Middle East Report Online. Free, web-only news analysis and commentary in addition to the in-depth coverage found only in the print quarterly Middle East Report.

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Musharraf's Opening to Israel
Middle East Report Online
March 2, 2006
By Graham Usher

When George W. Bush arrives in Islamabad on March 4, 2006, his will be the first visit to Pakistan by a US president since Bill Clinton touched down there in March 2000. Aside from the coincidence of the month, the circumstances could hardly be more different. In 2000, Clinton stayed for barely five hours, refused to be photographed with the then recently installed military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and proceeded to lecture the general on Pakistan's continued sponsorship of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamist insurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Full Story >>

Three Emirs and a Tale of Two Transitions
Middle East Report Online
February 10, 2006
By Mary Ann Tétreault

On the surface, the brief succession crisis that gripped Kuwait in January 2006 ended in the arbitrary replacement of one member of the ruling Al Sabah family with another. When Sheikh Jabir al-Ahmad al-Jabir died after a long illness on January 15, he was succeeded by the crown prince, Sheikh Saad al-Abdallah al-Salim, himself in the throes of a lengthy sickness and suffering also from senile dementia. Politicking ensued inside the ruling family, and on January 29, former Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jabir took Sheikh Saad’s place and made his first speech as Kuwait’s new ruler. But in between the two successions, the Kuwaiti parliament exercised its independent constitutional powers, demanding that the infirm Sheikh Saad yield. For the first time in an Arab monarchy, an elected body effectively deposed the monarch, and empowered a new one, without anyone firing a shot. Full Story >>

Less a "Big Bang" Than an Earthquake
Middle East Report Online
January 18, 2006
By Peretz Kidron

The two successive strokes and the cerebral hemorrhage that struck down Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came just a few weeks after the somber ceremonies marking the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The causes of the two occurrences were very different, and so was the actual physical outcome, for Rabin died within minutes of sustaining his wounds, while doctors still hold out glimmers of hope for Sharon’s survival, albeit with grave handicaps. Full Story>>

Following six months of rumor and speculation in Yemen, President Ali Abdallah Salih did the expected and announced that he would stand for reelection in the presidential contest scheduled for September 2006. Salih accepted the nomination of his ruling General People’s Congress party on December 17, 2005, during its three-day conference in the southern port city of Aden. The conference, which had been postponed twice to allow Salih to return from state visits abroad, was largely a scripted affair, with few surprises, save for when the president tried and failed to catch a pigeon that landed at his table. Full Story>>

Broken Ranks in the Palestinian National Movement
Middle East Report Online
January 1, 2006
By Robert Blecher

The long-awaited shakeup has finally come to Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority and the largest component of the Palestine Liberation Organization, though not in the way that champions of internal reform had hoped. Having failed to push their agenda from within, Fatah rebels formed a separate list for the Palestinian Legislative Council elections scheduled for January 25, 2006, calling on the public to arbitrate their disputes with party elders. With defeat looming for senior officials of the Palestinian Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas moved to reunite with the rebels, but backroom politicking has not been able to quiet the tumult within the party. Full Story>>

Controlled Reform in Egypt: Neither Reformist nor Controlled
Middle East Report Online
December 15, 2005
By Issandr El Amrani

Drawn out over five weeks in November and December 2005, Egypt’s parliamentary elections gripped a country normally jaded about formal politics -- and produced some surprising results. While the ruling National Democratic Party retained a large majority of seats in the legislature when the votes were counted, more than half of its candidates went down to defeat. The secular opposition parties, already weak, were crushed, losing most of their seats. Candidates associated with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, surged to an unexpectedly strong showing. These developments, along with rampant vote buying and violence that claimed the lives of 11 people and wounded hundreds more, kept Egyptians accustomed to yawning at the country’s electoral exercises glued to the television screen. Full Story>>

Torture and the Lawless “New Paradigm”
Middle East Report Online
December 9, 2005
By Lisa Hajjar

