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411. State-building: A Roadmap for the Rule of Law and Institutionalisation in the Kurdistan Region

Author:
Dlawer Ala'Aldeen
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Middle East Research Institute (MERI)
Abstract:
Despite frequent digressions, the system of governance in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) has made significant progress. However, this has always been influenced by internal and external political, economic, and security dynamics. In parallel, the system has inherited aspects from the former Iraqi, Middle Eastern and other models of governance- resulting in the formation of unique system. Further developing and reforming the governing system in the KRI requires a tailor-made solution that takes into account Kurdistan’s historical, cultural, religious and geographical background. Clearly the achievements and progress of the Region in the past 26 years should not be underestimated; as the KRI is in a neighbourhood bedevilled with regional powers with political agendas as well as weak or failed states. In addition, the KRI faces existential threats from violent extremist forces using the pretext of religion or nationalism in attempt to destabilise the Region. However, the KRI’s own increasing weakness is in its governance, which poses the greatest threat to its fate and future. Hence, this research-based policy book aims (1) to identify the key structural and functional weaknesses in the KRI’s governance system, and (2) to provide a 10-year roadmap capable of addressing these weaknesses. This book is an extended policy-report, a product of extensive research based on in-depth face-to-face interviews and roundtable meetings with more than 200 experts, including policy-makers, decision-makers and academics across the KRI’s governorates. In particular, the report focuses on reforming the management structures and mechanisms needed to promote the rule of law and create an environment conducive to achieving good governance, through: Adopting a transitional constitution for the KRI to serve as a framework and roadmap until the issue of the disputed territories is resolved. Transferring the political decision-making authority into the key democratic institutions. Enhancing legitimacy in the decision-making process. Maintaining the independence of government Consolidating the legislative, executive and judiciary institutions so they become sources of independent authority rather than tools for political interests. Amending dated laws and filling the numerous legislative gaps. Devolving power through administrative decentralisation and empowering local government. Enhancing the decision-making process and minimising bureaucracy. Strengthening institutions through restructuring and optimisation of staff numbers and performance. Enhancing institutional audit, monitoring and performance assessment. . Creating a tailor-made system for quality assurance, accreditation and performance management. This book provides detailed policy recommendations with the aim of introducing radical changes in the governance system, ensuring strengthened institutional structures, and empowering leadership and decision-making processes. The recommendations are designed to enhance the functionality and resilience of KRI’s system of governance in the face of future threats and crises. The public and the political leadership (including those in power and the opposition) have no choice but to engage heavily in nation- and state-building in the KRI with clear will and determination in order to achieve unity and prosperity. Left unaddressed, the status quo will not achieve the legitimate expectations of the people and will ultimately lead to failure of the entire governing system. Indubitably, reform and institutionalisation cannot be actualised in one institution or one sector of governance alone. Rather, these processes require a comprehensive and overreaching approach involving not only the public, but also the governing and opposition parties as well as the civil society.
Topic:
Reform, Political structure, Institutionalism, and State Building
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, and Kurdistan

412. Iran's Use of Shi'i Militant Proxies: Ideological and Practical Expediency Versus Uncertain Sustainability

Author:
Alex Vatanka
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
Since its 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has incited violent, radical, and often sectarian nonstate groups across the Middle East to serve as proxies in its military campaigns to influence regional and international politics. This “proxy model” has become increasingly salient since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and more recently in Iraq and Syria, and is now Iran’s primary tool for advancing its regional intersts. The U.S. and the West in general have largely paid attention only to radical Sunni groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. With a few exceptions, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, nonstate Shi‘i militant groups have generally avoided the same intense Western scrutiny. This study compares and contrasts regional conflicts that have been shaped by Iranian proxies and Iran’s successful—and unsuccessful—attempts to recruit to its militant groups. It also identifies the key forces that have shaped Iran’s ideological and operational sponsorship of nonstate militant groups, both Sunni and Shi‘i, as well as its motivations and preferred modus operandi.
Topic:
Non State Actors, Violent Extremism, Conflict, Ideology, Shia, and Proxy War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and United States of America

