More than four months after the start of an international airstrikes campaign against the Islamic State, the organization continues to expand—going beyond the geographical areas of Syria and Iraq.
New rules restricting the entry of Syrians into Lebanon are only a stopgap measure in the government’s effort to curb and ultimately control the refugee population.
Having already coaxed the Syrian regime into attending peace talks in Moscow at the end of January, the Kremlin finds itself unable to convince any significant opposition leader to participate.
By agreeing to the Moscow talks, the Syrian regime is portraying itself as more flexible than the opposition, at a time when the international community has lost patience with the intransigence on both sides.
The chances of success for the much-discussed Russian initiative to end the war in Syria seem slim at best—because Moscow has called a peace meeting with only one of the warring parties in attendance.
2015 begins with new proposals to resolve the conflict, but 2014 has shown that even dramatic geo-political and military changes can leave the conflict dynamic unaltered and the stalemate unbroken.
While financial awareness and education have a long way to go before Syria’s financial sector can reach its true potential, the country was and remains underbanked and underinsured by all measures.
The Islamic State will continue to be a major actor in the Syrian conflict in 2015 and beyond. The organization’s mode of operation may change, but not the fact of its existence.
The Lebanese government—reacting four years too late—should have had a policy on the Syrian crisis from the start of the conflict to ensure the livelihoods of the Syrian refugees and their host communities.
2014 was a year of crisis. Ebola, ISIS, and Donbas are now part of the global lexicon. Eurasia Outlook experts weigh in on how crises on Russia’s periphery affected the country, and what these developments mean for Moscow in 2015.












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