Juan Cole

My column, “Why al-Maliki Attacked Basra,” is now available at Salon.com John McCain said he was surprised that Nuri al-Maliki would abruptly launch an operation against Basra. It seems to me that there are only two possibilities here. Either McCain really did not know and did not anticipate the trouble in Basra, in which case […]

The USG Open Source Center translates a discussion by Iraqis about Muqtada al-Sadr’s ceasefire with the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki, carried in Arabic on the Iranian al-Alam satellite channel. ‘Iran: Al-Alam TV’s ‘With the Event’ Program on Iraq, Al-Sadr TrendAl-Alam TelevisionMonday, March 31, 2008 Document Type: OSC Translated Text Tehran Al-Alam Television in Arabic […]

McClatchy provides a lot of important detail about Sunday’s surprising developments regarding the fight between the Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army. A parliamentary delegation from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s own coalition (mainly now the Da`wa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) defied him by going off to the holy seminary city of […]

Iraqi Police surrendering to the Mahdi Army in Baghdad. Courtesy AFP via al-Hayat. Ned Parker of the LAT does a good job in clarifying the rivalry between the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (with its Badr Corps paramilitary) and the Sadr Movement (with its Mahdi Army paramilitary). The Iraqi government is supporting, and supported by, […]

Mahdi Army Militiamen, courtesy Al-Zaman of Baghdad. Another US soldier was killed in Baghdad on Friday. The Times of Baghdad reports in Arabic that clashes continued on Friday between Iraqi government forces and the Mahdi Army in Baghdad and the provinces of the middle Euphrates and the south, causing hundreds of casualties, including among women, […]

People are asking me the significance of the fighting going on in Basra and elsewhere. My reading is that the US faced a dilemma in Iraq. It needed to have new provincial elections in an attempt to mollify the Sunni Arabs, especially in Sunni-majority provinces like Diyala, which has nevertheless been ruled by the Shiite […]

There was heavy fighting Wednesday and Thursday morning in the Jumhuriya district of the southern oil port of Basra. That is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, now under assault by the Iraqi military, with rocket propelled grenades, mortars and small arms fire raining down on the civilian neighborhood. Al-Zaman reports […]

I’ll be on the Lehrer News Hour, PBS, Wednesday evening March 26.