MER Article Letters While I was extremely glad to see a wealth of factual information in your recent issue "Horn of Africa: The Coming Storm" (MER 106), I was bothered by the fact that Halliday, Molyneux and, to a much lesser extent, Gilkes see Ethiopia continuing to move in a revolutionary direction “toward socialism. (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article The Syrian Labor Movement ‘Abdallah Hanna, al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya fi Suriya wa Lubnan, 1900-1945 [The Labor Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1900-1945] (Damascus: Dar Dimashq, 1973). Elisabeth Longuenesse • 6 min read
MER Article The Importance of Bodyguards Power in Syria today is based on a narrow, clannish system, more akin to what was described by Ibn Khaldoun 600 years ago than to Western “development theory” or “the non-capitalist road.” Family ties are key. In the Syrian army, a major can have more power than a general if he is, like Mouin Nasif, Gerard Michaud • 9 min read
MER Article Social Bases for the Hama Revolt During the first week of February 1982, serious fighting broke out in Syria between residents of the north-central city of Hamah and the government’s armed forces. A Syrian army raid on a number of buildings that were suspected of being hideouts for local cells of the Muslim Brothers precipitated th Fred H. Lawson • 18 min read
MER Article Salah al-Din al-Bitar's Last Interview We met in Paris, in a small office on the top floor of a building looking out on a courtyard. Salah al-Din al-Bitar answered my questions in what was to be his last recorded interview. The year before, he had founded al-Ihya’ al-‘Arabi, the publication named after the movement that preceded the Baat Marie-Christine Aulas • 10 min read
MER Article Syria's Muslim Brethren Who are the Muslim Brethren in Syria? What is their significance socially? How are they related to Syria's social structure? What is the social meaning of their ideas and values? Are these ideas and values responses to distinguishable conditions and interests of one or more identifiable social group Hanna Batatu • 29 min read
MER Article The Asad Regime and Its Troubles Syria, under continuous Baathist rule since 1963, has relinquished its image of the 1950s and early 1960s as a peculiarly ungovernable and unstable state. Next year the regime hopes to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. A good measure of its maturity is that a majority of Syrians were born after t Alasdair Drysdale • 30 min read
MER Article From the Editors (November/December 1982) The massacre at Sabra and Shatila camps was an episode that immediately transcended the brutal war it was part of. The Israeli commission of inquiry seems almost a distraction from the obvious responsibility of the Begin government in this affair. Many of Begin’s critics regard the massacre as an in The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Relief Efforts in the South Richard Butler is director of the Middle East office for the National Council of Churches. Jim Paul interviewed him in New York in August 1982. When were you in Lebanon? James Paul • 5 min read
MER Article The Prisoners of Israel The Israeli Defense Forces have taken some 9,000 to 10,000 Palestinians and Lebanese prisoner in south Lebanon. Because the Israelis have not released lists of names or figures, the exact number of prisoners currently held cannot be determined. The IDF itself has released its estimate of 7,000 to 9, Judith Tucker • 8 min read
MER Article US and Israeli Weapons in Lebanon I visited Muhammad Sannoun, fourteen and a half years old, at his home in Burj al-Barajna to ask him why he had touched the triangle-shaped cluster bomb that had blown off his right arm. “It looked like some kind of aluminum cup painted red on the top, yellow on the bottom, with a black casing on th June Disney • 7 min read
MER Article The War of Numbers How many people have been killed and wounded in the course of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon? Precise numbers have been hard to assemble because of unsettled conditions, lack of free access to all areas, the incomplete recovery of bodies buried under the rubble, censorship and the tendency on the p Judith Tucker • 9 min read
