Good afternoon. On behalf of the council leadership, am very pleased to welcome new mall to this event. I am very pleased to see the huge turnout today despite two competing events taking place. One is obviously the apex of josie and the next 15 minutes, but the stronger panel menu also has the president s decision on afghanistan, which will somehow be two parts of this event. I have a distinct panel and i will not take much more of your time because the panelists also have competing engagements and i believe you will have to leave. So i will dive straight into the event. Im pleased to welcome two of my own colleagues. This is a collaborative effort. Thank you very much. As part of the south asia center, welcome. We need to welcome both chris fehr who has worked with us in the past and we are delighted to work at them again. Thank you very much for your participation and without further ado, i will turn over the preceding and we will take the event up followed by chris fehr towards the end. I have requested the panelists to keep their remarks brief and short. Five to seven minutes. And then we will turn over the questionandanswer session to the audience. These identify yourself and your organization and please keep your questions as brief as possible to enable the conversation. Thank you very much. The floor is yours. Thank you very much. If the microphone on . Can everyone hear me okay . Its a pleasure to be here and a pleasure to talk about the issue because it is such an important one in such a challenge that all countries are grappling with that we are really trying to figure it out as we go along. Im excited to hear about my other panelists point of years and you as well. I would like to start out by talking about the challenge of dealing with isis as it moves from physical caliphate to a virtual one. As they start to his territory in iraq and syria, we start to see it reframe itself into a virtual caliphate. With a different type of message. When they have territory in iraq and syria, the message to groups all over the world and muslims all over the world with this is a Perfect Place to live. Come to us, come live in the way of the prophet. Well take care of you. You can live a good pious life here. The message wasnt necessarily extremely nefarious. It was an extremely violent in the beginning. Images like come live with us in this utopia. As they start to lose this territory and as they start to lose control over where they are, you see the message shifting to a much more aggressive, much more violent one. They are no longer telling people to come join them because they cant and theres nowhere to join anyway. The townspeople stay where they are and just wreak havoc in their own societies. So the message is stay where you are. Well provide you with all of these instructions and the information you need to tear apart and that is what the challenges we have to grapple with today. So weve seen this particularly in europe and the u. S. As the level of attackers and other people who dont necessarily seem to be part of a group are part of isis per se. We have seen venus, orlando, london, most recently barcelona. These attacks are incredibly difficult to proactively address. For a couple of reasons. This is a big challenge basically. The big challenge is how do you prevent someone from being radicalized online. Not only how do you prevent someone from being radicalized online, how do you identify someone being radicalized online . How do you answer the question of why this person is becoming radicalized. What are their grievances if they dont have a criminal record and they are not under radar, how do you know when to step in and whether you can step in legally. Questions they really are much more complicated and much more challenging than a drone strike on a target or Law Enforcement operation. So, you have a couple of measures that you can do, and you can take part in. One is a reactive measure. Things like taking extremist accounts offline for example once you identify them or arresting people that are known to incite violence online. But what about proactive measures . What about preventative measures . I want to go through a couple of those right now just broadly and then i think i panelists are going to go into the country specific challenges and opportunities. So if you look at the reasons why people are usually drawn to extremism, but there will are seeing now in the u. S. Or islamist inspired extremism or any other form, the root causes are often the same. So, it is disenfranchisement, which are governance. It is feeling persecuted or wronged, like you dont have a sense of justice. It is a loss of identity. You dont know who you are or where you belong. Economic hardship. You can no longer provide for your family or for yourself and you have no dignity. Sympathizing with worldwide causes, whether it is palestine or syria or the wars in jan, iraq, feeling a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood or others, so basically a set of grievances. Grievances whether real or perceived, whether they are past, present or anticipated in the future. So a couple of examples in south asia that make conditions better. Im going to keep this really brief. For example, in india, we have been rising muslim hindu tensions and are increasingly feeling persecuted under Prime Minister moodie government. Again, grievances real or perceived. In bangladesh, you also have the same kind of tension in isis online has specifically expressed an interest in going into bangladesh because it is a winwin situation for them. One is the fourth largest Muslim Population in the world, so they have big potential for recruit. And they have a border with india, which is not to monitor, so they get a twoforone if you will. If they go into bangladesh. So what can these governments do . What are some of the things we can look at how to combat . South asia in particular because they havent been on the frontlines of fighting i suspect the middle east or europe or u. S. , and they face the challenge and mocking the line between being extremely aggressive and extremely vocal about their increasing efforts to combat a says in becoming the target because of that. The more that they do it publicly, the more they are on the radar, the organization doesnt target them, so it becomes a selffulfilling cycle. What are couple things they can do that some of these governments have ernie started doing, but can always be doing more and better. One is working with International Allies in the private sector to identify and take down these extremist presence online. I mentioned earlier come identifying online, identifying people in the country better than saving extremist individuals online, addressing the root cause of vulnerability and the stuff i talked about earlier. Promoting an inclusive tolerant dialogue and making every individual regardless of their religion or socioeconomic status feel like they belong and have a place in society. Finally continuing to bolster their line for snake capabilities at the help of allies in the u. S. To eliminate the physical isis presence on the ground and to use that as a big area or say we are not in iraq and syria anymore, but now we are in bangladesh and other places. To prevent them from having a recruitment tool. I think ill stop there and turn it over. Hi, my name is agar somalia. Both of us worked on middle east issues. I may be specifically about the financing aspect of isis. If the background at the department and they start with the Financial Model that i developed in iraq