Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Co-ordination

Transcription

KRISTEN STILT: I'm Kristen Stilt, professor of law here at the Law School and co-director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program. And I'll be moderating our session on ISIS today with two very distinguished guests. And providing deep and thoughtful commentary on current events is one of our goals at the Islamic Legal Studies Program. And today we have the perfect pair to offer just this kind of insightful analysis on what is currently, and I suspect will be for some time to come, one of the most pressing problems worldwide today. I want to thank our co-sponsors, listed behind me on the electronic poster. And before we get started, a brief introduction of our guests, although they're well-known to everyone here. Deborah Amos covers the Middle East for NPR News. You can hear her on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. And her Facebook page is a wealth of information about ISIS. Many awards for reporting, which I won't go through here. But apropos our location, I will mention that she was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, 1991 to '92. And then returned to Harvard in 2010 as a Shorenstein fellow at the Kennedy School. She's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of several books, including Eclipse of the Sunnis-- Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East; and Lines in the Sand-- Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World. She spends a substantial amount of time reporting from the Middle East and recently returned from a long period reporting from southern Turkey, where her focus was ISIS. And many of you have heard her reports. Our own Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and a senior fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, is also with us today. He's a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the Bloomberg View. He served as Senior Constitutional Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the interim constitution. He's the author of many books, three of which are directly pertinent to our conversation today-- The Rise and Fall of the Islamic State, What We Owe Iraq-- War and the Ethics of Nation Building, and After Jihad-- America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. Thank you very much to both of you. So a quick note about format. We'll talk with our two panelists for about an hour, with me moderating. And then we'll have time for your questions. So keep track of what you want to ask. So let's just begin. We have a map behind us from The New York Times, a week or so ago, showing ISIS strongholds-- territories they hold and contested territories. That's just for geographical reference for all of us. But estimates have been made that about 8 million people are living under partial or full ISIS control. And we could talk about the name ISIS at some point, which itself is contested. But for now, let's jump right in. Our attention began in earnest in August, when we saw the Yazidis, a minority group, trapped on Mount Sinjar. But obviously, ISIS has been around for a much longer time. Let's start with a general question-- what is ISIS? Where did it come from? It's a book-length topic, but give us some background. It's to both of you. DEBORAH AMOS: Our attention to ISIS was much earlier than August. For those of us who were covering the Syrian uprising-- AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] microphone. DEBORAH AMOS: I'm sorry. KRISTEN STILT: Yeah, let's get it closer. Sorry. DEBORAH AMOS: For those of us who were covering the Syrian uprising, ISIS was a phenomenon long before August. You could see them rolling into areas, becoming stronger in the chaos of Syria. They were well armed. They were well funded. And in particular, they were well focused. They knew what they wanted when they came. And what they wanted was to establish territory that they controlled. They came from Iraq. The leadership is Iraqi. And they changed their name to reflect their new territory when they crossed the border. And now they've shortened it, which is a blessing for all of us who have to actually report on the radio. ISIS/ISIL was always confusing. Now we just call them the so-called Islamic State, which makes us all very happy. I got an email from a woman who said, my daughter's name is Isis. Will you please stop calling them ISIS on the radio? I think that the name is instructive. It tells you what their goals are. And they aim to create an Islamic state. They are creating an Islamic state in the areas that they control. They tax. They police. They run the education system. They have a Minister of Oil. They have a Minister of Telecommunications. They are self-financed. They are wealthy. They are working on an ideological revolution in the places that they control. They focus on teenagers and children. They understand that they have to break loyalties to family and in some cases, to tribe. They have Saudi clerics who are skilled at doing that. They have just, for the first time this week, laid out their education plan for Raqqa. We were just talking about this before. They are using Saudi Arabia's curriculum in their schools, in Raqqa in particular, on their religious instruction. And so where they come from is Iraq. They come out of Sunni disenchantment with the government in Baghdad. They crossed the border into Syria, because they are picking up on the same disenchantment of a Sunni population who-- while a majority in Syria, a minority in Iraq-- feel that they have been dealt out of the regional game, and feel that they have no other alternative to get their message across, which is, we do not like the deal that we have. KRISTEN STILT: Want to add in, Noah? NOAH FELDMAN: Yeah. Let me say, perhaps, just a word about the geopolitics that help explain where they come from. Before I do, though, first of all, it's thrilling to have you here, Deborah. Thank you for coming here. And it's also thrilling to have Kristen running the Islamic Legal Studies Program with Intisar Rabb. It's a very exciting moment in the history of the Islamic Legal Studies Program. And as a member of the faculty here, I'm thrilled that programs are up and running. It's really great. That's the only optimistic thing I will say all day. The geopolitical context in which the Islamic State arises has to do, in large part, with the relationship between events in Iraq, and the end of the US presence as occupier in Iraq, and the subsequent events that took place in Syria in the kind of quasi-uprising that began, roughly, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and then quickly morphed into a much more complex, stalemated civil war. What I have just said is obvious to everybody. But let me be a little more specific in ways that may be a little bit less obvious. The historical origins of the organization that we're calling Islamic State now, or ISIS, or ISIL, is that it grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was called Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Now, the names that the Al Qaeda affiliates typically, historically used were connected, very self-consciously, to regions, geographical regions. They were not named primarily for states. In fact, there was a self-conscious effort in the naming process not to use the name of the state, but to use some geographical feature that was more connected in some way to some aspect of Islamic history. One striking thing about the hyphenation or complexity of ISIS-- the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, the Levant, which gives you the L, is that it self-consciously merged two different geographical locations. It merged Iraq with Syria. And in historical terms, those are, to a certain extent, distinct geographical areas. They were certainly distinct, for example, just to use a simple case, in distinct Ottoman sanjaks, distinct Ottoman provinces. The combination is itself a step. Now, that veers into ideology. But just to go back to the geopolitics for a moment, the success and then eventually the defeat of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was a product of the US invasion and occupation, followed by the Sunni uprising, followed by the US surge, which gambled that it would be possible to put down Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the region, primarily by building ties between local Sunnis and in theory, the Iraqi government. But in fact, the US government, trying to push the Iraqi government to make that deal. That was enough to defeat Al Qaeda. But it wasn't enough to eliminate the interest set in which it had come into existence. Now shift attention to the context now with Syria. US policy in the aftermath of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad was neither to try to do as it had done with Britain and France in Libya, to take out Assad. Nor was it to step aside and let Assad utterly destroy all resistance against him. Instead, the US policy, if it can be dignified with that name, has been to try to maintain some balance, such that the uprising would continue to exist and would not be able to succeed in toto. And similarly, that Bashar would not utterly fall. But neither would he be able to regain effective control. In that environment, a kind of-- vacuum is not quite the right word. But a vacuum-like state arose, in which large parts of Syria were not under the control of any sovereign entity. That was an ideal condition for this follow-on group, which is exactly as Debra described, and moves across the border from Iraq into Syria to begin to grab territory. And so the grabbing of territory, which I'm going to argue later on, if we get a chance to talk about this, turns out, in my view, to be the most distinctive feature of the Islamic State, is a product of this confluence of these geopolitical events. It's also the reason, just to close on this thought, that ISIL could rename itself the Islamic State. It didn't have to be so geographically specific, because suddenly, they had something that looked a lot like a state. And that was, for the most part, not true of any of the Al Qaeda affiliates, even though there were moments when they were aspiring to that in places-- in Yemen, for example. KRISTEN STILT: Great. We'll definitely talk about their state-like characteristics. But one more question, by way of background. What do they believe? And how do their beliefs relate to other movements we've seen, such as Al Qaeda or other Islamist movements of the past years, or even decades? DEBORAH AMOS: I think that they, unlike Al Qaeda, have been more bold in outlining a much larger goal. They do aim to create a state. And you can see what they believe in their statements. They issue a yearly report, like any corporation, where they're fairly transparent about what they've