JOHN ALLEN'S REMARKS AT EAST ASIA SUMMIT SYMPOSIUM

FROM:   U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks at the East Asia Summit Symposium
Remarks
John Allen
Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition To Counter ISIL
Singapore
April 17, 2015

Remarks as prepared

Thank you Professor Rohan for your generous introduction and thank you for your generous welcome to the East Asia Summit Symposium.

This is the second time I have been to Singapore in the past few months but this is my first visit since the passing of this nation’s founding Prime Minister and one of the visionary leaders of the 20th century, Lee Kwan Yew.

I understand that the Prime Minister’s given name, Kwan Yew, can be translated as “someone who brings joy to his ancestors.” I have no doubt that the name Lee Kwan Yew will have even richer meaning in years to come: it will signify not only someone who brought great joy to his ancestors but a leader who brought Singapore great joy, prosperity, significane, and security to future generations.

I also want to convey my personal thanks to Prime Minister Mr. Lee Hsien Loon, whom I was privileged to have met years ago during my previous service in Singapore. And it is wonderful to see my dear friend, U.S. Ambassador to Singapore Kirk Wagar.

I deeply appreciate Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs Mr. Teo Chee Hean and Ambassador Ong Keng Yong for the instrumental roles they have played in inaugurating this conference and for their broader efforts in the fight against violent extremism and radicalization.

During the many years I spent in this region and particularly in recent months, I have seen firsthand the ways in which Singapore sets a standard for the region and the world when it comes to countering extremism. Indeed, I saw this powerfully in February when I met here with some of Singapore’s Muslim leaders, whose deep commitment to their faith, as well as to their country’s future and security, was clear for all to see.

These men of faith, as well as their counterparts in the community and government, had obviously invested enormous energy in understanding and in successfully developing protocols to de-radicalize young men, the victims of violent extremist ideology, and helping them transition back to being contributing members of society.

The way in which government officials and clerics had established deep bonds of trust and mutual respect served as a model for me of what is needed in so many multi-cultural, multi-faith communities around the world.

Singapore’s success has served to showcase what President Obama has emphasized repeatedly: that we need to diversify our approach to engagement and counter-terrorism by bringing strong, capable partners to the forefront and enlisting their help in this mutually important endeavor. Exactly that is occurring in the critical line of effort encompassing the rehabilitation and reintegration of violent extremist offenders in Singapore and beyond.

The U.S. Department of State, together with other U.S. government agencies, has been working since 2011 with other concerned governments, as well as multilateral organizations and civil society organizations, to develop and disseminate good practices intended to disengage incarcerated violent extremists from active support for terrorism, and to facilitate their successful reintegration into society upon release.

One of my counterparts from the State Department, Michael Jacobson, who has been deeply engaged in these efforts, is here with us today. Michael, thank you for your good work.

Singapore is one of several countries from around the world that has contributed funding and expertise – including very practical, on-the-ground experience – to enable other countries interested in establishing programs based on those good practices to progress more rapidly.

Because there are parallels between this work and addressing the challenges created by returning foreign terrorist fighters, we and our partners are now working to draw lessons to understand better what knowledge and good practices can be transferred from one domain to the other.

Many returning foreign terrorist fighters ultimately will not be prosecuted for their activities in foreign zones of conflict because there won’t be sufficient evidence to complete a rule-of-law prosecution in the home country.

Whether such non-prosecutable returnees will pose an enduring threat to their home countries is likely to depend significantly on how well the reintegration process functions for them and for their families. It will be essential to understand – based on rigorous risk assessment – the threat that each individual poses, so that the right resources, at the right level, can be brought to bear against their return to extremist ideation. Unless long-term detention is an option, and in many countries it isn’t, options range from intensive monitoring to providing social services and family and community engagement.

Close monitoring is generally very resource-intensive. Therefore, those evaluated as amenable to genuine reintegration should receive appropriate support and assistance, while those assessed as posing a continuing threat are likely to require close monitoring by law enforcement and intelligence resources.

Singapore has made important progress in understanding some of the keys to rehabilitation and reintegration, but the lessons Singapore is offering in the struggle against extremism extend far beyond these essential efforts. Singapore is also sharing critical insights into how to counter ISIL’s toxic messaging and appeal.

During my last visit here in February, I remember the particular efforts of one Singaporean who was in charge of tracking the social media in South Asia related to ISIL -- which hereafter I will refer to by the Arabic acronym Da’esh.

Through the strategic analysis of her team, she had found that potential foreign fighters in the region were particularly enamored with Daesh’s apocalyptic, end of days narrative.

Singapore is working with Rick Stengel, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public affairs, who is here this week in Singapore … to understand Daesh’s different appeals to young people in different regions, so that we can work together to delegitimize its message and ideology.

