FPIF is a think tank for research, analysis, and action that brings together scholars, advocates, and activists who strive to make the United States a more responsible global partner. We are a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, a community of public scholars working for peace, justice, and the environment.
Follow @fpif
How Western Aid Bungled Syria’s Opposition & Paved the Way for ISIS
The takeover of large swaths of Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—and the declaration of a new caliphate within this territory—has captured the attention of every media outlet, pundit, and politician with even a passing interest in Middle East affairs.
The reason for the emergence of ISIS remains hotly contested. Certainly, the Syrian regime’s willingness to employ the worst forms of brutality has created an environment in which ISIS has thrived. Also important has been the Sunni extremism born in the ashes of Iraq. “Moderate opposition forces,” for their part, have also failed to stem the tide of radical extremism.
4 Aug 2014 / 1 note / Iraq MENA Syria Turkey Assistance Coordination Unit Foreign Aid Gaziantep Haqquna ISIL ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Local Administrative Council Support Unit Raqqa Syrian Civil War Syrian Interim Government Syrian Opposition Syrian Opposition Coalition Syrian Rebels Syrian National Coalition for Revolution and Opposition Forces
Behind Door Number Three in Iraq
Governments around the world—and their expensive yet oddly clueless intelligence agencies—are watching in shock and horror as militant Sunni radicals sweep from Syria into Iraq.
Yet today’s crisis was both predictable and predicted ever since President George W. Bush made it clear that he and whomever he could persuade to join him were going to invade Iraq. That decision was the first in a long train of bad decisions hurtling toward the situation we find ourselves in today. Indeed, the reality of this post-Saddam world can be traced all the way back to the first plans for a post-Saddam Iraq bruited about by U.S. policymakers—in early 2001.
America Should Open Its Doors to Iraqis
President Barack Obama got it right when he declared: “There’s no military solution inside of Iraq, certainly not one that is led by the United States.”
But his Iraq track record doesn’t mark much of an improvement over the mess his predecessor made.
The June takeover of Mosul by the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) — a group born from the devastation wrought by the U.S. invasion — has only escalated the mass displacement of Iraqis that the Bush administration sparked in 2003. Half a million people have left Nineveh province in the last month. They’re only the most recent exodus in a six-month-long wave of displacement from western and northern Iraq as ISIS has fought its way across the country.
Women and the War In Syria
From the initial uprisings against the government of Bashar al-Assad in spring 2011, women in Syria have organized and participated in peaceful demonstrations and provided vital humanitarian assistance to those in need. Like their male counterparts, Syrian women who take part in protests or provide aid are targets of abuse, harassment, detention, and even torture by government forces and some armed groups opposed to the government.
At the same time, general insecurity and discriminatory restrictions imposed by some armed groups opposed to the government have curtailed women’s dress and freedom of movement. Many women have become de facto household heads, both inside Syria and in refugee settings, when male family members have been killed, detained, forcibly disappeared, injured, disabled, or unable to find steady employment.
Mowing the Lawn in Gaza
The Palestinians of Gaza are guilty of that new post-Cold War misdemeanor: voting while Muslim. The punishment for this crime has been eight years of economic hardship, international isolation, and periodic Israeli bombardments.
Like the Algerians in 1990 and the Egyptians in 2012, Gazans went to the polls in 2006 and voted for the wrong party. Rather than supporting the secular choice, they cast their ballots for Hamas. Not all Palestinians are Muslim (6 percent or so are Christian). But by opting for the Islamic Resistance Movement—Hamas, for short—Gazans had effectively nullified their own ballots.
Obama: Be War-Weary, Not World-Weary
Criticism of the Obama administration’s foreign policy approach has reached a boiling point.
The president’s loudest critics—chiefly those on the hawkish right, but also so-called liberal interventionists—fault him for hesitating to use military force in a host of venues. They accuse him of isolationism, weakness, lack of vision, and a failure to project American power abroad.
U.S. Forces: Stay Out of Iraq
The headlines and pundits alike are spouting the traditional clichés about Iraq: Baghdad is falling. Iraq is splitting into three parts. Shias and Sunnis have been fighting for a thousand years.
We heard many of the same claims during the heightened sectarian conflict in Iraq from 2005 to 2007. But it’s useful to remember that Iraq has been around in one form or another for 7,000 years. Much of what’s happened recently is a direct result of U.S. policy and regional tumult, not ancient history.
How John Maynard Keynes Can Save the Arab Spring
At first glance, the Arab region appears to have entered a new period of crisis—perhaps the greatest in its modern history. The Arab revolts of 2011 seem to have given way to a “Jihadi Spring,” with the civil war in Syria providing a haven for radical extremist groups from across the globe. As the crisis in Syria spills over into neighboring Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan, the world is confronting a frightening revival of the al-Qaeda franchise.
In 2011, North Africa witnessed the dramatic downfall of three dictators: Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. But in much of the region, “deep state” security apparatuses have proven more resilient than any one political leader. Cabals of military officers managed to frustrate democratic transition in Egypt and hold onto power in Algeria, with Algerian leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi recently claiming landslide victories in sham elections that were largely boycotted by the progressive left. The oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Middle East, meanwhile, have brutally suppressed any form of domestic opposition, while leveraging their huge cachet of petrodollars to appease their restive citizens through a combination of expanded welfare and new employment opportunities.
Don’t Go Back to Iraq!
This is how wars begin.
Barack Obama says we’re not going back to Iraq. “American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq,” he said on June 19th, “but we will help Iraqis as they take the fight to terrorists who threaten the Iraqi people, the region, and American interests as well.”
The White House says it’s “only” sending 275 soldiers to protect the embassy, it’s only sending 300 Special Forces, they’re only “advisers.” There’s only one aircraft carrier in the region, they say, and a few other warships. They’re considering missile strikes but they’re not going to send ground troops.
Who Won Iraq?
As Iraq was unraveling last week and the possible outlines of the first jihadist state in modern history were coming into view, I remembered this nugget from the summer of 2002. At the time, journalist Ron Suskind had a meeting with “a senior advisor” to President George W. Bush (later identified as Karl Rove). Here’s how he described part of their conversation:
“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’”