Current Analysis Chez Vous, Gitmo to Guangzhou We at MERIP are excited about the issue of Middle East Report on China and the Middle East coming out next week, featuring the work of two of my mentors, Engseng Ho [http://www.merip.org/author/engseng-ho] and MER editor Cemil Aydın [http://history.unc.edu/people/faculty/cemil-ayden/]. The issue wil Darryl Li • 4 min read
Current Analysis In-Laws and Outlaws A jury today convicted on all counts Sulayman Abu Ghayth, a Kuwaiti preacher who made televised statements in support of al-Qaeda shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001. As expected, war-on-terror liberals are seizing upon the outcome as proof that civilian courts are a superior alternative Darryl Li • 7 min read
Current Analysis Sulayman Abu Ghayth's Last Stand It has been a dramatic week in a federal courtroom just off Foley Square in southern Manhattan, where the trial of Sulayman Abu Ghayth has been taking place. The Kuwaiti preacher and one-time confidant of Osama bin Laden was pulled off a plane while transiting through Jordan last year under mysterio Darryl Li • 4 min read
Current Analysis "Journalists Are the Eyes of the World" on Guantánamo Lisa Hajjar’s spring lecture tour, entitled “Let’s Go to Guantánamo! An On-the-Ground Perspective on the Military Commissions,” explores secret renditions, black sites, torture, suppression of evidence, clandestineness and what it means to provide “legal counsel” to detainees in the post-September 1 Sheila Carapico • 2 min read
Current Analysis State of the Drones During his State of the Union Address last night, President Barack Obama said: We don’t need to send tens of thousands of our sons and daughters abroad, or occupy other nations. Instead, we will need to help countries like Yemen, Libya and Somalia provide for their own security, and help allies who Lisa Hajjar • 6 min read
Current Analysis Zero Dark Thirty's Losing Premise Zero Dark Thirty is a movie the CIA wants you to see. It tells a tale of the search for Osama bin Laden wherein the key lead comes from a man softened up by waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in a coffin-like box and other forms of pain and humiliation. It shows CIA agents extracting sub Chris Toensing • 2 min read
MER Article Fighting Over Drones After drones became the American weapon of choice in Pakistan sometime toward the end of the 2000s, a number of US counterinsurgency experts expressed their discomfort with the killer robots in various military-related forums. For these writers, the non-human nature of drones, their blunt force and Laleh Khalili • 9 min read
MER Article Anatomy of the US Targeted Killing Policy As President Barack Obama geared up for the 2012 campaign, he and his administration were eager to capitalize on their most bipartisan “victory” -- the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. With the one-year anniversary of bin Laden’s death approaching, top officials took to podiums to Lisa Hajjar • 25 min read
Current Analysis Plain Old Murder Drones are President Barack Obama’s weapon of choice in the war on terror. Since taking office, he has ordered over 280 drone strikes in Pakistan alone. That’s more than eight times as many as George W. Bush authorized and doesn’t even count the scores of other unmanned attacks in Somalia and Yemen Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis America's Pakistan American policymakers and their advisers are struggling with the question of Pakistan. The last ten years have produced a host of policy reviews, study group reports, congressional hearings and a few academic and more popular books, with more expected as the 2014 deadline for the end of US major com Sharon K. Weiner, Zia Mian • 21 min read
MER Article The September 11 Effect on Anthropology Conventional wisdom among scholars of the Middle East is that the September 11, 2001 attacks left behind a threatening professional environment. Graduate students and faculty alike speak of hostile infiltrators in their classrooms, inevitably bitter tenure battles and the self-censorship that both c Lara Deeb, Jessica Winegar • 5 min read
Current Analysis The Rites and Rights of Citizenship On Tuesday I became a citizen of the United States. Almost ten years ago, I was granted permanent residency. Between my Green Card and my naturalization certificate lies the seemingly endless decade of the “war on terror.” Moustafa Bayoumi • 8 min read