The kind of social media analysis being performed here in Singapore is also an example of Singapore’s pioneering technical and analytical capabilities.

Indeed, the way Singapore is leveraging these strengths to fight Daesh is one of the many reasons it has become a vital member of the Global Coalition.

Singapore is one of 24 capitals I have visited in the past seven months as Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter Da’esh … to meet with the national leadership, and in that short span we have assembled a global coalition, which currently includes more than 60 nations and international organizations, each committed to the counter-Daesh campaign.

Whether you live in Lisbon, Amman, Canberra, Kuala Lampur, or here in Singapore, Daesh’s threat is not confined to some distant and dark place, some foreign shore. In the form of foreign fighters and the spread of its bankrupt ideology, Daesh is a threat that is real; a threat that is here; and a threat that demands both our urgent and, assuredly, our enduring attention.

It was the urgency of that threat, and the immediate emergency we saw unfold last summer in Iraq, that first prompted President Obama … with the yeoman’s work of Secretary John Kerry … to convene a global coalition to counter this menace.

It is difficult to describe today just how desperate the situation was for Iraq last summer. By June, Daesh fighters began pouring through the Tigris River Valley. Multiple Iraqi towns and cities, including Mosul, went down one after another under Daesh’s heel. A substantial portion of Iraq’s military units collapsed, and Daesh’s subsequent and remorseless slaughter of Iraq’s refugees and Iraqi religious minorities exposed us all to a stark, intolerable evil.

Today, less than 10 months after Da’esh fighters were threatening Baghdad, and 8 months after President Obama called for a Global Coalition to counter Daesh, we have achieved the first phase of our campaign: we have blunted Daesh’s strategic, operational, and tactical momentum in Iraq.

As we undertake Coalition efforts to help restore Iraq’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, we are also seeing Iraq undertake vital reforms to make that a sustainable restoration. Today, Iraq has both a more inclusive government and a new prime minister, Dr. Haider Al-Abadi, whom I visited in Washington on Wednesday before my flight to Singapore. While he has only been in office since September, Prime Minister Abadi has made a series of politically difficult and absolutely critical decisions in support of a stronger, more unified Iraq.

For example, Iraq’s new government has come to an agreement with the Kurds on oil revenues – an agreement a decade in the making – one now reflected in the 2015 budget Prime Minister Abadi put before Iraq’s Council of Representatives in February. The Prime Minister has also priced into that budget funding for a national guard, one that would allow Iraqis to serve and provide security for their own provinces … an important step on the road to national reconciliation.

Prime Minister Abadi has mourned the deaths of Sunni colleagues in their own mosques and has met twice with Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani – a vital endorsement of his leadership at this critical time.

Of course, Prime Minister Abadi’s efforts to reconcile Iraq’s divisions and reform its government remain an enormous undertaking. The results are as yet uncertain. His efforts to spur economic revitalization are challenged by a historic decline in the price of oil.

Make no mistake: Iraq has a tough road ahead. Supporting a secure and stable Iraq will require a sustained effort from the Coalition. Whether it comes to standing up Iraq’s security forces or confronting extremist bigotry, these efforts require our realistic expectations.

And as we and Coalition partners pursue this campaign, there will be advances, as well as setbacks.

Sadly, Daesh’s savagery has touched us all. The victims of Daesh’s grotesque violence span from Tikrit to Tunis – and beyond.

We have grieved for the loss of the brave Jordanian pilot, Captain Mouaz Kasasbeh. We were disgusted when Daesh- affiliated militants executed 21 Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach. And we have mourned the murders of the many aid workers and reporters – all whose lives and values – like so many of Daesh’s victims – stand in stark contrast to Daesh’s empty vision.

In addition to these gruesome tragedies, what often goes unreported are the daily horrors endured by those who continue to suffer under Da’esh’s tyranny–the crimes and atrocities that impact countless Iraqis and Syrians every day.

None of us can stand by when we hear reports of Da’esh selling hundreds of women and girls into slavery.

None of us can see Daesh desecrate holy sites and murder spiritual leaders–Sunni, Shia, and Christian alike–and not see something sacred to us all being violated.

None of us can allow Daesh to threaten the existence of entire peoples and stay silent. Daesh and its barbarism must be consigned to the darker chapters of human history.

With the Coalition we have now assembled and through our coordinated action, we send a clear and unambiguous message: the international community will not waiver in its collective resolve to degrade and defeat this shared threat. We will not accept this as the new normal, and never cease to be outraged.

In my experience, I’ve seen the possibilities that lay beyond the horizon when partners maintain their focus on a set of clear strategic objectives, and work towards them with mutually-reinforcing lines of effort. I’ve seen how sustained strategic cooperation and the pursuit of a shared strategy can lead to unity of purpose and transformation.

