Transcripts For CSPAN2 Preventing ISIS Recruitment 20171002

Turkish, syrian border. These forms are essentially isis recordkeeping of foreign fighter, new foreign fighter joiners. Have bright of questions that include name, even mothers name, blood type but also include a lot of really interesting material on previous professions, education levels, religious knowledge, countries travel, people referred them to join isis, people who facilitated their arrival and a variety of other things. Thats the main data from which will be drawing conclusions to be there i get to the limitations of that date in a minute but i would just say the data were smuggled out of raqqa in march of 2016. We validated these data along with the Counterterrorism Center at west point, as well as some of the personal details that were not publicly available to my research and research from others. So last year we wrote a paper on this topic that looked at the regions in the world that had the highest per capita recruitment rate for isis all over the world, included western china, it included of course parts of north africa and the Arabian Peninsula we are looking at, in lebanon and in other places. The difference in this years report is not just that were focusing on two regions which saw some of the highest recruitment rates of foreign fighters to isis, including libya and tunisia which david will talk about but also saudi arabia. But also we try to supplement the data on foreign fighter registration forms with other useful information. So we use census data in a variety of cases is that okay, if fighters are joining isis and saudi arabia are reporting certain education level are certain level of work profession or skill, how does that correlate to the places they are from among the general population, are these representative of these people from the provinces they come from or is this a distinct phenomena we should look at . We look at census data. David did some interesting work look at protest data especially tunisia. I pulled in some data from 1980s onward on subnational origins of saudi terrorists, and im going to use some of that in my analysis. To incorporate a lot of this additional data. Let me say a few brief words about some of the caveats so we can frame our discussion and so are remarks at some context. The first is time. These fighters joint base hickam between 20132014. The landscape obviously looks a lot different today as the coalition is pushing back isis in syria and iraq. As i spoke to a friend, most people from the Arabian Peninsula basically left already and the foreign fighter rates decreased dramatically after 2015 when the saudi government especially started cracking down on isis attack stored to occur across Arabian Peninsula in kuwait and in saudi and in other places. This is also limited by location. The forefront of forms are recorded on border crossings between syria and turkey while of course as it although turkey was a huge Transit Route for fighters to joint isis. Of course there were other parts in iraq, lebanon, jordan were people able to join. We dont think they systematically alter the result of a region but it would manifest in other places so lebanese fighters, jordanian fighters, iraqi fighters, syrian fighters are not recorded in the data. A couple quick more points. Theres a point on the truthfulness i think we think the data are going to be more likely to be true than if fighters were being interviewed by journalists or researchers. Some of this information could be validated by isis of course, people who referred or people who facilitated one joining, but there are certainly elements that were omitted in these files and we had to work around that. We can talk more about that if youre interested in the q a. The last couple of points, this is only isis foreign fighter recruitment. Crucially whats missing is foreign fighter recruitment to other militias that were fighting especially in syria including what was wholly known as alnusra and i go into low bit about that in the Arabian Peninsula section. Just to conclude, last year we found provinces with high rates of equipment, all shared in common a certain kind of grievance they had with the federal government. The repressed regions of western china, generally underfunded and unsupported regions Like Northern lebanon and my colleague will talk about Eastern Libya, but this year will be found and im sort of paraphrasing tolstoy here, is that all happy provinces are alike, but all unhappy provinces are unhappy in their own way. We will swear to discuss i think what is important in the key take away which is while there is no consensus among experts on terrorism about what is a driving terrorism recruitment, i think when you look at the subnational regions of different countries, certain trends emerge and these trends are important and their distinct and we need to address them in different ways. So with that being said im going to pass it over to my colleague, david. Thanks. So im going to speak about what we found in north africa, or initial key finding which will be expanded further and forthcoming paper. But basically our analysis of north africa involved three broad conclusions. There was recruitment and provinces that shared huge structural aspects in common that are economically marginalized from the center of their countries economic, their countries economy where most of the good jobs are, where oil wealth is centered. And also the march politically, often the two go together, they are one and the same. Second, we found in most places this is the mobilization that comecome from places where thers mobilization in prior years for other Jobs Movement as well as for other nonjihadi outbreaks of anger over what appear to be structural issues. Best recruitment and mobilization which isis is the latest or perhaps now not the latest example of is predated by these other mobilizations. And finally where mobilization occurred, where its not a product of a long history of mobilization and outbursts of anger, whether jihadists or not, its a product of the arab spring which really was a massive outbreak of this anger and spread that anger throughout the region in a way that metastasized the problem. So to begin with it we look at the question of structural aspects, ill begin with what we found in libya, by far the clearest example, 80 of the fighters from libya came from Eastern Libya and they were all centered in two provinces. Eastern libya has a stoically been marginalized by the then gadhafi government which centered its Patronage Network largely across the country and funded tripoli in that area while simultaneously economically marginalizing the east. In particular it marginalized the area where we found amongst the fighters were looked at there were some deeper sense of under politics of people were underemployed, and our models people who are unemployed, people who report subsistent agricultural work, not i on the farm, but im doing agricultural work. People lower students in these north african countries, students face a particularly for Employment Situation upon graduation. In tunisia, for example, on average it takes six years to find a job. Also people report unskilled labor which is often unpredictable in these north african countries. We found it was 70 . We found a similar dynamic in southern tunisia which is another hot spot of equipment. And in the second highest capital, theres also 70 unemployment among fighters. And then in the suburbs of grand tennis we found a similar level of under plymouth and economic struggle which is important to know because its the capital of tunisia, its what a lot of the factory jobs and economic wealth is actually centered and if youre just running a large and aggression provinces, youre likely to miss that theres a massive internal inequality within these provinces. We found the fighters tend to be, supporters of the region. It was two to four times overproducing what we would have expected based on population. That neighborhood or city within the larger grand tunis metropolitan areas has an Unemployment Rate above that of the nation as a whole. As well as above the particular province that it sits in. Its an opponent rate was actually below tunisia as well. What we see is theres these hotspots of economic marginalization. That comes with political marginalization as well, the hotspot of protest