Escaping the Conflict Trap: (Middle East Institute Policy Series) (Harrison, Ross; Salem, Paul)

Toward Ending Civil War in the Middle East

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

Harrison, Ross, and Salem, Paul. Escaping the Conflict Trap: Toward Ending Civil War in the Middle East (Middle East Institute Policy Series). Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022.

Notes from relevant books on Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Defence, Development and Humanitarian Action.

These are my personal notes from this book. They try to give a general idea of its content, but do not in any case replace reading the actual book. Think of them as teasers to encourage you to read further!

Preface

Examining the phenomenon of civil war is like looking through a kaleidoscope: the image can change depending on the angle at which it is viewed.

contributions of three different types.

• The first are focused accounts of the civil wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq by practitioners

• The second are contributions that pull back from the individual conflicts and address the broad historical sweep

• The third type of contribution is represented by chapters written more topically,

While each of the civil wars covered in this volume is in a way sui generis, there are patterns that we have seen across the cases

• First, while each of the current conflicts under examination erupted over the past decade, they all have long historical tails.

• Second, each of the civil wars had deep and complex domestic drivers and dynamics over issues of governance, political identity, and resources.

• Third, all of these civil wars have been affected by the presence or entrance of armed transnational non-state actors.

• Fourth, each of the conflicts will require a mixture of local, regional, and global factors to bring them to an end.

• Last, the works by Chester Crocker and Jessica Maves Braithwaite warn us that few of the conflicts are likely to end cleanly through either a negotiated settlement or a clear victory by one party or the other.

But it is also important to note that from the longer-term policy perspective, civil wars generally don’t go on forever.

1 Middle East Civil Wars

 Introduction

The long-standing Israeli–Palestinian conflict itself started as a civil war in Mandate Palestine and still has many attributes of one.

The Arab–Israeli conflict has killed over eighty thousand

Iran and Iraq, left more than five hundred thousand dead. By comparison, the Syrian civil war alone has already cost at least as many lives, and Sudan accounts for even more, at around two million.

Globally, civil wars tend to last longer—on average four times longer—than state-to-state wars. Also, countries that have undergone civil war have a 50 percent chance of slipping back into one again in the future.

Traditional state-to-state warfare is often a nation-and state-building pathway; by contrast, civil wars are generally nation and state destroyers. This makes civil wars much harder to end, since both national and state cohesion and capacity have been weakened. It also makes the post-conflict period, if and when it comes, much more challenging.

 Questions of Terminology and Definition

“Naming … is always a form of framing.”

“I am a revolutionary, you are a rebel, they are engaged in a civil war.”

 Civil War as Politics

Civil war, like traditional war, is also a continuation of politics by other means. It is the use of violence—in this case taken up by civilians, not professional armies—to achieve a political end. In that sense civil wars are essentially political phenomena;

countries that suffer a civil war have a 50 percent chance of relapsing into civil war again.

Civil wars fundamentally change nations.

 Contested Nationalisms

This wave of political thought gave rise to competing nationalisms.

• Turkish nationalism

• Arab nationalism,

• separate Lebanese and Egyptian national identities,

• Kurdish leaders

• Islamic ummah

The two points that are important to note are that the Western divisions of the post-Ottoman lands set the stage for many ensuing conflicts (e.g., Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon), but even without those particular decisions and divisions the process of working out the competing nationalisms of this very heterogeneous region would have been contested and prone to conflict.

 Low State Legitimacy

different approaches to create or maintain legitimacy for themselves.

In few cases was legitimacy tied to a system of electoral accountability and renewal of political leaders and governments.

 The International Order

Ottoman empire

The second phase in the region’s international order is the period of European domination in the interwar years.

The waves of nationalist sentiment that had blown from Europe into the Middle East were reinforced by Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points, which included the right to self-determination.

cacophony of aspirations—

The “war to end all wars” created conditions that would be fought out in civil wars throughout the region for many years.

the United States and the USSR, were imperial, but not per se colonial powers;

This Cold War contest between the two superpowers ended up fueling several civil wars in the region, either directly or indirectly, and was part of the dynamic of civil war in Yemen, Lebanon, Oman, and Afghanistan to name a few.

This should have led to a reduction in global contestation in the Middle East and a diminution of civil war, but two other dynamics eventually took hold.

• The first was America’s hubris and overreach: invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq left both countries in conditions of full or partial state collapse and civil war.

• The second dynamic was that after the end of the Cold War the states of the region either had lost a major global patron or no longer mattered as much in the international game of superpowers; in both cases, it meant weaker states that were more vulnerable to rebellion from within.

The period of American dominance in the Middle East ended decisively in 2015, when Russia sent its armed forces into Syria,

 The Regional Order

As the majority of states gained independence after the Second World War, what emerged from the late 1940s was an Arab order organized loosely under the League of Arab States while the region’s three non-Arab powers—Israel, Turkey, and Iran—were looking westward.

The year 1979 was a turning point at several levels.

• Egypt signed a separate peace with Israel: sapped the secular “progressive” wing of the Arab world of its Egyptian champion,

• Iranian revolution,

• Russian invasion of Afghanistan,

The regional order changed again in 2003, when a US-led invasion toppled the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad. The invasion had the unanticipated effect of greatly empowering Iran, which emerged as the dominant player in Iraq, and enabling the rise of ISIS, first in Iraq but then in Syria as well.

Arab uprisings of 2011 and beyond also impacted the regional order.

Turkey had welcomed the Arab uprisings and hoped that the Muslim Brotherhood, whom he backed, would emerge victorious in Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria, and make significant headway in Yemen, Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco as well.

The year 2020 also saw a major change, as Israel signed normalization agreements with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

the regional order of the Middle East has gone through many changes. But it has remained a “disordered” system with shifting conflict axes.

 Civil Wars in Lebanon

Lebanon has gone through three civil wars in its modern history.

The third and much more devastating civil war was between 1975 and 1990.

when Lebanese lawmakers were invited to Taif, Saudi Arabia, in 1989 for talks, negotiators already had enough of an agreed political outline

The Lebanese case is one of a weak state and a strong but divided society.

 Civil Wars in Yemen

In some ways, the country has been in on-and-off civil war( s) since the early 1960s,

The Civil War of Reunification in 1994 came about after North and South Yemen were unified by negotiated agreement in 1990.

six Sa’dah Wars between 2004 and 2009, in which the central government fought armed Houthi groups in the Sa’dah region.

latest round of civil war in Yemen in 2015,

The pre-2005 case of recurring civil war in Yemen is, somewhat like Lebanon, one in which a strong society and a weak state struggle with representation and power sharing, as well as issues of state capacity and delivery of development and public goods.

 Civil Wars in Iraq

Iraq has suffered along two lines of civil conflict: Arab–Kurdish and Sunni–Shi’a.

The first wide-scale conflict, often called the first Iraqi–Kurdish War, erupted in 1961 and lasted until 1970, leaving around one hundred thousand dead.

During the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, the central government launched what can only be described as a campaign of genocide against the Kurds, which left 100,000–200,000 dead.

largely ended, or at least turned a positive corner, with the demise of Saddam Hussein’s

Kurdish community of Iraq has had its own bouts of civil conflict,

As regional politics turned more sectarian, so did the fault lines of Iraqi politics.

