MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2006) Aarts, Paul and Gerd Nonneman, eds. Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (New York: New York University Press, 2005). Abdul-Ahad, Ghaith, Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson and Rita Leistner. Unembedded: Four Independent Photographers on the War in Iraq (White River Ju The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Turkey's Tug of War To what extent should national security trump democracy? Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, this question has been pertinent everywhere, but it is especially pressing in Turkey. Marcie J Patton • 18 min read
MER Article Storming the Fences "'Black locusts' are taking over Morocco!" So ran the September 12, 2005 headline of al-Shamal, an Arabic-language Tangier newspaper, describing the forays of masses of in-transit sub-Saharan Africans trying to scale the security fences separating Morocco from the Spanish-ruled enclaves of Ceuta and Elie Goldschmidt • 17 min read
MER Article The Whole Range of Saddam Hussein's War Crimes On October 19, 2005, in a former presidential palace that had been hastily refurbished to resemble a respectable courtroom, Saddam Hussein went on trial. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam • 15 min read
MER Article Columns The pages of US newspapers are full of opinion pieces about Iraq -- almost none of them penned by Iraqis. Americans might be forgiven for believing that Iraqi writers are stunned into silence by the chaos enveloping their country, but that is far from the case. Below are two offerings, translated fr Shalash al-`Iraqi, Burhan al-Mufti • 5 min read
MER Article The Other Casualties of War in Iraq Labor practices in Iraq are under scrutiny, as contractors hire poor non-Iraqis to work low-wage jobs in a deadly environment. Migrant workers are employed through complex layers of companies working in Iraq. At the top of the pyramid is the US government, which assigned over $24 billion in contract Rebecca Milligan • 4 min read
MER Article Women in the Shadows of Democracy “Life would get better.” Women throughout Iraq told themselves that constantly during the first, cautiously hopeful months of the US-British occupation of their country. As the electricity blinked on and off, the water stopped running and desert-camouflaged tanks churned up the narrow streets of th Huda Ahmed • 7 min read
MER Article Women in Iraq At a press conference two weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq, flanked by four “Women for a Free Iraq,” [1] Paula Dobriansky, then undersecretary of state for global affairs, declared: “We are at a critical point in dealing with Saddam Hussein. However this turns out, it is clear that the women Nadje Al-Ali, Nicola Pratt • 17 min read
MER Article Afghan Wonderland The international occupation of Afghanistan is in bad shape. US casualties are up -- at times the ratio of killed and wounded to troops deployed is equal to that in Iraq, though of course the total numbers are not. Taliban attacks are intensifying, and now include frequent suicide bombings. Kidnappi Christian Parenti • 11 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 Tom Fox On November 26, 2005, Tom Fox and three other members of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) based in Iraq -- James Looney, Harmeet Singh and Norman Kimber -- were kidnapped by a previously unknown group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. Nearly four months later, on March 10, 2006, Deborah J. Gerner • 1 min read
MER Article Mohamed Sid-Ahmed Mohamed Sid-Ahmed (1928–2006), a long-serving contributing editor of this magazine, was born in Cairo into a cosmopolitan family whose landed wealth dated to the era of Mehmet Ali. He was a life-long activist in the communist and progressive movements, one of Egypt’s leading political writers and in Joel Beinin • 3 min read