activity during the arab spring. East of libya has a stoically bent aside of resistance at protests against the gadhafi government and militancy more broadly. And southern tunisia also has a history of pension with the Central Government of tunisia. So we found similarity of the structure. The second part is in each of these places theres a long history. In Eastern Libya its very clear. We can trace it back on isis mobilization were looking at in 20132014. Benghazi was the capital of the arab spring uprising against gadhafi and produce many fighters for that. If we go back to the records that were found in 2007 you get almost exactly the same percentage of fighters in that mobilization as were fighting in the isis records for 20132014. In 2008, the state department added cable, the report similar conditions and words of fighter equipment. In terms very similar to that are applicable to the 20132014. If you go back further to the 90s, you have the Islamic Fighting group conducting war against gadhafi a gain in uprising, again centered in the east, and then if you go for the back in the 70s and 80s, this region was really at the center of the Muslim Brotherhood opposition to gadhafi. So this civilization in Eastern Libya predates the particular isis claim to be building the caliphate. If we turn to tunisia, its a lot different. Its more widespread. However, we again see as i noted hotspots in southern libya, or southern tunisia, sorry, particularly has historical produced fighters in the early iraq conflict and other conflicts before, as the economy based on smuggling was the center of protest activity during the arab spring. And we have suburbs of grand tunis which again were sent a protest activity during the arab spring. That also proved to many of fighters before. In tunisia, there was a massive expansion that may have some aspect to do with the particular ideological pitch. But we are also just sitting fighters come from areas that are produced outbursts of anger for decades, largely due to the structural factors. Finally, as i noted when reduce the expansion, its largely about the arab spring. This was pretty clear in tunisia where the government felt a result of arab spring protests that were particularly high in the areas that were hotspots. In contrast, along the eastern coast of libya and its economic center, where fighters actually gain below the national rate, there were about a third as many protesters per capita as the were in grand tunis. In addition, we see on an individual level when you look at the data, about 7. 5 of the fighters who mobilized from tunisia were recommended by one figure who came out of shariabased himself in western libya where he was running a Training Camp. Thats again an example of how these dynamic arab spring really created the foundation that isis itself set itself to the top. So the basic conclusion that i will float for you here that were still looking at, is in many ways the counter messaging and the idea of countering violent extremism that is become a very important part of countering isis recruitment, doesnt make sense in much of north africa. Countering isis claim to be building the caliphate does not address the problems where there was recruitment for decades prior to isis rise. That some element in tunisia which also going to run into this repetitive mobilization of the anger areas that are being produced by structural factors. So we really to the extent where going to prevent the future possibility of a mobilization, as i could happen simply on counter messaging. Needs to address the structural issues. Thanks, david. In contrast i think the Arabian Peninsula has a variety of very distinct trends that are want to present today. Before i go into the three arguments i want to make on isis recruitment in the Arabian Peninsula i just want to note there are few countries where there simply were not in a foreign fighters data in the forms to draw any conclusions from, so automatic, the uae has less than five fighters in each one of this country and the overall data. My findings dont discuss the report will not discuss those three countries. Some supplementary information and qualitative work was done on recruitment in those three countries and we can discuss those in the q a but i generally want to focus on saudi arabia which had about 90 of the fighters that republican from the area as well as kuwait, yemen and bahrain. That is very interesting trend with regards to marginalization and im going to discuss those three and give what they think the policy educations of those are. The first of those is a new phenomenon. There are a few periods i want to make under this. The first is that we know isis has recruited a lot of young people to join especially in pairs into other terrorist organizations and document efforts but the Arabian Peninsula is distinctly more useful than the rest of the sample of isis equipments. The average age of isis biter from the Arabian Peninsula is over one year younger than the overall sample. When you dig deeply into this for i should say it is distinct from the demographic trends of the regions as a whole which generally you hold older than the arab world. When you dig more deeply into this you find that the regions with the highest rate of isis recruitment at the subnational level correlates very strongly with the proportion of those regions that have youthful populations. The youngest population as a proportion of 15 thirtynine over the provincial publication. The youngest ones are those that have the highest agreement and i did a bunch of progression to figure out which transfer most interesting about the overall provincial population, household income, for people being recorded, education levels was it under or over educated and the variety of other factors. The only factor that had a strong significant statistically significant positive correlation was the proportion of provincial population that was the ages of 1529. The second piece of this phenomenon that is new and important to emphasize is that the fighters they came from the Arabian Peninsula were much less likely to have reported to participate in a previous contract. The question on the form is have you participated in a previous jihad. About 12 of the overall sample of fighters that we looked at reported yes. So, places like libya, yemen, afghanistan, chechnya, bosnia and other places. In the Arabian Peninsula only 5 of the fighters reported to have participated in previous jihad. When you look at the correlation between provinces that were report there is no relationship people who participate previously in the jihad people who joined isis. All of this is strongly suggestive of the fact that the phenomenon on the Arabian Peninsula and the people who joined isis were new to fighting in complex and new to affiliations of the hottie organizations as a whole and when interviewing people they also would admit that this is very new and the two places where this is most acute was in bahrain and saudi arabia. Bahrain and saudis would say the places, the subnational origin of fighters in these countries were places that were new. Im going to discuss a little about the saudi case in a little bit. What is also interesting is where they are not coming from and the best example in the Arabian Peninsula is yemen. In the yemen isis foreign fighter sample from 2013 to 2014 only 26 fighters were at the national level, about 35 fighters from yemen as a whole. When you compare that to rates that were in the during the iraq war or people who were detained in one time and open yemen the rates are significantly higher. In the isis foreign fighter sample you have about 30 yemenis out of 3581 total fighters recorded. In the content ulowercaseletter had 110 yemenis being detained out of 770. Four times more yemenis being involved in a sample that is four times smaller. Nothing is happening here tonight prostitute why that is in the q a. All of this suggest the phenomenon is new and i think from a policy perspective need to seriously think about the efforts of the region undertaking the radicalization, not just arresting people who are perpetrating terrorist acts but more importantly figuring out ways to prevent future waves of mobilizations to occur. The second thing i will say is that it appears that not only do these countries have different motivations than north africa but theyre