photo beirut

Representing the Middle East: Looking for the everyday

This past week I participated in an interesting "webinar" about stereotypes in photographic representation of the Middle East through Open-i, which is an online photojournalism education network. Some of the audience members are involved in a World Press Photo course for photographers in the Middle East and North Africa. The other presenters were Alexandra Avakian (National Geographic photographer) and Laura Junka (photographer and PhD student in cultural studies in London). Rula Halawani (photographer based in Jerusalem) was to be there too but unfortunately couldn't attend. Paul Lowe (former Magnum photographer, now with Panos) was the organizer and moderator.

My comments revolved around how in order to understand something of the politics of photographs we need to know how they are constructed by various political, social and cultural processes. I also mentioned how photojournalism over the past 50 years or so has come to more and more emphasize the dramatic moment, the emotional story, and artistic framing and composition.

The problem with this I think is that the quieter moments, the mundane, the everyday, are often left out. But it’s on that level of daily life where the big political and structural forces of oppression, poverty, discrimination, or occupation, affect most people.

Even if we are not in positions to affect the structure of forces that produce the stereotypes, we can still promote the creation of new and different photographic work and find ways to help audiences, teachers, and editors appreciate different visions and visual styles, like Alexandra, Laura and Rula do.

I think Rula  was effective in showing this with her project "Intimacy” where we see the hands of Palestinians and Israeli soldiers handling ID cards and bags at checkpoints.

She doesn’t show faces or dramatic interactions, strong emotions or conflict. She captures the daily, normal tensions of living under occupation, which I think says a lot more about most Palestinian’s lives than photos of boys throwing stones, as important as those are too. Rula's project confronts stereotypes because the images don’t fit into the standard conventions of photos of the Middle East.

Alexandra's photo of a man selling fish in Gaza in 1993 while an Israeli soldier jumps out of his jeep to chase stone-throwing Palestinians also gets at what I'm talking about.

Caption: Gaza City, Gaza, July 1993: A man sells fish while an Israeli soldier jumps out of his truck to chase Palestinians who had been throwing stones. Credit: Alexandra Avakian

Normal life continues during conflict, as seen here, but is often not depicted. This photo is not about contrasts or surprising juxtapositions. We can see from the man's demeanor that this is just a part of trying to live life in Gaza. Israeli military actions were ongoing and closely intertwined with daily life for Palestinians. Alexandra told us that most of the photos in her new book Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World, were rejects -- not used at the time. They are complex and layered, maybe too much so for the prevailing conventions, especially in the late 1980s through the 1990s.

Laura spoke eloquently about the difficulties of photographing Palestinians as neither terrorists nor victims. She spent the summer of 2003 taking photos of Palestinians at leisure as a way to get beyond these tropes. But at the same time she was careful to point out that violence and occupation were still always part of everyone's lives and evidence of that lingers in the photos. She explained that in this photo of a family at the beach there are layers of important information that are only available through explanatory captions.

Caption: Summer at the beach in Gaza, 2003. Credit: Laura Junka

The family has borrowed this tent from their neighbors who received it from the Red Cross when their house was bulldozed by the Israeli government in retaliation for one son's involvement with violent resistance to occupation. Knowing this adds a whole new dimension to the scene, creating a poignant and complex sense of joy mixed with sorrow.

The emphasis in photography of the Middle East is usually on conflict and contradiction, on up-close confrontations between individuals. And of course, as in most photography, there is an emphasis on depicting people.

But there are other visual modes to powerfully depict realities the region. For example see a double page spread in the most recent issue of Middle East Report where we used photos of road blocks by Dirk-Jan Visser.

 

Blocked by Dirk-Jan Visser.

Here is the text I wrote to go with the photo sequence:

"Foregoing the usual depiction of Israel and Palestine as a site of dramatic confrontations between individuals, Dirk-Jan Visser has chosen instead to reveal a more mundane and insidious aspect of Israeli power. Photographing some of the more than 500 road blocks throughout the West Bank in a repetitive and neutral style, without the embellishments of unusual camera angles or clever compositions, these seemingly innocuous places add up to a typology of obstacles, attesting powerfully to an extreme disruption of Palestinian life."

