Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis Issue Declaration for US Pullout

By Cihan, aa

As the presence of foreign troops in Iraq is under debate, the largest Shiite and Sunni groups issued a declaration on Friday demanding a deadline announcement for the US pullout.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11272.htm

If America Left Iraq

The case for cutting and running

By Nir Rosen

At some point—whether sooner or later—U.S. troops will leave Iraq. I have spent much of the occupation reporting from Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, Fallujah, and elsewhere in the country, and I can tell you that a growing majority of Iraqis would like it to be sooner.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11273.htm

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IRAQ: The U.S. invasion has boomeranged, creating a different deadly threat.
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By Steven L. Spiegel
Steven L. Spiegel is a professor of political science at UCLA. He is working on a book on the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East.

December 11 2005

ON JAN. 29, 2002, President Bush infamously singled out three countries for his "axis of evil": North Korea, Iran and Iraq. But the number of words he devoted to each revealed a great deal about his intentions: 17 to North Korea, 19 to Iran and 84 to Iraq.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday...-sunday-opinion

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Sunni Factions Plot Their Return
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After this week's vote, the minority group may seek alliances with Kurds and secular Shiites to try to take back more power.

By John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writer

December 11 2005

BAGHDAD — At the office of the federation of Iraqi tribes, the scene is something of a throwback to the Saddam Hussein days.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...1,5797338.story

In Iraq, security trumps women's rights
Ahead of the Dec. 15 vote, some Iraqi women say safety is a bigger
issue than political participation. By Howard LaFranchi
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1212/p07s02-woiq.html?s=hns

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GL10Ak01.html


Badr's spreading web
By Mahan Abedin

The recent discovery of a supposedly secret prison allegedly run by elements in the Iraqi Interior Ministry loyal to the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has raised fears of an escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq. Leaving aside the sensational reporting on this incident, there is nothing particularly new or even secret about this development.

Certainly the American authorities in Iraq are not only well aware of aggressive counter-insurgency tactics, but in some cases even



oversee them. The timing of the so-called secret prison's "discovery" is also interesting, coming at a time when the US is trying to diminish the influence of the Shi'ite Islamist bloc in the government.

The elections scheduled for December 15 are seen as a perfect opportunity by the Americans and their main ally in Iraq, former premier Iyad Allawi, to curtail the electoral clout of SCIRI and other Shi'ite organizations and personalities, including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi. The "discovery" of the secret detention center and the sensational reporting that followed is part of this American-led electoral strategy.

In the security field, though, there are unlikely to be any changes to the way the Shi'ite-dominated security forces conduct the war against the Arab Sunni guerrilla movement and the Salafi-jihadi extremists. However, the events of the past month have highlighted a potentially fatal long-term flaw in the development of new Iraqi security forces, and that is the emergence of two separate security/intelligence structures: one which is entirely overseen by the Americans, and the other entirely led by Shi'ite Islamists with strong ties to Iran.

The Badr Organization
As the Interior Ministry detention center, where about 170 prisoners were being held, was allegedly controlled by elements either belonging to or strongly connected to the Badr Organization, it is worthwhile examining the emergence and evolution of this paramilitary and security organization.

The Badr Organization is the armed wing of the SCIRI, which was formed in November 1982 in Tehran. [1] Under the tutelage of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), SCIRI established a military wing in 1983, called the Badr Brigade. This force quickly grew into a full-fledged corps and joined regular IRGC forces on the front lines during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Like the SCIRI's political wing, the Badr Corps never posed a serious threat to the former Iraqi regime. The main problem was that it strove to be a conventional military organization, equipped with heavy weaponry, rather than a guerrilla force capable of easily infiltrating Iraq and operating clandestinely. While its conventional forces looked impressive on parade, their ineffectiveness was highlighted during the 1991 Shi'ite uprising in Iraq - Badr forces managed to cross the border, but were easily crushed by the Iraqi Army.

The relationship between the Badr and the IRGC has been the subject of much disinformation, exaggeration and misreporting. While there is no doubt that the Badr was partly created by the IRGC and sustained by it in the early years, the relationship was downgraded after the formal ending of the Iran-Iraq War in August 1988. One myth that has been sustained throughout these years, mainly by the former Ba'ath regime and its loyalists, is that the Badr was completely subordinate to the IRGC command structure.

It is alleged that the organization's real name was the "9th Badr Corps", indicating that it belonged to a chain of specialized IRGC units. These include the "2nd Qods [Jerusalem] Corps", the IRGC'S ultra-clandestine and highly effective special operations and foreign intelligence unit.

For their part, the SCIRI and the Badr vehemently deny strong association with the IRGC. This is, at best, a half-truth. While the Badr was never subordinate to the IRGC in a formal organizational sense, it was heavily reliant on the latter for funding, arms, training and even infiltration into Iraq.

Moreover, virtually every facility used by the SCIRI and the Badr in Iran from 1982-2003 was either wholly owned by the IRGC or in some ways connected to it. In terms of funding there is reliable evidence that the salaries of some full-time Badr personnel were paid by the IRGC's central accounting department.

According to a reliable military journalist in Tehran, the pay slips would be issued in nine-digit formats, complying with the IRGC's accounting and encryption system for those employees and agents whose identities needed to remain concealed, even to the IRGC's internal auditors. The funds would either be deposited in Iranian banks, or in some cases Badr personnel would be paid in US dollars. Fake charities were set up to launder the funds. These would be deposited in the Swiss subsidiary of Mebco, a small bank owned by Chalabi. Mebco had its banking license withdrawn by the Swiss federal banking commission in April 1989. Funds would also be deposited in Chalabi-owned banks and other financial institutions in Beirut.

The relationship between the IRGC and the Badr underwent further changes in 1992. Several front organizations were created to put further administrative and operational distance between the two and ultimately enable Badr's fighting forces to gain full independence.

This worked, as by early 2003 the operational links between Badr fighting forces and the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) had become tenuous. But a parallel development ensured that Badr maintained its links with the IRGC. The changes in 1992 were, in part, prompted by Badr's dismal performance in the March-April 1991 Safar intifada against Saddam Hussein's regime.

There was a realization that Badr could never hope to pose a serious military challenge to the (former) Iraqi regime and instead needed to develop strong security and intelligence capabilities, which would enable it to operate clandestinely inside Iraq. It was at this juncture that the Badr developed a distinct security/intelligence unit that was trained by and operated under the guidelines of the IRGC's Qods Corps.

Virtually nothing is known about these activities, mainly because there is no reliable information on the ultra-secretive Qods Corps, save for sloppy disinformation and propaganda put out by Western intelligence services and exiled Iranian dissidents. These security units proved useful during the period 1999-2001 when Iran and Iraq used each other's dissident organizations to conduct a low-level urban terrorist campaign, marked mainly by the use of mortar bombs in Tehran and Baghdad.

