Publisher's Synopsis
The U.S.-led international coalition to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has achieved substantial progress over the past several years, but the counter-ISIS campaign is not over. The authors assessed humanitarian needs in Eastern Syria's Middle Euphrates River Valley (MERV). They also examined how locally focused stabilization efforts might be orchestrated to help preclude the Islamic State's recapture of territory, even as Syria's larger civil conflict continues unabated and is growing more complex. This report opens with a sociocultural perspective on the MERV's human terrain, explicating long-standing divisions within and among the Valley's Sunni Arab tribes that may pose challenges to restoring broadly accepted local governance. The authors then assess the region's most urgent post-ISIS needs, focusing intensively on the status of its critical infrastructure-e.g., bridges, hospitals, transit facilities-as well as it
