Juan Cole

Basra: Massive Drug, Petroleum smuggling; Christians, Musicians Harassed Because the southern Iraqi city of Basra (1.3 million) is under British military occupation rather than American, it is little covered in the US press (does anybody else think this is odd?) There have been several British and Arab reports about the situation there recently. They indicate […]

More Iranians in Karbala than Iraqis? One finds these little gems in things like theCoalition Provisional Authority Briefing on Dec. 30, already on the Web. (Participating was Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Director for Operations and Daniel Senor, Senior Coalition Provisional Authority Adviser.) The below passage is rich in what it says about how porous […]

Firefight with Ansar al-Islam in Mosul kills 3 US troops in Mosul fought with the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group in Mosul on Sunday, killing 3 and capturing several other members, according to US military spokesmen. Ansar al-Islam had operated in the American-policed no-fly zone of northern Iraq, and is alleged to have ties to al-Qaeda. […]

Corruption Concerns Delay Pentagon Reconstruction Projects in Iraq The Boston Globe reports that the Pentagon has canceled the process of giving out bids to reconstruct Iraq until February 1, out of concern for pervasive corruption. It is being alleged that a small group of mercantile clans is manipulating the bidding process through dummy companies, hiding […]

Barzani: Kurdish Rights must be in Iraq Basic Law; Kubba: Washington rejects Loose Federalism The two most prominent Kurdish leaders are making a full court press for an Iraqi Kurdistan to be enshrined in law before the American civil administration decamps on July 1. Jalal Talabani, head of the Kurdistan Patriotic Union claimed during a […]

al-Rubaie: No Sunni-Shiite Conflict; need for National Reconciliation In Nasiriyah, Interim Governing Council member Muwaffaq al-Rubaie affirmed that there are no disputes between Shiites and Sunnis. He said that these two branches of Islam had suffered intellectual and political persecution during the former regime, and they are both now standing in a single row, serving […]

2 US troops killed, 8 Wounded; Interpreter Killed, 8 Iraqi troops wounded Michelle Faul of AP reports that guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb at the Karada shopping district in Baghdad, killing one US soldier; wounding 5 other US troops; killing two Iraqi children; and wounding an Iraqi interpreter and 8 members of the Iraqi civil […]

MI6 Manipulated British Media Former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski called on Sunday (CNN) for an investigation into how the US was manipulated into the Iraq war. Speaking of the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq uranium purchases, he said that the problem was not only that the US lacked good human intelligence, but that it […]

(More) Hurdles for Iraqi Democracy The Neocon idea that a post-war, US-dominated Iraq would become a beacon of democracy faces more and more hurdles. The increasingly strident and increasingly controversial Kurdish demand for a consolidated Kurdish super-province with relative autonomy from Baghdad could well derail the new Iraq. The demand is not acceptable to Turkmen […]