different from each other. The two cases i want to focus on here are bahrain and saudi arabia. Last years paper we talked about the mobilization of fighters from bahrain. I will say briefly that in 2011 there was a major arab demonstration in bahrain and the bahraini crackdown requires the use in sanctioning of very violent rhetoric against the majority population of the country which is shiite by the government which is a minority of the population which is to be. I think the mobilization of communities in bahrain that we see where fighters are coming from was encouraged by the government and cut down the file and a lot of those guys ended up joining isis. We talk more about this phenomenon in the question and answer but i want to get to an interesting case which is saudi arabia. The handout you have in the back of map at the bottom of three different maps saudi arabia. When i looked at their equipment is saudi arabia i looked at the historical rates of equipment and where were saudi fighters coming from went to afghanistan or iraq or when they went to bosnia or chechnya. I looked at three different subsets and the place where they were coming from were completely different than the places where saudi foreigners were coming from isis. Previously the fighters that were joining primarily Al Qaeda Affiliated conflicts from mecca, medina but this time around fighters are coming from the heartland of saudi arabia. This is an area where we normally associate with the most conservative region of saudi arabia and these are the parts of saudi arabia that mobilize 100 years ago for the saudi family to establish the saudi state. When we think about islam, this is these are the regions that we think about. There are a bunch of different theories about why this has changed and going to present a few briefly and then we can talk more about this if it is of interest. I think the most compelling one is there is a connection between the questions that animate people from these regions and the message of equipment that isis was presenting. People arent so interested in the slightly more esoteric, geopolitical context against the foreign enemy that a group like al qaeda is present. They are much more interested in social question of how to organize Islamic Society. When you have a group like isis which is declaring in Islamic State i think there is a huge amount of interest in a region like that for a project like that and in fact they built an Islamic State which was the saudi state 100 years ago, i think youre seeing a mobilization for similarly attractive passage now. Spoken with stories from this region and we need to understand that in the region as a whole there is the question of are we muslims saudis or rv saudi muslim and i think even though we now recognize the notion of the caliphate was a hollow promise and its been full of horrible human right violations and atrocities at the time at which it was announced it did have a lot of grounding in islamic law in theology. I think there is interesting papers that have been written and thats what few other options could be a social network, people from these regions couldve gone first to syria and recruited their friends and recruited their friends and the snowball effect. The other piece of the puzzle of what subsequently is that although dont associate saudi arabia with an arab spring. Se there were a lot of demonstration centered in the heartland province next to the odd and around the detention of the saudi state people were charged with terrorism christ but never tried in court and a lot of the people involved in organizing the demonstrations the release of the detainees took advantage of the instability the saudi state was feeling during the arab spring to mobilize demonstrations a lot of that was organized by people from the city and a lot of those people joined isis later on but also were responsible for attacks in the Arabian Peninsula, most famously the one where the saudi father tried it from bahrain and attacked the shiite mosque in kuwait. This suggest different motivations. You have the question of the compelling notion of. [inaudible] the last thing i will say briefly is that the regions that we looked at with the highest rates of isis agreement had strong elite women. For example, its true in bahrain the most desperate so the minister of defense and the Royal Court Minister are known as. [inaudible] which is part of the bahrain royal family that is very hard lined and very violent anti shiite opponents and their rhetoric suggest that there is a large station in bahrain communities to violently attack shiites both in the firing and elsewhere. We dont have to do all this but turkey was the nicest theologian is a member of a very prominent bahraini family and when asked who referred you to join isis almost half of all bahraini and use him as the person there for them. He settled to the equipment in bahrain a very prominent individual. His cousin iran some state prisons and point bahrain later. These are wellconnected individuals. The same is true of kuwait. We know now that they have a longstanding finance laws that they cleaned up and they have those is because theres been a very successful Business Community that has been politically active and religiously conservative. What does that mean for what we see Going Forward and what does this mean for policy. Im concerned that future reform fighter mobilizations cute similarly and successfully. I think there is a strong the radicalization in these countries and theres a strong criminal effort in many of these countries. I would conclude and wrap up what the message is that david and i want to convey here is there is i think the debate about which period of why people join terrorist groups is less helpful than thinking about where a certain theory about white people join terrorist groups in most people. In some cases its marginalization and other cares there is a theological element to the mobilization and we need to be able to first diagnose where people are coming from at this level where we start thinking about what is motivating them to join in the first place. Thank you. Great. Youve given us a lot to think about here. I will try to keep my questions so we can get to the audience. We were talking backstage earlier and you alluded here in your presentation that the al qaeda original ikeda message was somewhat esoteric. It has begin the far enemy over time and on some unspecified timelines almost certainly outside your lifetime that then brings about the caliphate and thats a great argument for seminary students and Technology Workers and people who deal with complex concepts but probably isnt going to sell two years since farmer. Conversely, isis can be burn, baby burn but lets bring about the caliphate today and it happened last year, get on board. Given these two models and it makes sense that there would be a much greater economic determinant for the isis fighter because he is thinking about his present day situation. David, in your north africa presentation you almost said exactly that that essentially joining the odds of joining isis acts is essentially a function of economic deprivation why. You say that on the golf its much more complicated than that. If i try to put an xy line over top of you david, i want you to say why that is too simplistic support north africa and i want you to tell me how much purchase then getting me in the gulf. In north africa, i think, what we see is that its not that there is a correlation between economic stress or poverty or fighter production. If you look at libya its all centered in the east but southern libya, the region known as. [inaudible] produced no fighters. It is actually the poorer part of libya. The key outside is much less that you can take policymaker or for analyst the Economic Data and from that we should focus on some work so that when we find a place of high production it shared the aspect of economic strength. There may be other places that are also economically struck but dont have the history of political mobilization or the political grievance. They may also have stress in a different way. One of the ways we would like to look at in the future is whether there is a difference what things characterized in southern libya and many young men who dont have jobs and arent married and poverty where people do have family. What we found is there is