Hayder al-Khoei writes in a guest column for Informed Comment : 22/12/2010 Bickering is still very much the order of the day in Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who has just won a second term, may have a functioning government that enjoys the confidence of parliament, but that is no reason to celebrate. Not yet […]
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Arab World
Iraq has a Government: Can we Please Come Home Now?
Iraq has marked three milestones this fall. The formal military mission of US troops was ended by President Obama on August 31, and while about 50,000 troops remain, some of them occasionally engaged in combat at the invitation of the Iraqi government, there are no large US military campaigns. The remaining 50,000 troops are scheduled […]
Saudi Arabia, Distribution of Annual Rainfall
Found a better rainfall distribution map: Courtesy the National Center for Atmospheric Research, 2007
Obama’s 2010 Successes and Failures in the Middle East – Cole in Truthdig
My new column at Truthdig.com is just out: “Obama’s 2010 Successes and Failures in the Middle East”. Excerpt: ‘ As 2010 dawned, President Barack Obama had four big issues on his plate regarding the Middle East. These were Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Iran, and Afghanistan. The year has been as unkind to him on those issues as […]
Iraq’s al-Maliki Rebuffed on Incomplete Cabinet
Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that prospective Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki faced severe opposition on Monday to his insistence on announcing the formation of a government without naming all the cabinet members. Among the parties opposed to this step was the Iraqiya, the Kurdistan Alliance, and the Sadr Movement. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court issued a ruling […]
Iraq Arrests Dozens in Terror Sweep, Offers Help to Iran
Iraqi authorities are going for the trifecta. They are finally forming a new government, nine months after the March parliamentary elections, to be headed by incumbent Nuri al-Maliki at the head of a Shiite-Kurdish coalition. They have finally gotten UN sanctions on Iraq, implemented after the 1990 occupation of Kuwait, lifted. And they are increasingly […]
Egypt: Israel’s Nukes Destabilizing to Region (Wikileaks)
Whenever any US official says that Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program is destabilizing the Middle East by posing a proliferation problem, I wince. A civilian enrichment program is not a proliferation issue, since only the construction of a nuclear warhead would violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT explicitly allows countries to close the fuel […]
Visser: Spin-Doctors and the Changing Nature of Imperial Power in Iraq
Reidar Visser writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: Treaties, Acronyms and Spin-Doctors: The Changing Nature of Imperial Power in Iraq In the 1920s, during the early days of the Iraqi monarchy, a major bone of contention between King Faisal I and Britain concerned the definition of their bilateral relations. King Faisal objected strongly […]
Mubarak: W. Naive, controlled by Subordinates
We now have the full text of the May 19, 2009 cable giving background in preparation for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s visit to President Obama at the White House. This is the one where he said Iraq basically needs strong man rule. But the cable is full of other insights: 1. Mubarak boycotted the Bush […]