Juan Cole

Human Rights, Anti-Terror (and somewhat Anti-American) Demonstrations The demonstrations for human rights and against terrorism in several Iraqi cities on Wednesday were organized by parties represented on the Interim Governing Council. Althought the US press has tended to portray these rallies as pro-American, they were far more ambiguous than that. The organizers were able to […]

CPA Halts Effort to Tally Iraqi War Dead AP is alleging that an ongoing program by the Iraqi ministry of health aimed at totalling up the civilian casualties in the Iraq War of last spring has been shut down. The report claims that the Iraqi minster of health stopped it, on orders from the US-led […]

Iraqi Battalion Collapses CNN reports that the first new battalion of the Iraqi army being trained by the US has collapsed, with nearly half of recruits having resigned. Apparently poor pay ($60 a month) is one of the big complaints. But surely a further motive is their increasing suspicion that the same guerrillas who have […]

Hundreds of Shiites Demonstrate in Baghdad Hundreds of angry Shiites demonstrated in Baghdad on Tuesday, over the killing of a mosque prayer leader by US troops. They gathered in front of the Palestine Hotel, carrying placards and carrying pictures of the slain cleric, Shaikh Abd al-Razzak al-Lami, 64, of East Baghdad (Sadr City), and of […]

Clark Lashes out at Bush on Mishandling of Iraq US presidential candidate Wesley Clark called the Iraq war a “$150 billion mess” on Tuesday, in his harshest condemnation of the Bush administration’s handling of the war so far. Clark’s more focused attack on the Republicans on the issue of the war may be his response […]

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 […]