Shiite uprising in 1991.

the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, to overturn the sectarian balance of power in Baghdad in favor of a Shiite majority. Sectarian conflict erupted again around 2006 and again in 2014 with the rise of ISIS.

Unlike the cases of Lebanon or Yemen, the state in Iraq grew extremely strong and indeed used its strength to try to dissolve social capital and primordial social bonds.

Iraq is also an interesting example, a bit like Lebanon, in which peaceful coexistence between the country’s three main communities is being attempted through a (new) inclusive power-sharing constitutional order.

 Civil Wars in Palestine

Palestine has known two civil wars.

• The first is the longstanding conflict between the Zionist and Arab factions in Mandate Palestine—

• second, of shorter standing, is between the Palestinian parties of Fatah and Hamas.

 

Civil Wars in Sudan

As in the case of Iraq, Sudan has faced two axes of internal conflict: that between north and south, and that between the central government and the communities of Darfur, although the internal conflicts in Sudan have led to vastly larger numbers of dead and wounded.

Sudan has also been beset by deep sectarian and ethnic divisions between a mainly Muslim and Arabic speaking north and a non-Arab, non-Muslim south and southwest.

 Civil Wars in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has been through many decades of civil war.

strong society (with strong tribal, regional, and ethnic groupings) and a weak state (one that rarely was able to extend its writ beyond the capital and a few cities). It is also the case of a country buffeted by strong external competition, both regional and international, and proxy conflict. Thirdly, the country has suffered from the ideological fault line, present in other countries in the region, between hardline Islamists and more secular nationalists.

 Civil War in Algeria

The conflict between the Algerian state and an array of armed Islamist groups lasted for a full decade in the 1990s and left over a hundred thousand dead and many more injured and displaced.

The civil war in Algeria highlighted three fault lines

• The first is between Islamists and secular nationalists,

• The second relates to demands for representation and electoral democracy—

• The third fault line relates to the internationalization of the Islamist jihadist movement

The Algerian civil war is a clear case of a civil conflict that was settled by direct use of force, with no negotiations.

 Civil War in Oman

Oman too has seen its share of armed civil conflict. Fighting first erupted in 1962

positive development in governance.

The latter took the lesson of the rebellion as a mandate to rapidly develop and modernize the country. He coopted much of the leadership of the rebellion and eventually integrated members of the armed opposition into special units of the Omani armed forces.

 Civil War in Somalia

Somalia has suffered from the ebbs and flows of civil war since the uprising against the regime of Siad Barre in 1991.

fault line from birth. In the nineteenth century the territory of modern Somalia was made up of British Somaliland in the north and Italian Somaliland in the east.

The Somali civil war has not been definitively resolved or ended, but it has been considerably de-escalated.

this government suffers from a lack of state institutions that can translate its de jure authority into a de facto national reality.

 Black September: The State–PLO Conflict in Jordan, 1970

The armed showdown in 1970 between the Jordanian state and the armed wing of the Palestinian movement in Jordan, often referred to as Black September, contained elements of what would unfold later in Lebanon.

The way a strong state in Jordan dealt with the armed Palestinian presence was markedly different from how a weak state in Lebanon tried to deal with the same presence.

 The Government–Islamist Conflict in Syria, 1979–82

The current civil war in Syria partially echoes the previous conflict of 1979–82. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood opposed the Ba’ath Party’s seizure of power in a coup in 1963.

The conflict erupted in earnest in 1979 after Islamists killed dozens of army cadets in Aleppo,

 Egypt’s Armed Conflict with Islamists

Although the Muslim Brotherhood had been an initial ally in the Egyptian army’s revolt against King Farouk in 1952, the two fell out as the army consolidated power in the post-monarchical period.

The insurgency in northern Sinai originates in discontent among Bedouins there who have traditionally felt neglected and repressed by the central state. After 2013, the insurgency took on a more radical Islamist turn, with the group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis pledging allegiance to ISIS.

three elements.

• First, it partly reflects the ideological chasm between Islamists and secular nationalists.

• Secondly, it is in part a symptom of the political impasse of authoritarian states, and the absence of a political pathway for Islamists that forswear violence.

• Finally, it is also a symptom of the wider militancy of Islamic jihadism that has taken root since 1979,

   

 The Turkish–Kurdish Conflict

networked insurgency drawing a strong-armed response from the government.

The process broke down, however, and fighting resumed in 2015 and continues to this day.

conflicts over national identity

 The Wars of Saudi Consolidation,

Third Saudi State, is the result of a number of successful military campaigns

During this period there was an insurrection by the al-Saud’s allies, the Ikhwan, a group of Islamically radicalized tribesmen that formed the main fighting force for the al-Saud during this period.

takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979

 Rebellions and Internal Struggles in Iran

Iran is an extremely ethnically diverse nation and has had its share of separatist or autonomist rebellions.

Marxist groups (such as the Tudeh party and the Fedaian guerillas), from the People’s Mujahedin (Mujahedin e-Khalq), which combined Marxist and Islamist ideology, and from Islamist groups inspired or led by various clerics.

Arab Khuzestan, Kurdistan, and Gonbad-e Qabus.

 The Morocco–Polisario Front Conflict Over the Western Sahara >

The conflict over the Western Sahara falls into a gray area in terms of civil conflict,

 Conclusion

the complexity and variety of civil wars and armed civil conflicts the region faced in the twentieth century,

how these sixteen conflicts ended,

only six can be said to have ended:

five were settled by force with the government overcoming the rebels. In two of the cases—Oman and Jordan—the government’s victory included some political and socioeconomic accommodation

Lebanon presents the only case in which the war was ended not through victory by one side, but by a complex set of domestic and international negotiations.

In Syria, the government defeated the Muslim Brotherhood insurgency in 1982, but the insurgency came back, in a very different form, three decades later,

Iraq presents an interesting and perhaps hopeful example.

Virtually all of the sixteen cases exhibit a deep involvement of external powers, both regional and international, either in the foundational contradictions that engendered the conflict, or in escalating and fueling conflict once it got under way.

2 What We Know about Ending Civil Wars

the near-ubiquitous state of international involvement,

Once military interventions have begun, it is difficult and risky (especially for local civilians) to subsequently pursue a disengagement strategy, so instead it is advisable to complement them with diplomatic efforts,

not particularly advisable for post-conflict states to rush democratization efforts,

critical to ensure that peacekeepers, especially multidimensional missions, are present

 How Civil Wars End

two general ways in which these wars end: either with a military victory for the government or the rebels, or through a negotiated outcome.

military victory for the government, this outcome is most likely early on in conflicts,

Conversely, conflicts are more likely to persist than to end in rebel victory when rebels are fighting civil wars over issues related to identity,

Negotiated settlements are less likely (and conflicts last much longer) in “multiactor” conflicts where armed groups with adequate military resources have preferences and demands that do not overlap in a way that facilitates easily identified terms of an agreement.

Leadership change

Peace agreements are also significantly more likely in cases where there are security guarantees

 The Role of International Actors in Ending Civil Wars

Nonmilitary interventions by third parties in civil wars can include humanitarian aid, economic assistance, and sanctions, as well as diplomatic engagement, particularly in the form of mediation.

interventions by third parties—particularly involving military assistance to warring parties—prolong civil wars and impose other negative consequences such as greater lethality of battles for both combatants and civilians.

combining ongoing military with diplomatic interventions might be an optimal strategy for many of the conflicts throughout the region.

