Khartoum's Greatest Challenge Colonel John Garang’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) played no direct role in the April 6 coup in Khartoum. But as the only organized, fighting resistance to the regime of Ja‘far Numairi, it laid the groundwork by chipping away at the state in a guerrilla campaign that cost the government A Special Correspondent • 11 min read
Sudan's Revolutionary Spring Khartoum, April 23. General ‘Abd al-Rahman Siwar al-Dhahab, in power since April 6, was expected to name an interim cabinet on Monday, April 22, to govern the country under army supervision for a transitional period of one year. In the meantime, General Siwar al-Dahab appointed an interim cabinet fo Eric Rouleau • 22 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks Spring 2018 Baconi, Tareq. Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018). Berda, Yael. Living Emergency: Israel’s Permit Regime in the Occupied West Bank(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017). Blumi, Isa. Destroying Yemen: What Chaos in Arabia Tells Us About the World (Berkeley: University of (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article New and Recommended Reading Summer 2018 Abboud, Samer. Syria (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018). Adalet, Begum. Hotels and Highways: The Construction of Modernization Theory in Cold War Turkey (Stanford: Stanford University press, 2018). Abul-Magd, Zeinab. Militarizing the Nation: The Army, Business, and Revolution in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). Ahmad, Attiya. Everyday Conversions: Islam, (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Sur Operation Sur cannot be reduced to the destruction of an old walled city. Beyond the deaths, destroyed buildings and compensation payments, what has been lost are the potentialities—the wish-images—that Kurds imbued in Sur and with which they defended it. Serra Hakyemez • 13 min read
MER Article "Mosul Will Never Be the Same" In June 2014, the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) launched an assault on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Within days, the Iraqi army collapsed and ISIS proclaimed its sovereignty over the city. An anonymous blog named Mosul Eyebegan reporting on life under ISIS rule. With de Omar Mohammed • 13 min read
MER Article Jerusalem's Colonial Landscapes of Loss Israel’s settler-colonial project has been premised on a set of racial and spatial assumptions that require the dispossession—even the elimination—of the native Palestinians. Over the seven decades of Israeli rule in Jerusalem and throughout historic Palestine, the state has produced abiding landsca Thomas Abowd • 7 min read
MER Article Generational Dislocations Since 2011, violence in Syria has worsened the widespread displacement of people in the Middle East and destroyed several cities. The images of displaced Syrian families fleeing to Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon broadcast around the world had a haunting resonance. Archival photographs of Armenian refuge Joanne Randa Nucho • 9 min read
MER Article Abadan In fall 1978, Abadan’s oil refinery workers played a decisive role in the Iranian Revolution by joining the national mass strikes. Just two years later, Abadan and the adjoining port city of Khorramshahr were shelled by the invading Iraqi army and effectively destroyed during the Iran–Iraq war (1980 Rasmus Christian Elling, Kaveh Ehsani • 10 min read
MER Article The Destructive Dreams of AKP Urbanism The Gezi Park protests were the first time that the AKP faced significant public resistance from below to their urban transformation project. The term “below” is important because the AKP’s legitimacy rests on the claim that it enjoys widespread support from below. The protests, however, revealed an Ayse Çavdar • 11 min read
MER Article Alexandria, City of Dispossession “In Egypt, provincial cities do not exist.” This statement by French geographer Eric Denis eloquently summarizes the relationship between Cairo—the capital city—and the rest of the country. Little seems to exist beyond Cairo, except perhaps Alexandria. In the late 1990s and during the 2000s, Egypt’s second largest Youssef El Chazli • 9 min read
