Juan Cole

Reflections on the Capture of Saddam Hussein Seeing a captive, disheveled Saddam on television this morning released a cascade of memories for me. I remembered the innocent Jews brutally hanged in downtown Baghdad when the Baath came to power in 1968; the fencing with the Shah and the Kurds in the early 1970s; the vicious […]

20 Die in Car Bomb at Khaldiya Police Station Guerrillas exploded a car bomb at an Iraqi police station in Khaldiya, west of Baghdad, on Sunday morning. Early reports gave the number of Iraqis killed as 20. On Saturday the US military confirmed that one US soldier was killed and three wounded by a roadside […]

Continued Opposition to the US Fiat in Iraq The possibility of a United Nations Commission that would decide whether early elections should be held in Iraq continued to be discussed in Shiite circles on Saturday. In Najaf, Ammar al-Hakim, son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said after a meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani that “The […]

3000 Iranian Pilgrims a Day foreseen for Iraq According to AFP, another son of SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Muhsin al-Hakim, announced that he had negotiated a deal with the Interim Governing Council and the Iranian government to allow 3,000 Iranian pilgrims to enter Iraq every day. If the negotiated number of pilgrims actually came, […]

Sunnis Gear up to Resist Shiite Rule Meanwhile, Rich Potter of the Toronto Star reports that the resistance to the US occupation in Falluja is Sunni Arab nationalist in character, and is rejecting both Saddam and the prospect of majority-Shiite rule. One has the impression that some people in Falluja may be blowing up things […]

Sistani Calls for UN Decision According to the Gulf Daily News, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani stands by his ruling that Iraq should go to early general elections on a one-person, one-vote basis. According to IGC member Muwaffak al-Rubaie, however, Sistani has indicated that he would back down on one condition. If Kofi Annan appoints a […]

1 US Soldier Killed, 14 wounded Three guerrillas drove a car filled with explosives near the Champion US Army Base at Ramadi on Thursday and blew themselves up, killing one soldier, wounding 3 badly enough to be taken to a combat field hospital, and lightly wounding 11 others (they got hit by flying glass and […]

Fadlallah Discourages formation of Militias Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, who resides in Beirut, Lebanon, has long had a following inside Iraq. He was born and educated in Najaf and is an Iraqi. The Shiite al-Da`wa Party is said to favor him. According to al-Sharq al-Awsat, he was asked recently by Iraqi Shiites if the […]

IGC Negotiates with Sistani The Interim Governing Council sent a delegate Thursday to conduct talks with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, which were described as “tough but sincere.” (-AFP via ash-Sharq al-Awsat). They discussed the instruments whereby sovereignty would be transferred to the Iraqi people from the Coalition Provisional Authority on July 1, 2004. The delegation […]