 Preventing a Return to the Battlefield

Economic development following civil wars has been found to be more difficult when the country is also undergoing significant political transitions, particularly from autocracy to democracy.

Lack of familiarity with and trust in democratic institutions can compel new groups seeking power to adopt more familiar methods of pursuing change

Democratization in general is often viewed as a risky endeavor during the peacebuilding process, particularly in the context of post-conflict elections.

civil society organizations (CSOs) play a critical role in reducing conflict recurrence rates,

construction and implementation of power-sharing arrangements.

The implementation of power-sharing provisions considered to be particularly costly—territorial and military in nature—are often seen as most effective at preventing renewed conflict, whereas implementation of political power sharing alone does not considerably improve the preservation of peace. However, while some scholars do not find that rebel-military integration leads to improved prospects for long-term peace,

considerations of economic power sharing would be advisable as well,

Another condition that can help prevent conflict recurrence generally, and perhaps even during democratization processes, is the presence of peacekeepers.

Finally, the destruction of these conflicts is not only material and physical but psychological and emotional as well.

Transitional justice mechanisms—including truth and reconciliation commissions, amnesties, trials, lustration, and so forth—are designed to help societies recover more deeply from the scars of civil war.

3 The Global and Regional Geopolitics of Civil War in the Middle East

 Introduction

how the power dynamics between the major global and regional powers have indirectly influenced how civil wars in the Middle East have played out.

 The Arguments: The Violent Civil War Vortex

all the states in the region, but particularly the erstwhile Soviet allies, under stress.

stresses that came to the surface decades later during the Arab Spring.

American unipolarity

this ultimately strengthened an “axis of resistance,”

Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have in fact treated the civil wars as proxy venues for competition with one another. But this chapter will argue that the regional powers don’t just “push” themselves into these conflicts, as a proxy war dynamic would suggest, but also get “pulled” in based on threats (and in some cases opportunities) created by the civil wars. This phenomenon will be described as “vertical contagion,” where beyond just exploiting the civil wars top-down, regional, and international actors get drawn into the vortex of a “conflict trap.”

 Cold War Global Dimensions of Civil Wars

supply and demand dynamics worked to create a region defined by the Cold War.

emergence of an Arab Cold War,

 The Role the Superpowers Played in the Domestic Politics of Arab Regimes

Countries which aligned themselves with the United States, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iran, gained regime security from this alliance, but at the expense of regime legitimacy.

 Syrian Domestic Policy

One could argue that the alliance with the Soviet Union had a “disciplining effect” on the Syrian political system, sidelining potential challengers to the regime.

One could make an argument that the Cold War prolonged the civil war in Lebanon, which started in 1975. With the United States supporting Israel’s involvement and the Soviet Union backing Syrian involvement,

 Regional Dynamics During the Cold War

Arab world quickly became contested by the United States and the Soviet Union, each staking out allies as part of the global power struggle. In contrast, non-Arab states Israel, Turkey, and Iran (until 1979) all leaned hard toward the West.

 Global Geopolitics and Civil Wars in the Post–Cold War Era

The asymmetry became apparent very quickly, with US allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey emerging from the Cold War period still having their US benefactor, while former Soviet allies Syria, Iraq, Yemen (south), and Libya were handed tougher cards to play.

 The End of the Cold War and the Effect on the Domestic Politics of Former Soviet Allies

All countries in the region, including American allies, took a strategic “haircut” when the superpower competition came to an end.

Syria was forced to choose between state security and economic reform.

loss of its superpower patron put the Syrian regime in the unenviable position of having to forego its economic interests vis-à-vis the west in favor of its security interests served by moving closer to Iran.

 American Unipolarity in the Middle East

In the last gasps of the Cold War, Moscow did not make a move when the United States assembled an army in the Gulf in 1990 to liberate Kuwait from Iraq, and barely objected when the United States crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq in 1991 to chase down Saddam Hussein’s much vaunted Republican Guard Corps, and pummeled Baghdad from the air.

two phases to this unipolar moment.

• “soft unipolarity,”

• more aggressive “hard unipolarity” in the wake of 9/11

 

A Resistance Front Forms

The loss of its Soviet patron, and the “hard” edge of American unipolarity, gave Syria the incentive to move even closer to Iran’s axis of resistance.

 Unipolarity and the Rise of Jihadi International Terrorism

In the Arab and Iranian experience mosques have long been the center of resistance against outsiders, going back to the late nineteenth century.

In a way, al-Qaeda and ISIS can be thought of as another embodiment of a “resistance front”

 The Collapse of the Arab Regional Order

The emergence of a resistance axis in the Middle East after the Cold War as a counterweight to US dominance created the contours of a new regional order. It wasn’t an Arab-dominated regional order,

 The Vertical Contagion Civil War Vortex

regional powers, namely Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, jockeyed for position by backing different sides in the civil wars.

Much of the work on how civil wars spread describe “horizontal contagion”

“vertical contagion” involves conflict spreading, not just laterally to neighboring fragile countries but also upward to stronger regional powers.

conflicts change the strategic calculus of these powers vis-à-vis one another.

conflict at the regional level that is connected to, but also distinct from, the individual country-level wars.

This analysis of vertical contagion, where the civil wars spread to engulf the region, has significance for the prospects of ending the current violence.

 Iraq: The Original Sin

Iraq was the first shot across the bow of resistance against the rise of American power.

 Libya: Hermit State

Tripoli’s response was to essentially switch sides from the resistance front to the United States and relinquish all remnants of its fledgling nuclear program.

 Multipolarity and Conflict in the Middle East

The international system and the Middle East have already made the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity. This happened for a couple of reasons.

• First, the United States became mired in Afghanistan and Iraq,

• Second, the entrance of Russia into Syria in 2015 turned what had been a unipolar moment into a new geopolitical reality of multipolarity,

United States withdrew in 2018 from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the Iran nuclear deal is officially known, Russia assumed a capability previously monopolized by the United States, which is the power to convene.

In addition to Russia, this multipolar environment also includes other influencers in the Middle East. China and the European Union,

 Toward Ending the Civil Wars

Today that has changed, as the Middle East is both a recipient of and contributor to international politics.

One approach for the future would be for the international community to work with the regional powers on some type of security architecture.

The Trump administration’s approach contrasted with a regional cooperation model. Instead of working to quiet the region, Donald Trump took sides, using Israel and Saudi Arabia as cudgels against Iran.

 Conclusion

The period of American unipolarity is long over, and we are now in an era of multipolarity. The question going forward will be can Russia and the United States, along with Europe and China, coalesce to help the regional actors bring the civil wars to an end and help the region transition from chaos to stability.

4 Yemen

Introduction

the current conflict is more accurately seen as a continuation of over sixty years of failed state formation leading to a cycle of violence, coups, assassinations, and open warfare.

 Historic Antecedents

extractive political and economic system.

Beginning with the 1962 uprising against the Zaydi Shi’a theocracy, or Imamate,

followed the Arab Spring uprising against President Saleh’s government in 2011. For over a year, more than five hundred delegates labored to produce proposals to resolve persistent regional divisions within Yemen and the grievances of the Zaydi majority population of the northwestern highlands.

inability or unwillingness of Yemeni elites to implement the agreements reached.

