Juan Cole

Guest Comment on Fallujah and Kaplan: Nir Rosen Journalist Nir Rosen, who has spent most of the past year in Iraq and has fluent Arabic, recently reported on Fallujah for the New Yorker. He objects to many details and arguments in the reporting of of Robert Kaplan on Fallujah for The Atlantic Monthly. We print […]

2 US Pilots Wounded; Strike on Fallujah Mortar Strike in Basra US jets dropped 500-pound bombs on Fallujah again on Monday, targetting an alleged safe house of the al-Tawhid terrorist network. The Iraqi caretaker government announced that it had supported the move. A dozen or more persons were killed, according to local Iraqi observers. Guerrillas […]

Samarra in Chaos Az-Zaman reports that informed sources tell it that the city of Samarra is still in a state of complete chaos, after an armed group established domination there when the American forces withdrew at the end of June. The sources maintain that gunmen blew up the headquarters of the political party of Interior […]

The Crisis in Yemen: Guest Comment by Willis John M. Willis, who has taught Middle East at New York University’s Dept. of Education, writes in about Yemen: ‘ I just wanted to add a few notes to your reading of the recent violence in Haydan outside of Sa’dah in northern Yemen. The recent violence instigated […]

2 US Pilots Wounded; Mortar Strike in Basra Guerrillas in the southern port city of Basra fired mortar rounds at the local government headquarters, but missed and hit local houses instead, killing one Iraqi civilian and wounding four others. Largely Shiite Basra has been quieter than some other parts of Iraq, but has witnessed some […]

Pipeline Blast Further Limits Iraqi Exports For the second day in a row on Sunday, guerrillas attacked a key north-south pipeline in Iraq. The damage further limited Iraqi exports, which had been halved by the Saturday sabotage.

Allawi: Considering Arab Troops George Stephanopoulos interviewed Iyad Allawi on Sunday and did what I thought was an excellent job. He pressed Allawi on the issue of Muqtada al-Sadr, and received the response that al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army might well be amnestied if they cooperate with the caretaker government and seek to join the […]

Karpinski Says Israelis Were at Abu Ghraib Brigadier General Janis Karpinski alleged Sunday that Israeli interrogators were active at Abu Ghuraib prison. She said she even met one who admitted his nationality to her. AP reports her saying, ‘ “I saw an individual there that I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet before, and I […]

Quiet Ethnic Cleansing of Shiites by Sunni Jihadis? A European reader with good Iraq contacts passes along a very interesting but frightening account of severe Sunni-Shiite tensions in the mixed areas around Baghdad. I have occasionally seen reports in the Arabic press of Muqtada al-Sadr’s followers usurping Sunni mosques and attacking Sunnis. Given the hatred […]