Despite the loss of its territorial "caliphate" in 2019, the Islamic State in Iraq and ... more Despite the loss of its territorial "caliphate" in 2019, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (IS) still poses a daily threat to the societies of the region and beyond. To account for the resurgence of IS, we need to look at its dynamism, in addition to the domestic and regional complexities that facilitate its persistence in Iraq and Syria. The gradual, drastic loss of territorial control in Iraq and Syria since 2015 has deprived IS of crucial assets to launch large-scale terrorist attacks and compelled it to change its tactics. Since 2019, IS has intensified its guerilla warfare and, by destabilising large parts of Syria and Iraq, managed to maintain leverage in those areas. The organisational and ideological cohesion of IS has not deteriorated significantly, even after losing its territorial base and its "caliph," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. IS exploits the political, security, social, and economic fragmentations that continue to plague both Iraq and Syria and that c...
Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the releva... more Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the relevance of the interaction between global and subnational or local dynamics but rather neglect the regional neighbourhood as an important intervening variable. The concept of "regional peace formations" either as an enabling or hindering factor for peacebuilding fills this gap. Empirical evidence from Latin America, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa shows the added value of the concept for explaining regional differences. Peacebuilding is a complex undertaking shaped by a variety of factors such as the nature of conflicts, the actors involved, and local contexts. A regional perspective regarding patterns of conflict and violence shows high levels of variation between regions. The concept of regional peace formations is an important tool to analyse the region-specific variation in actors and conflict dynamics. It allows us to identify either convergent or divergent contexts fo...
Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the releva... more Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the relevance of the interaction between global and subnational or local dynamics but rather neglect the regional neighbourhood as an important intervening variable. The concept of “regional peace formations” either as an enabling or hindering factor for peacebuilding fills this gap. Empirical evidence from Latin America, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa shows the added value of the concept for explaining regional differences.
This paper argues that the scholarship on security sector reform (SSR) tends to neglect re‐ giona... more This paper argues that the scholarship on security sector reform (SSR) tends to neglect re‐ gional politics in the formulation of its concepts and policies, and that this neglect deprives the study of SSR of a valuable analytical level. It therefore uses comparative historical ana‐ lysis and the model of regional conflict formations (RCFs) to examine army reforms in Sierra Leone and Iraq from a regional angle, thereby illustrating the explanatory potential that regional politics could bring to the study of SSR and its implementation. The paper also distinguishes between convergent and divergent regional formations, whereby the relation‐ ship between SSR outcomes and regional politics is conceived of as constitutive, entangled, and holistic.
Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the releva... more Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the relevance of the interaction between global and subnational or local dynamics but rather neglect the regional neighbourhood as an important intervening variable. The concept of “regional peace formations” either as an enabling or hindering factor for peacebuilding fills this gap. Empirical evidence from Latin America, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa shows the added value of the concept for explaining regional differences.
Despite the loss of its territorial "caliphate" in 2019, the Islamic State in Iraq and ... more Despite the loss of its territorial "caliphate" in 2019, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (IS) still poses a daily threat to the societies of the region and beyond. To account for the resurgence of IS, we need to look at its dynamism, in addition to the domestic and regional complexities that facilitate its persistence in Iraq and Syria. The gradual, drastic loss of territorial control in Iraq and Syria since 2015 has deprived IS of crucial assets to launch large-scale terrorist attacks and compelled it to change its tactics. Since 2019, IS has intensified its guerilla warfare and, by destabilising large parts of Syria and Iraq, managed to maintain leverage in those areas. The organisational and ideological cohesion of IS has not deteriorated significantly, even after losing its territorial base and its "caliph," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. IS exploits the political, security, social, and economic fragmentations that continue to plague both Iraq and Syria and that c...
Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the releva... more Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the relevance of the interaction between global and subnational or local dynamics but rather neglect the regional neighbourhood as an important intervening variable. The concept of "regional peace formations" either as an enabling or hindering factor for peacebuilding fills this gap. Empirical evidence from Latin America, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa shows the added value of the concept for explaining regional differences. Peacebuilding is a complex undertaking shaped by a variety of factors such as the nature of conflicts, the actors involved, and local contexts. A regional perspective regarding patterns of conflict and violence shows high levels of variation between regions. The concept of regional peace formations is an important tool to analyse the region-specific variation in actors and conflict dynamics. It allows us to identify either convergent or divergent contexts fo...
Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the releva... more Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the relevance of the interaction between global and subnational or local dynamics but rather neglect the regional neighbourhood as an important intervening variable. The concept of “regional peace formations” either as an enabling or hindering factor for peacebuilding fills this gap. Empirical evidence from Latin America, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa shows the added value of the concept for explaining regional differences.
This paper argues that the scholarship on security sector reform (SSR) tends to neglect re‐ giona... more This paper argues that the scholarship on security sector reform (SSR) tends to neglect re‐ gional politics in the formulation of its concepts and policies, and that this neglect deprives the study of SSR of a valuable analytical level. It therefore uses comparative historical ana‐ lysis and the model of regional conflict formations (RCFs) to examine army reforms in Sierra Leone and Iraq from a regional angle, thereby illustrating the explanatory potential that regional politics could bring to the study of SSR and its implementation. The paper also distinguishes between convergent and divergent regional formations, whereby the relation‐ ship between SSR outcomes and regional politics is conceived of as constitutive, entangled, and holistic.
Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the releva... more Academic and political debates on peace and conflict dynamics increasingly acknowledge the relevance of the interaction between global and subnational or local dynamics but rather neglect the regional neighbourhood as an important intervening variable. The concept of “regional peace formations” either as an enabling or hindering factor for peacebuilding fills this gap. Empirical evidence from Latin America, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa shows the added value of the concept for explaining regional differences.
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Papers by selman almohamad