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.

To view Middle East Report Online articles, choose from the menu below. Articles are listed in the order in which they were published, from the earliest to the most recent.

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

Two weeks after 60,000 Likud Party members voted against a pullout from the Gaza Strip, about 150,000 Israelis filled Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, calling on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government to proceed with the withdrawal plan. Those opposing the pullout from Gaza support the vision of a Greater Israel, while those favoring the pullout support the state of Israel. The first group believes that without Gaza, Israel will be destroyed; the second believes that with it, Israel will be destroyed. Full Story>>

Stubborn Stalemate in Western Sahara
Middle East Report Online
June 26, 2004
By Jacob A. Mundy

On June 11, 2004, the United Nations announced that former Secretary of State James Baker had resigned his position as the secretary-general's personal envoy to the Western Sahara. Despite his personal prestige and the explicit backing of the US government, Baker failed to bring the Moroccan government around to his vision for resolving its almost 30-year old dispute with the Algerian-supported POLISARIO Front, a Western Saharan independence movement active since 1973. If Morocco does not agree to Baker's most recent settlement proposal soon, the Security Council has threatened to turn the impasse over to the General Assembly come October, thereby admitting that its 16-year, $600 million effort to resolve the conflict has come to naught. Full Story

No Jordan Option
Middle East Report Online
June 21, 2004
By Marc Lynch

Could the plan of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to "disengage" from the Gaza Strip "include a Jordanian presence" in the West Bank? So Sharon told his cabinet on June 1, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. Since then, rumors about such a role for Jordan, farfetched as they seem, have spread like wildfire through Israeli and Arab political circles. Seeking to assuage fears that Hamas would dominate the Palestinian territories from which Israeli forces withdraw, Israel and the United States have approached Egypt about providing security assistance in Gaza. On June 17, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak met with CIA Director George Tenet, presumably to discuss the details. Reports that a Jordanian security team toured the West Bank in mid-June, without notifying Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, have fueled speculation that Jordan may be amenable to an arrangement similar to Egypt's. The prospect of Jordan's return to territory it occupied from 1948 to 1967 has been taken seriously enough that, on June 14, Jordanian spokeswoman Asma Khader found it necessary to repeat her government's long-standing opposition to the idea. Two days later, King Abdallah II is said to have told George W. Bush of his worry that the Israeli premier might be attempting to revive the "Jordan option." Full Story

Turkey's Tentative Opening to Kurdishness
Middle East Report Online
June 14, 2004
By Nicole F. Watts

In December 2003, Osman Baydemir was finishing his first semester of English-language instruction in San Francisco when he received a phone call suggesting it might be an opportune time for him to return to Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeastern region. Somewhat reluctant to abandon his English study, Baydemir hesitated before going back to his home town. Three months later, the long-time human rights activist was sworn into office as the new mayor of Diyarbakir, becoming the second consecutive candidate from Turkey's pro-Kurdish political party, currently known as the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP), to win the post. Indeed, the soft-spoken, 33 year-old Baydemir, an ethnic Kurd and a lawyer by training, was considered such a sure winner that Radikal, one of the country's national dailies, opined that there was "no need to have an election" in Diyarbakir. Full Story

In Rafah, History Hangs Heavy in the Air
Middle East Report Online
June 4, 2004
By Omar Karmi

Early in the morning on May 21, on a road into the neighborhood of Tal al-Sultan in the Gazan town of Rafah, 71 year-old Muhammad Salama swung his walking stick at a blade of grass. Some 100 yards ahead of him an Israeli army bulldozer rumbled along, apparently clearing the road of obstacles. Twice the bulldozer moved in the direction of a Red Crescent ambulance parked on the roadside, and twice the ambulance pulled back, until it was almost parallel to the spot where Salama sat in front of a row of greenhouses. Full Story

An Ironic Result in Cyprus
Middle East Report Online
May 12, 2004
By Rebecca Bryant

The April 24, 2004 referendum on a plan to reunite Cyprus marks a turning point in the island's history. While 65 percent of Turkish Cypriots voted in favor of the plan, Greek Cypriots rejected it by a resounding majority of 76 percent. European observers were shocked by the anti-democratic conduct of the campaign in the Greek Cypriot south. The negotiator in charge of the Republic of Cyprus' European Union accession went so far as to confess that he "felt duped." Greek Cypriots rallied around a leader known for his extreme nationalism and unwillingness to compromise. Turkish Cypriots, in contrast, cast aside their equally rejectionist leader and campaigned vocally in support of the plan. But while many observers were taken aback by this turn of events, it is in fact a sadly logical outcome of the ideologies and institutions that have shaped much of the island's recent history. Full Story

False Resolution Looms in EU-Israeli Settlement Trade Dispute
Middle East Report Online
May 3, 2004
By Peter Lagerquist

George W. Bush's ever more one-sided interventions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, most recently his uncritical backing for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's desired "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip, elicit thinly veiled declarations of dissent from the chanceries of the European Union. "No number of unilateral initiatives on their own can bring about a permanent peace in the Middle East. Everybody knows that," said Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen, speaking for the EU foreign ministers at a news conference on April 16. "In particular, the question of the borders cannot be prejudged and there must be a fair, just and realistic solution to the question of refugees."
Full Story

Mystery Surrounds Tashkent Explosions
Middle East Report Online
April 15, 2004
By Alisher Ilkhamov

Four days of mysterious explosions in Uzbekistan, from March 28 to April 1, have once again belied the country's desired image as an island of stability among the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia. For some years, in fact, Uzbekistan has been one of the least stable and secure countries of the region. Coming after the involvement of Uzbek Islamists in the civil war in neighboring Tajikistan in 1993, the beheading of police officers, allegedly by Islamists, in Namangan province in 1998, large-scale government repression of Islamic grassroots institutions, and then a series of bomb blasts in 1999, followed by the mass arrest and torture of pious Muslims, the recent explosions appear to be the latest link in a chain of escalating political violence. Two extreme poles -- a brutally authoritarian regime and militant Islamist groups -- conspire to maintain the political vacuum between them.
Full Story

Sharon's Sights on Strategic Objective
Middle East Report Online
April 14, 2004
By Peretz Kidron

Many critics of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon depict him as an adroit tactician who has a ready answer for every immediate problem, but entirely lacks a long-term strategy. Ari Shavit, a columnist for the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, recently characterized the present Sharon government as having "no principles, inspiration or vision...no comprehensive, coherent concept." Of course, Shavit's comment referred above all to the prime minister himself.
Full Story

Protests Hint at New Chapter in Egyptian Politics
Middle East Report Online
April 9, 2004
By Tamir Moustafa

