Juan Cole on Iraq This Week

MissM points us to a post I read earlier and should have thought to post. Gives some missing background on events in Iraq this week.

From Juan Cole at Informed Comment (go read it):

Two British undercover men seem to have seen something suspicious and intervened. But somehow they got involved in a firefight with Iraqi government police. The two Britons were slightly wounded and were captured by Iraqi police (which seems to be penetrated by the Badr Corps, the Sadrists and other Shiite paramilitaries.)

Then a Sadrist crowd tried to storm the jail where the two British special forces operatives were being held by the provincial government. The Shiite crowds appear to have intended to hold them as hostages to be traded for Fartusi et al.

It was at that point that the British tanks rolled against the jail.

In freeing the two Britons, they inadvertently let 150 other prisoners escape, presumably some of them involved in the guerrilla movement. Two Iraqis were killed in related violence. Then crowds attacked British military vehicles, setting 2 afire with Molotov cocktails.

The entire episode reeks of "dual sovereignty," in which there are two distinct sources of government authority. Social historian Charles Tilly says that dual sovereignty signals a revolutionary situation.