Badr in Iraq
It is widely believed that on the eve of the invasion of Iraq the Badr Corps controlled around 10,000-15,000 fighters, 3,000 of whom were professionally trained (many of these being Iraqi Army defectors and former prisoners of war). However, the core of the Badr fighting forces was composed of about 1,500 ideologically-committed combatants who had spent nearly two decades working alongside the IRGC.

Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, the Badr Corps moved into Iraq from the central sector, independent of SCIRI personnel who entered Iraq mostly from the south. The Badr established an initial presence in Diyala province, arguably Iraq's most strategic region, given its proximity to Iran and its mixed Shi'ite and Sunni population.

The US authorities applied great pressure on the Badr Corps to disarm in the early months of the occupation. Consequently the Badr Corps was renamed the Badr Organization, but it did not fully disarm. In any case, the disarmament process was reversed after the assassination of the SCIRI's founding leader, Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim, in August 2003, after which the Americans readily accepted that the SCIRI needed an armed component to protect its assets in the deteriorating security situation.

From early 2004 onwards, when coalition efforts to develop new Iraqi military and security structures started in earnest, the Badr Organization (which now claimed to be operating independently from the SCIRI) tried to place its most competent officers and fighters inside the new security organs. But these efforts were thwarted both by American officers and former Ba'athist security personnel, who saw the Badr as an extension of the IRGC in Iraq.

The Badr was sidelined during the tenure of Allawi's government (July 2004-April 2005), as the neo-Ba'athists in that administration, particularly the defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, the interior minister, Faleh al-Naquib, and the intelligence chief, Mohammad Shahwani, applied maximum pressure on the Americans to deny Badr access to government resources. The Allawi government proved to be the most serious mistake in post-war Iraq, as evidenced by the biggest fraud scandal in Iraqi history, which was allegedly masterminded by Shaalan and other senior figures in the Defense Ministry.

To their credit, the Americans, mindful of the incompetence of Allawi and his crooked ministers and advisors, refused to disarm and dissolve the Badr, as was repeatedly requested by Shaalan's office. In fact as the insurgency situation deteriorated sharply in late 2004, the Americans decided to involve the Badr in official security planning and counter-insurgency operations. This set the stage for the entry of Badr personnel and agents into the defense and interior ministries.

The situation changed dramatically after this January's elections, which resulted in a massive victory by the SCIRI and its allies, and which led to the creation of the Ibrahim Jaafari government in April. From the very early days of the Jaafari government, the Badr was given virtual control over the Interior Ministry, with Bayan Jabr (a former Badr Corps commander and SCIRI leader) being appointed the interior minister.

This enabled the Badr to capture the top positions at the ministry and exert significant influence on counter-insurgency planning and operations. The Badr set up new counter-insurgency units, which are widely regarded as the most motivated and effective components of the new Iraqi security forces.

The Badr Organization was instrumental in the creation of the elite anti-insurgency unit known as al-Liwa al-Dheeb (Wolf Brigade). The Wolf Brigade initially operated in the north of Iraq, particularly in Tal Afar and Mosul, but in recent months it has assumed a security role in Baghdad as well. The Badr also set up the Scorpion Brigade, which specializes in intelligence-led security sweeps against insurgent hideouts, bases and safe-houses in urban areas, particularly western Baghdad.

Aside from its heavy involvement in security and paramilitary operations against the insurgents, the Badr is also using its intelligence apparatus to collect information on a range of targets in Iraq. The Badr initially set up its intelligence apparatus in the city of Kut in April 2003. The intelligence network was under the control of Sayyid Abbas Fadhil, a senior SCIRI leader, who declared himself mayor of Kut after entering the town on April 10.

It was not mere coincidence that Abdel Aziz al-Hakim (the current leader of the SCIRI), who was then the de-facto commander of the Badr, decided to make Kut his first port of call after long years in exile in Iran. Hakim arrived in Kut on April 16 and was greeted by Fadhil and 20,000 cheering residents.

Currently Badr's intelligence apparatus is headquartered in Najaf, but it maintains regional and local headquarters in Basra, Amara, Khanegheyn, Khalis, Balad, Kirkuk and eastern Baghdad. Badr and the SCIRI's intelligence apparatus operates completely independently from the new Iraqi intelligence service that is nominally headed by Shahwani but is in fact completely controlled by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The Americans have refused to relinquish control of the new Iraqi intelligence service (which is very small and is almost entirely made up of former Iraqi intelligence officers) for fear that it would fall under the influence of Badr - and by extension Iran.

Badr's intelligence apparatus is currently focused on gathering information on six primary objectives, in the following order of importance: 1) former regime elements (particularly committed members of the Ba'ath Party, former intelligence officers, Ba'athist academics and anybody who still actively supports Saddam); 2) insurgents (both indigenous and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi-led Salafi-jihadis); 3) the Sunni clerical establishment (the Association of Muslim Scholars being the primary target); 4) Arab Sunni-based political parties and personalities (the Iraqi Islamic Party is a major target for penetration); 5) the new Iraqi intelligence service; 6) American forces and facilities in Iraq (detailed information on American military bases, troop movements and tactics are collected on a daily basis).

The Badr intelligence apparatus has a national network of informants and is also active in Damascus (Syria), Amman (Jordan), Nicosia and Larnaka (Cyprus), cities that have large Iraqi communities and where Iraqi insurgents conduct much of their planning, networking and fundraising. It is entirely possible that the Badr intelligence apparatus is both larger and more effective than the new Iraqi intelligence service, but it is impossible to verify this.

New Iraq and security challenges
The biggest challenge in post-war Iraq is developing new security forces and structures. This would not only enable the Americans to depart Iraq but would ensure that the country had the resources to cope with the long-term destabilizing dynamics that were unleashed by the toppling of Saddam.

However, the experience of the past 33 months has not been altogether encouraging. There have been three fundamental trends, in regard to developing new security forces. The first was the creation and development of the new Iraqi Army. This has been under the tutelage of the Americans, who are slowly developing a new armed force, albeit a very small one.

There is a tacit agreement between the Americans and Iraq's neighbors that the new Iraqi Army remains limited in size and is not equipped with ultra-modern and lethal American weaponry. In other words, the new Iraqi Army will be strong enough to maintain internal order, but it will never acquire the size and weaponry to threaten even the country's weakest neighbors.

The second is the development of a new Iraqi police force, which has been largely undertaken by the British. This has been a failure through and through. While the British have tried hard to train a core of top tier police officers, the treacherous nature of policing in Iraq, coupled with the heavy penetration of the rank and file by militias (especially the Sadrists and their offshoots) have blunted any success they may have had.