accomplished, where the money goes. It doesn't exactly say where the money comes from. But it does say where the money goes. They have set themselves up with regional governors. They're called princes. They are fairly international. Their leadership is composed of former Ba'athists, who work on their military strategy. They have an Egyptian who runs their oil policy. They are using Jordanian clerics and Saudi clerics to run their Sharia courts and to work on their ideology and how they propagate that ideology. They are expansionist. They intend to take over more territory than the territory they have. They are clearly anti-minorities. Anyone who is not a Muslim in the way that they define Muslims either has to be eliminated, as we saw with the Yazidis, or taxed, which is what they offer to the Christians in Mosul, who decided not to take the deal. Although, in Raqqa, they do. There are still Christians in Raqqa who actually pay tax to the Islamic State to be able to survive. So I think they've been very clear. You can read online what their ideology is. They have no trouble talking about it. KRISTEN STILT: Noah, give us a sense on the spectrum, where are they? NOAH FELDMAN: Yeah, I think everything that Deborah said is true. And I agree with it. But I think it's too soon to talk about a distinctive ideology, especially with respect to Al Qaeda, when you figure that less than a year ago, they were happy to affect a merger with the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front. So the ideological developments of the last year, I think, are interesting to watch. But it's, I think, much too soon to say definitively that we can identify the ideology. That said, I think it is certainly the case that they fit squarely into a particular brand of expansionist jihadi Salafism, which is very familiar to anybody who watches the region at this point, and familiar to anybody who goes on the internet and reads about it, either as a person interested in finding out more about it out of criticism or someone interested in finding out more about it because he or she would like to join. I don't think there's anything really remarkably distinctive here. Again, we're speaking about ideology, rather than practice on the ground. The idea that non-Muslim minorities may be tolerated, provided that they are not heretics-- and the Yazidis, in their view, are heretics and are therefore not to be tolerated. By virtue of their paying a tax, is just a standard piece of classical Islamic legal ideology. There's nothing shocking or unusual about that perspective. And if you asked other Salafi thinkers, they would probably agree with that in principle. So I don't think that-- the radicalism, I don't think, can be defined ideologically at this point. It would have to be defined in terms of actions on the ground. KRISTEN STILT: Would you say, though, on a spectrum, they are on the far end on the radical side? NOAH FELDMAN: Well, that, I think, is certainly the case. Ideologically, I think that's got to be true. But I also-- I don't want to de-emphasize too much the continuity of their ideology with views that would be held by Al Qaeda or by other jihadi Salafis. They're obviously in a radically different position from an organization like the International Muslim Brotherhood. This is for clarity. I think probably almost everybody in the room already knows this. But it's just important to put it on the record, because there is a tendency to say, oh, Islamic radicalism, as though it's all the same thing. So the International Muslim Brotherhood, with its particular branches, believes formally and officially, through the opinions of its leadership and also the actions of its members, in democracy. It is committed, at least in principle, to the total compatibility of Islam and democracy. And the Islamic State is totally different from that. It clearly rejects democracy and wants a form of government that is, in its view, much more purely Islamic and that, therefore, is structured around a particular person who has now, in fact, declared himself to be caliph. And maybe that's the other point in which ideological radicalism is to be mentioned. Many, many very seriously committed traditional Muslims, including many who would describe themselves as Salafis, which is a large number of Muslims. In the West, we tend to use the word Salafi as though it meant a radical. That's not the case at all. Would believe that in principle there could be a caliphate, but would not believe that either the present purported caliph or those around him are even vaguely qualified for that position. So in Saudi Arabia, for example, the ulama, the scholars, would clearly reject any claim that this person counts as the caliph. So that is, I guess, a form of radicalism. And I guess, to be totally fair, although Al Qaeda talked about the possibility of a caliphate, nobody actually-- I think to my knowledge, Bin Laden never formally declared himself to be the caliph nor did they ever acknowledge any particular person as the caliph. So that actually is an ideological step that goes further. DEBORAH AMOS: Let me just make one more point about them. I think in some ways their ideology is evolving as we watch them. Yes, they did cooperate with Nusra when they first arrived. But it was a cooperation of convenience. And as they grew, they understood that they were Al Qaeda 2.0. And they could shed their associations with Nusra. And now they're, in some places, at war with Nusra. And it's not necessarily ideological. But it is really about power. And so I do think, in some ways, you can't say that they have a fixed ideology, because I don't even think they understand all the parameters. They are, in some ways, making it up as they go along. NOAH FELDMAN: And the caliphate-- I mean, now that we're talking about this, I realize it's probably a bigger deal than I made it out to be, initially. It's connected to the sovereignty. You can't really claim to have a caliphate unless you have sovereign control over some territory and the aspiration to control all of it. I mean, to be the caliph is not to just be the ruler of a particular location. To be the legitimate caliph is to be the legitimate ruler of all Muslims. That's the aspirational claim that it entails. So you definitely can't just be the Islamic State in this place, and this place, and this place, if you're going to be the caliph. That's why you have to be the Islamic State, full stop. KRISTEN STILT: Which is why they shortened their name, more recently, to the Islamic State, period, with that claim. Great. OK, that's really helpful by way of background. So we know that they've taken over a lot of territory quite quickly, even though they have this substantial history that-- it's great that we brought that out. So how are they doing it? What's their strategy? What's their tactic? How do they move into towns? How do they recruit members? How do they conquer territory? How much resistance do they face? How are they doing it, strategically? DEBORAH AMOS: I can tell you how they do it in Syria, because I watched it happen. And in some ways, they were the better alternative in some towns. The Free Syrian Army, that umbrella term that we use that really describes all kinds of different brigades who are all across the ideological spectrum, were bad governance. They were brigands. They raped. They stole stuff, when they were no longer busy fighting the regime. And that happened in a lot of towns across Syria. And what ISIS offered was order. And people were craving order in Syria. And the second thing that ISIS offered was a respite from the bombing. The regime didn't bomb ISIS-held territory. They didn't bomb Raqqa. They did occasionally, but not with any persistence. And so if you were a Syrian and you'd been through two years of complete chaos in Northern Syria, ISIS looked pretty good. We saw the same thing happen in Mosul. Although, I was in Mosul maybe five days after ISIS swept through town. And I think that it was pretty common opinion, certainly among the Kurds and even the people in Mosul that we spoke to, they never expected the Iraqi army to collapse. That wasn't the point. They had come to Mosul to liberate a prison, which is one of the things that they had done before in Iraq. So you get another 500, 600 fighters if you do it. I think the second reason that they came to Iraq on June 10th was because they were coming for oil fields. And we saw them do that almost immediately. Once they left Mosul, they went to Baiji, to the refinery. They went to four oil fields in Iraq. So they were coming for money. Iraq, for them, was their bank. They had been involved in shakedown operations in Mosul for the past three or four years, reaping millions of dollars by extortion and kidnapping plots in Mosul. However, once they got there, they found a population that, by and large, welcomed them into Mosul. The Iraqi Army had so enraged the population of Mosul that they were-- in those first couple of weeks, they were happy that ISIS was there. They really were. And they would say it to us. The Christians weren't so happy. Although, they left the Christians alone in the beginning. But by and large, the Iraqi Army had behaved so badly in Mosul that they were welcomed when they first arrived. So that is how they do it. They find places where there is chaos. People don't know how to survive. They have no way to make a living. And ISIS brings order. NOAH FELDMAN: And again, just to emphasize the geopolitical side of that same account, they're exploiting, basically, security vacuums. And you would have thought there was no security vacuum actually within sovereign Iraq. But that, it turned out, was not the case. Because the Shia-dominated government has never really followed through on its promise to share power in any meaningful way with local Sunnis, the consequence is that the local population felt no buy-in, really, in the government institutions, and certainly not in the army. In fact, they felt, in some sense, they were still under occupation by the army. And so it was a good alternative. Similarly, when they've taken on Kurdish towns and villages, for the most part, they've managed to pick relatively poorly defended ones. And among other things, they've shown that the stereotypical view advocated, to a large extent, by the Kurdish government, that Peshmerga fighters, Kurdish fighters, are somehow unbeatable was just not the case. If not well armed, and not well trained, and not in large numbers, they turned out to be very much like all other human beings and were not able to mount a successful defense. And of course, this is very much true within Syria. In places where they've advanced have mostly been places where the regime was not. Aleppo was a great example. So ISIS has been on the outskirts of Aleppo. But it's not like inside Aleppo is the Syrian