what is at stake for their own safety's sake and what happens when the united states fades away but americans for a long time have said we got to tell nato allies to do more and we just act like it doesn't make a difference so i think a new president would have to take that very strong line inside the nato alliance to say we are not going to do this as business as usual again. there would be a lot of support for it. ..

a but all this says something about what happens when america withdraws from the world, why doesn't play the role we needed to play. not because we're we are altruistic. we are not after doing these for the other countries. we are doing it for our benefit. if we don't do it nobody else is going to do that for us. thank you very much. [applause] >> this week on c-span in primetime, three nights of attacks between between executives and innovators driving today's most successful internet companies. >> it should be a bit late or something but instead it's just a taxi.

and for that privilege of leasing that car for 40 grand a year, he gets to be impoverished. >> here from insiders at facebook, paypal and more all part of a special presentation while congress is in recess. >> israel, that probably -- went digital first for gdp growth job creation minority, arabs, health care, education to every location, moving a city south. >> three nights of tech tonight at 7 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> we are live now at the brookings institution for discussion on violence in the middle east. experts from the brookings institution, georgetown university and the carnegie endowment for international peace will talk about the civil wars in yemen and libya, and what can be done to stop the conflict. office as the white house is hosting a summit on violent

extremism in the middle east and around the world. we have coverage of that event also coming up on the c-span networks. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> a

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>> good morning and welcome. first i would like to make sure our video link is working. can you give us a wave if it is working. all right, thank you. thank you all very much for braving the aftermath of snow. i know in washington that's usually a disaster that takes weeks from which to recover, so you all are ahead by coming out today. i'm daniel byman, research director here of middle east center at brookings, also a professor at georgetown university. we designed this event because we felt that u.s. attention, really world attention when thinking about the middle east was thinking about the wars in iraq and syria, of course. it was thinking about the iranian nuclear program. once or twice is think about the israeli-palestinian peace process, but it wasn't thinking about the crises that were quietly growing and getting

worse, that perhaps something could be done about the relatively early stage. in particular we were thinking about yemen and libya where you have what we saw limited strive turn into more massive strife, changing to relatively low grade civil wars. there's a question about these countries, which is are we at a stage where we will see the violence dramatically increase where two or three years from now we will say hundreds of thousands of people or at least tens of thousands of people are dying, i wish we had done something sooner. and part of the purpose of this event is to draw attention to these complex. i'm delighted that we have really for great people to educate us about these complex and what to do about them. our first speaker is ibrahim sharqieh from doha joining us by peter kassig l. in the doha center. for those of you who follow both human and libya you know ibrahim well.

he writes extensively on this conflict, someone who is very deep both. our second speaker is to my the immediate left is frederic wehrey who is a senior associate at carnegie right next door to us. he is just back from a trip to libya and he too has written extensively on libya particular among other countries and has a real in depth knowledge of what's going on not just in general but right now in the conflict today. our next speaker is sama'a al-hamdani. she is the editor of the yemeniaty blog. choose someone who writes extensively on issues related to yemen, including women's issues and civil rights issues. she's one of the sharp eyed observers of yemeni politics today. and our last speaker is ambassador barbara bodine. in addition to a long distance career in the state department having served in yemen as ambassador among other countries, i'm delighted issues also a colleague of mine now at georgetown having the institute for diplomacy.

i feel these four speakers are going to give us a sense of the challenges and also some sense of what might be done about these complex. so let's start with ibrahim over in doha. please, and thank you for joining us today. [inaudible[inaudible] >> inevitably there will be video problems. okay ibrahim -- that's never a good sound to come out of any device. ibrahim, can you hear us now? no. okay. i'm actually going to vary the order a little bit. what i'm going to do is while our technical folks can fix this in a room and ask fred to kick off in hopes it would go to

ibrahim after that. fred, if you don't mind please. >> a pleasure to be under look forward to hearing my colleagues comments very soon. i just returned from libya and i can't emphasize enough that this is a conflict that has reached really dire proportions. i mean, about since the civil war started last year in may about 2500 people have lost their lives. that may seem somewhat of a poultry some would you compare to what's going on industry but this is a coach with a small population. the of the ripple effect of this conflict has been quite better, massive refugee flows, the plummeting oil production, and then most recently as we've seen the growth of the islamic state in libya. how did we give your? we can walk back the clock to the nato intervention, the failures after that intervention to assist the libyan government but i think what we are really led with his the aftershocks of

gadhafi's divided rule of policy that this was really a civil war that reflected his 42 year rule of tyranny the way he guided state institutions, the way he played communities off against one another and i think obviously the biggest failing of the transitional government period after the fall of gadhafi was the absence of a government that could project its authority that had the means to enforce its rule that how de-monopolization on force. we are really talk by the absence of a cohesive military army and police. this led to the proliferation of militias that we hear so much about. where are we have today? what we're really facing today is a civil war between two factions, one in the east that is recognized by the international community that is broadly anti-islamist in its orientation. the other faction is based in

tripoli, unrecognized. although this distinction between islamists and non-islamist is really a simple petition. what we are talking about is multiple power, multiple committees to some of the ideological, some of them ethnic, some of them down based that have banded together against common enemies. it's an incredibly complex civil war. if i was to point to one dividing line and libya that i see as sufficiently explanatory that helps us understand this conflict, it is really a split between the old order, the old officer class the old technocrats, the redness of the old regime, and they got what i would call the revolutionary camp. and some of his revolutionary camp our contact islamists, some of them are former libyan islamic fighting groups that had ties to al-qaeda, muslim brotherhood. but i think that's the real dividing line. where we are struck -- stuck

right now is a vicious cycle of mutual demonization of wild exaggeration. on the one hand, you have the camp in the east that is led by the the general who is was an excellent profile of him in "the new yorker" this week that is sorted using the counterterrorism card to paint his domestic opponents, the islamists, as terroristic and on the other side i was just in the tripoli on the islamist side. you have this camp saying this is a conflict about the return of the deep state would want the old officer corps coming back gadhafi part to. and we stuck in a cycle of mutual delegitimization. i think one very worrisome development that we've seen the last several weeks is the fragmentation of authority on both sides. we speak about these two camps and on camp in the western the dignity can't in the east but these are really loose

coalitions of militias different power centers in they are fragmenting. and 119 dashed on the one hand that is encouraging because it allows you to identify moderate that you can view all and bring it to a dialogue and that's what's happening now with the u.n. sponsored peace process under way. but at the same time that fragmentation is worrisome because you have spoilers. said just as the u.n. talks are under way, you have these islamists carrying out an airstrike on the airport yesterday, which is very worrisome and i think threatens to torpedo the peace talks. let me say a word about the rise of isis. the idea of libya as a base as a haven for extremism is not new. obviously, it existed under gadhafi that provided many volunteers to iraq and syria. iraq and afghanistan. after the revolution you had the growth of al-qaeda affiliated groups, and, indeed, general

haftar's campaign was designed to root out those groups from the east. i think what you had in the wake of the campaign is not the decisive defeat of those groups but rather their dispersal, their mutation. and this is what we're seeing now with isis. isis in libya is really giving away a lot of members of these older postrevolutionary jihad is groups that had affiliations to al-qaeda. you've had the influx of volunteers that went to iraq and syria to fight with isis libyans that went, started returning last spring and last summer. that's the nucleus of isis in the city. you that isis spread to all three of libya's major provinces, and, of course, the conduct of some very high profile attacks against the creepy hotel and most tragically recently the killing of the egyptian copts. again let me move some thoughts about policy options but i think one of the things that makes this problem so compounding is where faced with a terrorist problem in libya that is

embedded in a very complex civil war. there's no government to work here, there are two competing factions. so the question again and we face this in iraq and syria and yemen, is what partner to assist on the ground? how do we assist forces on the ground? there's a danger that if we provide counterterrorism assistance, the one faction that that will be used politically against opponents in the civil war. where are we at right now with resolving this conflict? you had the united nations came out, i think today, and said if these peace talks next week don't resolve themselves delete is some sort of resolution there's a real possibility of a u.n. intervention. and we made an -- we may be moving toward of that possibility. in my conversations, i think what the u.s. is trying to do is persuade more pragmatic factions

of the don coalition, the islamists in the west, to move toward a peace agreement with the tobruk government, the first step is opposite a cease-fire. the has to be a policy of noninterference regional states but egyptians are conducting airstrikes but licensing is policymakers and my own opinion is the strikes aren't helpful. they're going after camps in the east but what it is doing is having a polarizing effect on the civil war. egyptian intervention is a couple in terms of resolving the broader political conflict. i think the u.s. has the number and enmeshed in has a number of sort of coercive measures that they can use to try to force this conflict to an end. one of them is an abscess -- and asset freeze on the libya central bank reserves or oil fund. again both sides in this conflict ironically both the dawn coalition and the dignity coalition are accessing own

funds, drawing from the plot of money to fuel the conflict to pay their militias. so the idea to cut off a stream of revenue freeze the assets, put sanctions on certain individuals who are known to be attacking civilians facilities, and that will somehow end the conflict. again it's a risky hypothesis. there's a lot of operational questions, question because most of the central bank assets are held in europe. and my sense is that the europeans are a little reluctant to do that because the blowback in libya. the question of the u.n. intervention force, this is often heralded as a silver bullet send in the human. again, there's real questions about its mandate who would pay for such a force, where it would be deployed in libya. there's been some work about the number of troops you actually need to secure key installations are key areas but if you talk about tripoli and benghazi combined in a population of