The week marking the first anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq saw a flurry of demonstrations across Egypt. A protest in central Cairo marking the beginning of the war was followed by a series of demonstrations at al-Azhar and other major universities, as well as the lawyers' and journalists' syndicates, upon the Israeli assassination of Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin just three days later. While none of the protests matched the magnitude of those that rocked the Egyptian capital in March 2003, the constant recurrence of public demonstrations over the past year reveals much about how regional crises continue to exacerbate domestic economic and political tensions.
Full Story

An Algerian Presidential Free-for-All
Middle East Report Online
April 6, 2004
By Youcef Bouandel

The Algerian presidential elections coming up on April 8 have captured the imagination of the electorate like never before -- because, at least in theory, one cannot predict the winner. In previous elections, the results were known long before polling day, and Algerian voters, in effect, only rubber-stamped decisions made behind the scenes by the powerful army. But in 2004, le pouvoir -- as Algerians refer to the military establishment -- has made it clear that it neither supports nor opposes any of the six major candidates. Unlike two previous presidential contests with multiple candidates, in 1995 and 1999, this year's election looks like a free-for-all. If no candidate wins an outright majority in the April 8 balloting, there will be a runoff between the two top vote-getters on April 22. Such a scenario appears likely. Should President Abdelaziz Bouteflika fail to secure a second term in office, the election will have produced a chief executive who does not have to invoke participation in the 1954-1962 war of independence to claim legitimacy with the Algerian public. None of his opponents is from that aging generation.
Full Story

A New Kind of Killing
Middle East Report Online
March 30, 2004
By Charmaine Seitz

The killing of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, was a new kind of killing, even in the midst of the protracted conflict that began in the fall of 2000 and has claimed some 2,800 Palestinian and some 900 Israeli lives. Viewed by most Israelis as a kind of godfather of terror, in death Yassin has become the personification of all aspects of Palestinian loss -- even for those Palestinians who hold no brief for Hamas and its long-term program of Islamizing Palestinian society. The final crippling of his aging and withered limbs evoked the Palestinian innocents who have died; the last silencing of his declarations of resistance dealt a blow to Palestinian national pride. Even many secular Palestinians appreciated Sheikh Yassin for his continual invocation of Palestinian rights to all of historic Palestine, and saw him as an ideological backbone of today's insurgency against the Israeli occupation. Perhaps these sources of popular appeal, more than the sheikh's likely role in authorizing suicide bombings, explain why Israel signed his death warrant.
Full Story

Downsizing Saddam's Odious Debt
Middle East Report Online
March 2, 2004
By Justin Alexander

In a surprise move on December 5, 2003, George W. Bush named James Baker as a special envoy charged with seeking "the restructuring and reduction" of $130 billion in foreign debt piled up by the regime of Saddam Hussein. Until Baker's appointment, the United States and the international community had largely sidestepped this minefield, pleading uncertainty about the size of the debt, the need to focus on more pressing matters or the fact that only a sovereign Iraqi government can hammer out debt relief agreements in the end. Since Baker picked up the debt portfolio, however, discussions are happening at a frenetic pace, with the former secretary of state jetting off to Europe, Asia and the Middle East to jump-start the conversations.
Full Story

Headscarves and the French Tricolor
Middle East Report Online
January 30, 2004
By Paul Silverstein

France is in the process of passing a law that would ban "signs and dress that ostensibly denote the religious belonging of students" in public elementary and high schools beginning in the 2004-2005 school year. Lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the bill on February 3. According to the Ministry of Education, the law would cover all "signs and dress whose wearing leads to the immediate recognition of the [wearer's] religious belonging, which is to say the Islamic veil, whatever name one calls it, the [Jewish] kippa, or a cross of massively excessive dimensions." Despite such rhetoric of universality, the target of the interdiction clearly seems to be the hijab -- the head covering worn by Muslim women and girls -- whose place in French public schools has been a source of controversy since 1989. The law appears to call into question the legitimacy of Islam in the French public sphere and has been interpreted by many in the Islamic world as a direct attack on Islam. Not surprisingly, the law has elicited huge debate and contention in the halls of government, the pages of newspapers and in city streets from Paris and Washington to Gaza, Baghdad and Jakarta.
Full Story

Round 12 for Iran's Reformists
Middle East Report Online
January 29, 2004
By Kaveh Ehsani

When, in mid-January 2004, the Council of Guardians rejected the applications of 3,600 out of nearly 8,200 people seeking candidacy in Iran's upcoming parliamentary elections, there was scant surprise in the country. President Mohammad Khatami, members of his government and sitting parliamentary deputies professed to be "shocked" by the number of disqualifications for the February 20 contests, but in fact the Council members and their conservative allies had long been hinting at their aim to purge the legislature, the press and, eventually, the government, of political rivals belonging to the diverse currents lumped together under the rubric of "the reformists."
Full Story

Law of Unintended Consequences: US Sanctions and Iran’s Hardliners
Middle East Report Online
January 28, 2004
By Mehrdad Valibeigi

In the aftermath of the earthquake which devastated the Iranian city of Bam on December 26, 2003, and killed perhaps 41,000 people, many Americans were appalled to learn that they were technically barred from sending donations to Iranian-run relief efforts by unilateral US trade sanctions in place since 1996. Realizing the problem, the United States quickly relaxed some of the restrictions on US-Iranian transactions for a period of 90 days. To cope with the earthquake damage, Iran also accepted direct US aid for the first time in a quarter-century of hostility between the two countries. Coming on the heels of Iran's signature of the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and just before Iran's move to resume full diplomatic ties with Egypt, a long-time US ally, the temporary relaxation of sanctions led some to hope for an emerging thaw in relations between Washington and Tehran.
Full Story

The Guantánamo "Black Hole": The Law of War and the Sovereign Exception
Middle East Report Online
January 11, 2004
By Scott Michaelsen and Scott Cutler Shershow

Since January 2002, over 700 persons from 42 different countries have been detained without charge or right to counsel by the United States at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. While many detainees were captured by the US on battlefields in Afghanistan in late 2001, an unknown number of others were delivered there by other means, for example, by being sold to the US by Afghan warlords. According to Amnesty International, at least six Guantánamo prisoners were arrested in Bosnia-Herzegovina in January 2002. One of the cases to be taken up by the Supreme Court involves an Australian man, Mamdouh Habib, who claims to have traveled to Pakistan in October 2001 to look for employment, and found himself arrested by Pakistani authorities. He was transferred first to Egypt, then into US military hands in Afghanistan, and finally flown to Guantánamo in May 2002. The "unlawful combatants" being held at Guantánamo thus include persons arrested far from any active battlefield.
Full Story

The Specter of Sectarian and Ethnic Unrest in Iraq
Middle East Report Online
January 7, 2004
By Nicholas Blanford

