MER Article The Urbanization of Power and the Struggle for the City The Middle East is one of the most urbanized and urbanizing regions in the world. The proliferation of urban megaprojects, skyscrapers, gated communities, retail malls, airports, ports and highways continues unabated. From 2006 to 2016, cement production almost doubled in the region’s major cement producing countries, such as Saudi Deen Sharp • 12 min read
MER Article Editorial (Summer 2018) The articles in this issue of Middle East Report illuminate some of the sources of displacement, dispossession and loss found throughout urban areas in the contemporary Middle East, which often produce the very population outflows that militarized border zones seek to contain. The merciless killing by Israeli snipers of over Steve Niva • 2 min read
MER Article Conventional Humanitarian Solutions Fail the Test Syrians experienced the largest single-day exodus of the war on March 15, 2018. Seven years to the day since the start of the uprising in Syria, some 45,000 civilians fled their homes in besieged Eastern Ghouta. The fact that such large-scale displacement took place over the course of a single day a Parastou Hassouri • 11 min read
MER Article Refugee Rights Hit the Wall The expansion of humanitarian aid in Syria and its neighboring states has gone hand-in-hand with a growing restriction on refugees’ right of movement and ever-stricter control over refugees’ personal information and biometric data. UNHCR and the Syrian and Jordanian governments share two interests i Sophia Hoffmann • 8 min read
MER Article UNRWA Financial Crisis President Donald Trump’s decision to reduce the United States’ contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to only $60 million in 2018—compared to a total of $364 million in 2017 [1]—has been widely denounced as a brutal form of collecti Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh • 9 min read
MER Article Caught in the Circle of Punishment The politics, sensibilities and lives of Iraqis born in the 1970s and 1980s were intimately shaped by harsh US sanctions on essential and non-essential goods, Saddam Hussein’s wars and the US invasion in 2003 with its devastating war and aftermath. What can a young Iraqi possibly hope for now? Omar Al-Jaffal • 6 min read
MER Article Civilians in Mosul's Battle of Annihilation Understanding the course of events and identifying the participants in the battle of Mosul is a difficult task. What is certain is that all parties neglected the fate of civilians and were unable to provide proper emergency medical relief. An examination of the battle is crucial to understanding the Nabil Al-Tikriti • 7 min read
MER Article The Psycho-Politics of Wellbeing Iranians have repurposed, reconfigured and transliterated the psychiatric concepts of depression and trauma as depreshen and toroma. In this wide-ranging interview, Orkideh Behrouzan speaks with Sheila Carapico about the politics of Iranian mental health care policy, public discussion of the effects Orkideh Behrouzan • 16 min read
MER Article The Politics of Health in Counterterrorism Operations In the conflict zones of Afghanistan, where multiple fronts shift concurrently, the lines between who is, or is not, a legitimate recipient of aid and protection are not just blurred but erased. As in other counterterrorism wars, these life or death issues are exacerbated by shifting power and terri Jonathan Whittall • 13 min read
MER Article Suffering from Hunger in a World of Plenty The UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food surveys the catastrophic state of hunger and malnutrition and their man-made causes—war and conflict, climate change, massive displacement and global economic inequality. The paradox of this landscape of desperate need is that the world produces more t Hilal Elver • 8 min read
MER Article Extending the Borders of Europe European policies on refugees and asylum seekers are increasingly restrictive. Borders are effectively being pushed off-shore, extending the problems of border management as far south as possible. Aurélie Ponthieu explains the effects of these measures, including crowded refugee centers on the Itali Aurélie Ponthieu • 8 min read