3 million. by some guy collations would need about 30,000 troops to actually secure those areas. so again a u.n. resolution intervention force is not the panacea. my hope and i will conclude on a guarded optimistic hope, i just got back from the city of misurata which feels a powerful militias on the dawn side. this is the basis community. there are merchant but they also have the most powerful militias. what i got since there was they're tired of fighting, there's an exhaustion. you do have fragments emerging. i think the trick is identified those fragments can bring them into the dialogue process on the other side, identify people you can work with. has be some sort of confidence-building measures on both sides. the most polarizing figures on both sides have to be moved out of the equation i think for unity government to emerge. i will leave it at that.

>> thank you, fred. that was an excellent beginning to our conversation. i'm going to try again. ibrahim, can you hear us? which are like to give your remarks now lacks? okay, i'm going to take that as a no. ibrahim, can you hear us? okay, i'm going to move on and we will try again. okay, again apologies to all of you and apologies to ibrahim for our technical difficulties. >> good morning, everyone. i'm really happy to be your and to talk about human. i just want to point out that a few years ago you were talking i didn't the relationship to one of the successes of the arab spring. and now your i am today talking about it in relationship to libya and sometimes even relationship to syria. so i think this an opportunity

to kind of quickly glanced over what went wrong. i think maybe could be a cautionary tale of what the u.n. should not be in libya. if they have an opportunity for dialogue. such as the quick look at what's happening now in yemen. you have a movement that has been all over the news. they have controlled 11 race out of 20 in yemen. epic strong secessionist movement. they're strong in the sense they are demanding secession but they're not united. you also a popular committees in the south of yemen that belong, they just belong to the former president who just resigned. so you have these agents taking place in an yemen hills of tribes. you also have al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula. that's in america's biggest concern. putting all this point is that of course, there are a lot more

than those. of course, i can discuss them in a question and answer section if you like, but looking at human right now, what is going in yemen right now? you have the movement that took over the capital that has taken control of most of the government institutions. you have a president and a government that resigned. and so what the al-houthi group is opposed by the 551 transitional national council that will take yemen to another transition for two years can. discounts will select five members and the five members are going to form a presidential council that is supposed to take care of anything that yemen these, for two years and then we can have elections. of course the threat of this is that we just finished a transitional process that is led by the u.n. so the risk is are we retreating another transition with just a lot of work but no actual work would become commend on the ground? so i just want to quickly give

you guys an explanation of who the al-houthi are. the who the movement, a revivalist movement. it can morph in the mid '90s into a rebel movement. by the early 2000 they were an enemy of the state. and former president government engage in sex was with him from 2004-2010. so since the arab spring in 2011 they were able to present themselves as the former regime and to show that they have strengthened the northern parts of given. so they participate in yemen's national dialogue with 33 members, and they also able to secure an entire committee in this dialog just to discuss their concerns. so while they were engaging in a dialogue, they were engaging in warfare outside of the dialogue are terrified a group in yemen that belongs to a sect.

what's happening now in yemen because of the war between the houthi and the southeast, we are portraying it as if it's a sectarian war. in reality it's all about power and politics. i think we need to keep that in mind. so the houthi came to power by protesting a subsidy list that the president decided to to say the common. it was a central move that yemen had to make in order to keep its comes from collapsing. so when the people took to the street, the houthis decide to capitalize on the. they demanded, to reinstate subsidies, and then they pretty much held protest and within six days they took control of the capital. on september 21 the houthis pretty much surround all government billings and took charge of everything there. having said that since they have demanded the creation of a new government there was a new

prime ministers who was appointed and a new government was elected by the new government that they created just in november 2014 actually consisted of technocrats. political parts on the ground in yemen and tribal leaders refuse to purchase the in this government, which is probably why the government reside. they had no actual effect on the ground. and so the government was created in november. they sought approval from the parliament in december and they resigned in january. that was a very short-lived government and now human has no government. everything is in the control of the revolutionary committees that are composed by houthis. the revolutionary committees is a fancy name for militants and political branch on the ground that is facing -- and the actually report directly to the leader of the houthis movement. they don't deal with the political office of the houthis. so why did the houthis take

over? what happened, what went wrong and the national dialogue transition? so first of all we get the usual critiques about yemen's national dialogue that was led by the human. it was to be. it took too long. it was, you know, the members were 500 members, and five and 65 members but to be to take that a step further, the failure of the transitions actually because of the government that was created. so in 2011 it was decide that a national unity government that was going to be composed of different political parties. that government because it was composed of different political parties, they refuse to work with each other and i think each political branch was kind of secure their position on the ground. and had these governments didn't work for him because he was a new president he was put in place just for a transitional period of two years. and so previous to 2011 we had a yemeni government that acted as a mediator or a middleman between the international

committee and the west and the local powerholders on the ground. yemen always had tribes. they always had -- they always had movement and even in some cases you can come if you're successful you can be achieved. so the government always is able to create a file of team indication between the west and what's going on on the ground. had discovered kind of broke that tie because didn't have society, they can communicate anymore, and so it seems that that led to the weakening of state institutions. the government wasn't able to deliver services, and on the ground political parties took advantage of the forces that we can did national identity. people on the ground were for the first time asking oh are you sunni? what is your politics? then they start pointing fingers at each other. that's all because of a strong political vacuum that was left.

so what was also another problem was that yemen had no checks and balances in place. the military restructuring that took place weekend of the military. the law wasn't effective, and we also had a parliament that was in place since 2003. it was a huge and i'd need for parliamentary elections but that didn't take place. the worst thing that happened to the transition period is that in february 2014, we were supposed to have presidential elections. that didn't happen. the period was extended and the biggest problem was that the international community and the players on the ground did not find a legal way of extending this transition which made it very easy for people tocome and point out the flaws entity to finish over what was happening on the ground. the only thing that happened to explain extension of the transition period is that the u.n. special envoy to yemen he stated that the du which have a time limit of two years is only in think by the delivery of the

transition, and not by duration. and so that's what brought us here. what are the mistakes the international community committed in yemen is that they wanted to keep him as a key ally because they're able to combat terrorism on the ground. and then they also had no plan b. so in yemen and the national dialogue conference and that was the only game in plan. all other ways of negotiation, any kind of tribal negotiations or any kind of on the groundwork didn't take place. everything was interested in the u.n. hands and everything poured in that direction. that's a very big mistake because the realities on the ground were very separate from what was taken on behind closed doors in a very elite hotel. so looking at yemen what now? what can we do? so first of all what's happening now is the u.s., the uk france and a bunch of other governments

decided to shut down their diplomatic missions on the ground and pull them out. there's a policy or strategy of isolating yemenis, by slitting the houthi movement on the ground. this policy right now is probably a worst thing that they could do. it is definitely pouring into what saudi arabia would want because saudi is very upset that there's a shia movement near the borders. however, this isolation only push the houthis towards the arms of event. it would also probably strengthened al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula because at the moment with the government out of sight, the houthis are the strongest are on the ground. there enemy is al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula. so to fight the houthis, any kind of funds or any kind of weapons that's going to go into strengthening the opponents of the houthis will probably fall into the hands of al-qaeda or any kind of militant branch that is similar to that.

