MER Article The President and the Field Marshal Husni Mubarak succeeded Anwar al-Sadat in October 1981 at a time of troubled civil-military relations. Sadat’s pursuit of a separate peace with Israel after the war in 1973 raised important questions about the military’s future role, size and sources of weapons. If Egypt was no longer at war, it wou Robert Springborg • 36 min read
MER Article From the Editors (July/August 1987) At the beginning of June, a new, heavily armored Mercedes arrived in Cairo. It had been ordered for the new US ambassador to Egypt, Frank Wisner. Just a week earlier, in the heart of the crowded capital, a group calling itself Egypt’s Revolution had ambushed a car carrying three US Embassy staff, in The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article The Fate of the Family Farm Samir Radwan and Eddy Lee, Agrarian Change in Egypt, An Anatomy of Rural Poverty (London: Croom Helm, for the International Labor Organisation, 1986). Alan Richards, ed., Food, States and Peasants, Analyses of the Agrarian Question in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986). These t Karen Pfeifer • 8 min read
MER Article "Food Security" As Egypt’s dependence on food imports has increased, so has the cry for food security. The phrase “food security” (al-amn al-geza’i) can have several meanings in Egyptian policy debates. It is usually taken to mean either “hedging against fluctuations in world food prices” or “increasing domestic pr (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article The Language of Food “I went down to Cairo with a little wheat in my pocket and they had the red carpet out for me there…. I was speaking the language of food and they understand.” -- US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, 1974 For more than a decade now, the political embrace of Washington and Cairo has directly af Kathy Funk, Jean-Jacques Dethier • 13 min read
MER Article New Lands Irrigation Once irrigated and lush but now barren, the Mesopotamian plain circling the ruins of Gilgamesh’s Uruk makes present day calls for food security via vast new irrigation projects appear shortsighted. Irrigation today suffers the same problems as in ancient times -- salt buildup in the soil, collapsing Douglas Gritzinger • 5 min read
MER Article Said, A Bridge Through Time Laila Said, A Bridge Through Time: A Memoir (New York: Summit, 1985). Evelyne Accad • 2 min read
MER Article Cairo's Long Summer The current situation in Egypt has great potential for disaster. On the economic front, the government threatens to eliminate subsidies on food and other basic consumer commodities in order to reduce its current budget deficit of about $4 billion. The subsidies are currently costing $3.8 billion -- Ben Rose • 5 min read
MER Article Egypt's Infitah Bourgeoisie A recent story illustrates the political power of the bourgeoisie in contemporary Egypt: At the beginning of 1985, the Egyptian minister of economy, Mustafa al-Sa‘id, unveiled a set of new trade and banking laws. They aimed, among other things, at imposing a greater degree of Central Bank control ov Robert Vitalis • 5 min read
MER Article Mutiny in Cairo Wednesday, February 26. The story was on BBC at eight this morning. Central Security Forces (al-amn al-markazi) mutinied last night at the big camp at Dahshour and at two camps in Giza, on the road to Alexandria. Thousands of conscripts burst out of the camps and burned nearby luxury hotels. The gov Ann Lesch • 7 min read
MER Article Insurrectionary Women The study of women and politics has usually focused on the participation of women in the formal political arena -- that is, in politics as practiced by political parties, by people holding political office or, at most, by political opposition movements. In the Middle East context in particular, the Judith Tucker • 16 min read
MER Article Egypt's Left Opposition Party Holds Second Congress Cairo, July 2. The National Progressive Unionist Party (Tagammu‘) held its second national congress in Cairo on June 27-28, 1985. The Tagammu‘, Egypt’s principal left opposition party, is a united front formation including members of illegal communist organizations, independent Marxists, Nasserists, Joel Beinin • 4 min read
