Iraq
Iraq’s future remains profoundly uncertain. Sectarian divisions continue to handicap the government and despite a reduction in violence after the 2007 troop surge security conditions are grim. Informed by perspective from the Middle East, Carnegie scholars in Beirut and Washington provide analysis of the hurdles preventing political progress in Iraq, the policy options available to the United States, and the role neighboring states, most notably Iran, play in Iraq.
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De-Baathification Decision Postponed Until After Election Results
While an ad hoc committee has lifted the ban barring candidates suspected of ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from participating in the Iraqi elections, it did not dismiss the charges against those candidates and is widely seen as the result of internal and external political pressures.
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De-Baathification As A Political Tool: Commission Ruling Bans Political Parties and Leaders
The recent decision to bar nine political parties and 458 individuals from running in the Iraq’s March parliamentary elections has damaged sectarian reconciliation efforts and affected the integrity of the election process.
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Foreign Policy Challenges in 2010
Efforts to combat terrorism largely defined the global security agenda during the past decade, when small terrorist groups, with as few as three hundred active members, were able to inflict enormous amounts of damage on regional, national, and international scales.
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Iran, the United States, and the Gulf: The Elusive Regional Policy
Any effective U.S. diplomatic approach to Iran must involve other countries in the Gulf, but Washington will not succeed if it continues to strive for an anti-Iranian alliance. A normalization of relations between Iran and its neighbors is an important and attainable step for reintegrating Iran into the international community.
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Preventing Conflict Over Kurdistan
The invasion of Iraq has surfaced long-suppressed nationalist aspirations among the Kurds. If ignored or mishandled, Kurdish aspirations have the potential to ignite violence and instability in Iraq and the region.
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President Obama and Middle East Expectations
Barack Obama's election was celebrated throughout the Middle East. But enthusiasm could quickly turn to hostility if the new administration does not back up its rhetoric with concrete changes to U.S. Middle East policy on three key issues: Palestine, Iraq, and political reform.
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Six Years Later: Assessing Long-Term Threats, Risks and the U.S. Strategy for Security in a Post-9/11 World
The Iraq war will be the turning point that changes the basic parameters of our security picture for decades. The war's monopoly on our political energy, which has now stretched to five years -- an eon in a time of fast-moving global change -- is one of its greatest uncounted costs.
Featured Event
Kurdish Elections: Implications for Iraq and the Region
The July 25 elections for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) changed the dynamics of Kurdish politics in Iraq; for the first time real political opposition to the two ruling Kurdish parties emerged.
Experts
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Henri Barkey
Barkey served as a member of the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff, working primarily on issues related to the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and intelligence from 1998 to 2000. He has taught at Princeton, Columbia, the State University of New York, and the University of Pennsylvania. -
Michele Dunne
Formerly a specialist at the State Department and White House on Middle East affairs, Dunne has also been a visiting assistant professor of Arabic language at Georgetown University. -
Amr Hamzawy
Hamzawy previously taught at Cairo University and the Free University of Berlin. He writes a bi-monthly op-ed for the leading Arab daily al-Hayat. -
Ariel (Eli) Levite
Levite was the Principal Deputy Director General for Policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission from 2002 to 2007. -
Jessica Tuchman Mathews
Jessica Tuchman Mathews was appointed president of the Endowment in 1997. Her career includes posts in the executive and legislative branches of government, in management and research in the nonprofit arena, and in journalism. -
Marina Ottaway
Before joining the Endowment, Ottaway carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East for many years and taught at the University of Addis Ababa, the University of Zambia, the American University in Cairo, and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
