Bashar al-Assad
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GIS Dossier: Islamic State
For the better part of a decade, Islamic State was enemy number one for the United States, its allies and other countries across the Middle East. While establishing a quasi-state across a huge section of Iraq and Syria, the group also conducted terrorist attacks all around the world. Though it has now lost its territory and leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the organization could make a comeback. This GIS Dossier explores our experts’ analysis of the group’s origins and operations, and examines their scenarios for what moves it could make in the future.
Israeli view: Hezbollah puts Lebanon at risk
Since 1982, the Shia Hezbollah movement has turned the Lebanese-Israeli border into one of the most volatile in the region. With help from Iran, it has also consolidated political power in Lebanon and expanded its involvement in the Syrian civil war. After its stunning success in last year’s elections, Hezbollah ...
2019 Global Outlook: The Fertile Crescent
The single most important development in the Middle East has been the end of Syria’s civil war, which was unequivocally won by the Baath regime. Even the hammer blows of a determined religious opposition could not destroy the post-World War I system that created Syria, Iraq and Jordan as Arab ...
Withdrawal from Syria: George Washington’s warning revisited
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria was neither a bolt from the blue nor a departure from his predecessor’s strategy. Even so, the announcement allowed a new and perhaps more stable configuration to emerge in the Middle East. While the short-term winner appears to be Vladimir Putin’s ...
GIS Dossier: Europe as a global player – the Middle East and North Africa
Europe’s influence as a great power is nowhere more apparent than in the attraction it exerts on the poorer countries to its south – in the Middle East and Northern Africa. This is the region where European Union member states, often without U.S. support, have deployed their full foreign-policy arsenal, ...
