Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
The first shipment of grain to leave Ukraine’s key Black Sea ports since the Russian invasion is expected to dock this week in Tripoli, Lebanon, the country where food inflation is the highest in the world, completing a test run for an international deal aimed at alleviating the global food crisis. The ship, carrying...
Just days after President Joe Biden returned from his controversial trip to the Middle East, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is paying his own visit to the region this week. On Tuesday, Putin arrived in Iran, where he will meet with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hold talks with...
As Russia turns its attention increasingly toward Ukraine - evidenced by the transfer of senior Russian military officials from Syria to Ukraine and a decrease in Moscow's strategic bandwidth on Syria - Tehran is ready to seize the advantage, both militarily on the ground as well as politically and diplomatically,” Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser at the US Institute of Peace, told TNA.
Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, and Mona Yacoubian, senior advisor at the US Institute of Peace (USIP), spar over the points of convergence and divergence regarding Russia’s malign actions in Syria and Ukraine with host Carol Castiel.
The Ukraine war's reverberations into the Middle East and North Africa could serve as the catalyst for the next significant wave of uprisings among fragile MENA states.
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Mona Yacoubian of the U.S. Institute of Peace about the role Russia's military played in Syria and what she thinks the legacy of that conflict is today.
For those shocked by images of Ukrainian civilians targeted by Russian air strikes, I have one word for you: Syria. Moscow’s indiscriminate bombing campaign in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal war against his own people — including attacks on hospitals, schools, residential neighborhoods and markets — killed thousands of civilians. Its year-long military offensive in the rebel-held province of Idlib in 2019 was particularly savage, forcing as many as 1.4 million people from their homes...
After a decade of warfare, the conflict in Syria has settled into a violent, protracted stalemate. Now, as before, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad continues to act with impunity. He has forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of Syrians and subjected thousands more to torture, sexual violence, or death in detention. The country is in a full-blown humanitarian crisis: an estimated 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line, and 60 percent are food insecure—the highest proportion since the start of the conflict, according to the United Nations...
Absent an unforeseen event, experts say Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is not going to lose his grip on power any time soon – something that is moving many Arab countries to normalise relations with the government in Damascus. Thousands of kilometres away in Washington, DC, United States policy on Syria has become a balancing act between maintaining a rejection of Assad while pursuing “realistic” goals in the region...