All were doing enough to prevent attacks from on degree the u. S. Releases its annual report on global terrorism naming eisel and iran as a persistent threat and its warning of emerging challenges so whats all the solutions this is inside story. And welcome to the program im the star of the attack a new threats are emerging in the socalled global war on terror thats the warning from the u. S. State department as it released its latest country reports on terrorism the analysis looks at efforts in the u. S. And around the wild to combat armed groups and their ideologies the release coincides with the death last week of i still found i would back out baghdadi in a u. S. Military raid in syria but eisel remains a threat the armed group says it killed at least 53. 00 soldiers and a civilian in mali on friday and one of the deadliest attacks on the mahdi in minute tree lets take a look at the Main Findings of this report the worlds worst state sponsor of terrorism remains iran according to the u. S. State department it says the Islamic Republic spends a 1000000000. 00 a year supporting armed groups and its influence has expanded globally the report warns isolates ideology is still spreading around the wells and thats despite major strides by the u. S. And its allies to defeat the group it also says the gulf diplomatic crisis is hampering counterterrorism efforts in that region the u. A. E. In particular hasnt done enough to prevent terrorists from exploiting financial new polls despite its collaboration with u. S. Intelligence the middle East South Asia and Subsaharan Africa the regions with the most terrorist incidents attacks in the sahara region and learn doubled last year at the same time the state department is worried about attacks inspired by white supremacy. And racist ideology we saw an alarming rise in racially or ethnically motivated terrorism including here in the United States with the pittsburgh synagogue shooting similar to islamist terrorism this breed of terrorism is inspired by a hateful supremacist and its all or it idiology make no mistake we will confront all forms of terrorism no matter what inspires it in 2080 the Administrations National counterterrorism strategy specifically highlighted racially and ethnically motivated terrorism as a Top National Security priority this was the 1st such strategy to ever address this threat. Well lets bring in all our guests who are all joining us via skype in beijing we have a wherry who is director of the Gulf Studies Center at Castle University usually in doha and washington d. C. Is allison pieces whos the Deputy Director of the National Security program at the 3rd way think tank and in pretoria. The Senior Research on counterterrorism at the institute of Security Studies welcome to you all right so we have seen the u. S. Repeat what it said many times in the past and that iran is the west state sponsor of terrorism and in this report weve also heard the u. S. Say that the gulf crisis is straining these regional counterterrorism efforts so just how much. Regional tensions hindering u. S. Attempts to try to keep iran in line. In fact all of this there is a this and its that but it is in the region the tensions the ramification of the arab spring the fragility of a policed 10 states and out a book d. All of this contributed to the what so called terrorism and the activities of those groups lets take a dim memory always defined those 2 groups being on a state activists and on us there are those basically whats contributing to their strength their activities their nuggets of their slogan is backs but actually instability is and in politics and actually the United States is on a state did help and this are all by for example this that i was in iraq the obvious occasion and you know an awful lot of that and also the hiding itself from yemen lets not forget that yemen for example those are groups are active and theyre not the state has washing its hand from the activities that see this activity im not saying 100 percent they have some of that is what they 2 had also so tensions contributed highly to those activities and to those groups alison i see you nodding and i do want to ask you about iran this week marks ahead since and the u. S. Reimposed sanctions on tehran so how has that been going is that bringing iran into line and well i think what weve seen is the chunk of mr curation who has taken the approach that the law just consistently sleeve and sleeves and smears iran. Until the terms of the iran comes back. To the table but we have not seen that happen in fact weve seen the opposite weve seen tensions increase between the u. S. And iran and we and in europe who have essentially opposed u. S. Actions against iran and are working to move beyond u. S. Sanctions weve not seen iran give any indication its going to come back to the ball its economy is tanking and we are not seeing the level of support globally for new sanctions under president obama we had several rounds a multilateral sanctions we have the Global Community in line to sanction iran that is why that approach was so effective in getting run back to the table and we dont know how that will support anymore because President Trump decided to walk away from a deal that was negotiated with several world powers that was working and we know international specters have told us its working and now we completely walked away what weve lost all of our leverage over arm to bring them back so that you all well alison youre saying that its a real departure from president obamas strategy certainly it is and not and i want to ask you more about that because i i recall that obamas counterterrorism strategy seemed to be why the and at skype dealing with more of