Our research looks at 10 years of truces in Syria. A missile attack last weekend in northern Syria left a hospital in ruins and further casualties in a residential area. But these types of attacks have become less common in Syria. Although this civil war remains among the most devastating global conflicts, the number of… Read more »
Category: Regions and Powers
Russia Readying for Compromise on the UN Humanitarian Aid to Syria
The UN Security Council is due to make a decision on a particular and particularly controversial issue pertaining to the humanitarian disaster in Syria by July 10, and Russia positions itself as the key part of the problem and a necessary contributor to a solution. The discord in the UN Security Council (SC) on the… Read more »
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Arab Street and Erdoğan
In a series of brief blog posts, researchers of the PRIO Middle East Centre offer their reflections on the unfolding Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The conflict in Gaza has once again highlighted the tense relationship between Turkey and the United States with President Erdoğan using incendiary language in his criticism of Israel and its strongest ally, the… Read more »
The Pitfalls of Peacemaking
The revelations in the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) of Terje Rød-Larsen’s links to Jeffrey Epstein are a reminder that personal goals, dreams and ambitions can become entwined in professional choices in unfortunate ways – including for well intentioned foreign policy actors. The International Peace Institute in New York, the think tank Terje Rød-Larsen… Read more »
A Forgotten Mission: Monitoring the Ceasefire in Hodeidah, Yemen
Yemen’s conflict has been described as a forgotten war. Peace, up until recently, has been even more forgotten. The new US administration has begun a new a military and diplomatic track to end the fighting. Biden has made Yemen one of his foreign policy priorities, selected veteran diplomat Timothy Lenderking as a new US Special… Read more »
Will the Taliban Gain From Negotiations?
In the summer of 2001, a Taliban delegation came to Oslo in the hope of holding talks with Norway’s government. The terrorist attacks in the United States that autumn put a stop to such talks, but the Taliban’s attempt at that time to break out of the “steel ring” of international isolation may give some… Read more »
Parliamentary Election in Kosovo: Democratic Development and Desire for Change
Less than a year after the fall of the Kosovo government led by left-wing reformist party Vetëvendosje (“Self-Determination”), the same party has returned to power. Following a landslide victory in the parliamentary election last Sunday, Vetëvendosje is set to form a government with a markedly stronger mandate than the first time around. The election outcome… Read more »
NATO’s Exit From Afghanistan: ‘a brutal dilemma’
NATO is facing ‘a brutal dilemma, NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, said to the press ahead of NATO meeting of defense ministers on 17-18 February.
Facebook’s Power in Myanmar
Facebook is Myanmar’s dominant media platform. Now the country is again a dictatorship. In 2018, Facebook banned commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing for his role in the expulsion of the Rohingya. Now, as the country’s new dictator, he temporarily shuts down Facebook. Myanmar’s many conflicts have given Facebook director Mark Zuckerberg one headache after another. He… Read more »
The United States Must Be Viewed as a Flawed Democracy at Significant Risk of Transitioning into Dictatorship
A study of flawed democracies and semi-dictatorships describes a common pattern of events as follows: After having lost an election, the sitting president claims that the election was invalid, whereupon he attempts a coup d’état and his supporters storm the parliament. A few years ago, this sequence of events would have been unthinkable in any… Read more »