Author

Eric Rosand

Nonresident Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy, U.S. Relations with the Islamic World

Particularly given the looming presidential election and the uptick in attacks inspired or directed by the Islamic State in the West and beyond, one is likely to continue to hear calls for more of the same: more police on the street, more troops on the battlefield, more rigorous screening of migrants, and more intelligence sharing. With no presidential candidate wanting to appear “soft,” the average of $11.8 million a day the Pentagon is spending each day in Iraq is likely to go up rather than down next year.

The reality, however, is that much more needs to be done to prevent the recruitment of new ISIS adherents and to provide alternative pathways for those who may be drawn to the group, but do not necessarily pose a threat and, more importantly, can be placed on another path.

We must commit ourselves to find ways to prevent disillusioned individuals from becoming motivated to join or be inspired by ISIS; only then, will we have a chance in our struggle against violent extremism. In that battle, the front lines are not manned by soldiers, drones, or intelligence officers, but by our teachers, social workers, mental health professionals, faith leaders and, perhaps most importantly, family members.

Orlando. Dhaka. Istanbul. Nice. To prevent more cities from being added to this list, we must encourage and empower those on the front lines in our communities to do more. Working with individuals that are most likely to notice the early signs of radicalization makes sense and, as we have seen in other efforts, such as those to address gang violence, it can work; they are likely to be most effective in steering an individual away from violence, including by developing programs that offer alternatives to alienated youth.

These same stakeholders are also the key to reintegrating into society those young people who may have been drawn to the messages of violent extremists but who are not deemed a security threat and for whom a jail sentence will only harden their views.

In the United States, a few, ad hoc local programs to prevent violent radicalization have (slowly) emerged in Boston, Cook County (Illinois), Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Montgomery County (Maryland), where local officials are working with professionals, families, and others in the community to identify disillusioned young people and steer them away from violence.

This year the White House established a Department of Homeland Security-led (DHS) task force to coordinate federal countering violent extremism (CVE) efforts and DHS just announced the first-ever federal grant program (albeit for only $10 million, which is roughly the same amount available in the Netherlands, a country of less than 17 million people) to support community-based CVE initiatives. These are steps in the right direction, but on their own unlikely to catalyze the breadth and depth of a community-led effort—and attract the broad swath of non-federal government expertise—required. The federal government—led by the FBI, DHS, and Department of Justice—is perhaps ill suited to the task as we have seen in its nascent efforts in this area, (often unfairly) accused of stigmatizing Muslim communities, serving as a guise for intelligence-gathering, and violating the civil liberties of law abiding Muslim-Americans. A broader and more integrative approach to engaging community-level and non-governmental actors in this area is needed.

With the 16th anniversary of 9/11 just around the corner, and growing realization that we won’t be able to kill or arrest our away out of the problem, President Obama can mark the occasion by calling for the creation of a non-government-led “National Prevention Network” to harness the efforts of the growing number of communities and professionals around the country interested in helping to prevent the violent radicalization of individuals in their communities.

Such a network could help to mobilize resources by leveraging corporate and philanthropic contributions to support local prevention and intervention projects and involve non-law enforcement professionals around the country with experience working on CVE or related fields (e.g., drug or broader crime prevention, mental health). It could allow communities to more easily draw on the expertise from the growing number of its members and professionals (both in the United States and overseas) that need to be involved in designing and implementing “social service” prevention and intervention efforts as they move to develop their own programs, tailored to the needs of their citizens. It could help ensure that communities that don’t feel compelled to develop a full-fledged CVE program, but are interested in getting much smarter about the problem and how they can identify early signs of radicalization and steer their young people away from violence the opportunity to do so, without having to involve the “feds.” Such a network would energize professional associations of educators, community development workers, mental health and social services organizations, which have generally been reluctant to actively engage in Washington-driven CVE efforts, and create scalable partnerships with a philanthropic sector that has also been leery of involving itself in efforts that have been so closely associated with the FBI and other security actors.

A National Prevention Network will help ensure that the community-led approach to CVE that was the centerpiece of last year’s White House CVE Summit becomes a reality and is not dependent on who is in the White House or, more broadly, Washington. Although not a panacea, the network, which could draw on lessons from networks developed in other fields (e.g., human trafficking, drug addiction, and child trauma) will not only help communities in the United States, but serve as an example for other countries to follow as they look beyond the military advances in Syria and Iraq and build a “whole of society” effort to prevent terrorism.

      

 

 

Meanwhile, under the stewardship of Donald Trump, the Republican Party appears to be morphing into a European-style ethnonationalist party. In a two-party system, this can’t help but affect the Democrats’ own message, since each party comes to define itself, and even understand itself better, in opposition to the other.

