Juan Cole

WaPo and NYT Duel on Sigificance of National Congress One of the wonderful things about the internet is that it is easier than ever to see lots of news reports on the same event and to get a sense of the different angles that reporters work in reporting them. There is a night and day […]

Fadlallah: Americans must be Forced to Withdraw Just saw an interview on al-Jazeerah with the Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah, who has been in Beirut since 1965 but is from Najaf. (Fadlallah, an independent, has strained relations both with the ayatollahs in Iran and with the Hizbullah in Lebanon, though he may have […]

Al-Haeri Weighs in Al-Jazeerah’s crawl is saying that Grand Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri, based in Qom, has issued a fatwa or ruling that no Iraqi Muslim may fight another Muslim on behalf of the current regime in Iraq and its American backers. Al-Haeri is sometimes called the “fifth” grand ayatollah of Najaf, the other four being […]

Thousands Stream to Najaf Thousands of Shiites are streaming toward Najaf in hopes of forming a human shield around Muqtada al-Sadr, according to al-Hayat. Many have already gathered at the gates to the old city in Najaf and around the shrine of Imam Ali. In the meantime, the Allawi government says it intends to send […]

Oil Pipeline Closed, Costing Iraqi Government $30 Million a day The continued instability in the Shiite areas of southern Iraq, especially threats of sabotage by Mahdi Army fighters, has led Iraqi authorities to shut down oil facilities in Basra again, according to AFP. Excerpts: ‘ . . . the Southern Oil Company announced the pipeline […]

It Takes a Following to Make an Ayatollah My op-ed on Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr is in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Why does the Mahdi Army fight? Mariam Fam of AP talks about the cultural dynamics around the Army of the Mahdi, the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr. She does a good job of providing a balanced view. She quotes one of the militiamen: ‘ Ayad Ali, a militiaman in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, claimed his brother […]

Muqtada Press Conference: “No Ordinary Politics Under Occupation” The one-day truce in Najaf has collapsed. And, even the council of tribal chieftains in the Middle Euphrates, a previously pro-American group, has issued a statement condemning the “barbaric massacres perpetrated by the United States in Najaf,” according to al-Jazeerah’s crawl. Just saw a long press conference […]

US War Planes Bomb Samarra Al-Jazeerah also showed footage of the US bombing of the city of Samarra (north of Baghdad) on Friday night or early Saturday morning, and the huge craters it produced, along with residential buildings reduced to rubble and a few corpses. It is annoying that al-Jazeerah (the mirror image of Fox […]