Juan Cole

Thousands Stream to Najaf Thousands of Shiites are streaming toward Najaf in hopes of forming a human shield around Muqtada al-Sadr, according to al-Hayat. Many have already gathered at the gates to the old city in Najaf and around the shrine of Imam Ali. In the meantime, the Allawi government says it intends to send […]

Oil Pipeline Closed, Costing Iraqi Government $30 Million a day The continued instability in the Shiite areas of southern Iraq, especially threats of sabotage by Mahdi Army fighters, has led Iraqi authorities to shut down oil facilities in Basra again, according to AFP. Excerpts: ‘ . . . the Southern Oil Company announced the pipeline […]

It Takes a Following to Make an Ayatollah My op-ed on Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr is in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Why does the Mahdi Army fight? Mariam Fam of AP talks about the cultural dynamics around the Army of the Mahdi, the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr. She does a good job of providing a balanced view. She quotes one of the militiamen: ‘ Ayad Ali, a militiaman in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, claimed his brother […]

Muqtada Press Conference: “No Ordinary Politics Under Occupation” The one-day truce in Najaf has collapsed. And, even the council of tribal chieftains in the Middle Euphrates, a previously pro-American group, has issued a statement condemning the “barbaric massacres perpetrated by the United States in Najaf,” according to al-Jazeerah’s crawl. Just saw a long press conference […]

US War Planes Bomb Samarra Al-Jazeerah also showed footage of the US bombing of the city of Samarra (north of Baghdad) on Friday night or early Saturday morning, and the huge craters it produced, along with residential buildings reduced to rubble and a few corpses. It is annoying that al-Jazeerah (the mirror image of Fox […]

Muqtada to Allawi: Resign! In a press conference on Friday, Muqtada al-Sadr called on the caretaker government of Iyad Allawi to resign: “I advise the dictatorial, agent government to resign … the whole Iraqi people demands the resignation of the government … they replaced Saddam (Hussein) with a government worse than him.” Muqtada seemed to […]

Kadhim on the Najaf Crisis Abbas Kadhim, an Iraqi Shiite scholar who knows Najaf intimately, has published an op-ed that questions the common wisdom about the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr. He points out that, despite the claims of some politicians in the Allawi government, Iran is not in fact implicated in the Sadr movement. ‘ […]

Muqtada Wounded by US Bombing Muqtada al-Sadr was wounded by US bombardment of Najaf on Friday morning, according to Reuters. Sadr spokesman Ahmad al-Shinabi told Reuters, “Sayyed Moqtada was wounded in American bombing. He suffered three injuries to his body.” The wounds are not considered life threatening, and are being treated at the Imam Ali […]