Juan Cole

US Ignorance Created the Quagmire in Fallujah Journalist Hazim al-Amin reports in al-Hayat that Fallujah and Ramadi strike him as almost identical in most ways. The same extended clan networks dominate both cities, both are Sunni, etc. Yet Ramadi hasn’t given the US nearly as much trouble as Fallujah. He thinks the difference is that […]

US Clashes with PKK in Iraq; Turks Complain of Lack of Influence Turkish Chief of Staff Hilmi Ozkok has complained that the US is showing favoritism to Iraqi Kurds. He said in an interview with Radikal, “The United States favours the group in the north a little too much. We don’t know what shape Iraq […]

Israel Connections to the Iraq Occupation Delinda Hanley charges that there is a strong Israeli connection to US plans for Iraq, citing three developments. One is the Israeli demand that an oil pipeline be built from northern Iraq to Haifa. The second is the opening in Baghdad of an office of MEMRI, an Israeli propaganda […]

Muqtada’s Softer Side A more extended analysis of Muqtada al-Sadr’s recent softening toward the US presence and his turn to playing ordinary politics instead of appealing to a kind of radical politics of theater and, to be frank, thuggery, has appeared by Hamza Hendawi. He argues that Muqtada is now reaching out to other Shiite […]

Klein: Not Just “Troops Out Now” but “Contractors Out Now” Journalist Naomi Klein says, “It’s too late to stop the war, but it’s not too late to deny Iraq’s invaders the myriad economic prizes they went to war to collect in the first place . . Bring Halliburton home. Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. […]

Iraq faces Bitter Winter without enough Kerosene Iraq will need half a billion liters of kerosene this winter, according to a Reuters report, but only has managed to accumulate a quarter of a billion. The US has the responsibility to ensure the welfare of the Iraqi people, and the Coalition Provisional Authority is making arrangements […]

Alnasrawi: Privatization is Wrongheaded The eminent Iraqi-born economist Abbas Alnasrawi of the University of Vermont has written a wide-ranging argument against the immediate privatization of state-owned industries by the American administration of Iraq. He argues that such policies should have waited for an elected Iraqi government, which would have the legitimacy to implement them thoughtfully, […]

You will all be following in other news sources the story of the downed Blackhawk helicopter and further US casualties. I’m at a conference and so I’ll just report here some items that might not make the US newspapers or might not be highlighted.

Sunni Fundamentalists Protest arrests of Clergy 500 Sunni Islamists demonstrated in the streets of Baghdad on Friday, representing the Higher Islamic Institute and other Muslim groups, and demanding the release of Sunni clergymen imprisoned by the Americans. They prayed on the street before the Coalition HQ. Shaykh Abd al-Sattar al-Janabi announced after he had sought […]