Wherever Coalition nations have coordinated airstrikes with capable partners on the ground, we have seen Daesh stopped in its tracks, particularly in Iraq, where our partners have taken more than a quarter of the populated territories back from Daesh.

Because we lack the same kind of partners on the ground in Syria, the situation is more challenging and complex. However, more than 1,000 Coalition airstrikes helped Kobane’s defenders thwart earlier this year a massive Daesh assault, which killed nearly 1,000 of their fighters and led to significant attrition of its ranks.

Looking ahead, we are working closely with regional partners to stand up a program to train and equip approximately 5,000 appropriately vetted Syrian opposition elements for the next three years.

The military aspects of campaigns like this will invariably receive the greatest attention from the media and policy-makers. But as I saw in Afghanistan during my command there, in Al Anbar in 2007-08, and in recovery efforts for the 2004/5 South Asian tsunami: the military response to this kind of emergency is essential but it is not sufficient.

It will ultimately be the aggregate pressure of the Coalition’s activity over multiple mutually supporting lines of effort that will determine whether we succeed or fail.

That is why when I visit a Coalition capital and meet with a prime minister, a king, or president, I describe the counter-Daesh strategy as being organized around five lines of effort — the military line to deny safe haven and provide security assistance, disrupting the flow of foreign fighters, disrupting Daesh’s financial resources, providing humanitarian relief and support to its victims, and counter-messaging–or defeating Daesh as an idea.

The issue of foreign fighters has grown to be a prominent, if not the preeminent, topic of concern in all of these conversations, and rightly so. There is clearly a growing awareness that the thousands of young men, and increasingly, young women, who have traveled to fight in Syria and Iraq present a truly unprecedented, generational challenge.

Coalition members are beginning to take the coordinated and hopefully increasingly concerted actions required to meet the emerging foreign fighter threat. Within the context of the Coalition, more than a dozen nations have changed laws and penalties to make it more difficult to travel and fight in Syria and Iraq. Through capacity building in the Balkans, criminal justice efforts in North Africa, and through a 20 million euro investment from the European Union to engage at-risk communities, we are beginning to see nations take a series of coordinated actions.

Even with these expanded measures, foreign fighters continue to make their way to the battlefield so we must continue to harmonize our border and customs processes and promote intelligence sharing among partners.

As we seek to interdict foreign fighters at home, en route to the battlespace, and returning from the front, we will need to develop the capacity to reach, rehabilitate, and reintegrate the thousands who have been radicalized, an area where, as I noted earlier, Singapore has achieved significant success.

The kind of creative thinking and information sharing Singapore has championed on counter-radicalization is also critical to a related and similarly urgent challenge: constraining Daesh’s access to financial support.

If you have the right intelligence and have the right partners working together, some of what can be achieved in the financial space can strike a substantial blow at Daesh’s spending options and operational latitude.

The Coalition is not there yet, but we have made gains in synchronizing practices to block Daesh’s access to banks, both in the region and globally.

But, their financial resources are diverse and for now, nearly self-sustaining. For example, beyond the oil enterprise, Daesh’s portfolio includes massive criminal extortion of conquered populations, kidnap for ransom, and human trafficking and a slave trade, including sex slaves, in which, disgustingly, Daesh takes pride.

And when Daesh is not just destroying precious works of antiquity, it is attempting to make millions, if not billions, from the sale of historical artifacts and artworks. They are literally attempting to eliminate Iraq’s and Syria’s rich history for the purposes of burying the region’s future.

As more territory is taken back from Daesh, we must also ensure that we’re poised to act in relief of the liberated populations and support the return of internally displaced persons. We are working closely with the Iraqis, with the support of our Coalition partners, and in particular the Arab states, to help Iraq develop stabilization and recovery plans.

The Coalition’s counter-messaging line of effort is contesting Daesh’s narrative across the many platforms and languages it uses to drive its aggressive propaganda machine. Daesh appeals to many of its recruits because it proclaimed a Caliphate.

But while Daesh once proclaimed itself to be on the march, it is today under increasing pressure from a world uniting to push back against its savagery.

In any operation– stabilization, humanitarian, counter-messaging–we need to define success from the outset. When I think of what success must look like, I think of my young grandchild. I ask myself whether the world he will inherit will be different from our own.

I am not the only one in this room today who has spent the better part of his or her life at war or preparing for it. If we do not get this effort right, our children and grandchildren will have to endure the same and perhaps, more dangerous consequences.

Degrading and defeating Daesh is a top priority. But we should not forget the future that millions of young people across the region hoped to forge when the streamed on to the streets of their capitals just a few years ago. They were motivated by a common desire for education and jobs, for the freedom to determine their own future, no different from what all of us want for our families and the generations who follow us.