in syria and how unique it is, how different it has been with the fundraising mechanisms and how it has evolved and this varies very well with the evolution into the Virtual World and these kind of loan rules often what we call single terrorist. So, isis when it grew come in the Financial Model that is focused on this very much focused on something called self generated funds. What that means is they can rise funds from the land over which they control, meaning other people. This is a different model than al qaeda, for example usually raised funds from what we called deep pocket donors. They would send tons of money. They would expose those individuals. Hezbollah, for example, a diversified their mechanisms, but backed by a state and they have a very wide, diverse system of organized crime to raise funds. I think the system that was actually harder to combat because they came directly from the land. What that meant is the number one source of revenue is mainly extortion and the people they were controlling by everything. They were taxed them if they left their house. It attacks them on every single aspect of their life. And so it was extortion. They operated a long time ago. The most incident was when they robbed the central bank raised there and they were able to receive three to 400 million in now. Thats a big chunk of money for an organization to achieve. So that was the main way. The second way at the time that obviously went down afterward. When it was first established, oil is a major part of their fund raising. Again, they are taking advantage of the resources and people in the land over which they control. Following that snuggling with people and then other business enterprises. But this meant was the more land isis controls, the more funds they were able to generate. In south asia and given that a says has now launched some land in syria and iraq, it remains self generated and self financed if you will. But a lot is through these lone wolves like you talked about. They were committing attacks in her lando, jakarta, london, et cetera. Mostly selffunded come individuals who have funded operations themselves. The operations are really pretty much cheap. I am down the line im not. Also taking advantage of the vulnerabilities in south asia already. South asia is not new to terrorism. There are a number of terrorist groups that have proliferated and they all pretty much focused on the same vulnerability in those regions to move funds and to raise funds. That is crossborder smuggling. In the case of isis, theres a lot of those in iraq and syria losing fund through the porous border afghanistan and pakistan ended he then moves to southeast asia. For example, the philippine is in the news a lot lately. In another way is to allow a, which is the informal transfer of money and through charitable organizations. Some of them are set up to support terrorist organizations. Some of them are used perhaps unwittingly. And this is now evolved to bed. Again, this is self generated. What to do about it in the challenge is that have been posed have been self generated to track. The individual sinai. They are much harder to find. Social media has made a good effort and they obviously need to continue that. When the self generated a crossborder smuggling of cash, this is money that is very hard to track. So, the usual typical financial tools like interception of funds, working with banks doesnt have the same effect here as they would for other finance goals. Before absurd that i say are the most effect did improve in effect is so far has been number one, military operations. Im not trained to say that its like a big no. He continues now with the Coalition Campaign in iraq and syria. The u. S. Department in dod had always worked closely, but they never worked closer than when they were working on the finance campaign. What that meant was treasury Defense Department works together to identify where isis was arriving in oil and was able to target those oil refineries, the production outcome of the smuggling routes. And also of course there is the fact that military campaign to take land away from isis is going to have the same effect in terms of its ability to raise funds. The less ability to generate. The second is partnership through government. Who proves to be the most significant steps in this ad against isis. That goes on all levels. Also financially, the u. S. Government worked to isolate that area 150 from the former financial systems. Don lennon, none went out. So isis was able to generate in mozilla. They werent able to use that money for someone who was able to send it out. So it is surveillance, especially when youre talking about that is going to be one of the most important enough for us. And lastly, as a kind of hinted on, it is preventing isis from benefiting, so perhaps they raised money, but if they are not able to deploy it, it really has no value. The way with what the government did in mosul. Another way is obviously for the lone wolf in particular training to identify better suspicious that committee when it comes to the single individuals whose Financial Transactions may seem completely benign and its going to be very difficult. I think its a challenge for the government as well as the private sector. Working with those things, making sure that file reports to their Intelligence Units and having the u. S. Government another government, australia, working with the south asian ones to make sure that they have the intel needed or the wherewithal to identify what the activity is going to be critical in cracking down on cases financing offers. Thank you. Thank you good im glad to be here. Talking about the story of the Islamic State in afghanistan and which is curiously interesting and frankly somewhat under examined as well. The Islamic State calls itself the Islamic State that emerged in late 24 team after mullah omar, the spiritual leader of the taliban you lead. That sort of triggered internal struggle within the taliban that led to the Taliban Movement into different groups. One of these groups became the escape beyond province and carved out a relatively small territory. And at a time, u. S. Commanders on the ground in the emergence was essentially a rebranding marginalized or renegade taliban numbers they began to offer under a different leader and a different name. The United States declared a terrorist organization. But since then, they have several skills that calculate in kabul and of course afghanistan, including 1. 