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