There aren't a lot of Syrian institutions left in the region. They've been gone for four years, and I dare say, they pretty much neglected that region when they did rule.
On the Iraqi front, you asked about the police and the judiciary. I think they're a far cry from being professional forces in both cases. The police have become very much dominated by the Iraqi Shiite as well as the judiciary. This is all Maliki's work, not that of Abadi, who I think has done a good job of trying to combat this. But this has become so entrenched, because we've had, under Maliki, four or five years of ensuring that only his cronies, those who come from his particular ideological orientation within the Shia community.... There are plenty of secular, centrist Shias who don't support Maliki's perspective. I'd even point to some who are not centrist people, like the Sadrists, who don't support Maliki's view. That's another untapped resource in Iraq, which would very much be willing to...in the name of a more national narrative. Maliki is seen as a puppet of the Iranian regime, even within Iraq among some of the more radical Shiite forces, who are very much Arab and not Persian.
I'd let my colleague, the other witness, talk about that because he's much more of an expert on Iranians, as I mentioned.