Middle East

McCain: “Iraq is a peaceful, stable country now”: I’m hurt. I thought everyone who is anyone in Washington read IC. McCain seems to have missed these recent headlines here: Wednesday, August 27, 2008: “45 Dead, 79 Wounded in Wave of Violence; Bombing in Jalawla’ Raises Tensions with Baghdad” Monday, August 25, 2008: “54 Killed in […]

Why Iraq still matters to the presidential campaign,according to Mark Brunswick of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Violence erupted throughout central, eastern and northern Iraq on Tuesday, leaving at least 45 dead and some 79 wounded. The major single attack was a suicide bombing that struck at a police recruiting center in the mostly Kurdish town […]

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq insisted again Monday that all foreign troops must be out of Iraq by 2011 and that US troops in Iraq must come under the authority of Iraqi courts. These demands appear to have emanated in the first instance from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf and from Sayyid Muqtada […]

A suicide bomber attacked a celebration in Abu Ghraib late Sunday, killing at least 30 and wounding 42. The gathering was in honor of a former prisoner in a US prison who had just been released and was attended by police and by members of the local Awakening Council that has fought radical Muslim vigilantes […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Arabic online press complaining about Iraqi government collective punishment of Baghdad city quarters that witness poor security. US, Iraqi Forces Accused of Dividing Baghdad Neighborhoods on ‘Sectarian’ BasisReport by Kalshan al-Bayyati “Residents of Baghdad: ‘The Government Imposes Collective Punishment on us”Al-Arab OnlineWednesday, August 20, 2008 […]

Secretary of State Condi Rice’s visit to Baghdad for consultations on the US-Iraqi security agreement provoked a demonstration in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, with Sadrist crowds carrying placards warning against US intentions. The Sadrists said that they rejected any security agreement that lacked a specific timetable for US troop withdrawal, and would take […]

Strange things happen in Iraq. On Tuesday, an unidentified Iraqi government security force, or at least people wearing such uniforms, attacked the Diyala provincial governor’s headquarters, killed his secretary, and arrested a member of the Diyala Provincial Assembly. The local police fought back, and four were wounded. The attacking unit is said to be a […]

Kurdish control of Kirkuk creates a powder keg in Iraq, the NYT explains this morning: ‘ it demonstrates that despite a recent decline in violence, Iraq’s unsettled ethnic and regional discord could still upend directives emanating from Baghdad and destabilize large swaths of the country — or even set off a civil war. . . […]

A suicide bomber in Baghdad killed 15 and wounded 29 in al-Adhamiya on Sunday. This neighborhood is what’s left of the Sunni enclave on the eastern side of the Tigris, and the bombing appears to have targeted a local Awakening Council leader, Faruq al-Ubaidi, who was killed. The US-financed Awakening Councils and the Qutbist vigilantes […]