MER Article Dilemmas of Relief Work in Iraq The allied attack on Iraq in January-February 1991, and the hardship inflicted on the civilian population, prompted many UN agencies and non-governmental organizations to mobilize relief efforts in the country. I spent seven weeks in May and June leading a relief team in southern Iraq. Relief work w Atallah Kuttab • 4 min read
MER Article The Iraq Sanctions Catastrophe The continuing public health emergency in Iraq is taking a higher toll in civilian lives than the coalition bombing last January and February. This emergency could have been over by now if the Bush administration and its allies at the United Nations had accepted recommendations on humanitarian needs James Fine • 5 min read
MER Article Tilting Democracy John Simpson of the BBC is one of the most judicious and conservative members of my profession. He bravely holds the record for “staying on” in Baghdad during the bombing, at a time when many reporters found they had to keep appointments elsewhere. In his new book, From the House Christopher Hitchens • 4 min read
MER Article Gatekeepers The media have devoted a lot of space in recent months to the so-called political correctness issue, conjuring up a portrait of college campuses patrolled by ideological truth squads ready to punish any deviation from left-wing orthodoxy. In the July-August 1991 issue of Tikkun, Evan Carton hit the nail on Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Democracy and Liberation Movements: The Case of the SPLA The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) has been fighting a succession of Khartoum governments since 1983. Though its stated goal is to build a unified “new Sudan,” it is widely perceived as representing the interests of the south, where most of its fighting is done and which it now almost entirel Gill Lusk • 5 min read
MER Article Democracy Dilemmas in Jordan On September 2, 1991, the public liberties committee of the lower house of the Jordanian parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, issued a shocking report on torture of political detainees in Jordanian prisons. The shock was not that no one knew these things, but rather that the report had been issued Abla Amawi • 14 min read
MER Article Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World Democracy has become a catchword of Middle Eastern politics, replacing in some ways the concern with Arab socialism of the 1950s and 1960s. Can a combination of political and economic liberalism, of multi-party democracy and a market economy, help Arab governments enhance their efficiency and acquire legitimacy? Will it reduce Gudrun Kramer • 12 min read
MER Article Iranian Populism and Political Change in the Gulf From the political perspective, the main consequence of the Persian Gulf War has been the restoration of the status quo ante. In Iraq and Kuwait, dissidents who had expected the military defeat of Saddam Hussein to usher in a new era of freedom and democracy have been sorely disillusioned. In the sh Eric Hooglund • 7 min read
MER Article Syria's Parliamentary Elections On May 22 and 23, 1990, Syrian voters were called to the polls to elect a new parliament, the fifth People’s Council (Majlis al-Sha‘b) since Hafiz al-Asad came to power in 1970. The new Majlis would consist of a total of 250 instead of the 195 members in previous councils. The official media made cl Volker Perthes • 12 min read
MER Article The Resilience of Algerian Populism Before October 1988, Algeria struck most observers as one of the most radical political regimes in the Third World yet one of the most stable, a strong “socialist” fortress firmly in the hands of the National Liberation Front (FLN). Comfortably backed by oil and gas exports, an expert technocratic elite Boutheina Cheriet • 17 min read
MER Article Human Rights and Elusive Democracy The practice of human rights cannot wait until all political systems have become democratic. Human rights, in their vast range, can be protected under non-democratic regimes and violated under democratic ones. Still, human rights and democracy, though not interchangeable, can form the most humane re Ahmed Abdalla • 8 min read
MER Article The Democracy Agenda in the Arab World Political liberalization, if not democracy, seems to be on Arab agendas. Algeria is about to conduct national elections that could alter the character of the regime there. Jordan’s monarchy must now take account of a parliament in which opposition forces have considerable sway, following the first elections in a The Editors • 10 min read
