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Posted: February 11th, 2016

By Renad Mansour

Renad Mansour is an El-Erian fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research focuses on Iraq, Iran, and Kurdish affairs. Prior to joining Carnegie, Mansour was a researcher for the Pembroke Security and Intelligence Initiative at the University of Cambridge, where he also taught history, international relations, and comparative politics of the modern Middle East. 

In Iraq, the fight to rid the country of the Islamic State (referred to colloquially in Arabic as Daesh) is taking longer than officials and analysts expected. For instance, U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently stated that the campaign to eject Daesh from Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, will not be achieved in 2016.

This inability to combat the Salafi-jihadist group, which is detested more than supported in most parts of the country, highlights the malfunctioning state of Iraq’s government. Haider al-Abadi, who emerged as Iraqi prime minister in an effort to address the conditions that facilitated the re-emergence of Daesh in 2014, has been unable to bring about real change – despite his so-called reforms package. He faces several challenges.

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Categorized as:Middle East ReportingTagged with:

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