Although stereotypes and conventions of depicting the Middle East are still a problem, I do see more and more photographers pushing the boundaries, looking for new visual styles. Some are also finding ways to visualize structural political problems (the road blocks typology is an example) and to expand the repertoire of images of the region in order to more fully represent the multiplicity of people's identities and experiences.

Apartheid and Beyond - new issue of Middle East Report

The latest issue of Middle East Report is now available. Below is the blurb about the contents. Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies at MERIP’s website. Included in the issue is a photo essay on road blocks by Dirk-Jan Visser in addition to the usual great work by talented photographers.

Middle East Report 253  Winter 2009

APARTHEID AND BEYOND

“Apartheid” is a word bomb. It explodes upon the page, laying bare memories of the regime of racial discrimination that prevailed in South Africa until 1994. So it was no small thing when the South African Human Sciences Research Council issued a report in 2009 concluding that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip is a “colonial enterprise that implements a system of apartheid.” The winter 2009 issue of Middle East Report, “Apartheid and Beyond,” asks what it means that such language is gaining currency and whether it holds promise for bringing peace to the strife-torn land of Israel-Palestine.

As political geographer Oren Yiftachel demonstrates, it is increasingly difficult to speak of separate political systems in the country, a state of Israel “side by side” with a Palestinian proto-state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Rather, settlements, bypass roads and walls are creating one Israeli system of rule from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. But different groups of people living under that system have very different sets of rights and prerogatives. Anthropologist Julie Peteet traces the genealogy of the comparison between the post-1967 occupation and South African apartheid, finding in the differences between the two experiences reason to look for a new language to talk about Israel-Palestine.

One key difference is in the realm of labor: Whereas in white-ruled South Africa, the country’s economy was built on the backs of black workers, Israel is no longer dependent on the toil of Palestinians. Economist Jennifer Olmsted measures the growth of unemployment in the Occupied Territories and explains why the jobs have disappeared. There is also severe inequality within Israel, as Monica Tarazi shows in her essay on the dispossession of the Bedouin of the Naqab. Global protest against these inequalities is increasingly taking the shape of calls for various types of boycott. Ursula Lindsey reports on the efforts of Egyptian intellectuals to enforce a cultural boycott, as well as “anti-normalization.”

Also featured: Nazanin Shahrokni inquires into why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not known as a friend of freedoms for women, nominated three women as cabinet ministers; Rola Abimourched investigates working and living conditions for migrant domestic workers in Jordan; and more.
---

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the implications of US and international policy for the region.

New issue of Middle East Report out now - The US in the Middle East

The latest issue of the excellent quarterly magazine Middle East Report is out now. Ok, I'm biased, being the photo editor, but it is widely respected for its analysis and I do think the photos are fantastic overall.

Photographers whose work appears in this issue include: Karim Ben Khelifa, Balazs Gardi, Eros Hoagland, Luiz Maximiano and Stephanie Keith.

In this issue be sure to check out the illuminating book review by Waleed Hazbun on US foreign policy towards the Middle East.

If you're going to the Middle East Studies Association conference in Washington, DC this weekend, stop by the MERIP booth in the book exhibit to say hello (and get issues of the magazine).

[Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies online.]

Middle East Report 249
Winter 2008

SHRINKING CAPITAL: THE US IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The Bush administration entered office in 2000 determined to extend the
global dominion of the United States into "a new American century." Yet as
President George W. Bush prepared to depart the White House, the National
Intelligence Council released a report surmising that Washington "will have
less power in a multipolar world than it has enjoyed for many decades." The
winter 2008 issue of Middle East Report, "Shrinking Capital: The US in the
Middle East," examines the Bush-era changes in US regional policy -- and the
continuities with the past -- that have left Washington's clout diminished.