We should not forget how these young people used technology so effectively to share their struggle and story with the world. Think for just a moment about what would be possible if these same young people, so hopeful for peace and prosperity, were not joined in protest, but rather by efforts to innovate and trade with one another.

As we confront this shared threat, we must also seize this moment’s promise: to create a rising tide of opportunity, to propel a young generation forward in dignity. That must be our common aspiration.

And we should also keep in mind that if we do not act in concert, if we don’t use this moment of crisis as an opportunity to grapple with underlying causes of extremism, we will burden future generations with the bitter inheritance of this struggle. That’s why the work happening here in Singapore on de-radicalization and the purpose of this conference is so important … so vital to the way ahead.

In the fight against extremism, we must summon a will and determination not unlike the late Lee Kuan Yew’s. “If I decide that something is worth doing,” he said “then I'll put my heart and soul to it … That's the business of a leader.”

As members of the community of nations, let us be those kinds of leaders. Let us be resolute in this struggle.

Indeed, that is what the world asks of us … That is what this challenge requires of us … and that is what the future demands from each of us.

Thank you your leadership, your courage, and your continued commitment.

JOHN ALLEN'S REMARKS ON STABILIZING IRAQI TERRITORIES

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Stabilizing Iraqi Territories
Remarks
John Allen
Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition To Counter ISIL
Prime Minister's Guest House
Baghdad, Iraq
March 16, 2015

It is good to be back in Baghdad and to see so many familiar faces. I want to thank the Prime Minister and COMSEC for hosting us today. I also want to thank the Iraqi deputy ministers, Dr. Hamid, Dr. Turki, German Charge Milan Simandl and leaders who have come together to discuss a series of efforts that are vital to the peaceful and prosperous future of Iraq.

We also have a team today from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the UN, and the EU to learn from you today. We will bring your message back to the other Coalition partners who will meet in Berlin on Wednesday.

When I was here last, Prime Minister Abadi and I spoke about the importance of planning for Stabilization Operations. I have come to Baghdad today with a team of experts because we agreed that Stabilization planning must begin in earnest. Today and tomorrow our team will learn and understand how the Coalition can best support the Iraqi plan for stabilizing territories your country will take back from Daesh.

As Daesh is defeated in population centers and the military forces must move on to other objectives, there will be an immediate need for policing and public security efforts to set the conditions for essential service delivery. Populations that have fled the fighting will need shelter, assistance, and security, until they can return home. In many cases facilities will have been destroyed or made insecure by IEDs. Providers will need to rapidly assess and respond with basic medical care, water, electricity and other municipal services. All first responders, whether civil or military, should be sensitized to the special needs of those who’ve suffered under Daesh, especially women and girls.

A successful stabilization effort begins with fair treatment during military operations. We applaud Iraqi leaders, including His Eminence Ayatollah Sistani, who publicly called for the protection of civilians and warned against acts of revenge, recrimination, or abuse against civilians or prisoners. It also means protecting the schools, hospitals, water treatment facilities and securing antiquities and, libraries. These measures begin the process of reunifying Iraq and building trust between liberated communities and the Government of Iraq.

It is also critical for military and civilian ministries to work together from the beginning. Military forces need to understand how civilian stabilization operations will follow military operations. As part of our team today, we have experts on the provision of health services, restoring water and electricity, on policing and civilian-military planning, and on addressing the specific needs of women, children and vulnerable populations. Over the next two days they will work with you to identify how to synchronize civilian and military plans, and identify how the Coalition can work with you.

As I see it, there are four components to the counter-offensive that must be synchronized.

First, is the clearing element when the Iraqi Army and the Popular Mobilization Forces remove Daesh from a town or city.

Second is the security and policing element that deals with crime and provides general security so life can return to normal. This will likely come from a combination of PMF units, local tribes, and police.

Third is restoring local governance which will be difficult because many officials are in exile, were killed, or cooperated with Daesh.

Fourth, is providing for essential services including short-term restoration of services such as health, water, electricity, and rebuilding critical infrastructure.

These four components will be applied differently to the circumstances found in each liberated area. It is important that you plan uniquely for each city and town, and prepare the necessary resources.

Several Coalition partners have expressed a specific interest in offering technical and planning support to assist Iraq by filling any gaps in implementing Iraqi-led stabilization efforts. We will look to the leadership of Dr. Hamid and Dr. Turki to identify where assistance is needed and to communicate the Iraqi stabilization plan to the Coalition partners.

After this visit to Baghdad I will go to Berlin, where Germany and the United Arab Emirates will launch the Coalition Stabilization Working Group. This Working Group will work with the Government of Iraq to organize Coalition support to stabilization operations and identify resources.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of these critical activities. The stabilization effort will be the most important signal of the intentions of this government towards any and all Iraqi’s who have been victims of Daesh and those who have been driven from their homes. Iraq’s future as a unified nation depends upon how the liberating force treats those living under Daesh rule.

