Juan Cole

PKK Leader Warns Turkey on Incursions Michael Howard of the Guardian interviewed a Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla commander in northern Iraq. Money graf: ‘The Turkish army faces “a political and military disaster” if its generals give orders for a cross-border offensive, Cemil Bayik, one of the two most powerful figures in the Kurdistan Workers […]

Kurds and Turks: Will they or Won’t They? Joshua Partlow has a good article in WaPo on the military friction at the Turkish-Iraqi border. It is based on interviews in Iraqi Kurdistan and with US military officials, however, and oddly lacks the perspective from Ankara. I was just at an International Relations conference at Middle […]

US Paramilitary Casualties Covered Up Sistani condemns Attacks on Sunni Shrines, Mosques Pakistan Rallies Condemn US Highly paid “security guards” play an essential role in the US war against Iraqi guerrillas. They form a paramilitary, which has inevitably taken great numbers of casualties (they sometimes actually guard US troops!) Turns out that they have been […]

Sunni Mosque Demolished Turks Plan Buffer Zone inside Iraq An important, historic Sunni shrine south of Basra was blown up on Friday, raising fears of further Sunni-Shiite sectarian killings and reprisals, according to Alissa Rubin of the NYT. The town of Zubayr near Basra is largely Sunni, though it is situated in the overwhelmingly Shiite […]

Khamenei, Global Demonstrations, Blame US Demonstrations in Sadr City, Basra, Kashmir 3 Sunni Mosques Torched Iran’s Supreme Jurisprudent,Ali Khamenei, managed to blame the Iraqi Baath Party, the Wahhabi sect of Islam, the Salafi Jihadi radicals among Sunnis, and the United States, jointly for the blowing up of the minarets at the al-Askariya Shrine in Samarra. […]

Samarra Fallout Surge not Working The Sadr Bloc in parliament [Sawt al- Iraq in Arabic] is threatening to suspend their participation in legislation in protest against the failure to rebuild and protect the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra. Often the Iraqi parliament, many of whose members live abroad, cannot get a quorum without the Sadrists […]

Samarra Shrine Attacked The Golden Dome or Askariya Shrine in Samarra had its minarets blown up on Wednesday. The shrine is among the holiest in the Shiite world, dedicated to the father and grandfather of the hidden Twelfth Imam. Millenarian Shiites believe that the hidden Imam will one day return to restore the world to […]

Fox News: Bimbos in, Iraq out Mashhadani to Sue Iran: Captured Diplomats Must not Be Harmed Fox Cable News spent more time than other cable news networks covering Anna Nicole Smith, and spent much less time covering Iraq than the other networks. Gee, back in 2003 they seemed to have a lot about Iraq. I […]

Militiant Sufism in Iraq The USG Open Source Center translates an interview with a spokesman for a militant offshoot of the Naqshabandi order in Iraq that fights the US military presence. Naqshbandis are known as a Sunni Sufi order and have been more “orthodox” and tied to legalism than most other mystic brotherhoods. Many Kurds […]