As Yahya Sadowski writes, the Bush administration's go-it-alone spirit -- 
and refusal even to speak to regional actors it does not like -- wound up
sparking a rash of diplomatic initiatives undertaken by US allies without US
approval or participation. Political scientist Waleed Hazbun situates the
Bush failures, which have caused such great damage to the Middle East, in
the historical sweep of US grand strategy and identifies a worrisome lack of
fresh thinking on the subject in the tomes of the Democratic foreign policy
establishment.

It is important to recall the legacies of the Philippines and Vietnam, as
Laleh Khalili writes, when evaluating the newness of Bush-sanctioned torture
and, for that matter, the US military's current focus on counterinsurgency.
Jason Brownlee finds more disturbing echoes of Vietnam in the 2008 field
manual covering "stability operations" -- occupation and militarized nation
building by another name. And, as sociologist Louise Cainkar demonstrates,
the draconian post-September 11 program of detention and deportation of
Arabs and Muslims could not have occurred so easily without the history of
anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment in the US.

Cultural historian Melani McAlister offers a different lesson in her essay
on the global engagement of American evangelicals: Their adoption of the
language of human rights to highlight persecution of Christians in Africa,
Asia and the Middle East has simultaneously drawn upon Islam-bashing themes
and pushed the activism of many evangelicals in a more liberal and less
parochial direction.

Also featured: Sandra Beth Doherty looks at why so many women in Lebanon go
under the knife; Tamir Sorek reviews Aziza Khazzoom's Shifting Ethnic
Boundaries and Inequality in Israel; and more.

---

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information
Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in
Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the
Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the
implications of US and international policy for the region.

60 years of the Universal Human Rights Declaration - photo slide show

Oeil Public, a French photo agency that I like to use for excellent photos of the Middle East, has a poignant and compelling slide show commemorating 60 years of the UN's Universal Human Rights Declaration. As you might imagine, from a photojournalistic/documentary agency, the photos almost all show violations of (not respect for) human rights. It's powerfully done. I rarely sit through online slide shows, but this one was riveting (the music adds a sense of urgency). Just click on the link above and it will start up.

One of the photographers whose work appears in the slide show is Karim Ben Khelifa, whose photos I use occasionally for Middle East Report, and who focuses on Islam and the Arab world.

Politics of Youth: New issue of Middle East Report out

The latest issue of Middle East Report, Winter 2007, is out. I wrote about my work finding photos for this issue recently, in this post.

 

Here's the press release:

Middle East Report 245
Winter 2007

THE POLITICS OF YOUTH

In many countries of the Middle East, as in other developing regions, young people between the ages of 15 and 24 make up a fifth or more of the population. These youth face serious socio-economic problems, including unemployment, under-employment and delayed marriage, but not the least of their burdens are the expectations and anxieties of their elders. In recent decades, indeed, youth have come to be seen as a problem in and of themselves. "The Politics of Youth," the winter 2007 issue of Middle East Report, measures the image against reality.

Anthropologist Ted Swedenburg sketches the "imagined youths" that preoccupy policy planners and pundits in the Middle East and the West. Youth are perceived both as people who need to be protected -- from radical political Islam or from "vulgar" popular culture -- and people from whom the social order may need to be protected. A corollary, among Western observers, is to see youth as the inevitable emancipators of closed political systems.

Real Middle Eastern youth confound elite hopes and fears in ways both conventionally political and mundane. In Egypt, finds political scientist Marc Lynch, young Muslim Brothers are challenging their older leaders' platforms and habits of mind with the open discussion fostered by their blogs. In Beirut, as Lara Deeb and Mona Harb demonstrate, the purchasing power of pious Shi'i youth is generating an "Islamic" culture of fun to parallel the hard-partying "Paris of the Middle East" downtown. In Israel, argues sociologist Tamir Sorek, young fans of Likud-supporting Beitar Jerusalem and the Arab team from Sakhnin both use the soccer stadium to demand full integration as citizens, rendering the Beitar-Sakhnin matches more than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in miniature.

In a special report, James McDougall checks in on the recovery of Algeria from its long and brutal civil war. Many of the war's deep causes remain in place: The options in formal politics are limited to opportunism or principled, but impotent opposition, while the newly liberalized economy is working best for those who were already prosperous.