Stabilization operations can be expensive and require dedicated resources. We applaud the inclusion in the budget of $2 billion for recovery funding and support of displaced Iraqis. It will be essential to move resources quickly to the liberated areas most in need. As you continue to clarify stabilization and recovery needs, we will work with the United Nations to further develop the concept of a trust fund and find appropriate support. The Coalition does not have the resources to resource all of Iraq’s needs. We will work together to assist and support Iraq as we are able.

The recovery of Iraqis from under Daesh’s control is now beginning in earnest. We are already seeing the results of your early work in Diyala, and hopefully soon in Tikrit. Today, we want to hear from you about what you have seen to date, what lessons we can learn from the last few months, and what you anticipate the requirements are to stabilize liberated areas.

I look forward to learning more about Iraq’s efforts to bring stability to liberated areas from today’s conversation and to identify future actions necessary to ensure success in the days and months to come.

And now I would like to hand it over to my German partner, Charge Milan Simandl, whose nation is energetically engaged in this important effort.

GEN. JOHN ALLEN'S REMARKS ON COUNTERING ISIL

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 

Remarks to the Press on Countering ISIL

Special Briefing

John Allen

Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL 

Washington, DC

October 15, 2014

GEN. ALLEN: Good afternoon, everyone. It’s good to see you all. Many familiar faces. What I’d like to do today is to discuss my trip of last week, which was the first trip I took in my capacity as the President’s Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. But before I do that, what I’d like to do is to re-articulate my specific role in the strategy.
Now, this is a robust coalition. It’s made up of many diverse actors, all seized with the reality of degrading and defeating ISIL as a global challenge. And as the President’s special envoy in this capacity, my task is to consolidate and integrate and coordinate the coalition activities across multiple lines of shared effort.

This first trip and many of my early travels will be about the consolidation of the membership and the integration of what partners and potential members can contribute and how we integrate and harmonize those efforts to the accomplishment of the strategy.

We’ve heard a lot about the five lines of effort to this point: supporting military operations and training; stopping foreign fighters; cutting off access to financing; humanitarian relief; and de-legitimizing ISIL and degrading its messaging. And a key and a main takeaway from this trip was that we all agreed that while the military side is important to the outcome, it’s not in – it is not sufficient in and of itself. And there’s a strong consensus across this coalition about our shared goals and the objectives on all the lines of effort and a strong commitment to work together closely.

Now, you’ve all had daily readouts from Jen on our meetings of last week, and so I’d like to talk about the key themes that we saw emerge from our conversations with the partners and the coalition members about how we can take the fight to ISIL where it operates. And where it operates, as we see it, is in the physical space, in the financial space, and in the information space.

In the context of the physical space, or the battle space if you prefer, naturally it’s getting a lot of attention. And we had a number of very productive conversations about coalition efforts to defeat ISIL on the battlefield. A number of the partners have expressed their desire to participate in advising and assisting and building partner capacity and working in security sector reform.

In Iraq, we met with a broad cross-section of government and security officials, tribal leaders, and sheikhs. And in all of those meetings, we not only discussed the transformation of the Iraqi Security Forces but also the formation of the Iraqi National Guard which will seek to connect volunteers and tribal fighters into a formal structure at the provincial and national level.

In Amman, we expressed our support for the targeted airstrikes by the Jordanian Air Force in Syria. And as you’ve already heard, our Turkish partners have voiced their support for training and equipping the moderate Syrian opposition, and there is a DOD team on the ground, a joint team from the European Command and the Central Command on the ground in Ankara today, working out operational details.

I can’t stress enough how much we discussed confronting and contesting ISIL’s messaging in the information space and disrupting their recruitment and their radicalization of foreign fighters. Every country and partner we met with has a unique and vital role to play in this within the context of their particular cultural, religious, or national norms. And indeed, this diversity is turning out to be a real strength for the coalition. We’ve already seen many countries take action on particular issues associated with foreign fighters. For example, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have declared it illegal for its citizens to fight abroad. And Bahrain and Kuwait both announced that it would monitor ISIL sympathizers. Saudi Arabia arrested and convicted several Saudi nationals on terrorism charges, including an arrest of multiple individuals with alleged ties to al-Qaida in September.

For many partners there was a very sharp and often troubling intersection of the susceptibility of the citizenry of their countries to extremist messaging and the ISIL narrative, and a willingness to become a foreign fighter as a result of that narrative. So we discussed this nexus extensively with Egyptian and Turkish leadership. We also discussed it with Arab League leadership in Cairo as well, and how they can support and strengthen moderate voices across the region. And already, influential political or religious leaders from the region and around the world have issued statements rejecting ISIL’s violent and divisive ideology. I’d particularly note the 22-page letter issued in late September by 120 Islamic scholars to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his fighters denouncing ISIL militants and refuting its religious underpinnings.