The president who campaigned on a pledge to “restore honor and dignity to the White House” has now been compelled to declaim: “We abide by the law of the United States, and we do not torture.” In the closing months of 2005, President George W. Bush has been forced to repeat this undignified denial several times, most recently with the head of the World Health Organization standing beside him, because a dwindling number of people believe him. Full Story>>

Impunity on Both Sides of the Green Line
Middle East Report Online
November 23, 2005
By Jonathan Cook

As Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon strode up to the podium at the UN General Assembly on September 15, 2005 to deliver a speech recognizing the Palestinians’ right to statehood, government officials back in Jerusalem were preparing to draw a firm line under unfinished business from the start of the Palestinian uprising, five years earlier. Full Story>>

The Mehlis Report and Lebanon’s Trouble Next Door
Middle East Report Online
November 18, 2005
By Marlin Dick

The UN-authorized investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, now well into a second phase of heightened brinkmanship between Damascus and Washington, also has Lebanon holding its collective breath. Full Story>>

Iran’s Nuclear File: The Uncertain Endgame
Middle East Report Online
October 24, 2005
By Farideh Farhi

After almost a week of contentious meetings, on September 24, 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) adopted a resolution without precedent in its lengthy file on the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a split vote, the agency’s Board of Governors found that Iran’s “failures and breaches…constitute non-compliance” with Iran’s agreement to let the international body verify that its nuclear program is purely peaceful. Iran, which is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, concluded such a supplemental agreement with the UN nuclear watchdog in 1974. Full Story>>

Forecasting Mass Destruction, from Gulf to Gulf
Middle East Report Online
September 29, 2005
By Sheila Carapico

While internally displaced Americans were piled into an unequipped New Orleans sports stadium, the question on everyone’s lips was: where were the Louisiana National Guard and its high-water trucks when Hurricane Katrina struck? One answer, obviously, was that at least a third of the Guard’s human and mechanical resources were deployed to Iraq. Anti-war protesters demonstrating in Washington on September 24, 2005 as a new storm battered the Gulf coast turned the question into a new slogan: “Make Levees, Not War.” Full Story>>  

Signpost in Somaliland’s Quest for Sovereignty
Middle East Report Online
September 28, 2005
By Nathalie Peutz

A year after its inception, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia remains in disarray. The interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf, lingers north of Mogadishu, amassing weapons and recruiting troops for his return to the capital. His 91-member cabinet and 42 ministries, forged in exile, are scattered across the globe. Meanwhile, on September 29, 2005, the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland in the northwest of the country will hold its third multi-party elections since 2000. Often disparaged as a “rogue enclave” or a “breakaway region,” Somaliland has asserted a largely unrecognized right to self-determination since 1991. Full Story>>

Egypt’s Election All About Image, Almost
Middle East Report Online
September 6, 2005
By Mariz Tadros

The skies of Cairo are cluttered with strips of cloth daubed in red, blue and green. Hanging in crowded squares and stretching across streets before traffic lights, almost all of the banners proclaim the enthusiastic support of “So-and-So and his family” or “such-and-such shop or hospital” for Husni Mubarak in his quest for a fifth term as president of Egypt. Full Story>>

The Ceasefire This Time
Middle East Report Online
August 31, 2005
By Evren Balta-Paker

"The aim of the Turkish armed forces is to ensure that the separatist terrorist organization bows down to the law and the mercy of the nation." Thus did the Turkish chief of staff, Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, brusquely dismiss the one-month ceasefire announced on August 19, 2005 by the Kurdistan People's Congress (or Kongra-Gel). Kongra-Gel is the name adopted in 2003 by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which had renewed its armed struggle with the Turkish state just over one year before proclaiming its latest truce. Full Story>>

The New Hamas: Between Resistance and Participation
Middle East Report Online
August 21, 2005
By Graham Usher

