The Day After: What to Expect in Post-Islamic State Mosul

Over recent months, the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq has lost territory to the Syrian army, opposition forces in Syria, the reorganised Iraqi Security Forces and the Hashed Al-Sha’bi (Popular Mobilization Forces – PMF), as well as to Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq. These losses have led to heightened speculation that an assault on the IS stronghold of Mosul may happen sooner rather than later. However, with such speculation comes the fear of ‘the day after’, and what could be expected to happen in Mosul – a traditional focal point of Arab and Iraqi nationalists – and a city that was the centre of Iraq’s military establishment throughout the twentieth century. Tallha Abdulrazaq and Gareth Stansfield investigate this ‘day after’ question, highlighting the potential problems that may emerge following IS’s departure from the city

The intra-GCC crises: mapping GCC fragmentation after 2011

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this record.If shared security perceptions were the foundation of the GCC, 2011 might be analysed as the watershed year in which the GCC begun to fragment from within, as then the divergences between the countries’ security perceptions became markedly exacerbated. It is commonly held that the threat posed to their security by Iranian intent and, at times, actions forced the countries of the GCC to be more aligned. However, the opposite seems to be the case, with both the 2014 and 2017 intraGCC crises being manifestations of conflicting security perceptions formed across the GCC countries in and since 2011. Through an in-depth analysis of the events and of the subsequent reaction of the GCC governments in terms of discourse and foreign policy, we can distinguish between three different categories of conceptualization. While the governments of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE perceived domestic protests as an intermestic threat – triggered by the intersection between the international and domestic levels - the leaders of Oman and Kuwait conceptualised their protests as a manageable domestic insecurity, rather than full-fledged externally orchestrated events, arguably because they did not perceive a direct danger to their stability and legitimacy. Finally it can be argued that the government of Qatar did not see any real danger in the protests but instead view them as an opportunity to expand Doha’s regional influence, arguably at Riyadh’s expense. Unpacking what are the fundamental factors shaping such perceptions today would be the key to finding the appropriate framework for analysing GCC security in the futur

The Enemy Within: ISIS and the Conquest of Mosul

ArticleUsing eyewitness accounts, this article tells the story of the 2014 conquest of Mosul by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The organization's rise is placed within historic context, examining events in Mosul dating back to the US-led invasion of 2003 and assessing the impact of Iraq's sectarian policies. The failure to appreciate these long-term developments has hindered understanding of ISIS, despite the enormous media attention the group receives