5 times truck bomb that killed over 150 people and also kabul that they had 45 people as well. They challenge the taliban in through scores of taliban and advisers, also foot soldiers. The one voice of the caliphate in the propaganda and broadcast the group to operate its own schools and madrassas in afghanistan. Overall the current strength is estimated the between 700 to 1000 fighters with information about where it gets its material and Financial Support and, quarter isis leadership in iraq and syria exercises over it with respect to target and instructions. One thing is clear, which is they have absolutely no friends in afghanistan. The afghan leaders believe that pakistan is in fact complicit in taliban hands of rebranding and security establishment, particularly the intelligence has manufactured the new proxy group to alternate their positions between the taliban in its favor in doing so the Pakistani Army in particular with cheap and expendable assets to exploit in support of its regional statecraft, while offering pakistan cross capability. There were three or four reasons cant explain. The first one is it takes the taliban, which has been pakistans longterm proxy out of the spotlight. In the past year it has become particularly important that pakistan starts mounting pressure from the United States, the chinese about bringing the taliban and to the negotiating table. Other afghanistan has been an unchartered territory. They have a record of pakistan, afghan policy, but there have been times in instances where they have catered to chinese elite. So chinas concern is that it doesnt [inaudible] to find sanctuary and support in afghanistan. How they bring in her push the taliban at the table. It must keep its options open by creating some kind of a smokescreen to ensure some kind of a tool in any future peace talks with the taliban and very Political Sentiment or perhaps even disrupted negotiations, not go is that they intended or if they are not hospitable. Another one on the one hand, pakistan reduced taliban leaders to negotiate a political settlement over the Afghan Government. On one hand, they exploit the taliban and to disguise the fighters in afghanistan is a discretionary tool for more chaos, violence, to stir fear and undermined the Afghan Government and ultimately pushed them to suitable conditions for a favorable Political Sentiment with the taliban. In a logistical training and other support. Now the problem is that the nearest isis base of operations is about 1500 miles away from afghanistan in iraqiterritory. Where fighters that infiltrate on a regular basis from pakistan. Secondly, the old of isis fighters are also coming from pakistan and other agencies so its not unreasonable to question Material Support for centuries that may be provided by payments within the pakistani establishment and their proxy networks. Money people would not travel and all of the groups fighting in the first year leadership also hailed from the Pakistani Taliban. That was secondary. A third reason that could support any afghan plans is that the pakistani methods that are employed by icp and afghanistan are remarkably similar to the ones used by the taliban themselves so interesting in the taliban and share the same targets. If you look at parts attacks by both icp and the taliban they show a increase of targeted progovernment forces, government buildings, institutions and soft targets. And most of icp targets are also soft targets and they also target minority groups to stoke tensions and create more chaos. You look at the recent un report about civilian casualties in afghanistan, there were a good in the First Six Months of 2017 until july of this year there were about 1700 civilians that were killed and that was a two percent increase from the same time last year and a tenfold increase by casualties caused by the Islamic State there. With an additional 28 percent of women killed in afghan war. Now how much planning those attacks and organization for these attacks influence the virtual command and control center in theirhideouts in eastern afghanistan is unclear but its also questionable but fundamentally , the taliban represent the congeniality and they kill indiscriminately. The message of those groups is remarkably similar in social media and able have the support of unfailing alertness in the field. Theres also interestingly no evidence of isp establishing any kind of Operational Base either in pakistan or special are similar to the ones they have in afghanistan and the province. The fourth reason is that its logical to assume a certain level of anxiety among pakistan political elites about the contours of the afghan war and the conversation, the debate in washington that the us is going to withdraw from afghanistan, leaving afghanistan at pakistans doorstep. This administration, we will see later tonight what the Administration Says about the policies but President Trump has called the war in afghanistan a total disaster and that the us should abandon it altogether but when you look at it and doctor will talk about this as well is that this 2001, pakistan has benefited fabulously from us military assistance there. A provided well over 32 billion in assistance. But that assistance has not dissuaded pakistan from abandoning its poisonous agenda in the region. Some us officials have called for a holistic review of us relations with pakistan. Some us lawmakers even introduced bills in congress to declare pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. When you hear of a pakistan political elite and military elite in islam, and youre reading these reports in washington, theres two important questions. The first is who benefits the most from the taliban members of icp . One, the second is what exaggerating the threat of icp control the United States to depend on pakistans support to fight it eventually and leave washington to continue with the military assistance to pakistan. So finally, on what to do about the icp correct in afghanistan. Us and Afghan Forces have been on increased offensive. In the palestinians both inground offenses and also on drone strikes its call killed almost all leaders including recently making out one of their leaders, they taken 100 of their fighters down from 3000 to almost 6 or 700 now. Its also strong their territory by almost 2. In april the us even dropped socalled mother of all bombs on their bunkers which felt a great deal. So these accomplishments are significant but the nature of it, in the end i think icp is the wrong enemy in afghanistan because by afghan standards perhaps compared to the taliban, focusing too much on icp distracts attention from large challenges which is identified targets of financial sanctuary and support networks and those are unfortunately not in afghanistan so the us should focus more on the task which is tell a man and its hatred who are energized by the recent gains in afghanistan as well as the western fatigue with afghanistan. And frankly also the political chaos that is in kabul right now. So be taliban also is morphing slowly into a shadow government that controls over 30 percent of the territory now so folks in icp give taliban the benefit of even more strength and it also provides with them with a time to consolidate that strength across afghanistan and we can discuss more about the others later. We have a lot of overlap you and i so im going to briefly highlight a few things that come didnt come out in your talk and i suspect you and i are in complete agreement. To restate, isp and afghanistan is not tied to iraq and syria. We have two sources, one is the refried caliban who have grown vexed with talent and leadership and one of the things that i think you might agree that didnt mention it specifically is this frustration that the taliban is essentially pakistans intelligence agency, the isi. That the caliban has become the isis lapdog. That the caliban were being increasingly told what to do by the pakistanis. So this is a way of getting themselves out of pakistan and so continuing to be a player. The second source which you also hinted at is what i guess you could call reflagged pakistan caliban. Whereas the refried Afghan Taliban reflects indigenous trends within the Different Networks of the caliban, redescribing a Pakistani Taliban is quite different and again, we can identify at least two strains of this. And they are different but ultimately they are interrelated. Pakistan for a number of years and then waging this dog and pony show called the other, i use to call it nonsense because thats largely what it was. It was one of pakistans recent operations that