MER Article Why War? Since August 5, 1990, we have seen the most extensive and rapid US military mobilization since the end of World War II. As of early October, more than 200,000 US troops in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region are drawing combat pay. President Bush declares this deployment was necessary to defend Ann Lesch, Joe Stork • 18 min read
MER Article Khalil, Republic of Fear Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear: Saddam’s Iraq (California Press, 1989). This book, first published a year ago at a time when -- with a few honorable exceptions -- most criticism of Iraq and its president was strangely muted, is a sophisticated and brilliantly savage denunciation of Arab populist Peter Sluglett • 5 min read
MER Article Iraq Since 1986: The Strengthening of Saddam In June 1986, we wrote that the situation in which Iraq found itself “underlines the vital need for the establishment of democracy...however broadly this may be defined.” Four years later, this plea has become more urgent; the regime has become even more powerful and repressive and has now extended Marion Farouk-Sluglett • 15 min read
MER Article Continuity and Change in Soviet Policy The day after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and US Secretary of State James Baker announced what they termed “an unusual step.” They issued a communique “jointly urging the international community to join them and suspend all supplies of arms to Iraq on an in Alain Gresh • 18 min read
MER Article Report from Paris: The Kurdish Conference “There’s not much talk about the Kurds because we have never taken any hostages, never hijacked a plane. But I am proud of this.” So wrote Abd al-Rahman Qassemlou, the Iranian Kurdish leader who was assassinated in Vienna last July. The Kurdish Institute of Paris and France-Libertes, a human rights Sami Zubaida • 4 min read
MER Article A Split in the Iraqi Communist Party? In the aftermath of the party’s fourth congress in October 1985, a group of 11 members led by an ex-alternate member of the central command of the party were expelled from the party. They had violated the party’s constitution by publicly circulating a memorandum attacking the new policy adopted by t Isam al-Khafaji • 2 min read
MER Article Iraq's Seventh Year According to the Iranian media, the seventh year of the war was again to be the “decisive year.” For Iraq it was a year of more “achievements and victories” under the leadership of the “militant leader.” On March 21,1987, the Persian New Year, Saddam Hussein brought thousands of demonstrators to the Isam al-Khafaji • 13 min read
MER Article Soviet Perceptions of Iraq From the Soviet point of view, Iraq under the Baath Party has been a troubling enigma, in terms of its place in the Third World generally and its political position in Middle East diplomacy. In the first respect, Iraq during the 1970s did not manage to consolidate itself as one of the USSR’s dependa Roderic Pitty • 19 min read
MER Article Nonneman, Iraq, the Gulf States and the War Gerd Nonneman, Iraq, the Gulf States and the War (London: Ithaca Press, 1986). Fred H. Lawson • 1 min read
MER Article CARDRI, Saddam's Iraq Committee Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq, Saddam’s Iraq: Revolution Or Reaction? (London: Zed Books, 1986). This book fills an important gap in the works that have been published on Iraq in the West. Here a number of scholars from Britain and Iraq survey the economic, class an Thabit Abdullah • 2 min read
MER Article When I Found Myself This story first appeared in Arabic in the Paris-based Kull al-‘Arab, September 3, 1986. The men in our unit branded me “the intellectual,” a term that connoted for them more sarcasm than conviction. They pronounced it in mincing tones, and played comically with its derivatives. This ought not, of Dia' Khudair • 14 min read
MER Article Iraq's Agrarian Infitah Egypt’s infitah is finding an echo in Iraq. The Iraqis are grappling with many of the same problems which caused the Egyptians to adopt such a policy: the shortcomings of public sector manufacturing and of collectivized and semi-collectivized agriculture. As in Egypt, the sudden and dramatic rise in Robert Springborg • 17 min read