and so in my opinion the countries that evacuated yemen should probably return in negotiations. the immediate reality on the ground, the houthis are here to stay. they have control of the majority of the military. i would say at least 60% of military is in their hands. they have control over the national security. of the political security organization of human. and so we are going to have to deal with them. and i think while i strong contender behavior to arrest protesters and torture them into deep former government officials under house arrest, they have control. so unfortunately the yemen state and isolation war is probably going to be the only business in town, and everything is going to go into that that and that's the last thing that i think anyone in the world would want in the middle east right now given the circumstances in syria and iraq and even libya. can we say jim and? that's the question that i always hear. i think that yes, we can save

human because there are always options. there's never one way. we just have to be flexible in our approach. we also have to put pressure not just on the houthi movement but also other political parties to engage with the houthis to come up with a transition. the only option out of this is the kind of create a force on the ground that is composed of all the different parties and kind of hope to hold presidential elections. and so we need to stabilize yemen. we need to save yemen from a massive economic disaster that will, under way. i think 62% of on yemen is depend on humanitarian aid come and about 14 million people are in dire need of clean water. and so look at the circumstances of their, we need to kind of assess these people and we need to kind of advice, u.n. special envoy, holding negotiations

between political parties and the houthis. i think maybe it's in our best interest to ask them to change the strategy and told in negotiations that are open and transparent before everyone. the yemeni people need to know everything and i think on the ground, yemenis don't know as much as you guys probably know here. they don't know what's going on behind closed doors i think it's very essential to keep all negotiations open and transparent and to engage in the people any kind of transition movement forward. the only thing is i just want to say that it's a shame if we lose yemen to the houthis scenario that we're going to see in the future because yemen displayed one of the few unique democratic expenses in the arabian peninsula. it was real hope for democracy and was one of the few countries where women to participate was actually going somewhere. and i think that the u.s. has invested too much to kind of let yemen go by isolating them or by

abandoning all the work that they have there. >> thank you. i'm going to go to ambassador bodine next and then hopefully our technical issues can be resolved. and we can hear from ibrahim. so please. >> thank you. thank you all for coming. battling the remnants of what passes for a blizzard in washington. and i noticed a number of people in the audience here who could do just as well sitting appear as sitting at there. look forward to the question and answer. thank you for your view of where we are in yemen and bringing us up-to-date on libya which i profess not to know very much about it i have to say that sometimes when i hear people talk about libya, i kind of in the you because it seems as if -- in the you. it seems like you have the east versus the west. and i took your point on fragmentation and everything. but when you do get to yemen you

get to what i've often described as a kaleidoscopic political structure where you've got a finite number of pieces in an infinite number of patterns. and who is aligned with you and who is in coalition at any given time is constantly shifting. and i am sometimes concerned that in washington we try to find mosaics which are static as opposed to kaleidoscope's which are in constant motion when we're trying to do policy. i think one of the first questions that come on the policy side that the u.s. and others need to ask is do we judge whatever we have as a yemeni government solely through the prism, or five standard of compliance to serve as proxy ground for our war on terrorism

particularly on al-qaeda. with the financial focus primarily on issues like working with local partners. and our rhetoric that is almost solely focused on counterterrorism. even the other day when i was speaking about yemen somebody from usaid noted you know how much we've increased our economic assistance to yemen over the years but described as fully integrated in supporting our counterterrorism efforts. and so our developers were, our governance work was all put in the context of counterterrorism. so are we looking at yemen as a compliant partner in a proxy war, or are we willing to go back to, as was described, looking at that there is stresses on this state and on this society that over the last

couple of years really have undermine the legitimacy and the efficacy of the government and allowed the extremists narrative to become the operative one? we used to be very much engaged in governance and development projects in yemen. we were never the largest donor, but we were a very active donor. and yemen was at one point and in urging but indigenous democratic experiment. in fact, the first community of democracy summit meeting was held there. unfortunately, i think what washington has been doing over the last several years we opted for the first alternative, that we have seen yemen solely within the context of our counterterrorism fight which is a highly narcissistic way to be

structuring your policy. your national interest out so they needs to be first and foremost, but it may not be narcissistic. ours is becoming narcissistic. and, in fact, a couple of months ago after the september takeover by the houthis but before the january whatever we're calling that, it was some talk about washington starting to open a dialogue with the houthis but it was all done within the context of welcome will they let us continue our characters and politics? so we were defaulting right back to where we had always been. the other problem with this is that it's very shortsighted, and i would make the contention that isn't not been successful. we have been so focused on aqap at a constant stream of reports going back at least a decade on the houthis, on the southern secession movement, on all of

the various security and political stressors within the country, we are not really fully realized or addressed. and, in fact, i recently heard someone, a senior policy person describe what is going on in yemen as an intelligence failure. and i was very surprised because it was not an intelligence failure. anybody who's been following yemen knows yemen. knew what was coming perhaps not the exact statement certainly was not surprised but i think what we have had is a policy failure. persistent efforts to squeeze yemen into pre-existing templates have served be a phenomenal effectiveness. an example is the current effort to try to squeeze yemen into this sectarian battle. that it's between sunni and shia shia.

and by putting it in this secretary and vocabulary, but also again walk away from having to face what are the real stressors in the society and the state. which arkin governance and development. we start to see the problems as externally generated. if it wasn't for the iranians everything would be fine. well, everything was not fine. the iranians are actually fairly late our rivals to this. and we have been raising the profile and the status, therefore of aqap as the defenders of sunni ism against the onslaught of iranian backed shia some, and that is an enormous distortion. if they are an internally focused movement, their tactics have been very wrong but to think that they can somehow step down with the recent u.n.

resolution which asked the houthis to basically walk away was naïve at best. they are a political force. they are a security force. they are there. and they are not going to step down. ironically, if they were to step down, just say the actually went, oh, my god, the u.n. security council has told us where to step down, i guess we're going to have to do it, they would be a total vacuum in yemen. there is no party. there is no coalition which is currently capable of running the country. even with the constantly shifting coalition. and so this is one where a u.n. intervention force would be about as counterproductive as anything i can imagine. it would not work. i don't know what side they would be on. i do know what they would be doing except perhaps unifying all of the yemenis against them.

but where the political dialogue with these ever shifting coalition is frustrating no guarantee of success but is the only step forward. what we have to do in terms of policy is think what happens the day after. this is what we did not do with a national dialogue, which was an amazing experiment in rewriting the social contract. that the international community was not that two-step in the day after the national dialogue and provide to the yemeni people the economic employment government changes that had been behind the 2011 revolution to begin with. we kind of a national dialogue overcome with constitution, put it in the success column, go home. well, we can do that. so we need to learn from our

most immediate failures and i think our failures was over a number of years. to start thinking about, we don't want the shame of losing yemen. we are not at that point yet, but we have got to change our approach and our commitment to yemen to be one of something other than a proxy war seen as somebody else's proxy war and actually get at what are the stressors within yemen. this is a savable country. thank you. >> thank you. i think we've got some technical difficulties but let me check. ibrahim, are you on the other end? >> i think it is solved now. can you hear me speak with yes we can. as we originally planned, our last speaker will be ibrahim sharqieh. ibrahim, please go ahead. >> hello? >> hello. >> yes. well, think you're going. thank you in washington and thank you for starting this very

important discussion area. it's almost six begin here in doha, and what finally overcome this issue i share with you my thoughts, join the discussion washington. and to everyone and thanks also to -- [inaudible] for great into. i'm trying after these great presentations on media -- libya and yemen, i will try -- and do some bridging the twin libya and yemen and do some comparisons. and recognize some patterns here, try to understand the civil wars that are taking place now in the region. and it is said let me begin with this, that all you're talking about change nonviolence resistance and

national dialogue, the debate has shifted from change in peaceful means that we're talking about -- looking at two countries, there are a number of factors that can be identified. the very first one is that in my view, the transition itself. in my view this is the wealth of instability and violence that we are seeing that's taking place in both countries actually, it's not completely out of norm for a transition looking at how other countries deals with the transition to such transitions are thought to be complicated, messy, difficult, very challenging and yes can be

violent. and in many cases out of looking at cases, there's investment of approximately only one-third of the transition conflicts that make it peacefully, successfully peacefully without experiencing levels of violence. but two-thirds estimates two-thirds transition of conflict after negotiate agreement, they usually suffer some aspect of instability especially five years and after a regime change or a civil war and all of that. so what is happening now for years or five years after the uprising i think we are still looking at it from a global perspective, still within the norms, but we should of course take that, you know for granted. and recognize that especially