The ominous specter of sectarian and ethnic unrest in Iraq is growing more visible as the country struggles to forge a new identity and system of rule in the wake of Saddam Hussein's downfall. Though such unrest did not explode immediately after the end of the former regime, as some commentators had predicted, in the past few months, Sunni and Shiite Arabs have clashed in Baghdad. Tensions are also on the rise between Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Turkomans in the ethnically mixed and oil-rich regions around the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. The intercommunal strife is aggravated by the aggressive counter-insurgency tactics employed by the US military in the "Sunni triangle" where most attacks upon occupation soldiers have occurred, occupation policies which seem to favor the Shiites and the Kurds, and the failure of the occupying powers to restore stability.
Full Story

Sharon's Unilateral Steps
Middle East Report Online
December 31, 2003
By Joel Beinin

As the Israeli army reimposed a nearly complete lockdown on the West Bank in the aftermath of the Christmas Day 2003 suicide bombing outside of Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has reportedly deputized a top general to draw up the "separation plan" he threatened seven days earlier at the annual Herzliya conference on security issues. As widely predicted in the pre-performance publicity, at Herzliya Sharon announced that Israel would take unilateral measures to "disengage" itself from the Palestinians if Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei does not crack down on the armed Palestinian factions and engage in negotiations on Israeli terms.
Full Story

Iraqi Food Security in Hands of Occupying Powers
Middle East Report Online
December 2, 2003
By Nathaniel Hurd

After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the UN Security Council's imposition of comprehensive economic sanctions upon Iraq, the former Iraqi government assembled a food ration database, which was later expanded under the UN's so-called Oil for Food program. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Iraqi Shiite political leaders have recently proposed that the rationing rosters double as makeshift voter rolls for early national elections. Whether or not this proposal is adopted, at least until June 2004 the rosters will serve as guides for food rationing under the US-British occupation government in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). On November 21, 2003, as per the stipulation of Security Council Resolution 1483 passed in May, the UN "terminated" the Oil for Food program and turned over the UN's records and warehouse assets to the CPA. Though Resolution 1483 ended 13 years of economic sanctions on Iraq, the food dependency and eroded purchasing power that Iraqis experienced during the economic sanctions era stubbornly persist.
Full Story

The Israeli Text and Context of the Geneva Accord
Middle East Report Online
November 24, 2003
By Shiko Behar and Michael Warschawski

The Geneva Accord, the latest unofficial framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace made public in mid-October 2003, has not become the basis for official negotiations. But the initiative has already been successful in one respect: it has uncorked as many vocal hopes as it has protests among Israelis and Palestinians, even though the Israeli government has rejected it and the Palestinian Authority (PA) has not formally endorsed it. Essentially a repackaging of President Bill Clinton's peace plan of late 2000, the Geneva Accord stipulates several basic tenets upon which to finalize a permanent peace agreement.
Full Story

Iran's Upcoming Parliamentary Elections Up for Grabs
Middle East Report Online
November 23, 2003
By Siamak Namazi

So confident are Iranian conservatives three months before the country's February 20, 2004 parliamentary elections that, in the words of one right-wing strategist, they have stopped talking about how to beat reformist candidates and begun to plan "how to run the nation." Conservatives believe that victory next February will precede an even larger triumph in the presidential election of 2005. Their optimism, which finds glum echoes in Western analysts' predictions of a conservative takeover, is misplaced. It is too soon to call the outcome of the February vote, and too soon to conclude, as Washington hawks may have done, that Iranians' hopes for peaceable reforms are doomed.
Full Story

Violence and the Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia
Middle East Report Online
November 13, 2003
By Toby Jones

After nine months of increasing internal and external pressure, the Saudi royal family has recently appeared ready to make major changes in the way government is done in the Arabian Peninsula. On October 13, 2003, the Consultative Council -- a nominally autonomous body that in reality reflects the royal will -- announced limited municipal elections to be held within the next 12 months, and hinted at additional electoral initiatives in the near future. In Riyadh the following day, the government opened a conference on human rights sponsored by the Saudi Red Crescent Society. Whatever optimism these two events may have generated was crushed at the gates of the conference, where Saudi riot police used live ammunition to break up a march of peaceful demonstrators protesting the slow pace of reform. The authorities detained hundreds, administered beatings and affirmed that, in spite of suggestions to the contrary, it is business as usual in the desert kingdom. Meanwhile, presumed Islamist extremists continue to wreak havoc in the country, killing at least 17 in a shooting and bombing attack in the Saudi Arabian capital on November 8.
Full Story

Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize Highlights Tension in Iran
Middle East Report Online
October 27, 2003
By Ziba Mir-Hosseini

The decision to award the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi, the intrepid Iranian human rights lawyer and former judge, took everyone by surprise -- not least Ebadi herself. On the morning of October 10, when the award was announced, the Nobel winner was about to leave Paris, where she had been attending a conference on Iranian cinema, and the news forced her to postpone her departure for Tehran. In Iran, meanwhile, news of the award seems to have stumped conservative forces in the government, who initially tried to ignore it. State-run radio stations controlled by the conservatives waited hours to announce the prize, before finally according it the briefest of mentions at the end of an afternoon news bulletin. The newspapers and websites of Iran's reformist movement, however, instantly hailed the announcement in Oslo as the international community's recognition of the peaceful struggle of Iranians for democracy and human rights.
Full Story

Strings and the Global Gulliver
Middle East Report Online
October 20, 2003
By Ian Williams

Inaugurating the 2003 session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded the alarm about the UN's future in the face of US unilateralism. The world has "come to a fork in the road...a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the United Nations was founded," Annan declared. If the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes "were to be adopted, it could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification." Annan called for reform of the organization, especially of the Security Council, to set the global order back on the right track.
Full Story

Standing on a platform in the central traffic circle of the West Bank city of Ramallah, a number of speakers urged a crowd of roughly 300 to continue the Palestinian intifada that completed its third year on September 28, 2003. The men pledged their support to President Yasser Arafat, confined since December 2001 to two rooms of the Palestinian Authority compound a few blocks away. They demanded the release of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) member imprisoned by Israel since April 2002 for his activities as a popular leader of the uprising. As the orators shouted these exhortations, a small contingent of boy and girls scouts from the nearby al-Am'ari refugee camp snaked past the platform, the drums of their marching band muffling the speakers' words. Ten adolescent boys raced yelling down the street, briefly sharpening the vague anticipation that Israeli army jeeps would enter town, but word quickly spread that it was only a scuffle between teenagers. Apparently uninterested in either the sloganeering or the earnest drumming of the scouts, the onlookers resumed milling about, raising their voices so that their conversations could be heard over the loudspeakers. Finally, prompted by some inaudible command, the crowd began to move. At the beginning of the uprising, demonstrators had frequently headed out near Israeli checkpoints on the edge of town, but on this day, the marchers meandered around the block, returning to the spot they had vacated a few minutes earlier.
Full Story

