Iraq

Iraqis across the country voted in provincial elections over the weekend, the first of their kind since the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011. The elections are seen as a test for Iraq’s major political factions ahead of the 2014 parliamentary elections.

Iraqis are marking the ten year anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime this week. However, unlike ten years ago, according to most reports celebrations are expected to be restrained.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will have much to talk about when he visits the White House on May 16. He and President Obama will surely discuss the crisis in Syria, Israeli-Turkish relations and Erdogan’s pursuit of peace with the PKK.

The new year in Iraq has begun much as the old one ended. The Nouri al-Maliki government appears to have once again poked its fingers in the eye of Sunni minority.

The conflict in Syrian continues to largely take the form of a sectarian struggle, with the Sunni majority pitted against Assad’s Alawite regime and other religious minorities that have cast their lot with the government.  Across the border this contest is galvanizing sectarian competition in