As powerful as that first night of the DNC was, especially as a member of one of the minorities Trump has so often sought to attack, I couldn’t help but wonder. It was a bit dispiriting to see, in such visual form, that there really are two Americas. The message of the Republican National Convention seemed like it was being beamed in from a different country, at least if your point of reference was growing up in Washington or New York City. It was a dystopian vision of a declining America that was no longer itself.

But I could also imagine would-be Trump supporters in “real America” watching the proceedings at the DNC and feeling detached, as if they were watching a country that had moved well beyond them. Here were Democratic politicians, elites and delegates, celebrating diversity in all of its colors and persuasions. I can imagine the emphasis on inclusion seeming, to some, self-satisfied, even condescending, as if we were reminding “angry whites” that they were somehow deficient, and that the responsibility to change their lot was only theirs, and not ours.

In my own work in the Middle East, my starting assumption as a researcher has been to suspend my own ideological preferences and to immerse myself in the world of people I don’t agree with and wouldn’t want to live under (namely Islamist movements). I don’t think we do nearly enough of that in our own country.

In some sense, it’s almost too obvious. The Democratic National Convention, with its joyous inclusion, is not what America looks like in the more rural expanses of Virginia, where, by chance, I happen to be writing this very piece. One of the towns I passed through, Elkton, Virginia (population 2,762), already seemed like something out of a post-apocalyptic serial, with deserted streets, shuttered general stores, and nothing seemingly happening.

Having lived the majority of my adult life abroad, I used to joke with my fellow American expats that I probably knew other countries better than I knew my own. Liberals often complain about rural and working class voters voting against their economic interests.

But for a resident of Elkton, I can understand it in reverse. Why wouldn’t they vote for Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton is not promising a break with the past eight years, but a continuation of it. That is part of her appeal – building on and extending Obama’s legacy, at least on domestic policy. But if your experience of the past eight years has been one of economic, social and moral stagnation, or worse, then why would you want something resembling the status quo? I can imagine an Elkton resident watching the Democratic National Convention and not seeing, or hearing, themselves represented. For them, it might as well have been a different country.

The risk is that as whites become a smaller majority – and eventually an outright minority – the tendencies toward ethnic politics we’ve witnessed in this election season might very well intensify. The specifics of Hillary Clinton’s policies are almost beside the point. Most Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters will cast their vote for Hillary because it is part of their identity. Liberals and Democrats are not really part of a party, as much as they are part of a new America that looks and thinks differently and has little interest in looking back, wherever that might be. More than a party, it is a lifestyle, a culture and a sensibility, with its own media, institutions, norms and values.

It’s striking that, as Americans sort themselves into various identities, how little Christianity has seemed to factor in, compared to more traditional kinds of ethnic and nationalist markers. These are perhaps our “first real intimations of what a genuinely post-Christian politics might look like,” as Ross Douthat recently put it.

From a secular standpoint, this might seem like a good thing in theory, but it’s a bit more complicated in practice. As I discuss in my new book, all states require some unifying set of norms and ideas to bind citizens together (the 14th century historian Ibn Khaldun had a great word for it, asabiyah, which roughly translates as ‘social solidarity’ or ‘group consciousness’). A unifying nationalism is out, since our conceptions of America have apparently become so different. A “moderate Christianity” seems to be out, at least for the time being. Which doesn’t leave us with much.

Usually, when I write articles, I try to find a way to end on a positive note. In this case, it’s difficult. Again, I find myself returning to the kind of cross-party civic communitarianism that I sketched out in my previous column. The communitarian instinct is difficult to plot on a traditional left-right spectrum. Some saw communitarian themes in Sen. Cory Booker’s convention address, including his call for a “nation of interdependence” and for a civic virtue of love over tolerance.

I, however, would more than happily take tolerance right now. We can barely do that much as it is, and perhaps for good reason: quite a lot is at stake. This is perhaps the first election, at least in my lifetime, that sees us, as a country, moving beyond left and right, toward something more inchoate but probably more frightening. But whether these divides deepen or retreat will depend on who wins in November and, perhaps just as important, how the losers of the election take their loss.

      

 

 

The Islamic State has long sought to increase its power by consolidating and expanding its quasi-state in Syria and Iraq. At its height in 2014, large parts of Iraq and Syria were under the group’s control. The Islamic State conquered territory directly through conventional military operations and used guerrilla war and terrorism to weaken enemy government and civilian morale and stretch their forces.  Much of the Islamic State’s day-to-day terrorism is linked to its war effort, with enemies like Iraq’s Shiite population bearing the brunt of many of the group’s attacks. The U.S.-led coalition and their local allies have reversed the Islamic State’s military expansion, shrinking the territory under its control. In so doing, they have caused massive financial problems for the group, decreased the number of foreign fighters, and weakened its appeal in general.

