MER Article The Taliban, the Shari'a and the Pipeline Underlying the appearance of the Taliban movement, first of all, are factors internal to Afghan society, in particular the discrediting of the government and the “commandos” born out of the resistance to Soviet intervention. The rapid expansion of the militia, culminating with the conquest of Kabul Olivier Roy • 8 min read
MER Article Political Islam Under Attack in Sudan Through binoculars I can see clouds of reddish-brown dust billowing behind a Toyota pickup racing across the burnt savannah. A Dashka .50-caliber machine gun is mounted on its back. Crouched around me are a dozen guerrillas armed with AK-47s, hand grenades and light machine guns. The mood is casual, but Dan Connell • 9 min read
MER Article Street Vendors “Modern” is the way in which Cairo’s city administration would like to portray the Egyptian capital -- a Singapore-style, business metropolis stretching along the banks of the Nile, clean, rich and air-conditioned. In its latest campaign to create such an image, the city’s administration has identified unlicensed street Karim El-Gawhary • 2 min read
MER Article Sheikha in al-Warraq Clouds of smoke fill the room. Young women sit talking about the events of the day, while Sana’ inhales smoke from the strongest water pipe tobacco available on the market. “Everything else is for innocent children,” she scoffs. Her smoking habit symbolizes her social status. Sana’ is the sheikhat a Karim El-Gawhary • 5 min read
MER Article Community Participation and Environmental Change Cairo -- a city home to upwards of 14 million inhabitants -- is known to be one of the most polluted cities in the world. Although measures of pollutants in some places in Cairo exceed internationally recognized standards, popular collective action organized around environmental issues is rare. The Inas Tewfik • 6 min read
MER Article Environmental Conditions in Cairo In a 1994 assesment of environmental health risks prepared for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), American and Egyptian experts identified three leading environmental health risks for residents of Cairo: particulate matter air pollution, lead and microbiological diseases from envir Sally Ethelston • 3 min read
MER Article Who's to Blame? On the question of who or what should be blamed for endangering the environment (multiple answers possible), the largest number (72.1 percent) thought that “people in general” were at fault. Another sizable minority (35.7 percent) blamed factories, while 15.1 percent blamed “cars and transportation,” and 9.4 Sohair Mehanna, Nicholas Hopkins • 1 min read
MER Article Relocation and the Use of Urban Space in Cairo Sahar was only ten years old when her family, along with almost 5,000 Egyptian working-class families, was relocated from her neighborhood in the center of Cairo to a public housing project in al-Zawiya al-Hamra, in northern Cairo. The relocation project was part of Sadat’s open-door policy (infitah Farha Ghannam • 7 min read
MER Article Pollution, Popular Perceptions and Grassroots Environmental Activism An increase in media attention paid to environmental pollution, and a 1994 USAID report on environmental risk assessment in Cairo, [1] reflect and have engendered a growing concern for the environment in Cairo. While grassroots political action is rare, [2] there is an awareness among the general po Sohair Mehanna, Nicholas Hopkins • 9 min read
MER Article Giza Spaces “Itfaddalu ma‘ana,” Umm Ibrahim shouts across the alley to the next roof, “please eat with us.” “Shukran, Allah yikhalliki,” promptly comes the answer from Abu Samia and his wife, “thank you, may God keep you.” It is a sunny Friday afternoon in December, and both families have decided to eat lunch o Petra Kuppinger • 7 min read
MER Article An Expensive Toy Flanked by the Cairo citadel and the Nile on its eastern and western sides, respectively, Sayyida Zaynab, a neglected neighborhood, is but a stone’s throw away from the city center. Inhabited by poor families, its old buildings are rapidly deteriorating, while new owners haphazardly add extra rooms and extensions Fayza Hassan • 3 min read
MER Article Urban Planning and Growth in Cairo Descriptions of Cairo are dominated typically by the stark imagery of an extremely concentrated population mass near asphyxiation. From this perspective, one need look no further than its inhabited rooftops, its streets choked with traffic and pollution and its crowded cemeteries, where the living r Eric Denis • 12 min read