regime. No, the Syrian regime's on the other side of Aleppo. In fact, it's the Free Syrian Army-- which, as Deborah said, is probably neither free, nor Syrian, nor an army-- that's in the town. So again, it's a relatively soft target. So that's been good strategy on their part. And they've been able to do the thing that, ironically, the counterinsurgency manuals tell any actor to do, which is to form an inkblot. Do you all know this metaphor? You put down the ink on one spot. You protect that spot. And then you gradually spread out. And you establish order. So this is often described as a lesson for the counter-insurgent. But of course, it's also exactly what the insurgent force should do. Anybody who wants to create a functioning form of sovereignty should engage in this. And that's exactly what they're at least trying to do. KRISTEN STILT: But obviously, they do encounter some resistance, and they have to keep bringing new recruits into their armies. Where do these recruits come from? Are they people they've recruited from local areas? We hear reports of people coming from England, Tunisia. Where is the staffing coming from? DEBORAH AMOS: After they took Mosul, their numbers, according to the CIA, jumped to somewhere close to 30,000. I think there's two ways that they do that. They are very good in social media, reaching out to a population of somehow angry young Muslims who see that their future is with the Islamic State. And those numbers aren't large, but still, people are coming. And they come through Turkey. And they found smuggling routes to do so. In Mosul, we heard stories that ISIS would come house to house and ask for a son. And if the answer was no, then they said, well, then we'll take the daughter. And so a lot of families felt that it was wiser to give a son. In some towns, that wasn't a hard bargain to strike. In Tikrit, ISIS was able to take over Tikrit within 24 hours, because most of the Sunni tribes in Tikrit joined the uprising. And that has been true all the way through Anbar, that there is a population who is angry, who feels that there is no possibility to have a dialogue with the government in Baghdad. And if you don't think that there is a possibility for dialogue, which has been shown again and again in Iraq-- if you remember, it was only about two years ago that there was a rather large Arab Spring-like demonstration in Anbar that the Maliki government eventually shut down. And that was the last time, I think, that Sunnis in Anbar felt that there was a dialogue possible with the Baghdad government. And so ISIS offered a way to feel powerful, to feel that you could talk to the Baghdad government in a different way. And so you have two kinds of recruits-- those families who feel that they are obliged to give their sons and those families who support ISIS because it makes them feel empowered. NOAH FELDMAN: Yeah, nothing succeeds like success. And it's a three-part strategy. There are external recruits, who are ideological recruits for the most part. They're not very useful right when they arrive. I spent a lot of time in Tunisia over the last couple of years, and Tunisian teenagers are much like teenagers everywhere else in the world. If suddenly you had 2,000 Tunisian teenagers-- and I'm not saying there are 2,000 Tunisians, although that number is regularly repeated. I have no evidence to support it, but it might be true. But if we had 2,000 Tunisian teenagers outside, it would be like having 2,000 Cambridge teenagers outside-- very good for some purposes, not so useful if you wanted to fight an organized battle. You have to train people. And so useful as cannon fodder, potentially. DEBORAH AMOS: Suicide bombers. NOAH FELDMAN: Suicide bombers, but not yet hardened forces. And then the two strategies that Deborah was describing, internally. Obviously, the far superior one is people who want to fight on your side, because they think you're likely to win, or because they think the going is good. Much less good to have people who are coerced into fighting for you. But you'll take them, if they're likely to be loyal. So those are all reasonable strategies to build up manpower and do it quickly. DEBORAH AMOS: And there's one other simple recruiting tool. And that's money. They are a wealthy organization. And across Syria, we hear this report over and over, and the figure is always the same-- $600 a month on time every month. And three years of war, that really means something. When you are living in Deir ez-Zor, that is a fortune. Now, that's just the foot soldiers. So you move up in the bureaucratic chain, and you're making more. You get free housing. It happens to belong to somebody else, but never mind. You have the ability to get a free wife. In Iraq, it's expensive to get married. It is in Syria, too. A lot of people can't do it, because they can't afford it. And now, you have everything at your fingertips. And you are relatively safe. And you live in a place that works. What's not to like? Your wife has to wear a niqab, a small price to pay. If you stay on their side of the law, life is not that bad. KRISTEN STILT: Deborah, you've interviewed defectors. So it doesn't always work out. What happens when people want out? DEBORAH AMOS: Those are the most dangerous for ISIS. We did interview a 26-year-old defector who left, because in some ways, the brutality, for him-- and he'd seen plenty. But the brutality reached a level that he couldn't tolerate, because it was against his own tribe. And that seemed to have clicked him back into some kind of reality. But he explained to us that defectors are always beheaded. They are hunted, including in Southern Turkey. There are the version of ISIS [? Mahabharat, ?] who tries to find the defectors and drag them back, because one, they know too much. But two, ideologically, they are worse than anybody else. It's because they were real Muslims, and then they turned. And so they are the [INAUDIBLE] of the [INAUDIBLE]. They are the worst of the worst, rejectors of ISIS ideology. So if you actually get to cross the border, then even then, you are not safe. And this kid was really interesting, because-- I didn't notice it at first, but I realized that he was clean-shaven and he had short hair that was gelled. And I said, why no beard? And he said, as soon as you cross the border into Turkey, you have to shave it off, because the Turks are looking for beards. In my part of the world, beards are politics. And the length of the beard is politics. So this is ISIS. This is Brotherhood. And to be a little shorter, [? Rami-sized, ?] is moderate Syrian rebel. [LAUGHS] NOAH FELDMAN: And that's not [? Rami, ?] just to be clear. DEBORAH AMOS: Yes, just to be clear, just to give an example. And I was saying earlier that you see rebels in Syria have face hair according to their politics. And that changes. So when the money is coming in for the more radical brigades, longer beards prevail. And when money is coming in for more moderate brigades, then there is a celebration of shaving all over Syria. I saw that just as I was leaving. KRISTEN STILT: Before we leave the topic of strategy and tactics, I think-- and Deborah, you raised it. We have to talk about beheadings, because that has been one of the ways in which ISIS has captured world attention. What kind of a strategy is that? Is it foreigners, journalists? Is it defectors? To whom is this strategy deployed? What does it do? NOAH FELDMAN: Well, it's operating on a lot of different levels. And there may be a central beheading strategy committee. But it's not obvious that there is. So let's talk about its different social meanings in different contexts. To start with the West, not because it's the most important, but because it's been very significant. Here, it has a dual effect. On the one hand, it signals to anybody who might be a potential recruit that this is a serious organization that isn't afraid of anybody. It signals tremendous confidence to do something that-- and the reason it signals this, is that the effect that it has on a more general Western audience is shocking. And it galvanizes opposition. I think there's no question that from the standpoint of ordinary military strategy, if you had dropped a neutral military strategic adviser, someone who makes his living going around doing this-- it's usually his-- and had him have a conversation with Caliph Ibrahim, and said, should you, right around this time, start cutting off the heads of American journalists, he would have said, that's the worst thing you could possibly do, because it's going to get the United States to start bombing you, which will be strategically bad for you. And they didn't care. And the fact that they didn't care about those inevitable consequences is itself an extremely powerful signal that they are acting as though they were a sovereign state, that they're acting in ways where they say, you want to stop us? OK, here we are. Come right ahead and stop us. So they were not being strategic in the sense of trying to get the Western countries not to be shocked by them. They were, in fact, willing to pay the cost, in strategic terms, of upsetting and alienating a Western public, in order to get the benefits of communicating their degree of confidence. So I think that's one part of the strategy. KRISTEN STILT: Why did it start at that time, do you think? Why the summer? DEBORAH AMOS: It didn't start this summer. NOAH FELDMAN: It's been going on all along. But it may not have been of Western journalists. KRISTEN STILT: Well, that's what I mean. Why did that start? NOAH FELDMAN: I think that was probably-- it's very complicated calculus. But presumably, it precisely had to do with the moment when the West was probably going to do something interventive anyway. I mean, after the fall of Mosul, I would say that it was-- I held the view and said this to people, or whoever cared to listen, that it was inevitable that the United States would begin a bombing campaign. I thought that, because I just didn't think that any sitting president, including Barack Obama, could tolerate the existence of a sort of quasi-sovereign entity in Iraq and do nothing. He had to be seen to be taking action. I suspect that ISIS knew the same. I suspect that was their calculus as well. So once you're going to be attacked anyway, you might as well show that you're not afraid of being attacked. And you might as well try to send a message. And maybe you'll even show that you mean business, and maybe you'll deter the attacks. They may have thought, best case scenario, it would actually have some deterrent effect, convincing people that it's-- but my guess is that it was primarily about knowing they would be attacked anyway and producing a certain degree of confidence in the aftermath. I know I haven't spoken at all about the local effects of the beheadings. Maybe Deborah wants to talk