The United States announced last month that it intends to keep troops in Syria to support Kurdish-led fighters there until the Islamic State has been completely routed and the area stabilized, notes… Read more »
A wave of demonstrations protesting a lack of public services and government corruption have tested Iraq’s burgeoning government, while regional tensions have reached new heights, the Hudson Institute observes. Making… Read more »
Iraqi security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition Wednesday as demonstrators took to the streets for a third day in the southern city of Basra. One person died and 21… Read more »
In this year’s key parliamentary elections in Iraq and Lebanon, formerly controversial populist figures performed far better than expected and are playing central roles in the scramble to form governments,… Read more »
Many Shiite armed factions in Iraq haven’t been threatening the United States of late, especially since they fared so well in the May 12 elections, receiving the second-most number of… Read more »
Failure to predict the emergence of the leftist-Islamist alliance that won Iraq’s May elections resulted from a focus on elite politics and sectarian dynamics that obscured these underlying cross-ideological… Read more »
Moktada al-Sadr, the maverick Shiite cleric, who contested the Iraqi elections on an inclusive, nonsectarian list with Communists, independents and liberal civil society groups, has emerged as the winner.. During… Read more »
In all the turmoil of the Middle East, the most significant development of the year thus far may be the democratic election Iraq held on Saturday. It was competitive,… Read more »
An Iraqi nationalist cleric who led two uprisings against US troops has taken a surprise lead in parliamentary elections, fending off Iran-backed rivals and the country’s incumbent prime minister, the… Read more »
This week’s tsumani-sized election shock in Malaysia does not necessarily augur well for forthcoming electoral contests elsewhere, observers suggest. In less than two weeks, Venezuela will conduct the latest in… Read more »