[originaltext]Moderator: Hi, everyone! I’m so happy that Benedetta Berti wi

Moderator:
    Hi, everyone! I’m so happy that Benedetta Berti will be our keynote speaker today. Benedetta Berti is a foreign policy and security researcher, analyst, consultant, author and lecturer. Her work focuses on human security and internal conflicts, as well as on post-conflict stabilization and peace building. Her work and research have appeared in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Welcome, Ms. Berti.
Benedetta Berti:
    Thank you for the introduction. For the past decade, I’ve been studying non-state armed groups: armed organizations like terrorists, insurgents or militias. I document what these groups do when they’re not shooting. My goal is to better understand these violent actors and to study ways to encourage transition from violent engagement to nonviolent confrontation. I work in the field, in the policy world and in the library.
    Understanding non-state armed groups is key to solving most ongoing conflict, because war has changed. It used to be a contest between states. No longer. It is now a conflict between states and non-state actors. For example, of the 216 peace agreements signed between 1975 and 2011, 196 of them were between a state and a non-state actor. So we need to understand these groups; we need to either engage them or defeat them in any conflict resolution process that has to be successful.
    So how do we do that? We need to know what makes these organizations tick. We know a lot about how they fight, why they fight, but no one looks at what they’re doing when they’re not fighting. Yet, armed struggle and unarmed politics are related. It is all part of the same organization. We cannot understand these groups, let alone defeat them, if we don’t have the full picture.
    And armed groups today are complex organizations. Take the Lebanese Hezbollah, known for its violent confrontation against Israel. But since its creation in the early 1980s, Hezbollah has also set up a political party, a social-service network, and a military apparatus. Similarly, the Palestinian Hamas, known for its suicide attacks against Israel, also runs the Gaza Strip since 2007. So these groups do way more than just shoot. They multi-task. They set up complex communication machines-radio stations, TV channels, Internet websites and social media strategies. And up here, you have the ISIS magazine, printed in English and published to recruit. Armed groups also invest in complex fund-raising-not looting, but setting up profitable businesses; for example, construction companies. Now, these activities are keys. They allow these groups to increase their strength, increase their funds, to better recruit and to build their brand.
    Armed groups also do something else: they build stronger bonds with the population by investing in social services. They build schools, they run hospitals, they set up vocational-training programs or micro-loan programs. Hezbollah offers all of these services and more. Armed groups also seek to win the population over by offering something that the state is not providing: safety and security. The initial rise of the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan, or even the beginning of the ascent of ISIS, can be understood also by looking at these groups’ efforts to provide security. Now, unfortunately, in these cases, the provision of security came at an unbearably high price for the population.
16. What does Benedetta Berti’s work focus on?
17. What has Benedetta Berti been studying for the past decade?
18. What does Benedetta Berti say about the ISIS magazine?
19. What was the reason for the initial rise of the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan?