Middle East

The Iraqi parliament failed for a fifth time to pass a law on provincial elections. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that after months of wrangling in parliament over the enabling legislation for provincial elections, parliament has failed to find a mutually agreed-upon formula. Worse, the parliamentary debates on this issue have deepened the dispute between the […]

A helicopter crash in southern Iraq killed 7 US troops on Wednesday. The crash may or may not be the result of hostile action by elements of the Mahdi Army. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki signaled on Wednesday that the security agreement being negotiated by Iraq with the Bush administration is in trouble. Apparently the big […]

Amir Taheri, the rightwing Iranian ‘journalist’ who is the least accurate reporter to feign practicing journalism since Gutenberg invented movable metal type accused Barack Obama of seeking “a deal to delay US troops’ from Iraq when he was in Baghdad last summer. That makes no sense. The Iraqis have published their negotiating points, and they […]

In Baladruz, in Diyala Province east of Baghdad, a female suicide bomber attacked a homecoming party for an Iraqi soldier just released from nearly a year of detention in a US prison in Iraq. The bombing killed 22 persons and wounded 33. The returning prisoner, Ahmad Shukri al-Tamimi, appears to have been a Shiite who […]

In a continuing wave of violence in Iraq, 28 persons were killed and 40 wounded on Saturday. Among the dead were 9 members of the Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary, killed by a roadside bomb near the disputed city of Khanaqin in Diyala. Arabs and Kurds are increasingly at odds over the future of this city, which […]

Two big bombings targeted Shiites on Friday. A bomb killed over 30 persons and wounded over 40 in Dujail, a largely Shiite city northeast of Baghdad. Earlier on Friday, a bomb at the Dhakir al-Din Mosque in Sinjar killed two and wounded 15. The security situation has deteriorated in Mosul, (pop. 1.8 mn), Iraq’s second […]

Two bombs in the Shiite holy city of Karbala were detonated near the shrine of Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The explosions killed 3 and wounded 15. Because of the extreme religious sensitivity of the Shiite shrines in Iraq, these bombings had security implications far beyond what is apparent on the surface. […]

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that a big dispute has broken out between the three largest blocs in parliament. The government has so far been characterized by an alliance of the Shiite Iraqi Accord Front with the Kurdistan Alliance. But now the Shiites want to equip the Iraqi military with F-16s. The day before yesterday, the […]

We know Iraq has been the scene of several wars in recent years. But it seems increasingly clear that it has been a set of dirty wars. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Ali al-Lami, an Iraqi politician, protege of Ahmad Chalabi,and member of the Debaathification Committee,is being charged by a high unnamed American official with […]