Also featured: Norma Claire Moruzzi reviews Shahram Khosravi's Young and Defiant in Iran; Khaled El-Rouayheb reviews Joseph Massad's Desiring Arabs; Rosemary Sayigh reviews Laleh Khalili's Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine; and more.

Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies online at www.merip.org.

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the implications of US and international policy for the region.

Representing youth in the Middle East

The Winter 2007 issue of Middle East Report will come out in a couple of weeks. It's main focus this time is the politics of youth. As photo editor it was my job to find the best photography we can afford to accompany the articles. Sadly, I discovered that photos of youth (I'm not talking about kids, but 15-24 year olds) largely correspond to the popular image of the region as repressed, stern, and violent.

[Below are some examples of the usual clichés. However, these are all very good photographers, whose work I respect.]

One of the more common images of Middle Eastern youth:

[Spencer Platt/Corbis]

My goal was to find photographs that show youth being youth. By this I mean doing things like going to university or school, working, hanging out with friends, playing sports, engaged in entertainment like amusement parks, picnics, shopping, cafes, and using the internet. While I did find some photos like this, the vast majority instead chose to represent young people engaged in political demonstrations and rallies, religious observances, or as victims of war, poverty and oppression. These images do capture some part of the reality of life in the region, the problem is that these extra-ordinary moments are the dominant image while the everyday is rarely seen.

Another very common image of youth:

[Atta Kenare/AFP]

There are exceptions, of course. For example, there has been much interest in the youth of Iran for years now. Primarily the focus has been on the Tehran upper and middle classes, those who go skiing, shop at high-end stores, and wear fashionable outfits that only barely abide by the Islamic Republics restrictions on dress. Those images have become fairly commonplace. So common in fact as to become already a bit of a cliché. At first this new image was helpful in breaking up the old stereotype about stern-faced youth covered in black chadors or wearing beards, shouting death to America. They showed what some Tehran youth are up to. It's important to see there are plenty of young people who party, play music, flirt, have fun. But how representative of youth in Iran are those photos? As far as I know, it's just one thin slice of the population. In addition to the photos of hip and trendy youth, I wish there were other images depicting a wider range of youth and their various tastes, activities, levels of religiosity, and socio-economic positions.

An example of the sexy young Iranian woman cliché:

[Lynsey Addario/Corbis]

...which is meant to be understood in opposition to this sort of image of faceless women in chadors.

[Rob Howard/Corbis]

Another big exception to the standard picture of Middle Eastern youth as stern, religious and radical is the image of young people hanging out in shopping malls. However, the popularity of this image comes, I think, from a widespread belief in the (false) dichotomy of "traditional" versus "modern." It seems editors and viewers get some sort of satisfaction from seeing a supposed contrast between men and women in modest dress and veils wandering past global fast food franchises or international brand name stores in the sleek, familiar space of a mall.

An example from Bahrain:

[Spencer Platt/Getty]

I think the problem lies in that feeling of familiarity that is found in the popular images of hip youth and mall goers. My guess is that these newer images are popular because they seem to contrast with what outsiders believe is the dominant culture in the region. Perhaps editors choose them because they depict Middle Easterners as familiar and similar to European and American viewers. We can relate. But at the same time they are seen as surprising because of the usual image of the region.

Unfortunately, what gets lost in this search for the familiar (or its opposite -- looking for the image of religious extremism) is a whole range of other people and experiences. One article in the next issue is about youth in the southern suburb of Beirut, an area called Dahiyya. It's the neighborhood that got a lot of press coverage last summer because Hizballah's media and other offices are located there. During the war Israeli airstrikes took out many residential/commercial buildings there. But this article is about something else entirely. It discusses how youth in this mostly Shiite area figure out what are Islamicly appropriate modes of entertainment for themselves, which is defined differently depending on the individual. Many of these religious young people want high quality, interesting places to spend time and see friends but they don't want the alcohol, popular music and certain norms of behavior between men and women that are present in cafes in other parts of Beirut. The authors discuss a variety of places these youth are comfortable hanging out, like certain sports clubs, sleekly designed internet cafes, segregated beaches, restaurants, an amusement park and a mall.

