 Welcome, everyone, to the US Institute of Peace. My name is Robin Wright. I'm a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, specializing in issues involving the Middle East, Islamic extremism, and many of the conflicts that have haunted the region. I'm joined this morning by Ely Abu Alun, who is director of the Institute's Middle East and North Africa programs, and Monia Kubian, who is a senior policy scholar, specializing in Syria at the Institute. We're going to talk this morning about the challenges at this critical turning point in the fate of the Islamic State. It is under pressure in both Iraq and Syria. One of the big questions is, what happens to ISIS? How does it evolve as it loses its caliphate? And what happens in Iraq and Syria? Islamic State, at one point at its height, held a third of the country, territory in both countries, roughly the size of the state of Indiana or the country of Jordan. My initial thoughts to open up our conversation this morning is that it's quite possible that the US-led coalition and other parties will defeat the Islamic State. It will take back the caliphate, the territory, but that ISIS is far from finished. And the grave danger, of course, is if there isn't the kind of policy in place, the solutions developed by both countries, both of them facing conflict, longstanding conflicts, that we could beat ISIS, but still lose the war, still not make the peace. We also have the broader problem of what happens to the ISIS fighters. There are 50,000 foreign fighters who have joined the Islamic State and other extremist movements in Iraq and Syria. Somewhere between 20 and 30% of them have already returned home. In Britain, it's actually almost 50%. And of course, as we've already seen, ISIS is not just confined to the Middle East today, it is a global movement. It stretches from attacks in Europe to the Philippines to Florida and California. So this is a pivotal moment. My great concern to start off our conversation is that the government in Iraq, just as it's taken back most of Mosul, really doesn't have a plan in place for governance. It's got a plan for security, but the question is, how does it make a community, widely diverse community in Mosul, feel that they are represented, that their interests, their future, their livelihoods, their security are protected? And that's, I think the government has a lot of convincing to do. 14 years after the US intervention in Iraq, we still don't have a plan for power sharing nationally. And of course, Mosul is now a microcosm of that challenge. And so the fate of Mosul will in many ways decide the future of Iraq. And then in Syria, you have an array of wars playing out that are internal, are regional, and also pit the major powers, the United States and Russia, against each other. It has a sectarian component, Shi'id versus Sunni. It has the regional component of different players, whether it's the Gulf States supporting some of the rebel movements, Iran supporting the government of President Assad. So this is a time that there's still a lot of sorting out to do, even as we feel much more confident about fighting, finally defeating the world's most virulent extremist movement. So let me get your thoughts. Let me begin with you, Ily. What strikes you as most important for us to understand about this turning point? Well, the most important thing is to assess the threat of the jihadi movement in the region and its size. ISIS is only the last iteration of a movement that started a few centuries ago and the region has been living with this ideology for the last decades, specifically in the last decade, as I said, for the last century. So ISIS as an organization, as a caliphate, as you mentioned, will probably be defeated in the next few weeks. Mosul is not the last city, they still hold Tallahfar, they still hold Hawija and other cities in Iraq. But anyway, they will be defeated militarily. There seems to be no doubt about this. But the ideology of ISIS will not disappear. On the contrary, what we know from our field observation is that the radicalization and the ideology is increasing, actually, in Iraq, in Syria, but also in other places. So what we need to think really is how to address the drivers of this radicalization. And what I wanted to say about this is that also based on our experience on the ground, the drivers are different from one town to another town in the same country. So having one generic analysis and approach about radicalization is also another mistake. That's actually, let me follow up on that a little bit, because I think that's a really interesting point. When you talk about the drivers, what is it that has produced this extremism and that as it evolves becomes ever more ambitious, aggressive, angry, and deadly? Again, what drives this radicalization is different. There is a wide array of reasons why people get radicalized. So the most common reasons that are mentioned in almost every study are political grievances, social and economic exclusion, lack of appropriate education, religious discourse, et cetera. So I don't want to repeat them. These are the ones that are commonly mentioned as the drivers of radicalization. But we need to dig deeper than this and understand in each city, each town, how is it happening and why is it happening? Recently, the US Institute of Peace, through its National Partner, Senate for Peacebuilding in Iraq, handed over a CVE countering violent extremism strategy for the Anbar province to the Iraqi authorities. And this exercise made us realize how much the analysis needs to be local and the solutions need to be local. Mona, you spent part of your life working at the State Department and at USAID. When you look at what lies ahead, what do you think are the things the United States can do outside of our military power in creating an alternative? Well, I think actually the campaign against ISIL will not be won militarily. It really is going to come down to what happens in these areas that have been liberated from ISIL after the military campaign has been won. This is where I think the State Department, USAID, and other international actors have a