And finally, in the financial space, we had productive conversations about disrupting ISIL’s finances and cutting off ISIL from the global financial network. The EU and NATO partners have already made great strides on this area, and on my trip next week to the Gulf region, we’ll look to build even more important progress into disrupting financing and foreign fighter lines of effort.

Several Gulf states have taken steps to enforce their counterterrorism laws more effectively, including Kuwait’s newly created financial intelligence unit, Qatar’s new law regulating charities that includes the establishment of a broad – of a board, pardon me – to oversee all charity work and contributions, and the UAE’s new CT law in August that tightens counterterrorism financing restrictions and clearly defines terror-related crimes and penalties. And in the coming weeks, Bahrain will host an international conference focused on identifying counterterrorism-financed best practices and developing an implementation plan.

So finally, I want to reiterate that this was, while a long trip, it was a very important trip. And we learned that this is a very complex and long-term undertaking, and this global coalition has literally existed for less than 40 days. We have a lot of work to do and we’ve been at it a short time. But the good news is that there is a common vision for the future, and we look forward to working together closely with the members of the coalition, ultimately, to achieve our objectives.

So thank you for your attention, and we’ll take some questions.

MS. PSAKI: So we have a limited amount of time for questions. I’m just giving you a heads-up. Lara.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MS. PSAKI: And I’ll do an entire briefing after this (inaudible).

QUESTION: Great. General, Secretary Kerry has said several times that your job – that you could speak about how the ball was moved forward. Specifically, can you talk about how the ball was moved forward with regard to Incirlik and the use of the base there? And also, can you explain why the U.S. has increased its airstrikes in and around Kobani so dramatically recently if Kobani is not a strategic importance to – military goal for the U.S.?

GEN. ALLEN: With regard to not just Incirlik, but other potential resources, we had, I think, very detailed and very constructive conversations with the Turks. They’re old friends and they’re NATO partners, and we talked about a variety of areas where we could work together.

The conversation with respect to how those kinds of details will ultimately be resolved is underway right now. The CENTCOM-EUCOM team that is on the ground is talking about operational details. We have also committed to continued political consultation on the variety of ways that the Turks can contribute to the coalition. And there have already been – as you probably saw on the readout from my trip, there have already been some commitments by the Turks at this point in areas where they will be of assistance to us with the idea that additional details will come from further consultation later.

And so there is a ongoing dialogue with the Turks, and we look forward to that dialogue continuing in context of a political consultation, and we expect that more details will be forthcoming. But at this point, I don’t want to get into the specifics of Incirlik or any particular other base other than what we’ve already announced.

QUESTION: And Kobani?

GEN. ALLEN: Well, Kobani – obviously, we’re striking the targets around Kobani for humanitarian purposes. I’d be very reluctant to attempt to assign something, a term like a “strategic target” or a “strategic outcome” for the strategy. Clearly, there was a need given the circumstances associated with the defense of that town. There was a need for additional fire support to go in to try to relieve the defenders and to buy some white space ultimately for the reorganization of the ground. And so we have picked up the tempo and the intensity of the airstrikes in order to provide that white space.

MS. PSAKI: Margaret.

QUESTION: Thank you. General, thank you.

GEN. ALLEN: Hi, how are you? Good morning – or good afternoon.

QUESTION: Good afternoon. You talked a bit about the approach to Iraq. I’m wondering if you can explain more specifically what the approach is in the Syria portion of this given that it is so strategically and operationally important, it’s a base of operations for ISIS. So can tell us what the point – what the timeline is, perhaps, for some of these ground forces, whether there would be any kind of protection afforded to them through air support either through a buffer zone or any kind of protection once we put them on the ground, and if there is any coordination with the FSA?

GEN. ALLEN: At this point there is not formal coordination with the FSA, so hit that point first. Obviously, information comes in from all different sources associated with providing local information or potentially targeting information. And we’ll take it all when it comes in and ultimately evaluate it for its value.

The Syrian portion of this strategy is very important. At this point, the intent of the coalition is to build a coherence to the Free Syrian Army elements that will give it the capacity and the credibility over time to be able to make its weight felt in the battlefield against ISIL. It’s going to require a build phase; it’s going to require a training and equipping phase. I think you have probably seen that there are countries in the region that have announced – Turkey being one of them – that has announced a willingness to host those centers for our trainers to begin to build that capability. But it’s really – it’s a holistic approach. It’s not just building the additional forces that will go into the Free Syrian Army; it’s also an emphasis that I made when I met with the political echelons of the free – of the moderate Syrian opposition that they need to begin to build and work together to create a coherent political superstructure within which they will ultimately have a political role to play in the outcome of our strategy overall with regard to Syria, which is a political resolution of this conflict.