Yemen will not succeed in breaking this decades-long cycle of violence until there is a national consensus on the need to put in place the structures that enable implementation of agreed reforms.

 The Imamate Defeated: Triumph of Sheikhs

Northern Yemen was ruled for a millennium by a theocracy, the Imamate, which drew its social and political support from the Zaydi Shi’a tribes of the northwestern highlands.

While it made political sense to paper over sectarian differences between Zaydi Shi’a and Shafi’i Sunni populations, the Free Yemenis introduced a new concept: “Real” Yemenis were the descendants of the Qahtanis—southern Arabian tribes that were the original inhabitants of Yemen. By contrast, they asserted that the sayyids ruling Yemen were Adnanis—descendants of northern tribes that immigrated to southern Arabia following the arrival of Islam and became the rulers of Yemen.

favored the rise of highland tribal sheikhs, challenging the formerly dominant sayyids and their allies.

 A Unity Accord in 1990 Leads Quickly to Disunity

The discovery of oil in the border regions between the two states provided both sides with a financial incentive to strengthen their relations.

southern leaders declared independence and the north launched military operations to retake the south. The brief civil war in 1994 that followed the collapse of political negotiations failed to resolve the basic issues

“two profoundly different narratives took shape” about the outcome of the conflict. “Under one version, the war laid to rest the notion of separation and solidified national unity. According to the other, the war laid to rest the notion of unity and ushered in a period of northern occupation of the South.”

Pursuing his well-worn strategy of divide and conquer (“ dancing on the heads of snakes”), Saleh struggled to dilute the southern movement,

The government’s inability to defeat the Houthis, an armed Zaydi insurgency, in the northwest (see below) encouraged the al-Hirak movement to intensify its own campaign, and it clashed more aggressively with government forces.

 Populism in the North Reflected in Six Sa’dah Wars

trigger the Houthi rebellion in six Sa’dah wars between June 2004 and February 2010.

discrimination against its Zaydi population provided fertile soil in which the Houthi movement could take root and blossom.” Indeed, the scion of the Houthi clan, Badr al-Din al-Houthi, and his son Husayn, enjoyed strong reputations in Sa’dah as much for their deep commitment to community service as for their position as sayyids.

natural leaders of the “Believing Youth” movement in the 1990s.

Zaydi revival was far more than a sectarian movement: Under Husayn’s direction, it also embraced powerful social-revolutionary and political components.”

conflict between sheikhs and sayyids,

2011, the Houthis had built the most effective military force in the country

 The Arab Spring and a New Push for National Unity

General Ali Mohsen, Saleh’s heir apparent for decades until he promoted his son, Ahmed Ali, as his successor,

assassination attempt that spared Saleh (albeit seriously wounding him) but killed and injured a number of his senior advisors, including Prime Minister Abdul Aziz Abdul Ghani.

coordinated effort to help mediate among the Yemeni parties. The UN subsequently joined the effort, appointing a special envoy, Jamal Benomar.

National Dialogue Conference (NDC) to address the full range of political, economic, and social problems,

concerted efforts to undermine popular confidence in the transition.

 The Interregnum Ends and the Seventh Sa’dah War Begins

Houthis resumed their siege of the Salafist Dar al-Hadith madrassa in the town of Dammaj,

Saleh, despite his earlier antagonistic relationship with the Houthis, joined his forces with theirs, seizing the opportunity to confront their common enemies:

move aggressively into Sana’a.

negotiations under UN auspices produced a road map for resolving the conflict

Houthis moved to dissolve parliament and the government and forced President Hadi to resign, appointing a revolutionary committee to replace the government. Hadi, who had been placed under “house arrest” by the Houthis, fled to Aden in February 2015 and ultimately to Saudi Arabia a month later.

Chapter VII resolution to block the Houthi advance into southern Yemen.

The Saudi-led coalition launched operations shortly before the resolution in response to a request for support from Hadi.

Their movement into the more heavily Shafi’i midlands and south sparked a new civil conflict that metastasized into the broader conflict

Saleh’s abrupt announcement in December 2017 that he was abandoning the alliance with the Houthis and would join his greatly diminished force with the Saudi-led coalition. His uprising was short-lived, however, and Saleh was murdered by the Houthis on December

Southern Transitional Council (STC), that advocated separation from the north.

 Document of Pledge and Accord

eighteen-point “Document of Pledge and Accord.”

 Sa’dah War Mediation

repeated efforts, both from within Yemen and by external actors, throughout the course of the six Sa’dah wars to mediate an end to the conflict.

 National Dialogue Conference

After a year of debate, the 500 + delegates to the NDC provided some 1,800 recommendations

 External Factors in the Conflict

Although it is often characterized by outside observers as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the critical drivers of the Yemen civil conflict rest entirely within the country’s own history.

 Saudi Arabia

The kingdom fought a war with the Yemeni Imamate in the 1930s that led to the transfer of three provinces—Jizan, Najran, and Asir (sometimes referred to by Yemenis as the three “lost” provinces)—to Saudi Arabia and established a border between the two countries.

Saudi intervention triggered a hostile response in much of the world,

 The United Arab Emirates

Over the course of the conflict, however, the UAE’s role in Yemen, especially in support of the STC, grew more controversial. Emirati support for the STC as well as for members of the Saleh family, its hostile stance toward the Hadi government, and its military deployment to the island of Socotra raised questions about Emirati intentions and whether UAE policy remained consistent

 Iran

Unlike Saudi Arabia, there is no history of substantial Iranian involvement in Yemen in the modern era.

Iran’s support for the Houthis became more overt following the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in March 2015

 Russia and the United States

US involvement in Yemen was generally a subset of US relations with Saudi Arabia until 2001, when concerns about the rise of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula became the driving force in US–Yemeni relations.

 Yemen’s Economic Collapse and the Growth of a War Economy

The significance of the war economy over the course of the current conflict has grown exponentially.

 Can Yemen’s Problems Be Solved?

driven in large part by fundamental divisions and identity issues within Yemeni society, a sense of marginalization, and deep-rooted inequality engendered by an extractive, rentier political and economic system.

the most comprehensive attempt to end the cycle of violent conflict grew out of the Arab Spring revolt against the Saleh government and the resultant GCC Initiative–mandated NDC.

 Recommendations

Their failure is in implementation not in vision.

 Conclusion: The Consequences of Failure

The potential exists that the state may devolve not into two parts, as the pre-1990 arrangement existed, but into multiple statelets,

5 The Syrian Civil War

 Beginning of the Conflict, 2011–14

Poor economic circumstances among climate refugees in shantytowns around big cities encouraged more young people to seek change by taking to the streets.

became markedly more sectarian

Iran in 2013 began mobilizing tens of thousands of foreign Shi’a militiamen

Obama rejected retaliating against the Assad government after it used chemical weapons

 More Fighting, More Failed Talks, 2014–17

turned against the Syrian government in the spring of 2015.

late Iranian General Soleimani flew to Moscow to urge the Russians to intervene militarily

While the Russians pounded the anti-Assad opposition in western Syria, the Americans pounded ISIS in eastern Syria.

Astana process with UN and American backing called for four cease-fire zones in western Syria.

attacked and captured three of the four zones,

As its enemies’ strength diminished, the Syrian government had little incentive to compromise at UN talks.

