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Trump Finds His Scapegoat for a Failed Iran Strategy: the Kurds
The US President Donald Trump accused “the Kurds” of diverting weapons he says were intended for Iranian anti-government protesters, claiming Washington had sent guns and ammunition through Kurdish intermediaries for…
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Arivan
Syria’s Kurds: Peripheral to the Centre, Central to the Periphery
An earlier National Context report showed how the demographic map of northern Syria has foreclosed the more ambitious versions of the Kurdish national project. What that report left open is…
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Arivan
The Demographics That Doomed a Kurdish National Project in Syria
A micro-level look at the demographics of northern Syria reveals how much Kurdish nationalist expectations have diverged from ground realities, and why the broader territorial collapse of the SDF polity…
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Arivan
Amedspor and the Kurdish Question’s New Public Arena
For the first time in their history, Amedspor will play in Turkey’s top division. The promotion is a football story, but only barely. It is a social and political event…
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Arivan
Iraq’s Oil Revenue Has Collapsed. The Question Now Is How Long the State Can Hold.
Iraq entered April having already recorded its worst monthly oil export figure in recent memory. March revenues had fallen to roughly $2 billion on 18 million barrels exported – a…
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Arivan
Pentagon Zeroes Out Peshmerga Funding as Lebanon and Jordan Enter the Picture
The Pentagon’s budget request for next year proposes to end U.S. training and weapons support for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs entirely. The line is worth $61…
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Arivan
Iraq’s CEO Candidate
Iraq’s Coordination Framework on April 27 named businessman Ali al-Zaidi as prime minister-designate, and President Nizar Amede tasked him the same day with forming a government within the constitutional thirty-day window. Zaidi,…
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Arivan
Why Turkey’s PKK Peace Process Has Stalled
More than a year after Abdullah Ocalan called for disarmament from his prison on Imrali island, Turkey’s peace process with the PKK has reached its first genuinely hard question: which…
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Arivan
For the KDP, Mansour Barzani’s U.S. Bribery Case Comes at the Worst Possible Time
On April 22, the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil forfeiture complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California seeking to seize a Beverly Hills mansion…
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Arivan
Courts, Coercion and Control: Why SDF-Damascus Integration Is Hitting Its Real Test
On the latest developments in the SDF-Damascus integration process, a clearer disagreement is emerging over the future of the judicial system in the parts of Hasakah province that remain under…
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