MER Article From Peacekeeping to Peace Enforcement The US decision to intervene in Somalia in December 1992 came well after the two-year-old crisis had finally hit the headlines. The power vacuum that followed the flight of Siad Barre from Mogadishu in January 1991, and the subsequent civil war in the capital, particularly the fighting between Novem Patrick Gilkes • 13 min read
MER Article The Saudi Economy: A Few Years Yet Until Doomsday The word seems to be getting around: Saudi Arabia confronts a set of uncomfortable and unwelcome economic choices that will affect the royal family’s relations with its own citizen-subjects and with its big power allies in the West. For the past two decades, the kingdom’s treasury has served Fareed Mohamedi • 10 min read
MER Article Elections and Mass Politics in Yemen The Yemeni parliamentary election of April 27, 1993 marks a watershed for the Arabian Peninsula. The multi-party contest for 301 constituency-based seats, and the period of unfettered public debate and discussion that preceded it, represents the advent of organized mass politics in a region where political power has long remained Sheila Carapico • 13 min read
MER Article Letting the Colonel In from the Cold On the last day of May 1993, some 200 Libyan pilgrims alighted from buses that had just crossed from Egypt into the Israeli-occupied Gaza. Strip on the way to Jerusalem. None of the rhetoric in the statement the pilgrims issued at the end of their stay, duly broadcast by the Libyan “Voice of the Gre Dennis Sammut • 7 min read
MER Article Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War Louise L’Estrange Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijani Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge, 1992). Moyara de Moraes Ruehsen • 3 min read
MER Article Korn, Stalemate David A. Korn, Stalemate: The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970 (Westview, 1992). In a world conditioned to perceive the rhythm of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the vantage point of downtown Tel Aviv, the Egyptian-Israeli war of attrition of 1969-1970 along t Mouin Rabbani • 2 min read
MER Article Clinton, Israel and the Hamas Expulsion On December 16, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin issued Order 97, authorizing military commanders to “expel inciters from among the population of their locality.” Israeli forces that day seized, bound and blindfolded 418 Palestinian men and threw them onto buses which then headed north. The military censor forbade the broadcast or The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article Books on Oil Simon Bromley, American Hegemony and World Oil (Pennsylvania State, 1991). Daniel Yergin, The Prize (Simon and Schuster, 1990). These two books present a historical account of the development of the international oil industry and the struggle for control of oil over the past century. Both authors Majid Alsayegh • 4 min read
MER Article Gulf War Journalism John J. Fialka, Hotel Warriors: Covering the Gulf War (Woodrow Wilson Center, 1991). John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Hill and Wang, 1992). Jacqueline Sharkey, Under Fire: US Military Restrictions on the Media from Grenada to the Persian Gulf (Center for Barbara Harlow • 4 min read
MER Article Israel Stonewalls US Aid Investigation An Israeli general and a General Electric official diverted more than $40 million in US military aid to Israel from 1984 to 1990 for unauthorized military projects, according to an ongoing investigation by the House Commerce and Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Presenting his pa Jack Colhoun • 4 min read
MER Article Money, Media and Policy Consensus Although the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) was established only in 1985, by the time the Bush administration came to office in January 1989 it had become the non-governmental organization with the greatest influence over US Middle East policy. WINEP built its success on ample fun Joel Beinin • 16 min read
MER Article From the Editors (January/February 1993) “Propaganda to Journalism” was the New York Times headline on a year-end story about mass media in former Socialist countries, without the slightest self-consciousness about how US coverage of events like the Somalia intervention exemplifies “journalism to propaganda.” Perhaps there have been equall The Editors • 2 min read