The Western mantra dating to 2011 that there was no military solution to the Syrian conflict was wrong.

opposed to Assad declined to match the Iranian and Russian escalations,

 Dynamics of the Fighting, 2018–21

Direct military intervention by foreign states, especially Russia, the United States, and Turkey, has shaped the latest phase of the civil war.

 Eastern Syria

Fighting ISIS was never a Syrian government priority, and the government made quiet deals to buy oil and food from the Caliphate.

In 2021, therefore, the Syrian government, backed by its sometimes competitive Russian and Iranian allies, controlled almost 70 percent of the Syrian territory, including all of the major population centers.

Americans developed a relationship with the YPG militia, providing training and military supplies to enable it to assume the largest share of the ground battle against ISIS in eastern Syria.

American military controlled the junction of the Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi borders to block Iranian utilization of the main highway crossing from Iraq into Syria.

leave about half the troops in Syria to continue helping the YPG-led SDF and guard oil wells in eastern Syria. Trump remained unenthusiastic and in response to a major Turkish incursion in October 2019, he ordered American forces to redeploy away from the Turkish border in northeastern Syria.

 Turkey

Turkey has a clear priority national security objective in Syria: forestall the formation of a Syrian Kurdish state.

The American alliance with the YPG drove Ankara to find accommodation with Russia.

seized territories in northern Syria in 2016–17 to block the YPG’s push into northwestern Syria.

seized the area around Afrin in north-central Syria in 2018.

seized territories east of the Euphrates along the border and further segmented areas dominated by the YPG.

Washington was unhappy that these Turkish operations distracted YPG attention away from the battle against ISIS

Syrian–Turkish border in northeastern Syria regularly sees Syrian government, Russian, Turkish, and American military units operating in very close proximity

 No Negotiated Political Deal in Prospect, 2017–21

removed any remaining incentive for the Assad government to make compromises in a political negotiation.

 Syrian Government

very public squabble between President Assad and his wealthy businessman cousin, Rami Makhlouf, in 2020 over payments the Assad government demanded.

Constitutional changes mean little when the Syrian government has never been subject to the rule of law.

There will be no Appomattox moment that concludes the Syrian civil war.

There is even discussion of a pipeline

 Russia

Russia is the key foreign state that can help bring the long conflict to a close.

Bitter about the Western exploitation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 to intervene militarily in Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, the Russians have resisted Western efforts to pressure Assad for major political concessions or even his departure.

The overall Russian effort has been relatively low cost to Moscow.

The Russians now seek to use the Astana group that it organized in 2017 to promote, with the UN, a minimal political resolution of the civil war focused on constitutional amendments.

 Syrian Non-Jihadi Opposition

The other issue to be negotiated between Turkey, Russia, and the Syrian government in northern Syria is the fate of the opposition groups there that are not jihadis.

Ankara has even sent some to fight on its behalf in Libya.

 Jihadis in Turkish Zones

Organization to Liberate the Levant (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS).

HTS aims to extract itself from global terrorism lists and with Turkish encouragement claims to have broken all ties with al-Qaeda.

The future of Idlib and that of HTS depend mainly on Russian–Turkish negotiations about their bilateral relationship,

 Resolving Eastern Syria

Eastern Syria is an even more complex challenge to resolve than the Turkish zones because of the greater number of actors, notably Iran, the United States, and a strong local Syrian administration.

(PYD), has dominated eastern Syria since 2012, backed by its seasoned militia, the YPG.

YPG remains the backbone of the SDF,

PYD/ YPG has organic links to the Turkish PKK, which both Turkey and the United States consider a terrorist group.

As ISIS no longer controls any territory in Syria, the legal justification under the UN Charter for the American military presence is more problematic.

 Iran

However, the Assad government is unlikely to ask Iran to withdraw all its forces. Iran’s proxy militias provided most of the manpower that enabled Damascus to prevail on the battlefields of western Syria, and they help in the ongoing fight against ISIS in central Syria.

 Israel

The buildup of pro-Iranian militias and IRGC Quds Force elements in Syria in 2016 and 2017 provoked alarm inside the Israeli government.

Jerusalem set up a deconfliction mechanism with Moscow

 ISIS Presence

While ISIS lost its remaining territories in March 2019, it continues to operate as an insurgent group able to strike in both central Syria, controlled by the Syrian government, and eastern Syria,

 Reconstruction Stalled, Refugees Stranded

Estimates for the cost to reconstruct Syria vary widely but range in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

illegal production and trade in drugs overseen by Assad allies had become the largest Syrian export by the end of 2021.

 Conclusion

Reconstruction, thus, is far off.

6 From Emirate to Emirate

 Introduction

failure of an experiment with democratic constitutional government and of a multinational military mission led by the United States.

the speed at which the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) disintegrated was wholly unanticipated.

largely US-funded defense forces were slated to number at least 350,000. In reality, at no time were its ranks close to being filled.

The announcement by President Joe Biden that US troops would be fully gone from Afghanistan by September 11 if not sooner set in motion events that made the government’s collapse almost inevitable.

provision of close air support, was to be withdrawn.

 Perpetual Afghan Civil Wars

At least six periods of almost continuous conflict can be distinguished.

• The first followed the communist coup in April 1978,

• second phase with the December 1979 military invasion of the Soviet Red Army

• A third phase of civil war came with the exit of the Red Army in 1989

• With the fall of the Kabul government in the spring of 1992, a fourth stage saw several of the victorious mujahedeen parties turning their weapons against one another

• Taliban, a movement of militant Afghan students out of the madrassas in Pakistan, crossed into Afghanistan, captured Kandahar and with a slow but relentless offensive began a fifth phase of civil war.

• sixth phase followed the US military intervention to punish al-Qaeda

share some key features.

• foreign actors

• militant groups

• ethnicity

• political, economic, cultural, and social reforms that were largely antithetical to Afghanistan’s predominantly religious and traditional society—triggering a nationwide antigovernment and anti-Soviet rebellion.

Deeper Historical Context

created seven parties—collectively known as “the mujahedeen”—to wage war against the Kabul government and its Soviet allies.

Najibullah announced a reconciliation program

Emboldened by the Soviet decision to withdraw, however, mujahedeen leaders rejected Najibullah’s peace offer and doubled down on efforts to topple the government militarily.

interlocutors agreed to a “negative symmetry”

Facing internal divisions and financial hardship after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the Kabul government fell to the mujahedeen in April 1992.

emergence of the Taliban in 1994

 Parties to the Conflict

Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)

Taliban were closely aligned with the more cohesive Haqqani Network,

Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), established in January 2015

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

The typical Taliban field commander and foot soldiers were less motivated by Islamic ideology than by patriotic appeals calling for an Afghanistan free of foreign occupation and foreign cultural influences.

profits of extortion, kidnapping, smuggling, drugs, and other criminal activities.

relatively generous salary paid to Taliban foot soldiers

 Phases of the Twenty-Year War

The conflict that began with the routing of al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts in Afghanistan late in 2001 can be broken down into five phases,

• first covers the period following the Taliban’s disintegration in Afghanistan and their finding sanctuary in the border regions of neighboring Pakistan. Three key factors prepared the ground for the Taliban reemergence.

  • First, three decades of war had fragmented Afghan society and crippled the country’s civilian and military institutions.

