Juan Cole

Safire gets it wrong: Zarqawi William Safire’s piece, ‘Finally, a smoking gun,’ provoked a lot of dissent among my readers, who asked me to say something. I am waiting to see the Arabic text of the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi letter before commenting on it; I am told it was released today in Baghdad but I […]

Americana in Arabic: Translation Project I was talking yesterday about the tragedy that American culture is so little known (except through bad television shows) in the Arab world. One of the problems is that so few books of American thought, literature and history have been translated into Arabic and published accessibly, and kept accessible through […]

Tens of Thousands of Pilgrims Flock to Najaf, Support Sistani Wire services report that tens of thousands of Shiites thronged to the holy city of Najaf yesterday to celebrate a holy day. Many of them also took the occasion as an opportunity to show banners and chant slogans in favor of direct elections, which Grand […]

Sistani in a Secure Location; Annan worries about Partition of Iraq az-Zaman and Deutsche Press Agentur report that UN Secretary General gave a speech Tuesday expressing concern about ethnic tensions tearing Iraq apart. Murtada Kashmiri, a spokesman for Sistani, announced to az-Zaman that the UN team in Iraq to advise on elections will meet this […]

57 Killed in Separate Incidents; Iraqi Police Targeted Wire services report that: About 57 people were killed yesterday in separate incidents in Iraq. A powerful truck bomb exploded yesterday outside a police station [in predominantly Shiite Iskandariyah] south of Baghdad, killing up to 53 people and wounding scores of others, apparently all of them Iraqi […]

Basra’s Security Endangered by Drug Smugglers, Terrorists Az-Zaman conducted an interview with the Iraqi police chief in Basra about security there. He said the city’s security was threatened by al-Qaeda terrorism and by criminal gangs. The latter are involved in drug smuggling and in looting the materials being used for reconstruction and reselling them elsewhere. […]

Sunni Cleric in Iraq: Resistance against Occupation is Licit in International Law Muhammad Bashar al-Faidi, official spokesman for the Sunni Board of Muslim Clerics, gave an interview in ash-Sharq al-Awsat in which he strongly opposed Sistani’s proposal for direct elections. “Cooking on a fast fire ruins the food,” he said. He alleged that the plan […]

Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood Seeks to Islamize the Constitution Muhsin Abdel Hamid, the leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party (Muslim Brotherhood), is this month’s president of the Interim Governing Council. He has weighed in on the need for the Fundamental Law now being drafted to govern Iraq until a new constitution can be written to reflect […]

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Scott Taylor reports on his bad experiences with the security situation in Iraq, painting a pretty scary picture of the situation in Baghdad and points north. But just to underline how ambiguous the situation is, note that even some wounded Iraqi war veterans are insisting that the US […]