Allawi’s cabinet failure may indicate growing Iraqi agency at Iran’s expense, but the path toward political stability remains tortuous and foggy. On March 2, Iraqi prime minister-designate Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi stepped down after failing to gain sufficient parliamentary support for his proposed cabinet, putting President Barham Salih on the constitutional clock for designat
Read MoreCongress and the Trump administration should privately agree to some ground rules for timing deterrent strikes on truly high-value targets, while quietly deploying more force-protection assets like Patriot missiles. In the early hours of Friday, U.S. and British aircraft conducted multiple airstrikes on the missile storage sites of the Iraqi militia group Kataib Hezbollah (
Read MoreEarly elections remain the best prescription for getting the country back on track. By Bobby Ghosh A month ago, when Mohammed Tawfik Allawi was nominated to the prime ministership of Iraq, I predicted he wouldn’t last long. Turns out, I was wildly optimistic. After four weeks of flailing efforts to form a cabinet, culminating in two failed attempts to get parliament to
Read MoreSchools and universities in Iraq will remain closed throughout next week as part of government measures to combat the spread of coronavirus from neighboring Iran. Iraq's five-months-old protest movement which has been demanding overhaul of the political elite also faces a major scale-down following a new government call to stop all kinds of congregations which risk the outbr
Read More1 Introduction The effectiveness of foreign aid remains controversial. A large literature studies how aid is spent (Werker et al., 2009); how it is absorbed in the domestic economy (Temple and van de Sijpe, 2017); and how much it ultimately stimulates growth (Dalgaard et al., 2004), improves human development outcomes (Boone, 1996), and reduces poverty (Collier and Dollar, 2
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