  • Second, the United States and its allies initially had a small footprint in Afghanistan, and they largely relied on local warlords and power brokers to provide security and governance, fueling corruption and lawlessness and leaving a security vacuum that could be filled by the insurgents. Furthermore, the 2003 invasion of Iraq distracted Washington

  • Third, the Taliban leadership, including the group’s leader, Mullah Omar, relocated to Pakistan, where they received support from state and non-state entities to reestablish the Taliban as an insurgent movement.

• By late 2005 the conflict entered a second and more confrontational stage marked by changed Taliban tactics and a willingness to take greater risks.

• A third stage beginning in 2010 followed from the decision by President Barack Obama to order a surge that called for US forces to rise to 100,000, which together with allied NATO-led troops brought the number close to 140,000.

• The fourth stage of the conflict beginning in 2014 was one of transition. The prospect of serious negotiations remained a possibility,

• A fifth stage began with the February 2020 agreement to remove all American forces from the country in fourteen months.

Shaping the Conflict

Perhaps no single factor better accounts for the course and outcome of the Afghan conflict than the determination, resilience, and patience of the Taliban.

strong contrast to the Afghan Republic’s political elites,

The decision to pivot American military efforts from Afghanistan to Iraq had a profound effect on the war.

The Taliban had only to wait out the surge.

The US and NATO troops dropped to 20,000, with subsequent withdrawals leaving 9,800 in the country by the time that Obama left office in early 2017 and 5,500 on the ground during most of the Trump administration.

The mistaken belief in the possibility of a negotiated compromise peace agreement stemmed from a failure of the United States and others to understand the Taliban movement’s true aims.

For much of the twenty-year war, US intentions were to manage the conflict rather than to defeat the Taliban militarily.

self-deception, deliberate obfuscation, and disinformation

 Fateful Decisions

A possibly alternative track for the Afghan conflict required a long-term military commitment that the last three US presidents were determined to avoid

decided to frame the American presence as a choice of “all in” or “all out.”

A residual US force could have denied the Taliban what had always been the centerpiece of their strategy to reclaim power: the removal of all foreign forces.

The process of withdrawal has also taken a heavy toll on the credibility of the United States as a reliable military partner and global leader.

fundamental error in having trained the Afghan military to fight the wrong kind of war.

7 The Origins of the Libyan Conflict and the Path for its Resolution

Introduction

With Gaddafi’s overthrow in 2011, Libya lost the driver of its engine. It faced a choice between moving forward to achieve mutual accommodation and inclusive government, or renewed civil conflict. Mostly, its leadership has avoided making the choice.

an unstable stability, or a stable instability,

The initial foreign militarization of Libya was led by Russia and its mercenary forces from the Wagner Group, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt in support of Hifter as he sought to take Tripoli by force.

The risk of regional war between Egypt and Turkey abated. But the result for Libya was a status quo ante with everything worsened:

(LPDF), met. The LPDF chose to replace the now tired and unpopular GNA with a second transitional government, the Government of National Unity (GNU), under a new prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah,

 Historical Factors

A never-to-be-forgotten inflection point was the 1996 massacre at Abu Salim Prison,

Gaddafi’s support was a mile wide, but an inch deep

 Security Forces

Instead of institutions to govern the country, what Libya had was a lot of oil wealth and many contenders seeking to claim it,

A critical watershed came after the legislature in Tripoli was established in July 2012, when it was intimidated into enacting a political lustration law in May 2013,

working on Libya generally agreed that their biggest collective mistake after the revolution was the failure to take action in May 2013 to refuse to recognize the lustration law for what it was—a power grab.

 Primary Foreign Actors

these and other European powers largely retreated and did not seek to exercise control over events in Libya. Instead, they offered a broad menu of assistance programs in every sphere (political, economic, and security), essentially all of which failed.

splitting of the country into two governments in June 2014,

 Underlying Conditions Fueling Conflict

Initially, the Libyan revolution resulted in the distribution of armaments widely throughout the country as militias raided military depots. Afterwards, these self-selected militias all received continuing cash payments from the state as revolutionary thuar.

The big prize of Libya’s oil wealth became increasingly contested,

 Precipitating Events Leading to Open Conflict

2014,

First, on February 14, General Hifter, recalling Gaddafi’s own 1969 coup, announced on TV that he had taken control of Libya’s main institutions that morning,

May, General Hifter initiated Operation Dignity to reclaim Benghazi from Islamist forces, which in turn prompted the creation of Operation Dawn by those forces and others in the west to oppose him.

GNC, to unilaterally decide to ignore the elections and declare it was still Libya’s legitimate parliament.

United States and most other international embassies quit the country entirely by mid-summer.

 Mitigating Factors

number of mitigating factors came into play that helped stabilize the country even as it was largely ungoverned.

Central Bank to continue to pay all the salaries that had been established following the 2011 revolution.

making all mutual hostages and no one in a position to capture it all.

Libyans and foreign actors alike saw the beheadings of Egyptian Copts by ISIS, terrorist attacks on tourists in Tunisia carried out from safe havens in Libya, and a lethal assault on one of Tripoli’s major international hotels and concluded that geographic control of any portion of Libya by ISIS was not something that any of them could tolerate.

 The Skhirat Process Leading to the LPA

Mitri’s successor, Spanish diplomat Bernardino Leon, appointed in September 2014, focused his efforts on forging a political agreement to create a new transitional government

Notably, the LPA depended entirely on securing the full alignment of major international actors. Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey all contributed to getting reluctant and oft-truculent Libyan clients to participate in the talks.

 The Post-Skhirat Balance of Power

In practice, the requirement of a functioning HoR proved to be the Achilles’ heel that ensured the GNA would never be effective.

Prime Minister Sarraj made the brave decision in March 2016 to take up residence in Tripoli in the face of threats issued by the self-proclaimed head of the previous government in the capital displaced by the GNA. He was supported in this decision by the Italian government, as well as Maiteeg, who had friendly forces available to help.

billions in ersatz Libyan dinars by Russian state printer Goznak.

Hifter and Speaker Aguila having very large sums available to them

much of the revenue generated from oil was squandered on patronage networks,

 Moving Beyond Skhirat: Political Agreement or Stalling for Time?

major stakeholders, in particular Speaker Aguila and General Hifter, would not accept the GNA’s authority.

new UN SRSG, Ghassan Salamé. Like SRSGs before him, he began with great enthusiasm and a new political road map.

Over the following nine months, whenever the Salamé road map gained traction, one or more major Libyan actors boycotted, retreated, prevaricated, reinterpreted, or otherwise failed to take the necessary steps, blocking progress due to a lack of trust or good faith and divergent regional, political, and personal interests.

General Hifter and Aguila telling their followers that they had agreed to nothing in Paris.

Moreover, diplomats were privately saying that France had given General Hifter too much attention and he was taking the Macron initiative as a sign that France was ready to join Russia, the UAE, and Egypt to support him taking power by force, if necessary.

Speaker Aguila’s self-appointed eastern “government” issued a statement authorizing sales by representatives of the eastern NOC.

blocking the oil deprived Libya of revenue and risked widespread criticism. Accordingly, UN mediation resulted in the oil returning to NOC control.

