Juan Cole

Sistani Insists on Elections Al-Zaman: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called on Wednesday for general elections to be held at the scheduled time (January 2005). He made the statement during a meeting of the Shiite leadership held in his office in Najaf. Present were Muhammad Said al-Hakim, Bashir Najafi, and Ishaq al-Fayyad in adition to Abdul […]

Kurdish Settlement in Kirkuk and Geopolitics Jim Krane of AP has an excellent piece today on the demographic struggle taking place in Kirkuk, Iraqi’s northern oil city of some 750,000. In April of 2003 one reporter estimated that the population was 250,000 each, Turkmen, Arab and Kurd. The Arabs were settled there by Saddam and […]

Carbomb Kills 47, Wounds 114 in Karkh Luke Harding writes for The Guardian in Baghdad that a huge car bomb killed 47 and wounded 114 at the al-Karkh Police station. Targeted were prospective recruits to the police force. In Baqubah, guerrillas attacked a mini-bus full of police, killing 11 along with a civilian, as they […]

Ethnic Conflict in Tal Afar? A correspondent in Europe sent me the following from the Turkish press. This very abridged story from a Turkish newspaper could be of interest. The Talafar case is VERY serious in fact, Foreign Minister Gül openly is threatening the USA to end cooperation. Guess what the opposition says: They are […]

Open Letter to Madonna from Angela Godfrey-Goldstein I got this by email from The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and thought I would share it here. It might sound frivolous but it is very important. PO Box 2030 Tels: +972-2-624-5560 Fax: +972-2-622-1530 E-mail: info@icahd.org Rehov Ben-yehuda 7 +972-50-651425 Website: www.icahd.org 91020 Jerusalem, Israel +972-66-314471 Jerusalem, […]

US Air Strikes Kill 20 in Fallujah US air strikes on Fallujah on Monday killed some 20 persons. The US military maintained that it was targeting safe houses of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his group, Monotheism and Holy War. (Some are translating tawhid as “unity,” but in Islam what is meant by tawhid is to […]

Has the US been Fighting Turkmen? Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul revealed that he threatened the US over its treatment of Turkmen in Iraq when he talked to Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Scotsman writes, ‘ Gul said he spoke to US Secretary of State Colin Powell ”and told him that what is being […]

Bloody Sunday: 110 Dead in Iraq, 200 Wounded The Iraqi Guerrilla War erupted into a spectacular set of conflagrations on Sunday and over the weekend, according to Reuters’ Ibon Villalabeitia, leaving at least 110 dead and, according to AP, some 200 wounded. Baghdad At least 7 car bombs shook the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, and […]

US Casualties in Iraq: Gustafson Erik Gustafson writes: “Setting the record straight, sort of… Last week Clive Astle wrote, “Molly (Ivins) appears to have omitted counting the number killed but unidentified pending notification of kin. Total US dead is reported at 1012 as at end of August…” Clive is double counting some U.S. military deaths. […]