The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), also known as Iraqi Kurdistan, is a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Iraq with a population of approximately 6.5 million. The KRI’s contemporary politics are rooted in a century of Kurdish efforts to achieve self-rule.
Brian is joined by Amb. (ret.) Yael Lempert, Vice President for Outreach at MEI, to discuss her career in diplomacy and the importance of US diplomatic efforts abroad. She shares stories from postings across the Middle East in Baghdad, Cairo, Tripoli, Jerusalem, and Amman and examines how her personal and professional experiences shaped her approach to the work. Together, Brian and Yael discuss the realities of life in the Foreign Service, the core tenets of American diplomacy, and why it matters in today’s Middle East.
It has become a commonplace for Americans to describe our current war with Iran as stuck in a kind of limbo, neither full war nor real peace. We’re not the only ones. Iraq finds itself caught in a limbo of its own, between America and Iran, between the tolerable and the intolerable, between progress and relapse.
This article was originally published on NPR.
The Islamic State has been steadily losing territory in its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq, where a U.S. bombing campaign and a host of rival forces chip away at its holdings.
This article is the result of a recent visit by the authors to Baghdad where they met with government leaders, security officials, political party representatives from the various communities, and leaders of ten Iraqi think tanks. A version of this article appeared in the March 10 issue of the Arabic Al-Hayat newspaper.
Despite deep internal divisions, a massive security threat from ISIS, and a fiscal collapse due to low oil prices, the Iraqi government is struggling to move the country forward and deserves urgent support from international and regional players.
Summary
Amb. Robert Ford delivered the following prepared remarks at a hearing of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on January 12, 2016. Click here to watch C-SPAN’s coverage of the hearing.
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee,
It is an honor to be on this distinguished panel. Thank you for inviting me.
This paper is part of a MEI scholar series titled “The Middle East and the 2016 Presidential Elections.”
Abstract
This paper is part of a MEI scholar series titled “The Middle East and the 2016 Presidential Elections.”
This article was first published in The Hoover Institution’s The Caravan.
Daesh or ISIS does not represent an existential threat to any state except Syria and Iraq. It occupies and controls ungoverned space in the region between Iraq and Syria and in parts of northern Africa; and its self-proclaimed Caliphate has benefited from the seizure of some income producing assets in these areas. Daesh depends on the dynamism of success and expansion, both of which have been in short supply of late.
October 2015 marks the fourteenth month of formal U.S. military engagement in the struggle against the Islamic State (ISIS). The Obama administration was at first reluctant to engage U.S. military power in this struggle but then became more deliberate in its approach. U.S. involvement in the battlegrounds of Iraq and Syria has been evolving especially over the past year. This evolution has been defined and is in many ways limited by a strategy that emphasizes political change in Iraq and a broad coalition of states taking action against ISIS.
Read the full article in the September 2015 issue of The Ripon Forum.
It will be one year this September since the U.S. president declared the formation of an international coalition to ‘degrade and destroy’ ISIS. After 6,000 air strikes, 9,000 targets struck, 10,000 fighters killed, and various battles undertaken in Iraq and Syria, the war is at a strategic stalemate.
Twenty-five years ago, on August 7th 1990, an American interagency team walked into an urgent meeting with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, not knowing what would happen. A week earlier Iraq had seized Kuwait. The Americans feared that the Iraqi Army might keep going, seizing the Saudi oil fields. As a result of decisions made at that August 7th meeting, Iraq and terrorism have dominated American foreign policy for three decades and continue to do so.
أقدم مطبوعة محكمة مخصصة لدراسة الشرق الأوسط المعاصر، تغطي مجلة MEI الرائدة السياسة والمجتمع والثقافة في المنطقة.
