*Apparently two nights ago there was a major battle in the Mashtal quarter of New Baghdad between US troops and Arab volunteers who had gone […]

*Some of you may have seen me on John Gibson’s The Big Story on Fox Cable News at 5:30 pm EST on 4/23. I may […]

*For my essay on the Shiite religious parties and factions in Iraq, see “Shiite Religious Parties Fill Vacuum in Southern Iraq” in Middle East Reports […]

*US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Monday, of the future of Iraq that he did not expect to see a theocracy there like that […]

*Breaking News US military forces arrested Shaikh Muhammad al-Fartusi and two other clerics at a Baghdad checkpoint. This arrest provoked a big demonstration of 5,000 […]

*Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites continue to make their way to Karbala, the site of the shrine of Imam Husayn, to commemorate the 40th […]

*The eight nations bordering Iraq met in Riyad and called for an early US withdrawal. They demanded that the US abide by the 4th Geneva […]

Some two million Shiites live in eastern Baghdad, and several factions are jockeying for influence with them. Press reports of local Shiite clerics in Baghdad […]

*Al-Hayat for April 18 has an interview with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. It says that Sistani “affirmed his rejection of any foreign power […]