Writing in The Atlantic, CASBS fellow and Stanford associate professor Lisa Blaydes, with co-author Martha Crenshaw, unpack the political bargain that must be struck in Iraq in order to defeat ISIS there.
In countering the prevailing narrative, Blaydes and Crenshaw assert that
Iraq isn’t so much innately divided along ethnic and sectarian lines as it is fractured within ethnic and sectarian lines. Understanding these divisions is critical to defining political solutions that will produce meaningful inclusion of tribal and regional interests, whether in a federal system or some other arrangement.