The Islamic State has sought to expand into “provinces” throughout the Muslim world, following al-Qaida’s use of “affiliates” in the past. This expansion spreads the risk of civil wars to new areas and increases the ferocity of existing ones. Moreover, the Islamic State governance system makes life even more miserable for already suffering communities. Some of these provinces drew on small terrorist groups that used the Islamic State brand to expand. Others, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, were powerful groups already. In some instances, local commanders broke off from an al-Qaida affiliate, using the IS name as a pretext for a power grab. In October, the Islamic State’s Sinai province downed a Russian passenger jet flying from Egypt, killing all 224 people. The Islamic State’s province in Libya carved out territory near the city of Sirte, though recent military efforts by militias tied to the Libyan “government” have pushed the group back considerably.

The Islamic State exerts tremendous influence even outside areas where it controls territory, agitating regional politics in general.

The Islamic State exerts tremendous influence even outside areas where it controls territory, agitating regional politics in general. Its terrorist attacks in nearby Lebanon, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are revenge for the policies of enemy governments (or the powerful sub-state group, Lebanese Hezbollah, which is an important ally of the Assad regime). In addition, they are attempts to foment sectarianism and otherwise shape regional politics to reflect the Islamic State’s worldview and strategy. The Islamic State’s high-profile violence also inspires extremist voices, creates fears of instability, and injects divisive issues such as sectarianism into a region already highly divided. This agitation increases the risk of civil wars and political violence and degrades politics in general.

The Islamic State’s persistence in the Middle East also keeps the risk of terrorism to the West high. The success of U.S. and allied forces in the past year have not stopped the Islamic State from using its territory—and perhaps, in the future, that of its “provinces”—to organize terrorist attacks outside the region, such as the November 2015 Paris attacks. Indeed, as the Islamic State’s territory shrinks, it has more incentives to do low-cost, high-profile terrorist attacks against its enemies outside the region.

The Islamic State’s role in the Middle East has several implications for the United States beyond the threat of terrorism against the United States and its Western allies. The strife and risk of greater chaos create a constant demand for intervention in ways both large and small. To prevent the Islamic State from expanding (and to shrink its territory), a significant USAF campaign along with efforts to train local forces is necessary. More forces are necessary to make more dramatic gains. To a lesser degree, military assistance and limited direct military strikes are necessary against Islamic State efforts to expand through its provinces.

The violence the Islamic State produces also creates refugee flows and a broader humanitarian crisis. Though refugee flows have hit regional states the hardest, the crisis has become an international one, with significant consequences for European states and U.S. allies. Most refugees fleeing Syria are fleeing the Assad regime’s abuses and hardship in general, but thousands have also left areas under Islamic State control. In addition to refugee flows, abhorrent practices such as sexual slavery and the slaughter of Muslim minorities create grave humanitarian concerns. The Islamic State also targets international aid organizations, limiting social services in the hardest-hit areas.

Finally, the Islamic State is a dictator’s dream “bogeyman” when interacting with the West. Regional dictators use the genuine risks the Islamic State poses as a pretext for delaying or reversing democratic reform, cracking down on opponents, and otherwise playing off U.S. security interests against broader U.S. concerns over democratization and good governance.

So, even if the terrorism danger to the West diminishes, the United States and its allies must recognize that the Islamic State will, and should, profoundly shape their foreign policies towards the Middle East.

      

 

 

Another post shows a video of Karam, a simple man from upper Egypt, revealing his secret to getting a favorable exchange rate for converting Egyptian pounds to dollars. Karam simply lays the Egyptian pound notes out, covers them with his scarf, and sings nationalistic songs to them—afterwards, he reveals a pile of fresh $1 notes. The video has since made it to mainstream media, with a news presenter sarcastically suggesting that Karam be appointed minister of finance.

These posts—just two recent examples of many—reflect the Egyptians’ pessimism about worsening economic conditions. With the resurgent authoritarianism under Sissi, it seems now the only way they can respond is with satire.

Big promises meet reality

In a classic authoritarian bargain, President Sissi came to power two years ago promising security, stability, and economic prosperity in exchange for near-total political control. Now, that bargain is in the process of breaking down, since he’s failed to deliver on all three fronts.

