Combating Terrorism Seminar: Day 1

Right now, you’re all probably looking at the title wondering whatever happened to my seminar on Yemen.  Well, it turns out that NESA was planning on holding two seminars at the same time, the first being the Yemen Bilateral Seminar, and the other the Combating Terrorism Seminar.  Little did I know until late last week that I would be assigned to the Combating Terrorism Seminar and not the Seminar on Yemen, so I will be taking you all on a daily look of my role in the Combating Terrorism Seminar.  While I was looking forward to helping out with the Yemen Seminar, I’m also really excited this upcoming Terrorism seminar as well.  The Combating Terrorism Seminar, as the title already suggests, involves high ranking government officials from 17 different countries in various ministries discussing and debating the more pressing transnational and domestic issues revolving around terrorism, and discussing what can be done to take steps forward towards ending it.

With that being said, I will be giving you an insider look at the work that goes behind the scenes during the Combating Terrorism (CT) Seminar as well as a description of some of the events that will be going on during this seminar for the next five days.  The first event actually began on Tuesday evening, where the interns, planners, and participant program assistants hosted a Welcome Reception at the hotel that the Seminar participants were staying in.  My job for the evening was to direct the participants into the Jefferson Room inside the hotel and then prepare the interpretation devices so that the non-English speakers will be able to understand everything that the course director was saying during the speech.  After the reception, I had the chance to mingle with the participants over a delicious dinner.  The evening ended around 9 pm and then we all had to be back in NESA at 7:30 pm am for the first day of the CT Seminar.

The first full day of the Seminar started the next morning around 7:30 am.  Most of the day was spent taking care of administrative issues and other housekeeping businesses, such as getting the participants badges to get into the building, taking a group photo, and simply getting the participants acquainted with their surroundings around the NESA building and Washington D.C. in general.  My tasks for the day involved helping out with all of those administrative tasks that needed to be taken care of, including walking the participants down to get their badges and distributing forms that needed to be filled out during the registration process.  I was also responsible for managing the TV screens around the building, which would show the participants the schedule for the upcoming sessions as well as display any pictures taken from the previous day.  In this case, I put up pictures from the Welcome.  Unfortunately, due to national security reasons, I cannot display any pictures from the Welcome Reception or the CT Seminar on the whole. Also, as interns we are assigned to make coffee and tea for our participants.  Now it may not be the best part about being an intern, but it also benefits us as interns because then we will get the opportunity to have free coffee and tea for the day.  The day ended with the Senior Vice President of National Defense University speaking on behalf of the NESA Center, welcoming the participants to NESA.  The most interesting aspect about this session was that what was supposed to be simply an introductory talk ended up turning into a discussion on Iran and its influence in the region.  The first day of the seminar ended around 4:15 for the participants, but our day was not over just yet.  We had to help clean the plenary room, which is the main room that the CT Seminar assembles, as well as prepare coffee and tea for the next day.  By the time we were all set with that, I got by around 5:45.  

Tomorrow we will begin the first full day of sessions and discussion groups, with those discussions revolving around how U.S. foreign policy is shaped and how the shaping of U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy affects the Near East South Asian (NESA) region.  Until then, take care, and hope you enjoy the rest of your day!