The Rise of Iraq's Shi'ite Militias

This week on a special edition of Babel, Will Todman speaks with Jon Alterman, the creator of Babel and the show’s host since it began in 2019. They discuss Jon’s reflections on 22 years directing the CSIS Middle East Program, his analysis of how the Middle East policy ecosystem ...  Show more

This week on Babel, Jon Alterman speaks with Dr. Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Mohanad's latest paper for Carnegie investigates the rise of a new form of drug smuggling in Lebanon. Together, they discuss Hezbollah’s i ...  Show more

Over 13 years, the US spent at least $21.7 billion training and equipping the Iraqi army, police and counter-terror forces. Then, in the space of a few days in the summer of 2014. it all collapsed. As thousands of ISIS fighters poured over the border from Syria, as many as 90,000 ...  Show more

Iraqi Voices hosts political analysts Lahib Hagel and Omar Al-Nidawi once again, a year after they joined the podcast to analyse the 2021 early elections, to deconstruct the political developments of the last 12 months and discuss the direction Iraq is headed in 

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 ...

Renad Mansour, senior research fellow and project director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House, discusses the origins, impacts and trends in Iraq’s protest movements; the influence and role of the US and Iran in Iraqi politics and security; the normalization of I ...