The third has been the creation of a new Iraqi intelligence service, which mainly due to the political landscape of post-Saddam Iraq, has led to the emergence of two Iraqi secret states; one controlled by the Americans and the other by Iranian-backed Shi'ite Islamists.

The abuses discovered in the Interior Ministry facility are partly rooted in the fragmented nature of the new Iraqi security forces. But it is also important to remember the ferocity of the insurgency in Iraq and the fact that the country simply does not have the security and judicial resources to respond appropriately. Those who are tasked with fighting the insurgents on the ground protest that not even the most sophisticated judicial apparatus in the world would be able to prevent abuses by security forces faced with catastrophic threats and enemies who regularly resort to extreme methods.

More broadly, the complex and fragmented nature of the new Iraqi security forces is informed by the evolving political superstructure. As Iraq is steadily transformed into a weak federal state with deep sectarian and ethnic cleavages that are exacerbated by daily bombings and communal massacres, the security forces will continue to develop along fragmented, militia-based and ethnocentric lines.

Note
[1] For a comprehensive (and at the time) original account of the emergence and development of the SCIRI, refer to the author's Dossier: The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Volume 5, No 10, October 2003.

Mahan Abedin is the editor of Terrorism Monitor, which is published by the Jamestown Foundation, a non-profit organization specializing in research and analysis on conflict and instability in Eurasia. The views expressed here are his own.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

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December 11, 2005
Commission Finds Irregularities in Iraqi Voter Registration
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 11 - With just four days to go until parliamentary elections, the Iraqi electoral commission said today that it had found irregularities in voter registration in the volatile northern oil city of Kirkuk.

The discovery was the first instance of an election irregularity announced by the commission as the country prepared for the vote on Thursday.

The commission said experts conducting an audit of voter lists found that there had been an unexpected surge in voter registration in the area. When the experts scrutinized the voter registration forms, the commission said in a written statement, they found that many had been filled out incorrectly. Some had missing signatures and others had more than one signature. In some cases, the same name appeared on several forms.

Adel al-Lami, the director general of the Iraqi electoral commission, said in an interview that in his view the voter registration irregularities were technical errors and not politically motivated. "Please stay away from political conspiracies," he said. "There's no political reason for this."

Kirkuk is considered one of the most potentially incendiary cities in Iraq, because of its diverse ethnic and religious mix and its oil resources. The area, north of Baghdad, has 10 to 20 percent of the country's oil reserves. As a result, several competing groups - Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs - claim dominance over the city.

Under the rule of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab, the government pushed Kurds and Turkmens out of Kirkuk and moved in Arabs, many of them from the south. After the American invasion, the two main Kurdish political parties began an aggressive campaign of resettling the region with Kurds.

Homes for Kurds are being built at a fevered pace in Kirkuk, further stirring the fears of Arabs and Turkmens. Unlike the situation in Mr. Hussein's time, the Kurds also control the provincial council, the police force and most of the provincial ministries.

No reliable census of the city has been taken for decades. The new constitution says Kirkuk Province will hold a referendum vote by the end of 2007 to determine whether it will be governed by the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan, or by the central government. One expert on the area, Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, has recommended that Kirkuk itself be designated a special autonomous region.

The election commission said today that Kirkuk had an average 45 percent increase in voter registration across the region, compared with an average 8.19 percent increase across Iraq. That prompted experts to look at the registration forms that had been turned in recently.

The commission said it would distribute to polling places a list of names for whom forms had been rejected, and that those people would not be allowed to vote.

The Ministry of Interior laid out security plans today for the period surrounding the elections. The measures are similar to ones put in place during last January's elections and during the constitutional referendum in October. The government will shut down from Tuesday to Saturday, as a national holiday, and a nightly curfew of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. will be in place. In addition, civilians will not be allowed to carry guns even if they have a permit.

Iraqi forces will also clamp down on movement across the country's borders and on travel between provinces.

Advance voting is to take place Monday in hospitals and prisons.

Kirk Semple contributed reporting for this article.



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December 11, 2005
Ambassador Says Elections May Not Lead to Withdrawal
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - Four days before parliamentary elections in Iraq that the Bush administration has portrayed as a "significant milestone," the American ambassador there and a Republican lawmaker cautioned today against assuming that the vote would produce quick and dramatic improvement or lead to a rapid withdrawal of United States forces.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the elections would underscore the rising importance of the political process - and, he hopes, rising Sunni participation in that process - and should accelerate a gradual reduction in the military presence. He predicted that Sunni parties would win 40 to 55 seats in the 275-seat assembly, with no party gaining a majority. That would give the Sunnis a "critical role" in talks on a new constitution.

"Our hope and expectation is that violence and use of the military will become less important," he said on "This Week" on ABC television. "I do anticipate a set of circumstances in the aftermath of the election where we can begin to reduce numbers significantly."

But, he added: "I do not anticipate that that change will take place very quickly. In the best of circumstances, it will take time and change incrementally."

He also warned that a precipitous United States military withdrawal could lead to civil war.

Iraq's government, meanwhile, announced today that it would close its borders, extend the nighttime curfew and restrict domestic travel starting on Tuesday - two days before the main election day - to try to prevent insurgents from disrupting the vote. Voters will be choosing their first fully constitutional Parliament since the Sunni-dominated Saddam Hussein regime was driven out of power by the American invasion in March 2003.

The assembly, to serve for four years, will choose a new government that American officials hope will win the confidence of the disaffected Sunni Arab community - which has become a major element in the insurgency - amid fears that the country's majority Shiites will dominate the country's future government.

The Republican lawmaker, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, welcomed the elections as "a huge sea change in the Mideast," but also cautioned against unalloyed optimism.

"I don't think we're going to have any major troop withdrawals anytime soon," he said on "Meet the Press" on NBC. "The level of security that we'll need to leave behind, is not even close to being there."

Citing an array of problems in Iraq, Senator Graham, a member of the Armed Services Committee and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, added, "For us to deny the fact that we are a long way from a secure Iraq needs to stop."

While administration officials have referred to the Dec. 15 elections as the last in a series of crucial political events pointing Iraq toward normalization and stability, a senior Democrat, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, cited another crucial juncture ahead.

Once a parliament is elected, work will begin on amending the draft constitution. Sunnis count on these negotiations to ensure them a larger role.

The reworked constitution, Mr. Biden said, "is either going to be a document of division, or a document of unity." If it proves to be the former, he added, "then I think we're in real trouble." He suggested enlisting regional countries and major powers to press Shiites and Kurds to allow a significant Sunni role.

