MER Article Letter from Kuwait Some ten years after a sudden, brutal occupation, Kuwait gives, at first sight, the appearance of having returned to normal. Virtually all the damage done to buildings has been repaired, the oilfields are functioning and the state has normal diplomatic relations even with states such as Jordan, Yemen and Sudan Fred Halliday • 9 min read
MER Article What About the Incubators? It feels oddly like being at a wake in a funeral home. Our Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation members speak very quietly with one another as we wait for a hospital official to brief us about conditions at the al-Mansour Children's wing of the Saddam City Medical Center. Dr. Mekki, the director, Kathy Kelly • 4 min read
MER Article Americans Against the Sanctions As US policy supporting the continuation of sanctions on Iraq becomes ever more isolated abroad, domestic criticism of sanctions also mounts. Opponents of sanctions gained new visibility in February 1998 at Ohio State University, when pointed questions from the audience disrupted the Clinton adminis (Author not identified) • 7 min read
MER Article Elusive Justice Saddam Hussein's regime has long been one of the world's worst human rights violators. But the international community largely ignored Iraq's record of human rights abuse -- brutal repression of internal dissent, atrocities during the eight-year war with Iran -- until after Hussein crossed the red l Joost Hiltermann • 9 min read
MER Article A Shaky De Facto Kurdistan Surrounded by four states that do not wish it well, officially embargoed, still divided by internal conflicts, Iraqi Kurdistan hasn't had it this good for years. Paradoxically, Kurds in northern Iraq are hoping everything stays exactly the way it is. "If the government comes back we lose everything Quil Lawrence • 7 min read
MER Article The Politics of Consensus in the Gulf As American and British warplanes flew into action over Iraq in December 1998, they blasted away not only Iraqi targets but also the remnants of international consensus. After the Gulf war, the Security Council authorized economic sanctions and intrusive inspections aimed at the elimination of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) Marc Lynch • 10 min read
MER Article The Public Health Impact of Sanctions Throughout the 1990s, social conditions in Iraq have deteriorated to levels last experienced three and four decades ago. This decline is associated with a dramatic reduction of the gross national product from around $3,500 to under $700 per capita, but changes in the GNP do not tell the entire story Richard Garfield • 12 min read
MER Article Depleted Uranium Haunts Kosovo and Iraq Iraq and Kosovo may be thousands of miles apart, but they share the dubious distinction of contamination with radioactive residue from depleted uranium (DU) bullets used in American air strikes. After several years of silence, US officials finally admitted that 340 tons of DU were fired during the G Scott Peterson • 3 min read
MER Article Daghara Dispatch In 1996, five years after the Gulf war, my anthropologist husband Robert Fernea and I returned to Daghara, a predominantly Shi'i Muslim provincial town on a tributary of the Euphrates in south central Iraq. We had lived there for two years before the Iraqi revolution of 1958 against British colonial Elizabeth Warnock Fernea • 4 min read
MER Article Sanctioning Iraq After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 triggered the imposition of international economic sanctions, it was widely believed that the Gulf crisis would be rapidly resolved. The scale of Iraq's military defeat in the 1991 Gulf war suggested that the government would accept ceasefire terms, Sarah J Graham-Brown • 13 min read
MER Article "And They Called It Peace" Ten years ago, on August 2, 1990, US policy in, toward and around Iraq dramatically changed course. From close if sometimes distasteful allies, Baghdad's government and its leader, Saddam Hussein, were transformed overnight into Washington's public enemy number one: "Hitler!" thundered President George Bush. Phyllis Bennis • 11 min read
MER Article Stifling Democracy Within Palestinian Unions In well-furbished offices overlooking downtown Nablus, Shahir Sa'd, General Secretary of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) sells his vision of the post-Oslo labor movement. "With the return of the Palestinian Authority (PA) we could concentrate on workers' issues, rather tha Nina Sovich • 6 min read