Searching for photos of youth in the Dahiyya, however, I could only find pictures of them in Hizballah rallies, listening seriously to Nasrallah's speeches, or sadly searching for belongings in the midst of the rubble after last summer's war. Granted, photographing In the Dahiyya isn't easy. The dominant news story, which shapes what editors want, is about Hizballah and the war. (I found very few photos from before the war, no one was interested at that point.) The other difficulty is gaining access. Hizballah controls journalists' visits, many don't get permission from the party to photograph in the area, and people are at times suspicious of a photographer's intentions.

But even knowing the difficulties, I can't help but be frustrated. Observant young Muslims (and indeed youth across the Middle East of all sorts) are as animated, smiley, independent and intelligent as any teenagers and yet they are rarely represented this way.

Two examples of images depicting youth in their everyday reality:

[Alexandria, Egypt. Mark Henley/Panos]

[Algiers, Algeria. Giacomo Pirozzi/Panos]

It seems that as a young person in the image world that represents the Middle East you are either provocatively pushing the bounds of conservative, traditional society (such as Tehran beauties, Beirut nightclubbers and consumers of "western" brands) or caught up senselessly in religiously-inspired politics and extremism.

These categories and assumptions need desperately to be challenged by image-makers and image-buyers. There are certainly photographers who are thoughtfully depicting the nuances of the real Middle East, but they also need to make a living licensing their work to magazines, newspapers and agencies that are often still stuck in these invidious ways of imagining the region. One photographer I spoke to here in Beirut who does good work said he was shocked as he looked through his own archive trying to find photos of youth involved in normal, everyday activities.  He found very little.

Lebanese politics

One reason I find Lebanese politics difficult to follow is that it seems obvious no one is telling the truth. Besides verbally attacking each other, politicians here talk often about finding a compromise between the main factions or they say things aren't as bad as they seem. The news constantly reports that various leaders are planning to meet and talk things out. And yet, none of that ever makes the slightest difference, the crisis continues or worsens. In the Middle East Report Online article titled "Rallying Around the Renegade," Heiko Wimmen describes the system as a "Byzantine political game, whereby decisions and distributions of spoils are supposed to be worked out behind impenetrable smokescreens of lofty principles and diplomatic cant." This is definitely how it appears to me.

As the article points out, the traditional leaders (and a few newcomers) don't want this system of back room dealing to change. However, those in the opposition do. Their motives might be just as self-serving, but they talk about increasing transparency in the system and combating corruption and nepotism. I can see the appeal. This situation also reminds me that I read recently that much of the civil war (1975-1990) was a battle between those who were defending the status quo and those who wanted reforms and a non-sectarian system. Much is different now, and perhaps that sort of dynamic is usually present in civil conflicts, but still it strikes me as eerie.

Wimmen's excellent article is primarily about Michel Aoun and his Free Patriotic Movement. He describes Aoun's history, appeal and popularity and discusses why he is now aligned with the Hizballah-led opposition and despised by people in the ruling March 14th coalition. Along the way he illuminates how Lebanese politics works (or rather, doesn't) and why the country is in such a stalemate now. Very worthwhile reading.

Anyhow, I'm not a political expert of any kind, so my comments are necessarily simplistic. Read the article.

Displaced -- new issue of Middle East Report out

The latest issue of Middle East Report is now out and I highly recommend you buy it (you can order it online from the website.)

[Photo by Klavs Bo Christensen. Abu Karar with his wife, three kids and his sister in their house in Sayeda Zainab, Damascus, Syria, June 9, 2007. Their son (picture) was killed in a random shooting by American soldiers in Baghdad. Abu Karar was a contractor for the Americans. After receiving a death threat, the family fled Iraq. He now runs an outdoor teashop in Damascus.]