In March 2005, Hamas, the largest Islamist party in Palestine, joined its main secular rival Fatah and 11 other Palestinian organizations in endorsing a document that seemed to embody the greatest harmony achieved within the Palestinian national movement in almost two decades. By the terms of the Cairo Declaration, Hamas agreed to "maintain an atmosphere of calm" -- halt attacks on Israel -- for the rest of the year, participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for July and commence discussions about joining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In the eyes of many, the Islamist party had not come so close to reconciliation with Fatah since it emerged as a political force in the late 1980s, and certainly not since Fatah became the dominant party within the Palestinian Authority (PA) created in 1994. "This is a turning point for the region," said top PA negotiator Nabil Abu Rideina of the Cairo Declaration. Full Story>>

Black Monday: The Political and Economic Dimensions of Sudan's Urban Riots
Middle East Report Online
August 9, 2005
By Khalid Mustafa Medani

The sudden death of John Garang de Mabior, the long-time leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) recently named first vice president of Sudan, unleashed a torrent of anger and protest in Khartoum. Suspecting that the July 30 helicopter crash that killed Garang and 13 others was not an accident, thousands of young men and women took to the streets of the Sudanese capital, setting fire to scores of businesses and numerous government offices and public facilities. In the ensuing three days of rioting, which spread to the southern city of Juba, as many as 130 people were killed and thousands more were injured. The Khartoum government, SPLM lieutenants and Garang's widow Rebecca insisted that the crash was accidental and appealed, somewhat in vain, for calm before the disturbances finally fizzled out. Garang's August 6 funeral in Juba was quiet, but the rioting has laid bare structural tensions that persist as the Khartoum government and the SPLM seek to consolidate a permanent peace on the north-south front of Africa's longest-running civil war.Full Story>>

Cracks in the Yemeni System
Middle East Report Online
July 28, 2005
By Sarah Phillips

The sudden announcement by Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih that he will step down in 2006 in favor of "young blood" has set the country and the region abuzz. Having led the northern Yemen Arab Republic from 1978, and then assumed the presidency of the whole of Yemen following the country's unification in 1990, Salih has enjoyed the second-longest rule in the Arab world, behind only Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. As speculation rages that Salih's announcement is only a ploy, that the "young blood" is his son Ahmad or that he does in fact intend to relinquish power, one thing is certain: Yemen is in the midst of a prolonged security and economic crisis that has exposed the fragility of the state and widened cracks in the country's political system. Full Story>>

Iranian Women Take On the Constitution
Middle East Report Online
July 21, 2005
By Mahsa Shekarloo

Activists for women's rights are prominent among the many Iranians who fear a reinvigorated crackdown on personal and social freedoms in the wake of the surprise election of the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of the Islamic Republic. Though Ahmadinejad sought to soften his image on gender issues during the week before the runoff on June 24, 2005, even speaking against "sexist attitudes," his electoral base on the far right continually agitates for a harder line. His base is particularly offended by the looser standards of "Islamic dress" for women and the freer mixing of the sexes in public places that have slowly developed over the two terms of President Mohammad Khatami, who will vacate his office on August 4. In one taste of the pressure the new president might face, the parliamentarian Mohammad Taqi-Rahbar was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as complaining: "Even if women remove the small handkerchiefs they wear instead of a proper veil, nobody says anything." That, Taqi-Rahbar implied, must change. Full Story>>

Orange Rampant
Middle East Report Online
July 15, 2005
By Peretz Kidron

Israel’s national colors are blue and white. In the summer of 2005, however, an Israeli driver adorning his vehicle with ribbons in those hues runs the risk of a broken antenna or a vandal’s scratches in the paint job. Conversely, the motorist would be far safer joining what appears to be the general trend by accepting the strips of bright orange proffered at every main intersection by eager youngsters in orange T-shirts. Indeed, so dominant is the orange that one may be forgiven for suspecting a mass takeover by Protestant militants from Ulster. Full Story>>

Killing Live 8, Noisily: The G-8, Liberal Dissent and the London Bombings
Middle East Report Online
July 14, 2005
By Sheila Carapico

The organizers of Live 8, the week-long, celebrity-driven musical campaign for increased aid and debt relief for poverty-stricken nations, plugged their July 6 concert in an Edinburgh stadium as “a celebration of the largest and loudest cry to make poverty history the world has ever seen.” By rush hour the next morning, four coordinated bombings in the London transit system had stolen the show from the well-orchestrated international extravaganza and handed the microphone to Tony Blair and George W. Bush. Talk about a vast right-wing conspiracy: the London terrorists could not have done more to strengthen the hand of the world’s richest states against dissident voices in the West and beyond if they had actually been in cahoots.  Full Story>>

Iran's Presidential Runoff: The Long View
Middle East Report Online
June 24, 2005
By Kaveh Ehsani  

Many observers were caught off guard when the first round of Iran's presidential election on June 17, 2005 catapulted the arch-conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, into a runoff against former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad's unpredicted strong showing raises the prospect that he could win in the second round on June 24, thereby consolidating even further the control of radical conservatives over the Islamic Republic. Some commentators have warned that such a development presages “Talibanism” in Iran; others see an Ahmadinejad victory as tantamount to a military takeover of Iranian politics. Full Story>>

Just a short time ago, the Iranian presidential election being held on June 17, 2005 was regarded as a non-event. The prospect that the election would advance debates over political reform and democratization appeared weak, in the shadow of the self-described defeat of Iran's parliamentary reformist movement and the increasing skepticism of the disappointed citizenry that voting for reform-minded candidates will in fact democratize the regime. In the past two electoral seasons, the reformist camp allied with President Mohammad Khatami had fallen victim to a hardline conservative backlash and voter disenchantment. In the 2003 municipal elections, hardliners took advantage of low voter turnout to sweep the open seats on city councils, especially in the capital of Tehran and other large cities. Then, prior to the February 2004 parliamentary elections, the conservative Guardian Council disqualified over 2,000 candidates from the major reformist parties, usually on the grounds of "lack of respect for Islam." The Guardian Council, an unelected supervisory body vested by the constitution of the Islamic Republic with the power to overturn acts of Parliament, had intervened repeatedly since 1997 to block reformist legislation. Popular faith in the parliamentary reformists' ability to change the system eroded, to the point that the Guardians' intervention to ban reformist candidates in 2004 did not elicit a strong reaction from Iranian civil society. Full Story>>

Reform Retreats Amid Jordan's Political Storms
Middle East Report Online
June 10, 2005
By Curtis Ryan

For weeks in the spring of 2005, banners advertising an international gathering at the Dead Sea resort of Shouna adorned every main street in Jordan's capital city of Amman. The government was touting what it regarded as a significant national success: for the third year in a row, the lightly populated, resource-poor kingdom would host the high-powered World Economic Forum on May 20-22. Jordanian officials were also proud to be hosts of a conference of Nobel laureates convening in Petra around the same time. As the dates of the World Economic Forum approached, however, heavily armed soldiers and commandos soon outnumbered the banners in the streets. Units of the Jordanian army and special forces spread out across the capital, posting armored vehicles at all major interchanges. Full Story>>

Mahmoud Abbas’ Mission Improbable
Middle East Report Online
June 1, 2005
By Mouin Rabbani and Chris Toensing

Renewed, if somewhat less euphoric talk of a historic opportunity for Middle East peace accompanied Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas both heading to and returning from his May 26, 2005 summit with President George W. Bush at the White House. Yet the opportunity, of which much has been written since Abbas’ victory in a presidential poll in January, is primarily remarkable for the absence of any plan for exploiting it. Full Story>>

Elections Pose Lebanon's Old Questions Anew
Middle East Report Online
May 31, 2005
By Sateh Noureddine and Laurie King-Irani

