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Colonial Designs, Arab Dreams, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

02.23.22

H.D. Wright provides an analysis of the European diplomatic engagements that pulled apart existing territories and forced them between the borders of new states, sealing a nearly inevitable destiny of domestic strife.

Understanding the Kurdish Student Protests

12.30.21

Sarkawt Shamsulddin provides his insights on the recent student protests in Kurdistan, what led to them, and what they mean for the region.

Persistent Impunity Raises Concerns Around Iraqi Elections & Democracy

10.10.21

Ghazi Ghazi sits down with Sally Bachori, one of the founding members of Ending Impunity in Iraq to learn more about the organization and their grassroots movement.

Bill Kristol Can’t Teach Us Anything

02.2.21

Kristol’s unapologetic role as a driving force behind the Iraq War, as an advocate of violence throughout the Middle East, and as a promoter of hateful discrimination make him unfit to teach in our community and serve as an IOP Fellow.

Media

Guilty by Association: The Fate of ISIL Families in Iraq

08.27.19

BY JOHN MILLOCK   In December 2017, Iraq’s government declared victory over the Islamic State (ISIL), ending more than three years of ISIL’s brutal occupation of large swaths of Iraq. Yet for the 2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Iraq today, the conflict is far from over.[1] This is especially true for ordinary Iraqi […]

Repeating History: An Iraqi-American’s Appeal to Avoid War with Iran

08.1.19

Though I was born at a time when Iran and Iraq were at war with each other, no conflict has been more formative to my identity than the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Years after Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his now infamous address at the U.N. accusing Iraq of threatening the post-9/11 world […]

International Relations and Security
KRG Independence Rally, Creative Commons

Event review: an ambassador without a country

01.22.19

Kurdistan Regional Government Rep. Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman discusses Kurdish politics since the KRG’s 2017 independence referendum and the Erbil-Baghdad relationship at Harvard Law School.

International Relations and Security

From deadlock to deadline: Iraq’s new government faces pressure to reform

10.25.18

Newly minted President Barham Salih and Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi have one year to enact reform on pressing domestic issues, especially utility services and unemployment. If the government fails to implement changes, it may face another series of popular uprisings.

Asylum seekers in Greece

To address the refugee crisis, focus on dignity

06.22.17

Millions of people in the Middle East and elsewhere were forced to flee their homes in recent years. What they need most now is dignity.

Human Rights
Tunisia protests

Tunisia: “Unemployment has killed me”

05.15.17

Youth unemployment is a major driver of radicalization in Tunisia, which supplies more fighters to Syria and Iraq than any other country.

Poverty, Inequality and Opportunity
ISIL graffiti

ISIL may be losing on the battlefield. But it’s winning elsewhere.

04.4.17

The terrorist group aims to shrink the “grayzone”: the plane of coexistence between Muslims in the West and their non-Muslim countrymen.

International Relations and Security

‘Saving Iraq’: The chains of liberation

03.20.17

The dangerous assumption that Iraqis are unable to govern themselves must be challenged.

International Relations and Security

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