ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Randa Slim is a senior fellow and Director of Conflict Resolution & Track II Dialogues Program at the Middle East Institute. She spoke with Rudaw Media Network’s anchor Hiwa Jamal earlier this week about several topics, including the challenges Iraq and Syria face in tackling the threat of Islamic State. Slim argues that it is critical that the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) take “serious reform measures” to tackle the economic crisis Iraq is facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the drop in oil prices and to be able to plot a “sustainable economic recovery.” On the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, Slim says that, like the Iraqis suffered under the UN-imposed sanctions in the 1990s, ordinary Syrians will suffer too under these new sanctions, but she hoped that the targeted nature of the sanctions on the energy and reconstruction sectors, as well as the tracking process, would ultimately alleviate the suffering of Syrians.
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