Watching a wave of peaceful protests compel the Lebanese government to resign on February 28, 2005, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli hailed the victory of a "Cedar Revolution" in line with, among others, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and "the Purple Revolution in Baghdad." Ereli went on to claim that Lebanon's spring of discontent, sparked by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri on February 14, proved President George W. Bush's thesis that it is "the natural state of human beings to...want to be free." On the streets of Beirut, though a lively striving for freedom was in evidence, the phrase "Cedar Revolution" never gained currency. In Lebanon, the months of protest, theatrical and musical performances, and all-night, left-right, Muslim-Christian political discussions, culminating in the massive demonstration of over one million people that overflowed Martyrs' Square in downtown Beirut on March 14, were called "the independence uprising" (intifadat al-istiqlal). Full Story >>

Après Nous, Nous: Covering the Colonial Retreat
Middle East Report Online
May 19, 2005
By Peter Lagerquist with Tom Hill

It was vintage Shimon Peres. On April 18 Israel's deputy prime minister emerged from a tete-à-tete with French President Jacques Chirac proclaiming a shining vision of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. "We could convert a settlement into a Club Med," he suggested. "We must not wait for the political solution, but create economic and social hope." The assembled press might have been even more bemused if Peres' proposal had not sounded so in tune with other recent statements about the fate of Gaza after Israel' s promised withdrawal in mid-August 2005. A week earlier, Peres, Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister Muhammad Dahlan and World Bank officials had emerged from a forum convened by the Washington-based Aspen Institute also touting plans for major investments in the impoverished territory. On both occasions, talk about what will be done with Israel's Gazan settlements after they are evacuated echoed deeper concerns over the order that will emerge after the "disengagement." Full Story>>

Darfur and the International Criminal Court
Middle East Report Online
April 29, 2005
By Eric Reeves

On March 31, 2005, the United Nations issued another response to the vast crisis in the Darfur region of far western Sudan, referring various conspicuous violations of international law to the International Criminal Court. Though there have been five previous UN Security Council resolutions bearing on Darfur, the response contained within Resolution 1593 has gained far and away the most public notice because it seemed, at first glance, to have teeth. Major human rights organizations welcomed the possibility that perpetrators of the mass killings and displacement plaguing the Sudanese region since February 2003 could face trial and eventual punishment. Germany and other Western governments were gratified that the United States, long hostile to the Court, had stopped its obstruction of such an international justice effort. Given the extremely limited relevance of Resolution 1593 to the task of ending the destruction and human suffering in Darfur, however, the initial sighs of relief at the resolution's passage are grimly ironic. Full Story>>

At midnight on April 13, ringing church bells and the call to prayer echoed across Beirut. These haunting sounds intermingled over Martyrs’ Square, the unfinished main plaza of old Beirut where thousands of Lebanese have been mixing, day and night, since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri in mid-February. The blending of the aural symbols of Christianity and Islam was but one component of a carefully orchestrated series of events designed by the family and supporters of the late prime minister, the architect of downtown Beirut’s reconstruction, to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the beginning of Lebanon’s long and devastating civil war. Full Story>>

Morocco’s Justice and Reconciliation Commission
Middle East Report Online
April 4, 2005
By Susan Slyomovics

From independence in 1956 through the 1990s, the Moroccan state sent thousands of dissidents and political opponents to prison. During these decades, known to Moroccans as the “black years,” the act of expressing an “unauthorized opinion” could earn years of arbitrary detention. Political opponents of King Hassan II’s regime, many of them leftists or Islamists, were often “disappeared” in the manner of dictatorships in Chile and Argentina and tortured or killed while in state custody. In 1990, Hassan II established an Advisory Council on Human Rights to begin the rehabilitation of his regime’s reputation for repression. These official efforts intensified after the king’s death in 1999. Anxious to burnish Morocco’s new image as a developing democracy, and pushed at every stage by vocal and organized survivors of the prisons, as well as Morocco’s vibrant community of human rights activists, King Mohammed VI has endeavored to fulfill his father’s 1994 promise to “turn the page definitively” on the rampant abuses of the past. Full Story>>

Lebanon Catches Its Breath
Middle East Report Online
March 23, 2005
By Nicholas Blanford

The February 14 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri has precipitated a rapid and dramatic transformation of Lebanon's political landscape. In the six weeks following the assassination, the Lebanese government collapsed and Syria began the process of withdrawing its soldiers and intelligence officers from Lebanon, almost 30 years after they first arrived during Lebanon‚s 1975-1990 civil war. The government's collapse and the Syrian plans for departure were each compelled by an unprecedented wave of anti-Syrian street protests, as well as unrelenting international pressure. Full Story>>

Kurdish Green Line, Turkish Red Line
Middle East Report Online
March 11, 2005
By Quil Lawrence

Election day on January 30 was a day of celebration for the Kurds in Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city just below the Zagros Mountains in northern Iraq. Despite the threat of car bombs, Kurds stood in long lines for hours awaiting their chance to cast a vote. A teenager was killed by a solitary mortar attack on a soccer stadium full of Kurds displaced by the "Arabization" campaigns of the former Iraqi regime -- but his death did not deter even the boy's family from voting. They buried him and went to the polls. The two main Kurdish parties swept the local elections and won a kingmaking role in national politics, with 75 seats in the transitional national assembly. Full Story>>

Popular Social Movements and the Future of Egyptian Politics
Middle East Report Online
March 10, 2005
By Joel Beinin

President Husni Mubarak’s unexpected announcement that Article 76 of the Egyptian constitution will be amended to permit a direct and competitive vote in the September presidential election has captured the attention of the international and local media and political classes. The substance of the proposed constitutional amendment, announced on February 26, remains undetermined. While the president will not run unopposed in a single-party referendum, as he has done on four previous occasions, a multi-party contest might not end his 24-year rule. Past multi-party elections for the parliament have been plagued by voter intimidation, fraud and other dirty tricks intended to pad the ruling National Democratic Party’s majority. Full Story>>

Women's Rights and the Meaning of Citizenship in Kuwait
Middle East Report Online
February 10, 2005
By Mary Ann Tétreault

Prosperous and possessed of a spirited parliament, Kuwait has prided itself on being a standard setter among the Arab monarchies on the Persian Gulf. With respect to women's rights, however, today Kuwait ranks just above Saudi Arabia. Kuwaiti women are allowed to drive and they occupy positions in public life ranging from secretary to second-level government ministers, but like their sisters in Saudi Arabia, they can neither vote nor run for political office. Full Story>>

Weary, Guarded Hope in Gaza
Middle East Report Online
February 8, 2005
By Omar Karmi

There is a bullet hole in the door of the Sufi family's diwan. The windows are newly replaced. Inside the clan's gathering place, a large rectangular room lined with cushions and small tables, there is further evidence of life on the front line in the Gaza Strip. At least eight more bullet holes add texture to the otherwise bare white walls. Family elder Humeid Ayed al-Sufi, 52, his wife and ten children live in the apartment upstairs. The apartment has four bedrooms, but for the past year the family has huddled together in the only one that does not overlook the street. "It's just not safe at night. There's too much shooting," said Sufi, a taxi driver. Full Story>>

Egypt Looks Ahead to Portentous Year
Middle East Report Online
February 2, 2005
By Mona El-Ghobashy

Not so long ago in Egypt, elections for the parliament, bar association and press syndicate, as well as presidential referenda, were dismissed as mere beautifying accessories for an incorrigibly authoritarian regime. In 2005, several developments promise to accentuate the significance of these once nugatory rituals. Full Story>>

Another "Historic Day" Looms in Iraq
Middle East Report Online
January 28, 2005
By Chris Toensing

Yet another “historic day” will dawn in war-weary Iraq on January 30. As interim prime minister Iyad Allawi told Iraqi television viewers, “For almost the first time since the creation of Iraq, Iraqis will participate in choosing their representatives in complete freedom.” Not to be outdone, President George W. Bush used the first news conference of his second term to herald the “grand moment in Iraqi history” that the world will witness when Iraqis go to the polls. Full Story>>

