Juan Cole

Interim Governing Council expels Mujahidin According to AP, the Iraqi Interim Governing Council has decided to expel from the country the terrorist group, the Mujahidin-i Khalq. The Mujahidin-i Khalq Organization or Holy Warriors of the People (MKO) had about 4,000 men at the Ashraf Base near the Iranian border in the Saddam period, from which […]

US arrests 29 in Kirkuk, including 5 Policemen US forces arrested 29 Iraqis on Tuesday afternoon, including 5 police officers, after a search operation in a quarter of the northern, largely Kurdish city of Kirkuk. This according to a Kirkuk police official, Major Adnan Muhammad Sadir, head of the police station in Miqdad, in an […]

Eyewitness Account of US Administration of Iraq Amal Winter posts at H-Net a fascinating account of her recent 3-week trip to Iraq as part of a delegation of International Federation for Election Systems. She is an Arab-American intellectual, and her perspective is unique. She confirms our worst fears about how isolated the Coalition Provisional Authority […]

Sistani Followers: Call for Resistance if Islam is Threatened Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post has written a fine and detailed description of the holy seminary city of Najaf, which is now reemerging as a Shiite center of learning, pilgrimage and politics. He reports that 40 seminaries have been established and that scores of clerics […]

Breaking News: 58 US Soldiers Wounded in Bomb Blast According to the WP, a suicide bomber got just barely within striking distance of a US Army base near Mosul, but detonated his bombs before he was ready because he took US fire as he drove madly toward the gate. He still managed to wound 58 […]

US Soldier Assassinated in Mosul Drive-By; Iraqi Policeman Killed Four Iraqis in a vehicle conducted a drive-by shooting directed at US troops in Mosul Monday, killing a US soldier from the 101st Airborne Division. In Baqubah, guerrillas detonated strategically a tank round, killing an Iraqi policeman who was a bomb disposal expert.

Iraqi Resistance sees itself as Fighting Occupation Mitchell Prothero of UPI has found a source among the guerrillas willing to explain the nature of the Iraqi resistance. It is decentralized; much or most of it is not religious; and it has people in it who initially thought well of the US but came to believe […]

US Using Israeli Military to Train Special Ops to fight Iraqis Julian Borger of the Guardian reports that the Israeli army has sent “urban warfare specialists” to Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, to help train US Special Forces personnel for operations in Iraq. He says that according to two sources, Israeli military “consultants” have also […]

Carnegie’s Arab Reform Bulletin I did not get time to do it when it came out, but I wanted to direct readers to the recent Arab Reform Bulletin put out by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which considers issues in the political development of contemporary Iraq. I’ve got a piece there, as do Peter […]