nouri al-maliki

I spent most of my day at the J Street conference, but took a few breaks for recreation — in this case two impromptu roundtables with prominent aides to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who happened to be in town. This is a delicate moment in Iraqi politics: in addition to the most destructive bombings [...]

In one of the more bizarre subplots of the Iraq war, the United States has for years protected thousands of members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian organization chartered by Saddam Hussein to carry out terrorist attacks against Iranian targets. The MEK has a cultish aspect to it — Elizabeth Rubin wrote a great and detailed [...]

Forgive me for getting a bit self-indulgent here, but I feel like I should reply to Juan Cole’s post saying Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s remarks yesterday that he’s open to a post-2011 U.S. troop presence is “not a story.” Since I was the one who elicited Maliki’s response, perhaps I’m being parochial when I say [...]

Eli Lake at The Washington Times builds on yesterday’s comments from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that U.S. troops might be welcome in some form in Iraq after the 2011 deadline for their withdrawal set in the Status of Forces Agreement. He quotes Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service:
“It would also appear to indicate [...]

Here’s a portion of a press release issued by Said Jawad, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Washington, to mark the recent rise in U.S. military fatalities in his country:
I would like to convey our most sincere condolences to the friends and families of each of those that have fallen in Afghanistan. Our thoughts and prayers are with [...]

In advance of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s audience with President Obama tomorrow, Meghan O’Sullivan, the Bush White House’s Iraq director from 2004 to 2007, has some advice to the Obama administration: stop talking about Iraq’s political difficulties in sectarian terms.
A lot was made — both in Iraq and in the United States — of [...]

Just out from the White House:
Vice President Biden has arrived in Iraq to visit U.S. troops and to meet with Iraqi leaders, including President Jalal Talabani, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Speaker of the Council of Representatives Ayad al-Samarrai. The Vice President will reiterate the United States’ commitment to fully implement the Security Agreement and [...]

Milestones don’t always mark what they should. Tomorrow all these things are true: there are 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq; procedures and circumstances and contingencies pertain whereby urban security will still be a U.S. mission; there is a U.S. combat mission, by binding diplomatic accord, for an additional 13 months; another year will pass after [...]

Abu Muqawama’s pseudonymous guest blogger has a good post giving some reasons for not freaking out over the recent spate of high-profile Iraq bombings. S/he counsels that there’s really no good reason to slow down the pace of withdrawal, contending, “what the Iraqis need is more assistance in resolving some underlying conflicts that can drive [...]

Yesterday’s Pentagon briefing featured a telling exchange about Iraq between a reporter (whom I think was McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef) and  spokesman Geoff Morrell. If the United States is on pace to withdraw from Iraq, the reporter wanted to know, wasn’t the United States declaring victory? Morrell came up with a couple of unsatisfying evasions — [...]