about that. DEBORAH AMOS: Well, two things I will say is, you know, Saudi Arabia also uses beheadings. And we are not horrified by that. It is just that is what they do. And so-- NOAH FELDMAN: We might be horrified, but it doesn't affect our policy. DEBORAH AMOS: It doesn't affect our policy. Human rights groups shout about it, but it goes on. Two, they've been beheading for quite some time. And we seem to not notice that they have beheaded Lebanese soldiers, Iraqi journalists. I agree with Noah that there is a-- a British writer called it "horrorism"-- that they like to engage in. And the one I thought was most interesting was the Alan Henning beheading. Alan Henning had enormous support in Britain from Muslims across the country. He even had a safe passage letter that he had with him when he was taken from people in London who were closely affiliated somehow to Al Qaeda. Still, he went. Those were his guys. Those were his protectors. And when it was clear he was next up, there was just a lot of work being done in Britain to try to talk them out of it. What I thought was very interesting, they killed him on a Muslim holiday, Eid. And I think that the message was, too bad. I don't care what you people in Britain think. We are not of you. We are a completely different organization. And we will show you what we will do. Now, it's going to be interesting to see what they do with the next guy up, who has converted to Islam. He now has support from a Nusra commander who said, this guy worked on me. I thought he was jihadi. I had no idea he was an American. They are about due for another one. It's pretty much been on schedule. However, they're running out. They don't have very many more, which is why everybody's a little worried in Southern Turkey that there's going to be another snatch. KRISTEN STILT: Running out of hostages. DEBORAH AMOS: Yeah, they are running-- they are. NOAH FELDMAN: Western. DEBORAH AMOS: Western hostages, yeah. Journalist hostages, because the Europeans buy theirs out. And the next one after Kassig is a woman. That also gives them a problem. I don't know if they would go that far. I don't. What do you think? NOAH FELDMAN: I mean, we'll see. I don't think it would be an impediment to them, ultimately. DEBORAH AMOS: To kill a woman? Maybe not. KRISTEN STILT: So let's talk a little more about life under ISIS. What is it like in these towns? Deborah, you've already hinted a little bit at it. But they're running towns. They're providing food, water, social services, education, health care. What are they doing? How are they doing it? How are they paying for it? Give us some texture of what it's like in these towns. DEBORAH AMOS: I'll start with the paying part, which is what we know the most about. They are excellent smugglers of oil. They've tapped in to a black market that has been around since Saddam Hussein and the Oil-for-Food Program, which was a giant smuggling organization out of Iraq. And even to this day, the Iraqi government will tell you that they lose $6 million a day in smuggled oil from somebody-- Kurds, Arab tribes, Northerners. And so ISIS was able to tap in to this huge smuggling network at the same time that they took over the oil fields, paltry as they are, in Eastern Syria. So they've got oil. They deal in antiquities, and hostage-taking, and extortion. So that's how they pay for what they're doing. They're also very strategic in the towns that they go to. One of the reasons that Raqqa was a focus for them is-- KRISTEN STILT: Is everyone following the map? Can you see it from here? DEBORAH AMOS: --is Raqqa had one of the last and biggest grain silos in Syria. And they needed that, because they do promise to provide services. And they did it in Mosul. And they did it in Raqqa. Within days of coming into Mosul, they were bringing cooking gas around to families. They'd lower the prices on the produce in the markets. They did the same thing in Raqqa. They take over the bakeries. They take over the food distribution, the bread distribution. We spent a couple of days in Urfa, which is on the Turkish side, talking to people who were coming out of Raqqa, to find out what life was like. The bureaucracy in Raqqa is essentially the one that was there when the Assad regime was in charge. There's a lot of people who stayed in their jobs. Some of them were even being paid by the regime as late as this summer. You had to go to Deir ez-Zor to pick up the check or to pick up the cash. And over time, I was told, ISIS didn't really like that. So they shut that down, and they were picking up those salaries. So you had an existing bureaucracy already in Raqqa. But in some ways, these guys are like free-marketeers. They're kind of Republican-ish in the way that they run their economies. You can rent a space in the market, and you are free to sell whatever you want. You get in a little trouble when it's clothing, especially when it's women's clothing and you're not allowed to have it in the windows. But they do you know how to run a bureaucracy. So the people that they have attracted have obviously worked in government before. What I thought was interesting is after Caliph Baghdadi announced his new position, two days later, he issued another proclamation, which was, engineers, doctors, architects, come now, we need you. And they have been asking for technical people to come to the caliphate. And they've been getting answered. There are people from Saudi coming. There are people from Jordan coming. People who knew how to run hospitals, who knew how to run offices have been arriving to essentially help them run their state. NOAH FELDMAN: I just want to-- I haven't been on the ground, and Deborah has. So this is not intended in any way as a disagreement. I just want to sound a note of caution about how bureaucratic, actually, they are thus far. They haven't engaged in de-Ba'athification. So that was smart of them. Using your local people is the right way-- the people who are already in power-- is the right way to organize something. And some of the sources of income are, more or less, sustainable-- tax from what little economy there is on the ground. And there is some taxation. Some are less sustainable, like the big theft from Mosul, which was who knows how much money-- somewhere between $350 million and $600 million worth of usable currency. That may not run out for a very long time. But that will run out, eventually. That's not ultimately sustainable. And they're not operating a market economy, insofar as that a market economy extends beyond the territory that they control. That said, neither are the governments around them drawing a strict cordon sanitaire around them, such that goods can't get in. So to some extent, there is some trade going in and out. So that's a possible ongoing source of function. One example that was just in the news recently, there was a report-- I don't know whether it was properly confirmed-- that Islamic State forces entered a power plant near the Mosul dam and ordered the dam workers who had not been operating the dam-- because they didn't have the right kind of fuel-- to use the wrong kind of fuel just to get the thing up and running to restore power and water to Mosul. Now, that's, on the one hand, clever, and smart, and a good thing to have done. On the other hand, it suggests that, up to that moment, there was neither power nor water in Mosul. So that was also true under long periods of American occupation. So I'm not saying that's as if to say that it's such a failing to not have produced that. I just want to say that it remains to be seen-- this is very new for them. It remains to be seen just how effectively they'll be able to govern it in a longer term sort of way in these places. We just don't know yet. DEBORAH AMOS: I think you're right. I think we don't know. But what's interesting about them is it is part of their strategy to deliver services. And they do it almost as soon as they arrive. And so the fact that they thought they needed to go to Mosul-- because the problem for them in Mosul is Baghdad controls just about everything, both water and electricity. And Baghdad shut them off. So they were a bit stuck. But you can buy fuel for your generators. It's not that there's no power in Mosul. There is. And if you bring the prices down of fuel, then most people tell me they have power for 12 hours a day. NOAH FELDMAN: Which is pretty good. DEBORAH AMOS: Which is pretty good. KRISTEN STILT: Well, their economic base has been referred to as a Ponzi scheme of looting. I don't know if that's what you were alluding to, Noah, that there's a limit to how much you can-- NOAH FELDMAN: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have called it a Ponzi scheme, because it's not a Ponzi scheme. It's just outright theft. There's no faking in the process. But you can keep on expanding. As long as you expand, there'll be more loot to have. KRISTEN STILT: Anything else you want add, Deborah, from your interviews about what it's like to live in these areas? The legal system. How is criminal justice dispensed? Education? DEBORAH AMOS: I think the most interesting thing is over time, how people adjust to the brutalities. And that is probably worrying. I had a young activist who had to leave, because she was on a list. And she was being hunted by ISIS. It was easier for her to survive for a while, because when you're in niqab, it's harder to see who you are. But she said they were trying to mount campaigns in Raqqa to say to people, beheadings-- it's not cool what's happening here. And she said there were times on the central square where there would just be heads, maybe 15, 17 heads. After ISIS took over one of the military bases in Raqqa, they beheaded many of the Syrian regime forces. And they brought those heads to the central square as a demonstration project and just set them out. And she said people would come and have lunch on the square. They'd bring their kids on the square. And she said that it is a way to desensitize people to this kind of violence. Between that and this obsession that ISIS has with ideological camps for teenagers-- I think both of those things tell us that it is going to be very hard to unravel a generation that's lived under ISIS, even if it's just for a couple of years. They are really seeping into people's heads in the places where they control. NOAH FELDMAN: I'm sure that that's true. I guess I would just say, under Saddam's regime, probably a quarter of a million Iraqis were killed. Under the decade of de facto US occupation, probably roughly the same number of Iraqis died, maybe a little bit more, depending on how you measure. Beheading is a terrible, terrible thing. And it's a terrible form of death. And it's shocking. But it's still death. And we're talking about places where the amount of damage that has been done has been so great that I think-- I