 The War on Tripoli and Its Aftermath

at a macro level Libya achieved some stability under the first thirty-six months of the GNA,

General Hifter pointed to the militias providing Tripoli’s security as the justification for his decision to overthrow Libya’s internationally recognized government and his April 2019 assault on the capital.

initial blitzkrieg degenerated into a typical war of attrition,

Hifter’s forces dominated, largely due to their ability to control the airspace with Emirati drones and Russian fighter jets,

Turkey supplied the GNA with its own heavy artillery and rocket launchers, which together swiftly changed the balance of forces to one favoring the defenders.

pulled back from Tripoli in late May 2020 in a precursor to what became a full and publicly declared cease-fire in October 2020.

The road to war had been tried. The war had failed to resolve Libya’s crisis. All that was left was to try the alternative road of peace.

 A Pathway to Peace

continued conflict was not merely against the national interest—but their own. This recognition was sped by Libya’s compounding economic misery.

formal cease-fire in October 2020 under UN auspices, and the creation of the “5 + 5”

The transitional Dbeibah government was immediately accepted internationally, and conditions improved somewhat domestically, without further east-west conflict.

stabilization conference initiated by the government of Libya,

Aguila, the master staller,

It is unlikely that elections alone will be sufficient to establish stability in Libya.

8 Iraq

Introduction

notwithstanding these hopeful signs, Iraq is still incredibly vulnerable and a more negative scenario where the country could return to an open state of civil war

At the heart of the conflict in Iraq has been a clash of visions among political and social communities over the identity and ownership of the Iraqi state.

post-2003 conflict in Iraq was a violent renegotiation of both the political compact in place in Iraq since the 1960s and of the balance of power among regional and international players.

Shi’a and Kurds seeking to reclaim ownership of a state that they had long perceived as Arab Sunni-centric.

2003 invasion created a public space for them to be politicized and militarized, gave rise to an upsurge in political parties and civic associations that were mostly organized along ethnic and sectarian lines, and reshaped the relationship between the state and the Shi’a clerical authority.

it was also an intra-Shi’a, intra-Sunni, and intra-Kurdish competition for power.

The relationship between the Ba’athist regime and the Iraqi Shi’a and Kurdish communities was already badly broken well before the US-led invasion. Three developments

• assassination of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr,

• Shi’a uprising of 1991, and its brutal suppression

• no-fly zone in northern Iraq in the aftermath of that same war helped the Kurds

regional political order upended by the Iranian Revolution in 1979,

proxy theater for the decades-old conflict between the United States and Iran.

 Emergence of an Ethno-Sectarian Political System

first key turning point in the conflict came after the US invasion in 2003 with the introduction of a host of measures by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA),

These measures made enemies out of large segments of the Arab Sunni population,

This set the stage for the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2003–4 and for its successor ISIS in 2014,

• First was the official elevation of sectarian and ethnic identity as a primary organizing principle

• Second, the CPA’s decisions to de-Ba’athify government structures and disband the army. Many Arab Sunnis equated de-Ba’athification with “de-Sunnification,”

• Third, and relatedly, the Arab Sunni community struggled to come to terms with its place in post-Saddam Iraq. They were neither prepared nor willing to play sectarian politics.” two camps,

  • one of which was opposed to the United States occupation and the Shiite-led political order in Baghdad.

  • Other Sunni leaders and political entities decided to engage in the political process,

AQI was established under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,

deepen sectarian conflict, AQI targeted Shi’a mosques, including the 2006 attack on the al-Askari shrine in Samarra.

 Emerging Sunni-Shi’a Violence

assassination of leading Shi’a cleric Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim on August 29, 2003, was the second turning point in the Iraqi conflict,

The al-Askari shrine bombing in Samarra escalated the violence, which culminated in a rising death toll of more than three thousand civilians a month by October 2006.

They positioned themselves as the protectors of Arab Sunni Iraqis, and tried to harness the narrative prevalent at the time among the Arab Sunni communities that the Iranians and Shi‘a Iraqis were working with the Americans to kick Sunnis out of Iraq.

Shiite militias also stepped in to provide security and services for their constituents

Jaysh al-Mahdi

Badr Brigade,

Kataeb Hezbollah

Hashd al-Shaabi

 The US Surge

The US troop surge of 2007 represents the third key turning point in the conflict.

Disillusionment with AQI inspired Arab Sunni support of the surge and led many tribal leaders to join the Awakening Movement, known as Sahwa, founded by Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha.

Operationally, the surge was a success.

political elites viewed national reconciliation as a means to achieve mutually exclusive objectives. For Sunnis, it meant restoration of their power. For Shi’a, it meant redressing injustices carried out by the Ba’athists. For Kurds, it was a means to achieve their autonomy.

 Consolidation of Shi’a Control of the Iraqi State

The fourth key turning point in the conflict was primarily engineered by Nouri al-Maliki, former Iraqi prime minister (2006–14), who made a number of decisions during the period between 2008 and 2013 aimed at consolidating Shi’a control of the Iraqi state and consequently his leadership of the Shi’a political class.

For the Obama administration, which wanted to pivot away from Iraq, challenging Maliki’s power grab meant investing time and energy in a country they were eager to exit.

three key components of Maliki’s sectarian strategy.

• Sidelining Moderate Sunni Political Leaders from the Government

• Weakening of the Kurds

• Dismantling of the Sons of Iraq

Emergence of ISIS

Maliki’s targeting of Sunni leaders and protesters and his reneging on commitments made to the Sons of Iraq in 2010–11 created an environment conducive to the rebuilding of AQI, which began in 2011.

In 2013, after a split with al-Qaeda’s leadership over control of Jabhat al-Nusra, its main franchise in Syria, AQI rebranded itself as ISIS, and in February 2014, formally separated from al-Qaeda.

ISIS’s takeover of Mosul is the fifth turning point in the conflict trajectory. It created a panic that Baghdad was going to fall next,

President Obama soon abandoned his “let Maliki be Maliki” policies of the previous five years and questioned his leadership.

Sistani’s influence in Iraq and among Shi’a worldwide has always been a concern for Tehran.

 The Protest Movement

mid-July 2015, one of the largest protest movements in modern Iraqi history erupted in Basra and spread to cities in central and southern Iraq, including Baghdad. The sixth turning point, this protest movement was the second of its kind after a similar wave of protests on February 25, 2011, called the “Iraqi Spring,” was violently put down in Baghdad and Karbala.

2015 protest movement “displayed unmistakable signs of a popular shift from identity to issue politics.”

2019, as large-scale protests broke out in Baghdad and across southern Iraq in what became known as the Tishreen (October) movement.

end to the muhassasa sectarian quota system

 The Fight against ISIS

The seventh and final turning point is the removal of ISIS from its strongholds,

 Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani

role Grand Ayatollah Sistani, a Shi’a marja’ (source of emulation) and head of the Najaf hawza (a network of schools, learning centers, institutions, and charities),

mostly aimed at shepherding the democratic process in Iraq, demanding accountability of government officials, and stemming sectarian strife.

who will succeed Sistani

 Why Attempts at National Reconciliation Failed

three major impediments to national reconciliation:

• first, lack of political will;

• second, the absence of an honest broker;

• and third, the lack of a national reconciliation framework including a coordinating mechanism among multiple official and unofficial reconciliation initiatives at the national and local levels.