critical role to play. Beyond ensuring that security is provided for citizens so that they can return, are there basic services that have been restored? What about governance? Are people's aspirations being addressed by local governance structures? In the absence of those things, we really create the fertile ground for a reemergence of ISIS 2.0. We did a report at the US Institute of Peace bringing together 20 scholars on extremist movements and found that with each generation, the time to mobilize or swarm, which is the official term, is cut in half. That to recruit and get people into a battlefield takes half the time. With each generation, you have a wider array of countries represented that the agenda becomes much more ambitious. Again, creating a caliphate. You think of this movement, which really the current round has its origins in the 1970s with the failure of the 1973 war, the reaction to the Soviet intervention or invasion of Afghanistan, the 1979 Iranian Revolution. We have seen them become, the movements become in some ways more absolutist, more difficult to create alternatives to counter the narrative. I think one of the things that's so striking is that we haven't yet figured out a way to counter that narrative effectively. I think you're absolutely right. I think the role of social media in one of the things has amplified and perhaps accelerated these drivers. But I think Elise Point bears repeating, which is it's really local conditions on the ground that need to be addressed. And as he rightly points out, each city, each town differs one from the other. I think in Syria, in Raqqa, we have a particular set of concerns, which is that the main force that's gonna be taking the town is Kurdish dominated. But it's essentially an Arab city. So how are we going to mediate these interests? Who is actually going to be calling the shots in terms of governance issues? If Kurds are dominating the governance structures of an Arab majority city, I think that's setting up a conflict down the road. We welcome your questions and we have the first one. The US has shown it will continue to work with the Kurds in the war against ISIS, but the independence referendum does not sit well with some ethnic and religious minorities in the region. How do you think the US will proceed? We should note that they're referring to the Kurdish president's call for an independence referendum on September 25th this year. The culmination of a long campaign to decide whether the Kurds want to be part of Iraq or want to go off on their own. The Kurds, the largest minority in the world without a state. Eili, do you have some thoughts on that? I mean, not necessarily on the US, but what I would say is that the US has any other international power. They know how to pick and choose what to do and what not to do with regional or local forces. And I think the same approach will be used with the Kurds. So I don't see the collaboration on the war against ISIS being severely affected by the independence. And the other point I want to add on the independence that yes, the Kurdish leadership declared September 25th to hold the referendum and I think it will be held on that date. But implementing the decisions or the outcomes of the referendum will take some time. So it's not something that will happen overnight. It requires some time to negotiate with the central government how to proceed based on the outcomes of the referendum. Yeah, and I suspect the United States and the United Nations have both said that they do not support the idea of Kurdish independence at the moment. And I think what the Kurds may be doing is trying to figure out to broker a different kind of power sharing agreement with Baghdad. During a transition period, they've had tensions over issues of oil revenues, over power sharing. And this is a way to give them more leverage in that argument on the path to eventual independence. But of course, Kurds becoming independent of Iraq, opens up then the issue of what happens to the Kurds in Syria and Iran and particularly Turkey. Do we have another question? Well, let's talk a little bit about Mosul. I was there in March and this is a place where the country really reflects all its vulnerabilities. There's no electricity. The US bombed all the major intersections in order to prevent the suicide bombers from attacking Iraqi troops trying to liberate the city. And that's made aid difficult. It's made difficult for families who may wanna go back to reclaim their property. The university was destroyed. This is one of the oldest libraries with documents dating back more than a millennia that the institutions have been destroyed, not just the walls of buildings. Eili, you were in Iraq recently as well. Do you have thoughts about what it's gonna take to create an Iraq that is viable and not vulnerable to extremist ideologies to kind of the forces that have eroded the national identity or the national fabric of the country? This is a two hours discussion by itself but in a nutshell, I think what Mona referred to as the lack of an appropriate governance framework is very relevant in the Iraqi case. I don't think it's realistic to expect some sorts of stability in Iraq without having the Iraqis agree on a governance or on a power sharing agreement on a governance framework that would prevent further political exclusion that would give guarantees to all the constituents of Iraq that they can live in safety and dignity in their own country. And in Iraq and in many countries in the region, personally, I don't see any viable model that is not based on a federal, confederal, largely decentralized model. I think these are, this is the pattern in the region, in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, in Yemen and probably in other places. So the effort to highlight or emphasize one national identity and the nation-state model based on the European or some European model, not all of them, but I think is a waste of time at this stage in the region. We need to think creatively out of the box. We need to figure out governance models that are appropriate to the reality of the region. And today's reality is that