the root causes of radicalization the motivations behind terrorism and theres not much discussion of that in this report so how is President Trumps counterterrorism strategy playing out in africa where you. Well 1st i want to say. Counterterrorism has been highly politicized and i think this is ation very bit of an issue that the whole world should be united against is again creating a conducive conditions for many groups to launch attacks against other countries yet when i looked out their strategy if you count that it to the obama strategy and term strategy you see a lot of confusion with the current strategy because we we have identified certain regions where the threat is really high time such as africa and at the same time we talking about troops we draw up from the continent or we draw our supporters on to turn trees which are in the front line against terrorism so different is a lot of contradictions in the current policies against terrorism and as you have said that. Obama i think we moving towards what i prefer to quote country in violent extremism which is a lot broader than counterterrorism where i believe the focus is really on states with the country of violent extremism we try to get to the root of the problem were not seeing thats not on which means that i believe if it is to see an aspect of the drums a ministration it is the to come because we are not feeling that yet in africa not i want to read you another finding that was in this report and that says particularly alarming is the trend of terrorist leaders manipulating local ethnic conflicts and members of ethnic groups to support terrorist operations by assisting them through longstanding crimes against other ethnic groups and at the talks about the had a conflict and no money for example just how widespread is this in different parts of africa not in the i know it is respite weve seen terrorist mixing bits are sort of groups weve seen terrorists. Making alliances with transnational. Organized spend groups weve seen terrorist book in conflicts in this ahead and send them packing conflict in the live chat busy and therefore the threat that they are is who is its a lot wider than we think because they are now ready to form alliances with us of groups that show the ideology or even if they dont share that ideology to fight that they might have a common purpose which is to destroy the lives or to opt in financial benefits i think they trade those alliances well speaking of forming alliances not just yesterday we saw this attack in northern mali 53 soldiers dead and that comes just a month after another attack with dozens and dozens of soldiers killed. In this report weve seen that attacks in the whole region have doubled in 2018 is there a concern that as the eiffel caliphate has basically been squeezed into nonexistence that these fighters and moving elsewhere to new battlegrounds. Thats right but let me just make a quick comment on the reports which is you know about the contour ism and that a trump this report is similar to george bush the son report you know reports coming from the department of state they are they have the same content the same understanding of the others and this reflects basically 2 things one the role of the role of you know the Republican Party and the politics the next and the National Parties and the 2nd one the role of the institution like cia or department of state or and put into that of this report so basically does not forget this administration has done nothing actually to. To to and to call itself that it does something need to crucial and counterterrorism and thats the reason why i found the report actually couldnt. Say that that 100 percent of the content the sold off that the core of the content is actually irrelevant to or more of what some about to what george bush mistaken used to do that is no doubt that you know they what happened and stop it or what happened and if even in iraq is that different government it does tell us that you know those 2 groups the more you push on them politically the more you type of them within it you know using security and and old all or an event tools the more they would work individually the more they would work and we know that there is you know the secret cells and you know the hidden wolves and all of these that with knowledge is used to describe the activities of those of groups so those 2 groups the more you squeeze them as as it grew the more individuals who were without going back to the sensor leadership if you want to call it so basically thats what we witnessed and i freak up and thats what we witnessed today action is syria but this actually can fans all of us that the mall. You see its logical to the stood the law to see security buxtons the more disagreeable to grill the mode that would be affected during the sucks to be to the gods the outcome but its out of hand i want to bring you and him what you think other countries can be doing to help to combat the spread of these movements as we do see them grow and move into new areas there are enough resources that are being expended hit in order to try to combat that well i certainly agree with my fellow co panelists were not going to be able to use military approaches alone to fight our way out of the problem that much is clear since 911. 