Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Joe Stork

Joe Stork was the editor of Middle East Report until 1995 and deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division from 1995 to 2017. He is currently chair of the advisory board of the Gulf Center for Human Rights.

MER Article

Dayr Yasin and Qibya

What is the meaning of the Israeli parliamentarian's comment that “in Lebanon we have entered with a policy that is a direct continuation of Dayr Yasin and Qibya”?

Joe Stork • 2 min read

MER Article

The War in Lebanon

On Sunday morning, June 6, 1982, 40,000 Israeli troops, with hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, rolled across the 33-mile border with southern Lebanon. Israeli seaborne troops landed on the Lebanese coast at Sidon and near the mouth of the Zahrani River, while the Israeli air force co

James Paul, Joe Stork • 26 min read

MER Article

Egypt's Military

Egypt’s armed forces number well over 300,000 men, the largest in the Arab world or in Africa. Some two thirds are in the army, and most of the rest in the air force. Since 1952, the top political leadership has been drawn from the armed forces. Since 1968, there has been a “demilitarization” of the

Joe Stork • 4 min read

MER Article

Egypt's Debt Problem

Egypt’s external debt—the sums owed to other governments, private multinational banks and multilateral agencies like the World Bank—increased on an average of 28 percent per year under Anwar al-Sadat, compared to 13 percent over the previous ten years. Sadat’s decade also witnessed important shifts

Joe Stork • 4 min read

MER Article

In the Footsteps of Sadat

Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, the fifteenth anniversary of the June war of 1967. Then, Egypt was the main Arab combatant state in a war that redrew the geopolitical map of the Middle East. Today, Israel is again redrawing the map, with Palestinian and Lebanese blood. This time Egypt has fi

Joe Stork, Judith Tucker • 11 min read

MER Article

MERIP: The First Decade

On a weekend late in October 1970, we were part of an informal group of seven meeting in a cabin in New Hampshire. All of us were active then in the broad movement against the US war in Indochina. Some of us had lived in the Middle East, working in church or Peace Corps volunteer programs. We all ha

Peter Johnson, Joe Stork • 12 min read

MER Article

Massive Arrests Precede Sadat's Assassination

On September 3 and 4, 1981, just four weeks before he was assassinated, President Anwar al-Sadat launched a crackdown that overnight swept nearly 1,600 Egyptians into prisons. Hundreds more were detained under house arrest, or stripped of official positions in professional associations. Sadat attrib

Joe Stork • 5 min read

MER Article

Chronology: US-Egyptian Military Relationship

1974 February 28 Kissinger and Sadat, in Cairo, announce US-Egyptian diplomatic relations to resume, following June 1967 rupture. March 18 State Department announces US Navy will help clear mines from Suez Canal. April 18 Sadat announces Egypt ending 18 years of reliance on Soviet arms. April 19

Danny Reachard, Joe Stork • 9 min read

MER Article

The Carter Doctrine and US Bases in the Middle East

On Thursday, July 10, a squadron of 12 brown and green camouflaged F-4E Phantom fighter-bombers landed at Cairo West Air Base after a non-stop 13-hour flight from Moody Air Base in Georgia. A week earlier five C-141s and 28 C-5s airlifted some 4 million pounds of equipment and supplies and more than

Joe Stork • 38 min read

MER Article

Iran's Oil Workers

A shroud of silence seems to have enveloped Iran’s oil industry since last fall when the top oil official Hassan Nazih was dismissed under charges of treason, allegedly for failing to purge non-Islamic elements from the ranks of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). Even production and export fig

Joe Stork • 2 min read