earlier this month, usip hosted ambassador alex wells from the u.s. department of state who joined us to shed light on the u.s. response to all of these recent developments. so this is an important opportunity to now hear directly the afghan perspective with the afghan national security adviser mohammed atmar. we really much appreciate you coming today to share your thoughts and to give us an update on how the afghan government is approaching this process for peace, especially as it deals with multiple security threats from within the country. of course, i also want to extend a special welcome to ambassador moad afghanistan ambassador here in the united states. national security adviser atmar has been a critical leader in afghanistan. he's been the minister of education, and rehabilitation and development, and his efforts through the years have led to remarkable gains, most particularly in the education of girls, but also in rural infra structure, in governance and much more. he was a driving force in the creation of the first afghan national developm

usip works in both iraq and syria. we work in complement the u.s. military, diplomatic, and aid workers as well as with our iraqi government and civil society partners and the kurdistan regional government and civil society partners in both iraq and syria. we have been on the ground in iraq since 2003 i was there actually last month and i was encouraged to see some very useful, heartening signs of hope and progress as we await the elections in may. i'm sure you have more about that and for many years, particularly following the rise of isis, usip has worked with the u.s. and iraqi counterparts to spread and to prevent the spread and subsequent reemergence of conflict. so most notably we have worked to consolidate the recent successes of military action to liberate areas from isis. we have supported iraqi partners to broker and implement local peace accords. these local accords and places like to create -- to create have enabled iraq you to come together to bridge deep divides which were left deep in the wake of the isi

usip works in both iraq and syria. we work in compliment to u.s. military, diplomatic and aid workers as well as with our iraqi government and civil society partners in the kurdistan regional government and civil society partners in both iraq and syria. we have been on the ground in iraq since 2003. i was there last month and i was encouraged to see some very useful heartening signs of hope and progress as we await the elections in may. i'm sure you'll hear more about that. for many years, particularly following the raid device is, usip has worked with and iraqi counterparts to spread and prevent the spread in subsequent reemergence of conflict. most notably, we have worked to consolidate the recent successes of military action to liberate areas for isis. we have supported our iraqi partners to broker and implement local peace accord. in places like felicia, to create common man of the have enabled the iraqis to come together to bridge deep divide, which were less deeper in the wake of the isis occupation and agree to solve problems peaceably comme

. >> if this results in more chinese purchases of semis or more money for usip, you may say this was it. >> i would agree if that's how it turned out. remember, we could have had the trans-pacific partnership which would have gotten us better intellectual property protection and we walked from that. >> but china wasn't involved in tpp, right >> sorry >> china wasn't involved in tpp. >> no, no. but remember how tpp worked. it was essentially creating a unified front in dealing with china, so it would have made it everybody's trade would have had to go on that basis, and so i look at this, you can do bilateral things with china, in their interest to have good relations with us, there's a lot of stuff goes back and forth i am listening to wilbur ross talk about how deficits work and effect the economy and think if people like that are in charge of the economy, we don't know what they'll think history is simple. what you want is stability right now, we have uncertainty as a market investor, uncertainty is a terrible thing. tell me what the outcome is, get to equalibrium until then, we ha