As photo editor, I was responsible for finding the photos for the issue and am particularly pleased with them. It's often hard to find photographs of the region that go beyond the usual clichés that focus on incidents of violence or paint a picture of exaggerated religious traditionalism. When it became known that I was looking for photos of refugees for this issue I was inundated with submissions. This was of course helpful and is how I found out about some great photographers like Annie Tritt for example (see her excellent work on Iraqis in Jordan in the magazine).

But what was made dishearteningly clear was how many photographers have done stories on refugees. This made me sad in two ways –- first that there are so many refugees and displaced people in the world and secondly that they have become what seems to be for some photographers a subject to launch their careers. I have no problem with photographers covering refugees and their lives in-depth, I am not making a complaint about “aestheticizing suffering” either. What bothers me are those who make generic images of an emaciated person sitting on the ground looking abject as if this is all the description that is needed to summon up the experience of a refugee. It’s insulting to the subject who, regardless of how much they have lost, still has a life embedded within society and family and their own particular history. It's also not good photography or journalism.

However, I did see good work too, the best treated the subjects visually not as abject cases for sympathy or as the sorry result of bad politics, but real people with stories to tell and lives to be lived. In this issue you can see Annie Tritt’s work on Iraqi refugees trying to get by in Jordan, a country that does not classify them as refugees but as visitors. On the cover and inside are photos by Klavs Bo Christensen of Iraqis who now live in Syria. Paul Taggert and Tariq Saleh show some of the brutality of the battle over Nahr el Bared refugee camp in Lebanon and Jake Price contributes a photo that captures the uncertain situation of Iraqi refugee children. Johan Spanner and Andrew McConnell provide portraits of internally displaced people in Iraq and Somalia.

Here is the description of the issue, I hope you will order it.

Middle East Report
244, Fall 2007

DISPLACED

Downplayed in the media, dithered over by the international community and (until recently) ignored by the Bush administration, more than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes since the US-led invasion of their country in  2003. Even before the Iraqis' flight, the Middle East held the dubious distinction of being one of the foremost generators of refugees -- Palestinians, Sudanese, Somalis and others -- in the world. In the mass uprooting and dispersal of Iraqis, as demonstrated in the fall 2007 issue of Middle East Report, "Displaced," there is much that is sadly familiar. 

What is novel about the Iraqi displacement crisis, writes anthropologist Julie Peteet, is the near silence about the displaced, the absence of camps and the belated humanitarian assistance. The crisis magnifies the trend noticeable in the 1990s toward categorizing the displaced as something other than refugees and thereby minimizing the legal obligations of states and international bodies to help them.

Madona Mokbel surveys the plight of Iraqis in neighboring states, where they are denied access to jobs and services, and also face the growing resentment of the native population, who blame them for rising prices and groaning infrastructure. As political scientist Stefanie Nanes finds in Jordan, this blame is misplaced. Given the limited capacity of neighboring states to absorb refugees, the question is why the US and UN have been so slow to respond, argue researchers Kathryn Libal and Scott Harding.

The displacement of Iraqis of course recalls the 1948 expulsion and flight of Palestinians, who continue to live in a harrowing limbo. Muhammad Ali Khalidi and Diane Riskedahl, analyzing the Lebanese army's summer 2007 assault on the Nahr al-Barid refugee camp, conclude that the only thing uniting Lebanese factions is "antipathy for the Palestinians living in their midst." Relief efforts, reports Mayssun Sukarieh, are received with ambivalence by Palestinians who wish their supporters would focus on campaigning for Palestinian rights -- including the right of return. Middle East Report interviews the activists of Zochrot, an Israeli organization working to recover the suppressed memory of the Palestinian displacement in Israel.

Also featured: Stephen Dedalus chronicles another forced migration that has passed almost unnoticed in the West -- the Pakistani military's displacement of perhaps 250,000 people from rebellious Balochistan; Joel Beinin visits settler-besieged al-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills; Laleh Khalili reviews Bernard Rougier's Everyday Jihad; and more.

---

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the implications of US and international policy for the region. 

Middle East Report: The War economy of Iraq

The latest issue of Middle East Report is out now, Summer 2007. You can order it here. Looks to be an excellent one. Below is the summary of what's inside, an interesting read in itself.

