Middle East

Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday rejected Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s terms for ending his campaign against Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Al-Maliki wants the militia to give up heavy weaponry and turn over wanted commanders. Salah al-Ubaydi, a Sadr spokesman, called the demands “illogical.” Some 50 Iraqi political leaders from various parties (including Sunnis) protested on Sunday against […]

Five US troops were killed in Iraq on Tuesday. Turkey bombed northern Iraq again on Wednesday, claiming to hit at guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) “attempting to infiltrate Turkey from the Khakurk region of northern Iraq.” Iran’s foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, strongly backed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s attack on the Mahdi Army militia […]

The LAT says that 2 US troops were killed in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad (a largely Sunni Arab area). Also, a roadside bomb struck a US troop transport in Basra, producing unspecified casualties. In addition, LAT reports that fighting continued on Monday in Sadr City between its Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi government forces […]

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 […]