitude of actors sort of competing to deliver services and fund service delivery Including a lot of non-western actors a lot of non-traditional donors Sort of the ownerist US government vetting and procurement processes look a lot less appealing from the perspective of besieged Communities I will also say from my former US government representative had those regulations are there for a reason and And so it is if you will a dilemma I will I will say that my personal belief having served and you know the sort of the abstract Research role as well the practitioner role is that the hardest and most important questions to resolve on stabilization are the really non-sexy bureaucratic ones and organizational ones The bureaucratic hurdles the procurement processes That kind of issue. I don't know the latest on this, but I know this has been raised in you know USA it is doing More work on reforming procurements. I know that this was a One of the findings of the stabilization assistance review is there need to be another step on this whether it will be the Referendum that you and we all seek. I don't know yet One quick point to Sasha and I feel your pain, but I would also say You know don't hold your breath because I think to to Francis's points not only about US government officials happen to be effective stewards of taxpayer dollars But there is also particularly in the north this the issue of extremism shrinking space The need to vet the need to ensure that assistance ends does not end up in the wrong hands And that was certainly something that occupied a lot of our time as well One more thing to add I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there are some contracting mechanisms that help get at this issue my former office the office of Transition initiatives in USA does have a lot more flexibility while still maintaining fiscal responsibility in terms of giving Giving grants out in a more quick way, so if anybody wants to talk nerdy procurement specifics I'm here for you and so are some OTI colleagues Thank you. I'm Elizabeth trucker for the form for regional thinking I research Syria Excellent report very very readable I wanted to deal with the issue of kind of long-term consequences You discuss, you know how? Implementers clearly were impacted by being engaged in these trainings and delivering services and they have changed their expectation regarding governance My question is whether the population that remains on the ground the people who are receiving services Are there any clear indications that they change their perceptions? Because based on interviews that I've conducted they perceive the local councils as corrupt as tied to the powerful families and At times because of the way, you know the Assad regime use state terrorism as Basically the reason they're getting bombed because of this opposition governance, so people You know ordinary civilians would tell the implementers whether NGOs whether local Councilmen that you You know you grab power here Then we get bombed and then you help us deal with the ramifications of getting bombed so Okay, let's say that all the people in all the local governance changed, you know But is there any indication as far as you can tell that locals, you know Civilians the millions of people who lived under these structures actually changed their views Such a great point in an Elizabeth piece actually researching these issues. I commend to you I quote it extensively near the end of the report because she conducted tremendously deep research on the ground and Exactly on this question of what does the population think of the NGOs of the local council activists of the armed groups? And I think you capture that exhaustion Really well, I I don't have anything to add to your and other work on that Because I didn't conduct that level of on the ground research I think I found it quite convincing What you find in that and I also think there was a wide variation across time and space so to characterize the experience of the many different constituencies and the many different local councils is Definitely beyond the scope of my paper, but I think it's a really important question, which is Do we see this? Divergence again between this sort of more activist Ben to as I describe in the paper were the staff of these programs and had a you know a really a Revolutionary idea versus, you know, perhaps the silent minority. We don't majority. We don't know I'd I personally don't know so I think it's a real question that you should all read a list of report about I I do think it's an excellent point and I think It's important to point out here that the need for more rigor on assessment monitoring and evaluation for our stabilization Programming because that is the sort of temperature that we should ought to be taking first in program design To understand what the local perceptions are and incentive structures are before we insert the assistance and then also providing feedback opportunities as we go through a wide range of mechanisms not just The implement are going out and asking those questions, but actually taking the temperature of other Organizations that might have greater insights into different aspects of the community and then feeding that into our process to fine-tune The the assistance and if need be, you know, if it's if it's not working if the council is not credible Then then perhaps revisiting the the assistance one very quick comment because I certainly agree with both the What you pose as an important question to be looked at and my colleague's response is the only thing I would add and Tammy you and I have talked about this in other contexts is is that we do need to have a much greater understanding of the political economy of the assistance Who are the winners and losers? It's so hard to get at Unfortunately, I mean I think you know given the given the complexity of the work itself and the inability Especially when you're implementing this assistance as we did remotely that said I think there were many attempts through these town hall meetings and other things to try and gain a deeper insight into what was What was the assessment of citizens in terms of whether their needs were being met and how and so forth? But which you raise a really important point and the only other thing I would mention is Let's not forget what pre-conflict Syria looked like where you wasn't as though we had you know Democracy spreading out of springing out all over the place, right? Obviously, so we were dealing with already a situation under the best of circumstances But the excellent question Yeah, I actually think that you