April 29, 2006

Sistani returns to Iraqi politics

Many journos in the mainstream media had noted that Iraqi PM-designate Nouri al-Maliki went to Najaf Thursday to meet with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and that Sistani's office afterwards issued a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:26 PM | Fulltext link (30 comments)

December 29, 2005

Kurds acting independent

So now the Iraqi Kurds are reportedly going to be welcoming tour groups from Israel. Between that and their conclusion of a successful oil-exploration deal with Norway's DNO oil company,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:31 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

Fight over Iraq election in new phase

As I noted here, back on Tuesday, one of the "meta-narratives" of what's going on in Iraqi politics these days is the contest over the validity of the election conducted...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:03 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

December 27, 2005

Post-election Iraq, Part 2

[I just re-arranged the order in what follows, late Wednesday. Same content though. ~HC] The two big narratives As I see it, there are two big mega-stories currently dominating Iraqi...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:27 PM | Fulltext link (33 comments)

December 22, 2005

Politics inside the UIA (south)

Reidar Vissar is a Norwegian historian whose knowledge of southern Iraq I have admired in the past. Today he has a fascinating new text on his website, in which he...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:38 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

December 20, 2005

Post-election prospects, Iraq

Can the Dec. 15 election in Iraq help lead to some form of intra-Iraqi accommodation, and thus to significant progress toward US troop withdrawal and national independence? Most (but not...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:42 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

Who's running the Iraqi elections?

From AP's Jason Straziuso in Baghdad, this morning, writing about the official complaints that have been filed about the conduct of last Thursday's election: U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said there...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:22 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

December 11, 2005

Land of 1,001 detention centers

Buried at the bottom of this report in the Dec 12 WaPo is the dryly presented news that unidentified "authorities", presumably American, have identified more than 1,000 detention centers across...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:50 PM | Fulltext link (62 comments)

Baghdad days

With four days left to the next Iraqi election, we should look at what's happening to the lives of the six million people who live in its capital, Baghdad. Three...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:44 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

Marina Ottaway's "Back from the brink"

I've been meaning for some time now to write something about the very interesting and wel-informed study that Marina Ottaway of the Carnegia Endowment published three weeks ago about the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:03 PM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

More on Moqtada al-Sadr

AP's Hamza Hendawi has a good piece on Moqtada Sadr today. (Read it in conjunction with Gilbert Achcar's recent piece, on JWN here.) Hendawi writes: "We had a choice to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:17 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

Kanan Makiya: mea culpa and more

Today's NYT had an important article by Kanan Makiya, who was the most significant Iraqi to be an intellectual father of the whole 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Writing nowadays...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:19 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

Life and death in Baghdad

I just want to draw a little attention to this obituary of a remarkably talented Iraqi geophysicist called Wissam al-Hashimi, who was abducted and murdered in Baghdad earlier this year....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:35 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

December 10, 2005

Achcar on important Sadrist initiative

(I see that Juan Cole also has this intriguing Gilbert Achcar report on his blog today. But I think it's significant enough to also put the whole text here. Its...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:59 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

December 05, 2005

The US and Iran in Iraq

I see that Boston Review has now posted on their website the text of an article by veteran MIT security-affairs professor Barry Posen, titled "Exit Strategy". This is one of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:08 AM | Fulltext link (51 comments)

December 04, 2005

No tears for you, Ahmad Chalabi

The most disappointed man this weekend in Iraq (or Paris, or wherever he is right now) must be Ahmad Chalabi. As I wrote here on November 23, when three Iraqi...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:12 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

December 02, 2005

Iraq in US politics

I'm just back from a lunch here in Charlottesville with George Packer, the thoughtful and well-informed author of a new book on the US engagement in Iraq called The Assassins'...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:29 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

November 29, 2005

Christian Peacemakers abducted in Iraq

I invite you all to join me in praying for the wellbeing and safe release of the four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who were abducted by unknown...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:06 PM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

November 28, 2005

Death and dishonor in Iraq

This, definitely worth reading. Hat-tip to Diana. I hadn't seen this story before. It's in today's L.A. Times. It's about a US Army straight arrow called Col. Ted Westhusing, who...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:26 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

November 27, 2005

Modalities of imperial retreat

The Bush administration's rush toward repositioning itself as pursuing a policy in Iraq that is both "responsible" and one that involves a certain amount of troop withrawal has been amazingly...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:52 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

November 25, 2005

Military historian Van Creveld calls for US exit from Iraq

The noted Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld has now written in the US Jewish newspaper Forward that: The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:05 PM | Fulltext link (79 comments)

November 23, 2005

Iraqi round-up

Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:32 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

November 18, 2005

Riverbend on WP and the torture houses

Riverbend had a great post yesterday about White Phosphorus, and she has another great one today about the torture houses. Excellent reading, both. Thanks to Janinsanfran for the heads-up....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:04 PM | Fulltext link (79 comments)

SCIRI Central Cttee man talks with Muslim Brothers

This, from Gilbert Achcar: AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN SUNNI MUSLIMS AND A SCIRI LEADER On the occasion of the Iraqi conference to be held in Cairo under the auspices of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:55 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 16, 2005

Salam/Pax on the torture houses, contd.

