Juan Cole

Muhsin Abdul Hamid: The Sunnis are the Majority ash-Sharq al-Awsat: The leader of the [Sunni] Iraqi Islamic Party, Muhsin Abdul Hamid, gave a long interview in Cairo in which he reiterated his allegations that Sunnis have been unfairly “marginalized” in Iraq by the US occupation authorities. He maintains that if you count all Sunni Arabs, […]

Threat of Hyper-Inflation The Guardian reports that the British head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Basra, Patrick Nixon, is warning about the dangers of inflation. The economy is heating up. Rents and housing costs in Basra are way up. Unemployment in Basra has fallen to 15%, in Baghdad to 30%, and in the country […]

Engelhardt: Follow the Money in Iraq Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch.com has very suggestive insights this week on Iraq, especially with regard to the role of money, of corrupt expatriate politician Ahmad Chalabi, and Pentagon control of US reconstruction aid in that country. I saw all the individual items Tom cites, but he has put it […]

More US Soldiers killed The steady and depressing drumbeat of US deaths and woundings in Iraq continues unabated. At 5 am on Saturday in Tikrit, guerrillas detonated a bomb in Tikrit that killed two US soldiers and wounded 4, several seriously. On Thursday, two soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb at Habbaniyah. On […]

Shiite Crowds, Preachers, Denounce Interim Constitution az-Zaman, ash-Sharq al-Awsat; wire services: The Shiite clerical leader Muhammad al-Ya`qubi called on high school students and students in institutes and colleges throughout Iraq to announce a strike on Saturday, in protest against the contents of the Basic Law or interim constitution. Over 1,000 Shiites demonstrated Friday in the […]

Wave of Killings at Sunni Mosques Reuters reports on a wave of killings at Sunni mosques. Both worshippers and Sunni clerics have been killed. Some of the mosques attacked are in poor, largely Shiite neighborhoods, and some suspect Shiite militias are the culprits. (The more radical Sadrists are being spoken of without being named, I […]

Red Herrings on Discount at Washington Post Poor Dana Priest at the Washington Post caught the frankly shitty assignment of summarizing Undersecretary of Defense for Planning Doug Feith’s self-defense against Democratic critics. The article is a mere repeat of statements made to the press by Feith on June 4, 2003, and contains nothing new. It […]

ETA or al-Qaeda? Madrid Bombing’s Significance Unknown As Steve Komarow argues, the full implications of the sanguinary bombings in Spain on Thursday depend on who did it. If it was ETA, the Basque separatist organization, then it would tend to be seen by the rest of the world as of mainly local significance. If it […]

Sistani doesn’t Want Brahimi to Come Back al-Hayat newspaper maintains that it was told by a high Frendh official that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani opposes the return to Iraq of special UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. He is said to be happy with the Shiite majority on the Interim Governing Council, and to fear that Brahimi […]