a long history of economic and political marginalization combined and when we look at regions that dont share that the happy families of north africa they dont produce fighters at a high rate. And the only cases where you find spots where they may be considered happy families you look deeper its the function or appears to be a function of substantial internal inequality. On a permit is not actually by consensus number all that high in the provinces of. [inaudible] when you look at neighborhood like. [inaudible] that the permit rate is similar to what we see in the southern part of tunisia. One aspect i note on the ecological aspect is that worth considering is that ideological aspects of jihad is him in north africa arguably have long been closer to Islamic State then the al qaeda mobilizations in saudi arabia. North africa was the periphery of the al qaeda mobilizations in the past al qaeda head control over north africa affiliates and over it south asian were saudi arabian. Theres a part of the question about whether the lack of impact isis ideology here is done decades ago by other groups and were just seeing the outcome of that. I would say two things in response to your question. The first is i think people were more animated in many regions by social issues than the political one. The notion of this being a state building project a. Where we are looking at in 20132014 was compelling for people in the region that was a lot more animated about the questions of how to use socially organized in Islamic Society as opposed to how do you contest the influence of materialism or colonialism et cetera. These are the regions of saudi arabia that are also protesting the new laws that the kingdom has passed about allowing women to drive. I think it will be the source of a lot of angst as the kingdom continues down this path of economic reform it has been promising. The other piece of it is the message of recruitment is powerful because it is so flexible it is the message of the invention of self. You can go and be someone new in this place and i think that is attractive for a lot of people, through wide variety of reasons. It is not just that im a poor farmer from the tunisian hinterland and i have a chance to work as a Office Monkey in the records of foreign fighter joiners but also its an opportunity to structure of society. Especially in parts of conservative saudi arabia where they see the kingdom growing further away from that conservative idea of Islamic State. Honestly this has changed a lot since 2014 and of course this notion of an Islamic State is hollow for many years now and i think a lot of saudis and people on the Arabian Peninsula have left. At that time it was significant. Im going to turn to your handout. You have not only data but maps and these are quite powerful. The big, middle centerfield, if you will, is this map of where you found these groups came from colorcoded on the map of the region which is extremely useful. Then you have these three smaller maps on the back that show saudi arabia recruitment overtime. If you are to make me one of these maps that has this data showing differences over time what do you think would tilt off the map get me . Where are recruits coming from now that they have not historically and conversely, i think, more interestingly what are the dogs that are not barking . Where are the places that have produced large amounts of jihadist overtime that are in the gray or neutral marking on your map . In north africa there are two examples that are interesting. Untreated historically persons now. They are both really good examples. First, as discussed libya where they as you trace it back to the decades it is the same to provinces and their in Eastern Libya. Its not a new issue. It is one that the United States and the Libyan Government have been struggling with for decades. Its gotten particularly bad but there has been really a meaningful Libyan Government with control over the whole country. The other interesting one is algeria which did not produce fighters in this case. Only 26 fighters came from algeria. Thats an extremely tiny rate given algerias Large Population and its surprising because algeria was one of the foremost producers when you look at the record and the leading of north african fighters in the past. It also has an internal history of jihad is him with it is somewhat surprising that algeria does not show up. One of the reasons why we suspect that maybe the case although one we cant demonstrate because there arent enough fighters from algeria to get a sense of what the demographics of algerian fighters are is that this is a product of algerias lack of movement. It experienced fewer protest and the protests were not as anti regime as they took on the character in they did not part of that is they dont want to repeat the history of the 1990s. Therefore, algeria set out not the isis mobilization but the last permanent outburst of anger at Structural Conditions in north africa. Which, to me, although one would have to get a whole bunch more research from algeria. [inaudible] italy provides this idea that in north africa we have a structural problem that predates isis. To touch on a few places i spent a lot of time in this presentation emphasizing the newness of mobilization for it to occur in bahrain. I wont delve into that anymore but one of the places on the map that doesnt show up at all is surprising and i briefly touched on it is yemen. I think ultimately there is a very powerful notion as commitment and called. [inaudible] its making a pledge to the leader of a different movement and a lot of people in yemen pledged to bin laden and once he was killed and theres this notion of. [inaudible] you make this pledge and promise and its hard for you to to another group and when isis declared the caliphate there was very few Al Qaeda Affiliated organizations around the world that expected even though it is strongly suggestive that isis had a lot of times coordinating these movements to try to make this declaration caliphate in mosul and in 2014 more powerful by the fact that they could get these other affiliates to declare allegiance. In yemen i think its one of the places where you see how the commitment to the leader of the Different Organization is still very strong in the data i wish i had was on foreign fighters were originally joined places like. [inaudible] the main Al Qaeda Linked group in syria. I believe that it is very likely that we would see a similarly high rates training accounting for the fact that yemen has its own complex going on right now and theres a lot of people taking part in that and not having to leave at all. Outside of the radiant so there are few other countries i want to highlight. One is turkey. I think the Political Support of the turkish government due to a variety of militants in the searing conflict including even the al qaeda Affiliate Group at the time has gone on and on and on. [inaudible] anyway, i think the turkish Political Support for the movement has given citizens in turkey a lot of freedom to join these conflicts and this is a place where there is not a lot of work being done what the motivations are and where they are coming from. The other place i would emphasize is jordan it has been well documented in the iraqi complex and it doesnt show data about jordan simply because a lot of jordanians need to fly to turkey but they could do it on their own. I also dont think there are a large number of jordanians. [inaudible] click okay. You preempted my last question but ill ask it anyway. You have been pay careful about saying in the limits of your data so now im going to try to not do on the first day of grad school and extrapolate from your data. You have these wonderful map of the fact that show the differences between this time period, 13, 14 time period and historical norms. If you had the data on where everyone else and where are the Al Qaeda Affiliated movements but the al qaeda brand where are they getting their recruits and for that matter, other minor jihad groups that are some that still dont fall under the isis or the egg q umbrellas. If you could get the data on these then do you think the current map would look much more like this historical norm and in other words do you think they are Still Producing these source countries across north africa and their essentially producing foreign fighters at