Juan Cole

Car Bomb at Hilla Police Academy Kills at Least 20 Guerrillas detonated a car bomb outside a police academy in Hilla, a city of 500,000, largely Shiite, in the mixed Babil province an hour south of Baghdad. Numbers of wounded were not available but must run to the dozens. The Academy was holding a graduation […]

Baghdad Governor, 6 Bodyguards Assassinated 5 US Troops, 10 Iraqi Commandoes also Killed The pro-American governor of Baghdad and his convoy were ambushed on Tuesday by gunmen, who managed to cut down the governor and six of his bodyguards in only the latest of a spate of killing of provincial governing officials. The head of […]

Downsides of Partitioning Iraq Some readers asked me why I was so against partitioning Iraq. It is because it would cause a great deal of trouble to us all, not least Iraqis. Iraq is not divided neatly into three ethnic enclaves. It is all mixed up. There are a million Kurds in Baghdad, a million […]

Carnage continues With 27 Dead Bombings and assassinations resulted in at least 27 deaths in Iraq on Monday. Not only was a bomb exploded outside the headquarters of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord party (killing four and wounding 24), but another blast went off outside the Green Zone that houses government offices […]

2 Killed, 14 Wounded at Allawi Party HQ Wire services and Lebanese Broadcasting Channel were reporting early Monday morning that guerrillas had detonated a car bomb near the headquarters of the Iraqi National Accord party. The party was about to announce its candidate list for the forthcoming elections. LBC reported that Allawi was on the […]

Middle Eastern Contributions to Tsunamic Relief in Context Someone on an email list drew my attention to the following exchange from last week, with Tucker Carlson talking to Leslie Gelb, a fromer president of the Council on Foreign Relations, shown at 10 pm on Weds. Dec. 29 on CNN Newsnight. Carlson, who doesn’t know anything […]

Postings Postings may sometimes be irregular this week, since I’m at a conference.

Thousands of Fallujans Demonstrate Ash-Sharq al-Awsat Thousands of Fallujans demonstrated on Saturday in front of the main entrance to the largely abandoned city. They demanded that US military forces leave their city and that basic services be restored so that they could return. One eyewitness reporter called in from the scene an estimate of 30,000 […]

Guerrillas kill 32 Car Bomb Kills 19, Wounds 6 AFP reports that guerillas killed 32 persons in Iraq on Saturday. The most spectacular act of violence was the car bombing of a bus carrying national guardsmen. “Sixteen Iraqi national guard soldiers and one Iraqi civilian were killed… when anti Iraqi forces detonated a vehicle borne-improvised […]