Iraq is on the brink following the takeover of Mosul and other cities by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Leaders from across the region and internationally are now faced with the challenge of how to halt the advancement of ISIS and steer the region away from sectarian conflict.

With a panel of experts we will take a view of events on the ground and the measures being taken by Iraq, its neighbours and the international community. Asking how ISIS has been able advance so quickly and what can be done to prevent further escalation of sectarian polarisation. We will also be looking at the new alliances that might be formed in this new front on the fight against extremism.

Chaired by Ian Black, The Guardian‘s Middle East editor.

The panel:

Hayder al-Khoei, associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme, Chatham House.

Zuhair al-Naher, a spokesman for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party.

Dominic Asquith, has 30 years of Middle East experience earned in the British Diplomatic Service. He was deputy special representative and then deputy head of mission in Iraq in 2004, director of the Iraq Directorate at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office 2004–06 and Ambassador to Iraq 2006–7.

Zaid Al-Ali (via Skype), is a senior adviser on constitutional building for International IDEA and author of The Struggle for Iraq’s Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy. He was a legal adviser to the United Nations in Iraq from 2005 to 2010.

CBS News’ Elizabeth Palmer led an expert discussion at the Frontline Club on 11 September regarding the latest crush of violence in Iraq.

The panel painted a portrait of a country desperately in need of peace, independence, rule of law, reconciliation with its traumatic past, and unity amidst hardening divisions along ethnic, class, and religious lines.  Yet none of these needs are being met.

Professor Charles Tripp lamented Iraqis’ inability to trust their government, with a:

"Parliament that sat for 20 minutes in the whole of the year 2010 after being elected … a judiciary which seems to be completely in the pocket of the executive power, and of course a police that you have to be very wary of calling."

Tripp expressed sadness at a "hatred of the state" that he perceived fueling many Sunni and Shi’a attacks.

"The blowing up of people who are looking for employment … of a large number of people standing outside army recruiting or police recruiting. These are people who are just like [their killers] in some senses, these are, you know, sad people who are looking, desperate for employment."

Kamran Karadaghi, distinguished Kurdish Iraqi journalist, downplayed recent attacks as anything out of the ordinary.  

"This was something that was meant to happen," he said.  "There is always from time to time a wave of violence in Iraq …  Iraqi people are very violent.  Killing, getting rid of others, is something which sometimes is like a normal thing."

Different factions who make up the government, The Independents‘ Patrick Cockburn added:

"Sunnis, Shi’a, Kurds … none of these people like each other … [but] they all have quite a lot to lose if the present system collapses.  So despite the very high levels of violence … in a way it has a sort of grisly stability." 

Karadaghi agreed.

"Being an oil economy … everybody in Iraq wants to be a part of it.  So this is why, despite … all the animosities … nobody actually left the government.  They are all still in the government. This kind of arrangement will continue."

On one topic, however, the panel found optimism, Kurdish independence.  

Karadaghi, as well as Tom Hardie-Forsyth, a senior adviser to the Prime Minister’s office, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Northern Iraq, both touted the transparency and success of recent Kurdish oil contracts, a more stable and prosperous way of life in the region, and a stronger sense of unity and purpose among Kurds.  

"They are the largest disenfranchised nation in the world.  They deserve [independence]," Hardie-Forsyth said.

But are they ready for it?  

Karadaghi smiled:  "Not yet, but like Andy Murray said, getting closer."

As the violence in Syria spreads to the capital Damascus and the latest reports confirm the deaths of top government ministers, it is certain that the revolution there is entering a new phase. Many analysts believe that it is not now a question of “if” the Syrian regime collapses from within, but “when".

A conversation with Samar Yazbek, a Syrian journalist and writer, therefore couldn’t have been more timely. She is an opposition activists and human rights defenders, she is also a member of the minority Alawite community, which is probably the only thing in common she has with the President Bashar Al Assad. When describing the ruling family, Yazbek certainly did not mince her words.

Bashar Al Assad and his family have always seen Syrian citizens as slaves. He was never chosen by the people to be the president. He is ready to destroy Syria, he will completely divide it up, turn it into ruins before letting go of power,” she said.

The regime in Syria is a family that has been building alliances for 40 years. Bashar Al Assad is a front for this mafia alliance of families who are basically criminals.”

Yazbek also gives a nuanced analysis how, throughout the decades, the Assad and a cluster of several other families – both Alawite and some Sunni – have turned Syria into, what she calls, “an explosive society.”

The Syrian secret service have the upper hand in the Syrian society, that’s how it’s been carefully created for 40 years. The Assads eliminated all the fellow officers who had helped them in the 1970s coup. Those were the origins of, what I call, explosive society.

They worked on undermining of the social context of the Alawite sect. Little by little they made the Alawite sect synonymous with the totalitarian regime, they made sure its survival depended on the regime.

They also enhanced the divisions between various tribes, giving them control over different sectors within the secret service, which has always been recruited mainly from the coastal, Alawite regions, but not exclusively. The Assad regime built strong alliances with the wealthy merchant class from the Sunni community.

He also undermined the rule of the national army, despite the propaganda you hear. The secret service controls them too.”

Yazbek says that this clever social engineering brought a lot of resentment from large parts of the Syrian society, which had started to simmer long before the first protesters, emboldened by the events in Tunisia and Egypt, took to streets demanding change. However, in the early months of the revolution, the overthrowing of the ruling family was not yet on the agenda:

"In the first four months of the revolution the people demanded change – reform – but not the overthrow of the regime. They did not want the division along the sectarian lines, they did not want the country to be run by Alawites or Sunnis alone.

The regime at the time accused all of the protestors of being armed gangs. But I was there, all protests were peaceful. I remember once I was standing next to someone who was shot by a government sniper from a nearby building. I can tell you now – if these people had been armed, I never would have supported this revolution. The armed forces were the security forces of Bashar Al Assad.”

More recently there have been accusation by the generally supportive Western media that the Syrian opposition are conducting massacres of their own people to push for a Libya-style intervention, which Yazbek categorically denies.