Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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George R. Trumbull

George R. Trumbull IV teaches Middle East history at Dartmouth College and is an editor of Middle East Report.

MER Article

Postcard from the Algerian Saharan Past

In 1923, a crippling drought pushed the nomads of the Algerian Sahara as far north as Bou-Saada, just 150 miles south of the Mediterranean coast, in search of sustenance. The French colonial authorities worried that fighting would break out between the nomads and locals over scarce water. From their

George R. Trumbull • 4 min read

MER Article

A Tale of Two Secessions in the Sahara

The March 2001 destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan, Afghanistan, introduced a new loanword into the Euro-American political vocabulary. The Taliban’s new explosion into world consciousness catalyzed, until September of that year, more hand wringing than substantive investigation of their social ori

George R. Trumbull • 9 min read

MER Article

On Piracy and the Afterlives of Failed States

Until the resurgence of naval predation in the late 2000s, pirates were confined to the realm of the fantastic -- novels, films and stage productions. Since Western states last worried about pirates in the eighteenth century, the intrinsic, man-bites-dog interest of contemporary pirates for the popu

George R. Trumbull • 14 min read

MER Article

Speaking of Water

“Life After People,” the History Channel’s plangently alarmist imagined documentary series on the vestiges of civilization after an unspecified catastrophe, forecasts an end for Dubai’s infamous Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at 2,625 feet. The desert location of Dubai, coupled with the persistent engineering

George R. Trumbull • 11 min read