A Very Slippery "Landslide" for Mahmoud Abbas
Middle East Report Online
January 20, 2005
By Peter Lagerquist

A chorus of international approval greeted Mahmoud Abbas' victory in the Palestinian Authority presidential election. January 9 was "a historic day for the Palestinian people and for the people of the Middle East," declared President George W. Bush, as the final count gave the Fatah party candidate some 62 percent of the vote -- three times the tally of his nearest challenger, human rights campaigner Mustafa Barghouthi. Prior to the election, the Bush administration and the government of Ariel Sharon had scarcely disguised their wishes that Abbas would be chosen as successor to the late Yasser Arafat. Since Arafat's mysterious death, pundits and diplomats alike have heaped plaudits on his erstwhile lieutenant, most importantly describing him as a "moderate" for his long-standing calls to end armed Palestinian resistance to Israel's occupation. Indeed, the promise of some movement -- any movement -- in the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process produced a rare international consensus on the Middle East. The campaigning Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was publicly endorsed by US-friendly Arab governments like Egypt and tacitly smiled upon by the chancelleries of the European Union. Full Story>>

Iran’s Nuclear Posture and the Scars of War
Middle East Report Online
January 18, 2005
By Joost R. Hiltermann

In waging war on Iraq, one of the points the Bush administration sought to prove was that President Bill Clinton’s policy of dual containment had failed -- that despite a decade of threats, sanctions, military action and UN-led disarmament, Iraq had continued to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Iraq, of course, was not the only target of dual containment. So was neighboring Iran, which likewise was suspected of having secret programs for building weapons of mass destruction and was seen as a destabilizing force hostile to US interests. Full Story>>

The IMF and the Future of Iraq
Middle East Report Online
December 7, 2004
By Zaid Al-Ali

On November 21, 2004, the 19 industrialized nations that make up the so-called Paris Club issued a decision that, in effect, traces the outline of Iraq's economic future. The decision concerns a portion of Iraq's $120 billion sovereign debt -- a staggering amount that all concerned parties recognize is unsustainable. In their proposal to write off some of the debt, the Paris Club members took advantage of the opportunity to impose conditions that could bind the successor government in Baghdad to policies of free-market fundamentalism. Full Story>>

The Politics of Slaughter in Sudan
Middle East Report Online
October 18, 2004
By Dan Connell

One day in the summer of 2004, more than 400 armed members of the janjaweed militia attacked the western Sudanese village of Donki Dereisa. They killed 150 civilians, including six young children, aged 3 to 14, who were captured during the assault and burned alive later that day, according to the Washington-based human rights group Refugees International. A man who tried to save the children was beheaded and dismembered. Eyewitnesses say that a military aircraft bombed the village during the attack and that Sudanese Army foot soldiers joined in the fighting on the ground. Afterward, government sources denied any involvement and downplayed the incident. That response pattern has typified the ongoing crisis in the Sudanese province of Darfur from the start. Full Story>>

Gaza's Wars of Perception
Middle East Report Online
October 14, 2004
By Mouin Rabbani

Operation Days of Penitence, launched on September 29, 2004, is the Israeli military's most extensive incursion into the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the current Palestinian uprising and its largest offensive within the Occupied Territories since the 2002 reconquest of West Bank cities during Operation Defensive Shield. Two weeks and more than 100 deaths later, it is increasingly clear that Israel's determination to prevent Palestinian militants from using the northern Gaza Strip as a launching pad for rocket attacks on Israeli border towns provides a partial explanation at best for the unfolding drama. The stakes are much higher, and they extend well beyond the conflict zone. Full Story>>

Afghanistan's Presidential Elections: Spreading Democracy or a Sham?
Middle East Report Online
October 8, 2004
By M. Nazif Shahrani