The ISIS-inspired insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula continues to fester, and since 2013, terror attacks have struck several Egyptian cities. The downing of the Russian jet in the Sinai Peninsula has brought down tourist arrivals. The murder of Italian PhD student Giulio Regenihas delivered a blow to Egypt’s relations with Italy and the EU. Protests erupted when the government suddenly transferred the sovereignty of two islands to Saudi Arabia this April. The government responded by locking people up, and many remain in jail to date on the charge of “spreading rumors about the disputed Red Sea islands Tiran and Sanafir.” In addition, incidents of sectarian violence continue to flare up. To many, Egypt seems to be moving backward, not forward.

On the economic front, too, Sissi has over-promised and under-delivered. The Egyptian pound continues to lose value, and unemployment remains high. Since Sissi came to power, overall unemployment has fallen slightly from 13.3 percent to 12.7 percent in the first quarter of 2016—but youth unemployment remains high, at 31.3 percent. In a new policy published yesterday titled “Educated but Unemployed: The Challenge Facing Egypt’s Youth,” I argue that if the Egyptian government does not deal with the specific problem of youth unemployment soon, it will likely face instability—and perhaps another uprising—in the years to come.

Hyper-nationalism, anyone?

In spite of this situation, the Sissi government continues to obsess over ultra-nationalistic and grandiose projects that will create desperately needed jobs in the short term—but likely not enough.

Egypt embarked on a major project to widen the Suez Canal, for example. The head of the Suez Canal Authority once predicted that the larger canal would generate $100 billion in one year. Egypt spent $8 billion on the project, and Sissi (dressed in full military regalia) opened it last year with a spectacle involving cruising in King Farouk’s yacht, al Mahrousa, in front of international dignitaries. A year later, the number of container ships passing through the canal is down by 3 percent, due to lower oil prices and preferences for the cheaper (but longer) route around the Cape of Good Hope.

The government also announced flashy plans to build a new capital, adjacent to Cairo, at the Sharm el Shiekh investment conference in 2015. One year later, the project has stalled over disagreements between the government and one of the main Emirati developers. There’s considerable debate over whether the new capital is even needed, or whether Egypt would be better served by improving Cairo’s existing infrastructure and directing resources to education and health care.

The joblessness problem

As these political spectacles continue to unfold, the problem of youth unemployment continues to fester. The policy brief analyses some of the root causes of the youth unemployment problem in Egypt. In particular, it sheds light on ongoing problems in the Egyptian higher education system: although public universities churn out thousands of graduates every year, many are unlikely to find employment in their respective fields.

The brief also highlights the growing youth bulge. Demographic pressures mean that the Egyptian labor market is increasingly unable to cope with the number of new job seekers. The size of the youth population (ages 15 to 29) has increased from 13.3 million in 1988 to 17.4 million in 1998 and 22.2 million in 2006.

In the brief, I make four key policy recommendations: reform the higher education sector and its funding model; invest further in vocational training; increase the emphasis on entrepreneurship; and take steps to increase the participation of women in the work force.

There is no silver bullet for dealing with youth unemployment, in Egypt or elsewhere. For these recommendations to have a chance at succeeding, they must be implemented within the context of an overall economic development policy that puts job creation at its center. Some policy changes may yield results at a faster pace, while others—such as reform of the tertiary sector—will take years.

The important step, now, is for the Egyptian government to acknowledge the urgency of the challenges it faces. If youth unemployment in Egypt is not addressed head-on (and soon), the government might as well start printing Sissi dollars and appoint Karam as minister of finance, as it seems nothing else is really working.

      

 

 

In Cleveland last week the Republican party adopted a platform entirely dropping the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a move that puts the party further to the right than either AIPAC or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The platform states, “We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier and specifically recognize that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS) is anti-Semitic in nature and seeks to destroy Israel.” This language, combined with Republican nominee Donald Trump’s apparent disinterest in the conflict, makes it unlikely a Trump administration would prioritize Israeli-Palestinian issues or make any serious attempt at negotiations.

Conversely, this year’s Democratic Party platform reaffirmed the United States government’s long-standing commitment to seeking a two-state solution in the region. But the party took a notably progressive turn, highlighting both the importance of Israel’s Jewish and democratic future and Palestinian freedom “to govern themselves in their own viable state, in peace and dignity.” The contentious fight over the Democratic Party language, combined with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s (and her potential First Gentleman’s) passion for this issue reveals an intent by a future Clinton administration to reinvigorate negotiations.