A Path to Sustainable Peace in Iraq

Sectarian competition seems to be becoming less relevant as a driver of political dynamics.

state of unstable equilibrium, meaning that the current stability could be torn asunder by terrorist attacks by the still-present remnants of ISIS, or possibly by efforts by regional and international actors to use Iraq as a proxy theater for their own conflicts.

For Iraq to move toward sustainable peace, it must address five key challenges: governance, marginalization, justice and accountability, reconciliation, and rebuilding the relationship between Baghdad and Erbil.

9 The Diplomacy of Engagement

This chapter looks at the challenges and trade-offs that arise when external powers seek to shape political crises and bring civil wars under control.

 Introduction

Properly understood, the purpose of an engagement strategy is to change the target’s perception of its own interests and, hence, to modify its policies and its behavior.

the purpose of engagement is not simply “getting involved,” “showing concern,” or “reaching out” to another party. The purpose of engagement is not improved relations, although better relations might be the ultimate result. The engager’s purpose is to change the target’s behavior toward more cooperative and constructive policies.

different types and amounts of power or leverage are called for depending on the context and the targets.

 A Universe of Transitions

How do civil war transitions end? At least seven possible outcomes can be identified. These include:

• (1) a “revolution” in which a more or less coherent new order sweeps away the old as a result of violent struggle (Ethiopia, 1974; Uganda, 1986; Russia, 1917; Afghanistan, 2021);

• (2) a velvet “revolution” in which the regime collapses amid a mixture of street power, external pressure, and leadership splits (Iran, 1979; the Philippines, 1986; Egypt and Tunisia, 2011; the Soviet Union, 1991);

• (3) bloody, broken-back regime change following prolonged strife as regime elements defect and leaders arrange their exit or are killed (Yemen, 2011; Libya, 2011; Ethiopia, 1991);

• (4) effective repression using scorched earth tactics so that the opposition is defeated (Peru, 1992–2012; Syria, 2011–18; Sri Lanka, 2009; Zimbabwe, 2000–);

• (5) drawn-out political stalemate followed by “negotiated revolution” (South Africa, 1992–4; Algeria-France, 1962; Burma, 2010–);

• (6) prolonged, bloody strife that prompts coercive external intervention and an imposed peace (Bosnia, 1995);

• (7) prolonged strife that prompts powerfully backed, externally led negotiations leading to an internationally monitored transition period and elections (Namibia 1966–90; Liberia, 1989–2005; Mozambique 1976–94; El Salvador, 1979–94).

The Challenges of Engagement

A “peace at any price” approach might respond to immediate humanitarian imperatives, but it also could entrench the wrong actors, prolonging rather than resolving the society’s problems.

The task here is to mesh the quest for as much of the right kind of change as possible with the necessity of achieving some measure of continuity—both to reassure the incumbents’ core constituencies and their allies and to avoid a descent into chaos.

Timing and sequencing

define the least bad outcome.

The “bad guys” may be evident, but “good guys” could be hard to find.

The Tools of Engagement

The first step in devising a strategy of engagement in civil wars—in the Middle East as elsewhere—is to identify the purposes and interests at stake.

Once purposes and interests are clarified, the external party needs to select a mixture of tools appropriate to the specific case. The main requirement is leverage, and leverage comes from power, actual and potential, in one of its many forms.

military forces are “not primarily instruments of communication to convey signals to an enemy, they are instead instruments of coercion to compel him to alter his behavior.” They are a blunt instrument, difficult to calibrate.

Over time, these tools are part of a strategy of “ripening” the transitional civil conflict by bleeding the regime.

 Where Possible, Create Coherence and Borrow Leverage

The remedy lies partly in finding sources of borrowed leverage and credibility.

 

Diplomacy with Regimes and Rebels

The most important choices involve

• (1) when to reach out to local opposition parties as a regime begins to run into trouble;

• (2) whether and how to engage with armed actors, including those that may engage in acts of terror or other forms of criminal activity; and,

• (3) what roles armed opposition movements and their civilian-led counterparts will play in negotiating the transition.

What to Do as Civil Strife Heats Up?

Early engagement will be called for, not as an act of solidarity with future “good guys,” but to send warnings, clarify positions and interests, ask tough questions, and obtain information.

there are no Nelson Mandelas in most scenarios in the Middle East.

officials may be deterred by the risk of political controversy or legally prohibited from contact with them in the absence of special waivers—a relatively recent development that severely complicates peacemaking in conflict zones.

The purposes of engaging armed actors must be stated as clearly as possible.

• First, engagers will want to support moderate voices and undercut the rabid extremists and greediest warlords.

• They will also wish to make clear the limits of what can be achieved by the gun and to encourage a return to politics.

• third purpose may be to split the leadership or entice it to think and act politically so that a negotiated transition can have a chance.

 

What to Do with the State?

as there are no Mandelas in the truly violent scenarios such as Libya or Yemen, there are also no F. W. de Klerks capable of seeing what is best for their country and what serves the long-term interests of their core constituency.

The greatest risk of engagement diplomacy, in sum, is that it will work and thereby force the engager to make decisions as well.

Concluding Thoughts and Policy Takeaways (Paul Salem and Ross Harrison)

while one tends to think of war as discrete from peace, civil wars in the Middle East are likely to remain a messier reality.

unless the politics of countries mired in conflict can be expressed constructively through lasting settlements or accommodations, and functioning political systems, the specter of further instability and recurring civil war will persist.

 Conflict Reduction: A Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

Lower levels of conflict also at least hold open the possibility of constructive engagement as analyzed in the chapter by Chester Crocker. Negotiating peace between combatants while a civil war is raging can be the equivalent of trying to change the tires on a car while it is still barreling down the highway.

 

Pathways Toward Resolution

there are no silver bullet policy solutions for transitioning numerous failed or failing Middle Eastern states from civil conflict to peace and stability.

Albert Einstein famously said that “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

The problems and grievances that dragged countries into civil war will likely not be the same drivers and dynamics required to resolve the conflicts.

resolving the grievances that tipped a country into war may be a necessary but insufficient part of what it takes to shepherd a country out of war.

And each of these wars will likely require a different cocktail of national, regional, and international interventions to move to a more positive future.

 National Level

deficits of political will, political dislocations, deep societal divisions, and a lack of institutional capacity and legitimacy, as the key drivers that perpetuate conflict.

 Regional Level

three major regional conflicts

• The first is between Iran and Israel.

• The second regional conflict is that between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

• The third regional conflict is that between rival Sunni powers, pitting Turkey—and Qatar—which have backed the Muslim Brotherhood and maintained relations with Iran, against the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, which have regarded the Brotherhood (and Iran) as mortal threats to their political systems.

 

International Level

global actors like the United States, Russia, China, and the Europeans also need to encourage regional actors like Iran, Saudi Arabia, as well as Turkey and Israel, to move toward some kind of cooperative framework for the Middle East.

creating a security architecture for the region.

If the great powers align on Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, this will put enormous pressure on regional actors to fall in line, which in turn puts strong pressure on national-level actors as well.

Borrowing the Hippocratic Oath from the medical profession, the political equivalent would be “do no harm.”

 Final Thoughts

While national-level actors have tremendous agency and can defy the efforts of regional and international powers, it is important to recognize that regional and international forces can either be agents or spoilers of peace.

A focus on the political-economy, past, present, and future, will be necessary to start rebuilding a functioning system