MER Article The Shape of Afghanistan to Come On a cold January morning, Uzbekistan opened its first mission in its battered neighbor to the south with as much ceremony as weary Afghanistan could muster: generals were in uniforms, bureaucrats in Western suits and delegates from the rugged hinterland wore their traditional pakul. Anthony Shadid • 3 min read
MER Article Victims of Circumstance It was 3 am in Qala Niazi when the drone of US bombers rumbling through the night sky awoke villagers sleeping off a night of festivities last December 29. Within half an hour, a storm of sound and fury unleashed by the warplanes had ended, and the hamlet was no Anthony Shadid • 11 min read
MER Article Nature Has No Culture In April 2000, Abbas Kiarostami received the Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. While in the United States, Kiarostami visited New York City, where the Andrea Rosen Gallery mounted the first US exhibition of Kiarostami’s photographs. The photographs, which Anthony Shadid, Shiva Balaghi • 6 min read
MER Article Lurking Insecurity Black clouds off the Nile River hang low over Mandela Camp, ushering in the storms that bring misery to an already wretched existence on the outskirts of Sudan’s capital. The clouds soon open up over the sprawling squatter settlement, and the rain begins its relentless fall. Barnaba Marial Marol, hi Anthony Shadid • 8 min read
MER Article Daring Theater Offers Respite from Baghdad’s Misery Soon after the tattered curtains part in Baghdad’s Sheherezad Theater, a boisterous Baghdad comes to the fore. The frenzied strains of an Iraqi pop song herald the appearance of a cross-dressing belly dancer, seductively clad women and a wiggling and jiggling government official, and suggest the pr Anthony Shadid • 5 min read
