Middle East Quarterly articles from January 2006

Middle East Quarterly archives from January 2006

How Afghan captivity shaped my feminism.
January 1, 2006... On December 21, 1961, when I returned from Afghanistan, I kissed the ground at New York City's Idlewild Airport. I weighed 90 pounds and had hepatitis. Although I would soon become active in the American civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, and...

Qadhafi unrepentant.(Libya and the U.S.)(Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi)
January 1, 2006... Despite Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi's international rehabilitation, the Libyan leader remains resistant to reform and intolerant of dissent. His ultimate goal--preservation of power--remains unchanged. His decision to abandon his weapons of mass...

The unique Libyan case.(Libya and the U.S.)
January 1, 2006... At first glance, recent U.S. diplomatic success with the Libyan government seemed easy. After two decades of international pariah status, Libya committed in 2003 not only to forswear terrorism and abandon its weapons programs but also to reveal...

Hezbollah's strategic threat to Israel.
January 1, 2006... In May 2005, as international pressure increased for Hezbollah's disarmament, (1) the group's spiritual leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, announced, "They say [we have] 12,000 rockets... I say more than 12,000 rockets." (2) It was the first...

Zionism in crisis.(Gaza Strip settlements )
January 1, 2006... Zionism is in crisis. Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip settlements in August 2005 exposed deep fissures within Israeli society and politics. But Israel s unilateral disengagement and the preceding decade's peacemaking did not create the...

Arab liberals argue about America.
January 1, 2006... Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American analyst, notes the contradiction of "an Arab world that besieges American embassies for visas and at the same time celebrates America's calamities." (1) But this seeming paradox actually makes sense. The more...

Syrians run up $11M phone bill in Lebanon.(Brief article)
January 1, 2006... BEIRUT--Lebanon's state-run telephone system has billed the government for more than $11 million in unpaid telephone charges run up by Syrian troops before they left the country earlier this year after a nearly three-decade occupation. ...

Lynne Stewart, Jihadi lawyer.
January 1, 2006... A federal court will soon sentence attorney Lynne Stewart to prison for "providing material support" to terrorists, among related charges. (1) The charges center upon her assistance to Egyptian sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman who, from a federal...

Juan Cole and the decline of Middle Eastern studies.
January 1, 2006... When the Middle East Studies Association's annual conference ends on November 22, 2005, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole (1) is scheduled to become the organization's president. The association describes itself as." A...

Akbar Ganji: "justice in the face of tyranny".
January 1, 2006... Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji earned the Islamic Republic's ire in 1999 as he investigated the murders the previous year of several prominent Iranian dissidents. His reports implicated former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, Expediency...

Iran bans American films.(DOCUMENT)(Brief article)
January 1, 2006... Iran has banned American and other films that promote Western culture in a move to combat what the Islamic government calls attempts to damage and humiliate Eastern traditions and culture. Iranian state-run television said on Thursday that...

Depeat of terror.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... To the Editor Newt Gingrich makes excellent points in his recent article, "Defeat of Terror, Not Roadmap Diplomacy, Will Bring Peace" (Summer 2005), but some of his ideas do not hold up to scrutiny. He wants to keep Israel from...

Revising the Armenian Genocide.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... To the Editor: I must express my delight at reading Guenter Lewy's balanced treatment of the Turkish-Armenian conflict ("Revisiting the Armenian Genocide," Fall 2005) in the pages of the Middle East Quarterly. I have the utmost admiration...

Tunisian Reporm.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... To the Editor: Your interview with Neila Charchour Hachicha on Tunisian politics ("Tunisia's Election Was Undemocratic at All Levels," Summer 2005) gave a platform to a political unknown. She is hardly one "of Tunisia's chief dissident...

Pure Pappe.(A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. By Ilan Pappe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.333 pp. $60 ($28, paper). Pappe is the odd man out among the so-called New Historians. Unlike his colleagues, who pretend to...

