Juan Cole

IGC Complains about Announcement that Coalition Troops will Stay The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has now said that UK troops are likely to be in Iraq until at least 2007. Interim Governing Council member Mahmoud Osman, in a telephone interview with Cairo radio, complained that this announcement contravened the November 15 accord between the […]

Baathists being Rehabilitated (to offset Shiites?) AFP (via az-Zaman) is reporting that Paul Bremer issued an order three weeks ago allowing Baath Party members to regain their posts and reenter civil society if they agreed to turn over their weapons. About 60 senior ex-Baath officers surrendered their weapons near Mosul at the Tel Afar base […]

Kirkuk Issue Made Complex by Turkmen, Kurdish Ethnic Nationalism The Turkmen representative on the Interim Governing Council, Songul Chapouk, called Monday for her hometown of Kirkuk to be demilitarized and for weapons to be collected from all the militias. In an interview with Agence France Presse (via az-Zaman), she said that Kirkuk is “a special […]

Resistance to US Military Presence Continues Unabated in Iraq A reader asked me about my claim that the pace of attacks on US troops hasn’t slowed since Saddam’s capture. The phrase is the title of a recent report by Tom Lasseter of Knight-Ridder. He reveals that top US generals in Iraq do not think Saddam […]

US Soldier Shot, wounded in Tikrit On Sunday, a guerrilla in Tikrit managed to shoot and wound a US soldier while he was on foot patrol. He is in stable condition. Alaskan journalist Dahr Jamail has a column today from Baghdad questioning the accuracy and fullness of US military reports of casualties. He says that […]

Democratic Presidential Debate: Lieberman, Kerry slam Dean In the Democratic debate yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman slammed Howard Dean for saying that the capture of Saddam Hussein had made America no safer: “I don’t know how anybody could say that we’re not safer with a homicidal maniac, a brutal dictator, an enemy of the United States, […]

New Sunni Fundamentalist Militia Announced; al-Kubeisi Exiled by US, will not Join other Sunnis The London daily al-Hayat reports that the “Clear Victory Movement,” a Sunni group, has formed a militia to offset the “Mahdi Army” of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It pledges to oppose the American occupation forces if they continue to marginalize Sunnis […]

US arrests Kurdish official but Acquiesces in Continued Kurdish Semi-Autonomy On the one hand, US troops have moved decisively to arrest a high official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Kirkuk, apparently on suspicion of having ordered the shooting of Arab and Turkmen protesters by pershmerga militiamen last week, which has led to dozens of […]

Basra: Ward Leader Assassinated; Labor Riot against al-Khorafi Construction Co. The British-appointed leader of one of Basra’s city quarters, an attorney, was assassinated over the weekend. the announcement was made as British PM Tony Blair paid a surprise visit to the city. The Guardian reports that the CPA has given up on trying to disarm […]