Stabilizing Eastern Syria After ISIS PDF Download

Author: James A. Schear
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781977402011
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The authors assessed humanitarian needs in Eastern Syria's Middle Euphrates River Valley and examined how locally focused stabilization efforts might be orchestrated to help preclude the Islamic State's recapture of territory.

Author: Congressional Research Service
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781973754626
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
The Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, continues to present new challenges for U.S. policymakers. Following a deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria on April 4, 2017, and subsequent U.S. strikes against Syrian military infrastructure and pro-regime forces, Members of Congress have called on the President to consult with Congress about Syria strategy. Other Members have questioned the President's authority to launch strikes against Syria in the absence of specific prior authorization from Congress. In the past, some in Congress have expressed concern about the international and domestic authorizations for such strikes, their potential unintended consequences, and the possibility of undesirable or unavoidable escalation. Since taking office in January 2017, President Trump has stated his intention to "destroy" the Syria- and Iraq-based insurgent terrorist group known as the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIL, ISIS, or the Arabic acronym Da'esh), and the President has ordered actions to "accelerate" U.S. military efforts against the group in both countries. In late March, senior U.S. officials signaled that the United States would prioritize the fight against the Islamic State and said that Syrian President Bashar al Asad's future would be determined by the Syrian people. Nevertheless, following the April 4 attack, President Trump and senior members of his Administration have spoken more critically of Asad's leadership, and it remains to be seen whether the United States will more directly seek to compel Asad's departure from power while pursuing the ongoing campaign against the Islamic State. Since late 2015, Asad and his government have leveraged military, financial, and diplomatic support from Russia and Iran to improve and consolidate their position relative to the range of antigovernment insurgents arrayed against them. These insurgents include members of the Islamic State, Islamist and secular fighters, and Al Qaeda-linked networks. While Islamic State forces have lost territory to the Syrian government, to Turkey-backed Syrian opposition groups, and to U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters since early 2016, they remain capable and dangerous. The IS "capital" at Raqqah has been isolated, but large areas of central and eastern Syria remain under the group's control. The presence and activities of Russian military forces and Iranian personnel in Syria create complications for U.S. officials and military planners, and raise the prospect of inadvertent confrontation with possible regional or global implications. Since March 2011, the conflict has driven more than 5 million Syrians into neighboring countries as refugees (out of a total prewar population of more than 22 million). More than 6.3 million other Syrians are internally displaced and are among more than 13.5 million Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance. The United States is the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to the Syria crisis (which includes assistance to neighboring countries hosting refugees), and since FY2012 has allocated more than $6.5 billion to meet humanitarian needs. In addition, the United States has allocated more than $500 million to date for bilateral assistance programs in Syria, including the provision of nonlethal equipment to select opposition groups. President Trump has requested $191.5 million in FY2018 funding for such assistance and $500 million in FY2018 defense funds to train and equip anti-IS forces in Syria. U.S. officials and Members of Congress continue to debate how best to pursue U.S. regional security and counterterrorism goals in Syria without inadvertently strengthening U.S. adversaries or alienating U.S. partners. The Trump Administration and Members of the 115th Congress-like their predecessors-face challenges inherent to the simultaneous pursuit of U.S. nonproliferation, counterterrorism, civilian protection, and stabilization goals in a complex, evolving conflict.

Author: William Harris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190911638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Quicksilver War is a panoramic political history of the wars that coursed through Syria and Iraq in the wake of the 'Arab Spring' and eventually merged to become a regional catastrophe: a kaleidoscopic and constantly shifting conflict involving many different parties and phases. William Harris distils the highly complex dynamics behind the conflict, starting with the brutalizing Baathist regimes in Damascus and Baghdad. He charts the malignant consequences of incompetent US occupation of Iraq and Bashar al-Assad's self-righteous mismanagement of Syria, through the implosion of Syria, and the emergence of eastern and western theatres of war focused respectively on future control of Syria and the challenge of ISIS. Beyond the immediate arena of conflict, geopolitical riptides have also been set in motion, including Turkey's embroilment in the war and the shifting circumstances of the Kurds. This sweeping history addresses urgent questions for our time. Will the world rubber-stamp and bankroll the Russian-led 'solution' in Syria, backed by Turkey and Iran? Is the 'Quicksilver War' about to reach an explosive finale? Or will ongoing political maneuvering mutate into years of further violence?

