It's no secret there is instability in Africa and the Middle East, the moderator of a panel of four former U.S. ambassadors told a crowd of more than 100 people gathered Monday evening at the Texas Tech International Cultural Center.

The question, moderator Richard Hoagland said, is why.

Hoagland has also served as an ambassador to Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.

Robert Ford, who served as U.S. ambassador to Syria from 2011-14, to Iraq from 2008-10 and Algeria from 2006-08, said he could sum up his experiences in the Middle East with three main points.

Countries in the Middle East are structurally weak, Ford said, and the Arab Spring was not a surprise.

Much of this is because, even in the same countries, people do not speak the same languages, share the same cultural or ethnic backgrounds or have the same religions.

Borders drawn in the last 100 years were based more on things like railroad lines than on outlines of groups of people.

Secondly, Ford said many of the governments in the Middle East are strong but brittle, and shocking events like an invasion or occupation can cause armed, yet non-governmental groups to rise and take power, such as ISIS.

While Osama Bin Laden operated out of a cave for a while, he said, ISIS is operating as a government, running schools and agencies.

"It even writes parking tickets," Ford said, adding he suspects people probably pay those parking tickets.

Finally, he covered what might happen in Iraq and Syria. Someday, he said, new countries could form based more on groups of people than geographical boundaries, like an independent Kurdish state.

Former U.S. Ambassador John Limbert, who served in Mauritania from 2000-03, said he approaches the world from the outlook of a historian who looks to the past to find out why current events are happening.

"Almost all of the states there (in the Middle East) are very fragile. I like to say they are two bad decisions away from complete collapse. I may be optimistic," Limbert said.

Historically, governments that allow freedom in religion, such as the Ottoman model, ruled for centuries, Limbert said.

"The other model, however, is what I call the Assyrian, Byzantine or ISIS model," Limbert said, further defining that model as a "my way or the gallows" model.

The second model works in the short term when the government basically scares everyone into obeying, Limbert said, but historically doesn't last long.

One problem for ISIS is that it and other groups have re-awakened ancient feuds of ethnic groups and religions, he said.

By declaring its intention to form a caliphate, ISIS has also declared war against Shiite Muslims, who don't accept the idea of a caliphate.

Limbert said the U.S. should follow the advice of Abraham Lincoln to his own cabinet during the U.S. Civil War.

Lincoln, he said, told them, "Gentlemen, one war at a time."

Secondly, he said the U.S. should stay out of other people's five-sided quarrels that have gone on for hundreds of years.

He also advised Americans to avoid hyperbole about "The Iranian Threat," adding that it's a popular phrase but should not be overblown.

Finally, he reverted back to his roots as a historian, saying don't forget the history of the area.

Many Middle Eastern states have a history of victimization and foreign occupation, he said, and the U.S. should not feed that history.

Former U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann, who served in Afghanistan from 2005-07, in Bahrain from 2001-04 and in Algeria from 1994-97, said the current lack of clarity from the U.S. is a real problem, and has a destabilizing influence on people in the Middle East and beyond.

The U.S. has been a pillar of stability in the past, he said, and countries orient policies based on what they think the U.S. will do.

The lack of clarity "means it is very difficult for us to talk to anybody and bring them together on any one point of view," Neumann said.

If the U.S. wants to destroy ISIS, he said, it must think in terms of how to destabilize Syria. The U.S. can't leave a big vacuum, he said. But as a new administration comes forward in the U.S., there are no simple answers.

The U.S. needs to do a better job of explaining policies to its own people, Neumann said, and it needs to make it clear that the U.S. has multiple interests and more than one priority.

After each ambassador gave introductory comments, members of the audience were allowed to ask questions.

The first questioner asked what the ambassadors think of having a new cabinet member who would deal with strategies.

Neumann said a new cabinet member would be an institutional solution to a human problem, when we already have multiple institutions.

The president, he said, is the only person who can "railroad the process" to find a solution.

How is the U.S. relationship with Turkey, and how will that relationship develop in the next five to 10 years, one audience member asked.

Ford said his first job was in Turkey.

He said the Turkish prime minister has been arresting journalists and recently seized the largest newspaper in the country.

He said he hopes the private message to Turkey is, "Shame on you."

Based on recent attacks by those loyal to the prime minister on the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, John Bass, Ford said he guesses those private conversations between the ambassador and the prime minister have probably been "pretty bumpy."

But another audience member stood up to say that, when Americans prosecute journalists, it sets the pace for the rest of the world to do the same.

"I am not saying that the United States is perfect," Ford said, adding it could do better.

But he said the Middle East now expects better of the U.S.

The final question came from a young woman who asked if there is anything else the U.S. can do to help other countries that are accepting refugees from Syria.

Ford said he believes the U.S. should take more refugees, and signed a letter to President Obama last fall asking that he take in 100,000 annually.

"That's what leadership is," he said, adding that it will encourage Europeans.

The U.S. must also spend money to try to help other countries take in refugees so that fragile governments in places like Lebanon won't fail, Ford said.

karen.michael@lubbockonline.com

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