Last week, Nick Danforth sat down with Denise Natali, Doug Ollivant and Bilal Wahab to discuss the latest in Iraqi politics? They debated what Iraq was like on Oc. 6th, how it has been impacted b...
http://warontherocks.com/2024/02/iraq-between-suits-and-fatigues/
To compete with Russia and China, Washington needs partners. One key way in which Washington has, can, and will secure these partners is by sending them weapons. This, in turn, requires the Unite...
http://warontherocks.com/2023/08/getting-serious-about-security-cooperation/
A recent Federal Supreme Court decision in Iraq has put a legal stake in the heart of Kurdistan’s oil and gas sector — the financial lifeline of the region. Only one man has the power to fix ...
http://warontherocks.com/2022/07/barzani-goes-to-baghdad-trouble-in-the-kurdish-oil-and-gas-sector/
Observers of Iraq were shocked this week by the most tectonic shift in the country’s politics since the defeat of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Muqtada al-Sadr, the mercurial, firebrand cl...
In the final days before Iraq’s Oct. 10 parliamentary elections, much speculation has focused not merely on who will win, but on whether the country can then form a majority government. The alt...
http://warontherocks.com/2021/10/a-minor-chance-for-a-majority-government-iraqs-electoral-outlook/
“Iraq is like a race car that has been neglected and repeatedly wrecked. Al-Kadhimi is not the race car driver. He’s the tow truck driver.” This is how Yazan al-Jabouri describes the task a...
http://warontherocks.com/2020/05/keep-expectations-modest-for-iraqs-new-government/
Wayne Michael Hall, The Power of Will in International Conflict: How to Think Critically in Complex Environments (Praeger Security International, 2018). “Will” may be the most underexamine...
On May 7, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a surprise visit to Baghdad, warning Iraqi officials that the United States had a right to respond to attacks “by Iran or its proxies in Iraq or an...
http://warontherocks.com/2019/05/the-problem-with-the-narrative-of-proxy-war-in-iraq/
The Middle East is the region that keeps on giving, and taking away. How has the American approach to the use of force evolved in Syria and Iraq? And what is the relationship between U.S. politic...
http://warontherocks.com/2019/02/wotr-podcast-mayhem-and-misadventures-in-the-middle-east/
In Baghdad this month, the mood is generally positive. A new government has been formed and higher oil prices (the recent decline notwithstanding) have given Iraq a stake of cash with which to ad...
http://warontherocks.com/2019/01/summer-is-coming-the-crucible-for-the-new-iraqi-government/
Congratulations on your selection as prime minister. Or condolences, depending on how you look at it. As in an earlier era in a different land, Iraq is in both its best of times and worst of time...
http://warontherocks.com/2018/09/an-open-letter-to-iraqs-next-prime-minister-whoever-he-might-be/
Iraq continues to move slowly but surely towards recovery. The defeat of ISIL — despite a small insurgent pocket remaining in Kirkuk and Diyala — and the (relative) success of the Kuwait conf...
http://warontherocks.com/2018/03/iraq-hurtles-toward-another-election-what-you-need-to-know/
The Kurds of Northern Iraq held an independence referendum, Iraqi federal forces seized Kirkuk, and the world wondered if we were on the precipice of another round of what could be described as o...
http://warontherocks.com/2017/10/must-the-war-go-on-lets-talk-about-iraq-and-the-kurds/
The American contribution to the defeat of the Islamic State (ISIL) has given Washington a new prestige in Iraq. Indeed, the United States has an extraordinarily favorable image in Baghdad. It is...