413. Environmental Politics in the Middle East

Author:
Center for International and Regional Studies
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), Georgetown University in Qatar
Abstract:
This report provides a summary of the "Environmental Politics in the Middle East" research initiative, which explores the geopolitics of natural resources in the Middle East in an attempt to expand the focus to include the region’s many natural resources other than natural gas, such as land, air, water, and food. Some of the issues under investigation include a focus on water scarcity, which is a global issue but one that is particularly acute in the Middle East; its impacts are examined through a case study on Yemen. Food security is studied in the case of Syria, which before the civil war began, in 2011, was one of the region’s notable food exporters. Aside from acute food shortages within Syria, the conflict has had ripple effects on the region and has led to rising food prices in neighboring states, such as Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Natural Resources, and Food
Political Geography:
Iraq, Turkey, Middle East, Yemen, Syria, and Jordan

414. Iraq's Post-2014 Counter Terrorism Service

Author:
David Witty
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
More than a decade ago, the United States created the elite Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service to conduct, coordinate, and lead CT efforts within the country. The CTS generally thrived in this role, even as Iraqis viewed the group with suspicion owing to its secretive operations, forbidding look, and avoidance of publicity. Beginning in 2014, though, the service experienced a dramatic boost in popularity after spearheading the ouster of Islamic State forces from Iraqi territories. In this respect, the CTS far outshone other elements within the Iraqi security architecture. But the anti-IS effort entailed a vastly expanded role for the CTS, straining its capabilities, producing high casualties, and raising questions about how the group should position itself in a future Iraq. In this new study, David M. Witty examines prospects for the Counter Terrorism Service in Iraq's post–Islamic State landscape. Despite the group's impressive performance in recent campaigns, he argues that it should return to its CT focus and that Washington can help drive this by conditioning future aid on these terms. The high cost of not doing so could include stunting the healthy growth of other Iraqi security entities.
Topic:
Terrorism and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Iraq and Global Focus

415. Iraq's Political Turmoil

Author:
Middle East Institute
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
Three months after Iraq held its latest parliamentary elections the results are still being counted. Meanwhile political parties are jockeying for power and Iraqi citizens are taking to the streets to protest the government’s handling of services and the economy. Dr. Abbas Kadhim, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Omar Al-Nidawi, Iraq director for Gryphon Partners, and Dr. Randa Slim, director of MEI’s Program on Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues, join host Paul Salem to discuss the situation.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Iraq

416. Economic Integration and Political Reconciliation in Iraq

Author:
Peter S. Henne
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for American Progress - CAP
Abstract:
Restoring Christian religious communities and other minorities in Iraq will foster stability and enhance development.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Religion, Integration, and Strategic Stability
Political Geography:
Iraq and Middle East

417. Kurdistan’s New Moment

Author:
Daniel Benaim
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for American Progress - CAP
Abstract:
One year after military victory over the Islamic State (IS) and a bitter Kurdish defeat in Kirkuk, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan is settling into a new moment of hard-won calm. Its two largest parties are poised to form a new regional government, and a newly formed central government in Baghdad presents opportunities for cooperation. Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leaders have sought to turn the page on bitter disputes with Baghdad and Washington over the Kurds’ referendum on independence.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Transition, and Political Crisis
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, and Kurdistan

418. Fighting Fire with Fire: The Growing Nexus between Atrocity Prevention and Counterterrorism and Its Implications for the Use of Force to Protect Civilians