was supposed to target the militancy centers that are based in pakistans federally admitted tribal area but those of us that have been studying for several years, what pakistan was trying to do was reorient most of these militants that were part of the Pakistani Taliban. What doesnt get explained enough in environments like this because it literally inside baseball, if you all want to watch the eclipse or something is these groups have one ideological strand of islam that they all follow. So there would be no Pakistan Taliban for example if there were no no Afghan Taliban which we know has generously benefited from all manner of pakistani support that there would also be no Pakistani Taliban had pakistan not raised and nurtured others militant groups. For example, mohammed, our jihad. Etc. Part of pakistans strategy was to take those elements of the pakistani town and that had closer ties or willingness to fight in afghanistan and moved them there. The other tack that they attempted to take was to get them to rejoin mohammed which had principally been raised by the pakistani isi to conduct operations in india. Those elements of the taliban that couldnt be turned back into good jihad ease were going to be those that they would then target the military operations in the way pakistan works is they dont engage in military operation. Theyre constantly going back and forth trying to bribe these people to become good jihad he assets. The pakistanis are very unwilling to show any jihad he asset, that theres any possibility that they might be rehabilitated into a good terrorist again. So just reiterating what weve already heard from javess, unless the Trump Administration shows more sagacity than the Obama Administration before it which i think is fairly unlikely, whether we have 3000 troops, 10,000 troops or 130,000 troops in afghanistan, we are going to be in the same situation unless we adopt a very serious policy towards pakistan. Pakistan in addition to the industrialstrength corruption and governance of afghanistan, one of what i would say the two largest reasons why we have been unable to have anything but a treadmill like stalemate going on in afghanistan, let me turn to pakistan because much of what happens in south asia is really driven by pakistan as opposed to these grievance arguments which i dont have a lot of patience. The grievance arguments are time and again not supported by the data and so you can have a lengthy discussion about that. Let me tell you about who supports terrorism in pakistan. Not for poor people, not undereducated people. Folks that support terrorism in pakistan are middleclass, there rain , theyre welleducated. The people who dislike them the most are poor People Living in cities. The reason for this is straightforward, its the poor People Living in cities were getting killed by these terrorist groups. These attacks do not occur randomly, they dont occur in rich people neighborhoods so this is what they call it a reality. We really need to look at this grievance indentation with a lot of skepticism because this mythology that we have really indulged in since 2002 that we can buy our way out of this. That the usa can go in there, become part of a counterinsurgency. This is just rubbish. When we turned to bangladesh im going to relish this argument even further. If we do not understand the political sources of appeal for these organizations rather than trying to make a grievance based argument we really have no chance of winning. Let me tell you what winning means. Winning in the case of south asia means salvation dont die. Lets be clear about who is going on here. South asians are dying at the hands of south asian militants. Isis in south asia is not a problem for us. Our problem in case theres any confusion because it hasnt been said our white supremacists. If you think im exaggerating, go to the university of maryland website where start is how they, they house the global terrorism database. Europe is dealing with an ice threat but ladies and gentlemen, were more likely to be killed by a white lunatic with an ar 15 with a beard stuffed into and hand military surplus so i want to make sure that you understand that when i talk about isis in south asia, the victims are salvation. People that are killing us here in the United States, there are white supremacist. Not all people are saying this. Lets go to the pakistani case because tens of thousands of pakistanis have been killed by these people. Pakistan is a very , it has a strategic stance. Since 1947, not since 1989 for whatever magical mystery number of disa i provocateurs that come to events like this might say, pakistan has been in the militant business since 1947. One of the first things he did was spend with ample provincial and federal government supporting a bunch of militia members to go to cashmere and illegally sees that territory. Pakistan been in this business a long time. Its been until quite recently, not only riding a tiger but calibrating the speed at which the tiger runs and the things which the tiger eats. This is begun to change in 2001 for a series of reasons but many of the groups that pakistan raised and nurtured for killing indians, so part of jihadist long, parts of the mujahedin are telling afghans, the taliban. They come from this dale bundy mill you. That also produced sectarian terrorists, unfortunately not only has these been sort of episodic tools in the hands of the deep state, theyve also been political alliances of both the pdp and bp at nln. The problem is is as we enter the world of isis and al qaedas leadership, being killed also in pakistan despite getting all that money from us, up the street from pakistans military academy and the demise of omar, this traditional allegiance between dale bundy militant groups and al qaeda have come under strain. So many of the Pakistan Taliban commanders came from genji and said they saw that originally which is this sectarian set of daily militants. They have been pretty much loyal from mullah omar and al qaeda when Leadership Structure wasnt but when it fell away, they actually felt as if they were much more incontinent with isis sectarian objectives than they were with al qaeda and say what you will, they didnt have, al qaeda didnt have this carrying objective so we thought lbj leadership going to iraq and syria for isis uniform. And then obviously as outlined on the and chill off it came into shape we saw explicitly lbj commanders taking biot or pledging fealty to albert dottie. So pakistans problem is not that theres this massive swirl of aggrieved people. Pakistans problem is that it raises terrorists and i think hillary clinton, we be in a different world right now if she were president. She was the only one that told pakistanis rightly, she said your government is hoping they will only kill their enemies. I used the raised snakes and you cant really train a snake like you can and on. So pakistan is able to decide that you cannot use islamist terrorism as a tool of Foreign Policy without experiencing this blowback. Pakistan is going to continue experiencing these violent paroxysms ofdeath. And it needs to be said that even when the taliban were in afghanistan, they didnt really target cc. They took the locks on the cc strides but they didnt also fees. The Pakistani Taliban do this. Already declared obviously she had to be called which means not only liable to be killed those that are, a celestial benefit but they also declared the largest number of pakistanis the logical couple so pakistan is on its own making. India despite