the same rates or in the same portions in the gross numbers last overtime but proportionately does it look the same or do you think something is changing in the way that jihadist groups across, it was called the family of extremism, across the way that all of these groups are recruiting. Is this something new or a limitation of have one snapshot of one segment of the group . I would say there are two things that have helped improvement among the full variety of organizations. Al qaeda, isis, variety the others and those are that the syrian conflict in the spring. When you look at those two as the key determining variables so, when it comes to arab spring like david had mentioned the case of tunisia where the phenomena in of isis agreement is widespread and an extraordinarily high rate as compared to morocco which has a dispersed isis went but you didnt have the extent of arab protest that tunisia had and for that level its much lower. There are obviously more completed factors but lets keep it that. In addition, you have the syrian conflict and theres a strong correlation between countries that politically supported militants in the searing conflict and fighters that joined militant groups in the syrian conflict. It catalyzed treatment equipment and battlefield tactics and strategy has become a safe haven for a variety of organizations and the generation before we were able to address this in a systematic way. Places like saudi arabia members of parliament were doing official visits of loading rockets into rocket launchers and theres huge amounts of sanctions at the time where we are looking at to support fighters that are going to these places to join a variety of groups. In cases where they went to join the Free Syrian Army and overtime the phenomenon occurs and they find themselves getting to they want food and they join isis. Those two variables are hugely when you look at where fighters are coming from. I would propose one would do a study to see how that relates. I would add on a question of whether he sees similar locations had we stopped al qaeda recruitment record for the xyz militia record and how to return to the overall findings of our papers is that we should be so focused on the overall question of where and its certainly possible that the we cant really say access to that data which one of the suggestions i would add is the extent of the government has and can release that data is a majo what does in north africa, my tendency is to think there isnt a big difference. We see that in libya that historically the various mobilizations of relatively similar theres not an extensive reason to think that to the extent that there was recruitment it was coming from a different place. Another reason id suggest is that in tunisia the recruitment built off foundation that was shared between races and al qaeda factions and it was built off of. [inaudible] which was engaged in an internal split over which way are we going to go. One that wasnt really resolved either but particular individuals north africa would tend to think that an area further studies should be looking at in the incoming hypothesis would be that its similar dynamics for us and the Arabian Peninsula, i think there is reason to begin with that hypothesis that there is a difference between al qaeda and iso and one area to test that would be yemen where they are basically no meaningful isis agreement. There has been some reports of large numbers of al qaeda. [inaudible] other Group Payments from yemen whether those are believable or accurate, i have no clue. There does seem to be a distinction between what is reported versus. [inaudible] track i said that was my last patient and her light. One more way. He talked about how this is bounded geographically and thats a very important qualifier. How much of this is found in temporarily as you pointed out, these records are drawn from a time when isis was really at its peak. When otherwise responsible people in washington were saying a baguette will certainly fall on jordan and lebanon right after the fact. Isis looked pretty good in this 20132014. From which you are recruiting. Lets say the anti coalition grabs your paper and the use it as the basis for their future efforts. What cautions would you give them about hey, we are looking at a period where again this is the faith building project. I would caution you to not use it now that were moving into. That would look more traditional terrorism focused. I would say that its very impacted by the time and if you looked at 2015 isis recruitment you would find. [inaudible] because the saudi government was starting to crack down on these departures because the tax work needed to be perpetrated in the kingdom and the satellites around the kingdom but also because no one wants to join a losing team. That is effectively what isis became. I would caution that if we were to just briefly i would say and pour out in my presentation that the fundamental context in which these fighters were being recruited hasnt changed. I dont see the radicalization efforts actually address these issues in the region. In bahrain i think its the most acute of any in the whole Arabian Peninsula. That we will move to questions but let me give you the groundwork for questions. Please raise your hands, wait to be recognized. Once you are recognized please wait for the microphone so that those who do not have the benefit of being in the room can hear you. Once you have the microphone in your hand, please identify yourself and any relevant affiliation. Please ask a question. The question usually begins with a who, what, when, why and when you ask it as a slight infection in your voice to indicate a . There. A short preamble to your question is acceptable, a long statement that essentially ends with a what you think about that is not. With this we will go right here in the jacket. Post, id like to ask about how isis recruitment posted strategies. [inaudible] is there any impact or did you see any correlation . Thinking. So, i will talk briefly to that. With we did egypt from our north africa region on the basis that when we look at that data there was a lot of phenomenon that things that adjusted shared a mobilization dynamic with other countries rather than so much the dynamic in libya, tunisia, morocco and algeria. Therefore first constraint we found it risky to analyze that without the comparison of the palestinian territories as that comparison. We have not really look too deeply at it but it does appear to share a similar dynamic with some of the north african sites but is the country his government founded the arab spring. We do see the importance of marginalized the cyanide particular and there some kind of dynamic with sinai and the gaza strip that shows up in where people are reporting previous jihad. That is all tentative and we did not examine each of them and we viewed it as part of the sustained regional grouping that was seem to be different from what we were looking at and tied together the north african country. Right here in the front. John hogan. [inaudible] these provinces are unhappy in their own way could you explore the use of qualitative methods that are specifically designed to test hypotheses. Sample size of one being what. These provinces are happy and. [inaudible conversations] yeah, okay. No, what i would love to accomplish with this paper to be honest is the fact that this paper in our presentation the goal is to for more rigorous oriented testing and we need are strongly suggestive conclusion we believe to be true but i think as you emphasized people should be going to these places where possible. I wouldnt advise anyone to go to. [inaudible] anytime soon but some nice places where the required positive work to validate or disagree with some of our findings. Its a valid question. Woman on the isle. Question is about political marginalization. You mention comic marginalization and political how are you measuring this and how is it different from economic and how are you testing. So, the political marginalization can definitely use more measures that are better. A large part of what we were looking at or that i was looking at in north africa is the protest data and that looks at the fighters reporting jobs and other demographic information that appears to put them within the higher parts of parts of the other issue is we define not distinct phenomenons