American Oil Diplomacy in the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... American Oil Diplomacy in the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. By Gawdat Bahgat. Gainesville, Fla: University Press of Florida, 2003.214 pp. $39.95. Energy will be a defining issue in international relations in the twentieth-first...

Arab Human Development Report 2004: Towards Freedom in the Arab World.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Arab Human Development Report 2004: Towards Freedom in the Arab World. United Nations Development Program. New York: UNDP, 2005.248 pp. $24.95, paper. The first Arab Human Development Report in 2002 broke from the usual blame-the-foreigner...

The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq. By George Packer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. 454 pp. $25. "The story of the Iraq war is a story of ideas about the role of the United States in the world, and of the individuals who...

The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power. By As'ad AbuKhalil. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004. 248 pp. $9.95. AbuKhalil, a representative of the American academic Left and a Lebanese-born academic who...

British Muslims: Loyalty and Belonging.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... British Muslims: Loyalty and Belonging. Edited by Mohammed Siddique Sedon, Dilwar Hussain, Nadeem Malik. Markfield, U.K.: Islamic Foundation, 2003.116 pp. $8.95, paper. This summary of a seminar opens with an introduction by Manazir Ahsan...

Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran.(Iran's Nuclear Option: Tehran's Quest for the Atom Bomb)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran. By Kenneth R. Timmerman. New York: Crown Forum, 2005.392 pp. $25.95. Iran's Nuclear Option: Tehran's Quest for the Atom Bomb. By AIJ. Venter. Havertown, Pa.: Casemate, 2004.451 pp....

Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington. By Paul Sperry. Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Current, 2005.360 pp. $24.99. Sperry portrays his work as "an indictment of subversive Muslim leaders representing Saudi...

Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists. By Raymond William Baker. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. 309 pp. $29.95. Baker's books on the Abdel Nasser and Sadat eras, 1954-81, bespeak his familiarity with the...

Kidnapped in Yemen: One Woman's Amazing Escape from Captivity.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Kidnapped in Yemen: One Woman's Amazing Escape from Captivity. By Mary Quin. Guilford, Conn.: The Lyons Press, 2005.248 pp. $23.95. In her mid-40s, a successful executive just placed in charge of Xerox's Color Solutions Business Unit, Quin...

The Kurds in Iraq.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The Kurds in Iraq. By Kerim Yildiz. Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2005.236 pp. $75 ($22.50, paper). The liberation of Iraq propelled Iraqi Kurdistan into the international limelight. The Iraqi Kurdish militia plays an important role in Iraq;...

Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco. By David L. Phillips. Boulder: Westview Press, 2005.292 pp. $25. Losing Iraq illustrates what went wrong with planning for post-liberation Iraq although not for the reasons its author,...

Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom: The Role of Military Intelligence Assessments.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom: The Role of Military Intelligence Assessments. By Gregory Hooker. Washington: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2005. 114 pp. $19.95, paper. What was the biggest intelligence...

Sudan: The Contemporary Middle East.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Sudan: The Contemporary Middle East. By Abdel Salam Sidahmed and Alsir Sidahmed. New York and Abigdon: Routledge Curzon, 2005. 180pp. $105. The Sidahmeds deal with the political history of post-colonial Sudan and a short but weighty...

Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. By Dore Gold. New York: Crown Forum, 2004.320 pp. $25.95 ($14.95, paper). Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, tackles the infrastructure of the...

US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. By David Houghton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 252 pp. $75 ($29.99, paper; $10, digital). Houghton, lecturer in government at the University of Essex, has written a case study...

Warlords and Merchants: The Lebanese Business and Political Establishment.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Warlords and Merchants: The Lebanese Business and Political Establishment. By Kamal Dib. Reading: Ithaca Press, 2004. 333 pp. $49.50. Dib, an economist by profession, has written an interesting book, especially with respect to the economy...

Dissident watch: Sami Angawi.
January 1, 2006... In 1975, Sami Angawi, a Saudi architect and scion of a respected merchant family, founded the Haj Research Center to preserve the history and architecture of Islam's holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Both cities once boasted centuries-old...