Author:
Colin Thomas-Jensen
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
By the fall of 2014, before the United States and its partners began the military campaign to erode the territory held by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, the international community understood the horrors endured by civilians living under IS control. While IS leadership plotted politically motivated attacks against its enemies in the region and in the West, reports trickling out from areas under the group’s merciless grip and IS’s own online propaganda clearly indicated a grave pattern of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including violence targeted at ethnic and religious minorities; women; the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community; and other vulnerable groups. As the United States considered its response to the rise of IS, the duality of the group’s threat—an external one to Americans and American interests and an internal one to civilians living in IS-held areas—animated two communities of US policy makers that had rarely interacted with one another: those focused on counterterrorism and atrocity prevention. The US-led military operation to prevent genocide by IS against the Yazidi community on Mount Sinjar, Iraq, that President Barack Obama announced on August 7, 2014, included the first volley of airstrikes in the more-than-three-year counterterrorism campaign to defeat IS in Iraq and Syria. Important for the atrocity-prevention community, the airstrikes and deployment of Special Operations Forces (alongside humanitarian experts) to help coordinate the evacuation of civilians demonstrated an openness on the part of senior US policy makers to use counterterrorism capabilities to prevent a mass atrocity. In hindsight, however, US-led lethal action against IS fighters who threatened thousands of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar was more the outcome of a unique set of circumstances than a harbinger of a more collaborative relationship between the counterterrorism community and policy makers focused on preventing atrocities committed by state actors, such as the governments of Syria, South Sudan, and Myanmar, and nonstate actors, including militia groups with little to no connection with international terrorist networks. With terrorist groups such as IS, Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin, and al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa almost certain to continue atrocities against local populations in areas in which they operate, a fundamental question for policy makers arises. Did the extreme circumstances under which the United States and its partners decided to intervene on Mount Sinjar necessarily represent a threshold for action, or can a more normalized relationship between the atrocityprevention and counterterrorism communities be advanced—a relationship that would seek to leverage counterterrorism tools and resources to take decisive action to protect non-US citizens from atrocities while improving measures to avoid civilian casualties, including civilians killed during actions taken by US counterterrorism partners? Drawing from interviews with nearly 40 former and current US policy makers and outside experts1 , as well as a convening of 20 experts at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in June 2017, this paper explains the increasing relevance of the counterterrorism–atrocityprevention nexus and defines some of the significant challenges of closer collaboration between those communities, with a specific focus on preventing imminent atrocities. Defining when (including clearly articulated criteria for what constitutes “imminent” in this scenario), how, and under whose authority to use force to prevent atrocities against civilians is only one element of broadening a counterterrorism strategy that also includes diplomacy and countering violent extremism (CVE) efforts. 2 This paper is narrowly focused on the use of force and argues that in some circumstances, the atrocity-prevention agenda can be advanced by using counterterrorism tools—including lethal strikes—to prevent imminent atrocities against civilians in areas where terrorist groups operate.
Topic:
Counter-terrorism, Islamic State, Civilians, Atrocity Prevention, and Protection
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, Global Focus, and United States of America

419. Rethinking Orientalism

Author:
Nadje al-Ali
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR), Rutgers University School of Law
Abstract:
The lecture will address the relevance of Edward Said’s Orientalism for the contemporary study of women and gender in the Middle East. What are the main challenges of researching and talking about gender in the Middle East? What are the continuities in our engagement with Orientalism and where do we find ruptures and limitations? Based on empirical research as well as activism in relation to Egypt, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon, this lecture will discuss the centrality of a gendered analysis in understanding recent developments in the region. It will pay particular attention to the centrality of body politics in challenging authoritarianism.
Topic:
Politics, Authoritarianism, Women, Research, Orientalism, Activism, and Gender
Political Geography:
Iraq, Turkey, Middle East, Lebanon, and Egypt

420. The Shia armed groups and the future of Iraq

Author:
Kardo Karim Rached and Ahmed Omar Bali
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
In this article, we try to identify the impact of the Shia militias in Iraq on the future of this country. We maintain that these armed groups will be a destabilising factor for Iraq and its neighbours, and they will worsen and deepen the sectarian division in the Middle East. We assess these different groups from different perspectives, for example, using the Weberian theory that the state is the only entity that has a monopoly of violence, Ariel Ahram’s model of state-sponsored and government-sponsored militias, and finally the devolution of violence to these armed groups.
Topic:
Non State Actors, Sectarianism, Armed Forces, Islamic State, and Shia
Political Geography:
Iraq and Middle East