Juan Cole

Quiet Ethnic Cleansing of Shiites by Sunni Jihadis? A European reader with good Iraq contacts passes along a very interesting but frightening account of severe Sunni-Shiite tensions in the mixed areas around Baghdad. I have occasionally seen reports in the Arabic press of Muqtada al-Sadr’s followers usurping Sunni mosques and attacking Sunnis. Given the hatred […]

Iranian Influence on Iraqi Shiites Ed Wong of the New York Times has a fine piece Saturday on Iranian influence on Iraqi Shiites. It seems pretty clear that the Iranians are giving money to various Shiite groups, though they are spreading it around so widely that it seems likely they are like some American lobbyists, […]

2 Marines Die Friday The Washington Post reports: ‘ The U.S. military reported that a Marine was killed in combat Friday and a second died of wounds sustained a day earlier in a restive province west of Baghdad that contains the city of Fallujah, the target of several U.S. air strikes over the past week. […]

3 Killed or Injured in Hotel Attacks Reuters reports that guerrillas launched a sophisticated strike Wednesday against the Baghdad Hotel and the Ishtar Sheraton in downtown Baghdad. The hotels were hit with rocket fire, causing three civilian casualties. A bus also exploded outside a mosque across from the Sheraton. Guerrillas intended to make the point […]

Saddam Blames Bush The brief appearance of Saddam Hussein in the courtroom on Wednesday was marked by his arrogance and intimidating style of speech. He ran circles around the 40-year-old prosecuting judge who tried to take his deposition. Saddam said that the whole proceeding was aimed at helping Bush win the elections in November. He […]

Iraqi Reaction to “Transfer of Sovereignty” The Al-Ahram Weekly, the leading Egyptian organ of news and opinion in English, has published a special issue in which it asked Iraqi writers and intellectuals to respond to the events of this past week. The American press almost never gives us canny, informed Iraqi voices like these, and […]

11 US Troops Wounded; Car Bomb in Samawah The Associated Press reports that guerrillas pounded a U.S. base near Baghdad airport with mortar shells, wounding 11 US soldiers. The shelling started a fire on base that burned for an hour. In the southern city of Samawah, guerrillas detonated a car bomb outside the police HQ. […]

The New Improved Iraq My essay about the so-called transfer of sovereignty in Iraq is now available online at In These Times. An excerpt: The so-called transition to sovereignty for Iraq set for June 30 [actually held on June 28] has been trumpeted as a turning point by the Bush administration. It is hard to […]

Rashid Khalidi’s talk at UCLA, “Government Attacks on Area Specialists Called Disservice to U.S. Middle East Policy,” is absolutely essential reading. Khalidi covers the group-think at the Pentagon, the exclusion and intimidation of State Department Middle East experts, the willful disregard by the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith crew of Middle East expertise generally, and the recent attempt to […]