Indeed, in most of the discussions, Washington was hardly mentioned. But with no U.S. superpower in view, the fear was palpable that no one could halt the chaos in a fragmenting region. "The big question is how to maintain a peace after [ISIS] is defeated, so as not to repeat the disaster," said the university's founder and former prime minister of the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan, Barham Salih. "The key is to make sure [ISIS] is not one episode to be replaced by another."