wouldn't blame-- I think it would be too quick to blame the Islamic State for desensitizing people. DEBORAH AMOS: Sure. I can see-- NOAH FELDMAN: A lot of things have happened in which a lot of other actors, including the United States, have been indirectly complicit or in some cases, directly complicit. DEBORAH AMOS: Sure. KRISTEN STILT: Before we move on to who's fighting ISIS and how that strategy is working, Deborah, you had mentioned to me something earlier about the polio eradication campaign that I thought was quite interesting. Do you want to say something about that? DEBORAH AMOS: Yeah, I do. Look, when you're on the ground, it all looks a little greyer than the black and white when I come back here. And one of the UN officials in Gaziantep explained to me that they are beginning to open channels with what he called "the pragmatic wing" of ISIS. And I think that there are pragmatists within ISIS who probably had a sip of Johnnie Walker somewhere in their past and for convenience's sake, now belongs to this group and are running some of these provinces. And the UN's explanation is, we talked to the Taliban, so why not? There are practical reasons to do so. For example, the relatively successful polio eradication campaign in Northern Syria, which was quietly carried out-- if you remember, we don't really hear much about polio after there were reports of cases in Deir ez-Zor. And the reason for that is that ISIS cooperated with a rather large effort. The drugs were brought in by the WHO, delivered to the Turkish government, who delivered them to Syrian NGOs on the border. And they have carried out more than one eradication campaign. ISIS has children. And they wanted this campaign to succeed. And they made it happen. They even invited reporters, with some sort of protection clause, to come and report on this campaign, because they were very interested in it being a success. Nobody really talks about that, because you can't actually get any official to admit that that's how it happened. But it had to happen that way, because in the places where these volunteers-- and there were 7,000 of them that were trained on the Turkish side of the border, all of them Syrians, to go in. They had to have the permission of ISIS to be able to carry out those campaigns in the places that they did. NOAH FELDMAN: Acting like a sovereign state. KRISTEN STILT: Yes. Right. Well, that goes back to your territory grabbing, Noah. Do you want to jump in on that? Is this a segue for that? NOAH FELDMAN: I guess I would just say that the most distinctive thing about ISIS thus far-- about the Islamic State thus far is how successful it's so far been in holding territory. The United States has been bombing now for more than 50 days. Right? There have not been very many bombing sorties measured by, say, the campaign against the Taliban, in which I think I read that something like 17,500 individual strikes occurred in the six weeks. I think there have been about 375, roughly, targets struck by the US in the last 50 days. So the scale is very different. But the fact remains that, notwithstanding the scale, if you look up at the map, there hasn't really been very substantial change. This is not an overstatement. There hasn't been very substantial change on that map since the president went on television and announced that he was going to, quote, "substantially degrade the capacities of the Islamic State." So what does that tell you? Well, it tells you that the strategy of holding territory has been fairly effective thus far. It makes it very difficult to use bombing against you. If you don't have a lot of big military machinery, then it's difficult to bomb you. If you're mostly made up of soldiers who can just go and live among civilians, you can make it hard to find you. The alternatives, from the US standpoint, if it wants to reverse this map or change this map, really, are probably, realistically, A, to step up the quantity of the bombing very substantially; B, to take steps to motivate on-the-ground Iraqi forces other than Iranian-guided, Shia-dominated militias. And to do that probably would require some commitment of US ground forces, probably special forces in advisory capacities. Now, if that sounds familiar, it should. And it's rather obvious why this is a big issue for the Obama administration, which they're really internally struggling with. On the one hand, if they're seen not to have had any impact-- and the administration's year and a half in office continues. And at the end of that period-- my math is off there. It's longer than that. It's two and a half years. But if that continues and no substantial change occurs, it'll be very costly to the administration, to the Democratic Party, and to the president's legacy. So that is reason to think he will act. On the other hand, there's the understandable deep opposition, domestically, to the putting in of any ground forces. So this is a real puzzle. If I had to bet, I would bet that we would see a significant stepping up of air attacks, coupled with this limited, very limited commitment of a very small number of special forces to see if that makes a difference, experimentally. It may. But my guess is it probably wouldn't make a very significant difference, in which case there's going to be a real crisis point, I would say, in the policy-making process. DEBORAH AMOS: I think we're on our way to that. Because stepping up the bombing steps up the number of civilian casualties. There's almost no way around that. Two, the contradictions in the policy is becoming clearer almost every day. For the first time, CENTCOM announced-- I think it was today-- that they will not tell us who's flying. In the beginning-- the first day, it was the Saudis. It was the UAE. I take that as trouble. And I think because different actors want different things. Certainly, the Saudis, the UAE want clarity on where we're going with Syria. Already, we see that the bombing in Kobani, which has been the focus so far, has allowed the Assad regime to step up its bombing campaigns against the very rebels that the CIA has vetted. 200 sorties in the last 48 hours, where it's usually 30 to 40. People on the ground notice this. They notice that the Kurds are the focus. They notice that those battalions who have been vetted are under attack. Saudis say to me, we're watching Syrian television, and Bashar is saying he's part of this coalition? Yesterday, Damascus announced that they were helping the Kurds of Kobani. Of course, they're not. But they know where to put the knife in and turn it to make all those contradictions of American policy more obvious than they have been. Although, I think for the actors, they are pretty obvious. And I think people are beginning to respond. KRISTEN STILT: Yeah. So let's pull this apart. The anti-ISIS community is large and heterogeneous, with lots of diverse interests. And you've already started to hint at that. You want to go further with that, Noah? NOAH FELDMAN: Well, I mean, yeah. But that's a very polite way of putting it, Kristen. The most significant anti-ISIS community consists of the government of Iraq, which is still Shia-dominated, even after the US pushed a new prime minister. We still don't have a substantial Sunni buy-in to that government. It's Bashar al-Assad. And it's necessarily Iran, which is the most significant backer both of the Iraqi government and of Bashar al-Assad. The only really reliable Levantine resource they've had on their hands is Hezbollah, which is a political party and militia that operates, more or less, as its own quasi-state within Lebanon, when it doesn't co-opt the Lebanese state. Oh, and there's also the United States. We're on the same side. Oh, and there's also Al Qaeda, at least Jabhat al-Nusra. But they're also on the same side, because they're in a fight. So yeah, that's a diverse set of interests, I suppose. KRISTEN STILT: Where do you want to put Saudi, Qatar, Turkey? NOAH FELDMAN: So right. So the Gulf, I left out. How could I have left out the oil-rich Gulf Emirates and the Saudis, who are very worried that further success by the Islamic State would be de-legitimate them and would like to do something about it. Though they would not like to do so much about it that it generated domestic anger against them. And that's probably the real reason they don't want to be mentioned in the same sentence as any bombing attacks anymore. And of course, there's also Turkey, which is worried primarily about destabilization, but secondarily about the fact that Iraqi Kurdistan has exploited the rise of the Islamic State very brilliantly. And in the process, took over Kirkuk, which had been the desideratum of Iraqi Kurdish foreign policy for the previous decade. And they were successful in accomplishing it. And it's very clear that no one's going to do anything about it. Their presence there is now permanent. And that, of course, worries Turkey, because they're worried about Kurdish rise. So it's pretty much everybody, right? It sounds like everybody's against them. And there's an important lesson here. The fact that everybody is against the Islamic State suggests that in the longer term, as a geopolitical matter, the Islamic State won't be there. I'm not saying that's going to happen in six months, or a year, or even two years. But the odds, to my mind, that something like the Islamic State will still exist two and a half or three years from now seem extraordinarily low. There are just too many strong interests allied around them, and there aren't enough domestic interests favoring them. So then you may say, well, why hasn't it happened already? And the answer there is that all of these groups that I mentioned, all of their interests are fairly mild. They have a mild desire for this regime not to exist, or this entity not to exist. They have a mild desire for them not to grow, a mild desire for them not to de-legitimate. Maybe the Iraqi government is the one exception, and the fall of Baghdad is maybe the greatest threat to them. And make no mistake about it, this slow progress of ISIS remains in the direction of Baghdad. That's the general direction where they're headed here. But short of the fall of Baghdad, I think these other countries can tolerate it. And they're sort of feeling it out and trying to figure out how they're going to operate. So if that sounds incredibly cynical, what I just said, it was intended to be incredibly cynical, because I'm trying to describe to you the actual foreign policies of actual countries. And those are made in an atmosphere of the utmost cynicism. It's just the way the world actually is. Maybe it's a terrible thing that the world is like that. But that is the way the world, in fact, is. So that's my take on that. And the big winner when ISIS is gone-- just to be really clear here-- will certainly be Iran. Because at least for the