This paper is part of an MEI scholar series, titled “Obama’s Legacy in the Middle East: Passing the Baton in 2017.” Click here to view the full project, or navigate using the table of contents to the right.
A month after the Houthi conquest of Sana, Yemen’s new political landscape remains uncharted. In Sana, the Houthi leadership is trying to coax Yemen’s political elite into a coalition government, while south of Sana, Houthi forces are pressing to consolidate their military power on the ground. Both efforts are encountering considerable resistance, but the Houthis may prevail still.
Read the full article on CNN.
In the space of just 48 hours last week, Turkey went from calling the PYD — the Kurds defending the Syrian border town of Kobani — a terrorist group to opening up an arms corridor from Iraq to aid its fight against ISIS.
The past decade has witnessed a steady increase in the numbers of Indonesians embarking on pilgrimage (ziyara) to the Hadramawt valley of the former South Yemen. Despite the considerable presence of the Hadrami diaspora in Indonesia, the idea of a pilgrimage to Hadramawt did not really exist among Indonesian Muslims of non-Hadrami descent until rather recently.
This article was first published on The Huffington Post.
Read the full article on CNN.com.
Turkey is in a tough spot. It has ISIS militants threatening the Syrian border town of Kobani, inching ever closer to confronting Turkish security forces. In addition thousands of Syrian Kurds, fleeing ISIS attacks, have massed along its border, adding further to Ankara’s troubles.
This article was first published in The New York Times.
President Obama made the right decision to boost military aid to moderate Syrian rebels last year, but today America’s approach to attacking Islamic State fighters risks undermining the moderate opposition and alienating support among the Syrian public.
In his speech on September 10 President Obama characterized the Islamic State (ISIS) as a terrorist group.[1] There were clear political benefits to using this label, not the least of which was to facilitate the formation of a broad-based military coalition against the organization.
This article was first published on LobeLog.
Alongside the wave of Syrian Kurdish refugees into Turkey this month is an equally unsettling story: alarming gains by the Islamic State in an offensive against a potential ally. Syria’s Kurds carved out their own regional bastion extending west from their main base in the extreme northeast corner of Syria. For two years they have fiercely defended their lands against the Islamic State and other extremists, employing many thousands of veteran Kurdish fighters.
This article was first published on CNN.
Turkey, a key U.S. ally and a NATO member that borders the territory captured by ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq, could play a critical role in the U.S.-led military assault against the jihadist group.
The following is the written testimony prepared and delivered by Amb (ret) Robert S. Ford for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing held on September 17, 2014. Click here to watch video of the full hearing (Amb. Ford’s testimony begins at the 3 hours and 26 minutes mark).
One way to grasp the immense difficulty facing President Obama as he tries to forge an effective international coalition to oppose the Islamic State is to examine the difference between this effort and the last time the United States led a diverse group of countries to take on a conflict in the Middle East: Operation Desert Storm, in 1991.
After capturing Amran in mid-summer, the emboldened Huthi movement (Ansar Allah) began a fall campaign against the national capital, surrounding Sana‘a with armed camps, organizing large demonstrations around government buildings inside the city, and demanding that the government repeal its recent decision to lift fuel subsidies before resigning. Tensions turned bloody on September 9 when gunfire broke out as Huthi demonstrators tried to force their way into the Prime Minister’s office in downtown Sana‘a.[1]
