Mako Publishes Essay on Baghdad-Erbil Sinjar Agreement
Shamiran Mako, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an essay in Lawfare assessing the Baghdad-Erbil Sinjar agreement
In the article, titled “Negotiating Peace in Iraq’s Disputed Territories: Modifying the Sinjar Agreement,” Mako explains how discontent among local communities may jeopardize the Sinjar agreement and regional stability in general. As Mako details in her article, formation of the Sinjar agreement excluded representatives from the areas minority population. She argues that a reformation of the agreement to include bottom-up political settlements “could mitigate existing tensions regarding political representation, foreign intervention and influence, security, and reconstruction.”
An excerpt:
Recalibrating the existing agreement requires short- and long-term conflict resolution strategies to assuage local demands for substantive representation in governance, security and reconstruction. In the short run, power brokers in Baghdad and Erbil should facilitate cross-communal, local-level participation and representation by engaging directly with multiple Yazidi stakeholders, especially civil society organizations.
Shamiran Mako is an assistant professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. She is also a member of the Graduate Faculty at the Political Science Department at Boston University. Her research explores the historical and contemporary drivers of inter and intra-state conflicts that produce weak and fragile states across the MENA region. She is the author of After the Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa, with Valentine Moghadam (forthcoming June 2021). Read more about Shamiran on her faculty profile.