because, here this takes me to the second pattern which is these conflicts or the civil wars, whatever you want to call them, can still be contained. looking at civil war also globally, the duration of civil wars usual last a 25 and 15 years. here we are still in the beginning. this will give us hope and this tells us why probably we haven't, i see the point why some hesitant about calling them even civil wars. so i definitely see that. probably we haven't really seen a civil war that is happening in these two countries. so it's still debatable and still within the first couple of years after the transition. so i think in my view this

gives hope as it is still, can still be contained and can be prevented from instilling more civil war probably as we see in syria or in other places. the number the third thing i think which is quite alarming and we should be careful as we should notice is now, in fact, which is these conflicts or civil wars are becoming more of -- [inaudible] meaning that this experience of instability that the two countries are experiencing actually are generating new issues that will not or did not exist in the past. for example, in the libya, only as a result of the recent fighting the number of displaced

peoples has reached almost 394,000 people. this, of course, adds to approximate half a million from the revolution under the regime. so this takes a number to approximately 800000 or so but even into a million. so this large number are in flux emerging as a result of current fighting is pushing becoming more self-sustaining here because there are new issues making it stronger or more resistant to the revolution. an example i see is the number of militia but in the past we were talking about probably a handful, a few number of malicious. today, we're talking about some estimates put it active militia working in libya -- this

actually is alarming in a way that this is emerging, we have emerging warlords here. so it is in their own interest for this conflict to continue and that is again the self-sustaining aspect here where does -- the conflict becomes more alarming. another factor that the two countries also have shared, which is the spillover effect. we have seen, it's obvious now that egypt, or the conflict in the libya has aspects of a spillover in egypt, as we are clearly and publicly saying egypt becoming or taking an active bombing part in the conflict in libya. in yemen, we have to be careful

because always whenever we talk about instability there, we always, the media think that comes to our mind is saudi arabia and how this is going to spillover in saudi arabia. and, of course 2009 is still present in our mind when saudi was pulled into the conflict between the government and made the conflict even more conflict or more complicated. beyond the spillover, actually in the neighboring countries another pattern also that is emerging here is the regional or even the global aspect of a spillover of the conflict in the two cases but and i'll give you an example here of the oil supply, oil markets and how this, and how the oil market is going to be impacted.

in the libya for example the oil production has dropped in the libya to today almost 400,000 barrels a day from 1.6 in the past. so it's almost now libya is producing less than one-third of its capacity in oil production and this is going to have a force and it will impact the world market. in the case of yemen also the houthis as you know, they're getting closer, now we're hearing -- [inaudible] and i fail to see a civil war in yemen, a part acted civil war will have a serious impact where we have all of the 4 million barrels of oil traded

daily. so that is also another impact that we are going to see more be on the region and how it will impact others. the spoilers, we are seeing that, you know parts emerging also taking more active active role. that is against the political process and working against everyone particularly. we know of al-qaeda in the air potential for a long time in yemen, and that you are seeing daesh of isis or isil, or whatever you want to call it also becoming more active in libya which is the two countries share. another alarming aspect here is that we start is the and issues of legitimacy in the two countries, where in yemen we

know the houthis, they have representation, but on the other side actually who represents who? the south, the north joint meeting partners that use to be more functional in the past is no longer the case. now, or who exactly is representing. and also within libya itself. we were talking about dawn coalition of dignity coalition on the side of dawn who actually possess this party. we have a number of actually a coalition of different -- that is not really about who represents who. so who represents sharia and -- [inaudible] that's actually the leaders --

so this makes the situation more compensated. now, after talking about the two sections share some solutions or where do they go from here the solution in both countries, in my view will have two come from the two countries themselves. and, of course, they should be supported from the outside world, but in case you were wondering whether there is a military intervention or bombing, that is not the solution to the yemen or to libya. because -- italy declaring its willingness to fight or to bomb a, this is not going to solve libya's problem. drones, in the u.s., and i share my views with ambassador bodine also that we have a policy failure in the past drone policy in yemen failed, failed

miserably. and actually aggravated the situation. one reason why we are where we are today in yemen is because of that shortsighted security force of the drones attacks that this is going to solve yemen's problems. in fact, actually we missed an opportunity for a political transition to national dialogue to succeed, that was magnificent, achieved magnificent in the past two, three years in yemen but in fact actually the past two years in yemen showed that we have international community ignore yemen, neglected in yemen, avoided getting with yemen. of course, this finally led to where we are today, and,

unfortunately, that transition or the solution from within has been disrupted. i think the solution again in yemen would have to come from within. it's probably nonviolent resolution, nonviolent resistance or uprising might need to continue. at this time i agree with also my colleague from washington that probably, you know, fighting against or isolating the houthis, this is not going to solve the problem. it's going to make it i think more difficult. again, i think we need to emphasize local solutions from within supported by the international community in terms of nonviolence national dialogue and with -- the peace negotiations that are taking place. and here there's an very

important lesson to learn from yemen, where actually the u.n. became too much involved in managing the dialogue of yemenis during the time, leading the national dialogue. they lost ownership of the yemenis. this is an important lesson today, is that the ownership of the peace negotiation in libya will have to be libya is and they will have to solve it. i think moving negotiations from outside to libya was the right direction. and i can't just as the one final word because i'm sorry i'm taking longtime, because this is always, it has become a central to the debate about a special in

yemen where we have a sectarian conflict in yemen. it has never been a sectarian conflict. they always lived together in peace and harmony on many levels, lyrical levels tribal, you name it, civil society organizations. however, i am deeply concerned with the way that the crisis is being managed. ..

video system works and fearing that it might stop at some point, my question for you is, your solution of, dialogue from within, of change from within, sounds very compelling but there is another possibility which is simply the violence from within gets worse and five years from now we're talking about a much more bloody conflict. what is your sense of the trajectory of violence? do you feel that we'll be look at resolution or that is actually going to a more dangerous stage? >> well, thank you dan. this is really an important question. what i would like to see is the following. is that because the depth of the political parties in yemen are still overwhelmed with the houthis movement, although, the

coup back in my view, back in september, they're still overwhelmed. they have haven't been really able to put their thoughts and strength together and form a balance of power to the houthis. i think their strength as the solution, and i wrote about this for the yemenis for the other political parties to come together and more of a non-violent, probably a continuation of the uprising, the non-violent uprising we saw in the past and to balance the power with the houthis there in yemen. i'm hoping still that the other parties or the rest of the political parties in yemen will realize that be able to form to come together and balance and engage with the houthis more on, a solution. but, i am, i am actually

concerned that and this is a good question again. i'm concerned that it is not taking that direction yet because i haven't seen, i'm seeing more civil war or civil violence, that try with arab and jew, already formed a power together a coalition together we've seen the in the south that they're also forming their own power. so i'm afraid it is not taking the direction of a solution that i would like to see but more of a the fighters that the -- so more on that. this is the responsibility of the political parties of yemen to take and for the international community to support in that direction. >> thank you. fred if i could ask you, really since the, the killing in benghazi of ambassador stevens

and other u.s. officials seems like the united states has been in retreat from libya both in policy sense and institutional sense. there is a reluctance to have people at risk which is quite understandable but the result is that as the situation becomes more and more complex, u.s. knowledge on the ground, ability to work with people on the ground diminishes. first i would like your sense is that actually right? is my impression from d.c. correct but more importantly if that is the logic, how and why should the u.s. be more engaged in libya right? is it reasonable to say it's a tough situation, okay, moving on. we have other priorities? >> well, i mean again the attack in benghazi, it did force this retreat and i went to libya five times since the revolution. each visit i saw the u.s. presence, talking to libyans we're, we never get visited by the americans anymore.

you go to the embassy, look, we have all these programs on the books to help civil society to train media, to do advise on constitutional level but we can't execute the programs because we don't have the staff. they have a skeleton crew in the staff and can't get out in the country. same with the security sector. we made a lot of noise should we help libyans build their army and police early on? there were plans on the books to do that. you know, i think part of it was some u.s. reluctance to get involved. we were waiting for the libyans to pay up for this program and to write the check they never did that. there was such political dysfunctionalty and divisions. we could get into that. the other question, where would the training occur? it would have to oh cure overseas. the problem was one of distraction, no doubt. obviously, syria, iraq, ukraine. libya started sinking lower and lower on the priority he list.

