Juan Cole

Army of the Mahdi on the Move; 10,000 Demonstrate Militiamen of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Army of the Mahdi spread through the slums of East Baghdad Friday, after two of their number were killed in clashes with American troops. A crowd of 10,000 angry Shiites gathered to protest the deaths. Al-Hayat said that the militiamen were killed […]

Northern Clergy Condemn Plan to bring Turkish troops into Iraq The “Union of Muslim Clerics” in nothern Iraq warned Turkey not to become entangled with the Americans. In a communique that the group issued, they said, “Scholars of religion stnad with the Kurds against the interference of Ankara in Kurdish affairs, and pledges to resist […]

Weblog on Situation of Women in Iraq Thierry Robin, a French freelancer, is posting on the situation in Iraq from Baghdad Oct. 8 – 22, with a special focus on the position of women. The site is bilingual in French and English, so scroll down to find the English entries. http://www.centifolia.com/

Spanish Intelligence Officer Assassinated in Baghdad Insurgents assassinated a Spanish diplomat in Baghdad, José Antonio Bernal Gómez, the Information attaché at the Spanish embassy.. They waited until his night guard left at 7 am, and struck before the next guard shift arrived. One of them, who approached, was dressed in the garb of a Shiite […]

Day of Rage in Iraq: 3 US Soldiers Dead, 5 Wounded, 9 Police killed in Truck Bombing Guerrillas ambushed a routine US patrol in the slums of East Baghdad late Thursday night, killing two US soldiers and wounding four others. I believe these are the first US soldiers killed in Sadr City, a radical Shiite […]

World Bank: Iraqi Reconstruction will be Delayed by Lack of Security The World Bank and the UN say that the rebuilding of Iraq may take longer than the 4 years they originally estimated, because of the deterioration in the security situation. They had put the cost of rebuilding at $36 bn., on top of the […]

Demonstration Against lack of Security at Basra University Hundreds of students and faculty demonstrated Thursday against the failure of Coalition troops in the southern Shiite city of Basra to prevent the assassination last Sunday of the dean of the college of engineering. They carried placards demanding that students and professors at the university be protected […]

Senior Member of College of Ayatollahs Slams US The al-Hawzah al-`Ilmiyyah is the seminary center of leading Shiite clerics in Najaf, which exercises enormous moral authority over Iraqis of that branch of Islam. It is presently dominated by four senior clerics: Grand Ayatollahs Ali Sistani, Muhammad Said al-Hakim, Muhammad Fayyad, and Hussein Bashir al-Najafi. Sistani […]

Bush’s Diplomatic Failures Hurt US Reservists The way in which reservists have been virtually kidnapped by the Bush administration, with 170,000 now on active duty and many given one-year overseas assignments, may become a political issue in the 2004 elections. Many reservists are small businessmen, whose businesses are in danger because they are absent for […]