Juan Cole

Chalabi attacks Shaalan The rivalry between Iyad Allawi [Arabic link] and Ahmad Chalabi has heated up two weeks before the January 30 elections. Jon Lee Anderson points out in his New Yorker piece, Allawi was a long-time member of the Baath Party, and is now a secular, tough pragmatist. He organized other ex-Baathists, especially officers […]

IraqTheMOdel

Pace of Attacks picks up in Iraq, with Explosion Tuesday Morning in Baghdad, 24 Dead on Monday A big car bomb exploded outside the headquarters in Baghdad of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq on Tuesday morning. The number of casualties is unclear as I write. SCIRI is a leading Shiite party and […]

The Accountability Moment and Hersh on Iran Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh threw Washington, Islamabad and Tehran into consternation Monday with his report in the New Yorker on the activities of Bush’s Pentagon with regard to Iran. He said that the Pentagon had alread sent some special ops teams into Iran to look for evidence of […]

Al-Abbudi: Sistani Endorses the United Iraqi Alliance Al-Zaman reports via AFP that Shaikh Naji al-Abbudi, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spoke at a conference on the upcoming elections in the southern Shiite city of Diwaniyah on Sunday, and said something that is explosive if it is true. He alleged that Sistani is throwing […]

Major Fighting in Ramadi, Mosul, Kut al-Zaman says that a US soldier was killed Saturday at Babil, the site of ancient Babylon, where the US military has come under criticism for having damaged ancient artifacts while basing itself there. Guerrillas killed a member of the governing council of Ninevah. Sally Buzbee of AP reports that […]

Curfew Measures on Election Day Events conspired to undermine the Iraqi government’s attempts to reassure the public that procedures for voting would be secure. Judge Wael Abdul Latif, a Basra notable of Shiite heritage who serves as Federal minister for provincial affairs, announced that severe restrictions would be placed on automobile traffic near polling stations […]

Muqtada: “Outside Powers Should Not Interfere in Elections” Pachachi: Expatriate Iraqis must Vote Al-Sharq al-Awsat: Shaikh Nasir al-Sa`idi, the Friday prayers leader of al-Muhsin Mosque in Sadr City, read out a sermon written by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that called on “neighbors and non-neighbors of Iraq” to refrain from interfering the in the internal affairs […]

Polling Sites, Soldiers, Electoral Workers Targeted Guerrillas bombed a polling site in Sharqat north of Baghdad, destroying it but causing no casualties. In Baghdad, a policemen, two Iraqi soldiers and a civilian were killed in separate incidents. In Mosul, guerrillas detonated a car bomb as a US convoy went by, but no word on whether […]