March 30, 2006

Jill, freed!

Jill Carroll was freed today in Baghdad! She's reported to be in good shape. Fabulous news! Now let's all work for the reease of everyone else illegally deprived of their...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:28 AM | Fulltext link (83 comments)

March 29, 2006

Riverbend: read her!

I just read a stunning post by Riverbend, written yesterday. Read it and weep for Iraq....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:51 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

US-Iraqi women's conference-- Part 2

... Monday afternoon, I took a bit of time out from the US-Iraq women's conference I was at to sit in a wifi zone in the hotel there and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:25 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

Czar George speaks

The US ambassador in Baghdad, Zal Khalilzad, has been working feverishly around the clock (but notably not behind the scenes) to try to make sure that his favored candidate (SCIRI's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:15 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

March 27, 2006

Perspectives on Iraq

This is just to note that our friends Reidar, Shirin, and Salah have continued their good discussion on intra-UIA and UIA-US issues down on this JWN comments board. Meanwhile, Juan...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:49 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Iraqi and US women on war, occupation, peace

I'm here attending the two-day conference Creating our Common Future, which is billed as an "Iraqi and American Women's Summit". The morning's session was extraordinary. We had six Iraqi women...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:42 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

March 22, 2006

Whose unified Iraq, anyway?

It has seemed clear to me for some time now that, despite all the protestations of various US officials that what they most want to see is a "unified" Iraqi...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:30 AM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

March 19, 2006

Iraq war launch on trial in Britain

Three years into the US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Blair government's decision to join the invasion effort is on trial in an obscure courtroom in Aldershot, west of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:53 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 18, 2006

Tom Fox's last journey

Susan (Dancewater) over at Today in Iraq has posted the text of an email she got from Doug Pritchard, the Toronto-based co-director of the Christian Peacemaker teams, about Tom's last...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:45 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 17, 2006

Nir Rosen from Iraq

The latest (March-April) issue of Boston Review has a riveting piece of reporting from Iraq by Nir Rosen. Nir is a fearless young reporter who has already racked up huge...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:29 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 15, 2006

New Visser paper on Sistani's role

I've just gotten the time to read this paper, which Iraqi-Shiite affairs expert Reidar Visser sent me. It is his assessment of the role that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has played...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:08 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 12, 2006

Kissinger and Haig on Iraq/Vietnam

At a forum here in Boston yesterday, former Nixon advisor Al Haig said that the Bushies are repeating a mistake made in Vietnam by not applying the full force of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:31 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

February 26, 2006

The dog that hasn't barked

With the whole unfolding tragedy in Iraq, few people have remarked yet on "the dog that didn't bark" in response to all of this... This dog being... the revamped, up-and-running,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:00 AM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

Bush telephone, Iraq, militias

In many countries, "Bush Telephone" is a term used for the informal but rapid spreading of wild and crazy rumors. I just read this AP story, by Jennifer Loven from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:37 AM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

February 22, 2006

Tragedies in Iraq

Iraq, which has now lived through 69 post-election days and still has no even faintly accountable national government in sight, witnessed a series of tragedies and tumults yesterday and today....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:47 PM | Fulltext link (50 comments)

February 19, 2006

Iraq: political developments

Juan Cole has a good post today which is his digest of a long interview that Moqtada Sadr gave to al-Jazeera last night. There's a huge amount of interesting material...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:38 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

February 15, 2006

The Iraqi insurgency, analyzed

The International Crisis Group has a new report out today titled In their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency. It is based on an apparently close reading of the public...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:13 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

February 12, 2006

Jaafari gets UIA nomination

So where are they now, all those pundits and experts in Iraqi affairs who've been telling us non-stop since the December elections that SCIRI's Abdel-Aziz Hakim is "the most powerful...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:15 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 11, 2006

The UIA and the final vote tally

Reidar Visser, who must be the western world's leading UIA-ologist, has come out with his latest analysis on the seats won in Iraq's new 275-member parliament by the United Iraqi...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:22 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

February 07, 2006

MSM 'discovering' Moqtada's strength?

Well, we still don't have a government in Iraq though my handy DDI counter on the sidebar here at JWN tells me that it's been 54 days since the Iraqi...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:41 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

January 29, 2006

'Democracy denied in Iraq' counter goes up again

45 days and counting... It's an outrage. I confess that when I wrote this post on January 25, I for some reason undercounted the number of days since the Iraqi...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:48 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

January 26, 2006

Iraqi Sunni leaders try to take a stand

Gilbert Achcar has generously sent over his translation into English of an intriguing piece in yesterday's Hayat that gives some great details about the efforts of some Sunni parties in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:30 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

January 25, 2006

Democracy denied (again) in Iraq

I note that today it is 35 days since the Iraqi people went to the polls to vote for the National Assembly. The US government, which is the occupying power...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:43 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

January 20, 2006

Reidar Visser on the UIA balance, contd.

Reidar Visser, the well-informed and judicious Norwegian specialist on the politics inside Iraq's politically dominant UIA coalition has now almost completed his analysis of the political balance within the UIA...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:48 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

January 17, 2006

Egyptian troops for Iraq?

So Cheney might be trying to persuade the largely-client government in Egypt to help pull the Bush administration's burning chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq?? [That's an Arabic-language link;...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:36 AM | Fulltext link (34 comments)

January 13, 2006

The question of Hakim

Nearly all the media commentary up till now, about the inflammatory statement that SCIRI leader Abdul-Aziz Hakim made Wednesday about the present text of the Constitution being untouchable, has referred...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:19 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 11, 2006

Iraqi oil affairs

The British-based anti-poverty movement War on Want is one of the co-publishers of what looks like a well-done new study of the production sharing agreements that Iraq's American occupiers are...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:13 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

January 09, 2006

CSM reporter kidnapped, Iraq

I just saw this report about a young Christian Science Monitor reporter called Jill Caroll being kidnapped in Baghdad. I am just hoping and praying that she and the translator...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:49 PM | Fulltext link (29 comments)

January 07, 2006

Iraq: government "within weeks"??

Percipient as ever (irony alert there), "Uncle" Jalal Talabani, still the President of Iraq, predicted today that a new government could be formed in his country "within weeks". This is...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:47 PM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

January 05, 2006

Riverbend on Iraqi hyper-inflation

Go read Riverbend's post of Wednesday on daily life for Baghdadis in the aftermath of the "wonderful" election that Prez Bush has been gushing so much about, recently. It is...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:50 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 02, 2006

Christmas in the ER, Baghdad

Our delightful and multi-talented friend C, who is also the son of long-time family friends, is an ER doc with the US military who recently deployed to Iraq. What follows...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:05 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

January 01, 2006

Appreciation to Juan Cole

Regular JWN readers are probably aware that I have a couple of fairly serious disagreements with Juan Cole; and it occurs to me that I probably spend a disproportionate amount...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:09 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

More heavy politicking inside the UIA

I got around to reading Juan Cole and a couple of pieces from today's Al-Hayat-- but a little late, today. The Hayat articles (as indicated by Juan) had noted that...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:07 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)