Juan Cole

10-20 Dead in Failed Terrorist Prison Break Sunni Arabs Demonstrate Against Election Results in Samarra Prison guards killed between 4 and 16 inmates when some of them attempted a jail break from a special facility for terrorists in Kadhimiyah, northeast Baghdad, on Wednesday, according to AFP. An inmate got hold of a weapon and began […]

Kurds Plan to Seize Kirkuk Militarily: Knight Ridder Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder reports that the Kurds have seeded 10,000 peshmerga militiamen into the Iraqi army units in the north of Iraq, and plan to use them to seize control of oil-rich Kirkuk. (Actually, the Kurds already control Kirkuk militarily, since their forces conquered it […]

Over 10,000 Sunnis, Secularists March in Baghdad against Election Results; Al-Hakim meets Kurdish Leaders AP reports that in Iraq, over 10,000 mainly Sunni Arab demonstrators rallied in downtown Baghdad on Tuesday, calling for a rerun of the elections on the grounds of massive fraud, and demanding a government of national unity (which would include many […]

Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005 Iraq has unfortunately become a football in the rough and ready, two-party American political arena, generating large numbers of sound bites and so much spin you could clothe all of China in the resulting threads. Here are what I think are the top ten myths about Iraq, that […]

Over 20 Dead, 46 Wounded in Guerrilla War; Governor of Diyala Wounded in Assassination Attempt Sunnis Threaten Boycott A wave of guerrilla bombings and apparently coordinated small arms attacks around north-central Iraq left over 20 dead and over twice as many wounded on Monday. (Actually, it is worse; the average estimated dead in the guerrilla […]

Shiites, Sunnis, Demonstrate Against one Another over Elections; Five Percent of Ballots Fraudulent: IECI According to Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times, Sunni Arab cabinet ministers requested that the United Iraqi Alliance donate 10 of their seats to Sunni Arab candidates. Apparently they hoped such a gesture would mollify Sunni Arab activists who believe […]

Iraqi Christians in Peril this Christmas Because of the poor security, Iraqi Christians had to celebrate midnight mass at sundown instead. Many Christians have fled Iraq for Syria and elsewhere, while others are afraid to go to the churches, which have been targeted in the past by bombers. (Ironically, the secular Arab nationalist regimes like […]

Sistani Calls for Government of National Unity According to AFP, Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie met Saturday with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and then conveyed the latter’s hope that a national unity government will be formed. Rubaie (al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP, Cole trans.:) quoted Sistani as saying, “I urge you to maintain the unity of […]

Interlibrary Loan/ DHS Story a Hoax The story of the interlibrary loan request for Mao’s Little Red Book that produced an interview by the Department of Homeland Security turns out to be a hoax. However, it is one of those hoaxes that bespeaks a reality, which is that the level of unwarranted (a pun!) surveillance […]