Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Sheila Carapico

Sheila Carapico is professor of political science and international studies at the University of Richmond and visiting professor at the American University in Cairo. She is a contributing editor of Middle East Report.

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Arabia Incognita

Dispatches from Yemen and the Gulf

Sheila Carapico • 1 min read

MER Article

The Breakdown of the GCC Initiative

On September 21, 2014, fighters of Ansar Allah, loyal to the Houthi movement based in the northern highlands of Sa‘ada, conquered Yemen’s capital. Militants occupied the home of 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkul Karman, a leader of the 2011 uprising against the regime of President ‘Ali ‘Abdalla

Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Sheila Carapico • 12 min read

MER Article

Demonstrators, Dialogues, Drones and Dialectics

In 2011 Yemenis shared a vision of revolutionary change with protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria demanding the downfall of cruel, corrupt presidential regimes. Today, like many of their cousins, the peaceful youth (shabab silmiyya) of Yemen face a counter-revolutionary maelstrom from withi

Sheila Carapico • 8 min read

MER Article

The Strategic Logic of the Iraq Blunder

To hear American politicians and the commercial news media tell it, the greatest military power in world history hastily launched an ill-conceived invasion because of intelligence failures and wishful fantasies of sweets and flowers. It is as if, to paraphrase a sentiment heard in White House hallwa

Chris Toensing, Sheila Carapico • 17 min read

MER Article

Euro-Med

Most Americans and many Arabs, Israelis, Turks and Europeans think of Uncle Sam as the superpower in the Middle East -- an avuncular hegemon, waging peace and war, picking favorites and ostracizing errants, disbursing guns here and butter there. Certainly, this image of a Goliath casting a shadow from the

Sheila Carapico • 12 min read

MER Article

NGOs, INGOs, GO-NGOs and DO-NGOs

This issue of Middle East Report takes a critical look at "NGOs" -- non-governmental organizations -- in and beyond the Arab world. The topic is both trendy and controversial. Although they may see themselves as marginal actors, charities, advocacy groups and a range of other civic associations in

Sheila Carapico • 8 min read

MER Article

Mission: Democracy

Incumbent national leaders invite foreign election monitors only when it is in their interest to do so. Rarely is significant financial assistance “conditional” on holding elections, although it does improve a regime’s image abroad to do so. For governments being observed, the trick is to orchestrat

Sheila Carapico • 11 min read

MER Article

Legalism and Realism in the Gulf

In his State of the Union address in January 1998, President Clinton won thunderous applause for threatening to force Iraq “to comply with the UNSCOM regime and the will of the United Nations.” Stopping UN chemical and biological weapons inspectors from “completing their mission,” declared the presi

Sheila Carapico • 7 min read

MER Article

From the Editors (Fall 1997)

The Arabian Peninsula has yielded few contemporary images as vivid as the 1991 Gulf war. The clean, virtual-reality fireworks display of 1991 has been revised only marginally by reports on Gulf war syndrome and accounts of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s military commendations for burying sur

Sheila Carapico • 5 min read

MER Article

From Ballot Box to Battlefield

Artillery and bombs rather than innocent fireworks marked the fourth anniversary of Yemeni unity and the first anniversary of free parliamentary elections of the Arabian Peninsula. The fight between the armed forces under President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih and those loyal to Vice President ‘Ali Salim al-Bayd was complicated by ideological,

Sheila Carapico • 10 min read

MER Article

Elections and Mass Politics in Yemen

The Yemeni parliamentary election of April 27, 1993 marks a watershed for the Arabian Peninsula. The multi-party contest for 301 constituency-based seats, and the period of unfettered public debate and discussion that preceded it, represents the advent of organized mass politics in a region where political power has long remained

Sheila Carapico • 13 min read

MER Article

The Economic Dimension of Yemeni Unity

To the outside world, the unification of the two Yemens in 1990 resembled the German experience in miniature. North Yemen (the Yemen Arab Republic, YAR) was considered a laissez faire market economy, whereas the South (the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, PDRY) was “the communist one.” When, w

Sheila Carapico • 17 min read