Middle East Report Online
September 30, 2003
By Ian Urbina

On April 16, 2003, George W. Bush visited the shop floor at the Boeing plant in St. Louis, Missouri. His 90-minute appearance drew several hundred men and women who help make the military's $48 million F-18 Hornet fighters, 36 of which were deployed during the Iraq war. The purpose of Bush's visit was twofold: to offer thanks to the blue-collar workers equipping US soldiers for their foreign adventures and to provide reassurance in an atmosphere of climbing unemployment.
Full Story

As the long, hot Egyptian summer of 2003 wore on into autumn, gloom-and-doom scenarios filled opposition papers and daily conversations, warning of a terrible quiet before the storm. Elites and the masses are slowly being pushed together by palpable disaffection at rapidly deteriorating economic conditions, fueled by the government's January devaluation of the Egyptian pound, and the stagnation in the nation's political life, symbolized by raging speculation that Husni Mubarak is grooming his son Gamal to succeed him as president.
Full Story

In Jayyous, a village of 3,000 in the northern West Bank, Najah Shamasneh cradles her granddaughter in her lap and listens to her husband Yusuf tell of the loss of their agricultural land. The Shamasneh family's 25 dunams (about 6.25 acres), their sole source of income, now lies on the western side of the wall that Israel is erecting in the West Bank.
Full Story

The Jewish Israeli Left, US Empire and the End of the Two-State Solution: An Interview with Roni Ben-Efrat
Middle East Report Online
August 21, 2003

Roni Ben-Efrat is editor of Challenge magazine, a critical, left analysis of Israeli and Palestinian politics. She is a veteran activist for Palestinian rights inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories, and a founding member of the Organization for Democratic Action (ODA), a Marxist party with Jewish and Palestinian Israeli constituents. Since the outset of the second intifada and the election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Jewish Israeli society has moved ever further to the right. With its numbers radically diminished, the Jewish left finds itself as isolated and vilified as it has been at any time in its history. In the absence of a just or viable internationally sponsored peace process, the small numbers of radical Jewish activists who continue to work against the occupation increasingly find themselves in a conceptual and political quandary. What form should their activism take in the wake of the reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the collapse of the secular Palestinian left? What kind of political solution can be imagined? How might the Israeli left work with the broader global justice movement? How does any Israeli struggle for regional peace and justice address the radical changes within Israel's borders over the course of the last decade? In June 2003, Rebecca L. Stein, an assistant professor at Duke University and an editor of Middle East Report, spoke with Ben-Efrat about these pressing questions in Tel Aviv.
Interview

The Iraqi Governing Council's Sectarian Hue
Middle East Report Online
August 20, 2003
By Raad Alkadiri and Chris Toensing

Passage by the UN Security Council of a resolution "welcoming" the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) reignited debate over the legitimacy of the body as a representative of the Iraqi people. The resolution, approved on August 14, 2003 by a vote of 14-0, with Syria abstaining, pointedly refrained from "recognizing" the IGC as a proto-government, saying instead that the council is "an important step" in the direction of an internationally recognized and sovereign entity. Syria, reflecting the position of the Arab League as well as Arab public opinion, views the IGC as a creation of US viceroy L. Paul Bremer rather than an institution representing Iraqis. In Iraq itself, there is no standard view of the council. Some think it is a first step toward indigenous governance. Others reject the council as an entirely unproven body made up disproportionately of formerly exiled groups that pushed "regime change" on the West throughout the 1990s and have very few constituents in the country. There is also a pronounced sectarian hue to opinions of the IGC -- with Shiites more willing to give it a chance than Sunni Arabs.
Full Story

Declining to Intervene: Israel's Supreme Court and the Occupied Territories
Middle East Report Online
August 4, 2003
By Jonathan Cook

In its annual report issued in July 2003, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) painted a familiar yet surprising picture of Israeli army maltreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. A wide range of army practices -- from house-to-house searches in villages to "targeted killings" of Palestinian militants -- came in for harsh criticism, unusually harsh by the standards of the mainstream human rights group. "Most of the abuses occur not as a result of operational necessity on the part of the army," the report continues, "but from vindictiveness on the part of soldiers, who receive implicit approval to denigrate the dignity, life and liberty of innocent Palestinians." ACRI goes on to cite army data revealing that most incidents of possible abuse, including most shooting deaths, are never investigated. Between the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 and June 2003, the army says it opened 362 internal investigations and brought charges in 46 cases, the majority of them relating to theft of Palestinian property. Only eight soldiers were indicted in shooting incidents. To date, not one has been convicted.
Full Story

On July 31, 2003, the UN Security Council voted to "support strongly" former Secretary of State James Baker's proposals for resolving the Western Sahara dispute, the last Africa file remaining open at the UN Decolonization Committee. Baker has been the personal envoy of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan since 1997, charged with making progress in the 1991 Settlement Plan for the Western Sahara even after Annan had damned it as a "zero-sum game," while also pursuing alternatives.
Full Story

Without the aid of its foreign friends, the regime of President Maaouiya Ould Taya in Mauritania would have ended on June 8, 2003. The attempted coup on that day left 15 reported dead and 68 injured. Taya, well-regarded in the West but perceived as a brutal dictator by most Mauritanians, fled his palace with his wife and four children and obtained refuge -- reports conflict -- in either the Spanish, French or US embassy. Most accounts of these events, by ignoring the local politics that drove the coup attempt, have facilitated an interpretation that serves Taya and even makes the rebellion's defeat seem like a victory in the US-led "war on terrorism."
Full Story

Saeed Razavi-Faqih is a student at Tarbiat-Modarres University in Tehran and a member of the steering committee of the main national student organization, the Office for the Consolidation of Unity (OCU). Razavi-Faqih has played a key role in the leadership of  Iranian student protests in December 2002 and previously. Kaveh Ehsani, a contributing editor of Middle East Report, spoke with Razavi-Faqih by telephone on July 8, 2003, the day before the anniversary of major demonstrations in 1999. Many expected that rallies commemorating the 1999 protests, which were forcibly repressed by the regime, would rock Tehran again, especially after a dramatic series of student protests over tuition hikes in the month of June. Reports from Iran conflict as to the size of demonstrations on July 9, but analysts concur that they were much smaller than anticipated. A crackdown by the regime was likely one reason. Razavi-Faqih, for instance, was arrested on July 10. He remains in detention.
Full Story

In the 1950s, Jordan was to kick-start its own modernization through phosphates and potash. In the 1970s, it was to be "the new Beirut" -- the banking and financial center of the Arab world. In the 1980s, it was to be "the Hong Kong of the Levant." By the 1990s, international donors and US officials were referring to Jordan as a model for economic reform in the Middle East. After the extraordinary World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting at the Dead Sea resort of Shouneh from June 21-23, 2003, one can add another formulation to this list of wishful descriptions. Jordan is now to be the linchpin of the Bush administration's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) and the schwerpunkt for its envisioned Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA).
Full Story

