Arab World

Iraq as an issue was back front and center in Iraq on Monday in the South Carolina presidential debate among the Democratic candidates. Barack Obama complained that his record of opposing the Iraq War had been distorted by Bill Clinton, who had called the image of steadfast consistency on Obama’s part in that regard a […]

Martin Luther King will be honored today throughout America as a champion of racial justice and racial harmony. That is a pivotal legacy for the United States of America, which for 87 long years was built on the lawful enslavement of one race by another, and for another century practiced the lawful Apartheid of Jim […]

Andrew Bacevich eviscerates the Iraq War party with this passionate and clear-sighted essay on ‘the Surge to Nowhere’ in WaPo. He points out that the real motivation behind last year’s troop escalation was to avoid popular outrage building in the US electorate to the point where the troops were pulled out. He observes that the […]

Another US soldier was killed on Saturday, bringing January’s total to 23 — already as much as in all of December. Street battles and machine gun fire rang out for a second day in Basra and Nasiriya as Iraqi security forces battled Supporters of the Promised One, a Shiite cult that is now reported to […]

The instability of the Iraqi south was on display Friday, as a doomsday cult attacked police and religious mourners on the eve of Ashura’, the holiest day of the Shiite Islamic calendar. The clashes in Basra and Nasiriya left at least 80 dead and 90 wounded according to the LAT. The cities were under curfew […]

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that women activists on Thursday organized a conference in Baghdad to protest the increasing problem of women being targeted for killing, especially by religious militias. They said that more than 100 women have been killed in Basra, 250 in Kirkuk province, and 50 in Diyala. McClatchy reports on Shiite hopes that […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview with the police chief of Basra, Staff Maj-Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf. Therein, Khalaf denies that Iran is playing a negative role and stirring turmoil in the southern port city of 1.5 million. Khalaf was appointed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki about six months ago. He is therefore […]

In the small town of Khan Bani Saad in Diyala Province east of Baghdad, a woman suicide bomber killed 9 Shiites and wounded 15 at a market just before a major religious holiday. Meanwhile, in nearby Salahuddin Province, guerrillas deployed small arms fire to kill 3 US troops: ‘ SALAHUDDIN PROVINCE – Three U.S. soldiers […]

So whatever happened to Fallujah? Hard to get news from the city. Can they drive personal cars again, yet? Apparently the US military has built blast walls around each of 10 districts in the city. As the US prepares to withdraw from al-Anbar, there are worries about there not being enough local police to provide […]