because of all what happened, all the conflicts, all the exclusion that happened, the dictatorships, et cetera, people don't feel that they belong to nations, they feel they belong to communities. And this is something that need to be addressed, at least in the short term, through an appropriate governance model in Iraq, in Syria, et cetera. And then later on, on a voluntary basis, communities might reunite in one country and more than one country, but this has to be a voluntary movement, not a forced thing by the international community. Could I just jump in on this? Because I think this idea of decentralized governance is really a critical one to hammer home. I think Ali rightly points out. In places with diverse populations like Iraq, like Syria, the irony is it's really going to be a very highly decentralized Iraq or decentralized Syria that allows these countries, these nation states, to actually stay together. And if we don't understand that, I think we are really setting ourselves up for more conflict down the road. You know, the one question also is that we've seen the movement of peoples inside countries noted particularly in Syria, whether between the death toll, but also the displaced people, communities effectively ethnic cleansing going on by a lot of forces, not just the government. That is the danger that the demographic distribution of countries changes. Syria was a wonderful melting pot and it is the geostrategic center of the Middle East and it was a model. I've spent Easter in Damascus where they have chocolate Easter bunnies and colored eggs and they honor both the Orthodox and the Catholic holidays so that there is a sense that it may be a predominantly Muslim country but there are others, other faiths whose rights and holidays they honor as well. Is that spirit, has that evaporated? Is there, because the danger strikes me is so much more profound in Syria in terms of how do you bring those communities back together? It's very hard to see how they volunteer with the death toll of half a million people with two thirds of the country dependent on international aid for their daily bread. I think you frame it exactly right. I mean, the displacement issue in Syria is significant. Half the country's population has been displaced. Half outside, nearly more than five million refugees outside and about six million people internally displaced. Out of a country of about 22 million. Exactly, and you are exactly right. There's real, I think legitimate fear that new facts are being created on the ground. New demographic realities are being created on the ground and I think there's a lot of concern that the Syria, certainly the Syria that you knew and I knew as a Fulbright student there, that Syria I think is gone. The question is what is the model to look for going forward to build a new Syria? Again, a highly decentralized Syria. As difficult as Iraq is, Syria is exponentially more complicated. We are trying to do all of these things in the absence of a political settlement. That said, as the country begins to stabilize, as conflict starts to recede from areas, we are actually seeing people return. The UN has recently announced 400,000 Syrians have returned to the country, but will they stay? And what Syria are they returning to? My sense is that many of them are going back to see whether their houses are destroyed to get a sense of the state of play. It's the men going home, or men and their sons, women and other children staying outside the country. We have another question. From the perspective of peace builders, what does the average Iraqi citizen face after ISIS? What are the major barriers to peace, and what peace building initiatives might work, especially in places like Mosul? Eli, you want to take that one? Yeah, sure. I mean, peace building in places like Mosul has many layers. I think the immediate, the short-term concern is to prevent revenge operations against some civilians or some groups, tribes, et cetera. And the second one is to work on deconfliction mechanisms for local conflicts. This is what we think should be done in the immediate future. Now, thinking on a longer term, we mentioned the issue of the barriers to return. So what would prevent IDPs from returning? And this takes us into the reconstruction aspect, the security provision aspect and the governance model. So these are the main aspects that peace building need to be thinking about in the case of Mosul, but also in other places in Iraq. If I could just add on this, I think, Eli is exactly right. There's another issue, which is places like Mosul and Raqqa, populations have lived under ISIS control for three years in some instances. There are real concerns about who constitutes an ISIS sympathizer or not, and how are these people going to be treated? So I think there are real legitimate concerns about tensions not only between various sectarian communities, but even within the Sunni community. And there, I think, local level reconciliation efforts and dialogue is going to be essential. And some sense of understanding that people were living under ISIS, not by choice in most instances. We need to think really creatively about how to ensure families and others are integrated back into the social fabric of their community. I think that's a really important point. We look at the Iraq experiment after Saddam Hussein's ouster, and there were so many people who had worked, were members of the Ba'ath party or had worked under some kind of official join because they needed a job, basically. And you couldn't be a kindergarten teacher or a garbage collector unless you were a member of the party or rise from those positions. And, of course, I think everyone, history looks back and thinks one of the classic U.S. mistakes was disbanding the Ba'ath party and the military. And so we have to be, I think, very careful. It's the same thing with the Soviet Union where everyone had to be, you know, to get a decent job, had to be a card-carrying member of the party. And the critical question of how you differentiate between the really bad boys, the ideologues, the operatives, and those who were just trapped by realities