As President Obama and Secretary Kerry consider their final months in office, one item on the agenda is whether to push a last-ditch effort on the issue—either by releasing some sort of Obama or Kerry Parameters based on the outcome of the failed 2013-14 negotiations or by supporting one of the international initiatives such as the French Initiative, the Quartet Report, or the regional Arab Peace Initiative, now spearheaded by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

Likely to drive the administration’s calculus are the Democratic and Republican nominees and their political motives on the U.S. led peace process. The time to watch for a potential move, therefore, is between November and January. Given the administration’s support for its own party’s nominee, it is in Obama’s interest to keep the peace process on life support—but without resuscitating it—through January. Publicly, but somewhat unenthusiastically, supporting the various international initiatives and allowing other states and international organizations to sit in the driver’s seat sets a future Democratic administration up with the best chance of success.

Lessons from getting Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the table over the years include the wisdom to refrain from yelling about past progress in negotiations. Publicly revealing how far Netanyahu and Abbas were willing to go in 2014 would only harm the next administration’s efforts at resuming negotiations. Keeping the “Kerry Framework” in the administration’s pocket allows a Clinton administration to take ownership of the peace process should she be elected.

Alternatively, if Trump is elected, the Obama administration would have nothing to lose in revealing the fruits of its efforts in 2013-14. The administration would have little concern for derailing a possible Trump attempt (which is not likely to take place in any event) and could determine that releasing some sort of Obama or Kerry Parameters would shed a positive light on the administration’s legacy. Furthermore, should the Republican Party win the White House, neither Obama nor Kerry is likely to care about the damage that releasing such a document might do to either Netanyahu or Abbas.

The party conventions have solidified the deep divides—both between and within the parties—regarding the U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this campaign season. This divide, combined with a renewed international focus on the conflict, virtually guarantees that the administration will keep the conflict on the back burner before November. The election, therefore, will not only determine our next president but also the fate of the “Obama/Kerry Parameters”.

Note: Ariella Plachta, an intern with the Center for Middle East Policy, contributed to this post.

      

 

 

Dividing lines

Telhami and colleague William Galston, Brookings’ Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies, discussed the poll and its conclusions at an event earlier this month moderated by Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Galston noted that that the cleavages between Clinton supporters and Trump supporters on issues related to Islam suggested by Telhami’s polls are remarkable even when compared to hot-button domestic issues in the United States.

When asked if they hold a favorable attitude towards Islam, for instance, there is a 40-point gap between Republicans and Democrats in general (24 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats). But the gap widens to 50 points between Clinton supporters (66 percent have a favorable view) and Trump supporters (16 percent), specifically.

Similar divides manifested on questions about the compatibility of the Islamic and Western religions and societies, with 13 percent of Clinton supporters believing in a so-called clash of civilizations and 62 percent of Trump supporters believing it. That is a 41-point gap.

And on the U.S. role in mediating between the Israelis and Palestinians, 55 percent of Trump supporters thought that the United States should lean toward Israel, while only 5 percent of Clinton supporters thought so. Again, that’s a 50-point difference between supporters of the main presidential contenders.

In Galston’s words: “[I]t’s polarization on steroids.”

In Galston’s words: “all this is to suggest that the election that we [are] actually going to have represents a greater degree of polarization between the two candidates and their supporters—if such a thing were imaginable—than even between the political parties that they represent. So it’s polarization on steroids.” Since whoever wins the presidential election will be expected to represent all Americans, these kinds of cleavages will complicate governing down the road.

Galston commented that “it would be wonderful if we were moving back toward an era in which political differences ended at the water’s edge …[However,] those days are gone and this survey I think puts a fine point on that.”

Wittes noted that in the contemporary media environment, “people are living in informational bubbles where their preexisting views are reinforced…of course, we are in a campaign season right now so all of those narratives are magnified.” She questioned whether “it’s the campaign that’s driving this polarization more than the polarization driving the candidates?” Telhami explained that views are shaped by voting preferences, but also by the demographic shifts in the population and the greater exposure of Americans to Islam and related issues in recent years.

Views on Islam evolving?

What do the polls show about how the Orlando shooting affected Americans’ attitudes overall on Muslims and Islam? When polled after the Orlando shooting, a strong majority of respondents (62 percent) expressed a favorable view of Muslims. Contrast that with 58 percent of respondents who said that in the weeks before the attacks, and only 53 percent who shared the view in November 2015, according to another of Telhami’s polls.

This finding seems perplexing on its face, since one might expect that prominent anti-Muslim rhetoric in the wake of the shooting might have swayed Americans towards more negative opinions. As Telhami has suggested, this poll may be an indication that Americans are pushing back against that rhetoric.

In any case, polarization among Americans—on these and a range of other issues—isn’t likely to dissipate any time soon. It will remain essential to understand why people hold the views that they do, since the next president will face the daunting task of trying to rally voters from both ends of the American political spectrum behind his or her agenda.