Republicans and Democrats continued their bitter squabbling over the war. Representative John Murtha, the retired Marine reservist and Pennsylvania Democrat, who roiled Washington by calling for a quick troop withdrawal from Iraq, refused today to back away, despite disagreement within his party.

"The majority of people in Iraq are in favor of us getting out now," he said on "Face the Nation" on CBS. "We have become the enemy."

Many Democrats have found themselves trying to forge a middle-ground message critical of the president's war-handling - as polls show most Americans are - but opposed to premature troop pullout.

"This was a war of choice, not of necessity, but getting it right is a necessity and not a choice," Madeleine Albright, secretary of state in the Clinton administration, said on "Meet the Press." "And we cannot leave chaos."

As support for the war has declined, some Republicans have been outspokenly critical. Senator Graham was blunt in his criticism today, while opposing a quick withdrawal.

At "every turn, we've underestimated how hard it would be," he said on "Meet the Press." "We've paid a price in the past for our missteps."

But he insisted that progress could be cemented only through perseverance.

"The worst thing we could do, in my opinion, is leave this infant democracy behind without the ability to have a reasonable chance to develop," he said.

Meantime, the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, predicted that the Senate and White House would soon reach agreement on a proposal to ban the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" in interrogations of terror suspects.

The administration has said that it needs a range of interrogation tools to stop potential attacks. But it also asserts that the United States "does not torture," and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week assured her European counterparts that this applied to United States interrogators everywhere.



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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/14B...DA800E8BEA8.htm

Saddam loyalists urge Sunnis to vote
Sunday 11 December 2005, 23:16 Makka Time, 20:16 GMT

In a move that would have been inconceivable only months earlier, Saddam Hussein loyalists are urging Sunnis to vote in Thursday's poll and warning al-Qaida fighters not to launch attacks.


As political and security tensions rise before the parliamentary elections, fighters in the Western al-Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from those loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

These same fighters violently opposed elections held in January when many Sunnis, in rebel strongholds such as Ramadi and Falluja, either staged a boycott or were simply too scared to vote.

Ali Mahmoud, a Falluja resident and former army officer and rocket specialist under the Baath party, said: "We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will be safe when they vote."

Former Baathists opposed to the US presence in Iraq, such as Falluja resident Jassim Abu Bakr, are still fiercely opposed to US-backed leaders, and say any Sunni politicians who move too close to them will lose their support.

"We are telling Sunnis that they have to vote for nationalist parties and even if they win, we will be watching very closely to keep them in line," said the Falluja fighter, 28.

In Falluja, known as Iraq's City of Mosques, Sunni Muslim spiritual leaders made it clear there would be no repeat of the boycott of January's election which left their sect marginalised.

Encouraging change

Despite the continuing hostility, this shift in attitude is encouraging for the US, which hopes to engage Sunni Arabs in a policy of peaceful politics in order to defuse the fighting. But it is far too early to suggest that any breakthroughs will ease violence that has left thousands dead.

Most election posters back two Sunni politicians, Saleh Mutlak and Adnan al-Dulaimi. Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia and former prime minister who ordered a US-led offensive that devastated Falluja last year, has some appeal, fighters said.

The influential Association of Muslim Scholars urged its large Sunni community to boycott what it saw as illegal polls in January.

Nearly one year on, the group has so far been officially neutral, but some of its members have called participation in the polls a religious duty.

Ramadi remains a trouble spot. Just a few days ago US helicopters were exchanging fire with determined fighters.

But Saddam loyalists have turned against al-Zarqawi, originally from Jordan, whose fighters travel to Iraq from across the Arab world.

"Zarqawi is an American, Israeli and Iranian agent who is trying to keep our country unstable so that the Sunnis will keep facing occupation," said a Baathist leader who would give his name only as Abu Abd Allah.

Political wrangling

Meanwhile, the election campaign geared up for its final sprint ahead of Thursday's poll, with rival candidates trading bitter accusations over mounting political violence.

Former prime minister Iyad Allawi, campaigning hard on a joint Shia-Sunni ticket to unite the country and end the armed chaos, has accused the government of leading the country to the brink of civil war.

Exacerbating the insecurity, the fate of four Western peace activists remained in limbo on Sunday after another ultimatum expired from their kidnappers who threatened to kill them unless prisoners are released.

In order to ensure that Thursday's vote takes place with a minimum of violence, Bayan Baker Solagh, the interior minister, has announced strict security measures.

The country will grind to a halt for the election, with a five-day public holiday, a ban on carrying weapons in public and night-time curfews.

Land borders will be closed and airports shut beginning on Wednesday.

Similar measures were adopted during an October vote on the constitution and a January election to elect a transitional parliament.

More than 15.5 million Iraqis are eligible to go to the polls on Thursday to elect 275 members of parliament from about 7000 candidates competing for a seat in the country's first full-term parliament since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government.


Agencies

Early Departure Of US Troops Would Lead To Civil War In Iraq: Khalilzad
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzzzzj.html

Washington (AFP) Dec 11, 2005 - A premature pullout of US troops from Iraq would plunge the country into civil war, Washington's ambassador to Iraq said Sunday, in a direct riposte to lawmakers in the US Congress calling for a quick withdrawal of American forces.

Bush: U.S. Will See Iraq Victory Strategy Through
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzzzzk.html

Walker's World: The U.S. consensus on Iraq
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzzzzl.html

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December 12, 2005
Early Voting Begins in Iraq's Parliamentary Elections
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:04 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Patients, soldiers and prisoners began voting Monday in parliamentary elections, three days ahead of the general population, while insurgents said the balloting violated God's law, and new violence killed at least 12 people.

Five Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq, denounced Thursday's elections as a ''satanic project,'' vowing to continue their war to establish an Islamic regime, according to an Internet statement. But they made no threats to disrupt the process, unlike earlier balloting when militants warned they would attack polling stations.

President Bush cautioned that the elections ''won't be perfect.''

''Iraqis still have more difficult work ahead, and our coalition and a new Iraqi government will face many challenges,'' he said in a speech in Philadelphia.

Asked about the number of Iraqi casualties from the war and the insurgency, Bush said: ''I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis.'' White House counselor Dan Bartlett later said the number was not an official figure but that Bush was simply repeating public estimates reported in the media.

To curb election day bloodshed, Iraq will close its borders, extend a nighttime curfew and restrict domestic travel starting Tuesday. Thousands of Iraqi forces will guard polling stations, with U.S. and other coalition troops ready in case of a major attack.

In a development that could affect the elections, 13 prisoners who were apparent victims of abuse were found at an overcrowded detention center run by the Interior Ministry, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari ordered an investigation into what he described as an ''unhealthy phenomenon.'' A similar case surfaced last month.

''I will not allow such dealing with any prisoner,'' he said.

