War in Context

The cult of the suicide bomber
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 14, 2008
No one doubts that the road to Baghdad – or Tal Afar or Fallujah or Mosul – lies through Syria, and that the movement of suicide bombers from the Mediterranean coasts to the deserts of Iraq is a planned if not particularly sophisticated […]

Normalizing air war from Guernica to Arab Jabour
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, January 29, 2008
For those who know something about the history of air power, which, since World War II, has been lodged at the heart of the American Way of War, that 100,000 figure [– the quantity of explosives dropped on Arab Jabour south of […]

Exit al-Qaeda. Enter the militias?
By Charles Crain, Time, January 1, 2008
In 2007 the United States military put its most dangerous enemy on the run. In 2008 it may face an even more entrenched foe. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the primary target of the American troop surge and counter-insurgency strategy, appears to be on its last […]

Torture house, mass graves discovered in Iraq
CNN, December 20, 2007
Coalition forces found 26 bodies buried in mass graves and a bloodstained “torture complex,” with chains hanging from walls and ceilings and a bed connected to an electrical system, the military said Wednesday.
[…]
The complex was in an area thought to be an al Qaeda in […]

Iraqi insurgents regrouping, says Sunni resistance leader
By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, December 3, 2007
Iraq’s main Sunni-led resistance groups have scaled back their attacks on US forces in Baghdad and parts of Anbar province in a deliberate strategy aimed at regrouping, retraining, and waiting out George Bush’s “surge”, a key insurgent leader has told the Guardian.
US […]

2008: The year of federalism in Iraq?
By Reidar Visser, historiae.org, November 12, 2007
In all the speculation about the fate of the US “surge” policy in Iraq, many analysts have overlooked a date on the 2008 calendar which is bound to become fateful: 11 April. On that day, the current moratorium on creating new federal entities […]

Who’s the Enemy?
By Robert Dreyfuss, TomDispatch, November 11, 2007
Who is the enemy? Who, exactly, are we fighting in Iraq? Why are we there? And what’s our objective?
Nearly five years into the war, the answers to basic questions like these ought to be obvious. In the Alice in Wonderland-like wilderness of mirrors that is Iraq, though, […]

Meet Abu Abed: the U.S.’s new ally against al-Qaida
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian, November 10, 2007
Abu Abed, a member of the insurgent Islamic Army, has recently become the commander of the US-sponsored “Ameriya Knights”. He is one of the new breed of Sunni warlords who are being paid by the US to fight al-Qaida in […]

Report: 14 percent of Iraqis now displaced
McClatchy, November 6, 2007
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction offered a generally optimistic picture of security developments in Iraq in his quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday, but noted that while violence was down, one of every seven Iraqis — 14 percent of Iraq’s population — is now […]

Gunmen in Iraq kidnap eleven tribal leaders allied with U.S.
By Amit R. Paley, Washington Post, October 29, 2007
Eleven tribal leaders who had banded with U.S. troops to fight the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq were kidnapped Sunday morning, the latest in a string of such attacks, fellow tribesmen said.
The Shiite and Sunni sheiks, members […]

Al-Qaeda in Iraq reported crippled
By Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, October 15, 2007
Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the Joint Special Operations Command’s operations in Iraq, is the chief promoter of a victory declaration and believes that AQI has been all but eliminated, the military intelligence official said. But Adm. William J. […]

Super-sheikh murdered by tribal rivals?
By Noah Shachtman, Danger Room, September 14, 2007
An expert on Anbar’s tribal politics offers DANGER ROOM a different view. Tribal rivals, he says, are the most likely culprits.
Think in tribal terms. Sheikh Sattar met with the U.S. President. This reinforced the newly-won position of the Albu Risha. A number of competitor […]

Sunni world
By Marc Lynch, The American Prospect, September 13, 2007
During his visit to Iraq last week, President Bush carved out an hour to sit down with Shaykh Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha, the controversial head of the Anbar Salvation Council who had become a symbol of America’s Anbar strategy. The pictures from that photo-op were likely […]