00 Security Sector approaches are only one piece of the puzzle we saw under the last u. S. Administration that not just here in the United States around the globe with our partners and allies and increasing focus on countering violent extremism recognizing that we need to actually address the root causes of violent action ism and radicalization that lead to terrorism to the dinwiddie and we saw an increase in resources but to counter nonextreme ism efforts we saw a national countering by an interim ism strategies that worked out last year around the globe and we saw a real recognition that we need diplomatic and Development Tools as a key component of our effort to counter the violent extremism that the weeds and terrorism all around the globe were now seeing a lot of countries walk back from that there was mention that President Trump has actually cut resources to counterbalance humans in programming has attempted to got the budgets of our department and our usa i. D. R. Development entity here in the United States were seeing around the globe and a number of European Countries the same types of tools resources are being cut to them and even where resources are not being fully cut were seeing a real diminishing a political will. To employ those types of resources in the fight against terrorism we need countries to step up in prayer our ties addressing things like rule of law like Good Governance like sectarianism because those are the actual drivers that are leading to this violence to begin with i want to drill in a little more into whats going on with isilon hair because some of the language in this report like major strides to defeat and degrade isis isnt quite as definitive about a victory as President Trump has been trying to portray it as and that the report does say that it remains a complex evolving threat and it itemizes attacks that have been carried out by foreign fighters right so monson i want to ask your head how much of an ongoing threat these find fight as in various different regions where it is it is very serious at let me just preface my comment by saying that the report is not fundamentally different from the Previous Report that we have seen in the past and again my critique of the report has always been thats it for quest to march on is that action and needs to to to be pretty nice on the belief that you know those that actually be able to eliminate terrorism but weve seen in many cases that thats that action is again the main course of terrorism since 911 i believe that terrorism since 911 is primarily because of state action over the use the excessive use of military force i think is the one that is driving terrorism around the world not if you look at it africa and look at its head thats isis forces it has increased weve seen this action of the Islamic State in countries that previously didnt did not know about it threats if you look at for example mozambique which only recently fell into that this punishment of the day the isis day the. Islami states the promise for Central Africa this in the do you have received is this something that we didnt know before weve seen isis not despondent into sudden africa these are areas which were previously free from the threats so what were witnessing is actually an increase in the threats i noted in part mention that. Attacks are falling this is purely a want to do issue but only to to flee on the ground you know dissed a decrease in attacks thats what translated into more security for people on the ground so we have seen this venture movies themselves and we know that its part of the i jane that we know about that day before his death made it very clear that africa is where he is back with equal groups the next caliphate so i dont know what of the world is which is what this trial is it to be grounded in africa or it is serious about country to get on the continent and that the it is time for them to take that action so i want to ask you a little more about the spread because one thing that really struck me in this report was and i want to quote here u. K. Officials categorize as islamist terrorism as the greatest threat to National SecurityOfficials Say theres a rising threat from racial ethnic a motivated extremist and this isnt just in the u. K. Right but in other European Countries as well so when moving away potentially from is a missed movement so to speak and moving towards far right attacks weve seen many a rise in in attacks by White Supremacists in the United States alison i want to ask you whats driving that trend i think theres a number of factors that are time that trend we saw an uptick in white supremacist violence starting under president obama and there were a number of factors including the fact that he was the 1st black president in the United States in america and we saw certain parts of the right wing party here in the United States exploit that and bring out in open white supremacist groups and ideology that have always sort of. A lower level in American Society but i think under President Trump we see. A complete increase in someways white supremacist groups and we have a president who. Fails to acknowledge that we have a problem with White Supremacists trinas them here in the United States while our f. B. I. Is saying that this is number one security threats here in the United States more people have died in recent years from right wing extremist them as opposed to just honest extremism and we are seeing our Security Officials say at the top and yet our president refuses to acknowledge it time after time and i think that is emboldening these groups to come out in the open again theyve always been existed the ideology of those existed but they are now emboldened to come out in public we see marches in certain cities in the United States weve seen an uptick in Violent Attacks and until the president s rhetoric and actions match what his Security Officials are saying we will continue to see these groups involvement and increasingly i should know theyre becoming more transnational nature so weve had a number of attacks involving right wing extremism here in the United States that have connection