know when you when you pose it that way money You have to think about what was the relationship between money and power in pre-conflict Syria, right? So it's you know Right, what's the baseline that we had a big warlord now? We have lots of small warlords, right? over here on that I am Peter Bowman with Bowman Global Excellent report and presentation Francis really well done So I've been working on something similar in terms of looking at options for stabilization in South Sudan so I've interviewed Francis and The people who wrote the cigar report and I've actually been looking for success stories of stabilization campaigns And I haven't found any at all Maybe Somalia has some successes, but it's more counterterrorism not not a in a civil war environment and So I'm curious why we keep doing it and putting money into it If if there's no evidence of success that's part number one to my question. I have two parts Have to breathe, okay the second part is Because money is going into South Sudan for stabilization the the UN Unmiss we're spending a lot of money That we all work hard to earn regardless of the lack of evidence Part number two is say you take away the Assad regime Say it's just the end of a civil war Assad goes away take away all those problem issues take away ISIS There's also no evidence that our D&D programs are effective in building governance the way we do it So why do we keep doing that? Even if they are successful the ends ways and means don't add up to the problem definition You can't fund a contractor for five years give them 50 million dollars and say build a government in a place That's totally part of part, but we keep doing it and in some ways I think that the questions you raise go beyond the assistance they they go to broader policy questions But assistance is obviously one core component of the toolkit in addressing those policy problems Francis You and I take this off. Sure. I just very quickly. I think we What we know about what might work our recommendations that we keep on breaking ourselves, so What we do know would be a necessary prerequisite is that? Nation-building state-building state consolidation is a generations-long endeavor that requires Predictability setting out rules of the game and then enforcing them and a concerted diplomatic assistance security posture over the course of years and decades This group knows very well instead. We typically do our planning over the course of a few months or a year We do our funding cycles on similar rhythms. So My first idea would be we need to keep We need to actually listen to our own best practices on this I think the stabilization assistance review Which is a tremendous document and I commend to all of you Set out very clearly what the recommendations are It says that stabilization should be clearly tied to an end political state that is analytically backed and realistic and a broader political strategy And stabilization should have objectives that are realistic in the political and security context And we keep on violating those own rules. We know We know that's be true. We keep on doing it the one sort of modest success, which isn't a stabilization or a Branded stabilization operation, but we hear a lot about a lot is Columbia And that if you look back at it was, you know deck over a decade of concerted bipartisan support a host government that was in the lead and You know more predictable steady support from the international partner side. So I think there's something there Yeah, I also think there's a political context in Columbia that that maybe doesn't meet the The threshold or rather it goes well above the threshold that these other cases are below And your colleague Rachel Kleinfeld has a new book coming out that discusses the Columbia case at length I think Melissa, did you want to add anything on this? I mean, I think just Building out from that in terms of What are the what are some of the broader lessons for for stabilization going forward? I think we've well trod the ground of you know needing to define Outcomes connecting our stabilization to actual strategy with criteria and miles milestones. I think some of the other useful takeaways from this it's by far, you know, not finished story yet But things that seem to be working and we could extract lessons from for hopeful, you know future better endeavors Is operationalizing virgin sharing? The the effort currently underway in the east and through the start mechanism to feed in funding from from allies from from golf partners, you know initially some hiccups I think in terms of technically how to do that, but How you take the concept of you know, we are all in this together Isis was a global challenge How do we ensure that they can't grow back? Let's everybody chip in and how you actually operationalize that? I think we're seeing some creative approaches real time being executed in in eastern Syria and supportive stabilization there that that we should we should take I think another key observation is Predictability in in funding and you know, I think the US has been quite mixed in this regard. They're still is I believe a freeze on US State Department stabilization funding for for Syria. There are limits to what can be done under DoD stabilization authority and Of course the USA D efforts efforts by by allies help us fill that in but it does lead to some some worrying gaps in public perceptions within Syria more broadly in terms of Undermining donor interest and continuing on this if the US itself is is is flagging and it's political and funding commitments And then I think also key sort of meta theme or light motif throughout our discussion has been Managing expectations of what stabilization can actually deliver. I mean your point that if you look at the historical record It's been pretty uneven So we need to be realistic when we undertake these enterprises that there may be some some local successes delivery of services Stopgap mechanisms, but stabilization has never been intended to be the thing that that solves the problem So we should stop thinking about it that way Okay, we have a few minutes left on a lot of hands in the air. I'm gonna try and take I see four hands I'm gonna take four of you really quickly. Okay, and then I'm gonna ask you all to respond. So we'll start over here I Shumjabi at MSI static How do you envision the future of stabilization in the south giving the fact that the regime is controlling probably? 