Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Sarah J Graham-Brown

Sarah Graham-Brown has written extensively on the Middle East. She is the author of Sanctioning Saddam: The Politics of Intervention in Iraq [New York: St. Martins Press].

MER Article

Multiplier Effect

Despite continual White House assurances in 2002 and early 2003 that “war is a last resort,” the key advocates of invasion in Washington gave a good deal of forethought to the US-led war with Iraq. The Iraq hawks had been considering the military option for years. the option became feasible after th

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 24 min read

MER Article

Sanctioning Iraq

After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 triggered the imposition of international economic sanctions, it was widely believed that the Gulf crisis would be rapidly resolved. The scale of Iraq's military defeat in the 1991 Gulf war suggested that the government would accept ceasefire terms,

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 13 min read

MER Article

Security Council Conflicts Over Sanctions

UN Security Council Resolution 687 establishes terms which would commonly be embodied in a post-war peace treaty: destruction and monitoring of weapons of mass destruction; Iraqi acceptance of Kuwait’s borders and sovereignty; and return of Kuwaiti property and missing persons. It also includes a reference to compliance with “all

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 3 min read

MER Article

Intervention, Sovereignty and Responsibility

Four years after Operation Desert Storm, and the mass uprisings that followed in the southern and northern parts of Iraq against Saddam Hussein’s regime, the country’s economic and social fabric is in tatters. Economic sanctions, following a destructive war and compounded by the Iraqi government’s a

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 32 min read

MER Article

New Writing On Women, Politics and Social Change

Deniz Kandiyoti, ed., Women, Islam and the State (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991). Seteney Shami, Lucine Taminian et al, Women in Arab Society: Work Patterns and Gender Relations in Egypt, Jordan and Sudan (Oxford: Berg, 1990). Bouthaina Shaaban, Both Right and Left Handed: Arab Women Talk About The

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 16 min read

MER Article

Before Their Diaspora

Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948, introduction and commentary by Walid Khalidi, (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984). Before Their Diaspora gathers some 400 photographs to present a portrait of Palestine, its people and their culture, fr

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 5 min read

MER Article

Report from the Occupied Territories

Snow fell seven times on the hill towns north of Jerusalem this past winter, and the warmth of spring did not come until after the middle of April. But the welcome spring did not bring relief from the harshness of the Israeli occupation. In the town centers, Israeli troops were a constant reminder o

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 19 min read

MER Article

Islam in the News

Edward W. Said, Covering Islam (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1981). Edward Said’s Covering Islam is one part of his project to analyze aspects of the Western view of Islam and the Middle East. Orientalism, the first and most substantial of these books, traced the evolution of European attitudes

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 7 min read