and theres places where there is honestly not the same but in libya economic marginalization is so much a product of the ways the patronage and the distribution of wealth and government jobs. That is the large aspect of that. I would also note that our abscess on the protest data and qualitative work by others in the region. Great. Next, in the very back. David galloway. This is a question that goes more to north africa. Since you have identified the subnational regions that have the economic and social political marginalization issues is your study going to lend itself to a solution of perhaps focusing International Aid other than intergovernmental agencies and individual countries like usa as a way to stanch the recruitment of isis fighters by improving the source of isis fighters. This is one of the key areas that are report intervenes the existing debate. There is a current debate which i will give you the media narrative obviously within academic and policy and its a bit more detail but it goes Something Like there is a set of people who say we need to give them jobs and then theres a bunch of people who say jobs for jihadists, that will make the difference. One of the findings of the debate is that it is unhelpful to get at district and many of the areas of north africa we look at the subnational areas they dont appear to be something about being underemployed or not having a stable job that i cant tell you is causal but shows up in a lot of these provinces. Hundred at really high rates. In contrast, if you go to the arabian love the people who say jobs for jihadists is an ideological aspect and probably much more a point then many of the people from bahrain actually have not great job situations but theres a whole bunch of them that are wellconnected to institutions of power. The other thing they are adding more jobs and when theres an ideological aspect it is unlikely to help. The other thing i would note is that one of the things we need to get a better handle on and that we are struggling within the paper and the field as more generally, i believe, is the measures we are using to understand economic. They suffer a massive underemployment problem in north africa that is not captured well by our unimportant data. Many of the jobs of people who actually are owners are very unpredictable and there is substantial informal work and illicit work and even for example in tunisia jobs that a are. [inaudible] are only one step away from a struggling economy particularly in southern tunisia. Therefore you get this dynamic that if you would just run your classical economic measures it wont mix us up and it failed to pick it up for the arab spring in tunisia that the outburst of anger was coming. When you look at the more qualitative sense of people in this region they will tell you marginalization or economic stress seems to have something to deal with permits. Those people have often been historically dismissed as money grabbing aspect of tb research and they want money for their particular project or the head of the union that of course he will tell you one employment is bad for whatever reason he can come up with but i would suggest that we should be a lot more trusting of these qualitative statements from people particularly given the high rate of underemployment that show up in the fighter record. One thing i would add is one concrete policy intervention i very strongly believe in for the United States and other countries in europe is to encourage greater trade within the region. Thats an opportunity for a lot of wins in chart of economic pretty much any region of the world for example, a province in eastern morocco 5 of the income comes from reminiscent and the best economic chance you have is a moroccan to be. Yet, historically the trade that was a hugely important city in the trade routes in the inland trade route across north africa so the lack of trade between morocco, algeria and tunisia is checking the economic opportunity. What david is saying is that it is not just important from an Economic Development perspective but that its encouraging trade across these countries in the National Security and Regional Security issues. Great. Right here in front, women in the blue. Inc. You. This is very important study. Diane from the school for conflict resolution at george mason. Some of the questions about the age factor in terms of not just a biological age but the. [inaudible] of experience they havent been through like zero15 since 911 but issues of humiliation, and be in trauma and the inequality has a relative deprivation factor in conflicts that they are shaped. Its a ten year lag effect so kids who were ten during the. [inaudible] became caliban in those traumatize later became a qaeda and its an effect of, in humiliation. I mean there is obviously important work being done on child voters were bringing children into the conflict but it doesnt play out so much arabian fiscal fighters as in central asia. A lot of fighters from central asia are bringing their whole families and if that element but i would also say that isis Recruitment Strategies are predicated on impulsivity. I think more so than any others we have seen when you look at al qaeda recruitment. They advocate that you build a relationship with the crew. Isis has prayed on the impulsivity of you more than any other group and i think when you look for example a german journalist recently a few months ago engaged in a conversation with isis routers and they basically said just send us a video and then will have that and you can plan the attacks. Dont worry about complicated things, get a knife and just go out there and do it. The commitment mechanism of someone sending a video to the group makes them feel responsible for carrying out an action. There is a lot of detail thinking in their current strategy to get people to make impulsive decisions and it turns out that i made impulsive decisions when i was young kid, to spread i guess the only thing i would add is that it is fascinating area to look at although one that unfortunately would be incredibly difficult to figure out a method is where you have the generational aspect of the mobilization and you have fighters who are i believe the median age we found was 19 or 20, that was the point they were entering syria. Now, whether that has an aspect to do with the impact on children and cohort effect, i dont know. My tendency would be to ascribe that to Network Effects that build up in that its home to militant networks that evolve over decades and get reenergized every time there is an outburst of anger but its not something where if anyone can get a meaningful sample of people, searing effigies or whatnot it would be an area that could benefit from a lot of discussion. Jumping on that last point, bill lawrence, i would echo what my colleague from george mason said and say that the cohort of the Network Effects are the same and that the networkers figure out the local corporate issues in the each factors are important in north africa. I would also say that there is a huge value in the data that you have but theres a missing stuff in the dataset. The first one jump to mind for the computers seasons in syria fighters going to iraq and that was of early example of tunisi tunisian, algeria, libya is going to iraq and that reveals some very interesting things including another thing you seem to have missed which is the middle class fighters. One of the reasons tunisia since so many is not lack of access to capital but access to capital. Looking at uppermiddleclass and. [inaudible] it is interesting. Let me just, if i could. What i would suggest is that your conclusions are exactly right but they are almost diligent 35000 feet once you go down theres these other factors. My question would be this there are lots of files out there, hundreds, particularly in literature and how would you, in generations, a version to a study capture all of that in growing anecdotal information from returning fighters which is another great new database. I think one of the next steps for research in this area is to turn to the profiles and to examine them geographically rather than trying to generate the tunisian profile which is if you look at the aggregate and we do split some of the data to be forthcoming and you find that there is about as educated as the tunisian population and there is about as many