Less than a month before George W. Bush's second bid for the White House, his protégé and partner in post-Taliban Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, faces an election that both men hope will not only establish the legitimacy of Karzai's presidency but also prove the Bush administration's claim that the war-ravaged nation's transition to democracy has been a success. Over 10.5 million Afghans have reportedly registered to choose from among a slate of 16 candidates on October 9, 2004, less than three years after the removal of the infamous Taliban regime and their al-Qaeda allies from power in Kabul. "It's a phenomenal statistic," said Bush of the number of Afghan registrants during his first debate with Democratic nominee John Kerry, "that if given a chance to be free, they will show up at the polls." Full Story>>

Fahrenheit 9/11 Plays Cairo
Middle East Report Online
September 16, 2004
By Garay Menicucci

The cinema was crowded but not full when, at the end of August, Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 opened in a theater in Cairo’s leafy southern suburb of Maadi. An audience made up of expatriate employees of UN agencies and well-heeled Egyptians snickered at each of Moore’s jabs at the ineptitude of George W. Bush and his coterie. Though Egyptian audiences, unlike their American counterparts, are accustomed to graphic pictures of the effects of shrapnel and phosphorus on the human body, women openly sobbed during the clips taken from al-Jazeera television that show Iraqi children who had been shot and burned in the course of the US invasion and occupation. When Neil Young’s anthem “Rockin’ in the Free World” boomed from the theater sound system as the credits rolled, the audience rose to its feet and applauded. Full Story>>

Hizballah and Syria's "Lebanese Card"
Middle East Report Online
September 14, 2004
By Nicholas Blanford

The clock is ticking on a surprising UN Security Council resolution, passed on September 2, calling on Syria to cease its various forms of interference in Lebanon. France and the United States co-sponsored the call on "all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon," which charged the UN secretary-general to report on progress toward implementation within 30 days of the resolution's passage. Full Story>>

Kuwait's Parliament Considers Women's Political Rights, Again
Middle East Report Online
September 2, 2004
By Mary Ann Tétreault

When Kuwait's parliament reconvenes in late October, it will be facing a full agenda. Member initiatives include an ambitious redistricting bill and threats to interpellate at least two cabinet ministers. The government's wish list is equally contentious; it includes a wide-ranging privatization program and a proposal to confer full political rights on Kuwaiti women. Despite promises of enfranchisement in return for their highly lauded performance resisting the Iraqi occupation of 1990-1991, Kuwaiti women are still denied the rights to vote and run for national office. Full Story>>

World Court's Ruling on Wall Speaks with Utmost Clarity
Middle East Report Online
July 27, 2004
By Nidal Sliman

The International Court of Justice has rendered its advisory opinion on "the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem." Though the near-term fate of the wall is unclear, subject as it is to international power politics, the Court's ruling, issued on July 9, speaks with the utmost clarity. Full Story>>

Darfur's Manmade Disaster
Middle East Report Online
July 22, 2004
By Peter Verney

At last, the catastrophe in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, a quarter of whose six million people are now displaced by war and whose lives are at serious risk, has gained some international attention. In July, Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited Darfuri refugee camps to pressure the regime in Khartoum into stopping what has become a frenzy of destruction. Their pressure has so far failed. Moreover, the promises of humanitarian aid for internally displaced and refuge-seeking Darfuris come desperately late. As the Sudanese government places obstacles in the way of the international relief organizations, the death toll from deliberate, war-induced famine is headed for the hundreds of thousands. Full Story>>

Scandals of Oil for Food
Middle East Report Online
July 19, 2004
By Joy Gordon

Rep. Ralph Hall opened a set of Congressional hearings on July 8 with a dramatic flourish, denouncing "the deaths of thousands of Iraqis through malnutrition and lack of appropriate medical supplies." "We have a name for that in the United States," the Texas Republican told a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "It's called murder." Full Story>>

The Militarist and Messianic Ideologies
Middle East Report Online
July 8, 2004
By Neve Gordon