Middle East

Pro-US Tribal Sheikhs Attacked at Mansur Hotel Beiji Police Station Blown UP The guerrillas are at it again on Monday morning. They detonated a bomb in the lobby of the al-Mansur Hotel during a meeting of tribal sheikhs, killing 12. Presumably these were leaders who had decided to fight the Salafi Jihadis or extremist Sunnis. […]

Al-Maliki Under Onslaught from Security Failures VP Abdul Mahdi threatens to Resign Parliament extends Work One Month Mahdi Army Rallies Roil Najaf Al-Hayat writing in Arabic says that PM Nuri al-Maliki has been exposed to vehement criticism from his own bloc (the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance) for his inability to provide security, and especially his […]

7 US Troops Killed on Saturday Turks March in Istanbul Against PKK Iraqi guerrillas killed 7 US troops on Saturday. Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Saturday. Police found 11 bodies in Baghdad on Friday. Excerpts: ‘ HILLA – A car bomb killed two people and wounded 18 in the Shi’ite city of Hilla, […]

Iraqi Bill Clarification The lede below on the Kurdish Baghdad deal on distribution of petroleum receipts contains some inaccuracies, according to Ben Lando of UPI. Apparently the deal is not about the petroleum bill but about distribution of profits. Will link when I can. This is by treo on the side of a mountain in […]

Kurdistan-Baghdad Oil Deal? US Strike Kills 11 Civilians Shiites Rally in Najaf, Criticize US Reuters is reporting that the Kurds have reached an agreement with other parliamentarians on changes to a draft petroleum bill. These changes do not address, as Reuters incorrectly reports, “the equitable distribution of petroleum receipts.” There is nothing in the draft […]

Everyday Apocalypse in Iraq War of the Mosques 142 Dead on Tuesday 142 persons were killed or found dead on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning two Sunni mosques in towns south of Baghdad were blown up. On Tuesday, a huge truck bomb in Baghdad blew up a Shiite mosque dedicated to an important religious figure and […]

111 Killed or Found Dead in Iraq on Monday Al-Maliki to Ankara Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has accepted the Turkish government’s invitation to visit Ankara. Al-Maliki says he is worried about PKK terrorism. Al-Maliki should be careful. When his predecessor, Ibrahim Jaafari, flew to Istanbul for talks on Kirkuk, the Kurds in the Iraqi […]

PKK Leader Warns Turkey on Incursions Michael Howard of the Guardian interviewed a Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla commander in northern Iraq. Money graf: ‘The Turkish army faces “a political and military disaster” if its generals give orders for a cross-border offensive, Cemil Bayik, one of the two most powerful figures in the Kurdistan Workers […]

Kurds and Turks: Will they or Won’t They? Joshua Partlow has a good article in WaPo on the military friction at the Turkish-Iraqi border. It is based on interviews in Iraqi Kurdistan and with US military officials, however, and oddly lacks the perspective from Ankara. I was just at an International Relations conference at Middle […]