U.S. officials hope the new parliament can help quell the Sunni-dominated insurgency so American forces can begin heading home. The 275-member assembly will be the first full-term parliament, serving for four years, since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster.

Al-Jaafari said a timetable for a withdrawal would depend on the ability of Iraqi forces to take over security.

''We want the multinational forces to leave, but we don't want security to disappear as well,'' al-Jaafari said. ''When the Iraqi hands are in complete control of the security situation in Iraq, then we will tell the multinational forces, 'Thank you. Please leave the Iraqi lands.'''

At the largest election rally of the campaign, thousands of Shiite Muslims filled the streets of Baghdad's sprawling slum of Sadr City, chanting Islamic and anti-insurgent slogans.

''Yes, yes to Islam! Yes, yes to Iraq! Yes, yes to the religious leadership!'' the group yelled as they waved Iraqi flags and pictures of the sect's top leaders amid tight security.

A new opinion poll found most Iraqis disapprove of the presence of U.S. forces in their country, yet they are optimistic about Iraq's future and their personal lives.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed oppose the presence of coalition troops, and less than half, 44 percent, say their country is better off now than it was before the war, according to an ABC News poll conducted with Time magazine and other media partners.

But three-quarters say they are confident about the parliamentary elections and more than two-thirds expect things to get better in the coming months, the poll said.

The Internet statement could not be independently verified, but if authentic, it was a rare instance of several militant groups joining to announce their stance.

''The conspiracy in Iraq against the mujahedeen, the so-called political process ... is nothing more than a satanic project, just like those before it,'' the statement said.

''To engage in the so-called political process and in the renegade election is religiously prohibited and contradicts the legitimate policy approved by God almighty for the Muslims in our constitution, which is the holy Quran,'' it said.

An unsigned statement believed to be from an insurgent group and distributed in the Sunni stronghold of Azamiyah said Sunnis could use the elections to make some political gains but that ''fighting will continue with the infidels and their followers.''

In Egypt, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa urged all Iraqis to vote and ''participate in the building of a new Iraq,'' adding that all fighting and police crackdowns should be suspended for the polling.

An empty minibus loaded with explosives blew up Monday near a Baghdad hospital, killing three civilians and injuring 13, including five police officers, authorities said.

A U.S. soldier was killed Monday by a bomb in Baghdad and another died a day earlier in a suicide blast near the city of Ramadi, the U.S. command said. The deaths brought to 2,144 the number of U.S. military members killed in Iraq since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.

Clashes killed two police officers and injured nine, police said. Two other people died in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad's Dora district.

Gunmen killed three men and injured a woman when they opened fire on a pickup truck with Education Ministry license plates.

A roadside bomb in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, killed a woman and injured five.

Police also said a businessman and his 23-year-old son were kidnapped in Baghdad's upscale Mansour district.

Monday's early voting saw the first of 1,500 patients cast ballots at Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital, with officials bringing a box around to the bedridden in various wards, said Yousif Ibrahim, director of the election center. Police and soldiers also voted early, displaying their ink-stained fingers.

On Tuesday, the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi voters living outside the country can cast ballots at polling centers in 15 countries.

Suspected insurgents held in detention but not convicted are eligible to vote, officials said. Saddam, who is jailed and facing trial for the deaths of more than 140 Shiites in 1982, also can vote but it is not known whether he would.

Sunni Arabs largely boycotted the Jan. 30 election to protest the U.S. military presence, enabling the Shiites and Kurds to dominate parliament, a move that sharpened communal tensions and fueled the insurgency. This time, more Sunni Arab candidates are running, and changes in election law to allocate most seats by province instead of based on a party's nationwide total all but guaranteed a sizable Sunni bloc in the next assembly.

Turnout in January was about 58 percent but less than 5 percent in the predominantly Sunni province of Anbar, a hotbed of insurgency.

Still, Shiites are expected to win the biggest share of seats. Shiites form an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 27 million people, compared with 20 percent for the Sunni Arabs.

In the discovery of the 13 prisoners, a statement by the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry did not say why they needed treatment, but said an investigating judge also ordered the immediate release of 56 people apparently held without reason at the Baghdad facility -- which was inspected by investigators Dec. 8.

Opposition parties and Sunni Arab groups have accused the government and the Shiite-dominated security forces of human rights abuses.

The Interior Ministry did not say what had caused their injuries or if they were consistent with abuse or torture. An officer at the ministry, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the 13 were taken to a hospital due to ''signs of torture.''

According to the Human Rights Ministry, the facility next to the Interior Ministry housed 625 detainees in ''very overcrowded'' conditions.

Last month, an inspection by U.S. troops at a building of the Shiite-led Interior Ministry in Baghdad's Jadriyah district found up to 173 malnourished detainees, and some showed signs of torture. On Nov. 15, al-Jaafari ordered an investigation and promised results within two weeks.

Separately, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, head of operations at the Defense Ministry, was asked by reporters if Iraqi forces had captured non-Arab foreigners such as Britons. ''The defense and interior ministers said previously that foreign terrorists have been captured. They were from different nationalities, not only Brits, but even from the United States of America,'' he said, without elaborating.

Steve Bird, a spokesman for the British Foreign Office, said Mohammed apparently was referring to British nationals Mobeen Munwef, who was detained by U.S. forces a year ago as a suspected security threat, and Abdul Reza, who was detained by British forces in southern Iraq in early 2005.



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December 12, 2005
Iraq Prison Raid Finds a New Case of Mistreatment
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 12 - American and Iraqi forces raiding an Iraqi government detention center last Thursday in Baghdad discovered more than 600 prisoners packed into a cramped space, 13 of them mistreated so badly they had to be taken to a hospital, a senior American official said early Monday.

The raid was the second in the past month in which American forces have uncovered mistreatment of prisoners at the hands of Interior Ministry officials. On Nov. 15, soldiers with the Third Infantry Division, charged with controlling Baghdad, entered a ministry bunker in central Baghdad and found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured. Most of those prisoners were Sunni Arabs.

The detention center raided Thursday, situated to the east of the Tigris River, is run by a commando unit from the Interior Ministry, which oversees the country's police forces, said the senior American official, Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for the American detention system in Iraq. When members of the search team entered the building, he said, they found "overcrowded" conditions that prompted them to begin transferring the prisoners.

"Thirteen of them were removed due to medical reasons and sent to a hospital," the colonel said in a telephone interview, declining to specify exactly what signs of abuse or torture, if any, the prisoners might have exhibited. Iraqi officials are still investigating the findings, he added. A total of 625 prisoners had been kept in the center.

Sunni leaders immediately denounced the Shiite-led government after the Nov. 15 discovery, and some have repeatedly raised the issue during campaigning for the parliamentary elections on Thursday.

