'Death after death, blood after blood'
Killing goes on despite claims that siege is over

Inside the pockmarked entrance of Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, there were no police to be seen yesterday afternoon. Supporters of the rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr loafed on carpets in the pigeon-infested courtyard. A few smoked; others dozed. A couple of young students stood next to a makeshift infirmary; parked nearby was an empty pallet covered in blood. "We haven't given up. This is a lie by the government," said Amar Al-Khaji, a 29-year-old civil engineer from Baghdad. "As you can see, we are still here."

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Besieged Al-Sadr keeps grip on shrine
Iraqi government claims that police had arrested hundreds of the radical cleric's fighters and taken over his headquarters in Najaf could have come from Saddam's Comical Ali, reports Luke Harding

Asked how the battle was going, Commander Abu Mohammad Hilu showed off his latest trophy - a blood-drenched American boot. There was a large bullet hole in the middle. 'We found it after last night's battle,' the commander explained. His colleague, Abu Ali, added: 'Originally there was an American foot inside it and a bit of the leg. But we took it out and threw it to the dogs.'

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Egyptian Mufti: Volcano of Anger over Najaf
by Juan Cole

It doesn't have to be this way. The US is behaving in profoundly offensive ways in Najaf. U.S. military leaders appear to have no idea what Najaf represents. I saw one retired general on CNN saying that they used to have to be careful of Buddhist temples in Vietnam, too. I almost wept. Islam is not like Buddhism. It is a far tighter civilization. And the shrine of Ali is not like some Buddhist temple in Vietnam that even most Buddhists have never heard of. I got some predictably angry mail at my earlier statement that the Marines who provoked the current round of fighting in Najaf, apparently all on their own and without orders from Washington, were behaving like ignoramuses. Someone attempted to argue to me that the Marines were protecting me. Protecting me? The ones in Najaf are behaving in ways that are very likely to get us all blown up. The US officials who encouraged the Mujahidin against the Soviets were also trying to protect us, and they ended up inadvertently creating the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Such protection, I don't need. Radical Islamist terrorism is a form of vigilanteism. Angry young Muslim men see their own governments doing nothing about Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians, and bowing to US adventures like Iraq, and they grow disgusted. They have no hope of getting their governments to do anything about what they see as profound injustices. So they form small groups of engineers or other professionals and take matters into their own hands. That is exactly the kind of phenomenon Gumaa is warning against. He is right about the volcano of anger.

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It's the policies, stupid!
by Helena Cobban

More moaning and handwringing in Washington this week over the everywhere evident lack of success of the US government's campaign to "sell" the US to the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world. Condi Rice gave a major speech at the US Institute of Peace Thursday on this theme. The next day, the WaPo's Robin Wright had a front-page article joining and amplifying the general bemoaning. "Oh, if only some well-conceived p.r. campaign could come along and just unlock the magic door that would enable the always well-intentioned US government to explain its good intentions to the world's Muslim masses" ...That seems to be the theme. People like Rice and Wright who harp on it so much either forget completely, or seek to minimize to near-zero, one simply fact: It's not the "values" or the "image" of the US that Muslims around the world "hate". It's the policies, stupid!

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What does Muqtada al-Sadr Want?
by Juan Cole

Class, Generation and Neo-Khomeinism
by Juan Cole

What do we call the enemy?