Juan Cole

Successful Caucus Elections in Samawa Veteran Middle East reporter Nicholas Blanford writes in the Christian Science Monitor about the successes of the Coalition Provisional Authority in sponsoring caucus-type elections in Muthanna Province in the hardscrabble Shiite south. He describes how the populace is given the opportunity to put 100 names of delegates forward, who in […]

Reaction to Saddam’s Capture in Iran In 1980, Saddam Hussein launched a war on Iran, attempting to grab its oil-rich Khuzistan province, and beginning a bloody conflict that lasted until 1988. The war devoured the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iranians, but eventually Saddam was forced to withdraw. Iranians are therefore among those rejoicing […]

4 US troops Wounded in Kuwait According to Reuters, guerrillas in Kuwait attacked two US convoys moving through that country on Sunday in separate incidents, lightly wounding four US soldiers when their small arms attack shattered glass and set it flying.. Unsuccessful attacks on US personnel in Kuwait, presumably by Kuwaitis sympathetic to al-Qaeda, have […]

Impact of Saddam Arrest on US Politics The capture of Saddam is probably more important for US politics than for the Iraqis. The Baath Party and the Saddam cult of personality were spent forces by the end of the Gulf War, which was why Saddam was forced to rule by sheer terror. You don’t have […]

Celebrations in Dearborn Arab-Americans in southwest Detroit came out into the frosty streets to celebrate Saddam’s capture, reports Nancy Youssef of the Detroit Free Press. She writes, ‘”This is a golden opportunity for the coalition to rebuild trust with the Iraqi people,” said Imam Husham Al-Husainy, head of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center in Dearborn. […]

Musharraf Nearly Blown Up On any other day it would be front-page news. As Dawn notes, General Pervez Musharraf, who styles himself president of Pakistan, was very nearly killed by a powerful bomb on a bridge to Rawalpindi that went off just after his convoy had passed over it. Musharraf has in recent days cracked […]

Iraqi Joke about the Capture of Saddam Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says the following is making the rounds in Baghdad: ‘Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, the former Information Ministry spokesman [known in the West as Baghdad Bob], was reached for comment about the arrest of Saddam. Al-Sahhaf denied that the US had captured the former Iraqi leader. “The man […]

Rumors of Iran Connection to Arrest of Saddam Questioned Ali Nourizadeh, writing in the London-based Saudi daily, ash-Sharq al-Awsat, reports that rumors have swirled in Iraq that Iranian intelligence played a role in ferreting out the location of Saddam Hussein. Nourizadeh discounts these reports, because, he says, Iranian security is in the hands of the […]

Reflections on the Capture of Saddam Hussein Seeing a captive, disheveled Saddam on television this morning released a cascade of memories for me. I remembered the innocent Jews brutally hanged in downtown Baghdad when the Baath came to power in 1968; the fencing with the Shah and the Kurds in the early 1970s; the vicious […]