The Interior Ministry is run by Bayan Jabr, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading religious Shiite party that has an Iranian-trained armed wing called the Badr Organization. Many Iraqi officials have said the ministry has recruited heavily from Badr and other Shiite militias, and there is growing evidence that such forces are abducting, torturing and killing Sunni Arabs.

On Monday morning, soldiers, patients and detainees across Iraq began early voting in the parliamentary elections. From hospital beds, at military bases and inside prisons laced with concertina wire, they cast their ballots, sometimes lining up by the dozens. During the constitutional referendum in October, some Iraqis, including detainees, were allowed to vote early. Expatriate Iraqis are also being permitted to cast ballots at polling stations outside the country ahead of Thursday's polling.

The early voting comes amidst continued violence throughout the country.

At least 11 people were killed in several suicide bombings or other incidents in the last day, including one American soldier and four Iraqi police, interior ministry officials and police said.

As for the detention center, Colonel Rudisill said he did not know the ethnic or religious make-up of the prisoners found Thursday, or whether the commandos running the center had been recruited from militias. The Interior Ministry employs a vast array of commando units, many shrouded in secrecy.

There was no immediate comment from the Interior Ministry on the Thursday raid, first reported on The Washington Post's Web site late Sunday.

The uncovering of the bunker last month led to an extraordinary public rebuke from the American Embassy, which asked the government to bar militias from dominating the security forces and assigned Justice Department officials to assist in a wider Iraqi-led investigation into detention centers across Iraq. The Bush administration is still grappling with fallout from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal that galvanized anti-American sentiments across the Muslim world.

The broader investigation begun last month has not been completed, and it was unclear whether the search last Thursday was part of it. Colonel Rudisill said he did not know what prompted the raid. The team was led by the Ministry of Human Rights, he added.

Of the 625 prisoners found, 75 have been transferred to a center called Rusafa Prison, also in Baghdad, and 56 others were released after Iraqi judges determined there was no longer any need to hold them, the colonel said. The rest are still in the prison that was raided, he said, and judges will be reviewing their files.

With just four days to go until the parliamentary elections, the Iraqi electoral commission said Sunday that it had found irregularities in voter registration in the volatile northern city of Kirkuk.

The discovery was the first election irregularity announced by the commission as the country prepares for the vote on Thursday.

The commission said experts conducting an audit of voter lists had found an unexpected surge in voter registration in the area. When the experts scrutinized the registration forms, the commission said in a written statement, they found that many had been filled out incorrectly. Some had missing signatures and others had more than one signature. In some cases, the same name appeared on several forms.

Adel al-Lami, the director general of the electoral commission, said in an interview on Sunday that in his view the voter registration irregularities were technical errors. "Please stay away from political conspiracies," he said. "There's no political reason for this."

Kirkuk is considered one of the most potentially incendiary cities in Iraq, because of both its diverse ethnic and religious mix and its oil. The area has 10 percent to 20 percent of Iraq's oil reserves. As a result, several competing groups - Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs - claim dominance. The commission said that it would distribute to polling places a list of names for whom forms had been rejected, and that those people would not be allowed to vote.

The American military said Sunday that a soldier was killed in a roadside bomb explosion in Baghdad. At least 2,144 American troops have died in the war.

An insurgent group, the Victorious Army Group, has extended a deadline for a Web design contest, according to an Internet posting. The group has set a Jan. 15 deadline for submissions of a design "worthy of the group's reputation and the reputation of the jihad and the mujahedeen," according to a translation provided by the SITE Institute, which monitors jihadist messages.

The winner is promised "God's blessings" and the opportunity to fire three long-range rockets at an American military base.



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Bush Estimates 30,000 Iraqis Killed

By Daniela Deane

President Bush today stood by his decision nearly three years ago to invade Iraq, despite the fact that some 30,000 Iraqis and more than 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed and he expects the violence to continue even after the country holds parliamentary elections this week.

In a speech in Philadelphia, Bush likened Iraq's attempts to build democratic institutions to the founding of an independent democracy in the United States, which he said was marked by tension, "disorder and upheaval."

"No nation in history has made the transition to a free society without facing challenges, setbacks and false starts," Bush said at Philadelphia's World Affairs Council, which is just a few blocks from historic Independence Hall, where the U.S. constitution was signed in 1787.

The president's speech was part of a recent round of speeches on the war in Iraq designed to bolster flagging public support for the military campaign.

The 45-minute speech focused on recent Iraqi efforts to create democratic institutions. Afterwards, Bush unexpectedly took questions from the audience. One questioner asked how many Iraqis had been killed since the war began.

"I would say 30,000 more or less have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," the president said. "We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."

Speaking just three days before Iraqis go the polls to vote for a new parliament on Thursday, Bush said a lot of difficult work remained to be done in Iraq. He predicted continued violence.

"A free Iraq is not going to be a quiet Iraq," Bush said. "It will be a nation that continues to face some level of violence. Still, he argued, that the "year 2005 will be recorded as a turning point in the history of Iraq, the history of the Middle East and the history of freedom."

Another questioner challenged the administration's linking of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington with the war in Iraq. Bush answered that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a threat and was believed by many people to harbor weapons of mass destruction, the main reason the administration gave for invading Iraq.

"I made a tough decision," Bush said. "And knowing what I know today I'd make the decision again. Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country."

During the speech, Bush singled out Iran and Syria as two countries that do not want democracy in Iraq to succeed. He said Syria was "permitting terrorists to cross into Iraq." He said the United States would "stand with the Iraqi people against the threats from their neighbors."

"We will accept nothing less than complete victory," Bush said. "When victory is achieved, our troops will then return home with the honor they have earned."

Asked how many Iraqi troops were now able to stand alone without the backing of U.S. troops, Bush said there were "about 200,000-plus capable" forces. He said the training of Iraqi troops was "going much better than it was in the first year."

Asked if the terrorist threat against the United States had been diminished by the war in Iraq, Bush said, "it's been reduced, but I don't think we're safe."

He said he realized the United States had an "image issue" around the world because of the war. He argued, though, that "success will help the image of the United States."


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Almost all the prisons are run by Shiites, and almost all the prisoners are Sunnis.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1212/dailyUpdate.html

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle...ticle332812.ece

Iraq: 1,000 days of war
From Shock and Awe to a country torn between insurrection and democracy
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 13 December 2005
It has been the strangest war. A thousand days ago, on 20 March 2003, the US and British armies started a campaign which ended a few weeks later with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

It seemed so easy. President George Bush announced that the war was over. The American mission had been accomplished. Months passed before Washington and London realised that the war had not finished. In fact it was only just beginning. Of the 18,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in Iraq, 94 per cent have been killed or wounded since the fall of Baghdad.

