 Before the Arab Spring in 2011 the image of the Arab world, and this includes North Africa as well as the Gulf States and the heart of the Middle East, were seen as very similar in that they all had authoritarian governments using different techniques and approaches in each place, but really who kept a lid on demands within their societies for more political and economic participation. What's happened subsequently is that now the lids are off if you like the pressure cookers in each state, is that we are beginning to see the diversity and complexity of individual societies, so that where the Arab Spring started in Tunisia for example, actually you can see it as being on its way to being a success story. They've had three years of negotiations over a new constitution, they've had two sets of elections and they've ended up with a government effectively of national unity which engages both Islamist and secular parties, and the challenges they face now is to get on with developing the economy which has suffered in recent years, but it's on track, and I would say one reason for that is Tunisia is very close to Europe, it's always had very strong relations with France, there are many people who move backwards and forwards from Europe, so we're not talking about a state which has developed in isolation from its Mediterranean neighbourhood, and therefore is using the best I would say of their background, links and institutional understanding from Europe, as well as indigenous traditions. If you move further east in the heartland of the Middle East where we now see what effectively many people are describing as failed states in Syria and diminished government control in Iraq, where movements such as ISIS have not only been able to mobilise and take over cities, but also move across the border between Syria and Iraq, we have a completely different phenomenon of states which never really governed, and governments from Saddam Hussein to the government elected under Prime Minister Al-Maliki, who's now in turn being replaced by another Prime Minister, who never really governed on behalf of the whole state. Iraq is comprised of two different ethnicities, Arab and Kurds, and then amongst the Arabs you have a Sunni minority, it's about a fifth of the population, 20%, and the majority of Shias. Now under Saddam Hussein, who himself was a Sunni Muslim, it was the Sunnis, even though an absolute minority of the population, who actually ruled and governed, but largely on behalf of themselves, under the Bathist Party, whereas the Shia were seen as the underdogs. Now the situation has reversed. Under majority elections, the Shias took over the government from the first elections in 2005-6 in Iraq, when the Americans were still, if you like, in occupation after the military invasion that unseated Saddam Hussein in 2003. So what we now see is the fight back, the backlash is coming from the Sunni population, who were not only a numerical minority, but a political minority. And it's precisely in these ungoverned and unprovided-for spaces that groups such as ISIS have been able to provide local services. They've actually taken over cities such as Mosul by infiltrating and providing services, money, facilities that the central government in Baghdad never did. So that when ISIS besieged militarily Mosul, it already had, if you like, an audience within a city which is largely Sunni, who were very disgruntled about being abandoned by the Shia-dominated government, who they saw as only governing on behalf of the Shia population. When we come to the situation where the Iraqi army units that were supposedly defending Mosul in June last year from the attack of ISIS actually saw each other, they communicated with each other, they realised that on both sides there were former Ba'athist members. And so I think one of my colleagues in London said that they communicated with each other and said, look, we're both Sunnis. Why are we fighting? Why is the Iraqi army fighting to protect essentially what is a Shia policy? So ISIS communicated back to the Ba'athist or the former Ba'athist officers that they already knew because they both, there were Ba'athist officers on the ISIS side as well who had converted to the Islamist cause and said, drop your weapons and go. We're not fighting each other, we should both be fighting the Shia majority in Baghdad who have done nothing for the city of Mosul. So that's when they dropped their weapons and run and went off over to the Kurdish areas in the north of Iraq. Much has been made of the ideological appeal of al-Qaeda affiliated organisations throughout the Middle East and increasingly ISIS, which is a growth from a similar ideology. But in fact, the kind of techniques and reasons why people affiliate to ISIS is often purely pragmatic. It's out of need. When in cities like Mosul, the local authorities or certain local people were demanding more attention from the central government for their needs to make public services run for jobs, they were ignored. When ISIS arrived, they provided many of these facilities. But also, as they've captured and taken over the city, they've put pressure on individual families to say, look, we will continue providing for you if you give us one of your sons as it were to be a fighter in our ranks and that way we'll buy you if you like local peace you will still be provided for. Now, this is one situation in many where locals, individuals, communities, families come under pressure not just internally but also from foreign governments trying to manipulate them with money. In reality, people in given situations do what they have to do to survive. It's not often out of ideological choice that they affiliate to one side or the other. It's out of sheer necessity depending on the context in which they find themselves. Just to be able to live, to eat, to know that their children can go to school in safety often requires fairly hefty compromises in situations where the state authorities either have abandoned the situation or are not willing to protect people in the way that they normally should. For the outside world to have an impact on what's happening locally and obviously there is a concern that the violence will spread requires more thinking about a longer term strategy not just to intervene to prevent movements such as ISIS taking over territory, terrorizing people using violence but also to think long and hard about how a longer term strategy could answer exactly what was articulated at the time of the Arab Spring the desire of the majority of people in these states to be included both in political systems and in economies which are less corrupt and how you do this I know is very complex but actually unless the outside world has a kind of narrative that is inclusive and says it's listening to the majority demands for the creation over the long term of a functioning state system with institutions that respond equally to the needs of citizens an economy that creates jobs that actually protects an autonomous private sector where the state and government does not dominate everything that goes on or can act in ways that steal public resources then I think we're going to flip I'm afraid particularly in states like Iraq and Syria from one crisis to another we have to reach a situation in which Iraqis themselves mediate their own differences internally and don't rely on foreigners constantly coming in to assist them out of crises and for this you need a solid set of state institutions which equally act on behalf of all the citizens rather than one section of the population over the other this is a long term project but it would be good if the international community could invest as much time and energy in creating these solid institutions and finding ways to make them locally appropriate and entrenched rather than limited and preventative military action