Quadriga - Terror in Iraq: Who Stops the Slaughter?
US president Barack Obama indicated that he had only reluctantly ordered the airstrikes against IS fighters. Since US troops withdrew from Irak in 2011 he has been determined to avoid a renewed military engagement in Iraq. Since the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are largely perceived as unsuccessful, Americans are unwilling to go to war again. But the advances made by the Islamic State insurgents are increasingly being seen as a potential global threat rather than a mere regional problem.
The fact that even the Iraqi central government in Baghdad has given support to Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the autonomous north shows how seriously it takes the IS advances. Iraq is undergoing a change of government shake-up. Many consider outgoing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his discrimination against Sunnis and Kurds partly to blame for the success of the IS. Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi says he will form a new cabinet in which Sunnis and Kurds are also represented.
Which new alliances will form to push back the Sunni extremists? Is a military buildup in the autonomous Kurdish region the only solution? Can the territory controlled by IS be won back, or is the Islamic caliphate it has proclaimed a fact that the world must accept?
Let us know what you think. Send an email to quadriga(at)dw.de
Terror in Iraq: Who Stops the Slaughter?
Our guests:
Alison Smale - is a British journalist who graduated from Stanford University in the US. In December 2008, she became the first woman to take up the post of Executive Editor at the International Herald Tribune. In an article about the IHT's redesign in April 2009, which Smale oversaw, The Independent called her "the most powerful British female editor overseas." In her reporting days, Alison Smale was AP's bureau chief for Eastern Europe, where she covered the rise of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and changes in Russia. As Deputy Foreign Editor at The New York Times she organized much of the paper's coverage of the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan. She is now the New York Times bureau chief in Berlin.
Daniel Gerlach– he is the founder and editor-in-chief of Zenith, a German magazine focusing on politics, economics and culture in the Middle East. After studying history and Middle Eastern Studies in Hamburg and Paris, he started as a freelance journalist. He is the author for several TV-documentations on the Middle east and the Islamic world. He is also a co-founder of the German publishing house Levante Verlag.
Amir Musawy - is the Berlin correspondent for Iraqia TV. He studied media and political science in Bonn, Germany, and has reported for Associated Press in London. Musawy has worked for the Iraqi foreign ministry and several NGOs in his capacity as a political scientist and media consultant. He has taught Media & Communication at the University of Minsk in Belarus.