Juan Cole

Muqtada Aide: Australia Out! According to Australian Broadcasting Co., Imam Amer al-Hussaini, an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr, called Sunday for an immediate withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq. ‘ “The Saddam regime (is) gone and … we know how to control our country,” he told ABC radio through an interpreter. ‘ Australian Broadcasting’s Peter Cave […]

Incompetence or Double-Dealing in Coalition Management of Iraq? The Coalition decision to provoke a fight with Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement only three months before the Coalition Provisional Authority goes out of business has to be seen as a form of gross incompetence in governance. How did the CPA get to the point where it has turned […]

Shiite Clashes in with Coalition in Najaf Baghdad: Phase II of the Anti-Occupation Struggle Begins Nine Coalition Troops Killed, Dozens wounded in Confronting Uprising [Updated] The always tense relationship between the Sadrist movement among Iraqi Shiites and the US and its Coalition partners has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Perhaps a third of […]

Iraq Information or Party Propaganda? The Guardian has a story on Sunday about how the Iraq Information Office is not just a Coalition Provisional Authority way of getting the news out about their activities, but is essentially an arm of the Republican National Committee dedicated to reelecting George Bush. The goal is to keep the […]

Thousands Protest Newspaper Closure in Baghdad Some 5,000 followers of Muqtada al-Sadr marched through largely Shiite East Baghdad on Saturday, protesting the closure of his al-Hawzah newspaper. The building demonstrations come against a backdrop of continued violence in Iraq. The night before, heavy fighting had broken out in Kufa, a town of about 120,000 near […]

Gypsy Town Razed by Militant Sadrists as Den of Iniquity The Financial Times reports, a little belatedly, that Muqtada al-Sadr’s Army of the Mahdi militia raided and destroyed the town of Kawlia near Diwaniyah about 3 weeks ago. Kawlia was a center of Iraqi “gypsies,” dancing girls and prostitutes, and was a concern to the […]

Kaplan: Is Fallujah Mogadishu? See Fred Kaplan’s suggestive comparison of Fallujah to Mogadishu at the Slate weblog.

Deaths of Americans in Fallujah: In revenge for Sharon’s Murder of Sheikh Yassin? There is increasing evidence that the brutal attack on the American security guards in Fallujah, and the desecration of their bodies, was the work of Islamists seeking vengeance for the Israeli murder of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Leaflets found at the […]

Kimmitt: Fallujah will be just like Baqubah On the killing of the US security personnel in Fallujah on Wednesday: ‘ GEN. KIMMITT: What I’m suggesting is that there is an incident that happened yesterday. It’s going to color the way that the town of Fallujah is looked at by the military authorities responsible for that […]