Juan Cole

Bombings in Baghdad and Basra The Washington Post reports Thursday, in the wake of the huge car bomb in Karrada, Baghdad, on Wednesday that demolished the Mount Lebanon Hotel and surrounding buildings:: “Near Baqubah, a machine-gun toting man opened fire on a small bus carrying employees of a U.S. funded radio and TV station, killing […]

Kurdish Demonstrations in Irbil on Behalf of Kurds of Syria Reuters reports that some 5000 Kurds demonstrated in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, waving Kurdish flags, in support of the Kurds of Syria. There was a soccer riot in the northeastern town of Kameshli last Friday, which sparked Arab-Kurdish fights that later spread to […]

New Government will not be “Expansion” of Governing Council The Iraqi newspaper az-Zaman managed to get an interview with an unnamed Coalition Provisional Authority official who sketched in some ideas about the shape of the new Iraqi government to which the US and the UK will transfer sovereignty on June 30. He expected a large […]

“Coalition” Forces in Iraq: Tomdispatch.com Gavan McCormick writes about the Japanese and other supporting troop contingents in Iraq. He says of them that they. . . “have added up to a strange imperial legion of occupation. Almost all of these forces, ranging from the symbolic to the microscopic, represented interests that had absolutely nothing to […]

Comments on ABC Iraq Poll David Patel, in Basra responds with some thoughtful comments on the recent ABC News poll from Iraq. Some readers have asked me about the finding that Iraqis generally think they are better off than during the Saddam era, but are very worried about the security situation. This finding doesn’t surprise […]

Role of the United Nations in dispute az-Zaman has been reporting that 12 of the Shiite members of the Interim Governing Council, including expatriate Ahmad Chalabi, are opposed to the return to Iraq of special UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. They are angry that he certified that open, direct elections could not be held before June […]

Did al-Qaeda Win the Spanish Elections? This silly question is being asked by billionnaire Rupert Murdoch’s and Conrad Black’s media outlets all over the world in blazing headlines. For some strange reason, the billionnaires aren’t happy that the Socialist Workers’ Party won the elections in Spain, and are trying to portray the outcome as cowardice […]

Sunnis of Iraq “Apprehensive, Defiant” A British reporter recently in Baghdad kindly sent me the following impressions: “1. I didn’t get out of the city at all because of the security situation, and I concentrated mainly on talking to Sunnis. The ones I met were both apprehensive and defiant: apprehensive about “what the Americans are […]

Shiite Account of Visitation (‘pilgrimage’) to Holy Shrines of Iraq This is a fascinating account of an expatriate Shiite’s return to Iraq for religious visitation to the shrines. The narrative of bribing his way past the guards at the Syrian border for $200; the images of chaotic, heavy traffic and drivers driving on the wrong […]