all the things that we heard about india and im not going this segment, the committee which is a government report demonstrated without any shadow of a doubt unless you are one of these bjp supporters believe that the committee is just an appeasement exercise but the committee report, most of them are on the most socially backward groups in india. They are not represented in government sectors, they are not represented in private sectors, there among the least educated and so forth so if the grievance are that were true india should be festooned with isis fighters. Yet its not. And parts of india that has discussed isis fighters are actually the most welleducated parts of india. Where weve seen isis fighters coming from india, it one of the most educated state and posted them from kerala are among the most educated. If the grievance argument were true and i submit to you is probably not, we should be expecting places like our and for awhere the typical grievance based arguments are most applicable. Theyre not producing isis fighters. Lets talk briefly about kashmir. What happens in the rest of india for example, the phenomenon of the indian mujahedin, the prices fighter, theyre very different from what were seeing in cashmere, cashmere, there is an actual debate about how real also isis is in past. We are seeing prices but it doesnt get enough, one of the beauties of the ice is basically a scribble. Theres no artful calligraphy. This means that it can be very easily replicated. So that was i think the genius of the isis flag is that even a person who has no familiarity with calligraphy and with with isis flag which makes it easily transported into these areas that doesnt have any legitimate ties to iraq and syria. What cashmere does have whether or not its isis formally and ihave to share the skepticism of my colleagues , that is a very Muslim Population and it exhibits decades of failure on the indian part to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It would be very hard for the pakistani and sunni to gin up suchsupport for violence and by the way, they are ginning this up. When we talk about kashmir, just as it is elsewhere to remove the pakistani component is incredibly difficult. You can pay a kid 500 rupees to throw some and the pakistanis will pay these kids and grandmothers tothrow stones. So well theyre going to throw stones at a triggerhappy Police Officer who has no training so pakistanis put a lot of work on the head of the debt and unfortunately the indians fall for it time and time again by failing to do very sensible Police Reform and failing to understand that either a tactical and operational issues like putting a boy Energy Strategic effects. So when were talking about kashmir, whether or not isis is actually the stranded franchise, there are very real issues in cashmere that india should be taking quite seriously but those issues have increasingly become tied to the events in the rest of india through the commercialization of pilgrimages. So ive been in cashmere when these vehicles have gone by. Theyre insensitive to the local population which tend to be muslim. They are very in your face, the widening of the highways which cause encroachment upon your National Forest was an issue as well as the environment of degradation. You see these government vehicles in the highway, they also leave in their path a bunch of trash there are real issues that need to be dealt with. I know, you asked meto do and theres a bunch of countries. And im now going to turn to bangladesh. Bangladesh is actually where, i know. I did, i drove all like from indiana and you ask me to do south asia. Bangladesh is really, in the end we really do have a threat and that is bangladesh. Bangladesh, people dont follow bangladesh, it gets no respect and no attention but bangladesh has militancy what for quite some time. Whats interesting is islamist militants are very efficacious. If you look at the data from the golden global database, they get about one fatality. So we had the fatality yield of pakistani territories, we would all be screaming up and down, what is happening in bangladesh but so far the terrorists are quite incompetent so we managed to not care about them. Nor has suicide bombing criticized in a serious way in bangladesh. Suicide bombing has begun to emerge in bangladesh. Like every other country that dealing with this islamist militancy, the government has been incompetent to say the least. They dont want information, in fact to preclude people from having information they shut down our survey. We were supposed to do 80,000 people, they shut our survey down after 4000. They never shut us down. The survey in iran, they never shut us down. Why . They dont want to know. But islam is and has a considerable base of support in bangladesh. Theres not a lot of support for the tactics of terrorism but there is support for the goals of these organizations, i can tell you that taste on the preliminary analysis of our data. However, just as in the case of india, the people joining isis are not poor and undereducated. A previous wave of bangladesh militants had much more conformity to that sort of hypothesis, that they were much more allied to al qaeda and the taliban for historical reasons because bangladesh served in afghanistan. These isis fellows, their cosmopolitan which apparently means Something Else if youre Mister Miller in the white house but there welleducated, the urban, they are not poor. So the idea that these are these lumpen bangladeshis ready to be sucked up by isis simply isnt true. What i see across all these spaces where not just isis but islamist militancy drives, we need to get out of our heads that poverty is driving this. Its not. What i see from my surveys and studies of their literature is that they actually agree in some measure with the goals of the different militant organizations that they serve. And which they support. If we dont want to come to terms with the fact that these are rational actors, theyre not poor impoverished you whos who are easily swayed by the exoticism of beheading people. This is not whats going on here. If we are not willing to spend the time to look at the ways in which isis is able, and not just isis, isiss new flavor of the day but all these countries have more serious Islamic Militant groups. We are not going to buy our way out of this with a development program. What we need to be spending a lot more time doing and this is the entire resources is understanding what is the source of political will these organizations have. Finally, burma. Not going to talk about it here, i dont have the time but burma if you pay attention, all of these groups are active in burma. Isis, burma is a country that we talk about for a lot of reasons but probably not for the reasons of this aggression yet both a dys, al qaeda in the continent and isis have made numerous statements and appeals to the rohingyas who as you know are being into some fairly serious fatalities by me on our government. Okay. Says you have to go, do you have any directed questions on finance erected at the audience. Particularly on finance. My name is mohammed with the iraqis. My question is to mister somali. Ask for your opinion that any involved in taiwan since 2003 up till now. So theyre different first. What ive seen more is not so much a government. Ive not seen a government financing isis. What ive seen is governments turning a blind eye to financing going on in their border. You could have many obvious theories to what that means, whether they support or they dont care or