The War in Iraq and the Middle East Issue

On March 20th, the ferocious military attack against Iraq commenced. Many of the scholars and researchers must have experienced a sense of helplessness. That may not have been because they could not stop this war, but because of the completely different political circumstances that prevailed in the Middle East from the time of the Gulf War until the September 11, 2001. In that period of time, the local political situation of the Middle East was considered the core of the Gulf War question; similarly Islamic political movements were considered the central issue at the time of the September 11 in New York.

This time, however, the central issue is not the Iraqi question itself. To be blunt, it has rather become an "American" problem": Policy-makers and specialists tended to deal only with concepts like "dictatorship", "terrorism", or "Islam" based on their poor and simplistic knowledge and views on the Middle East. The complex reality of the Middle East was never carefully taken into account.

If discourse remains on this level in the future, without the acute insights and long-standing proposals by specialists on the Middle East, that region would be marginalized and considered simply a local problem. A specialist on the Middle East cannot remain a passive spectator of such a course. This is why we propose a Contributor's Corner on "the Question of Iraq" issue in the website of JAMES.

(KATO Hiroshi, President of JAMES)

Author's Guidelines for "the Question of Iraq" issue

Contributions about "the Question of Iraq" issue are welcome for publication in the special forum pages of JAMES. Facts and issues related to the conflict, reports from the field, or discussion of any related questions are welcome including the presentation of personal points of view.

Please follow the following conditions:

* Contributors are only accepted from members of JAMES, and the content should be consistent with the aim of JAMES, and academic standards in general.

* The contributor, as an individual member of JAMES must bear personal responsibility for the published article. This will not represent the official view of JAMES in any way.

* Each contribution must have a title and contributor's name. The organization with which he or she is affiliated, field of specialization, and e-mail address, if necessary, must all be included.

* Each contribution must be of about 700 English words (approximately of 2 pages of A4 size.) or 2000 Japanese characters long. The inclusion of website addresses is allowed, if they are relevant to the issues being discussed. For technical reasons the contribution must in principle be either in Japanese or English. But anyone who wishes to write in a language other than Japanese or English should send the manuscript as a PDF file which will enable it to appear in the website.

* Publication of the contribution in the website of JAMES will be deleted in September 2003.

* A contribution should be sent to the Secretariat either by e-mail or post. In the case of sending by e-mail, please make it a Word (Win/Mac) or text file. In addition, please take into consideration that it will take about a week to publish, to allow the Secretariat to correct spelling-mistakes and idiomatically wrong expressions.

Japan Association for Middle East Studies Secretariat Office

c/o Prof. Toru MIURA
Faculty of Letters and Education
Ochanomizu University
Ohtsuka 2-1-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 112-8610 JAPAN
TEL&FAX: +81-3-5978-5184
E-mail: james@cc.ocha.ac.jp