moment, the position of the United States is that we would like-- it's not the official position of the United States. But the president-- let's see how he put it. He said he acknowledged the inevitable fact that air strikes on ISIS would be helpful to Bashar al-Assad, which in Washington-speak is almost like saying, OK, we're ready to take Bashar back. Better him-- better increased Iranian dominance in the region, better fuller, greater power for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Anything's better than more of this. KRISTEN STILT: Well, can we be even further cynical and think about shifting alliances, shifting allegiances, shifting ideology of ISIS that ends up collaborating with any of the anti-ISIS elements right now that you've just spoken about? DEBORAH AMOS: I have a-- KRISTEN STILT: I don't see that. NOAH FELDMAN: Go ahead. I have a view about it. But go ahead. DEBORAH AMOS: I have a friend who will soon come to this town, Nadim Shehadi. And he explains the rise of ISIS by using a Turkish historical moment. He said, under the Ottomans, you couldn't build a new church, but you couldn't destroy an old one. And so there is a split in the Christian community. And so what they decided to do was build a barn. And inside the barn, they build a church. And one day they burn down the barn, and there's the church. And they get to keep it. And he said, that kind of explains ISIS in Iraq. ISIS is the barn, and the church is ex-Baathist officers, Sunni tribes, the Naqshbandis, all these groups who want a new church. They want a split. They want autonomy. They want to be on their own. They want a reasonable way to take the oil funds. They want what the Kurds have. But they couldn't ask for it under those names. So ISIS is their way of speaking. And one day they'll burn down the barn, and they will be the heroes in Iraq. The problem with looking at it this way is as time goes on, the barn and the church are merging, in some ways. That the guys in the church don't see how they get there yet. And they're not willing to burn down the barn. And it's unclear to me when that will happen. NOAH FELDMAN: It's a brilliant metaphor. I see what the argument is. It's closely related to the argument that people made during the Sunni uprising against the Baghdad government and against the US occupation. So the argument was something like this. It's a real domestic uprising of disenfranchised Sunnis who want their fair shake in Iraq and aren't getting it. And Al Qaeda is just along for the ride and is affiliated with them. And people said at the time, too, quite correctly-- but wait a minute, they're merging. And in fact, that was the core of the US strategy. The core of the US strategy was not just to fight against the insurgents, but to buy them off by promising them that they would have a share in the new Iraq. And it worked. So this is sort of consistent with the theory. They burned away Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and left behind the Sunni tribes who said they were entering into a deal, did enter a deal with the Iraqi government. And the United States then withdrew. Obama became president of the United States-- withdrew. And then what happened? Then the Shia government reneged on the deal. In some way, that's the opening scene of this movie. The opening scene is that that deal is reneged upon. Now, it's totally credible to say that this is just a re-manifestation of the same thing, that what Sunni sympathy there is for the Islamic State, especially within Iraq, is the same people trying to replay the tape, and this time, do it a little bit better, and get a more firm promise. It's conceivable. They would then, at that point, instead of being opposed by the Saudis and the Gulf states, would be supported by the Saudis and the Gulf states to counterbalance the influence of Iran through the Shia regime in Baghdad. So it's a brilliant theory. And it has some basis in historical reality. And I think there's something to it. I don't think it's right, however. I think that basically, in this instance, the bus-- I'm going to switch from your barn to a different metaphor. But the people who are driving the bus are actually the Islamic State activists. And there certainly are some Sunnis living in Anbar who are thinking, hey, maybe we can use them the way we used the last insurgency and just get a better deal this time. I'm sure there are people who are rationally thinking that way. DEBORAH AMOS: There are. NOAH FELDMAN: Those are probably the pragmatists who people are talking to. But it's not at all clear that they have the capacity, actually, to step up and take those actions here. And the declaration of a caliphate, and the sovereign-like behavior, and the trans-border, quasi-sovereign governance structures will all make it very difficult for them to pull that off this time. So that's the optimistic story. The story of the barn and the church is the optimistic story. And it would offer a plausible story of how this could all end in a good way, "good way." But it's entirely possible, and in my view, probable, that it won't be that simple. DEBORAH AMOS: And ISIS knows very well about the barn and the church. NOAH FELDMAN: Because they've seen the movie, too. DEBORAH AMOS: Because they've been in the movie. They were just younger. And they were all in Camp Cropper and learned all those lessons. It gets harder when you take the same analogy into Syria. There's only a barn. And it's not clear who gets to build the church. And that's why everybody is hesitating, because everybody in the coalition wants to know who builds the church. Are you going to let Bashar do it? And if you are, we're out. And that question, I don't think, has been answered in Washington yet, about who gets to build it. Because you can see them hesitating on training the rebels. They've essentially given up on their program that's been going on for the last two years, where the CIA vetted something like 2,000 rebels. That whole program seems to be in disarray right now, as we're waiting for the Pentagon. When I was there, everybody thought, they're coming. We're all going to switch over. It's going to be guys with shorter hair, but it's going to be the same idea. And we already know how to do this. We're getting our TOW missiles. And this is kind of working for us. But it looks like the progress towards that strategy has been delayed somehow. NOAH FELDMAN: I completely agree with you that if right now, we just traded out half the people in this room with Washington policymakers and got those people to have a debate about what our policy should be with respect to who gets to build whatever the future of Syria's going to look like, I agree they wouldn't be able to reach consensus, as a subjective, descriptive matter right now. Nevertheless, it's my view that-- this is just a probabilistic judgment. Because as I just said, the people themselves don't hold this view. I think the decision's already structurally been made for them. I think the United States has to opt for Bashar, as a descriptive matter. I'm not embracing this as a normative matter. I think it has to happen, because there's no way that the US government can tolerate the alternatives who will be there. We know we can tolerate Bashar. The United States knows it can tolerate Bashar, because it has tolerated him. And it tolerated his father before him. In the same way, the United States knows that it can tolerate Iran with respect to Iraq. In the early days of the US occupation, the idea was that there would not be an Iraqi-dominated Iraq. That wore off in about six or eight months. And then it became a plank of US foreign policy, the acceptance of the reality. So that is something the United States can accept. It cannot accept, for complex, political, ideological reasons, and also for pragmatic reasons-- it can't accept the long-range capacities of a state like the Islamic State to function, not in Iraq, not in Syria. So that means, in my mind, that de facto, the United States has already decided for Bashar, though we don't know we've done it. KRISTEN STILT: And there's no third alternative in Syria. DEBORAH AMOS: Which means we will have instability for the next 20 years. NOAH FELDMAN: That depends. It depends on how violently the United States responds to this and whether the United States, in effect, destroys not just the Islamic State but other rebel groups, or turns off the plug and allows Bashar to do it. KRISTEN STILT: To take over. All right. We have to take some questions. DEBORAH AMOS: That's cynical. NOAH FELDMAN: Questions. KRISTEN STILT: We have to take some questions. Do we have a plan? Or shall I just-- let's just start-- we'll just go back and forth. Let's start over here. And can you use the microphone on your seat, please? AUDIENCE: Thank you, guys, for presenting. Our question is regarding the Free and [INAUDIBLE] Coalition. You guys mentioned that [INAUDIBLE] the Free Syrian Army [INAUDIBLE] ISIS. And my question's regarding that. Essentially, what would it take to empower them, to legitimize them? What would be the turning point for a Syrian army? AUDIENCE: Please repeat the question. NOAH FELDMAN: The question was, what would be the turning point for the Free Syrian Army in the good sense? What could make them into an effective and organized force? Well, in the past, before the summer, basically, it would have required substantial coordination among the leadership of the groups and the exclusion of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Nusra Front, which is the Al Qaeda affiliate. At which point, there would have been some chance for significant foreign military assistance. And that was close to happening. And I'm not sure whether the blame should be put entirely on the Free Syrian Army's disorganization or entirely on the Obama administration's unwillingness, ultimately, to take the risk of using the Free Syrian Army. Because the worry was-- let's say we back the Free Syrian Army and we bring down Bashar. And then we get the Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra. That was the worry, of a two-stage process. So arguably, no matter how organized they had been, the US still wouldn't have intervened on their behalf. That said, they were not very well organized and didn't do a good job of sending a unified image that excluded the people the US wanted excluded. So I'm not blaming them, but I'm also not giving them a free pass. Now I don't see a route for them, to be honest. And what's more, they're feeling-- they get it. And so first of all, they see the bombing as pro-Bashar, which in effect, even if not in intent, it is. And they're not happy about it. And they also see the US support evaporating. So I mean, I think they know the score. And so they're going to be yet another group of people in the region who are convinced that the United