students of the tunisian population and they report origins from across the country. It is easy to come in as the journalist and get a sample that will tell you the story that the mobilization of the is the same terrorist dynamic we have seen in multiple terrorism campaigns. I believe that terrorism does not have an economic. [inaudible] and to some extent it is true that we shouldnt undercount the tunisian mobilization ability to cut across classes but i would strongly warn though as you get more vocal you begin to see the places that are really popping out are these geographically in many ways ghettoized areas that are producing under employment numbers at such high rates. I think part of that is with the arab spring, the economy really contracted in some ways particularly for many of these areas that are hotspots and i think this is a dynamic you see in some of the reporting of demographics of particularly attacks in tunisia is they will be reported as muscle because their family is middleclass or their family has some wealth but they individually often they dropped out of school and they were doing day labor or construction work. Now, looking at those profiles will be useful to determine what comes first, the jihad is him or the economic aspect. One of my suspicions based on the staff in tunisia is theirs and upgrading of people who really are not into the. [inaudible] when you have a dynamic of Unemployed People who do not have a stake in society. At the very least, its not radicalizing middleclass in any meaningful terms. James, writer with the news. I was at your earlier presentation, close to a year ago, but you had a broader take on not just north africa and the middle east but can you say anything meaningful having board in this part about the motivations, the profiles of the foreign fighters that came from the west and came from europe and obviously that is a major concern right now about ours about returning and is there any interesting persons with that subgroup . Sure, yes. This is outside the scope of what were looking at right now but im doing a social network coming from europe as opposed to those in the Arabian Peninsula and what we find is that the fighters from europe are much less connected both in a number of ties and the fighters from the Arabian Peninsula are far more interconnected. When it comes to what we see as threats what that means is there is a theory of social Network Analysis theres a vulnerability due to interconnectedness. Or benghazi. So i think the threat in the Arabian Peninsula is, theres greater risk of systemic failure but when you look at europe we have a far less interconnected network of terrorists, the threat is not systemic. We are not going use cities of europe to the caliphate or anything, but the threat is a sort of very small scale one person, one person, one person threat which means attacks a harder to stop. You basically have to have some every single note of the network is supposed to some few notes at a high degree and a larger interconnected network. This is outside the scope of our paper. Right here. Then well go to the gentleman behind you. Thanks for the presentation. My name is chris. We were considering criminal justice issues, so we have some contact with these types of forums. We are looking at them for criminal Justice Purposes of course but one of the things you mentioned early was the slippery slope effects. Weve seen that as well from the recruitment forms that we have but to really small degree. Again limited data that we have, its only like, its below 10 of those that were former fighters with other groups came from the moderate or the fsa type groups and most came from other extreme is groups enjoy privileges wondered how that played out with your work. We had this conversation anecdotally about the fighter that comes as a moderate and then it somehow radicalized in country. But our limited amount of documentation has not shown that at all. Thanks. The answer is i can do you get good answer. This is what issues about having foreign fighter registration forms record on the siri and Turkish Border. They are not fighters who were in syria switching groups really. Theres not enough evidence for us to make any kind of concrete claim. State department, thanks for the talk. I wanted to go over the issue of criminal justice and build on the point about some of these things have been addressed in europe, particularly in the balkans with the governments have input insert stiff penalties for any person going, any form of conflict or have been debates like this for such stiff penalties in the countries you are studying . They seem to have at least in some part of the balkans made it only the real diehard is going to go. The person who stands to really have a difficult lifestyle at home to try to do this lifestyle is likely turnoff. Any research in this regard . The main source of our data for this paper doesnt really talk to that as a registration style, and not sort of government statements or terrorism within the country overall, and also 20132014, the height of the mobilization when people were just beginning to see this a as a major problem tt required such changes. Really a question of where you look at. In libya theres not all that much because theres not a particularly functioning government. On the other hand, sort of the root strengthened and cut off, then you would have to take to get to syria. That really cuts that down. In tunisia you saw lots of antiforeign fighter while some of them quite strict would restrict travel. In algeria, during this time, or during you see Strong Military crackdown on the few portions of said country where there was effort to mobilize the interim isis threat. And from the United States, sort of country, terrorism report and other reporting, it sounds like that was pretty successful. Al jerry has relatively well functioning Security Service compared to at least tunisia and libya during the time we look at where tunisia was politically constrained as a result of the revolution, and libya had in effect collapsed because of the rebellion and the 2011 nato intervention. And then as far as the gulf, its pretty clear reported that once the arabian countries in the Arabian Peninsula faced a domestic Security Threat as a manifestation of the recruitment of isis fighters, the basically 2015 and afterwards, they crackdown very hard on people going, but i mean, even at the point you could go to saudi arabia and people would be willingly, willing to talk to you about any number of people they knew would left for sure. I guess my point is like, the underlying motivation and processes of radicalization in the Arabian Peninsula are still not well addressed. Even though the criminal element are heavily policed, and i think the region faces threats both from alqaeda and from isis and the different. They come from different places. They are animated by different questions, and the fundamental things that animate them are not being effectively addressed. Albright appeared we have time for one less question. It goes to the gentleman here. Dave, congressional fellow. Can you give me some of your hypothesis of why theres a higher rate of fighters in gitmo. In guantanamo turkey said there was a higher ratio of yemen fighters. I think its because there are more yemenis who were joining alqaeda are committed to alqaeda and they are yemenis for isis. Well, without we do have time for one more if im expecting a little longer answer. Going once, going twice. The gentleman in the front will take it. My name is jack, unaffiliated. I was wondering if you could maybe contrast or compare the distinction between flow of foreign fighters and recruitment. In other words, if a dueling coalition shut out out at the territorial area in syria, is recruiting going to go away, or is recruitment is going to shift and how much you get that kind of information in the future . Thats a really good question. I use recruitment in a broad term. When you think about recruitment you think about someone from a group reaching out to people that they want to join the group, and theres a deliberate initiation, the way like organized crime in southern italy might do it. In these cases, like its not that cut and dry. Its a lot more complex figure people who are seeking out people who have them join movements like isis, isis recruiters have Clear Strategy of