Juan Cole

Hizb and Mahdi: Do they or Don’t they? The NYT was told by somebody in Washington that Hizbullah has trained between 1,000 and 2,000 Mahdi Army militiamen. I don’t know if I believe it, and I am not sure it is significant if true. There are thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen, and some have much […]

Will Bush Rehabilitate the Baathists? Al-Zaman [in Arabic] is under the impression that Bush’s talks with al-Maliki in Amman will aim in part at politically rehabilitating members of the Baath Party. The “Debaathification Commission” of Ahmad Chalabi (who anyway lives in London) will be abolished, it says. Discussions will be held with the neo-Baathist leadership […]

The End of Academic Freedom and the Israel Lobby Terri Ginsberg and Rima Abdelkader survey the wreckage of a once proud tradition of American academic integrity. This is what I wrote last week on the subject: ‘ Academics at Risk Please Donate to MESA A report on the Iraqi professors’ panel at the Middle East […]

What is the Mission? Or, Russian Roulette Reuters reports:: ‘ BAGHDAD – The U.S. military said three of its soldiers were killed and two others wounded by insurgents in Baghdad on Sunday. RAMADI – U.S. forces killed two suspected insurgents on Sunday after observing them loading weapons from a cache into a vehicle in the […]

Tribal/Fundamentalist Violence Guerrillas Economically self-sustaining That a tribal group and Sunni fundamentalists clashed in al-Anbar is believeable. That the tribe lost 9 and “al-Qaeda” lost 55 is not, unless it was a sneak attack. The NYT says that oil smuggling, antiquities smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, and fraud raise as much as $200 million a year […]

Dozens of Bodies Found Firefight at Taji Dhari Urges Arabs to turn on Maliki Police found 17 bodies in Baghdad on Saturday. They found 21 bodies of Shiites in Balad Ruz, a small Sunni city near Baquba northeast of the capital. US forces said they killed 22 Iraqis at Taji in a fight with guerrillas. […]

Peshmerga to Guard MPs: Mashhadani The USG Open Source Center translates this item from the Kurdistan press: ‘Iraqi Parliament To Entrust Kurdish Peshmerga With Guarding MPsUnattributed report: “Al-Mashhadani recommends the peshmerga to guard Council of Representatives’ members” Patriotic Union of Kurdistan WWW-TextSaturday, November 25, 2006 T20:56:20Z Iraqi Speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani recommended entrusting peshmargas with guarding […]

Sunnis Set Afire, Mosques Attacked Nearly 100 Killed in Reprisals Muqtada Challenges Dhari The death toll in Thursday’s massive assault on Sadr City by Sunni Arab guerrillas has risen above 200. Trains of bodies have been delivered to the Valley of Peace cemetery outside Najaf, which is said to contain 2 million graves. Friday morning, […]

233 Dead in Civil War Carnage Health Ministry Besieged 3,000 Widows Created Each Month So as Thursday began, Sunni Arab guerrillas surrounded and attacked the Ministry of Health, which is dominated by followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The guerrillas trapped 2,000 employees in the compound and threatened to kill any who came outside. They […]