http://warontherocks.com/2017/10/americas-opportunity-in-iraq-is-ready-to-be-seized/
Mosul was not the first city to fall to the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but it was its capture that shocked the world into action. Over two years later, the much-...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/the-bigger-issues-at-play-mosul-and-the-future-of-northern-iraq/
Matti Friedman, Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story (Algonquin Books, 2016). Iraq veterans finally have their book; a manuscript that really deals with the whole of the Iraq experience. After o...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/06/the-best-book-about-the-iraq-war-isnt-about-the-iraq-war/
Is the CIA’s targeted killing campaign the “most precise and effective application of firepower in the history of armed conflict”? Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of both the C...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/a-more-granular-look-at-death-by-drone/
As the future of Europe becomes less certain, NATO now needs a new strategic concept that places less focus on new membership, and more attention on honoring the Article 5 guarantees it has alrea...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/radically-rethinking-nato-and-the-future-of-european-security/
The Iraqi Army defenders of Ramadi had held their dusty, stony ground for over a year and become familiar with the increasing adeptness of their opponents waving black flags. At first, these Iraq...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/the-rise-of-the-hybrid-warriors-from-ukraine-to-the-middle-east/
Despite a series of attacks in Paris, Beirut, Baghdad and (probably) a Russian airliner in Egypt, the military news from Iraq is cautiously good. Those who predicted the eventual defeat of the Is...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/the-war-in-iraq-against-the-islamic-state-after-paris/
Ah, the 2016 presidential election. Trump still leads the GOP field, Hillary has been challenged in the polls by Bernie Sanders and the shadow of Joe Biden looms large over the Democratic hopef...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/natsec2016-a-podcast-on-the-2016-elections-and-national-security/
The seizure of Ramadi on May 17 by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was a tactical defeat for the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi government, and — by extension — the U.S.-led coalition....
http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/iraq-after-ramadi-saving-the-anti-isil-strategy/
This is the podcast in which War on the Rocks fixes the Middle East…ok, we kid, but it is a fascinating conversation with some of the most astute and informed U.S. experts on Iraq and the Isla...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/podcast-the-islamic-states-war-in-iraq-and-syria/
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – known by most people in the Middle East as Daesh – will lose its battle to hold territory in Iraq. It may well take one to two years to reduc...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/iraq-after-the-islamic-state-politics-rule/
Soft partition, strong federalism, devolution of power — these are all terms bandied about when it comes to the future of Iraq. Formal partition has never been a serious option, at least not am...
Some of the sharpest minds on the Middle East in town sat down over drinks to tackle some of the most troublesome problems in the world’s most troublesome region. Have a listen! Soner Cagaptay...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/09/podcast-in-search-of-a-middle-east-strategy/
The videotaped beheading of American journalist James Foley by an Islamic State militant has opened the eyes of the public to what Middle East experts have known for some time: As terrorists go, ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/ollivant-at-tnr-on-the-threat-of-isil-to-the-us-homeland/
Military transformations can be hard to detect. They generally occur over decades, sometimes over generations. Soldiers are usually the first torecognize them, but for the perceptive, the signs ...
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), now calling itself the “Islamic State,” has burst onto the world scene in an impressive way in the past month, with its Blitzkrieg-like seizur...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/defeating-the-islamic-state/
The news from Iraq is bad. Four distinct yet intertwined problems—the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the dysfunctional politics of Iraq, the utter collapse of the Syri...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/ollivant-in-politico-why-iraq-is-more-stable-than-you-think/
Out of the crucible of the Syrian civil war and the discontent in Iraq’s Sunni regions, something new is emerging. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is no longer a state in name only...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/state-of-jihad-the-reality-of-the-islamic-state-in-iraq-and-syria/
What about counterinsurgency? At a time when all eyes are focused on the potential outbreak of a “conventional” war in Ukraine, Doug Ollivant, David Ucko and Ryan Evans sat down to consider c...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/03/podcast-bourbon-with-a-dash-of-counter-insurgency/
When alerted to the latest article about the wisdom and/or inevitability of the division of Iraq, I had to sigh. Yet again. Though at least this time I was spared the graphic of the various ethno...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/02/splitting-up-iraq-yes-biden-was-wrong/
The White House has announced the visit of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on November 1. The issues to be discussed are wide ranging, but can be reduced to three S’s—Sunnis, Syria, and the ...
http://warontherocks.com/2013/10/malikis-visit-the-three-s-words/