Summary of Day Two of MEPS 22 at AUK

Day 2 of MEPS ‘22 was dominated by conversations among academics, over the course of its four sessions detailing numerous challenges for the Middle East. In his opening remarks, AUK President Randall Rhodes broached several of these challenges and outlined the university’s commitment to addressing them, by ensuring the educational rights of women and vulnerable populations and building capacity for the public and private sectors.

Former US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad delivered the Keynote Speech. In it, he spoke succinctly on the themes of each of the panels that would follow. He talked about women’s rights just as President Rhodes had, using them as a segue to the ongoing protests in Iran. He posited the protests may indicate a loss of legitimacy for the regime.

The first panel, “Economic Reforms & Human Security: Pathways to Prosperity,” emphasized the “youth bulge” in the wider Middle East. Unemployment, disproportionately impacting young adults, is cited by Iraqis as their nation’s top security concern, above ISIS. Many young Middle Easterners have migrated from rural to urban areas or left their homelands altogether in search of employment and greater prosperity. A positive note for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq was on how many younger professionals in the Kurdish diaspora returned between 2005 and 2014, motivated by a local economic boom. The panelists agreed that steady electricity is essential for the economic growth that would shore up employment, security, and general prosperity.

The next panel, “New Threats, Old Realities? The Future of the West in the Middle East,” grappled with a conceptual framework bandied about by scholars for years: the “post-Western” world. The mention of new powers making inroads into the Middle East would be repeated in the fourth panel. There was, furthermore, discussion of encouraging signs of internal Middle Eastern diplomacy, through which the region could better police its own affairs. The consensus held that, notwithstanding drawdowns and Biden’s “pivot to Asia,” the US presence in the Middle East remains substantial and should be significant for decades to come.

In “COP 27 & The Climate Crisis: Can the Region Come Together?” panelists discussed the budding regional cooperation. Several Middle Eastern countries, in a departure from traditional rancor, collaborated on tackling sandstorms. Syria was referenced as a source of refugees from both fighting and climate change; Duhok, home to AUK, stands out in Iraq for being home to many Syrian refugees. Iraq’s troubles with water supply are partially due to the damming of shared rivers by Turkey and Iran, but there is little reason for cross-border conflict because those troubles are mostly attributable to Iraqi mismanagement.

The last panel, “China, Russia & the United States: Great Power Competition in the Middle East,” reiterated that the US has a firm position in the region and explained that the American presence is more likely to be supplemented than supplanted. In the “multipolar” world which appears to be the evolving model, the US will face both competition and cooperation in the Middle East, and the Middle East region may succeed in growing into a “pole” in its own right.

Dr. Honar Issa of AUK gave the closing remarks. Remarkably, he punctuated the climate change talk that had accounted for much of the day with a telling statistic: Iraq is the fifth most vulnerable country in the world to climate change.