Middle East

The US military arrested Makki Dulaimi, the son of prominent Sunni Arab politician Adnan Dulaimi, on Friday, along with 40-odd security guards. The US soldiers had discovered a car rigged up as a bomb near the younger Dulaimi’s house and found that one of his security guards had the key to the car. They tried […]

The dangers for the region and the world of the continued radicalization of Arab youth via the US presence in Iraq were demonstrated this week when Saudi authorities broke up a plot to attack Saudi petroleum facilities. Given current high prices, any such attack would have the potential for driving them even higher, with deleterious […]

In a new low of despicable looniness, at the Republican debate in St. Petersburg, John McCain equated those Americans who want to stop militarily occupying Iraq with Hitler-enablers. He actually said that, saying that it was ‘isolationism’ of a sort that allowed Hitler to come to power. It gives a person a certain amount of […]

7 US troops were wounded along with 5 Iraqi civilians when a female suicide bomber detonated her payload in Baquba. The attack took place on Tuesday but was not announced until Wednesday. Senator Joe Biden says that the idea that the US troop escalation or ‘surge’ is “working” in Iraq is a “fantasy” because there […]

Thousands of Sadrists demonstrated in downtown Baghdad for a second day on Tuesday, complaining about their marginalization and the high-handed policies of PM Nuri al-Maliki. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sadr Movement and the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front both rejected the ‘memorandum of understanding’ between the US and Iraq signed by PM Nuri al-Maliki […]

The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is negotiating a formal bilateral treaty with the United States. The question is whether the agreement will be submitted to parliament for ratification, and whether al-Maliki will be able to get a majority of parliamentarians to vote for it if so. Much of the work of the […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview in the Iraqi newspaper Ilaf with Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalist, called in Arabic Tawafuq), the major Sunni Arab party in Parliament, with 44 seats out of 275. The IAF has withdrawn from the al-Maliki ‘national unity’ government. Excerpt: ‘Dr Adnan […]

On Sunday, the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presented to parliament its bill revising the expulsion of ex-Baathists from government jobs and public life. The Shiite deputies in parliament essentially booed it, with the thirty Sadrist deputies pounding the table and making it impossible for parliament to conduct business. Parliament adjourned among shouting and […]

Another one bites the dust. World politics is littered with the political corpses of rightwing leaders who bucked their own public to join in George W. Bush’s wars and misadventures. Spain, Italy, Poland, and in a way the UK are all object lessons in this regard. Now John Howard of Australia has joined their number […]