Opinion: Fog of War

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It’s unclear whether the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has anything resembling a coherent government. Yesterday, the Shiite Interior Minister announced an arrest warrant for the country’s top Sunni cleric. Today the Associated Press is quoting ‘an official close to the prime minister’ saying that Maliki didn’t know about the warrant and that the cleric, Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, won’t be arrested after all.

Earlier this week, Shiite and Sunni cabinet ministers couldn’t agree on how many people were kidnapped from the Ministry of Higher Education, how many have been released or whether any were tortured. Juan Cole says the feuding inside the government reminds him of Kabul in 1995, when forces controlled by the prime minister and the president fought so fiercely they leveled the city and killed about 60,000 people. Baghdad hasn’t been hit so hard because the warring Shiites and Sunnis can’t fight set piece battles with U.S. forces there, Cole says.