Publications
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.
Question And Answer
Amid a Changing Global Order, NATO Looks East
From Conflict in the Streets to Peace in the Society
From Hong Kong’s boulevards and Nairobi’s Uhuru Park to the maidans of Kyiv, Cairo and Tunis, millions of people have massed in recent years to demand greater democracy and transparency from their governments. Dozens of similar campaigns have been fought more quietly. A quarter-century of worldwide growth in such non-violent civil resistance movements has sharpened a question both for their activists and for practitioners of traditional peacebuilding: How can such resistance movements and conflict-resolution work be combined to build more stable, democratic societies?
Iraq Crisis Builds Bipartisan Support for Keeping U.S. Troops in Afghanistan, Senator Cotton Says
The revival by ISIS of a brutal Islamist offensive in Iraq makes it urgent to prevent a similar reversal in the Afghan war—and is increasing congressional support for President Obama to maintain U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) said today.
Bipartisan Congressional Panel Urges New Approach to Fighting Extremism
Members of Congress representing both parties—Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), as well as Representatives Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Michael McCaul (R-TX)—yesterday lauded the release of a new report that makes the case and outlines a framework for preventing violent extremism at its roots.
South Sudan Crisis Requires More Active U.S. Role, USIP’s Lyman Says
U.S. officials and senators warned that South Sudan’s warring leaders risk losing American backing unless they end violence that has killed more than 1,000 people in the past month, and experts such as the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Princeton Lyman urged that the international community take a more assertive role.
How Drought Escalates Rebel Killings of Civilians
The 2011 famine in Somalia, caused by a prolonged drought, killed an estimated 260,000 people. But this was more than a natural disaster. Amid the starvation, food shortages prompted rebels of al-Shabab, the armed group fighting Somalia’s government and spreading terror abroad, to attack local farmers to seize their food reserves, causing even more civilian deaths. It’s a pattern that plays out in rural regions across the developing world.
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...
USIP Iftar: Don’t Just Tolerate Diversity, Embrace It
The traditional Muslim call to prayer echoed across USIP’s atrium yesterday evening as the institute ushered in its third annual Iftar, marking the breaking of the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan. But it wasn’t just one imam’s voice. Instead, five Muslim clerics and a poetry reader from six traditions—Senegalese, Syrian, Pakistani, Iranian, Turkish and Moroccan—represented the theme of the event: The Islamic Mosaic.
Provincial Reconstruction Teams: Military Relations with International and Nongovernmental Organizations in Afghanistan
Summary Deployed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) combine military personnel and civilian staff from the diplomatic corps and developmental agencies. Their mission is to: extend the authority of the Afghan central government, promote and enhance security, and facilitate humanitarian relief and reconstruction operations. Twenty PRTs were currently in operation throughout Afghanistan as of June 2005: thirteen staffed by the U.S.-le...
Panel Urges New View of Middle East Refugees
The refugee crisis that has spread to Europe and the breakdown of the Middle East’s century-old political order demand new thinking about the economic role of displaced people and a reassessment of donor strategies to rebuild societies in conflict, a working group convened by the U.S. Institute of Peace concluded. The panel’s report, developed under USIP’s Manal Omar and Elie Abouaoun as part of Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force, calls for refugees to be viewed as potential e...
The U.S. Can’t Give Up on Africa’s Crises
After a trip to assess humanitarian crises in some of the world’s most troubled nations, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley said he concluded that a matrix of conflict, corruption and “climate chaos” is driving one of the biggest periods of displacement in modern history.