Iraq

Ned Parker, Raheem Salman and Saad Fakhrildeen get the story in Najaf, the Shiite holy city south of Baghdad. The four grand ayatollahs, pillars of middle and upper class Shiite orthodoxy, are fearful of the influence of young Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the millenarian workers and the poor. The authors do not note the irony, […]

Meanwhile, a lot of open warfare is being threatened in Iraq. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is said to have threatened open warfare with the al-Maliki government if it does not cleanse “militias” [i.e. the Badr Corps] from its security forces and does not cease attacking Sadrist areas. The Islamic State in Iraq declared a month-long […]

I am quoted in this NYT piece today on John McCain’s allegations that the US is fighting “al-Qaeda” in Iraq and that there is a danger of “al-Qaeda” taking over the country if the US leaves. Those allegations don’t make any sense. McCain contradicts himself because he sometimes warns that the Shiites or Iran will […]

The spring dust storms in Baghdad have given cover to renewed guerrilla fighting there. On Thursday Iraqi guerrillas used the cover of the dust storms to bombard the Green Zone with mortar shells. On Friday clashes broke out between Mahdi Army militiamen in Sadr City and Iraqi and US troops at the edges of the […]

A suicide bombing at a funeral for pro-American militiamen in a village northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province killed at least 60 persons on Thursday and wounded a similar number. This attack follows a previous bombing in the provincial capital of Baquba that had killed 60. The US-backed ‘Awakening Councils’ are being fought in Diyala […]

Here is what Pope Benedict really thinks of Bush and his Iraq War: Is the war that has been announced against Iraq a just war? “All I can do is invite you to read the Catechism,” [the present Pope when he was still] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger replied with a mischievous grin, “and the conclusion seems […]

Aljazeera English reports on the increased Sunni-Shiite divide in Baghdad. The video of blast walls and closed bridges is worth the price of admission. My only puzzlement is why they did not say more about the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis from Iraq, such that the city is now overwhelmingly Shiite. Also, for those of […]

The USG Open Source Center translates a speech by Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, the putative leader of the radical Islamic State of Iraq, which has committed many bombings in the center-north of the country. FYI — ISI Leader Al-Baghdadi Announces Agreement with Sunni Tribal LeadersJihadist Websites — OSC SummaryTuesday, April 15, 2008 . . . On […]

The massive violence in Iraq on Tuesday underlines that in the north, the US is mainly fighting Sunni Iraqis, some of them neo-Baathists. It is a misnomer to call the resistance “al-Qaeda,” since most of them are not foreign fighters but Iraqis, and none of them has Usamah Bin Laden’s telephone number. The recent propaganda […]