MER Article Editor's Bookshelf Najda: Women Concerned About the Middle East, a national organization based in Berkeley, California, has been developing educational materials and conducting teacher training workshops on the Middle East for nearly 30 years. Najda has established a strong reputation among social studies teachers and Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Al Miskin Shut Up! From the Wall Street Journal of March 22, 1990: “More than half of Cairo’s 12 million residents use sleeping pills and other sedatives to escape the city’s deafening noise, the semi-official al-Ahram newspaper said. The incessant blare of car horns and loudspeakers at mosques has forced 62 Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Human Rights Briefing What has been the performance of human rights organizations during the first two years of the intifada? A fresh look at eight organizations surveyed prior to the uprising (MER 150) shows that overall coverage has increased, as one might expect based on the intensity and duration of the uprising, but Nabeel Abraham • 3 min read
MER Article Washington Watch SUPERCOMPUTERS Some chips in the bargaining between Washington and Tel Aviv prior to the Gulf crisis were two-year-old Israeli requests to buy supercomputers -- mainframes that perform scientific and mathematical calculations with great speed, enabling scientists to accomplish rapidly tasks such as Joe Stork • 5 min read
MER Article A Woman's Life on an Algiers Stage Algeria’s Islamist challenge to secularism and the populist revulsion against the corruption of the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) form the background to “Fatma”, a one-woman show which premiered May 23, 1990, at the El-Mouggar theater in Algiers. “Fatma’’ recounts a day in the life of an Al Susan Slyomovics • 4 min read
MER Article Algeria's Elections Show Islamist Strength The June 12 municipal and provincial elections, the first multi-party election held in Algeria since independence in 1962, delivered a stunning defeat to the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN). The victorious Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) has now emerged as the leading opposition party and princ Arun Kapil • 15 min read
MER Article Rolling Back Egypt's Agrarian Reform The publication in 1988 of the fifth Egyptian agricultural census, conducted mostly in January 1982, provides the most accurate and comprehensive description to date of the changing patterns of landholding and ownership of agricultural assets over the 20 years following President Nasser’s land refor Robert Springborg • 7 min read
MER Article "Please Don't Develop Us Any More" Fantu Cheru is an economist from Ethiopia now teaching at the American University in Washington, DC. His book The Silent Revolution in Africa: Debt, Development and Democracy (Zed) won the World Hunger Media Award for 1989. Joe Stork spoke with him in Washington in the spring of 1990. How would you Fantu Cheru • 5 min read
MER Article Algeria's Food Security Crisis On October 5, 1988, fierce rioting broke out in Algeria’s capital, Algiers, and spread to many of the country’s other urban centers. The government proclaimed a “state of siege” and responses with heavy force. By the end of the week, when an uneasy calm had been restored, the dead numbered in the hu Will Swearingen • 14 min read
MER Article Primer: The Food Gap in the Middle East As the Middle East enters the 1990s, the food situation cannot be easily captured in catch phrases like “dire emergency." Outside of the Horn of Africa, no country confronts wide-scale starvation, though poor people throughout the region face personal food emergencies daily. Agricultural production Martha Wenger, Joe Stork • 9 min read
MER Article The Famine This Time Gayle Smith coordinates the Africa program at the Washington-based Development Group for Alternative Policies. In the past ten years she has worked extensively in the Horn of Africa on relief and development issues. Her most recent trip to Ethiopia and Sudan was in June 1990. She spoke with Joe Stor Gayle Smith • 7 min read
MER Article Absolute Distress Most discussion of the food crisis in Africa is a model in which subsistence economies remain essentially intact and food insecurity is a transitory phenomenon, the result of external factors such as drought or war which temporarily upset the normal balance between sufficiency and dearth. My experie Mark Duffield • 21 min read
