MER Article Editor's Picks (Spring 2015) Abisaab, Rula Jurdi and Malek Abisaab. The Shiites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism and Hizballah’s Islamists (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015). Al-Saleh, Asaad. Voices of the Arab Spring: Personal Stories from the Arab Revolutions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). Amar, P (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Eric Rouleau Eric Rouleau (1926-2015) enjoyed an extraordinary career as one of the premier international correspondents writing about the Middle East. From 1955 to 1985 he wrote primarily for Paris-based Le Monde. Rouleau was a good friend of MERIP, and contributed articles and reviews to Middle East Report in Joe Stork • 2 min read
MER Article Lackner, Why Yemen Matters Helen Lackner, ed., Why Yemen Matters (London: Saqi, 2014). The essays in Why Yemen Matters, though written prior to the stunning takeover of much of the country by Ansar Allah, otherwise known as the Houthis, provide an excellent primer on the political and economic crises that underlie those stil Joe Stork • 3 min read
MER Article Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban and the War Through Afghan Eyes (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014). “There are no good men among the living, and no bad ones among the dead.” In the simplest sense, this Pashtun proverb is similar to the common injunction not to spea (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article The Politics of Iran's Satellite Era “Once,” the Iranian comedian Mehran Modiri notes, “our marital relationships were formed over long distances. An Iranian man would explore the world abroad with his father’s money. When the money ran out, he would suddenly miss home-cooked qormeh sabzi and ask his family to send him a pure Iranian b (Author not identified) • 16 min read
MER Article Palestinians and Latin America's Indigenous Peoples Palestinians have found an ally in the indigenous peoples of Latin America. Over the last decade, indigenous movements have been among the most vocal supporters in the region of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Bolivia’s Evo Morales, the first self-identified indigenous pre Cecilia Baeza • 11 min read
MER Article The Responsibilities of the Cartoonist Khalid Albaih is a political cartoonist “from the two countries of Sudan,” in his words, who is now based in Qatar. His drawings appear at his Facebook page, entitled Khartoon! in a play on the name of the Sudanese capital. Katy Kalemkerian and Khalid Medani spoke with him in Montreal on November 9, Katy Kalemkerian, Khalid Mustafa Medani • 22 min read
MER Article Can Art Cross Borders? “We are not just talking culture and art for the sake of having a vision (lil-tanzir), holding exhibitions irrespective of who comes or doesn’t. To the contrary, we have a mission!” At the press conference in Ramallah on October 21, 2014 for the second edition of the Qalandiya International Biennale Kirsten Scheid • 13 min read
MER Article Some Days Before the Day After The conflict in Syria has entered its fifth year, with no end in sight. There is no shortage of visions, however, for what Syria should look like after the fighting is over. Omar S. Dahi • 11 min read
MER Article The Everyday in Ramlat Bulaq Walking through the alleys of Ramlat Bulaq, an old working-class neighborhood in northern Cairo close to the banks of the Nile, I encountered an 11-year old girl playing in front of her house with other children her age. She stopped me and said, “Do you know ‘Amr, the man who was killed? He used to Omnia Khalil • 5 min read
MER Article Reexamining Human Rights Change in Egypt Over five tumultuous years in Egypt, the independent human rights community moved from a fairly parochial role chipping away at the Mubarak regime’s legitimacy, one torture case at a time, to media stardom in 2011, and from fielding a presidential candidate, who won over 134,000 votes, in 2012 to fa Heba Morayef • 11 min read
MER Article Rebels, Reformers and Empire For 20 years leading up to the uprisings of 2010-2011, Egypt and Tunisia suffered the ill effects of neoliberal economic reform, even as the international financial institutions and most economists hailed them as beacons of progress in the Arab world. For ten years preceding the revolts, workers and Karen Pfeifer • 21 min read
