Juan Cole

Regionalist Model for Iraq Fred Kaplan at Slate discusses the proposal of former Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie for consolidating the 18 Iraqi provinces into 5– one Kurdish, two Sunni Arab, and two Shiite. As Kaplan notes, I myself dislike this idea. It has the advantage of possibly mollifying the Kurds, who really want […]

Mosul Chaos Al-Hayat reported incidents all over the country. A US Black Hawk helicopter was downed near Taji (20 km northwest of Baghdad), hurting 3 of the 4-man crew. Another US serviceman was killed in Baghdad. 8 Iraqis were killed in Hilla and 5 in Kirkuk. In al-Hawijah near Kirkuk, 5 persons were killed and […]

Sistani calls for Peaceful Resolution of Fallujah Crisis Az-Zaman: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, th leading Shiite spiritual authority, called Friday for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Fallujah. His representative in Karabala, Ahmad al-Safi al-Najafi, said that the position of the grand ayatollah toward the bloody events in some regions of Iraq is that […]

Dylan Still Subversive? It is a good thing that Bob Dylan has US citizenship, otherwise he might be in the same fix as Cat Stevens (a.k.a. Yusuf Islam). The mere singing of a 1963 song, “Masters of War,” at a Colorado High School brought in the Secret Police. Now we know why Usamah Bin Laden […]

Levine on Arafat: Guest Editorial The Death of Arafat and the Myth of New Beginnings Guest editorial by Mark LeVine, Professor of modern Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine, author of Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (Berkeley: University of California Press) and Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil […]

17 Dead in Baghdad Bombing Fallujah, Mosul and Raids on AMS The Washington Post reports that the wave of violence in the Sunni Arab heartland continued unrelentingly on Thursday. A bomb at Sadoun Street in Baghdad left 17 dead. There was more fighting (quite sophisticated) in Mosul. Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that guerrillas burned 6 police […]

Wave of Violence in Sunni North Leads at least 28 Dead US Marines moved into most of Fallujah on Wednesday, though they were still meeting pockets of resistance. The Fallujah fighting has killed fair numbers of Iraqi noncombatants, including Shaikh Abdul Wahhab al-Janabi of the respected Association of Muslim Scholars. Armed clashes broke out in […]

23 US Troops Killed in 2 Days Guerrilla and Civilian Toll Unknown Associated Press surveys developments on Tuesday, including the deaths of 10 US troops in the fighting at Fallujah along with 2 Iraqi National Guardsmen. 11 troops had been killed on Monday, though the military spokesman did not give details. The US continued to […]

Senor Double Agent? I have it from a source I consider reliable that the order for the arrest of Muqtada al-Sadr in early April, 2004, which came as such a surprise and threw the country into chaos for two months, came from Dan Senor. Senor is said to have acted on instructions from Neoconservatives in […]