Elections in the time of Tishreen

We explore how the ongoing government formation process sheds light on the underlying elite bargains that shape Iraq’s political system. We examine how power-sharing arrangements are negotiated and contested, what these dynamics reveal about the informal rules governing politics ...  Show more

After more than two decades in Iraq, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq is coming to an end. In this episode, we look back at UNAMI’s mandate since 2003, how its role evolved over time, and the moments that defined its presence in the country. We assess what UNAMI ach ...  Show more

This week on Babel, Jon speaks with Dr. Haider al-Abadi, an Iraqi politician who served as prime minister from 2014 to 2018, while the country was battling the Islamic State Group (ISG). They talk about his decision making as prime minister, the Iraqi government's response to the ...  Show more

On Monday August 29th, Iraq came closer to civil war than it has for year. The fears of many Iraqis that political tensions would spill out into violence were coming true.

After 11 months of parliamentary elections, government formation is still help up by complete poli ...

This week Jon is joined by Hassan Hassan, director of the program on non-state actors in geopolitics at the Center for Global Policy and the editor-in-chief of its new online journal, Newlines Magazine. Hassan talks to Jon about his late colleague, Hisham al-Hashimi, and the rese ...  Show more

In a special episode of Babel to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, Jon sits down with two Iraqi guests to talk about the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion. Dr. Marsin Alshamary is a research fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard's Belfer Cen ...  Show more