there was a sense in washington, there is european problem. they are 200 miles off the coast with this problem. they need to step up on the plate to do that. perhaps there was overreliance on the u.n. and u.n. mission in libya. there is a lot of after action thinking about its mandate and capacity. early on the u.n. was actually quite frank in acknowledging that they focused too much on elections early on. they were so geared having successful elections. they were successful but they neglected the security sector. while the elections were happening, you had rise of militias deterioration of security in benghazi, the rise of extremism. you know, i think moving forward when i talk to people in senior level policy positions now there is this sense, if there is some sort of peace deal if there is unity government in libya, the u.s. approach going forward is going to be more forceful. they're not going to be waiting for the libyans to ask.

there will be -- i don't know what that means operationally but you get the sense washington is taking this problem very seriously. unfortunately, this goes back to barbara's point, isis thing. focused u.s. attention. my danger we'll view this problem through counterterrorism lens. there was effort early on to try to train a very small libyan contingent of counterterrorism forces. the program fell apart. we can get into that what happened. we were essentially training a factional mill like sharks not counterterrorism force. inserting ourself into kaleidoscope mosaic, trying to train one faction to go after quote, terrorists could be more destablizing in the long run. >> sama'a, if i could ask you if there is anything that will ask u.s. attention as much as terrorism it is iran.

there is a press reports of a greater iranian role in yemen especially backing houthis. can i get your sense first of all how extensive is this? one iranian shown up all of sudden became an iranian division in yemen or is more serious? what is your sense iran wants to accomplish by having a presence in yemen? >> i think it is clear they don't luke saudi arabia and their presence is to undermine saudi arabia first and foremost. to create allies in the arabian peninsula. they don't have a lot of friends there but this is a growing force. to answer this question with certainty or clear answer is very hard. the houthi movement itself is kind of a mysterious movement. we don't know if they're practicing as they used to be. there are new holidays they're celebrating not part of the traditional sadi sect practiced in yemen. what i call them is neo-sadi

movement. not to put a label on it. they're not like hezbollah in lebanon who are very similar to the way they are in iran. but to say with certainty how much support they're getting from iran would be really hard. i know at the start of the revolution iranians provided support not just to the houthis but some civil society organizations on the ground. the kind of support they provided yemenis is more logistical than financial. they treat them to organize, present themselves, presenting strategies. very obviously from the speeches, the leader of the group, that he is mimicking the attitude of giving speeches. also uniform and some of the strategies are, that they have used on the ground are very similar to what hezbollah has done in the past however what is not like it, so hezbollah has come into beirut and before twice, which is capital of lebanon but they withdrew after their demands were met.

in yemen scenario we have the houthis coming into the capital and refusing to leave and trying to take over the entire area. i don't know if this is an iranian strategy because it seems like a very yemeni one to come take control of everything. and so, it is very vague. i think the only way to find answers is, the situation has never happened before in yemen to kind of say anything with certainty would be a mistake. >> barbara if i could ask you to conclude at least my part of the q&a, you've been thinking about counterterrorism more than the vast majority of americans. you've done it for quite some time in professional capacity and you've also been thinking about it in the yemeni context. with that in mind, how do we think about al qaeda in the arabian peninsula? if drones are not the answer, then what is especially in the context of aulack of a government. >> yes, thank you.

i will say i do think i agree with a lot of others that the drone policy, when drones went from being a technical tool to the full strategy we began to lose and lose very badly. interestingly when we first i won't count the very first drones we used but when it became more the focus of our approach what we've actually done is spread al qaeda aqap. its supporters have grown its territory has grown. they also did see the vacuum that was created by the 2011 revolution and used that to expand their territory. what we should be doing is not so much an instead of but an in addition to and this goes back

to what i was saying our ct strategy in yemen has been too narrow and too short-focused. as fred noted, you end up training what you think is a ct unit and you have really sort of just trained a militia. we didn't work with the yemeni government on what do you do, let's say after 2013 when hadi came in? he was very focused on aqap. aqap was primarily an avian. and the south where hadi was from so the aqap presence and problem became much more personnel. even though the yemeni military on the ground was effective and the drones were being used where we failed is going in afterwards and rebuilding and so, you know,

it's one thing to take out, you know, some tiny village in the middle of avian and scatter the aqap people but if you don't go back in, and rebuild the homes and provide the services and provide something else, you haven't moved it forward. we rused to have what was it, clear, build and something. i never could remember what the order was but we never got around to the build part. aqap has a fairly limited reach in yemen because it is such a sala if i sunni organization and a large part of the country is not. and we never capitalized on that. we never kind of used that as a way to build bulwarks against it spreading in other parts of the country. and so what i would say is, this is to grab from something a yemeni official once said to me

it is not so much we need to take our focus off of security but we need to broaden our focus, broaden our aperture. look at the midterm and long-term stressors on the society and be seen as involved in those, as we are in what i think a lot of yemenis say is our proxy fight against al qaeda that is completely divorced from them. >> thank you. like to open it up to the audience. a few notes. please, a microphone will being coming around. please speak into the microphone. short questions of the they actually have to have a question. also please identify yourself. i will take them in groups of three. yes, please. >> good morning. thank you. pam dawkins with voice of america. a question for fred actually a couple of questions. you mentioned that you were recently in libya. what is your insight concerning the recent beheadings of the

egyptians? it is, is it your sense that this was carried out by the core islamic state group or more so by affiliates supporters? and if so, what does that say for the u.s.-led counterterrorism strategy? then also along that line in relation to the white house extremist summit that is underway here what needs to be done to address this type of extremism in yemen if this is indeed of the core islamic state? >> in the very back corner. >> thank you. daniel more row. two questions. on libya. much the first one, what do you think about the algerian role in these game? because the algerian a great

question mark. what they want if you have any hint on this to do with libya, especially with the south of libya. second, don't you think that having a an egyptian-led u.n. mission in libya could in some case say, have a new somali style situation with the ethiopians? you have a bordering country going inside, ethiopia with somalia, egypt with libya? thanks. >> graham common with icrd. how, if the south suck seceded from yemen, how would that affect the situation. thank you. >> i think we have a good broad set of questions on the table. i will ask our panelists to

respond. ibrahim, again taking advantage of a functioning video link, please respond to any of the questions you want to take up. >> thanks. one thing, actually, is on the issue of libya, of that type of intervention, i think this is going to be, again keep in mind that we have -- not representative of yemeni and affiliated with rest of the groups in libya. i think an operation of that -- in libya in my view will lead to catastrophic results. it will, deteriorate the situation much further. libya is a vast country. there are many active groups operating in libya. these groups are indigenous

groups. they're part of the lib yawn society. they are groups that participated in the revolution against qadaffi. they have wide representation within the public of, within the lib yawn public so they're not isolated groups. probably like al qaeda or aqap in yemen. that is not linked to the public. look at tripoli the different regions have wide representation within tripoli or in other parts of libya. so any solution in libya, if we're thinking of this type of somalia intervention or troops that they're going to intervene and stop the strife as we've seen in by the egyptian government, i think this will make the situation much worse. the hope will have to be given

or, the effort will have to be on the peace negotiations, if you can bring the parties together and i think there is a grounds for this because the mere commitment for the past weeks for the negotiations short some willingness from the parties together and i think that is where efforts must be doubled and insured that you have an agreement there and that you can save the country from -- >> anyone else? >> right. well no i completely agree. egyptian-led intervention i think would be disasterous. egypt is a party to this conflict. they're backing one side, the dignity faction this has been on going since last year. they're backing it with intelligence logistical support, conducting strikes. to ask them to be a neutral arbiter in this conflict is unreasonable and it would be polarizing and would lead to greater, greater conflict.

on the issue of the islamic state, what do we mean by core islamic state in libya? if there is a core it is in derna. it is among first groups to declare loyalty. that is probably the only place where you have real operational control. even then in the city of derna it's not complete. the people that conducted the execution, obviously there is foreign elements there. you know so the real question is, you know, what does this mean for the islamic state's actual reach? what kind of coordination and communication is going on between the islamic state core and then this new, you know sprout up group in libya? certainly there are emissaries. certainly a transfer of communication, technology. i think videos really speak to that. but it is unclear to me what that really means operationally.

