Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Sign In Sign Up

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

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 24 min read

Current Analysis

Sanctions Renewed on Iraq

Concluding almost a year of diplomatic wrangling, the UN Security Council has agreed to revise UN sanctions on Iraq when the eleventh phase of the oil for food program ends on May 29. Under the oil for food program, Iraq is allowed to sell its oil on the world market

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 8 min read

Current Analysis

Iraq: Rolling Over Sanctions, Raising the Stakes

Late in the evening of November 27, the US and Russia appear to have reached an agreement to once again roll over existing sanctions on Iraq for six months, by which time Secretary of State Colin Powell hopes the two powers will have agreed on a version of his proposed "smart sanctions." The Decembe

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 7 min read

Current Analysis

No-Fly Zones

In the long years of confrontation between the US and Iraq, an almost symbiotic relationship has developed between US and Iraqi efforts to raise the political and military stakes. The latest clashes in the no-fly zones, culminating in the February 16 US-UK attack on Iraqi command and control sites north

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 7 min read

Current Analysis

Politics, Not Policy

In a public break with the US, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook today submitted a draft parliamentary bill supporting the rapid establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC) in which to try major war criminals and violators of human rights. The British move to secure the ICC's ratificat

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 5 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

Current Analysis

UNICEF Establishes Blame in Iraq

UNICEF'S recent reports on child mortality in Iraq provided ready fuel for the ongoing propaganda war over the future of sanctions. Iraq's representative at the UN has spoken of a "genocide" caused by sanctions while US and United Kingdom spokespersons, completely ignoring the sanctions' impact sinc

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 6 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

Benvenisti, Israeli Censorship of Arab Publications

Meron Benvenisti, Israeli Censorship of Arab Publications: A Survey (New York: Fund for Free Expression, 1984).

Sarah J Graham-Brown • 2 min read