In terms of photos I found for this issue, I recommend checking out the good documentary work by Julien Warnand of South Asian workers in Dubai. Julien spent time with the workers in their camps, revealing one usually hidden part of the economy that enables Dubai's extraordinary growth and glittering image. The photos below are courtesy of Julien Warnand, see his profile on Lightstalkers for more information about him.

A worker walks through one of the several labor camps near Dubai. Julien Warnand

Workers make phone calls in one of the several labor camps near Dubai. Julien Warnand

Two workers in their quarters in the camp of Sonapoor. Julien Warnand

Middle East Report 243

Summer 2007

THE WAR ECONOMY OF IRAQ

President George W. Bush's "surge" has not made Iraq safer for anyone, not by anyone's numbers. The Washington debates about the war, driven as they are by the crassest of partisan calculations, remain completely disconnected from the scale and scope of the disaster on the ground. The summer 2007 issue of Middle East Report presents an unexamined aspect of that disaster, "The War Economy of Iraq."

Who is the US fighting in Iraq? Four years and counting into the insurgency, there is no clear answer. The missing piece of the puzzle, political scientists Christopher Parker and Pete W. Moore argue, is the extensive gray economy that fattened regime insiders and also helped to feed ordinary Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's dismantling of the state sector in the 1980s  through the calamity of UN sanctions from 1990-2003. All these informal ways of getting rich -- or just earning a living -- did not simply disappear when US viceroy L. Paul Bremer declared Iraq "open for business." Complex and deeply rooted war economies are a consistent feature of civil wars -- a fact that bodes ill for the prospects of peace in Iraq.

There is conflict in the formal economy as well. Shawna Bader-Blau traces the roots of Iraqi unions' opposition to the corporate-friendly draft oil law -- opposition that the US-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is now trying to break by force.

One destination for the windfalls reaped from the Iraqi war economy is the capital haven of Dubai. As researcher Ahmed Kanna shows, both the city-state's staggering prosperity and the requisite expendable labor force are supplied by "the restructuring and collapsing world surrounding it."

The reconstruction of Lebanon following the 1975-1990 civil war changed the face of the capital's central district and the country's political economy. What has happened to the dollars injected into Lebanon to repair the damage from the summer 2006 Israeli bombardment? What is being rebuilt and by whom? In a special investigative report, Jim Quilty and Lysandra Ohrstrom follow the money.

Also featured: Mitchell Plitnick and Chris Toensing reflect on the debates over the Mearsheimer-Walt "Israel lobby" paper; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin writes in solidarity with Azmi Bishara; and more.

Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies online at www.merip.org.

For further information, contact Chris Toensing at ctoensing@merip.org.

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the implications of US and international policy for the region.

Geoff Hartman

Terribly sad news. I found out last night that Geoff Hartman died of complications from cancer. Geoff was a contributing editor of Middle East Report, where I am the photo editor. Geoff was editor of the magazine from mid-1995 through mid-1998. Chris Toensing, our current editor wrote about Geoff: "He has been designing powerful covers for the magazine for the last several years. You can see his last design -- one of his very best -- on our website now. He was also a dedicated activist, a raconteur and an amazing chef -- a man of many talents and boundless generosity. We will miss him very much."

Here is the last cover he designed, the Summer 2007 issue. I agree it is one of his best.

Those times when I was frustrated that I couldn't find a cover photograph to convey the content of an issue he could usually come up with just the right design anyway. And when he did have compelling photos to work with he was able to show them off to great effect. He was also the designer of MERIP's Middle East Desk project, which has a wonderfully easy to navigate structure and lovely minimalist aesthetic. When I was media coordinator at MERIP he taught me how to populate the site with content and was always willing to help out when I got stuck.

Although I didn't know Geoff all that well, he was always fun to be around, warm, smart and engaged with the world. I will miss him too. My thoughts are with all who loved him.

There will be a memorial for him in DC at Busboys and Poets on June 16, in case anyone reading this knew him. In lieu of flowers his partner is asking donations be made in his memory to MERIP (publisher of Middle East Report).