Author: Dr. Jamil Effarah
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1728337615
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
It would be sad to think that US greatness depends on constant intervention and war in the name of the global order. And now after some eight years of civil conflict, the situation in Syria is basically reverting to the pre-conflict norm. The Syrian government is now close to re-establishing its sovereign control again over the entire country. Indeed, Syria’s sovereign control over its own country had been nearly completed despite the blocking efforts of many external efforts from the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. United States supported the creation of an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria ISIS or Al-Dawlat Al-Islamia Fi al-Iraq wa Ash-Sham (DAESH) by putting together flight to tens of thousands of Al-Qaeda Jihadists (fighters) from all over the world to topple President Bashar Assad who said “no” to a Qatar pipeline through Syria and to destroy Hezbollah, topple Al-Assad, install a puppet regime and extend the comfort to Zionist Occupiers of Palestine. Syria has survived and reconquered most of the country, it was able to secure an armed-alliance with strategic allies who succeeded in neutralizing domestic insurgents. Due to the steadfastness of the Syrian Arab Army, Syria’s secular constitution which has enabled a united front against jihad and imperialism and due to military assistance from Russia and Iran, Syria has not fallen and nor will it. Syria managed to stay one country, united country, united society, because a civil war will not go on for seven or eight years continuously without dividing the country. The Syrian government succeeded to survive in controlling the majority of Syria with all the Syrian diversities or with different spectrums of the Syrian society. What took place in Syria from the very beginning are mercenaries, Syrians, and foreigners being paid by the West and its allies in the region in order to topple the government. This is the reality, the mere reality, the very stark reality. Everything else is just masks to cover the real intentions. Nowadays, Syria is the only Arab state that defies western expansionism in the Middle East and Syria was and still is a pillar of support for Arab resistance in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Dr. Effarah expects that this book is essential for anyone seeking a deeper understanding for the cause of the current social turmoil and political violence ravaging the Arab-Islamic world, mainly the Syrian Arab Republic.

Author: Gary Kruger
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1665513675
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
How did the United States defeat the Soviet Union from its own backyard? How is China undermining freedom of the sea? Are these subversive activities new or do they reflect ancient wars? This book explores how state and non-state actors subvert one another. The core question is: why do strategies of subversion, whereby a weaker political entity undermines the dominant entity within a system to increase the weaker entity's relative power, appear to have so many commonalities across different situations and by both state and non-state actors? I theorize that underlying principles exist within all subversive strategies. This question is timely amid a rising China, aggressive Russia, rogue Iran, and a global Salafi-Jihadist insurgency. The current US National Security Strategy identifies these challenges as four of the five greatest threats to US national security. These challenges each involve entities subverting US dominance as a major component of adversary strategies. This new theory, the theory of strategic subversion, outlines fundamental principles regarding strategies of subversion to better enable policy makers and analysts to understand and respond to current security challenges. This book reviews existing literature on subversive strategies and synthesizes a new fundamental theory. The book then tests the theory of strategic subversion against four case studies: US support to the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, Rising Athens at the onset of the Peloponnesian Wars, China's current rise, and Russian subversion.

Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464814023
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
The war in Syria, now in its eighth year, continues to take its toll on the Syrian people. More than half of the population of Syria remains displaced; 5.6 million persons are registered as refugees outside of the country and another 6.2 million are displaced within Syria's borders. The internally displaced persons include 2 million school-age children; of these, less than half attend school. Another 739,000 Syrian children are out of school in the five neighborhood countries that host Syria's refugees. The loss of human capital is staggering, and it will create permanent hardships for generations of Syrians going forward. Despite the tragic prospects for renewed fighting in certain parts of the country, an overall reduction in armed conflict is possible going forward. However, international experience shows that the absence of fighting is rarely a singular trigger for the return of displaced people. Numerous other factors—including improved security and socioeconomic conditions in origin states, access to property and assets, the availability of key services, and restitution in home areas—play important roles in shaping the scale and composition of the returns. Overall, refugees have their own calculus of return that considers all of these factors and assesses available options. The Mobility of Displaced Syrians: An Economic and Social Analysis sheds light on the 'mobility calculus' of Syrian refugees. While dismissing any policies that imply wrongful practices involving forced repatriation, the study analyzes factors that may be considered by refugees in their own decisions to relocate. It provides a conceptual framework, supported by data and analysis, to facilitate an impartial conversation about refugees and their mobility choices. It also explores the diversified policy toolkit that the international community has available—and the most effective ways in which the toolkit can be adapted—to maximize the well-being of refugees, host countries, and the people in Syria.

Author: Mike Giglio
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1541742346
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Unflinching dispatches of an embedded war reporter covering ISIS and the unlikely alliance of forces who came together to defeat it. The battle to defeat ISIS was an unremittingly brutal and dystopian struggle, a multi-sided war of gritty local commandos and militias. Mike Giglio takes readers to the heart of this shifting, uncertain conflict, capturing the essence of a modern war. At its peak, ISIS controlled a self-styled "caliphate" the size of Great Britain, with a population cast into servitude that numbered in the millions. Its territory spread across Iraq and Syria as its influence stretched throughout the wider world. Giglio tells the story of the rise of the caliphate and the ramshackle coalition--aided by secretive Western troops and American airstrikes--that was assembled to break it down village by village, district by district. The story moves from the smugglers, traffickers, and jihadis working on the ISIS side to the victims of its zealous persecution and the local soldiers who died by the thousands to defeat it. Amid the battlefield drama, culminating in a climactic showdown in Mosul, is a dazzlingly human portrait of the destructive power of extremism, and of the tenacity and astonishing courage required to defeat it.

Author: Jeanne Gobat
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498336825
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
Five years into the ongoing and tragic conflict, the paper analyzes how Syria’s economy and its people have been affected and outlines the challenges in rebuilding the economy. With extreme limitations on information, the findings of the paper are subject to an extraordinary degree of uncertainty. The key messages are: (1) that the devastating civil war has set the country back decades in terms of economic, social and human development. Syria’s GDP today is less than half of what it was before the war started and it could take two decades or more for Syria to return to its pre-conflict GDP levels; and that (2) while reconstructing damaged physical infrastructure will be a monumental task, rebuilding Syria’s human and social capital will be an even greater and lasting challenge.

Author: Aaron Stein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Colin P. Clarke
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9781509533879
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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In 2014, the declaration of the Islamic State caliphate was hailed as a major victory by the global jihadist movement. But it was short-lived. Three years on, the caliphate was destroyed, leaving its surviving fighters – many of whom were foreign recruits – to retreat and scatter across the globe. So what happens now? Is this the beginning of the end of IS? Or can it adapt and regroup after the physical fall of the caliphate? In this timely analysis, terrorism expert Colin P. Clarke takes stock of IS – its roots, its evolution, and its monumental setbacks – to assess the road ahead. The caliphate, he argues, was an anomaly. The future of the global jihadist movement will look very much like its past – with peripatetic and divided groups of militants dispersing to new battlefields, from North Africa to Southeast Asia, where they will join existing civil wars, establish safe havens and sanctuaries, and seek ways of conducting spectacular attacks in the West that inspire new followers. In this fragmented and atomized form, Clarke cautions, IS could become even more dangerous and challenging for counterterrorism forces, as its splinter groups threaten renewed and heightened violence across the globe.