Hariri Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Ramzy Mardini is quoted in The Economist on the future of Iraq:
Creating a government sufficiently inclusive to win back the trust of Sunnis, and thus undermine IS, will be no easy task. Confidence-building measures such as releasing Sunni prisoners would probably be blocked by Shia parties while the IS emergency continues. Other demands such as incorporating Sunnis back into the security forces, most likely by creating a force in the Sunni areas nominally under central command, would take months if not years. Discussions on creating a more federal Iraq that devolves more power are likely to be necessary. Until the Sunnis are persuaded that such reforms offer a better alternative, IS will remain “an insurance policy”, says Ramzy Mardini, a visiting scholar at the Atlantic Council, a Washington, DC-based think-tank. Read the article here.