The Road from Aqaba
Middle East Report Online
June 13, 2003
By Mouin Rabbani

On June 4, 2003, a high-profile summit at the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba brought together Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas, under the auspices of George W. Bush, for the formal launch of the latest Middle East peace initiative. Within days of summit's end, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had entered one of its bloodiest periods in recent years. In view of the nature of the peace initiative and the method of its implementation, the newest "cycle of violence" should hardly have come as a surprise. Like previous "cycles," the latest attacks and counter-attacks are not self-generating. Rather, they are rooted in maneuvers to maximize political advantage in an already compromised "peace process," and the lack of political will in Washington to extricate Israelis and Palestinians from the morass.
Full Story

How Yemen's Ruling Party Secured an Electoral Landslide
Middle East Report Online
May 16, 2003
By Sheila Carapico

Yemen's parliamentary elections, held on April 27, 2003, might have set a higher standard for contested elections in the Arab world. Instead, post-election shenanigans and gunfire that disrupted ballot counting in key districts cast doubt on the voting process and the ruling General People's Congress' landslide victory.
Full Story

A Road Map to the Oslo Cul-de-Sac
Middle East Report Online
May 15, 2003
By Adam Hanieh and Catherine Cook

The "road map" to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the subject of Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent diplomacy in the Middle East, may never reach the conclusion of its first phase. To date, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has yet to accept the initiative developed by the Quartet of the US, UN, European Union and Russia. Powell's May 11 visits with Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas failed to produce any significant developments -- their aftermath punctuated by Sharon's public dismissal of a settlement freeze and advisers close to Abbas reporting that Palestinians will take no action toward militant groups until Sharon formally accepts the road map. In Arab capitals, Powell reached an agreement with governments to assist the Palestinian leadership in cracking down on militant groups, but encountered distrust over Israel's failure to accept the text of the Quartet's document.
Full Story

Bedouin in the Negev Face New "Transfer"
Middle East Report Online
May 10, 2003
By Jonathan Cook

The White House's hoped-for restructuring of the Middle East has begun: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been ousted from power by US and British troops who now patrol the streets of Baghdad, while a few hundred miles away Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been shunted aside in favor of the more Washington-friendly Mahmoud Abbas. With these tectonic shifts dominating Middle East coverage, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been preparing a smaller-scale reordering of the region which he hopes will escape attention. He has devised a plan to rid the huge semi-desert area of the Negev, located in the south of Israel, of its Bedouin farmers.
Full Story

Dual-Use Material and the Weapons Search in Iraq
Middle East Report Online
May 2, 2003
By Alistair Millar

Before the US-British invasion of Iraq, most skeptics did not argue that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed no illicit weapons of mass destruction. Rather, the majority of the international community doubted that Iraqi non-conventional weapons capabilities posed a pressing threat to the peace. Repeatedly presented with false, dated, improperly cited and, in at least one case, plagiarized "intelligence" of the Iraqi threat, the UN Security Council refused to authorize war to enforce Resolution 1441, unanimously passed on November 8, 2002. On the streets, anti-war organizers' efforts culminated in the largest worldwide demonstrations in history. The message of anti-war dissent was clear: available evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction did not constitute a case for war.
Full Story

Appointing Abu Mazen: A Drama with Two Enactments
Middle East Report Online
May 1, 2003
By Charmaine Seitz

The Palestinian Legislative Council's approval of the cabinet of newly appointed Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on April 29, 2003 completed a political drama with two enactments: one received with cheers by the international community and the other watched warily by a sober audience at home.

Since George W. Bush called for Palestinian "reform" on June 24, 2002, all sides have understood that US re-engagement in the mired Israeli-Palestinian peace process would not occur until Palestinian President Yasser Arafat -- blamed for everything from corruption to terrorism to the collapse of negotiations -- was put on the shelf. The Bush administration predicated release of the "road map," a document describing steps toward Palestinian-Israeli peace drafted by Russia, the UN, the European Union and the US, upon a Palestinian prime minister's appointment and confirmation. The Quartet of powers had someone specific in mind. Early in the current Palestinian uprising, US agencies conducted a secret survey to sort out who might succeed Arafat. The survey found that the Palestinian public generally assumed Abbas, popularly known as Abu Mazen, would fill the shoes of the departed Palestinian leader. The agencies must have thought they had a windfall -- the public had bestowed legitimacy on a man who had been instrumental in past peace talks and was considered not half bad in Western estimations.
Full Story

Hizballah in the Firing Line
Middle East Report Online
April 28, 2003
By Nicholas Blanford

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and Washington's recent pressure on Syria have placed Lebanon's Hizballah organization firmly in the firing line in the next phase of George W. Bush's war on terrorism. But Hizballah is confident that its strategic alliance with Damascus will remain unbroken and it hopes that a backlash against US forces in Iraq in the coming weeks and months will reduce Washington's incentive to pursue Syria, Iran and Hizballah. Nonetheless, Hizballah potentially faces the greatest challenge of its 18-year history, with the US viewing the organization as a possible threat to its position in Iraq, a continuing menace to its ally Israel and an impediment to the successful implementation of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Full Story

Shiite Religious Parties Fill Vacuum in Southern Iraq
Middle East Report Online
April 22, 2003
By Juan Cole

Religious Shiite parties and militias in Iraq have recently stepped into the gap resulting from the collapse of the Baath Party, especially in the sacred shrine cities. This development must have come as a shock to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who in early March preferred Iraqis as US allies to Saudis, saying that they are secular and "overwhelmingly Shia, which is different from the Wahhabis of the peninsula, and they don't bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory." Wolfowitz and other pro-war policymakers were right that large numbers of Shiites, from the educated middle class to factory workers, are secular Iraqi nationalists. But they were dead wrong to discount the power of the religious forces, and seem ignorant of the centrality of the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. The neo-conservative fantasy of Iraq is now meeting the real Iraq, on the ground, in the shrine cities as well as in the smaller, mostly Shiite towns in the south of the country. Western audiences are discovering that Iraqi Shiites, while perhaps unified in their hatred for the dissipated Baathist regime, are not unified in their vision for a post-war Iraq.
Full Story

On Settlement Trade, Europe Doesn't Stand Tall
Middle East Report Online
April 8, 2003
By Peter Lagerquist

The transatlantic rift over the war in Iraq, and now post-war reconstruction, builds on growing European disenchantment with muscular US unilateralism. French and German opposition to the war -- echoing the sentiments of a majority of the European Union's member states -- highlighted seemingly growing differences between European and American attachments to international laws and conventions, underscored by recent trade disputes and wrangling over US attempts to exempt its nationals from the jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court. Differences between European capitals and Washington have been particularly acute as regards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Full Story

