Juan Cole

Sunnis Gunned Down at Mosque: Specter of Sectarian Warfare Raised Al-Hayat: “Not even a week has passed since the Shiite and Sunni clerics issued a call for self-control and refraining from targeting mosques. But unknown assailants opened fire on Wednesday on worshippers issuing from a Sunni mosque, killing four of them. The ‘Board of (Sunni) […]

Two Students Injured in Ethnic Protests in Kirkuk al-Hayat, Tass: Student leaders in Kirkuk said that two Arab students were wounded Wednesday in confrontations with police, who were attempting to forbid a demonstration by Arabs and Turkmen. The confrontations broke out when hundreds of Arab and Turkmen students attempted to march from the courtyard of […]

Riots between Kurds and Turkmen and Arabs in Kirkuk The 5 Kurdish members of the Interim Governing Council have called for Mosul and Diyala province to be part of their greater Kurdistan region, which would have a loose Federal relationship to Baghdad. In Kirkuk, there was much flying of the Kurdish flag, on Monday, which […]

3 US Troops Killed, One Wounded; Judge, Police Killed in North Reuters reports Guerrillas near Samarra detonated a powerful roadside bomb at a passing US military vehicle, destroying it and killing the three US troops within. In the city of Irbil, in the Kurdish north, a car bomb was detonated by its driver at the […]

Bomb Found in Home of al-Hakim On Monday, a bomb was found in the home of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite cleric who is December’s president of the Interim Governing Council, according to AFP.. He is also the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. For many years he headed the paramilitary […]

Nelson: We cannot Afford to Lose the Peace; Northern Ireland Analogy Fraser Nelson has written a long post mortem in The Scotsman on all the things that have gone wrong in the aftermath of the Iraq war, which is a very long list indeed. He makes some telling points about the British side of things […]

2 US Troops Killed in Baghdad, 2 Wounded A roadside bomb killed two US troops in Baghdad, along with a civilian translator, and wounded two others. According to Michelle Faul of AP, the US military is worried that guerrillas will mount a Christmas offensive against US troops in Iraq. In other developments, interim Foreign Minister […]

Sistani on Elections In an interview with the Baghdad daily az-Zaman, a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani said that he expects his negotiations with various parties concerning the transition to an Iraqi government this summer to bear fruit in a matter of days. (Sistani has exchanged letters with US civil administrator Paul Bremer, and […]

RPG attack in Mosul injures 1; Sabotage of Petroleum Facilities Michelle Faul reports that on Sunday, guerrillas in Mosul launched a rocket-propelled grenade at a US military convoy. The grenade, fired near a police recruitment center, hit a civilian vehicle and seriously wounded the Iraqi driver. The nearby US troops were unharmed. Guerrillas using rpg’s […]