MER Article From Peacekeeping to Peace Enforcement The US decision to intervene in Somalia in December 1992 came well after the two-year-old crisis had finally hit the headlines. The power vacuum that followed the flight of Siad Barre from Mogadishu in January 1991, and the subsequent civil war in the capital, particularly the fighting between Novem Patrick Gilkes • 13 min read
MER Article Pride and Prejudice in Saudi Arabia Ahmad and Fatima Abdallah (not their real names) are an Arab professional couple who worked in Saudi Arabia for four years in the 1980s. They discussed their impressions with a Middle East Report editor in September 1993. Coming from elsewhere in the Arab world, what were your first impressions of (Author not identified) • 7 min read
MER Article The Saudi Economy: A Few Years Yet Until Doomsday The word seems to be getting around: Saudi Arabia confronts a set of uncomfortable and unwelcome economic choices that will affect the royal family’s relations with its own citizen-subjects and with its big power allies in the West. For the past two decades, the kingdom’s treasury has served Fareed Mohamedi • 10 min read
MER Article A Campaign Rally in Sanaa Just within the walls of the old city of Sanaa, southeast of Bab al-Sha‘ub, a large tent has been erected in an open square. People are milling about -- mostly children, but also men and women. The candidate is talking to a group of people as one of her opponents drives by in a black Mercedes. The c David Warburton • 1 min read
MER Article The Yemeni Elections Up Close Candidate registration for Yemen’s first-ever multi-party elections opened on March 29 in a climate of lively polemics against the president’s party, the General People’s Congress (GPC). The GPC’s permanent committee had approved its electoral program on March 27. That same evening it appropriated a Renaud Detalle • 11 min read
MER Article Elections and Mass Politics in Yemen The Yemeni parliamentary election of April 27, 1993 marks a watershed for the Arabian Peninsula. The multi-party contest for 301 constituency-based seats, and the period of unfettered public debate and discussion that preceded it, represents the advent of organized mass politics in a region where political power has long remained Sheila Carapico • 13 min read
MER Article From the Editors (November/December 1993) In the preamble to the agreement signed on September 13, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization “agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict.” This agreement may or may not serve that purpose. Peace and justice advocates should not be under any illusion The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (November/December 1993) Article 19. “Dismantling Civil Society: Suppression of Freedom of Association in Sudan,” Censorship News 27 (August 1993). Bennis, Phyllis and Michel Moushabeck, eds. Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1993). Burgat, François and William Dowell. The Isla The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (September/October 1993) Alcalay, Ammiel. After Jews and Arabs (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). B’tselem. The Closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Human Rights Violations Against Residents of the Occupied Territories (Jerusalem, 1993). Connell, Dan. Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revo The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Studies of Structural Adjustment Bent Hansen, Egypt and Turkey: The Political Economy of Poverty, Equity and Growth (World Bank, 1991). Heba Handoussa and Gilliam Potter, eds. Employment and Structural Adjustment: Egypt in the 1990s (AUC, 1991). Mustafa Kamil al-Sayyid, “Privatization: The Egyptian Debate,” Cairo Papers in Social Marsha Pripstein Posusney • 6 min read
MER Article Letting the Colonel In from the Cold On the last day of May 1993, some 200 Libyan pilgrims alighted from buses that had just crossed from Egypt into the Israeli-occupied Gaza. Strip on the way to Jerusalem. None of the rhetoric in the statement the pilgrims issued at the end of their stay, duly broadcast by the Libyan “Voice of the Gre Dennis Sammut • 7 min read
MER Article Israel's Economic Strategy for Palestinian Independence A peace agreement between the government of Israel and the PLO has yet to be signed; a Palestinian state has yet to be established. But such details are unimportant to the organizations representing the Israeli bourgeoisie. “It does not matter whether a Palestinian state arises, whether Israel imposes autonomy or Asher Davidi • 6 min read
