MER Article An Interview with Daho Djerbal From May to early July 2001, massive protests rocked the Berber areas (Upper and Lower Kabylia) of Algeria, spreading on several occasions to Algiers and other major cities. On June 14, perhaps a million Kabyles “marched for democracy” in the capital, sparking clashes with police and leading the gov Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article Algerian Insurrection In the past ten years of political crisis, Algerians have been wary of public protest. Terrorized by relentless violence and impoverished by structural adjustment, they have repeatedly given the impression that what they want most is the chance to get on with their lives quietly. Despite the cancell Heba Saleh • 6 min read
MER Article Women and the Palestinian Left Palestinian women played a major role in the intifada of 1987-93, but have not, so far, in the current uprising. In January 2001, the Jerusalem-based magazine Between the Lines asked Eileen Kuttab, director of the Women’s Studies Institute at Birzeit University in the West Bank, to talk about the wi Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article The Search for Good Governance in Palestine The second Palestinian intifada, a spontaneous expression of anger against the persistent Israeli occupation, has been sustained since last September through a complicated interplay of forces. The early Israeli deployment of sharpshooters quickly shut down large-scale popular protests. In their place, a type of guerrilla resistance, given staunch moral support Charmaine Seitz • 7 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Fall 2001) Upon its installment in the White House, the second Bush administration was universally expected to be the loyal handmaiden of Big Oil. The US oil and gas industry lavished $1,387,975 upon the hastily assembled committee which planned the inaugural festivities for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. BP- The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2001) Amin, Galal. Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000). Brumberg, Daniel. Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). B’Tselem, Illusions of Rest The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article In the Shadow of Kurdish The arrest of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), at the beginning of 1999 and the almost instantaneous wave of protest across Europe, in Australia and later within Turkey briefly increased the prominence of the Kurdish struggle for autonomy in Turkey. As one o Joan Smith/Kocamahhul • 11 min read
MER Article Challenging the Embargo What impresses one is the will to ignore and reduce the Arabs that still exists in many departments of Western culture, and the unacceptable defeatism among some Arabs that a resurgent religion and indiscriminate hostility are the only answers. — Edward Said (1990) Hosam Aboul-Ela • 9 min read
MER Article Arab "World Music" in the US “World music,” defined as “a marketing term describing the products of musical cross-fertilization between the north -- the US and Western Europe -- and south,” [1] attracts a growing audience in the US. Since the mid-1980s, this term has come to incorporate just about any music of non-European origin -- Ted Swedenburg • 13 min read
MER Article Nature Has No Culture In April 2000, Abbas Kiarostami received the Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. While in the United States, Kiarostami visited New York City, where the Andrea Rosen Gallery mounted the first US exhibition of Kiarostami’s photographs. The photographs, which Anthony Shadid, Shiva Balaghi • 6 min read
MER Article Iranian Cinema Following the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the inauguration of the Islamic Republic, many predicted that new restrictions would kill off Iran's cinema. But Iranian film has survived, undergoing remarkable transformations in parallel with the wider changes in Iranian culture and society. Today, Ira Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 9 min read
MER Article How "Berber" Matters in the Middle of Nowhere In the High Atlas valley of the Agoundis, less than 100 kilometers from Marrakesh’s international airport, the lives of Berber-speaking farmers move in what seems a timeless rhythm. Men manipulate intricate stone canals, drawing water to steeply terraced plots of barley. Women in bangles and bright scarves lash huge David Crawford • 14 min read