you know, i think the danger is, that what we're seeing is the weakening of these core, sort of jihad it groups in libya. ansar al-sharia. they have been pushed out of benghazi. their brand is suffering, if you will. so you have younger members of these groups that are gravitating towards the islamic state. with regard to the white house counterterrorism, counter extremism conference and how that applies to libya i think there is a real role for civil society activism, for ngos to be involved here. i was talking with a lot of groups in libya on the side, so-called islamistside. they're worried about the spread of daesh in their communities. i spoke to one man. he has a large family. some of the members of my extended family have gone to fight with daesh. this is a problem that affects communities. so i think there has to be some

inclusion on that community-based approach in libya. not just from the traditional sort of dignity side but from the so-called islamists. the quiet salafis in tripoli. there are other partners the u.s. should be engaging on that issue. >> still on the subject of southern secession in yemen we a joke been going on a few years the reason yemen has not seceded is actually because of the southern secession. they are composed of several groups who can not agree with each other. from 2011 to 2014 the south definitely had several opportunities to break apart and have its own nation because the government was weak the military is not there pretty much. but they're still, they're still trying to come together. we have a leader called ajusti who flew to riyadh as soon as houthis took over.

he trying to get the members to unite and come up with a southern solution. in my opinion if they could not do it since 1994 they can not do it now. what they will do take a lot of funds and support from the outside world to counter act the houthi movement. looking at possible fragmentation scenario, so you have several governors that will probably want to be independent state. they would not want to follow any other. the big example would be the governorrat where two oil sites are located. they will have assault tans, sheikhs, tribal warfare between them. political parties are dispersed all over. are they going to unite or what are the political representatives going to do? we're not really sure. of course we have a new youth movement within the southern

secessionist group not following the older generation that want to do their own thing. they're really angry. we have to keep our eye on the youth because that is pretty scary in the south. having said that i think that moving forward in yemen a esession scenario is not in its best interests. >> if i could just add to that, i agree totally with what was just said is that we tend to talk about the southern movement. it tends to be capitalized as the southern movement or iraq. there is no movement. there is an enormous range of views and parties to what that means. often what passes for the southern movement is really an aideni movement. has nothing to do with many of surrounding governance. the idea that even if yemen were to fragment, and i don't personally think that's going to

happen dividing along the old 1990 line is probably not the way it would break up in any event. that was an artificial line. you know if, we've all talked about how we shouldn't be looking at yemen in sectarian terms but i would say that, you know the sadi line is not at the 1990 north yemen-south yemen line. you have two major very important governorates. which are north of the old line. really not part of aden but may be closer to it in some ways. certainly don't have anything to do are not that connected to the hadramun. the north-south division along old lines i don't really think is going to happen. i have heard there are some

parties, and we were talking about spillover going out of yemen or libya. i'm actually more concerned about spillover coming in of some parties in the region who do believe that a divided yemen is actually in their interests. and are actually starting to talk about this again and they talked about it in 1994. and the u.s. government quite wisely went to them, said a divided yemen is not in your interests, our interests or yemen's interests and i would say that is very much the case now. if we're concerned about the houthi the al qaeda not being adequately confronted, if we're worried about failed state and humanitarian side, if we have problems with one yemen, two or three is going to just be two or three that more, that much more failed states. and so that is not a solution to

the problem. i'm not sure how it would, anyway. i have never been able to find out where the line between the north and south really is as opposed to the old 1990 line. >> time for one more question. we'll take one in the very front. sir, wait for the microphone. it will be coming. >> thank you. will embrey. will you talk a little more about the central bank, how it is relating to the two sides? what is its funding? is it able to stay independent? how is it dealing with the oil companies and oil revenue? >> very generally, there has been a real battle over ownership of it. the benghazi branch of the central bank was raided. there was questions who was the head of the central bank. my understanding is that it's reserves are declining rapidly.

i think that is sort of the real focus of the international effort is to safeguard that, that entity as sort of the last remaining neutral institution. the problem is, i mean, the two sides are, accessing funds from it. again from what i hear lately is there is this move to freeze assets of the bank which the majority of them are held in european capitals. the europeans tell me they're reluctant to do that. the americans are pushing hard on that. the europeans are a bit reluctant because if they cut off the funds to all these militias they will have a bunch of angry militias. they are afraid to completely change the dynamic of europeans as neutral arbiters, at that they're backing one side. there could be blow back down the road. but yeah i mean the funds are still flowing. when i was there the salaries were still there. these militias are incredibly well-armed. they're flying aircraft around.

somebody is helping repair the aircraft. we're talking artillery tanks, so this is very well arm conflict. >> with apologies for those with hands i did not get to. we have to end our event now. if you're like me more depressed and better informed. join me before we depart in thanking our panel for really an excellent conversation. [applause] and again, thank you all for coming out. have a nice day.

[inaudible conversations]. [inaudible conversations].

>> if you missed any of this discussion this morning it is available on the c-span video library. go to c-span.org. we do have more live events coming up today here on c-span2. at 11:00 a.m. eastern the u.s. institute of peace will be hosting pakistan's interior minister. he is expected to talk about his country's counterterrorism efforts. that is about half an hour from now at 11 eastern on c-span2. at 12:30 white house spokesman scheduled a briefing. we'll have that live as well on c-span2. 3:00 eastern we'll bring you a discussion on information sharing and cybersecurity. comes to us from the atlantic council. white house senior director of cybersecurity michael daniel. that is at 3:00 eastern.

also remarks from jeb bush the potential 2016 presidential candidate as we continue with our road to the white house programing. florida, former florida positive jeb bush will be in chicago today at the council on global affairs. that will be live at 12:30 eastern on our companion network, c-span. this week on c-span in prime time, three nights of tech featuring executives and innovators driving today's most successful internet companies. >> for $40,000 a year, it should be a bentley or something. instead it is just a taxi. for that, for that privilege of leasing that car 40 grand a year he gets to be impoverished. >> here from insiders at facebook paypal,ette sy and more. part after special presentation while congress is in recess. >> israel, probably topped hacked country in the world went digital first for gdp

growth, job creation, inclusion of minorities, arabs, orthodox jews, health care to every location, movement of their cities south. by the way cisco the partner all the way through it. >> three nights of tech tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. again coming up at 1 is:00 we're live at institute of peace for the pakistani interior ministry. until then a discussion on a federal judge's decision to block the president's executive action on immigration from this morning's "washington journal." >> host: turn our attention to the immigration debate and texas judge blocking president obama's policy on this, alan gomez, reporter for "usa today," covering this issue for a longter time joins us from miami this morning. first talk about what were exactly were texas and these 25 other states appealing?g? what were they suing over on the president's executive action'

>> guest: basically, so the president announced back in november he was going to create this program to protect up to five million undocumented immigrant from deportation.th and what these states states were doing were trying to block the program. their argument is, that by doing, that by the president doing that, by protecting these millions of undocumented t immigrants, those states were the one that would bear theones brunt, bear costs of allowing them to be here. be give them drivers license, medical care. free schooling in public school' from k through 12. they're saying the president doing this he overstepped his constitutional authority to do that and they're the ones thattitu will be hurt by it. are why 26 got together to sue the administration. >> host: here is the governor of texas, republican greg abbott on the immigration ruling. he says, we live in a nation governed by a system of checks and balance and the president's attempt to bypass the will of the american people was

successfully checked today. why this texas judge? why did it go before that court and what did this judge say? >> guest: well immigration advocates say this was a little bit of judge shopping. this is very conservative judge. he issued rulings in the pasttle that have been incredibly critical of the president and department of homeland security and how they implement or in his view, do not implementhat immigration enforcement in thisen country.t 5050 chance in that circuit whether they get that judge. they got him. what the judge ended up doing, 50- he used the question of the driver's license to really drive home the point that these states did have standing to sue the federal government saying that now you pay $26 in texas to geting a drivers license but the state subsidizes rest. $170 for the drivers license. now they would have to pay for those costs. what the judgeli ruled is not on merits of whether what theth president did was constitutional or not. he just ruled yes, we should stop this so we can have theot, hearing in court. so the texas governor may have overspoken a little bit but the,

because he didn't exactly strikee ov down the merits of this, what the president has done, all it does is delay it so there can be time to have a full hearing about the legality of the president's move. >> host: does it answer thebe a question about constitutionality? >> guest: not yet. that is question this judge or either presumably the fiftha qu circuit court of appeals where this will go to will have to answer. >> host: if the white house seeks an emergency stay, and they said that they will make sta that decision in the next couple of days how does that all work out? what happens? tha >> guest: yeah, what happens is, again we're not ruling on the basis of whether what the president did was constitutional or not. this is just a question ofhe delayingr program which was setthis to start wednesday.the a lot of these applications were about to start being processed on wednesday. and so what happens now it goes to the fifth circuit court of appeals and they're the ones that get to rule whether thises t blocking that the judge did in texas gets to stand.ng now the fifth circuit is

traditionally considered bit of a conservative appeals court but at the same time they havet ruled in the past on some immigration issues and in a ruling that they had a couple of, in 2012 actually wrote about the idea of the federal government's exclusive authority over immigration regulation in the country. so a lot of folks think as soon as it gets to them they could strike this down.hat >> host: then what?. >> guest: then we keep going upwh thate ladder. this is the kind of question that eventually could get to the supreme court. there are some think it might because, it is a very critical question that we've been facingight in this country for a few years now and that the court has weighed in on from time to time,ve b that question of federal supremacy over immigration laws. if you remember the arizona law from a few years ago they triedif to enact their own immigration enforcement scheme in arizona. supreme court eventually struck down majority of that law saying that the federal government has the exclusive purview to enforce immigration laws. so that moves possibly like this are contradict that ability.