And so when you have a strong political superstructure and it’s tied to a credible field force, which is our hope to build, a field force which ultimately deals with ISIL but in the context of the holistic approach – the political portion and the military portion – creates the moderate Syrian opposition as the force to be dealt with in the long term in the political outcome of Syria. And so that’s the intent. It’s not going to happen immediately. We’re working to establish the training sites now, and we’ll ultimately go through a vetting process and begin to bring the trainers and the fighters in to begin to build that force out.

QUESTION: And could you address the – whether there would be any air support, either through a buffer zone or through some of the planes we have in the sky already?

GEN. ALLEN: I think we’re going to consider all means necessary to provide for that force, and what particular measures we may take to do that, I think it’s too early to tell specifically with regard to a term or an effect. But we’ll certainly consider how that force ultimately will be employed overall on the ground and how the political entity will achieve its – our objective and its objective, ultimately, which is to represent a broad spectrum of the Syrian people and to make its voice be felt at the negotiating table eventually for the political outcome.

MS. PSAKI: Lesley?

QUESTION: General, thank you. One – one and a half questions. One is: How much --

GEN. ALLEN: One and a half.

QUESTION: How much is Turkey’s issue really about wanting to get rid of Assad and not necessarily focused on ISIL? Can you come to some kind of agreement on that one?

Number two, the Islamic State has also just put out a video, a number of images on where it’s making advantage – advances. Are the airstrikes having an impact? Are you pushing them back? Is this going to be won?

GEN. ALLEN: You said there was just something that came out a moment ago.

QUESTION: Right.

GEN. ALLEN: Give me that again, please.

QUESTION: The Islamic State has released a number of images on – about a base in Anbar that they’ve taken over.

GEN. ALLEN: Ah. Mm-hmm. I think we would say that the Turkish objective, and our objective in the end with respect to the regime in Syria, is the same. It’s a political outcome. In our case, it’s without Assad being a participant in that political outcome. I’ll let the Turks talk for themselves, speak for themselves in terms of their view on the matter. So I believe that in that regard, we’re lined up very closely.

They are focused with laser-like quality on the issue associated with ISIL. They’re very concerned about ISIL for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which is the enormous humanitarian crisis that has been created by ISIS in – just to the south of the border, but also that has generated a stream, an enormous stream of humanitarian – of refugees and a humanitarian requirement by the Turks. And the numbers vary depending on the reporting, but there’s well over a million and probably approaching a million and a half refugees in Turkey. And Turkey has been dealing with that humanitarian crisis now for some period of time. So it’s twofold. It’s obviously being concerned about the humanitarian signature that they have inside their country – the refugees – but it’s also a concern about ISIL’s presence on their southern border and the ability to generate even more of that.

MS. PSAKI: Elise. Sorry.

QUESTION: And on the issue of the strikes, I mean, are you – do you feel you’re making inroads on – are you pushing them back, or is the battle still – the outcome – who’s winning this at the moment?

GEN. ALLEN: Well, I’d be careful about assigning a winner or a loser. We had come in early along with the intention that the airstrikes were to buy white space to impede the tactical momentum of ISIL. And that in fact has occurred in some areas. They still retain some tactical momentum in other areas, and that’s to be expected. They – we’re only new into this strategy. We’re only new into the use of airstrikes. As I said, in some areas – Amirli, Mosul Dam, Haditha – those airstrikes were very helpful. We’re actually focusing, obviously, around Kobani, providing airstrikes to provide humanitarian assistance and relief there, obviously to give some time to the fighters to organize on the ground. But in the Anbar province, our hope is to stop or halt that tactical initiative and momentum that they have there.

MS. PSAKI: Elise.

QUESTION: Thank you, General Allen. Just a quick follow on Turkey, and I have another question.

On Turkey, I mean, there are few – as you noted, there are few countries that are facing a threat or the impact as much as Turkey, and it does seem as if while other coalition members have kind of eagerly come to the table, it does seem like it’s a lot more of a harder sell with Turkey. And if you could lay out what the reluctance is here – is that an issue of their dealings with the Kurds, is that also Assad, is it a combination of such, and how much longer do you think this will take?

We’ve also heard a lot about – you laid out this policy on training the opposition in Syria to a capable fighting force and acknowledged that it would take a long time. It seems as if there’s a kind of “Iraq first” strategy while that fighting force is built up and capable and dealing with leaders on the ground on Syria, but really focusing and concentrating on the battle space in Iraq. Could you kind of lay out a blueprint of how you think that will go?