There is no sign that the election for the 275-member Iraqi parliament this Thursday will end the fighting. The Sunni Arabs, the core of the insurrection, will vote for the first time, but there is no talk of a ceasefire. A leaflet issued by one resistance group in Baghdad yesterday encouraged its followers to vote but warned: "The fighting will continue with the infidels and their followers."

It was such a strange war because the US began a conflict in 2003 to change radically the Middle East, the most volatile and dangerous region in the world. This was in complete contrast to the first Gulf War in 1991, when the main war aim of President George Bush Snr was to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and restore the status quo.

There was a further sharp difference between the two wars. Mr Bush Snr had expended enormous effort in creating an international coalition under the UN to fight Iraq. His son, by way of contrast, seemed to revel in isolation. He made the Iraq war the supreme test of American military and political strength. The US would fight it alone, aside from Britain tagging along behind, and win it alone. It did not need allies outside or even inside Iraq. The insurgents received vital if covert assistance from abroad, but the rebellion against the US occupation was always essentially home-grown. Disillusionment with their liberators set in among Iraqis almost as soon as the American troops captured the capital in April 2003. The poor poured out of the slums of Baghdad in a frenzy of destruction and theft. Everything was looted, even the stuffed animals in the natural history museum.

Iraqis expected much from the fall of Saddam. They had endured 23 years of war and sanctions. The Iraqi armed forcessimply packed up and went home. Nobody wanted to die for the old regime. Instead they hoped to enjoy the fruits of their oil wealth for the first time and begin to live like Kuwaitis or Saudis.

Instead the US installed a colonial regime. Iraqis were marginalised and their opinions ignored. Iraqi professionals with PhDs and fluent in several languages found themselves being ordered about by young Americans whose only qualification was links to the Republican Party. The army and security services were dissolved. The five million-strong Sunni community was enraged. The first attacks on US patrols and vehicles began. Whenever I visited the site of an ambush I saw young Iraqi men dancing in jubilation around the blazing vehicles.

By November 2004 a serious guerrilla war was under way. The 140,000-strong US Army was hopelessly ill-equipped for such a conflict. Once I saw an American artillery unit trying to quell a fist fight among Iraqi drivers in a queue at a petrol station. They had brought with them an enormous howitzer designed to fire a shell 30km because they had nowhere to store it.

The face of Baghdad began to change. The symbol of the new regime was the concrete block, enormous obstacles to car bombs looking like gigantic grey tombstones. Walls of them sealed off the Green Zone in the centre of Baghdad where the US and Britain had established their headquarters.

The suicide bombers began to make their terrifying impact. Nobody was safe. The UN headquarters was reduced to a heap of rubble, as was the building housing the Red Cross. Iraqi police stations and US positions were all hastily fortified. On some days there were a dozen attacks. Later they fell in number, but became more sophisticated, with one bomber trying to blast a way through the concrete walls so the second could reach the targeted building.

People in Baghdad and the centre of Iraq lived in perpetual terror of suicide bombers, kidnappers, Iraqi army and US troops. The roads to the capital were all cut by insurgents or bandits. Better-off Iraqis, fearful of kidnappers who preyed on their children, fled to Jordan, Syria and Egypt. In the face of Sunni Arab attack, the US relied more and more on the two other great Iraqi communities. The Shia make up 60 per cent of the population and the Kurds 20 per cent. Some Iraqi leaders had an acute perception of the American dilemma in Iraq. "Let them try to run the country without us and they will see what trouble they will be in," said a Kurdish leader in the summer of 2003. "Then they will come running to us for our help."

Last year the US learnt that it could contain but could not suppress the Sunni insurrection. This year has seen Iraq slowly coming under the control of a Kurdish-Shia alliance whose authority is likely to be reaffirmed by the election on Thursday.

Iraq at the moment is an extraordinary patchwork with conditions varying in every part of the country. Kurdistan is more prosperous than at any time in its history. The skylines of its cities are crowded with cranes. In Baghdad there is hardly any sign of construction, and richer districts are often inhabited only by armed security guards. Their inhabitants have fled.

A BBC poll yesterday showed that half of those questioned say that Iraq needs a strong leader, while only 28 per cent cited democracy as a priority. But it would be a mistake to think that Iraqis could agree on the same strong leader. The Sunni would like a strong man to put the Shia in their place, and the Shia feel likewise that the priority for a powerful leader would be dealing with the Sunni.

Iraqis are cynical about their political leaders. The election results are likely to show that the great majority of Iraqis will vote along ethnic or religious lines as Shia, Sunni or Kurds. The country is turning from a unitary state into a confederation.

There is no sign yet of the thousand-day war ending. Every month up to a thousand fresh corpses arrive at the mortuary in Baghdad. A new Iraq is emerging but it is already drenched in blood.

It has been the strangest war. A thousand days ago, on 20 March 2003, the US and British armies started a campaign which ended a few weeks later with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

It seemed so easy. President George Bush announced that the war was over. The American mission had been accomplished. Months passed before Washington and London realised that the war had not finished. In fact it was only just beginning. Of the 18,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in Iraq, 94 per cent have been killed or wounded since the fall of Baghdad.

There is no sign that the election for the 275-member Iraqi parliament this Thursday will end the fighting. The Sunni Arabs, the core of the insurrection, will vote for the first time, but there is no talk of a ceasefire. A leaflet issued by one resistance group in Baghdad yesterday encouraged its followers to vote but warned: "The fighting will continue with the infidels and their followers."

It was such a strange war because the US began a conflict in 2003 to change radically the Middle East, the most volatile and dangerous region in the world. This was in complete contrast to the first Gulf War in 1991, when the main war aim of President George Bush Snr was to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and restore the status quo.

There was a further sharp difference between the two wars. Mr Bush Snr had expended enormous effort in creating an international coalition under the UN to fight Iraq. His son, by way of contrast, seemed to revel in isolation. He made the Iraq war the supreme test of American military and political strength. The US would fight it alone, aside from Britain tagging along behind, and win it alone. It did not need allies outside or even inside Iraq. The insurgents received vital if covert assistance from abroad, but the rebellion against the US occupation was always essentially home-grown. Disillusionment with their liberators set in among Iraqis almost as soon as the American troops captured the capital in April 2003. The poor poured out of the slums of Baghdad in a frenzy of destruction and theft. Everything was looted, even the stuffed animals in the natural history museum.

Iraqis expected much from the fall of Saddam. They had endured 23 years of war and sanctions. The Iraqi armed forcessimply packed up and went home. Nobody wanted to die for the old regime. Instead they hoped to enjoy the fruits of their oil wealth for the first time and begin to live like Kuwaitis or Saudis.