>> host: so who gets impacted by this injunction byco this texas judge? >> guest: well the people whos im get impacted are these up to five million people who could have applied and could have been, won deportation protections. basically what the program would have done is allowed them to apply to the federal government and if they meet certain criteria, they have a pretty t clean criminal record, they havey me been paying, they have been in thecl country for certain period of time, that they could be protected from the deportation for a period of three years. president did a similar programtect a few years ago deferred action for childhood arrivals program. that approved 600,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. this would have basically been a massive expansion of. m that there are literally millions of people who could have started applying in next couple months that now are ind this weird limbo. nex they're sitting there. not sure what to do. a lot had their paperwork ready, applications ready to go and they woke up yesterday found out no they can't. they haveic got to wait. >> host: that is your story

today in "usa today," many immigrants confused afteray i judge's late night order. you feature some people. you talk about mario, the boy who had everything ready to go, medical records., wh neatly arranged bank statements. pay stubs into separate file folders. sounds like she and others were really following this court closely and what the judge would decide waking her wakingecid herrer had up to tell her the decision. >> guest: it is incredible. they're following this incredibly closely. i was talking with a house cleaner and a nanny. she was telling me about the judge's judicial record in the southern district of texas. they were following it incredibly closely. the woman you mentioned. been here since 2001. came from argentina after that country's economy collapsed. she has been undocumented immigrant ever since. for her and millions like her whether you think this is goodwh idea or not, put yourself in their shoes for a second.

they have beener sitting there goo watching this congress repeatedly try to get an immigration solution that would deal with their situation and obviously that has failed time w and time again. now here they have the president saying, okay i will take they step i will protect all of you. then at the very last second, just 24 hours before they were about to turn a in those las applications, boom it getsfo yanked away from them. some of them, absolutely are just giving up, you know what? i'm sick of this. i'm sick of being teased.ey a sick of getting that close and just kind of losing everything. so is a lot of people who are incredibly depressed yesterday. by end of the day i got a sense that the message they were trying to drive to other undocumented immigrants continue getting their paperwork ready. tori be ready for that moment when and if, either fifth circuit court of appeals or some other court reverse this is judge's the ruling and there again allowed to apply for the program. >> host: let's listen to what the attorney general had to say

eric holder, asked about the texas ruling yesterday at the national press club.ling >> we're still in the process of looking at the opinion and trying to decide what steps we might take next. the solicitor general ultimately will make that decision in consultation with me. i think that we have to look at this decision for what it is. it is the, a decision by one federal district court judge. i expect, i always expected this is a matter that will ultimately be decided by a higher court, ifll not the supreme court then aa federal court of appeals and so i think it has to be seen in that context. this, i would view, as an interim step in a process thatd will, that has more to play out. >> host: alan gomez meds, what do you make of what the attorney general had to say? >> guest: much like undocumented immigrants, very aware there is likely possibility.this judge is george w. bush

appointee. he is definitely on the conservative side of things. you read this opinion heve s released. it was very well-thought out detailed oriented 123 page opinion but throughout it he calls the presidentalls disingenuous, claiming what he is doing not a big change todoin immigration laws. at one pointch he said the move ignores dictates of congress, but not only ignores the dictates of congress but actively acts to thwart them. it is strongly worded opinion. it is not very subtle, sort of what his views are, on this idea of the president making these moves. throughout this opinion he cites all the costs that states will suffer. because of these legalized undocumented immigrants about the health care education unemployment benefits. but a lot of immigration advocates said he did not once include any economic benefits these legalized undocumented immigrants bring. they would have better jobsse have better education, have more

taxes and pay more into the system. i don't think anybody in theob a white house was surprised by thisha ruling. now they're getting ready see what the next step is. >> host: president obama also saying yesterday the law is on our side. what kind of pressure is he. feeling from immigration groups, pro-immigration groups to do something quickly? >> guest: i think everyone understands that there is a certain, when it gets to these levels of legal technicalities that they will give him a little t deference. longhi time. undocumented immigrant. called him departner chief. h they said he is maintained immigration enforcementd structure in the country that continues to deporting 400,000 immigrants every year. very, very difficult on him. after he announced in november he moved to protect that five million of them. want a little bit more time with them and more leeway. they would give him an little more time and leeway. they are waiting to see what the next move is.

the judge's ruling ended up being really focused on the process of how the president lamented this. that he didn't provide enough notice or create the rules properly. a lot of people understand that this is now in the courts and it will get a little complicated for the next few weeks. they will give him a little space right now. host: we want to hear from our viewers. in the phone lines are on our screen and we have a deadline set aside for illegal immigrants 202-748-8003. ryan in ontario, california. a demoaticalle >> caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. are you wear we're a nation of laws, every time i've done, anything illegally. punished for it. these people coming here havingshed baby after baby. they will be tied here. we can't separate kids from their parents. i mean when is it going to stop?s fr i take my answer off.

>> host: alan, what about legality of this? >> guest: what the caller is talking about is one very central core of arguments that people make opposing granting any sort of legal status to undocumented immigrants. congress has been debating several years, about an immigration bill. there is widespread agreement on some things. increasing border security. reforming our legal immigration system so we can bring in moreea high-techsi workers. bring in more agricultural workers more easily.cu everybody in washington understands and agrees there is a lot of things need to be fixed. but when it gets down to core question of granting pathway of citizenship to undocumented immigrants, that is where everything generally falls f apart. a so hardor for a lot of people who they themselves, their parents, grandparents may havemsel emigrated to this countryay legally hard h for them to swallow the idea that folks came here illegally, awarded with pathway to citizenship or sort ofnot

interim legal status that the president was trying to givetryi him. >> host: line for republicans. john pennsylvania. go ahead jon. >> caller: good morning. thanks for my call. obviously this is extremely political, president's position he took this action unilaterally absolutely unconstitutional. i think that attorney general and of kansas, chris cobach sy a comer in political, i believe he is the, the developer of the idea and he is the attorney. harvard law school and, but, senator sessions is the source of, he is, he is the, leader of the opposition to, you know this illegal immigrants,al undocumented worker. but, the gentleman, mr. gomez,

said that everybody knows that the system has to be reformed and, that is ludicrous. everybody does not agree that we need more high-tech workers. this is surplus of workers. hi tech workers.ed a only about a third of the people graduate from stem, science, technology, they get work in their field. there is a surplus of agricultural workers. so what is going to happen is,ri if wecu bring in more agricultural workers, what agricultural agr workers move to the city either they get work or get unemployment disability. there is untold amounts of money we're talking about. >> host: take up those issues john. abo alan gomez. >> guest: on issue of workers coming in here, i can tell you, spent a lot of time with farmers around the country in wide variety of fields. i think a lot of them would disagree with the statement that the caller just made. it is incredibly difficult to find americans who will do that