States backs you and then lets you go. Big shock. I mean, what's amazing is that anyone ever thinks we're not going to do that. DEBORAH AMOS: I would argue that there is a Free Syrian Army, battalion by battalion. They're the people who have stood in the way of the Assad regime completely taking over in Aleppo. And in fact, in the last six to nine months, they have done relatively well. They have made gains in Deraa, in the south. They have held on to some of the suburban cities around Damascus. They've managed to hang on to Aleppo against all odds. And part of the reason they were able to do that is because they were getting TOW missiles. And they had figured out how to do it. And they were under enormous stress, because they were fighting on two fronts. They were fighting ISIS at the same time they were fighting the regime. That was not easy. NOAH FELDMAN: As they still are in Aleppo. DEBORAH AMOS: As they still are in Aleppo. And they have moved ISIS out of a town called [? Ma'arrat, ?] which is on the way in to-- that was very strategic for them. And they beat ISIS there, who brought in American tanks. So for the first time, we have American weapons on the FSA side hitting American weapons on the ISIS side. And that happened, like, six weeks ago. I agree with Noah. I think they understand that they are just not going to be in this equation. And they can't understand why not. We're the guys who started the fight with ISIS. We did it last year. We said directly that we're going to take them on. And still, they got no help. And they got no help, because I think that the American strategy is even a little bit more cynical. And that is, the American strategy always was, we will help the rebels just enough to force Bashar to the negotiating table. That is such an impossible strategy to calibrate. And they didn't get it right. They never got it right, because they never could give them just enough to frighten Bashar. Because he always had something in his pocket-- first Hezbollah, the Iranians, the Russians. Then we saw Iraqi Shiite militias coming in. There was always a new thing that he could do to sort of keep that balance, where he wasn't frightened. He wasn't forced to go to Geneva. NOAH FELDMAN: Don't forget the chemical weapons, too. DEBORAH AMOS: Yes. And so you could never support them enough and make sure they didn't win. They were not allowed to win. And I really don't know what happens now. I think that Noah's right. This is another moment of deep cynicism from those people who have lost so much, hoping they would get what Kobani-- those people weren't even vetted. We dropped weapons on them. That must be amazing for them to watch. NOAH FELDMAN: Can I just add one very quick point on this? Because we haven't talked about Kobani very much, and maybe we shouldn't spend too much time on it. But just to mention one fact. The US approach now seems to be very crisis-driven. It's very news cycle crisis-driven. So in tactical, military terms, what you would say is that the initiative is still with ISIS. Despite 50 days of US bombing, the initiative is still on the ISIS side. And Kobani is just an example of that. Suddenly, you have a town that looks like it's going to fall, a lot of people might die. Boom, global attention. Boom, weapons. Boom, literal bombing. It's not the way you want to fight a war in a perfect world. Believe me, the US military doesn't want to be fighting the war in this way. DEBORAH AMOS: And I also would argue it's the power of the telephoto lens. If Kobani was 25 miles further inside Syria, we wouldn't be having this discussion about it. And I saw it. NOAH FELDMAN: Yup. We wouldn't be seeing it. Very true. That's true. That's a great point. DEBORAH AMOS: I remember sitting, watching CNN, and calling my office, and saying, I can see the ISIS guys climbing up the hill on live television. It was extraordinary. KRISTEN STILT: The luck of geography on that one. DEBORAH AMOS: You bet. KRISTEN STILT: What else? Yeah, way in the back, please. AUDIENCE: I have a comment and a question. So the comment's on the relationship between ISIS and Iraqi Ba'athists. I think there's a real tendency to see it as a marriage of convenience. And that was reflected in your comments. But I think we're underestimating the extent to which a younger generation of Ba'athist officers have fully integrated into ISIS. And there's two points to this. A lot of different lists of who the cabinets are in ISIS-- but you look at that one list, those captured in the home in Mosul. 19 of the 20 of those guys were Iraqi. And I think they were-- almost every single last one of them, a former Baathist. Second, those officers that people talk about, like Izzat al-Douri and JRTN, those guys are in their 70s. They're an older generation. These guys who are joining ISIS from the Ba'athists, they're people in their 50s now. They were 35 when the Saddam regime fell. They're not trying to seize power again, because they were never in power. They had careers interrupted. And I think in 10 years, we're going to look back, and we're going to understand Saddam's faith campaign, that went on in the '90s, in much more detail, and see how there was a generation of younger Ba'athist officers who weren't the secular Ba'athists of the '50s and '60s, but a different sort of Ba'athist who probably fits in with more general currents in the region. But I think the Ba'athist, that younger officer corps, is much more integrated into ISIS than we and the US government is giving them credit for. NOAH FELDMAN: Can I just say, that's a totally plausible-- oh, sorry, you had a question, too. Sorry. AUDIENCE: My question is different. There's this young Saudi who I talk to online sometimes. And about two months ago, he told me, you need to understand that me and everyone who I know in my neighborhood, we love what ISIS is doing in Iraq, and we hate what they're doing in Syria. In Iraq, they're taking the country back from the Safavids. In Syria, they're causing fitna. Is the bombing that the US is doing, the strategy that you're suggesting is going to develop-- is that going to erase, in his mind, any idea that there's a difference between these two fronts and it's really a unified effort now against the West? DEBORAH AMOS: Interesting. NOAH FELDMAN: I just want to say on the first point that it's a plausible hypothesis. It's important to know when you say "Ba'athist," that, as I'm sure you know, 99% of officers in the Iraqi army were members of the Baath party. You had to be a member of the party to be an officer. Literally, you had to get the piece of paper. So you're right. But all you're really saying-- I don't mean this in a bad way-- is that young, Iraqi, Sunni army officers may be more ideologically sympathetic to the position of the Islamic State. And we just don't know the answer to that. But I think it's a plausible hypothesis. With respect to the second point, to ask the question is to answer it. Yes, even people who are deeply at war with ISIS are unsympathetic to bombing efforts by the United States against ISIS. That's been reported extensively. So yeah, make yourself the enemy of the United States. And then make our attacks on you ineffectual, which is where we presently stand. That's a recipe for generating substantial sympathy. And the concern that young Saudis who are online might eventually feel this sympathy is very worrisome to the Saudi regime. And that is what ultimately will lead them to put pressure on the United States to do something more. And eventually-- it will take time, perhaps-- but eventually, I don't really believe that the Islamic State is going to be permitted to continue to exist in this form. DEBORAH AMOS: Although his point about the young Saudi is also reflected in the Saudi government. They certainly have-- they wouldn't couch it in those terms. And they don't like what they're doing in Iraq. But they certainly are disturbed, would never support Bashar being the church builder once ISIS goes. And so I don't know how the US government squares that circle. Turkey has the same problem. Turkey is not going to join this coalition. They're just not, until America answers the question, what are you going to do about Bashar? And if they get the wrong answer, I really don't know where their politics goes. KRISTEN STILT: Great. Sorry. Please, go ahead. MIKE: Thank you very much. My name is Mike, from China. And I'm very concerned about these foreign fighter issues, because fact one, Resolution 2178 criminalized the foreign fighters coming from different parts of the world. Fact two, Canadian Parliament has been recently attacked. So my question is threefold. What is actually the role played by foreign fighters from Canada, from European countries, in this fight? Second, what is the deep root for that? Why are young Muslims coming from different parts of the world coming to this battlefield? And third, what is our strategy towards the foreign fighters? Thank you. NOAH FELDMAN: Well, it's a little soon to know what practical, tactical role the foreign fighters are playing. They're bodies. And over time, they could learn to fight. And there's no better way to learn combat than by being in combat. So they may turn into an important part of the fighting force. We just don't know that yet. On the ideology point, this is in some way one of the biggest questions you could possibly ask. And it's a hugely important question. Why are the foreign fighters coming? And I don't want to offer some universal mono-causal answer, because it would be too simple. But I do want to say that a factor that doesn't get enough emphasis, I think, in our discussions of this topic, especially in the West, is that there is a powerful human impulse to want to be an agent of history and not just an object of historical forces. And one of the appeals of ISIS, of the Islamic State, is that it is presenting itself as one of those agents of history. It's doing stuff. It's taking territory. It's forming an entity, or trying to form an entity. And that's tremendously attractive if one has a feeling in one's own life that one isn't affecting the course of history, but one is merely being acted upon by other forces. And that, I think-- of course, that's complexly intermingled with religion. And it's complexly intermingled with senses of alienation, perhaps, in some cases. I don't mean to undercut the other factors or forces. But I just want to emphasize that element is one we don't hear enough about. DEBORAH AMOS: I agree. I talked to a guy that I met a number of years ago, who was at a future Muslim leaders-- he was an imam in a London mosque. He now is working for the British government to interview Brits who come back from Syria, to try to figure out, are you a terrorist? Or do we let you out, because they can arrest everybody. And he said to me, look, in the 1990s, I went to