JHU SAIS and Brookings to Host Forum on Soft Partition Plan for Iraq

The Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Brookings Institution will hold a forum, "The Case for Soft Partition in Iraq," on Thursday, 07/5 at 1 p.m.

The forum, hosted by the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute (FPI) and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, will feature Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings Institution senior fellow, and Edward Joseph, SAIS FPI visiting scholar, who are the authors of a newly released Saban Center policy paper presenting an alternative plan for stabilizing Iraq.

In their analysis paper, O'Hanlon and Joseph argue that if the U.S. troop surge and the related effort to broker political accommodation through the existing coalition government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki fail, soft partition 05/be the only means of avoiding an intensification of the civil war and growing threat of a regional conflagration.

A complete copy of "The Case for Soft Partition in Iraq," can be accessed at www.brookings.edu.

The session, which is open to the public, will be held in the Kenney Auditorium of the school's Nitze Building, 1740 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. Members of the public should RSVP to fpi@jhu.edu or 202.663.5832.

Media who want to cover this event must register with Felisa Neuringer Klubes at the SAIS Public Affairs Office at 202.663.5626 or fklubes@jhu.edu.