Research & Commentary Results

As attacks by ISIS increase in both Iraq and Syria, the upcoming U.S. presidential election offers a turning point for how U.S. foreign policy will seek to address a potential ISIS resurgence. This paper lays out this growing problem and recommends policy, which will be constrained by the outcome of the November election.

With a presidential election looming in the United States, the continuing crisis in Syria is unlikely to make headlines. Aside from the COVID-19 pandemic, raging wildfires, and the occasional flare-up of violence in Idlib, Syria has been largely off the radar in the U.S. for quite some time. Yet dramatic new revelations suggest that Syria could be on the administration’s agenda more prominently as President Donald Trump makes a serious, if desperate, move to secure American hostages thought by U.S. officials to be held in Damascus.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Charles Lister, Ruba Husari, Marvin G. Weinbaum, and W. Robert Pearson.

In recent years Turkey has launched three incursions into Syria and become increasingly involved abroad.

Robert Ford, Hafsa Halawa, and Randa Slim join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the political and economic challenges facing Iraq, the state of US-Iraqi relations, and the potential impact of upcoming U.S. elections in November.

On June 17, 2020, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to Syria, Joel Rayburn, announced the beginning of the “summer of Caesar,” promising a wave of sanctions designations under the newly activated Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act. Summer has come and gone, but there’s little to show for it.

The Caesar Civilian Protection Act sanctions on Syria, which were signed into law by U.S. President Donald Trump in December and took effect on June 17, have polarized the international community. Most European countries have supported the Caesar Act’s use of sanctions to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for war crimes, but Russia and China have stridently criticized the legislation.

Thousands of former ISIS fighters and tens of thousands of civilians indoctrinated in the group’s extremist ideology currently sit in prisons and refugee camps across Iraq and Syria. Leaving the detainees there is dangerous, but transitioning them will require some type of accountability for the crimes committed. This paper explores options for international action to deal with the detention of ISIS members from Iraq and Syria and the foreign terrorist fighters who joined the group from around the globe.

The significant increase in tit-for-tat kidnappings between Daraa governorate and As-Suwayda governorate has become a defining characteristic of volatile southern Syria. Contrary to the belief of many, instances of kidnappings between the “plain” (Daraa) and “mount” (As-Suwayda) of Hauran, which have been occurring since at least 2011, are not driven by Sunni-Druze sectarian hatred. Rather, the deteriorating economy, decline of agriculture, unemployment, desperate poverty, and abundance of weapons are the core factors pushing many individuals to participate in criminal groups and engage in profit kidnapping, drug dealing, and gun running.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Robert S. Ford, Gonul Tol, Paul Salem, Dr. Marwa Maziad, and Marvin G. Weinbaum.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Maxim A. Suchkov, Ibrahim Jalal, Eliza Campbell, Alex Vatanka, and Marvin G. Weinbaum.

Political manipulation of cultural heritage is a powerful tool in the armory of soft power. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad understands this well, as does Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Charles Lister, Hafsa Halawa, Bilal Y. Saab, Anthony Elghossain, and Michael Sexton.

Foreign fighters have played a major role in Syria’s ongoing conflict, with a presence in the country that numbered in the tens of thousands at its peak. One of the most mythologized sources of foreign recruits has been Chechnya, the once-separatist province of Russia’s North Caucasus that was reconquered by the Russian army in the early 2000s. Several thousand Chechen fighters traveled to Syria to fight in various opposition and Islamist factions, where their battlefield prowess made them a prized commodity among Syrian rebel militants.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Grace Wermenbol, Jason Pack, Shahla Al-Kli, and Khaldoun Khelil.