needed to provide bread for their families. And those were the only jobs around. I mean, one other thing that concerns me is having spent my whole life covering wars is that as wars progress and kind of take a hold of society, you find that the economy is warped or corrupted by the war economies, the smuggling and so forth, that the warlords, the military figures, the militia leaders become powers in their own right with economic control of certain businesses. And ending a war is not just ending the firing of guns, it's actually undoing all the damage, the new infrastructure, the new realities that have been created in the meantime. We have one more question. Given the completion of the illicit dam in Turkey that will reduce the water flowing into Iraq via the tigress and the effects of climate change, what role do you think water insecurity will play in exacerbating conflict in the region? Who'd like to take that one? I'll say one thing that comes to mind immediately, which is there are some people have looked at the Syrian conflict and have said that water insecurity, climate change and drought in Syria, they had a record drought in the years prior to the outbreak of the conflict. But that was a contributing factor to the eventual uprising. Of course, many other factors at play, but I do think it's important to understand and drill much down more deeply into the role of climate change, water insecurity and other things as drivers for conflict. I think the same thing's true in Yemen. There's a sense that the conflict in Yemen was fueled in part by some of the environmental factors. And one thing that struck me, and I did a piece recently for the New Yorker on this, that the lights are going out in the Middle East, that electricity is a basic problem. Whether it's in Gaza where you have one or two hours a day, in Libya they have gone weeks, the whole country without any power at all, in parts of Iraq, which is an oil-rich country. In all of Iraq, in all of Iraq, not just in Mosul. You're down to eight or nine hours of power a day for a lot of complicated reasons. But this is one that affects the level of education. Kids can't, they're not liked to study by at night, they're not computers to do research, that it affects businesses. In some places the government does not announce where what hours of the lights are gonna be on or the electricity's gonna be available. And when they do turn on, people get up in the middle of the night to do groggily, to do their laundry or to do business deals because they've got access to their computers. That we forget that the challenges in the region are not just the ones of conflict. It's all the things, environmental issues, the electricity, the infrastructure deterioration that really are taking the whole region back in time. And then when it comes to finding solutions for some of these problems, you really, the scope is almost unparalleled for conflict zones. We're seeing the array of conflicts, the fact that borders could even be redrawn because of the deterioration of that national identity. It's a tough time. We have one last question. After ISIS is defeated in Mosul and Raqqa, what will be or should be the top priorities for the United States? I'll say very quickly, certainly in Raqqa, the top priority really needs to be stabilizing Raqqa and beginning to drill down on this very difficult issue of governance and ensuring that the people of Raqqa have a strong say in their futures. One of the things that's so striking is that Mosul will return to Iraqi sovereignty. We know that. The government is the army moving in against ISIS. In Syria, you have different armies moving in on Raqqa. As you pointed out, whether it's the Kurdish dominated force moving on an Arab city, but you also have others that want Raqqa as a symbol of we were the ones who beat ISIS or needless to say, the government will claim, the government of Bashar al-Assad will claim control of Raqqa because again, it's a sovereign issue. There are some really complex legal issues that have to be sorted out. And does the US, for example, which has backed the movement, the Kurdish dominated group, the Syrian Democratic forces with air power and with special forces on the ground, does it back the Raqqa council that is taking shape of displaced people who wanna go home and rule their own city? And does that set up for a post-conflict conflict? Yeah, two thoughts on this. First of all, the notion of Iraqi sovereignty is being challenged by the emergence of a lot of non-state actors, militarized non-state actors in various parts of Iraq. So this is something to be watched as well because it is going to be another driver of conflict in Iraq, even after liberation. The second thought I have is a straight answer to the question. I think that the top priority, not only for the US, but for the rest of the international community is to invest in a political process after liberation as much as they invested in the military effort. And when I say this, I always clarify, I'm not saying that they should do this because they need to do it for the people of the region. They need to do it because conflicts in the Middle East are a regional peace and international peace and security issue. It targets everyone. It's not only about the local communities, local societies in the region. It is about the whole international peace and security framework. So this is where I see that the international community has an interest to invest in a political process that would avert further conflicts in the region. This issue always reminds me of the movie Charlie Wilson's War, where the United States, the congressman, Charlie Wilson, raised billions to back the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. But when it came to the post-Soviet era, he couldn't raise $5 million for education for Afghanistan. So there are a lot of challenges. We're always willing to back military operations, but we're not so good on kind of post-conflict. Listen, I want to thank everyone for joining us. I'm really grateful to my colleagues, Ely Abu-A'oon and Moni Okubian. And I hope you'll join us again here sometime in the future.