whatever but what ive definitely seen yet is financing or fundraising going on within borders and no action knowingly and the government knows about it and no action being taken. One more. One last one. Im sorry, this is fascinating. Thank you jake, from the american foundation. Last week the state department declared the mujahedin a peshmeer terrorist group and froze on all their assets. Based on that in 1889 we have just now taken the steps, what other groups are we missing who may be fomenting the space for isis to operate within south asia and how can we correct that as soon as possible . This is a question, i think that question is for me but i think maybe you might know. You can probably added by the procedure. Generally when a terrorist organization is labeled as such and then sanctioned, it depends on the group itself as to how long it takes as to why the action is taken. Whereas ive never seen in my time in the Us Government, i was with the government for12 years. I never saw like a political reason as to why a terrorist organization to be labeled as such. Reason what might be a gathering of evidence, might be a sentiment among the population and what the population believes area a record of his history and attacks or all those things. It still doesnt get so much on the financing asset because the action to designate as a as one has by mistake apartment had financial implications but its more about that. That type of action is more about exposing the organization and its behavior and trying to use some counter measuring as well and making sure people dont tolerate. Ensure that this is, that people are involved with them. So the process is sort of dependent but as for the groups, im sure there are many things that have not yet been targeted. And im certain that the Us Government probably knows about them because in my experience, local populations are very good at telling these entities, this is what we are saying and the embassies are good at telling washington. Its just the timing depends sometimes on the policy or. What is the tippingpoint. A terrorist organization, as a terrorist organization. I dont really know. I know more about what the in terms of targeting terrorists here. And for that, there has to be a very significant evidentiary. What we need is evidentiary so while they were on other indications of that information, sometimes unclassified we be sent to the Justice Department to prove that person was financing terrorism or financing drugs or proliferation, whatever the classification was. Thank you for having me. In my data, these designations. I havent seen one. And i havent been political so i wish we could have this discussion. The us unlike ceu and even, i dont think the un, the un declare his yet . I dont think so. But the us, the reason for that is its a very, they have been historically viewed as an indigenous military group in terms of its cadres that have been historically viewed as mostly peshmeer. Mostly in job. The funny thing is in my own Data Collection his is not overwhelmingly, is not overwhelmingly peshmeer so that maybe have been one of these myths that told over and over again and any analytical circle. But i think that this sort of deference to pakistan may have been something that drove our reluctance to declare his for so long. Thats kind of hard to say because we been very aggressive on led and we declare that over pakistans dead body basically. The piece resignation i want you to understand in my view, my extent has not been very effective. The reason is that weve got this other partner in saudi arabia. And when i wish that she had been here to explain the process. Essentially with these designations do is it allows us to go after their resources in different places. What we can do is those who are allies and say weve designated this organization, we want you to up all its money and put it in a safe and that isnt how it works. So you actually, in militant groups or territories understand that and the saudis have been a really humongous pain in our posterior. They been very reluctant to do to comply with any of these efforts to get there money quarantined. And i have to say President Trump actually got something right although im pretty sure it was by accident and that was by identifying copper. Four years its been an important source of terrorist financing. I guess the problem is he didnt know we have a base pair. So these designations in my experience dont mean much. And i think its more of a political oped for india to say we do value this relationship. We dont have a lot of new gift to india. I did my dissertation on pakistan insurgency, the decision to declare wasnt the all india federation, that was very much a political decision. It wasnt driven by evidence, we designated it long after it stopped being effective and we did that because of our outgoing relationship. Thats not something, these designations is important because it sends a signal but it doesnt degrade their capabilities. Crying out loud, its been designated forever and they just had a political party. So lets not get too excited about this designation. Its not getting us any functional effect on the organization. Hi, im nectar helper and with peace. My question is about the us Drone Program. A couple of you mentioned they took out a terrorist, with the mother of all bombs in the bunkers but my understanding, i think its the same one, that was supposedly women and children in a compound. And ive read also the drone papers which was written by the intercept based on cia documents saying according to the cia itself, 90 percent, at least 90 percent of the victims of the drone bombings were not the intended target and even the intended targets. Thats what the intercept report said and i know youre agreeing with this but lets talk about the ground program. There is no singular Drone Program. There are multiple Drone Programs all over the world. You have cod programs and fbi programs so when people talk about the Drone Program, my applause meter starts hitting 11. The program art not the same in pakistan so in afghanistan we use drones as we would a conventional aircraft so when troops come under fire what we would call troops in contact, if a drone is in the air with ordinance that the ordinance that gets dropped. The drone is just a deliverance of ordinance, theres nothing magical about the drone. The whole point of rna was the revolution of the military, whats wrong with me . When ladies go through menopause, you forget nouns revolution in military affairs happens. Its like having cancer brain or something. The whole point of rna is to put standoff between you and your opponent. So for example if you were on a naval ship that hopefully isnt being hit by another ship in the navy and you are launching cruise missiles, you are actually at no peril. This idea that somehow drones makes us more prone to warfare because of the pilot isnt exposed to risk rest is quite preposterous. The debate is similar from when we moved to armored and go back in the debate ofwho said it first. So the drone target in pakistan cannot operate without pakistan input. Pakistanis own airbase and they have to conflict the airspace with civilian and military drone travel. The drone target that we are selected through intelligence led operations where we knew the actual identity of the individuals and what they were. There is no evidence that they are preponderant lee killing civilians. Why, how do we know this . Anyone know how we know this or we dont know this . The fact that we dont know this because