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
MER Article Martha Wenger MERIP mourns the unexpected passing of Martha Wenger (1955–2006), who was the indefatigable assistant editor of Middle East Report from 1982–1993. During her lengthy tenure at MERIP (she started working with the collective in 1980), Martha was the moving force behind new features -- especially short, informational primers (Author not identified) • 5 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2006) Call it “unconventional,” “muted” or “low-grade,” but civil war in Iraq has begun. A Los Angeles Times investigation published on May 7 documented at least 3,800 violent deaths, many of them execution-style murders, in Baghdad alone during the first three months of 2006. The reason for each and every The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Spring 2006) Aghaie, Kamran Scot, ed. The Women of Karbala: Ritual Performance and Symbolic Discourses in Modern Shi‘i Islam (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005). Bahgat, Gawdat. Israel and the Persian Gulf: Retrospect and Prospect (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006). Balaghi, Shiva. The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article He Didn't Do It For Them Michela Wrong, I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation (New York: Harper Collins, 2005). When I first encountered Eritrea in 1976, I was deeply impressed with the movement heading up the former Italian colony’s 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia. During those Dan Connell • 11 min read
