Juan Cole

Election News Al-Hayat says that the Sunni tribal shaikhs with whom Prime Minister Iyad Allawi met in Jordan on Thusday pleaded with him to postpone the elections. The leader of the Sunni clans of the Dulaim, Majid Ali Sulaiman, told al-Hayat that the shaikhs of the Iraqi tribes “meet Allawi during the past two days, […]

Brown: A Meeting with Yasser Arafat Middle East expert Kenneth Brown shares the following guest editorial. (Iraq news follows, below.): A meeting with Yasser Arafat Kenneth Brown I first met Yasser Arafat in January of last year in Ramallah at the Muqata’a, the half demolished headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. I was part of a […]

Shiite-Sunni, Shiite-Shiite No civil war and Massive Casualties There were major gun battles in Mosul and Samarra on Wednesday, and bombs went off on the road to Baghdad airport and at Iskandariyah to the south. They don’t hate our freedoms. They hate US policies. This conclusion had been obvious from extensive polling done by Ron […]

Baghdad: Car Bomb Wounds 5 US Soldiers Baiji: Car Bomb Kills 7, Wounds 18 Guerrillas in Baghdad detonated a car bomb near a US convoy on the road to the airport, wounding 5 American soldiers. Guerrillas in the town of Baiji north of Baghdad detonated a car bomb in a crowded market, killing 7 persons […]

Iraq Elections: Negroponte Optimistic; Shiites Enthusiastic for Reasons that would not Please Negroponte The Chicago Tribune’s Liz Sly is back in Baghdad and has two important pieces out. One describes the confidence of US Ambassador to Baghdad John Negroponte that the Sunni Arabs will vote in the upcoming elections rather than boycotting them. She reports […]

5 US Troops Killed, 18 Wounded I take today’s New York Times/ AP report on Iraq as a very bad sign. For one thing, it says “On Monday, the military reported five new U.S. deaths: Two American soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were killed and three wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in northwestern Baghdad. […]

The Fallujah Report and the Liberal/Conservative Divide The “Fallujah Report” prepared by the Marines concerning their enemies in the most recent big campaign is now up on the Web in HTML rather than powerpoint, and so easier to download. One thing that leaped out at me was the small number of foreign fighters it reports. […]

Kurdish Nationalism Kurdish writer Sabah Salih has an interesting piece on the way the image of the Kurds has changed among European leftists from that of victim to that of collaborator with American imperialism. He suggests that European sympathy for Kurdish nationalism has correspondingly declined. He says that I oppose the creation of a Kurdistan […]

Fresh Wave of Violence in Iraq 5 US troops Killed The relentless guerrilla war continued apace in Iraq on Sunday. AFP reported that guerrillas killed two Marines in clashes on Sunday. Also, in Anbar province, guerrillas killed three US servicemen on Sunday, and two had died there on Friday. A bomb exploded on the road […]