trying to facilitate that process. So it comes from both sides and its very complex. And so thats kind of how i use it. I think isis sounded very effective formula for having recruitment be very broad so its not just joining bide fighs also being recruited. I mean, these data are people, all terrorism announce this is limited by the quality of the did which with access to. I dont think, i think this data, to use word that is often misused, unique, in that, you know, you can have the current selection effect you have if a journalist is in having a bunch of people, or even fighters who were returning to tunisia. The people who return to tunisia want to return and can return, and theres a nonrandom selection bias in the sample. And allies. I mean so there is an element of this in the fighters were joining the because the data are so large and diverse, i think we can make broader claims about recruitment more broadly rather than just recruitment of people are willing to pack up and fighter turkey and interest ar area. It can be tough to figure out if theres a question, that is who recommended you, but its not clear whether that recommendation is, what it needs. Whether it needs the person that you at the Turkish Border and is give you a sign off, whether they raided terrorist Training Camp and the winter in the region and then went over, whether its just someone who can vouch for you but had no active recruitment outside. I did some digging into this in tunisia, and there certainly is some level of more organized movement within the region that we are studying the 7. 5 of the whole tunisian contingent was recommended by one person who runs this terrorist Training Camp. We know that he was in direct contact with isis in syria, more or less a daily basis. And also that there were connections back in tunisia. This has been one of the areas that airstrikes in libya really focused upon during that time. But i cant really tell you whether, with indonesia, he was in sort of people working with him, were doing a more direct reach out or if its just people with two al sharia tense and some of them have been radicalized and decided to go to libya or if its people just showed up in libya. Thats not really something i can necessarily tell you. However, the does appear to be a difference between Something Like that and what we seem to see in other parts of the world, perhaps limit in algeria or i think we should a lot in the United States where people are just showing up or they have an online connection they built. Something weve seen really in our research here at new america on homegrown terrorism, but is not physical recruitment going on in the u. S. By return fighters or clerics or things like that. And i think thats probably a geographic distinction based on Extensive Networks and expanse of marginalization between summer like the u. S. And summerlike rural tunisia. All right. I want to thank david and nate for all the work theyve done for bringing this data set to our attention. As been pointed out that are 20 different ways that future researchers can go with this data but nonetheless, this is a great first contribution. I know the paper got caught up and editing help you to have a best guess when it was released and on the website . Stay tuned. Stay tuned. I give very much for coming today. On behalf of new america, happy to have you here. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] if you missed any of this discussion on countering terrorist recruitment, well have that shortly online. Just search new america from the homepage using the search bar. Thats at cspan. Org. On capitol Hill Paul Ryan has ordered the u. S. Capitol flag lowered to half staff in memory of those killed last night in a shooting at a Country Music concert in las vegas. More than 50 people were killed. The congressman who represents much of las vegas, has been in the command center drink investigation into what happened. He made these remarks earlier today. Good morning. Im the congressman for the fourth Congressional District in nevada. I just want to say thank you to Law Enforcement and to all the First Responders who are now fighting tirelessly to protect and save lives. I have the opportunity to stop by Sunrise Hospital earlier this morning, saw firsthand a lot of the victims, a lot of the family members. But also saw a lot of nurses and doctors that were working tirelessly to save lives. And today it is a very sad day for nevada. Its a very sad day for las vegas, but if anything good came out of this, is that i saw humanity. I saw our Community Come together. I saw strangers helping strangers and saving lives. I do want to say thank you to the sheriff into metro police, to firefighters, the doctors and nurses and everybody who has working tirelessly to save lives at this precise moment. I know we will get to this and our city will be stronger. Thank you so much. President trump talked about the shooting earlier today during his meeting with the Prime Minister of thailand at the white house. Saying it was a very sad moment for me, for everybody. The president will be visiting las vegas on wednesday. Earlier President Trump ordered flags to be flown at half staff in memory of those killed and wounded, and press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted this picture of the lowered flag flying over the white house. The president and first lady will lead a moment of silence at 2 45 p. M. Eastern and will continue to bring you updates on the cspan networks. Cspans live coverage continues in just over one hour. New america when hosting a discussion on the u. S. Policy toward isis. You can stream that discussion live online, cspan. Org, or use our free cspan radio app to listen live. Both chambers of congress in session today. The house will be spending the majority of the week debating the budget resolution and they will consider a bill that would ban abortion after 2 20 weeks. Live house coverage over at cspan. The senate returning at 3 p. M. Eastern to debate the nomination of ajit pai to the fcc chair for another term and senators will vote on his nomination at 5 30 p. M. Eastern. You can watch that writer on cspan2. Tonight on the communicators. 5g will open up a completely new wave of and adjacent in the work they will give extremely fast speed to you be able to use 100 times what you use right now on your smart phone or your tablet. Verizon Senior Vice President kathy grillo talks about competition in the wireless industry, Net Neutrality and 5g deployment. Shes interviewed by Political Technology reporter Margaret Harding mcgill. Do you think the u. S. Has the right i guess Regulatory Framework for 5g making sure we are first in getting that out there . Guest we done a good job on spectrums of the fcc issued an order last year and is opened up highfrequency millimeter spectrum for the industry. We have done a pretty good job on fiber, private industry is doing a good job getting fiber out what needs to be. We could do some work on the infrastructure part. So in order to get 5g to the homes the way i described away going to need to put a lot of different small cells all over the country. Many, many more that we have today. Once we do that i think well be be in a good position. Watch the communicators tonight at eight eastern on cspan2. Education secretary betsy devos discuss education policy at the Kennedy School of government at harvard university. Including School Choice and alternative education options. After remarks she sits down with harvard government professor Paul Peterson and takes questions from the audience. This is one hour. An ho [applause] good evening everyone. My name is archon fung and in the academic dean of the harvard Kennedy School. Tonight were joined by two professor, and a very special j guest to explore the critical question of how to improve our Education System. In particular should we address the challenges of our Education System by shifting resources from School Districts to parents by giving them tax dollars to choose whether to send their children to public schools, charter schools, or privates . This is the latest chapter in a debate thats been going on for sometime. Milton Friedman Friedman developed the idea of choice in his 1955 essay though role of government in education, policy makers including our special guest here tonight develop these programs into experiments in t