Who’s Who in Syria’s Civil War (Zachary Laub, Council on Foreign Relations)

http://www.cfr.org/syria/s-syrias-civil-war/p38607

Humanitarian Summit Shines Spotlight on Turkey (Kemal Kirişci, Zachary Laub, CFR)

World leaders, UN agencies, and relief organizations will gather in Istanbul on May 23–24 for the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit, spearheaded by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in response to the more than one hundred million people in need of assistance. The Brookings Institution's Kemal Kirişci says that the decision to hold this summit in Turkey, made in 2013 on the basis of its generous foreign-assistance program and hosting of the world's largest refugee population, has been complicated amid President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's authoritarian turn. "I suspect that the summit is not going to receive the attention it would have gotten had Turkey been in a different situation," Kirişci says

http://www.cfr.org/turkey/humanitarian-summit-shines-spotlight-turkey/p37879

Why Sadr Is Returning to Iraq’s Limelight (Mohamad Bazzi, Zachary Laub, CFR)

Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric who led an insurgency at the height of Iraq’s civil war, is once again asserting himself as a power broker in Iraqi politics. He has mobilized followers to back Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s reform agenda, which includes replacing cabinet members with technocrats. This has pitted Abadi against Shia lawmakers, who stand to forfeit power from the reforms. In late April, protestors led by Sadr occupied the Green Zone and parliament. At least for now, the protests serve Abadi well, since the prime minister “does not have a natural constituency,” says Mohamad Bazzi, a professor of journalism at NYU who reports on the region. But the political paralysis has set back Iraq’s campaign to retake its second-largest city, Mosul, from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Bazzi says.

http://www.cfr.org/iraq/why-sadr-returning-iraqs-limelight/p37840

Is Calling ISIS ‘Genocidal’ Meaningful? (Naomi Kikoler, Zachary Laub, CFR)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared in mid-March that the self-proclaimed Islamic State has committed genocide against Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims, and crimes against humanity against others in territories it controls. The finding, which fulfilled a congressional mandate, does not appear to be a turning point in U.S. strategy to roll back the militant group, but does mark intensified efforts to document crimes for future prosecution, says the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum'sNaomi Kikoler. Insecurity and impunity in Iraq have encouraged the country's various ethnic and religious communities to form militias that could spur future cycles of violence, says Kikoler, whose fact-finding trip to northern Iraq in September 2015 documented genocide against the Yazidi minority.

Continue reading here ...



Naomi Kikoler, Deputy Director, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Syriaìs war. The descent into horror (Zachary Laub, CFR)

http://www.cfr.org/syria/syrian-civil-war-five-years/p37668#!/