Afghanistan. He's a Salafist. Went to Cambridge. He's a scientist, very honorable guy. He said it was a romance. I grew up my whole life knowing about jihad. And that was a pursuit that I could carry out in Afghanistan. And in 1990, the British government was perfectly fine with that. And he came home and went about his life. And he said, I would have gone to Bosnia, except I was getting married that year. But all of my friends did. Yet again, it was fine with the British government. Many, many people went and came home, integrated back into their lives. And it was a pursuit of this romantic notion, a religious obligation of going. And you already are seeing stories of some British Muslims who arrive, don't like what they see, are trying to get back out. So I agree with Noah. I think this is a whole new phase of study for all of you in the universities to figure this out, on what is the appeal and how has social media changed all of that. And I think that we really need to know the answers of why do two Somali girls from the middle of America get on a plane and get stopped in Germany? How did that happen? KRISTEN STILT: Great. Another question. Yes, right here. AUDIENCE: Do you think that the beheadings of American journalists could have been a provocation, that they wanted [? to bring them ?] to the United States, to be seen as the defending Islam against the United States and using our involvement as a recruiting tool? DEBORAH AMOS: There are some people who think that. There apparently is-- and you may know much more about this than I do, Noah. But there are prophecies. There is a town that ISIS has taken quite recently. I think it's called Dabiq. It's in Syria. It is where the final battle is to take place. They named their online magazine for the town. And there are people in the jihadi business who argue that that is what they want. They want the final showdown. They want it to happen in that town, because they think they cannot lose. And they are trying to draw us in. KRISTEN STILT: Someone else? Yes, in the green back there? AUDIENCE: I just have a question about the future of ISIS and its effect on the global field. I was just wondering if it would have any relation to other terrorists, like the Boko Haram. Would there be a possibility of an international coalition? Or would this kind of situation be happening somewhere else in the globe, as more and more of these [? ideas ?] come out of this country and as with social media, we view them more and more? NOAH FELDMAN: Well, as we know from the '90s, you could be groups far away geographically without much common interest, the way Al Qaeda and the Taliban were. And you could find yourselves in bed together. There are circumstances where cooperation can be useful. So it's not inconceivable that if ISIS remains functioning for a while, they might develop ties. The most common way for that to happen is people come and fight with ISIS. And then they go home. And then you have human connections, which are obviously, by far, the best form of connections to develop. So that's conceivable. It's one of the main reasons why US foreign policy won't ultimately be able to tolerate the presence of a state-like entity with this functioning ideology. The Taliban were similar. The US was completely able to tolerate the Taliban. In fact, the US played a role, through the Pakistani ISI in the creation of the Taliban, until Bin Laden was there and then acted on the United States. Until that point, the US was more or less OK with the Taliban. And post-that situation, it becomes very difficult for the US to tolerate this, partly because of its capacity to build ties and make connections. KRISTEN STILT: Yes, please. AUDIENCE: Can you comment on the ideological purity of ISIS and whether it's a false front, or if it's like other organizations, like Boko Haram, where it's more of just a front to actually go and do whatever they want, and how that's going to affect everything in the long run? Thank you. NOAH FELDMAN: Well, look, ideological purity-- it's a great idea in theory. I've just never actually seen it in practice. Human beings are complicated. And we're motivated by lots of different factors-- psychological factors, ideological factors, economic factors, you name it. So there is a question of, to what extent people in a movement are aware of the content of the ideology they're supposed to hold. So the early Taliban were an example of this. If you asked them what they were, they thought that they were acting as Islamists. But a lot of the time, they were acting on ideology that you could describe sociologically as really Pashtunwali, Pashtun local culture and tribal society. They didn't know that. Boko Haram is not a totally dis-analogous situation, where just the level of Islamic knowledge is very low among most of the Boko Haram participants. That's probably less true, to a broad extent, of ISIS. I'm not saying that there any prominent ulama in the leadership. So far we don't know of any. But it's probably only a matter of time until some important ulama who have scholarly and ideological qualifications attach themselves to the movement. They might be better, not more knowledgeable, about the content of Islamic teaching. But I'm not sure that one could describe their ideology as more or less pure. Now, we heard earlier about people who might not have been attracted to the organization for ideological reasons. And those people will also join an organization when it gets big. So the bigger an organization is, the less made up of a narrow group of ideologically pure people it can realistically be. Until ultimately, you rise to being, actually, a state. And at that point, people have a huge range of beliefs. But they participate, because it's the state and you don't have much choice. KRISTEN STILT: Well, Deb, earlier, you had hinted-- maybe it was just to me before we met here-- that the school curriculum had come in, and a lot of it was from Saudi, borrowed either in thought or the textbooks themselves. I'm not sure if you know the details. To what extent is this a borrowing of a doctrine? DEBORAH AMOS: Well, this is the religious teaching, is taken a whole cloth from the Saudi curriculum. And it is minority-intolerant. It is Salafi. So that shouldn't be a surprise. They have jettisoned all art and music. It is not that dissimilar from the Saudi education system. NOAH FELDMAN: With the all-important element that, at least in the Saudi ideological picture, in the Wahhabi ideological picture, all acts of jihad must be authorized by the legitimate ruler. Now, maybe they're going to say the same and just that they have the legitimate ruler. They might be able to do that. If so, that would be an interesting twist. KRISTEN STILT: Do you know if they've thought this out, if their online magazine, which, yes, anyone can go and download them, PDFs in English. Is that something that they've worked out or tried to talk about in those kind of publications? DEBORAH AMOS: I don't think so. NOAH FELDMAN: If so, I haven't seen it. DEBORAH AMOS: I haven't seen it. NOAH FELDMAN: Kristen, how are we for time? KRISTEN STILT: Yeah, I think we have time for one last question. And that'll be it. Strangely enough, all the hands are men. It's not a gendered topic. All right. Back here. NOAH FELDMAN: No, there's a woman right there. KRISTEN STILT: Yeah, we got one. Dorothy, please go ahead. DOROTHY: I was wondering if you guys could speak a little bit more about the military strategy of ISIS. I mean, is the assessment and exploitation of the security vacuums done on an ad hoc basis? Or is there some larger strategic vision that we can see or-- and especially moving into the future, is there some way that we can make predictions about where ISIS will move in terms of their territorial takeovers? DEBORAH AMOS: I'll speak just more specifically to their strategy, which moves them out of the sort of terrorist category and into insurgents. They have perfected this swarming strategy. And that is how they take over towns. So when they wanted to take over Tal Afar, which is in Northern Iraq-- actually, it is true that in Mosul, the army [? threw ?] down tools and ran. But in Tal Afar, they had one of the best commanders that works in the Iraqi Army. And he did hold for about six days. But what happens is they surround the town. And they just come from all sides. They have perfected the swarming technique and suicide bombing attacks. So when we talk to the military people in Mosul, they said, oh, man, they were brilliant. That first day, there was just a string of car bombs all over Mosul. And that's what scared the army. They kind of went, whoa, we haven't seen this before. And of course, their leadership ran away. So these conscript guys said, we're just not really doing this. The second thing that I know about their strategy is it is not centralized. So if a local commander says, Kobani, OK, let's all go do that. And somebody else says, yeah, but you know what? We want to do Anbar. They can manage, not only two, but think about all the fronts they're fighting on. They're fighting the FSA in Aleppo. They're fighting in Kobani. They're fighting in Anbar. They're fighting all over the place. And except for Kobani, because America tipped the balance a bit, they're winning in every place they're fighting. NOAH FELDMAN: So what Deborah's describing is tactics. Their strategy is targets of opportunity. That is the strategy at this point. And it's hold. They have not yet had to concede substantial pieces of territory. My guess is if they were forced to, they would fall back rather than stand and lose a huge number of fighters in a fight, because that would be consistent with the target of opportunity strategy. But that remains to be seen. But that would be the rational strategy for them to follow. And they've been pretty rational so far, with respect to that. The one thing I will say is if you look at the map, again, what makes it consistent is targets of opportunity. And it's also mostly not densely settled. There are bits and part of this, if they expand within Iraq, which will become more densely settled. And as they go down in Anbar on that line that runs from Haditha to Fallujah to Baghdad, that's a very densely settled area. That's going to require different tactics. And it's also going to require different thinking about their strategy. The biggest question facing them is, do they make a play for Baghdad? My guess is not right now, because there's too much to be lost. And the odds of success are still relatively low. DEBORAH AMOS: But they can menace the airport. NOAH FELDMAN: But they can menace the airport, and that's a good strategy. Good tactics. KRISTEN STILT: All right, we're just at time right now. So thank you, Deb. Thank you, Noah, very much. Thank you, everyone, for coming. DEBORAH AMOS: Thank you. [APPLAUSE]