BAGHDAD - He is a former Sunni Arab mujahid from Ramadi who until recently was fighting the US occupation. He has only a secondary education and is married with two wives. Now he is praised even by urban, secular, highly educated Shi'ites as a "conscious man", or "the kind of man we need now in... Read More

BAGHDAD - Muqtada al-Sadr is not at the conference on Iraq that opened on Thursday in Sharm-al-Sheikh, Egypt, even though he is, hands down, the most popular, and certainly the most charismatic, political leader in Iraq, with his ears finely tuned to the Shi'ite - and even Sunni - street. Nasr al-Roubaie is the leader... Read More

There must be some way to get out of here Said the joker to the thief There's too much confusion I can't get no relief - Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower BAGHDAD - It's noon on Sunday right in front of the Adhamiyah wall - the now infamous symbol of the Pentagon-devised Baghdad gulag.... Read More

BEIRUT - "You are in heaven and those who killed you will go to hell," reads a poster in a middle-class, predominantly Sunni neighborhood in north Beirut. Those depicted in heaven include Saddam Hussein, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri (killed in a car bombing in 2005), and Sheik Ahmed Yassin... Read More

DAMASCUS - There are three overlapping wars in Iraq: the Sunni Arab guerrilla struggle against the US; strands of Sunni Arab guerrillas against assorted Shi'ite militias/death squads; and al-Qaeda in Iraq against the puppet, US-backed Iraqi government in the Green Zone. Make it four wars: the Sunni Arab guerrilla war against the government inside the... Read More

"Security is a shared destiny. If we are secure, you might be secure, and if we are safe, you might be safe. And if we are struck and killed, you will definitely - with Allah's permission - be struck and killed." - Ayman al-Zawahiri, in the new al-Qaeda video The Correct Equation. US President George... Read More

Saddam Hussein shouts "Down with Bush" in the heart of the Green Zone, British soldiers beat up barefoot Iraqi teenagers and US Vice President Dick Cheney is out shooting people (not Iraqis; a fellow American, and a campaign contributor to boot). Cutting right across this theater of the absurd, Iraqi politicians have manufactured their own,... Read More

First, a quick look at the environment ahead of Thursday's elections in Iraq. Political assassinations, party headquarters burned, abductions (all largely unreported by Western corporate media). A former prime minister, Iyad Allawi - widely known in Baghdad as "Saddam without a moustache" - saying on the record that human rights in President George W Bush's... Read More

Iraqis desperately need security, electricity, water, food rations, health care, education, jobs. Instead they get a referendum on a constitution few of Iraq's theoretical 15.7 million voters have debated and fewer still have even seen. Why? Because the occupying power said so. So forget about the real priorities needed to make life liveable. No constitution... Read More

TEHRAN - Syria, Lebanon and Iraq are crucial protagonists in the specter of a Shi'ite crescent, according to the Saudi royal family, King Abdullah of Jordan and conservative American think tanks. Once again, the facts on the ground are much more complex than a simplistic formula. Syria, although 86% Muslim, is a multiethnic and multiconfessional... Read More

TEHRAN - A specter haunts the Middle East - at least in the minds of Sunni Arabs, especially Wahhabis, as well as a collection of conservative American think tanks: a Shi'ite crescent, spreading from Mount Lebanon to Khorasan, across Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and the Iranian plateau. But facts on the ground are much more... Read More

Undeclared civil war in Iraq has been raging for months. Now it's "official": using the customary audio clip on a website, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - who may or may not be a cipher, but is certainly the leader of Monotheism and Holy War, or al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers - has declared... Read More

"Iran is the country of Imam al-Mahdi." - Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic revolution in 1979 (For Part 1 of this report, see Sistani.Qom: In the wired heart of Shi'ism) QOM - Shi'ism is an eschatological religion that has codified its own, complex (happy) end of history. Intellectually, from a non-Shi'ite point... Read More

QOM - Secular voices in Tehran are adamant: Ninety percent of the political power in Iran is in Qom. One may be tempted to add that at least 70% of the political power in Iraq is also situated in Qom. It's only a small room, one of its walls plastered with blue cabinet files containing... Read More

Iraq now has 275 bright, beaming members of a new parliament. Flushed with victory, many are already shedding their virtual shells to meet their flesh-and-blood voters - thus running the risk of being obliterated by a suicide bombing or a drive-by shooting. Some parts of the world say this is an exercise in democracy. Other,... Read More

In Najaf, the holy Shi'ite city, the grand ayatollahs are busy advancing a religious agenda: Ali al-Sistani, Mohammad Ishaq al-Fayad, Bashir al-Najafi and Mohammad Said Hakim compose the al-marja' iyyah (source of infallible authority on all religious matters). They are unanimous: the Shi'ite religious parties, the big winners in the elections, must implement Sharia (Islamic)... Read More

In Najaf, the holy Shi’ite city, the grand ayatollahs are busy advancing a religious agenda: Ali al-Sistani, Mohammad Ishaq al-Fayad, Bashir al-Najafi and Mohammad Said Hakim compose the al-marja’ iyyah (source of infallible authority on all religious matters). They are unanimous: the Shi’ite religious parties, the big winners in the elections, must implement Sharia (Islamic)... Read More

Shi'ites will be in power in the Arab world for the first time in 14 centuries. So Iraqi elections are indeed historic. But it's not for US President George W Bush to proclaim Sunday's elections "a success", even before the results are known: it's for the Iraqi people, those who did and also those who... Read More

"Elections are the best way to expel the occupier from Iraq." - Banners in Shi'ite mosques in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala and Samarra "I anticipate a grand moment in Iraqi history." - US President George W Bush, January 26 Iraqi Shi'ites, the Pentagon, the Sunni Iraqi resistance, the rest of the world, even Henry Kissinger: everybody... Read More

"And to George W Bush, we say, 'You have asked us to bring it on, and so have we. Like never expected. Have you another challenge'?" - Message from the Sunni Iraqi resistance, January 12 History will salute it in kind: the US administration of George W Bush, parts 1 and 2, has introduced to... Read More

No matter what the spin from Time magazine's "man of the year", US President George W Bush, or defense chief Donald Rumsfeld, there's one overarching question facing the 83 entities - nine coalition lists, 47 political parties and 27 individuals, totaling more than 5,000 candidates - now competing for the 275 seats in Iraq's interim... Read More

The Iraqi elections won't happen on January 30 because the Bush administration wants them: they will happen because Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani wants them. The Shi'ite leader knows it's now or never for the Shi'ite majority in the country to take power. The majority of Sunnis - because of the Fallujah offensive - won't vote:... Read More

Iraqis are not fighting one another - at least not yet: they are fighting the occupying power, although with different strategies. After Fallujah, this situation is about to change. For the average Iraqi, Sunni or Shi'ite - and Americans underestimate Iraqi national pride at their peril - there's no question: the current Sunni resistance morally... Read More

"In Fallujah, [the Americans] have created a new vague target: [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi. Almost a year has elapsed since they created this new pretext and whenever they destroy houses, mosques, restaurants, and kill children and women, they said: 'We have launched a successful operation against al-Zarqawi.' The people of Fallujah assure you that this person,... Read More

Nearly 100 Iraqis have been killed in less than 24 hours in two suicide bombings in Iskandariya and Baghdad. Most of them were poor and unemployed and were trying to find a job with the new, American-approved Iraqi police and army. They were Shi'ites in Iskandariya, and mostly Sunnis in Baghdad. But for the anti-occupation... Read More