IPSI Syria Simulations Project

The International Peace and Security Institute in Washington DC has designed two three -day simulations on the crisis in Syria, which it will run for interested organizations (presumably for a fee, although this isn’t made explicit anywhere):

As violence continues unabated, Syrians and the international community are seeking greater information on how to resolve the armed conflict and then transition the country from civil war to stability.  To address the question of how the Syrian conflict will end and what a possible transition might look like, the International Peace & Security Institute (IPSI) developed a series of half day-to-three day interactive, flexible multilateral simulations based on the conflict in Syria.

These simulations are important for both the value of the experiential educational process for participants (i.e. the ability to “get into the head” of conflict actors) and for their powerful predictive analysis (i.e. simulation players’ decisions have closely mirrored the future decisions of real-world actors).

Full simulations take three days to facilitate, although specific scenarios/modules from the larger simulations have been designed to run independently and can be tailored to the specific timeframes and learning needs of outside organizations, institutions, and government bodies.

SIMULATION UNIVERSE ONE: Set in a complex universe closely mirroring Syria’s current state, this simulation challenges participants to explore how conflict resolution techniques, including negotiation, facilitation, mediation, military intervention and nonviolent action, might contribute to a resolution.   Participants take on the roles of actors from the Assad regime, the opposition forces, and the international community to test how different actions may affect the conflict.

SIMULATION UNIVERSE TWO: The second simulation universe places many of the same conflict actor roles from Simulation Universe One in a fictionalized, post-conflict Syria. The participants are challenged to structure a holistic transition for the country, taking into account security, governance, development, rule of law with an eye towards restorative and retributive justice mechanisms, and social well-being.

The Syria Simulations Project Report briefly sketches the contours of the simulation, although it contains only limited detail or analysis of past simulation runs.

If anyone has taken part in one of these, PAXsims would be interested in hearing your impressions.