On the eve of the Second Gulf War, Rep. James Moran (D-VA) told a meeting of his constituents that "if it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this." Leaders of the organized Jewish community of greater Washington, along with several of Moran's fellow Congressional Democrats, seized upon these remarks and forced the representative to issue a rather pathetic retraction.
Full Story

For the second consecutive Friday, thousands of Egyptians gathered at Cairo's al-Azhar mosque on March 28, 2003 to voice their opposition to the US-led invasion and bombing of Iraq. But it was immediately apparent upon arrival at al-Azhar that the March 28 demonstration would be very different from the dramatic protests of the previous week. Riot police lined the streets leading to the 1,000-year old mosque, but the state deployed only token forces around the building itself, in contrast to the massive presence on the previous Friday. Instead of clubs and riot shields, anti-war cartoons drawn by some of Egypt's more famous caricaturists were arrayed in front of the mosque.
Full Story

Turkey's Dangerous Game
Middle East Report Online
March 27, 2003
By Yuksel Taskin and Koray Caliskan

During his diplomatic attempts to avert the war now underway in Iraq, Abdullah Gul, until recently prime minister of Turkey and now foreign minister, said that he was suffering from sleepless nights. Today Gul's body language signals his distress at the deadlock faced by his neo-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Full Story

As the United States and its small band of supporters begin a war against Iraq without Security Council authorization or even a majority show of support, questions about the future of the United Nations seem ever more urgent. For the last several months, Bush administration officials have issued dire warnings that failure to back war against Iraq would condemn the United Nations to irrelevance. Invoking comparisons to the League of Nations, they warned that anything other than full support for the US interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 -- threatening "serious consequences" for Iraqi non-compliance with disarmament demands -- would constitute a collapse of international resolve. According to the Bush team's interpretation, intransigent French resistance to the US-British-Spanish resolution authorizing war "forced" the United States to lead its "coalition of the willing" into the war that is now underway.
Full Story

On September 11, 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), then part of the Department of Justice, began implementing a broad program of "special registration" for certain "non-immigrant aliens" resident in the United States to facilitate the "monitoring" of people so registered "in the interest of national security." The body of rules governing special registration is now referred to as the National Security Entry and Exit Registry System (NSEERS). Registration is mandatory. Non-compliance and lack of truthful disclosure upon registration are grounds for deportation, and Attorney General John Ashcroft declared that those failing to register upon exiting the US can be barred from subsequent re-entry.
Full Story

Economic sanctions have suddenly resurfaced in the international debate about Iraq, after months of near silence on the issue. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in particular, has advanced the notion that one of the benefits of a war with Iraq would be the prospect of lifting the punitive economic sanctions that have been in place since the end of the Gulf war in 1991. Echoing the words of George W. Bush in his September address to the UN General Assembly that "liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause," Blair argued that ending Iraqis' suffering forms part of a "moral case" for war with Iraq. Pro-war commentators in the US have begun to attack the peace movement because the default anti-war position -- inspections, not war -- would keep sanctions in effect indefinitely.
Full Story

Citing "many intelligence reports" of possible attacks on civilians inside Israel, on February 10 Israel imposed "complete closure" upon Palestinian towns and villages in the Occupied Territories for the duration of the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, which ends on February 14. This measure, last taken on the day of the Israeli elections on January 28, barred Palestinians from traveling between towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and sharply curtailed the extended family visits that are an important part of the Eid.
Full Story

Hours before chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix briefed the UN Security Council on January 27, Turkey's deputy prime minister protested that the Bush administration would proceed toward military confrontation regardless of Blix's findings. "You'll declare war against an Iraq...that has taken out its white flag," said Ertugrul Yalcinbayir. "Why are you going to make a war like this against someone who has surrendered?" The same day, Prime Minister Abdullah Gul confirmed reports that Turkey is negotiating for over $4 billion in US aid in the event of war.
Full Story

On January 27, UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix and IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei presented to the UN Security Council their required updates on the progress of weapons inspections inside Iraq. The updates arrive as the differences between the overt strategies of Security Council members reach a new level of sharpness. Permanent members China, France and Russia staked out their position over the preceding week: the inspections are satisfactorily helping to provide the Council with assurances regarding Iraq's non-conventional weapons and related programs, a military assault may have grave consequences for regional stability and the prevention of international terrorism, and the inspectors themselves must declare their inability to work in Iraq before the Council can consider changes in its policy. By contrast, the United States, along with Great Britain, has acknowledged neither positive results from the inspections process nor the inspectors' prerogative to assess the continued validity of their own work. Both factions among the Security Council's Permanent Five will find much in the Blix update to substantiate their positions.
Full Story

January 20, 2003 -- the scheduled date of elections that existed on Palestinian Authority letterhead alone -- passed with the incumbent presidential candidate nearly imprisoned in his offices in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Several weeks earlier, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat candidly told reporters that he craves a few minutes every day in the sun. With the Israeli army surrounding his compound, he only ventures outside when shielded by a bevy of journalists.
Full Story

In the early stages of the campaign for the Israeli Knesset elections due to be held on January 28, there were no armed attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. During the same six weeks, Israeli forces shot dead some 75 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This is what passes for a period of "calm" in Israeli parlance.
Full Story»

News of the shooting deaths of three American health professionals working for a Southern Baptist mission hospital in Yemen follows closely on the heels of the very public murder of a highly regarded figure in the Yemeni opposition.
Full Story»

The largest pro-reform demonstrations since the summer of 1999 roiled Tehran on December 7-10, as student protesters press ahead with plans to hold campus referendums on the legitimacy of unelected bodies of conservative clergy that wield great power in the country's political system.
Full Story»

On November 19, 2002, Amram Mitzna, a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general who now serves as mayor of Haifa, soundly defeated another retired general, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the incumbent Labor party leader and former Defense Minister, in the Labor party primaries.
Full Story»

An expanded campaign to silence outspoken critics of the Jordanian government has followed the October 20 assassination of USAID official Lawrence Foley in Amman. On the pretext of unsubstantiated speculation that Foley's killing was orchestrated by a group of Islamist militants...
Full Story»

A number of media stories have raised the possibility that certain clues indicate a connection between arrested sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo and an African-American Islamic group calling itself the Nation of Gods and Earths but commonly known as the Five Percenters.
Full Story»

Direct links to Middle East Report Online articles:

Paradox and Possibility in Iran's Presidential Election (June 17, 2005)

Reform Retreats Amid Jordan's Political Storms (June 10, 2005)

Mahmoud Abbas’ Mission Improbable (June 1, 2005)

Elections Pose Lebanon's Old Questions Anew (May 31, 2005)

Après Nous, Nous: Covering the Colonial Retreat (May 19, 2005)

Darfur and the International Criminal Court (April 29, 2005)