Some more sordid details from Salam/Pax about the Baghdad charnel/torture houses. Including stuff about chain saws, razors, etc. Also this: It is said that the investigations will reveal that there...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:34 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

November 15, 2005

Skin peeled off

The latest revelations about torture in the "New Iraq" are really horrific. Reuters has a good (by which I mean very disturbing) account of it... Including this: "There were 161...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:56 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

November 06, 2005

Riverbend writes

Riverbend-- whose book just won a good prize from a German foundation, I saw yesterday-- has a new post on her blog. It makes depressing reading. She concludes: We literally...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:33 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 04, 2005

Skulduggery at the Iraqi polls? ( I am "shocked, shocked!")

Gareth Porter (JWN commenter) has written a piece for IPS stating that, Reports compiled by the U.S. military in Iraq from its informants and by non-governmental organisations from independent Iraqi...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:39 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

October 25, 2005

Iraq referendum results: no surprise

And so now, fully nine days after Condoleezza Rice "called" the Oct. 15th Iraqi referendum, the Independent Iraqi Electoral Commission has come out with its final tally. Surprise, surprise! The...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:44 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 22, 2005

Approaching 2K (US dead, only)

We are coming up to hearing about the 2,000th US soldier killed in Iraq. People have different plans for what to do about it. I know the pals over at...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:59 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

October 19, 2005

War crimes trials: procedures or politics?

The war-crimes trial of Saddam Hussein and seven other co-defendants opened briefly today (see also here ), and was adjourned after just 2 hours and 11 minutes of court...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:07 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 16, 2005

Bush and Rice "call" the Iraqi referendum

So here's what's happened so far today re the Iraqi constitutional referendum: 1. At or before 2 p.m. today London time (9 a.m. US Eastern Time) -- a bare 18...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:52 PM | Fulltext link (36 comments)

October 14, 2005

Iraq open thread #8

Dear JWN commenters-- I'm off to my Quaker retreat and hope you may have some informative, courteous discussions here while I'm away. Back Sunday afternoon. Ommmm. (Not quite the right...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:18 PM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

October 13, 2005

Sunni dissension, Iraq

According to both Al-Hayat and the BBC, Ayatollah Sistani has now (through his aides) called on Iraqi Shias to vote "Yes" in Saturday's referendum. The Hayat article notes in addition...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:13 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Referendum prospects & maneuvers

I have a column on Iraq in the Christian Science Monitor today. The title is In Iraq, a rush toward democracy could trigger civil war. Well, I didn't write that...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:32 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 11, 2005

Pre-referendum security in Anbar province

Four days to go to the referendum... and according to this story in Az-Zaman -- as translated by IWPR-- the Independent Electoral Commission has still not been able to open...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:30 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

Many Iraqis apathetic or uninformed on the constitution

I read it here, on Riverbend's great blog, first. You should read the whole of that wonderful post there... Bottom line: a conversation with her nieghbor, Umm F., to whom...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:14 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

G. Achcar on present risks in Iraq & Saudi Arabia

Gilbert Achcar's latest despatch warns us regarding Saturday's upcoming referendum in Iraq that: whether the [constitutional] draft passes the referendum or not, there will be a largely autonomous Shiite entity...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:41 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

October 09, 2005

Iraqi referendum: a question

Given the truly terrible security situation in many or most of the majority-Sunni parts of Iraq, and concomitant inability of reputable international election-monitoring organizations to field anything like a satisfactory...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:47 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

October 08, 2005

Gilbert Achcar's letter

Iraq developments — Oct. 8, 2005 by Gilbert Achcar 1) How US and British Forces help Iraqis recover their sovereignty For any person believing in good faith that occupation...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:29 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

October 02, 2005

Who are we kidding?

Every constructive thing the Bush administration claims to have built up in its 30 months in Iraq is a sham. The "democratically elected Iraqi transitional government"? -- This government has...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:54 PM | Fulltext link (20 comments)