MER Article Voices from Turkey's Southeast Emerging through the clouds at 15,000 feet, the wheat-colored landscape below looked bone-dry, although the previous week’s snow had made roads in the southeastern Turkish towns of Batman and Siirt impassable. Fortunately for Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), an early taste of spring had warmed Marcie J Patton • 11 min read
MER Article High Stakes for Iran As neo-conservatives inside and outside the Pentagon step up their rhetoric against the Islamic Republic of Iran, internal polarization in Iran also seems to be reaching a breaking point. Hardliners in the Iranian regime have managed effectively to block most significant attempts at reforming governance over the past four years. Kaveh Ehsani • 12 min read
MER Article Iraq Reconstruction Tracker “War began last week,” said the New York Times on March 23, 2003. “Reconstruction starts this week.” In fact, the Bush administration had been soliciting proposals to “reconstruct” war-torn Iraq before dropping the first bomb, and before asking the UN Security Council to authorize military action. Between January 31 and Adam Horowitz, Elizabeth Rosenberg, Anthony Alessandrini • 6 min read
MER Article World Oil Markets and the Invasion of Iraq George W. Bush's regime-changing war in Iraq is widely seen as an oil war -- a grab for the second-largest petroleum reserves in the world. In the minds of many, this interpretation was confirmed when the United States pressed for, and secured, a UN resolution giving the US-British Raad Alkadiri, Fareed Mohamedi • 22 min read
MER Article The Worldly Roots of Religiosity in Post-Saddam Iraq April 9, 2003 will go down in Iraqi history as the day of the fall. Barely two days after the anniversary of the founding of the Ba‘th party, and 21 days after the US-led invasion of Iraq began, the battle Saddam Hussein dubbed the Mother of All Decisive Battles Faleh A. Jabar • 18 min read
MER Article Western Saharan Deadlock The Moroccan occupation since 1975 of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, is in violation of UN Security Council resolutions on the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination. The conflict remains unresolved despite the existence of a UN Settlement Plan (1991) and the Houston Accords of 1997, brokered by Karima Benabdallah-Gambier, Yahia Zoubir • 11 min read
MER Article Basic Needs vs. Swimming Pools Severe drought conditions, only recently ameliorated by heavy winter rains, and the current hostilities have exacerbated the fundamental inequality in division of the scarce water resources of Israel-Palestine between Israelis and Palestinians. Water is becoming a weapon of war aimed at quelling Pal Alwyn Rouyer • 16 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Summer 2003) Two months after the welcome demise of Saddam Hussein’s regime, it has become customary to say that the US won the war and is losing the peace in Iraq. This formulation, coined to describe US neglect of Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban, gives the Bush administration too much credit. The The Editors • 3 min read
