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Articles, publications, books, tools and multimedia features from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest news, analysis, research findings, practitioner guides and reports, all related to the conflict zones and issues that are at the center of the Institute’s work to prevent and reduce violent conflict.
Iraqi Prime Minister Says Trump Offers Support
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, speaking at the U.S. Institute of Peace after his first meeting with President Donald Trump, said the new U.S. administration is “prepared to do more” to fight terrorism than its predecessor, but he cautioned that military force alone won’t defeat ISIS. Abadi said his government is trying to gain the trust of the Iraqi people by reducing abuses by security forces, ensuring that areas recaptured from ISIS are stabilized and making the government more accountable.
Cooling Iraq’s Conflict With Community Dialogue
The violence of extremists—and the chaos they spawn—takes place in towns, villages, streets and homes, not along some far-off front line. That’s where extremist groups seek recruits and where residents they victimize plot revenge, said the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Sarhang Hamasaeed in a Ted Talk-style presentation during the Jan. 10 “Passing the Baton” conference. While national and international efforts to bring peace to such areas can help, dialogue and mediation at the community level has...
Kerry, Rice, Flynn Talk Foreign Policy
Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Advisor Susan Rice and designated incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn are among the Cabinet-level and other senior foreign policy and national security figures from the outgoing and incoming administrations gathering on Tuesday, Jan. 10 at USIP for a day of discussion about the global challenges facing the United States in the coming months and years.
Iraq: Recapturing Mosul is Only the Beginning
Iraqi government troops and allied Kurdish forces opened their assault on the city of Mosul before dawn today, fighting to recapture Iraq’s second-largest city from guerrillas of the Islamic State (ISIS). While a military defeat of the extremist group is expected, that will not bring stability or an end to extremist violence in Iraq unless it is followed by a broad reconciliation among deeply divided communal groups, according to Iraq specialists at USIP.
ISIS Makes Sex Slavery Key Tactic of Terrorism
The sexual violence committed against women and girls by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) can only begin to be addressed with a multipronged response from the global to the local level, said Zainab Hawa Bangura, the United Nations’ point person on the issue. Speaking at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Bangura cited work ranging from promotion of U.N. resolutions to talks with religious leaders to suggest how the brutal, systematic sexual slavery imposed by the extremist group might be ...
Iraq’s Executions: Aftershock of ISIS’ Deadliest Atrocity
Iraq’s execution yesterday of 36 men whom it accused of committing the deadliest single atrocity by the Islamic State group underscores that any stabilization of Iraq will require international support to strengthen the country’s overburdened judicial system, according to USIP Iraq specialist Sarhang Hamasaeed. Iraq’s government came under intense pressure from the country’s Shia Muslim majority population, and from the Shia “Popular Mobilization Forces,” or pro-government militias, to conduc...
For Iraq’s ISIS Targets, Urgent Need for Aid and Security
The recent U.S. designation of genocide to describe the ISIS extremist group’s killings and persecution of minorities as well as Shia Muslims in Iraq and Syria highlighted the long history of oppression of religious and ethnic groups and the questions looming about whether religious minorities especially can survive in the region, according to USIP Senior Program Officer Sarhang Hamasaeed.
The ISIS Genocide Declaration: What Next?
Sarhang Hamasaeed, senior program officer for the Middle East programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations.
Iraq Research: Sense of Injustice Is Key to Violent Extremism
Three years of public polling in Iraq by Mercy Corps has put hard figures to an often-cited theory about the spread and attraction of violent extremism. More than poverty, joblessness or any other dispute or social ill, it is the perception—or reality—of injustice that fuels support for armed opposition groups.
Rare Stability Is At Risk in Iraq’s Kurdish Region and Elsewhere, Middle East Experts Say
Iraq’s Kurdish region, which has been crucial for containing the Islamic State’s rampage and sheltering Iraqis fleeing the extremist group’s brutalities, urgently needs greater engagement from the U.S. and Europe, a panel of experts said in a discussion hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace. Only intensified support will enable the region to withstand the multiple shocks of the past year, including its own current political crisis.