99.9 of the south the second question related to donors donors coordination Patty more see I just want to pick up on Mona's point about Mobilizing the interagency and foreign partners around the problem, but in Syria the problem seems to have more from Get rid of Assad to get rid of ISIS to well Maybe we also want to keep Iran at bay and the heart of it is Russia intervened And we it tied our hands for all of all the above basically So my question is does anyone have a sort of precise definition of the problem in Syria that we could Mobilize around a a problem that we could Okay way in the back. Yes, our youngest participants mother has a question Jenny Marin State Department and my question is we've talked a lot about sort of measuring kind of what works and we can I'll tell that this hasn't added up But did you find evidence of where the continued support for stabilization efforts caused active harm or Did we have negative impacts that we didn't intend excellent question. Thank you and right here in front Thank you. I'm a Lee Anna Sacker I have a question for Mona whether the success in the south has something to do with Israel being right there on Konechra Giving first of all attacking a few times in the beginning Assad being afraid So it's and also the agreement with Russia to keep that area quiet. So military It's secure the medical help that Israel gave food and also whether there is you never mentioned any tribal Syria is a tribal society Whether it's a strong tribe tribe leader. I don't know how it works in other local administrations. Thank you. Thank you Okay, so very quickly. I'm the question of stabilization in the south. So that's finished I mean as soon as the regime has come in and taken control of these areas There is no longer the ability to undertake stabilization programming in any regime held there with respect to Mobilizing around the problem. I mean, I think the problem I would define is post ISIS Stabilization in the east. That's the critical challenge right now that we can actually impact And there I think there's some very interesting work. That's being done We don't have time to unravel all of that now But I to my mind that's really where we need to be focused and that that is an area where not only we are focused But we actually have a coalition tied to the counter ISIS coalition that's engaged in that and I think it's a really important Our efforts and then I will just answer the last question about Success in the south and the role of Israel and Israel has played a really important role in terms of providing humanitarian assistance, but not on the stabilization The fact that it was relatively quiet that the Israelis for whatever reason decided they did not need to be engaging Helped maintain some level of stability and to your question of tribes. Yes tribes are hugely important in the south Well, Syria is a very diverse country in some areas The tribal dimension is significant like the south and other areas I think I'll specifically take Patty's question on Mobilizing around a policy question I would agree with Mona that when you look at the array of regional partners and international allies That are currently engaged and Syria problem set that the common denominator is the Consolidate gains post ISIS That's where majority of the common resourcing is going and the international support is is local But I think we need to keep our eye on the ball there I am a bit worried about the Expanded mission to include Iran which I think makes a lot of sense from a strategic and policy perspective for the United States But risks Over time fracturing the coalition that we have for counter ISIS Because there are disagreements at the broad policy level when it comes to Iran post JCPOA So can we over time sustain for example, European investments in eastern Syria if If we choose to push hard on the counter Iran agenda again for good reasons But we may need to we in the royal we United States sense may need to bifurcate those efforts and concentrate our stabilization efforts on I have to tackle the Where but the wrap up so Negative impacts we didn't intense. This is a really tough one because it obviously requires a level of granular Detailed knowledge on the ground that I'm not claiming to have but I'll say that one theme came up that came up again And again was one of moral hazard and this idea that stabilization programs and other assistance working with some really compelling local partners may have prompted a sense of hope where the sense of hope was Unjustified and that's a really important thing. I think we need to wrestle with one quote. I have in the pieces US government colleague who said we kept on saying the Cavalry's not coming the Cavalry's not coming But still the perpetuation of these programs for those who are looking at it for a reason to hope the programs provided it because they provided a symbol of Continued us interest and so in this way kind of doing Governance programming because we weren't doing other kinds of assistance in some ways I think we were trying to use that as sort of a palliative But in some ways it might have had perverse consequences, and I think that's something I know you know very well and and wrestle with and I don't have an answer because at the same time these programs were providing Important assistance and there was also a sense of loyalty to the partners I also think that you know that sense of and this is what I talk about in sort of the allure of turning a corner That sense of false hope was also perpetuated by other reasons that had nothing to do with stabilization assistance big sort of geopolitical evolutions and announcements And I chronicle those in the paper. I think it's a pretty interesting story actually so I commend that to you And then finally just quickly on sort of what program to mobilize I would just say I agree with my colleagues and if my paper has been all about kind of the divergence between the local level Programs and the big picture policy wise and the big picture security Politics wise actually eastern Syria is a place where we have a possibility for convergence right now That with you know, there is a security condition that at least permits some stabilization and governance progress to happen And there is as far as I understand the emergent Contours of a US policy that might want to support that But I do think we need to be much more clear and articulating that I think we're already seeing that with Ambassador Jeffery's arrival and sort of a much more clear message on what a potential vision for us Intentions in this area is so I I'm hopeful that will continue on And I ended on a positive note Who knows to you for that so you are a terrific audience. This was a terrific panel and it's a terrific report Thank you all for being here