Juan Cole

Brussels Conference Inconclusive 32 Dead in Guerrilla Violence The Brussels conference of foreign ministers on Iraq seems to me to have yielded little practical result. The real action will come at the donors’ conference in Amman, Jordan, next month. The world community has pledged billions to Iraq, but has only delivered about $2 billion, in […]

Questions on UN Option in Iraq A reader with a US military background writes: “I noted your recent proposal for increased UN military involvement with some questions. 1. With great oversimplification, the civil war in Iraq is being fought by factions who desire to have the long term control of either the government of the […]

Kos Discussion of UN Option Many thanks to “Mark in San Francisco,” who runs a diary at Daily Kos, for provoking an extensive and often acute discussion of my piece on the “UN Option” there. The first thing I should say is that people shouldn’t get too hung up on the exact composition of a […]

Bush’s Iraq Incubator of Terror Syria Deploys 7,000 to Block Infiltrators The New York Times reports that the CIA is growing increasingly alarmed about Bush’s Iraq as an incubator of terrorists, and the probability that at some point they will target the US at home. Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP: Demonstrators in Baghdad from the center and […]

War on Terror or War on Each other? Dawn tells an unedifying little story of a crisis that was not covered by most US corporate media. So, first the Afghan security services broke up what they said was a plot by three armed Pakistanis to assassinate Zalmay Khalilzad, who had been the US ambassador to […]

History and Genetics in Madagascar Genetics and history have joined forces to explain the origins of the people of Madagascar (the world’s fourth largest island, off the coast of East Africa). Early Muslim chronicles speak of the peopling of Madagascar from the islands to its far east, i.e., Indonesia. Geneticists have found that about half […]

Cole on Knowing his Own History; and Isaiah Berlin I don’t usually bother to reply at any length to my Neocon critics. Mostly this is because they are simply insincere, and say what they say maliciously and in knowledge of its falsehood. In some instances they have quite unethically subjected their opponents to harassment of […]

Can they Handle it? Hawi as Communist A reader writes: ‘ I noted with some relish the subtleties of perception. You and Al-Jazeera identify Georges Hawi [up front] as a communist. CNN and others identify him as an anti-Syrian politician. They [later] add “former secretary-general” leaving his present membership in the party up in the […]

Beirut Bombing Kills Communist Opposition Leader The victory in Sunday’s polling of the anti-Syrian faction in Lebanese politics has not led to social peace. The coalition of Saad Hariri won in the north in part by having Sunni clerics mount their pulpits in mosques and play on sectarian feelings to defeat Maronite General Michele Aoun’s […]