MER Article War and State Power A student of European states finds much to wonder at in the recent Persian Gulf War. [1] Not that the armed, predatory character of Middle Eastern states, the invasion of a rich state’s territory by a financially strapped neighbor or a great power’s massive intervention in a local Charles Tilly • 8 min read
MER Article Women and the Stability of Saudi Arabia On November 6, 1990, some 50 women met in a supermarket parking lot in Riyadh. The women dismissed their drivers and drove their cars in tandem through the streets of Riyadh, defying publicly an unofficial but strictly observed ban on women’s driving. In Saudi Arabia, where women may not travel with Eleanor Abdella Doumato • 10 min read
MER Article Harvest of War It takes two to make a war, and there were indeed two protagonists in making this war. On the one hand, there was the United States, which wanted the war for a number of reasons, primarily global: to consecrate its world hegemony, to liquidate any sequels to bipolarism, to marginalize Europe and Jap Fawwaz Traboulsi • 7 min read
MER Article Oil and the Gulf War No blood for oil! The rallying cry of many of those who took to the streets in protest against the Gulf war is simple. Is it too simple? “Even a dolt understands the principle,” said one unnamed US official, “We need the oil. It’s nice to talk about standing up for freedom, but Kuwait and Saudi Arab Paul Aarts, Michael Renner • 16 min read
MER Article This Is Not Vietnam In 1926 the French surrealist, Rene Magritte, painted an unmistakable pipe and labeled it, in careful schoolboy script: “This is not a pipe.” In 1991 George Bush began a war in the Persian Gulf which, he insisted, was not Vietnam. Iraq, he pointed out, is a desert; Vietnam was a jungle. Moreover, Ir Marilyn Young • 10 min read
MER Article The Intellectuals and the War Edward Said is Parr Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, a member of the Palestine National Council and a contributing editor of this magazine. Along with Noam Chomsky, he is one of the foremost opposition public intellectuals in the United States, a role he plays in the Arab Barbara Harlow • 15 min read
MER Article Eyewitness: Iraq Joost Hiltermann, an editor of this magazine, traveled through Iraq from March 23 to April 10, 1991, as Middle East field coordinator of the Boston-based organization Physicians for Human Rights. The delegation, whose mission was to study the impact of the Gulf war and civil conflict on the health o Joost Hiltermann • 4 min read
MER Article The Other Face of War The human toll of the Persian Gulf war -- as many as 100,000 deaths, 5 million displaced persons and over $200 billion in property damage -- ranks this conflict as the single most devastating event in the Middle East since World War I. Eric Hooglund • 24 min read
MER Article From the Editors (July/August 1991) The US military deployment to Saudi Arabia was on a scale not seen since the height of the Vietnam war. The “victory” parade in Washington on June 8 was the largest celebratory military exhibition, we are told, since World War II. The parade, like the war, was designed in part to obliterate the hist The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Letters WHAT ABOUT WOMEN? I have your November-December 1990 issue and your special packet, “Crisis in the Gulf.” They are both excellent but they do not have much on one very important area of concern: women. In particular, I would like to see an article on the women of Iraq. In Sisterhood Is Global, Rob (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State: Essays on Political Ideas and Movements in the Middle East (Routledge, 1989). Modem Western literature on political Islam in the Middle East today generally falls into two categories: US-style think tank writing and intellectual proselytism. Think tan Chibli Mallat • 2 min read
MER Article Class Acts in the Middle East Berch Berberoglu, ed., Power and Stability in the Middle East (Zed, 1989). Alan Richards and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East: State, Class and Economic Development (Westview, 1990). Karen Pfeifer • 8 min read