GEN. ALLEN: Sure. Clearly, the emergency in Iraq right now is foremost in our thinking: stabilizing the government, giving Prime Minister Abadi the opportunity to build a stable government that is inclusive. He has – I’ve met with him several times now just recently on the trip. He was very clear that it is his intention to be the prime minister of a government that is inclusive of all the elements of the population in Iraq.

But obviously, ISIL has made some substantial gains in Iraq, and the intent at this juncture is to take those steps that are necessary with the forces that we have available and the air power that we have at our fingertips to buy the white space necessary for what comes next, which is the training program for those elements of the Iraqi national security forces that will have to be refurbished and then put back into the field, ultimately for the Iraqis to pursue the campaign plan, which they’re developing, to restore the tactical integrity of Iraq and the sovereignty of Iraq. And it’s going to take a while.

Now, this isn’t sequential, because while that’s occurring, we’re going to also be undertaking the training and equipping program for the free Syrian elements at the same time. We have the capacity to do both, and there is significant coalition interest in participating in both. And as I said a few minutes ago, we have some partners that will be interested in providing what we call building partner capacity – so helping to refurbish the Iraqi Security Forces – and we’ll have some partners that will be interested in security sector reform, which will be to assist the ministries in becoming more effective in supporting their operating forces in the field. But we’ll also have partners that are interested in participating in the development of the free Syrian echelons that are going to be trained in the training camps also in the region.

So much of this can occur simultaneously or concurrently. It doesn’t have to be sequential.

QUESTION: And Turkey?

GEN. ALLEN: With what regard?

QUESTION: With regards to, like, why is this such a hard sell with Turkey?

GEN. ALLEN: I don’t know that it’s a hard sell. I think what they want to be sure of is if they’re going to embark and commit the national resources that will ultimately be committed to this that they want to understand how they’ll fit into the program and how ultimately the coalition would operate out of Turkey, and those are valid questions. And the point of the planning team being on the ground and the point of our continued political consultation is to answer those questions for them and to go through a detailed planning process so they understand exactly what it is that they as a frontline state which faces, frankly, an awful lot of the many lines or faces participation in many of the lines of effort that we’ve talked about in terms of foreign fighters and disrupting finances and hosting coalition forces and potentially conducting military operations. They want to understand that, and they’re owed that as a friend and as a NATO partner.

MS. PSAKI: Roz. And unfortunately, this is going to have to be the last question due to our time constraint.

GEN. ALLEN: Okay.

QUESTION: Thank you, General. I wanted to come back to something you talked about particularly in your conversations with leaders who say that they’re concerned about the vulnerability of their populations and the seeming attractiveness of ISIL’s ideology, that people would be willing to leave their countries and take up arms for ISIL. How do you win hearts and minds, to use the phrase? Is it a simple matter of a PR campaign? What do you do, for example, about some of the anti-Muslim bigotry here in the United States, in Europe for example, that might make people feel as if their faith is under attack and they need to take up arms? It seems like it’s a very complicated, long-term problem.

GEN. ALLEN: It is a complicated – it’s a complicated subject. Each one of the countries that we spoke to were very concerned about doing just what you said, and that is outreaching to their populations and helping them – the populations themselves, the tribal structures within those populations, the elders, the clerics, the mothers, the teachers, all of the folks who are enormously important and influencing the direction of their youth – to reach out into those communities to assist them in dealing with the radicalization that occurs through social media and the internet and so on.

And so they voiced not only their concerns in reaching out to those communities, but they also in most cases voiced the concerns of the communities themselves and how they sought a partnership with the leadership in those countries to try to get after this growth and explosion, horizontal explosion through the social media, of access to extremist messages and radicalization.

So the foreign fighter piece of this, which ultimately is the result, was very closely paired with the conversation about attacking and contesting the ISIL message in the information sphere, the information space. And what was important was each of those countries saw the populations themselves as the first line of defense. And as they conducted their community outreach to those population groups and the influencers who I mentioned before, their hope was to try to have that first line of defense be the mechanism by which we can start to defeat the ISIL message as it is poured into the ears or into the eyes of those young children who sit in front of a computer or who listen to social media of some form or another.

And then, of course, it branches out across a whole process of border control and governing activities associated with transit from the source country by the various means necessary and ultimately into the battle space where they become often the suicide bombers, the unwitting suicide bombers in some cases, in many cases for ISIL.

So the national leadership was concerned; but importantly, they conveyed the message that the populations themselves were also concerned, and they saw here opportunities for partnership if they really exploit this an opportunity – opportunities for partnership they might not have had otherwise.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MS. PSAKI: Thank you, everyone.

QUESTION: I just have a quick --

MS. PSAKI: We’ll hopefully do this again, but I’ll be right back, Said, and I’m happy to take your question when I come back. We’ll be right back. Okay, thanks, everyone.