work anymore. i they talk about, it is just incredibly difficult for them to a a find american workers to do the job. we sort of moved on from wanting to do back breaking work of picking up lettuce and that sort of thing. sor so they can't find americanseall workers. they're forced to go through legal immigration system that is incredibly difficult. spent a lot of time with theseibly farmers as they walked me through the process of trying tod me bring in farming workers to come in. it is just incredibly tedious.rs takes months and months. they have to predict about a year ahead how many workers are going to need for their harvest when they don't even know what the harvest is going to look like. wil in the high-tech field i hear the exact same thing from high-tech companies around the country, yes, there are plenty of american workers out there graduating in these fields but it just does not satisfy the need they have for number ofm th workers that they have. and when i say everyone is inav agreement, whate. i'm talking about, is, democrats and republicans in congress. i mean that is one of the fewrepu

issues that you get pretty widespread agreement on is introducing these visa bills that would make it easier for these companies to recruit high-tech workers from overseas.erse >> host: jerome next anderson, california.: go ahead. >> caller: i'm concerned we're worried about the wrong things. i think united states is lastong human experiment.is t if we don't allow intercultural exchanges, i don't have a whole lot of hope for the united states. what i hear now and see now ignorance is bliss and the united states seems like we're approaching nirvana. i will take my call, answer off the air. thank you. >> host: alan gomez, what do you make of the sentiment? >> guest: look at cultural aspect of this, i see makeup of this immigration wave isis i something like unlike the country has been used to.en u america, since it is inception obviously has seen wave after wave of immigration. one of the last 40 or 50 years

predominantly hispanic and predominantly from central andentr south america. that is absolutely changing way things are happening in this country. you see a lot more spanish on prime time programing andng a commercials, things like that.ngs so that is sort of culture clash is something that has been incredibly difficult. with the number of undocumented immigrants and legal immigrants coming from central and south america, people in theand northeast part of the country probably weren't used to a lot of hispanics running around,of h suddenly have large growing communities of them. so yeah, there is good and there's bad of that. there is a lot of people who would not like to see those changes but i think more you see those folks coming across and establishing themselves in the country, that is where folkshe startms accepting a little bitptin more. >> host: alan gomez, colleagues on the front page of newspaper this morning, obama immigration plan blocked. they write, the ruling comes as congress debates how to extendn ho funding for department of

homeland security. house republicans passed a bill that would fund the department through september but block funding to enforce any of obama's executive actions. senate democrats threaten to filibuster and white house threatened a veto. what do you think this does the ruling, that debate on capitol hill? >> that willr be one ofapit fascinating questions that hopefully we'll get answered very soon. basically the department of hop homeland security runs out of funding on february 27th.e de and so if congress does not come to an agreement on a funding bill for them we're looking at partial government shutdown.ng most of the employees for homeland security will go to work. they just won't get paid. there isf a lot of lot of other programs that won't be funded. a lot of employees will have toot b stay home.mplo obviously at a time when we have so many international threats right now i think idea of having a shutdown for thel th department of homeland security is something that very few people actually want.depa so what, what the congress,ctua what the republicans in congress have been trying to do, using

that funding bill knowing itn tr really has to pass, to try to block the president's action.try and so now they're faced basically with two different options. they could use the ruling as some talked about yesterday senate leader mcconnell, houseay speaker john boehner, they eached talk about the idea look now the courts are on our side. that shows we have to keep pushing, we have to keep moving forward to eliminate the president's program through thist' funding bill. on the other hand, they could now say, hey look looks like the courts are taking care of this. pass a clean funding bill. doesn't deal with the president's immigration order. let's go ahead and move forward.iden the courts will figure that out. could give them that cover to be able to pull that out and not look like they were retreating. >> host: right. here is twitter reaction from capitol hill yesterday.om the minority leader, harry reid from nevada, tweeting out, president obama's well withintwee his established constitutional authority and legal process will bear that out. then you also have from capitol hill the speaker of the house saying, president obama said athe

least 22 times he didn't have the authority to don what he did at on immigration.imes no surprise, at least one court agrees. and nancy pelosi, the leader for the democrats in the house saying doj legal experts and history support the president's executive actions on immigration. confident the appeal will succeed. and also, bob goodlatte, who is the chairman of judiciary committee in the house saying good news that president obama's unilateral actions on immigration have been temporarily halted by a federal judge. immigration subcommittee which is chaired by jeff sessions,the republican from alabama, he tweeted out, president obama has already shut down dhs by ordering tens of thousands of immigration officers to violate our lawyers and their oaths. richard blumenthal, attorney general from connecticut served as fivde terms, now the senator from that state, democrat saying today's federal trial court order blocking the president's immigration direction is deeply and destructively wrong.

and john mccain saying good>> news. federal court temp halts president obama's recentfede executive actions on immigration. he has link to his statement.xecu i expressed support of judges who uphold the constitution. number of tweets from capitol hill and what they're saying as you said.ng. some conservatives are hardening themselves, a court agrees with us we should stick with this.agre you've got democrats and rolehave call reporting this morning especially democrat like harry reid who could have a tough battle in 2016 has no reason to cut a deal when this rallies the hispanics around him. >> guest: absolutely. when everything we're lookinolghing at, everything we're talking about here, it is done in the context of the 2016 election. we're getting close to, we're2016 getting close to that. this will be, unlike the 2014 election where, where hispanics weren't just that influential

the senate races where there was, there were races, they were not done in states that had very big hispanic populations. we didn't have a presidential. now we're getting into 2016, where the hispanic vote will behisp absolutely critical in the presidential election. you havee states like nevada, florida, illinois have these huge hispanic populations. something likead this, as we talk about, not just this, but congressional action on, on other immigration issues. that will really affect in a big way for, the senators, for the presidential race, for a lot of other lower races. >> host: winter haven, florida, ray, on line, illegal immigrant. go ahead. how do you view all of this debate? >> caller: i come from parents that emmy freighted to the united states, that was the -- culture and they actually went from, you know, up north down south and from being coming,

from a family my parents actually stopped immigrating and doing that whole you know trip because of having us children. they brought us up in a well-established home. went to school as you can telllish with my english. it is almost perfect. [speaking spanish] i can speak it.ish. i go back and forth from both countries. i see both sides of the mirror. in that country when i go over there, i get harassed because, oh you're american.ha you don't, you have more things than we do. i come over here get harassed by americans which i am an american. but sometimes i feel like, i am not valued here. that's a shame. >> host: can i ask you, are youou a one that tend, takes steps under president obama's executive action to start the process?t >> caller: well, actuallyth no.

i'm actually, i was born here. but my parents they worked everything out and back then inke thed '80s it didn't take fiv' six, 10 years. it only took one year. >> host: i see. >> caller: that is one question. why does it take so long? why have there been things implemented to stretch it out? i think because they want to take people's voice away. here in my community people ofs color get harassed. they take away our voices.le they put felonies on us so they can take away our rights. >> host: okay. ray. alan gomez. you want to jump in. >> guest: ray make as couple interesting points there. first off, he was born here but for a lot of, for a lot of folks that have been approved by the federal government for these deportations protections those were ones born elsewhere but brought here as children.al that is i think a really.thing to understanstd about the debate. in 2012, when the president

created that program, that was done for people who arrived here before the age of 16. they were kids.ple most of them were brought by their parents. i think even republicans an conservatives generally opposed to granting legal status toepub undocumented immigrants were saying in that case okay, they're not ones that made active decision to come here. they wer e brought along. let's give them a pass.es t you didn't see this level of an moss any toward that program in 2012. what the president did iny to november was not only expand that pool, but allow for the parents who came here to get this legal status. think that is what is really, what made this such an emotional and such a volatile issue.ma it is parents like, if you're basically a parent not undocumented immigrant in the u.s. and u.s. citizen child or child legal permanent resident you would qualify for the president's program. so because they're the ones that made that decision to immigrate here illegally that has republicans and a lot of conservatives so upset over the

program and working so hard to block it.k it >> host: pete, falls church. don: virginia, independent caller. hi pete. >> caller: , yes mr. gomez, inller all due respect. i'm not a republican, i'm anue r independent. i'm not a conservative, i'm anubli american. again, as being a vet and having a son serving this country right now i could debate this thing for you on and on line by line.g fo first thing in my opinion the defense of this country in immigration. i can go ignorance of the american people on i immigrants, just letting them all in when will it ever stop? youle know. this deferred action, what the president did is, this court found he can defer the action of deportations sorry a little nervous. but he can't bestow gifts on them of social security and medical benefits. so that is what they did. . .

thank you for your time. >> guest: he makes several very good points. the question of our country being able to monitor its borders and to stop people who are trying to get in that is an absolutely basic thing that any country should probably have and a lot of it is somethin