Juan Cole

*The American team in Iraq is being shaken up big time. Barbara Bodine, a long-time diplomat and Arabist, who has effectively been the US mayor of Baghdad for three weeks, is being sent back a desk job at State in Washington. Some reporters have speculated that Bodine was sacked by the incoming American pro-consul, Paul […]

*According to al-Hayat, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, just returned from Iran, has called for a state in which all would feel secure and in which women would play a central role. He rejected, however, any possibility of continuing to live with Baathism (the former ruling ideology of secular Arab nationalism and “socialism,” i.e. an Arab […]

* Breaking news. Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim has returned to Iraq, stopping first in Basra with a hundred-vehicle convoy. He is reported to have addressed a crowd of 10,000. He spoke in his speech against Iraq having a “foreign-installed government” but did not mention the US by name. AP reported him saying, “I am a […]

*US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz criticized Turkey in an interview on CNN for not giving practical support to the US war effort in Iraq. On Turkish news site said, ‘ In his criticism, Wolfowitz singled out the Turkish military for not playing “a leadership role” on the Iraq issue. He suggested that, without […]

*Jay Garner has added two further members to a nine-man leadership council (it is so far all men). One will represent the Shiite al-Da`wa Party and the other is a Sunni Arab representing an old party active in the 1940s until 1968 when it was banned. This move is a good step in the right […]

*The humanitarian and security crises continue to grow in American-occupied Iraq. Electricity has been returned to only 9 of 21 major cities, and much of the capital still lacks it. Lack of electricity generally equates to lack of pure water. Cholera has broken out in Basra and many Iraqi children in particular are at risk […]

In my view the really big news today is the growing rapprochement between Pakistan and India. On Tuesday, Pakistani PM Zafarullah Jamali put forth six steps to promote confidence-building between the two countries, “including immediate resumption of air, rail and bus links and exchange of high commissioners between the two countries” (Dawn). India says it […]

*AFP is reporting that Jay Garner, head of the Pentagon’s reconstruction effort in Iraq, has appointed 5 Iraqi leaders as the core of a new Iraqi government. He is said to have named: Massoud Barzani from the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Jalal Talabani of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim from the Supreme […]

*Emile Lahoud, the president of Lebanon, rejected US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s demand that the Hizbullah militia in south Lebanon be replaced. He said that Hizbullah is a legal political party, and expressed satisfaction that its guerrilla actions had gotten the Israelis back out of south Lebanon after 18 years. The Israeli and Zionist […]