Juan Cole

My opinion piece in the Daily Star covers some of the same ground as postings here earlier in the week, but also makes some new points: Sistani throws down a gauntlet Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has intervened forcefully in Iraqi politics. In a fatwa, or legal ruling, issued on July 1, he denounced US civil […]

* A happy Fourth to all the Americans in Iraq, where I know I have some readers. Hope you can all be back home soon, safe and sound. And to my Iraqi friends, I wish you well with the sentiments we celebrate on the Fourth – We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all […]

*The US is bogged down in a low-intensity guerrilla war in Iraq, with daily attacks that for the most part go unmentioned in the Western press, including grenade, mortar and rocket propelled grenade assaults on Anglo-American military and on Iraqi police personnel and facilities. So reports Richard Sale, the intrepid terrorism correspondent of UPI. He […]

For some odd reason, my July 1 posting of Sistani’s fatwa is not being archived by the new blogger software, so I am attempting to repost it here so it can be linked to. Tuesday, July 01, 2003 *Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has entered Iraqi politics in an unexpectedly big way. He has denounced US […]

*Here is what Tuesday’s events in Iraq looked like to Kuwait’s Arab Times: “Six more American soldiers were wounded in Iraq on Tuesday and a fatal blast at a mosque fuelled Muslim anger toward US forces, all within hours of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisting Iraq was no new Vietnam. Three soldiers were hurt near […]

*Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has entered Iraqi politics in an unexpectedly big way. He has denounced US administrator Paul Bremer’s plan to appoint a large constitutional committee to write a new Iraqi constitution. He insists that Bremer has no such authority, and that delegates to an Iraqi constitutional convention must be elected by the Iraqi […]

*The US Army has launched Operation Sidewinder, storming 20 towns in the Sunni Arab center of Iraq and making dozens of arrests, in a quest to stop sabotage and attacks on US troops. The problem with this sort of operation is that it assumes that resistance to occupation is a zero sum game. There is […]

*The civil administration of Iraq under Paul Bremer plans to create a ministry of religious affairs that would promote dialogue among Iraq’s religious leaders, according to az-Zaman. It would also attempt to ensure that any legislation passed does not withdraw from them their religious rights. *Large fires burned at three Baghdad sites on Saturday, at […]

*Jews who buy land in Iraq should be killed, according to a fatwa or legal ruling issued by Sayyid Kadhim al-Haeri ( -Reuters). Al-Haeri is still in Qom, Iran, but he is said to be contemplating a return home to Najaf, in Iraq. He has been adopted as the elder statesman of the al-Sadr Movement, […]