pakistan has declared, is a legal black hole. Journalists cant go there and its very difficult, with great difficulty canthey send a stringer there. However, what we do know is that even the dbi j project has had to concede that we cant simply reject drones because theyre killing disproportionate civilians. Thats simply not true. Comparing them to conventional airstrikes is what we should be comparing them to. If were going to compare them to potential airstrikes, by comparison, we should only be using drones because they are sympathizers but talk about the intercept document, they were talking about pia, they were talking about an essay and lets also be clear about the documents. This is research 101 and research 101, we talk about invariable selection bias. Who is releasing documents . Are these people happy with what they do . Number even people who havent asked to grind. These are people who represent the organization in which they serve, are they sort of the median purpose, probably not. How do we know the documents that they need are in fact representative of the entire universe of such documents . We simply dont. Heres what we do know. And i hope that i ask is going to publish this. When people have actually spoken to pakistanis whove experienced drones, not the ias br cutouts that come here and get isi funded airfare in research that testifies for congress, when you can look at the statements and say that what they have said is not physically impossible so for example ill never forget the Human Rights Watch that had a kid say i saw a drone flying in confirmation. No you didnt. They dont fly in confirmation, theyre not able to do that. So what the kids saw, he saw two airplanes flying like this he probably saw conventional aircraft. But when you talk to people who have witnessed the drones, they will tell you exactly who they killed. And theyre not predominantly killing women and children. They will also tell you that the people they killed were really bad people. Theres this really problematic sense of information because the flock i have been closed off but the farther you are from the impact of a drone, the more vulnerable you are to misinformation. The shop has just conducted the largest interview sample of actual drone. Nyu standard report did not interview drone victims. They created this new thing calledexperiential victims so anyone sitting in lahore can be an experiential victim. I think that as we get more data about the pakistan case , i think that this narrative is going to slowly give way to fat. Having said this, the other elements of the Drone Program which is basically what we call signature strikes which is we didnt know the identities of the person being killed, those are very problematic drone strikes. Idont know anyone in their same mind , these are where we face upon the signature which is how the people are moving around and based upon other information, we have word that someone who looks like this is going to be doing something naughty, kill them. This is where i think the programs really got himself into trouble and people who were allegedly killed multiple times are finally killed. When you said you killed and two other drone strikes ago, getting this is much more complicated. And im tired of hearing it because i dont like hearing things when theres no evidence but theres no evidence of drone blowback making parents. This is one of the biggest canards thats been propagated by people who dont have data but quoted some 16yearold. Theyve never seen a drone strike so im happy to have more discussion about this and youll notice i only can find my comments to the tribal areas of pakistan as each of the countries in which drones operate have very different standards and procedures in targeting and different relationship with the host countries inwhich the aircraft flies. Now i think is natalie from the center for internationalstudies. Doctor , you mentioned that there have been rising theories with the air crisis and so as there are versions of refugee camps in bangladesh how likely do you think it is that there will be blowback or even biliteracy refugees going into india and doing or conducting terrorist attacks in india. So the refugee issue is a tough one. So one of the things that must also be said because of this particularadministration running and ruining our country , refugees have not really been conducting terrorist attacks and its actually just a canard thats sold to gin up resistance to having refugees. Does this mean that refugees elsewhere dont conduct violence . I cant say that but certainly with respect to the folks fleeing the violence in syria, this is just not manifesting itself for the story. Refugees are not committing violence. Going to the rohingya issue, i hate that you follow this quite closely you would know this isnt the first time we had a large rohingya population in bangladesh. This crisis was , not in terms of the genocide and the viciousness with which the government is killing rohingyas, this is new but in terms of seeing that in a country concentration camp, making them do for labor, feeding them food until they die,this is not new. This is also happening in the mid2000 and we did see , Jamaat Islami in bangladesh do everything it could to get Voter Registration cards that they could vote and of course theres a lot of debate about the relationship between the mod and these different militant groups that are active in bangladesh. So this is one of those issues that you have to watch. I have a different concern. My concern is that the canard of the terrorist refugee is actually going to drive the Bangladeshi Government to the ever more brutal. And unaccepting of the rohingyas that are living in bangladesh that is going to drive them to even greater suffering. Having said that. There are rohingyas that have shown up in these different militant organizations historically in bangladesh so is this because they were refugees or is it because of their particular situation in burma is so frustrating . Or is it because they actually had access to recruiters. So this goes to the point by the way about designation. Fifa which is its humanitarian base is absolutely designated by the un. But when individuals apply to the relief in bangladesh, in burma as the fifa done. Countries dont know that this person is a member of that group. The most important thing is not designating a group area designating individuals. So these groups have been able to do if i have have been able to operate in the refugee camps of rohingas. This group ged fifa which is the title, does it deliberately support their cause. Those supporters to their particular strand of practice of response but also for the militant function. So i think its important. The other thing thats important for bangladesh is its not just for isis, lpt i think is much more important when you talk about bangladesh, its been a logistical operating base for operations going into india and when yougo to bangladesh , as we pointed, you missed that airplane traffic going between pakistan and bangladesh. Its fairly straightforward, its fairly easy but you actually see happening in bangladesh is many of the sort of islam rising things that you seen elsewhere so for example, when i first said going to bangladesh it was rare to see a woman in a new car. Now its actually not rare and whereas in many places its a global phenomenon, you also see that in rural bangladesh so bangladesh i think has long deserved much more scrutiny. I dont mean scrutiny in a negative way, i mean intellectual curiosity than