Twenty years after the Iraq War began, scholarship on its causes can be usefully divided into the security school and the hegemony school. Security school scholars argue that the main reason the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq was to safeguard the United States against the conjoined threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorist groups. Hegemony
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IFC Regional Director Aftab Ahmed and Iraqi Prime Minister.jpg Baghdad, Iraq, September 03, 2023—IFC signed a flagship agreement today with the government of Iraq that will harness private sector capital and expertise to develop the country's main airport—opening the door for more private sector investment and establishing a competitive model for other critical infrastructur
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A generational shift in geopolitics is creating new possibilities for prosperity in the Greater Middle East The Middle East is often seen as an arena of unending conflict: ambitious regional rivals vie for advantage as restless young people struggle against authoritarian rule and ailing economies. And yet despite the region’s many challenges—from the Islamic Republic of Iran
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Abstract Iraq’s economy continued its recovery after the sharp, pandemic-induced recession in 2020 but growth constraints in the oil sector have reemerged. After moderating in 2022, consumer price inflation ticked up in early 2023, fueled by the depreciation of the Iraqi dinar in the parallel market. Fiscal and external account balances benefitted from the oi
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POLITICAL STABILITY: Iraq is experiencing an unusual period of relative calm domestically after almost two decades of turmoil, characterised by a notable decrease in political violence and the formation of a comparatively cohesive government led by the prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, in October 2022. With support from a majority of parliamentary factions led by the
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