Commemorating Lebanon’s War Amid Continued Crisis (April 14, 2005)

Morocco’s Justice and Reconciliation Commission (April 4, 2005)

Lebanon Catches Its Breath (March 23, 2005)

Kurdish Green Line, Turkish Red Line (March 11, 2005)

Popular Social Movements and the Future of Egyptian Politics (March 10, 2005)

Women's Rights and the Meaning of Citizenship in Kuwait (February 10, 2005)

Weary, Guarded Hope in Gaza (February 8, 2005)

(Egypt Looks Ahead to Portentous Year (February 2, 2005)

Another "Historic Day" Looms in Iraq (January 20, 2005)

A Very Slippery "Landslide" for Mahmoud Abbas (January 20, 2005)

Iran’s Nuclear Posture and the Scars of War (January 18, 2005)

The IMF and the Future of Iraq (December 7, 2004)

The Politics of Slaughter in Sudan (October 18, 2004)

Gaza's Wars of Perception (October 14, 2004)

Afghanistan's Presidential Elections: Spreading Democracy or a Sham? (October 8, 2004)

Fahrenheit 9/11 Plays Cairo (September 16, 2004)

Kuwait's Parliament Considers Women's Political Rights, Again (September 2, 2004)

Darfur's Manmade Disaster (July 22, 2004)

Scandals of Oil for Food (July 19, 2004)

The Militarist and Messianic Ideologies (July 8, 2004)

Stubborn Stalemate in Western Sahara (June 26, 2004)

No Jordan Option (June 21, 2004)

Turkey's Tentative Opening to Kurdishness (June 14, 2004)

In Rafah, History Hangs Heavy in the Air (June 4, 2004)

An Ironic Result in Cyprus (May 12, 2004)

False Resolution Looms in EU-Israeli Settlement Trade Dispute (May 4, 2004)

Mystery Surrounds Tashkent Explosions (April 15, 2004)

Sharon's Sights on Strategic Objective (April 14, 2004)

Protests Hint at New Chapter in Egyptian Politics (April 9, 2004)

An Algerian Presidential Free-for-All (April 6, 2004)

A New Kind of Killing (March 30, 2004)

Headscarves and the French Tricolor (January 30, 2004)

Round 12 for Iran's Reformists (January 29, 2004)

Law of Unintended Consequences: US Sanctions and Iran’s Hardliners (January 28, 2004)

The Guantánamo "Black Hole": The Law of War and the Sovereign Exception (January 11, 2004)

The Specter of Sectarian and Ethnic Unrest in Iraq (January 7, 2004)

Sharon's Unilateral Steps (December 31, 2003)

Iraqi Food Security in Hands of Occupying Powers (December 2, 2004)

The Israeli Text and Context of the Geneva Accord (November 24, 2003)

Iran's Forthcoming Parliamentary Elections Up for Grabs (November 23, 2003)

Violence and the Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia (November 13, 2003)

Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize Highlights Tension in Iran (October 27, 2003)

Strings and the Global Gulliver (October 20, 2003)

Uncertainty and Disquiet Mark Intifada's Third Anniversary (October 8, 2003)

Hard Time in the Heartland (September 30, 2003)

Egypt's Summer of Discontent (September 18, 2003)

Final Status in the Shape of a Wall (September 3, 2003)

The Iraqi Governing Council's Sectarian Hue (August 20, 2003)

Declining to Intervene: Israel's Supreme Court and the Occupied Territories (August 4, 2003)

Behind the Baker Plan for Western Sahara (August 1, 2003)

Images and Realities of Mauritania's Attempted Coup (July 22, 2003)

“Our Letter to Khatami Was a Farewell”: An Interview with Saeed Razavi-Faqih (July 15, 2003)

The Newest Jordan: Free Trade, Peace and an Ace in the Hole (June 26, 2003)

The Road from Aqaba (June 13, 2003)

How Yemen's Ruling Party Secured an Electoral Landslide (May 15, 2003)

A Road Map to the Oslo Cul-de-Sac (May 15, 2003)

Bedouin in the Negev Face New "Transfer" (May 10, 2003)

Dual-Use Material and the Weapons Search in Iraq (May 2, 2003)

Appointing Abu Mazen: A Drama with Two Enactments (May 1, 2003)

Shiite Religious Parties Fill Vacuum in Southern Iraq (April 22, 2003)

On Settlement Trade, Europe Doesn't Stand Tall (April 8, 2003)

Pro-Israel Hawks and the Second Gulf War (April 6, 2003)

Egypt Struggles to Control Anti-War Protests (March 31, 2003)

Turkey's Dangerous Game (March 27, 2003)

Irrelevance Lost (March 20, 2003)

Targeting Muslims, at Ashcroft's Discretion (March 14, 2003)

Sanctions and the "Moral Case" for War (March 4, 2003)

Israel's Clampdown Masks System of Control (February 14, 2003)

A Case for Concern, Not a Case for War (January 28, 2003)

The Palestinian Elections That Never Were (January 24, 2003)

The Israeli Election Campaign Avoids the Issues (January 14, 2003)

The Death and Life of Jarallah Omar (December 31, 2002)

Protest and Regime Resilience in Iran (December 11, 2002)

The Upcoming Elections in Israel (December 4, 2002)

Occupied Maan: Jordan's Close Military Zone (December 3, 2002)

Snipers and the Panic Over Five Percent Islamic Hip-Hop (November 10, 2002)

Letter from France (October 28, 2002)

Elections in Pakistan: Turning Tragedy Into Farce (October 18, 2002)

Heightened Israeli-Lebanese Tensions Over Jordan's Headwaters (September 30, 2002)

Building a Wall, Sealing the Occupation (September 29, 2002)

Antinomies of the Saad Eddin Ibrahim Case (August 15, 2002)

Thirteen-Year Itch: The Demise of Lebanon's Taif Agreement? (August 13, 2002)

The US and the Kurds of Iraq: A Bitter History (August 9, 2002)

Washington Pushes Turkey Toward "The Red Line" (August 6, 2002)

Universal Jurisdiction: Still Trying to Try Sharon (July 30, 2002)

The UN Arab Human Development Report: A Crtique (July 26, 2002)

West Bank Curfews:Politics by Other Means (July 24, 2002)

Peace in Sudan Doubtful (July 19, 2002)

Don't Blink: Jordan's Democratic Opening and Closing (July 3, 2002)

Musical Chairs in Algeria (June 4, 2002)

Sanctions Renewed on Iraq (May 14, 2002)

The Band Played On: Continued Military Rule in PakistanPress (May 9, 2002)

Jordan's King Abdallah in Washington (May 8, 2002)

Bleak Horizons After Operation Defensive Shield (April 30, 2002)

Fears of a Second Front (April 23, 2002)

The "Do More" Chorus in Washington (April 15, 2002)