it has until recently but this applies to the question. My name is mark, i am syrian myself. My question is about the talk about the rise of isis and defeating the group but looking at the middle east now i see the same factors that you alluded to in the rise of isis. There is this drastic change in societies, increased attrition numbers, all of these conditions so did we reach the corners of isis, this is my question. The rise of isis was my thesis but the group and financing and the consequences of the failure of middle eastern politics that caused to the rise of the group so my question is did we see these forces, are they still there . How do you see the situation in general . Youre talking about the middle east specifically . The short answer to your question is no. We absolutely have not treated the root causes of the rise of isis and the number one piece of evidence to that is that neither the obama nor the Trump Administration had insisted on addressing the fact that assad is still in power and that would take away one large factor of the rise of isis so we go in and the us has always been reluctant to address root causes. Sometimes for political reasons but sometimes also because we dont have the strategic patients to address root causes but we have political cycles that have four years at a time and every time theres a new administration theres a break in the continuity of effort and there could be a complete change in policy as well so that makes it very difficult to address root causes of any kind of problem, let alone a terrorist problem. But to go back, because i think christina and i, i dont know that we necessarily disagree but the fact of, the rise of extremism and why people become radicalized, i dont think grievances, i mentioned a list of four or five reasons why people turn to extremism. Grievances being one of them but grievances also dont have to do with just being poor. Osama bin laden was a very rich, very welleducated, very welltraveled, very spoiled human being. And hisgrievance was political. So i definitely agree with you. I dont think its very useful for people to assume if someone is poor and uneducated they are automatically a terrorist or a refugee is automatically a terrorist but grievances can be political, they can be social, they can be economic and its very rare that someone becomes a terrorist just for the fun of it, theres always something behind it. So not to take up a lot of time, we can talk about this afterwards but the short answer to your question is no, we dont address the root causes of extremism. Were not very good at it as a government. [inaudible] isis is just the current manifestation of you know, years and decades of the same type of grievances and problems that we had in the region and in other places in the world. Before isis there was al qaeda. In different places in the region there are other groups. Isis is the latest manifestation because its in a region which we consider to be very strategic for our interests and because right now they are very successful in inciting people to have these, to go and do these lone wolf attacks in europe and the us. They directly affect our National Security which is why were still concerned with them. Isis is going to lose almost 100 percent of its territory very soon. Its on the brink. That doesnt mean that its going to become any less of a threat and it doesnt mean that isis itself is a threat, its the ideology. Its the set of grievances that can be manifested in all different kinds of languages and countries. Thats the issue that we have to deal with and its not just about isis. Let me make an intervention on this. The us i think is making great statements, every terrorist organization, every ideology identifiesas such , yet it would be so easy to do in the United States what is happening in spain, whats happening in belgium, whats happening in france is not happening here. Even in terms of the numbers of people from the United States that have joined isis, we are so, so low at the list. The singular community is predominantly contributing is actually the Somali Community which faces the double whammy of being essentially viewed africanamerican and experiencing the oppression of race and also being reformed. I think we should maybe turn this around. Im struck by countries that should be by all the rhetoric extruding isis fighters like crazy. I would really encourage people to focus on that. We have states that are producing ices and some that are not. They are probably more different in many ways that in north india is from pakistan. We were the object of al qaedas largest effort. Why is it that france is producing something ices fighters and this is the other thing that i wish they would understand even though we have this here. Couple things are really different. It cannot be compared to france for the uk. Experiencing this has had colonial histories of oppression. They came here as professionals. And so the very earliest that they came here. When immigration the American Muslim Community is more likely to sue. It is just is just the history of the organization. And what concerns me is the anti muslim era. These organizations have allowed americans to politically mobilize. So we dont very quickly understand what has been up the force of american resilience. We might find ourselves sooner or later that our european allies come from. Why had we not been the object of the massive attack. It doesnt undo the sources of that. Just to say a couple of things we havent been subject to ices attacks but we havent been subject to that. Those are two different things. This is a very real discussion had. I dont think anyone would accuse me of being soft on terrorism. With how the fbi the fbi has a huge incentive to do this. They are probably criminalizing people. If they have not been fbi radicalization. They are helping about those allegations. There is also al qaeda and isis plots coming from abroad that were preventing that. They actually do a really good job at it. I im talking about homegrown threats. That is a separate issue from our own muslims in this country. Which we have not been subjected to think we need to understand the source of that resilience is not the same as the muslim in france. That is a great source of strength on the root cause is an arduous task. It requires time and patience. The tendency to focus on that. It was also the taliban they exploit grievances. The norms and values are their way to solidify the casualty. Engaging in these groups in the online demand cannot be understated. They should engage in a digital counting series. With respect is to take that social media demand to attract that essentially to give themselves more legitimacy to create some kind of quasi favor. I dont know that it can be understated. I dont mean to an answer to your question about isis i dont mean to simplify how difficult it is for a government to both look at shortterm threats and longterm threats at the same time. This is something that i learned in my time in government. And you have to look at longterm threats at the same time. It is basically a group of individuals 12 or 16 hours a day and they are a finite group of individuals. There is always a president that has to make a choice between how much to focus on shortterm versus longterm. That said even as an international community. In especially when it comes without those. I know you all have a lot of questions i encourage you all to check just to chat with the speakers. [inaudible]
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