Middle East Quarterly articles from September 2004

Middle East Quarterly archives from September 2004

Does human rights law apply to terrorists?
September 22, 2004... From Manhattan to Mindanao, Islamist zealots draw no distinction between combatants and noncombatants. Jihadists target women, children, and the elderly without even the pretence of discrimination, in June 2004, an Al-Qaeda affiliated group...

Arafat's Swiss bank account.
September 22, 2004... Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are known internationally for the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. As ruinous as that violence has been, another cancer permeates Arafat's administration; its name is corruption. From...

Is Israel's security barrier unique?
September 22, 2004... On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel's security barrier was a violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law. Eleven days later, the United Nations General Assembly voted 150-6 to condemn...

Understanding Muqtada al-Sadr.
September 22, 2004... When U.S. forces rolled through Iraq in March and April 2003, most Shi'ites greeted them as liberators. But, the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq unleashed an array of forces that had been dormant or suppressed for more than three...

Where goes the U.S.-Turkish relationship?
September 22, 2004... Throughout the 1990s, Turkish foreign policy analysts had an easy job. After all, Turkish foreign policy was predictable. Ankara cooperated enthusiastically with Washington, whether in the Middle East or in the Balkans. Turkey aligned itself...

Remembering Hume Horan (1934-2004).(Ambassador Hume Alexander Horan )(Editorial)(Obituary)
September 22, 2004... Editor's preface. Ambassador Hume Alexander Horan passed away on July 22, 2004, in Fairfax, Virginia, at age sixty-nine. A statesmen and a scholar, Horan was perhaps the most accomplished Arabic linguist to serve in the U.S. Foreign Service....

Iran awards $120,000 to judo champion for not fighting an Israeli.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2004... TEHRAN -- Iran's official sporting body has awarded $120,000 to its world judo champion Arash Miresmaeili for refusing to fight an Israeli during the Athens Olympics, a newspaper report said Saturday. "Miresmaeili's act was extremely...

Salem Chalabi: judging Saddam.(Interview)(Interview)
September 22, 2004... On May 8, 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council named Salem Chalabi as head of the Iraq Special Tribunal which is to try former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his top aides. Born in Baghdad in 1963, Chalabi did his early schooling in Lebanon...

Al-Kut, Iraq: after-battle report.(Document)
September 22, 2004... In April 2004, followers of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr launched a well-coordinated uprising across southern Iraq. While Western media focused on events in Sadr City, Najaf, and Karbala, violence occurred elsewhere as well. A Coalition...

Egypt's Mufti approves synchronized call to prayer.(Document)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2004... CAIRO -- Egypt's highest authority on Islamic law endorsed on Saturday a controversial government plan to synchronize the call to prayer in Cairo's mosques and put an end to the present haphazard system based on the timekeeping of each...

Iran's link to Al-Qaeda: the 9-11 Commission's evidence.(Document)
September 22, 2004... While the State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 report (1) labeled Iran "the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2003," the Bush administration has vet to agree on a national security presidential directive to define U.S....

Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025. By Mark Palmer. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003. 348 pp. $27.95. In his 1982 speech before the British parliament, President Ronald Reagan...

Crisis: the Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises. By Henry Kissinger. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. 564 pp. $30 ($18, paper). In these gleanings from his voluminous memoirs, Kissinger lets us eavesdrop on his telephone...

Defending Israel: A Controversial Plan Toward Peace.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Defending Israel: A Controversial Plan toward Peace. By Martin Van Creveld. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2004. 184 pp. $21.95. Van Creveld, a military historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues that Israel...

Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda. Edited by Christopher Preble. Washington: The Cato Institute, 2004. 96 pp. $15, paper. U.S. forces will "stay as long as necessary in Iraq,"...

Hezbollah: the Changing Face of Terrorism.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism. By Judith Palmer Harik. London: I.B. Taurus and Co., 2004. 241 pp. $24.95. Given Hezbollah's role as a major actor in Lebanese politics and as one of the most active armed Islamist groups, it would...

House of Bush, House of Saud: the Secret Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. By Craig Unger. New York: Scribner, 2004. 357 pp. $26 ($15, paper). In his filial Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore leaves profoundly...

Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia. By Thomas Lippman. Boulder: Westview Press, 2004. 390 pp. $27.50. From his first line--"An American shopper would feel right at home in the Azizia supermarket on Mecca...

Israelis and Palestinians: Why Do They Fight? Can They Stop?(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Israelis and Palestinians: Why Do They Fight? Can They Stop? By Bernard Wasserstein. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 226 pp. $25 ($16, paper). Wasserstein's pervious book, Divided Jerusalem, received praise for a balanced approach...

The Missing Peace: the Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace. By Dennis Ross. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004. 872 pp. $35. For thirteen years, Ross was at the center of the U.S. government's Arab-Israeli peace...

The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. By Kanan Makiya. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004. 153 pp. $18.95, paper. In 1958, Baghdad had just three public sculptures. During the revolution, mobs destroyed one of King Faisal and...

Right to Exist: a Moral Defense of Israel's Wars.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars. By Yaacov Lozowick. New York: Random House, 2003. 326 pp. $26 ($15, paper). In a work both impassioned and measured, Lozowick offers a moral evaluation of Israel's conduct in successive...

Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude. By Robert Baer. New York: Crown Publishers, 2003. 226 pp. $24.95 ($13.95, paper). Baer's main theme in this informal memoir by a colorful ex-Central Intelligence Agency...

Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq. Edited by David Miller. London: Pluto Press, 2004.310 pp. $69.95 ($19.95, paper). There is only one thing worse than a radical leftist propagandist publishing paranoid...

Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East. By Hussein Agha, Shai Feldman, Ahmad Khalidi, and Zeev Schiff: Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. 225 pp. $44 ($22, paper). Track-II talks are "discussions by non-officials of conflicting parties...

Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic. By Wilfried Buchta. Washington, D.C. and New York: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000. 239 pp. $19.95, paper. This is an immensely valuable study. It identities...

EU lifts sanctions on Libya.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2004... BRUSSELS -- Libya took another stride out of diplomatic isolation yesterday when the European Union agreed to lift all sanctions against it. The move came two days after the U.S. president. George Bush. formally ended Washington's broad...

Gaddafi's son in brawl with French police after car chase.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2004... PARIS -- The youngest son of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, was involved m a high-speed police chase through central Paris that ended in fisticuffs, according to French officials. The Porsche-driving Moutassim Gaddafi, 28, nicknamed...

Dissident watch: Fathi El-Jahmi.(Commentary)
September 22, 2004... U.S. relations with Libya are undergoing a renaissance. On June 28, 2004, after a 24-year break, Washington and Tripoli resumed diplomatic ties. On September 19, 2004, President Bush released $1.3 billion in frozen Libyan assets. Four days...

Tigris tales.
September 22, 2004... One of the most interesting things about Baghdad these days, apart from all the car bombs, suicide bombers and errant mortars, is the transformation of our city into a huge collage of posters and billboards. And I don't mean the billboards...

Freddie Mercury gets official seal of approval in Iran.(Not a Parody)
September 22, 2004... Iranian authorities approve of Rock band Queen's tunes that have social theme, leaving out love songs. TEHRAN -- Rock band Queen, fronted by outlandish gay icon Freddie Mercury, has become the first rock band to be given the official seal...