Sparks of Activist Spirit in Egypt (April 13, 2002)

Eritrea-Ethiopia Verdict Due This Week (April 12, 2002)

In Ramallah, Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On (April 5, 2002)

War Clouds Over Somalia (March 22, 2002)

Letters of Warning: The Or Commission in Israel (March 18, 2002)

Sharon's Journey of Colors (March 18, 2002)

In Israel, A New-Old Voice of Conscience Awakens (February 22, 2002)

Detonating Lebanon's War Files: The Belgian Court Case and the Beirut Car Bomb (January 31, 2002)

Toward Submission or War in Palestine? (January 26, 2002)

Turkey's Ecevit: Hopes and Worries Arrive in Washington (January 15, 2002)

The Case of Azmi Bishara: Political Immunity and Freedom in Israel (January 9, 2002)

Algeria: Flooding and Muddied State-Society Relations (December 11, 2001)

Solutions Not Imminent for Afghan Displaced and Refugees (December 4, 2001)

Iraq: Rolling Over Sanctions, Raising the Stakes (November 28, 2001)

Pakistan, "Pro-Taliban Elements" and Sectarian Strife (November 16, 2001)

Desperately but Deliberately, Turkey Joins Bush's War (November 8, 2001)

Intifada in the Aftermath (October 30, 2001)

Understanding Political Dissent in Saudi Arabia (October 24, 2001)

Trying to Try Sharon (October 11, 2001)

Aid Drops in Afghanistan (October 10, 2001)

Afghanistan's Refugee Crisis (September 24, 2001)

Pakistan's Dilemma (September 19, 2001)

Business As Usual in Syria? (September 7, 2001)

Investigating the Cole Bombing (September 6, 2001)

Closure: The Daily Reality of Israel's Occupation (August 27, 2001)

How the Sanctions Hurt Iraq (August 2, 2001)

Explaining Egypt's Targeting of Gays (July 23, 2001)

Under the Guise of Security: House Demolitions in Gaza July 13, 2001)

Smart Sanctions: Rebuilding Consensus or Maintaining Conflict? (June 28, 2001)

Sudan's Opposition and the US (June 11, 2001)

On the Eve of Iran's Presidential Elections (June 7, 2001)

The Mitchell Report: Oslo's Last Gasp? (June 1, 2001)

Lebanon One Year After the Israeli Withdrawl (May 29, 2001)

Khatami and His "Reformist" Economic (Non-)Agenda (May 21, 2001)

The Kabyle Riots: Repression and Alienation in Algeria (May 11, 2001)

Walking into Israel's Trap? Syria and the Shebaa Farms (April 19, 2001)

Palestinians Prepare for the Worst (April 6, 2001)

Frosty Reception for US Religious Freedom Commission in Egypt (March 29, 2001)

Violence and its Rhetoric: Sharon and the US (March 28, 2001)

Assessing the Iraqi Opposition (March 23, 2001)

Sharon's National Unity Government: Shoring Up the "Iron Wall" (March 13, 2001)

No-Fly Zones: Rhetoric and Real Intentions (February 20, 2001)

Caught in the Middle: Women and Press Freedom in Iran (February 16, 2001)

Ethiopia-Eritrea: Peace Process Creeps Forward (February 14, 2001)

Israel Elects Sharon: Contradictions of a Creeping Apartheid (February 12, 2001)

Iran's Conservatives Face the Electorate (February 1, 2001)

Almost Unnoticed: Interventions and Rivarlies in Iraqi Kurdistan (January 24, 2001)

Negotiating Over the Clinton Plan (January 6, 2001)

Turkey's Operation Return to Life (December 29, 2000)

Beyond the Bibi Bill: Israel's Electoral System and the Intifada (December 19, 2000)

On Hold: International Protection for the Palestinians (November 28, 2000)

Cracks in Egypt's Electoral Engineering The 2000 Vote (November 7, 2000)

The Peres-Arafat Agreement: Can It Work? (November 3, 2000)

Hizballah Outside and In (October 26, 2000)

Shows of Solidarity Forever: The October 21-22 Arab Summit (October 20, 2000)

Yemen and the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army (October 18, 2000)

After the Sharm al-Sheikh Summit: An Armed and Temporary Truce (October 17, 2000)

The Iron Fist in the Peace Process (October 4, 2000)

Running for Cover: The US, World Oil Markets and Iraq (September 28, 2000)

Israel's Palestinians and the Politics of Law and Order (September 23, 2000)

Iran's Reform Dilemma: Within and Against the State (September 12, 2000)

Politics, Not Policy: Behind US Calls for War Crimes Tribunals for Iraq (August 25, 2000)

Egypt Harasses Human Rights Activists (August 17, 2000)

Jerusalem and the Illusion of Israeli Sovereignty (August 4, 2000)

Camp David II (July 26, 2000)

The Final Approach to Final Status (July 7, 2000)

Afghan Girls' Struggle for Schooling (July 6, 2000)

Israel's Cabinet Crisis and the Political Economy of Peace (June 19, 2000)

Lebanon: An Occupation Ends (May 31, 2000)

"They Dignified Our University" (May 24, 2000)

Lebanon's Most Dangerous Summer (April 25, 2000)

Destroying Houses and Lives (April 5, 2000)

An October 1999 Interview with Sai'id Hajjarian (March 13, 2000)

Greater Insecurity for Refugees in Lebanon (March 1, 2000)

News Not "Fit to Print"Fighting the Lebanon War: Hizbullah and the Press (February 23, 2000)

Rafsanjani's Gambit (February 15, 2000)

Israeli-Syrian Talks: Back In a Deep Freeze (February 1, 2000)

The Collapse of WTO Negotiations: Implications for the Middle East (January 13, 2000)

Equal Rights for Arabs in Israel: A Goal Unrealizable -- An interview with Azmi Bishara, Knesset Member (Part 1) (December 14, 1999)

Petition Charges Israel with War Crimes: The Case of the Qana Massacre Survivors (December 8, 1999)

Egypt: An Emerging "Market" of Double Repression ( November 18, 1999)

"The Situation in Iraq: Democracy Cannot Be Manufactured at Foggy Bottom or the Pentagon" An Interview with Representative Cynthia McKinney (October 21, 1999)

The Oslo Process-Back on Track? (October 7, 1999)

UNICEF Establishes Blame in Iraq (September 29, 1999)

De ja Vu All over Again? Iranian Demonstrations Surprise the US (July 20, 1999)

Special Report from Iran (July 15, 1999)

Assessing Israel's New Government (July 6, 1999)

Mubarak in Washington: Assessing the US-Egyptian Bilateral Relationship (June 30, 1999)

Interpreting Israel's 1999 Election Campaign (April 16, 1999)

The Demise of the Oslo Process (March 26, 1999)