DIIS researches security, conflict and social discontent in the Middle East and North Africa. This includes sectarian and regional conflicts, resistance and rivalry and migration among countries.
The Kurdish forces provide boots on the ground in the framework of Operation Inherent Resolve. But the strong backing of the Kurds presents a number of challenges and difficult balancing acts for Western and regional actors.
Tunisia marked the end of their transition to democracy with a free and peaceful parliamentary election on 26 October. Since the 2011 revolution the country has gone through a political reform process, which resulted in a democratic constitution in January 2014. Now the new democracy has passed its first test with an election that passed off peacefully.
In the shadow of the Arab Spring, Syrian civil war, conflicts in Egypt and Libya, one of the most serious conflicts in the Middle East evolved in Iraq leading to the establishing of a caliphate in areas stretching from the borders to Iraqi Kurdistan and beyond Al-Raqqah in Syria. The group behind the caliphate, Islamic State, is one of the most powerful and brutal groups seen in the modern Middle East now, threatening the Middle East system of states as well as Western interest inside and outside the region. How can the Arab Middle East and/or EU confront the Islamic State?