Juan Cole

Parliament Reverses Referendum Rule The United Nations has succeeded in convincing the Iraqi parliament to reverse itself. The interim constitution provides that if any three provinces reject the constitution by a 2/3s margin,it fails. (Iraq has 18 provinces). Sunni Arabs have been mobilizing to shoot it down in Anbar, Salah al-Din and Ninevah provinces, where […]

5 US Troops Killed in Sweep of West Sunnis threaten Boycott on new Constitution Five US soldiers have been killed by bombings and a sniper since Monday, in the course of a US sweep of western border towns. About 1250 Iraqi troops and 1250 American troops have attacked the towns, which had been bases for […]

Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan I won’t get a chance to say this all together again for a while, so L’Shana Tova and Ramadan Mubarak!

Sunni Arabs Enraged at Law on 3-Province Veto UN Begins Distributing Constitution The Sunni Arabs of Iraq have for some time had a sneaking suspicion that the Shiites and the Kurds whom the Americans had installed in power in Iraq intended to marginalize and humiliate them. In case they were still in any doubt, the […]

Iraq Press Roundup Tom Engelhardt writes about “Withdrawal Symptoms”— the increasing urge of Americans to get out of Iraq and the arguments for it. Jesse Jackson is eloquent on the need to rebuild America first. (I have often said that Bush is willing to spend over a billion dollars a week in Iraq, but just […]

Ammar al-Hakim: Iranian Influence Over-Stated Admits Iraqi Government has Performed Poorly From Al-Sharq al-Awsat (“The Middle East”), London: An Interview by Ma`d al-Fayyad with Ammar al-Hakim, the son of the powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (leader of the United Iraqi Alliance in Parliament). Translation courtesy the Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the US […]

The Welsh in Maysan: Anything but Quiet This article from last week was published obscurely but it is eloquent about the claim that the “problem” of insecurity is “only in four provinces.” Solidly Shiite Maysan, inhabited to a large extent by displaced Marsh Arabs, would be on no one’s list of the top security problems […]

Bush Dunnit George Stephanopolous dropped a bombshell on his show on Sunday. Toward the end, as Judd notes, he said, ‘ Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or […]

Talabani Calls for Jaafari’s Resignation Iraq Unravels President Jalal Talabani called Sunday for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to step down. Jaafari is the leader of the fundamentalist Shiite Dawa Party and was chosen prime minister by the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite coalition that has, with allies, about 54 percent of the seats in parliament. […]