Instead the US installed a colonial regime. Iraqis were marginalised and their opinions ignored. Iraqi professionals with PhDs and fluent in several languages found themselves being ordered about by young Americans whose only qualification was links to the Republican Party. The army and security services were dissolved. The five million-strong Sunni community was enraged. The first attacks on US patrols and vehicles began. Whenever I visited the site of an ambush I saw young Iraqi men dancing in jubilation around the blazing vehicles.

By November 2004 a serious guerrilla war was under way. The 140,000-strong US Army was hopelessly ill-equipped for such a conflict. Once I saw an American artillery unit trying to quell a fist fight among Iraqi drivers in a queue at a petrol station. They had brought with them an enormous howitzer designed to fire a shell 30km because they had nowhere to store it.
The face of Baghdad began to change. The symbol of the new regime was the concrete block, enormous obstacles to car bombs looking like gigantic grey tombstones. Walls of them sealed off the Green Zone in the centre of Baghdad where the US and Britain had established their headquarters.

The suicide bombers began to make their terrifying impact. Nobody was safe. The UN headquarters was reduced to a heap of rubble, as was the building housing the Red Cross. Iraqi police stations and US positions were all hastily fortified. On some days there were a dozen attacks. Later they fell in number, but became more sophisticated, with one bomber trying to blast a way through the concrete walls so the second could reach the targeted building.

People in Baghdad and the centre of Iraq lived in perpetual terror of suicide bombers, kidnappers, Iraqi army and US troops. The roads to the capital were all cut by insurgents or bandits. Better-off Iraqis, fearful of kidnappers who preyed on their children, fled to Jordan, Syria and Egypt. In the face of Sunni Arab attack, the US relied more and more on the two other great Iraqi communities. The Shia make up 60 per cent of the population and the Kurds 20 per cent. Some Iraqi leaders had an acute perception of the American dilemma in Iraq. "Let them try to run the country without us and they will see what trouble they will be in," said a Kurdish leader in the summer of 2003. "Then they will come running to us for our help."

Last year the US learnt that it could contain but could not suppress the Sunni insurrection. This year has seen Iraq slowly coming under the control of a Kurdish-Shia alliance whose authority is likely to be reaffirmed by the election on Thursday.

Iraq at the moment is an extraordinary patchwork with conditions varying in every part of the country. Kurdistan is more prosperous than at any time in its history. The skylines of its cities are crowded with cranes. In Baghdad there is hardly any sign of construction, and richer districts are often inhabited only by armed security guards. Their inhabitants have fled.

A BBC poll yesterday showed that half of those questioned say that Iraq needs a strong leader, while only 28 per cent cited democracy as a priority. But it would be a mistake to think that Iraqis could agree on the same strong leader. The Sunni would like a strong man to put the Shia in their place, and the Shia feel likewise that the priority for a powerful leader would be dealing with the Sunni.

Iraqis are cynical about their political leaders. The election results are likely to show that the great majority of Iraqis will vote along ethnic or religious lines as Shia, Sunni or Kurds. The country is turning from a unitary state into a confederation.

There is no sign yet of the thousand-day war ending. Every month up to a thousand fresh corpses arrive at the mortuary in Baghdad. A new Iraq is emerging but it is already drenched in blood.

http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=8252

December 13, 2005
Making the World Safe for Theocracy

by Ivan Eland
The much-ballyhooed elections in Iraq later this week are likely to dig the Iraqi hole a little deeper for the Bush administration. The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shi’ite Muslim cleric in Iraq, has indirectly ordered fellow Shi’a to cast their ballots for representatives of the Shi’ite religious parties that now control the interim Iraqi government. A permanent Shi’ite-Kurdish government may prove even more intransigent than the interim government in addressing Sunni concerns about being cut out of Iraq’s oil revenues—thus accelerating the incipient civil war in that nation.

The ever over-confident Bush administration, controlling the levers of authority in the globe’s only hyperpower, has never really bothered to understand important characteristics of nations it invades. In its lust for the rhetoric of “spreading democracy,” the administration has failed to notice that the term means something different in countries with little democratic experience, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, than it does in the United States. In Iraq, as in Afghanistan, voters cast their ballots as prominent leaders desire. In Afghan elections, people voted as their tribal leaders or warlords directed. In Iraq, most of the majority Shi’a population (60 percent of Iraqis) will reliably vote the way al-Sistani wants. In contrast, American voters—even fundamentalist Christian ones—don’t usually vote solely on the basis of their religious leader’s political wishes (if they are expressed at all).

The Shi’ite religious parties in Iraq, which will most likely be victorious, are heavily influenced and funded by the oppressive theocratic government in Iran. One of the most prominent of those parties, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, originally consisted of Iraqi defectors, exiles and refugees who spent two decades in Iran during Saddam Hussein’s rule and fought on the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq War during the 1980s. The party’s militia, the ruthless Badr organization, has been accused of assassinations and other violence against Sunnis and secular Shi’a. According to foreign policy analyst Gareth Porter, the Dawa party, another Shi’ite group, is organized on the basis of Leninist methods. Shi’ite militias have infiltrated Iraq’s security forces and Interior Ministry, which has recently been implicated in the torture of Sunnis in two prisons.

In short, the now desperate Bush administration’s attempt to achieve “victory in Iraq” and pledge to take the Iraqi democratic experiment on the road to other autocratic Arab countries really amount to letting U.S. soldiers die to make the world safe for theocracy. In fact, such future theocracies in Iraq and elsewhere would likely be very unfriendly to the United States and might even sponsor terrorist attacks against U.S. targets.

Of course, the “victory” of installing a Shi’ite theocracy in Iraq is predicated on the low probability of the United States defeating the Sunni insurgency and avoiding a civil war, which is already beginning. That internecine war will likely be intensified by the new Iraqi constitution, which barely escaped a Sunni veto in the referendum on October 15.

The constitution gives the Kurds and Shi’a a greater proportion of oil revenues than the Sunnis because most of the petroleum lies in Kurdish northern and Shi’ite southern Iraq, respectively. In addition to attempting to evict the foreign invader from their land and having angst about likely paybacks from the Shi’ite-Kurdish government for the excesses of Saddam Hussein’s years, the Sunni insurgents are fighting because they fear being left in a resource-poor rump area. The constitution only passed because the interim government agreed to renegotiate portions of it after the vote. But now that the document has been approved, a newly elected and stronger permanent Shi’ite-Kurdish government will have little incentive to do so. So the feud over oil revenues will likely fuel the embryonic civil war.

To reduce the chances of such a conflagration, the constitution should be amended to partition Iraq into Shi’ite, Kurdish, and Sunni areas (all lands within these three or more areas do not have to be contiguous) and to proportionally share petroleum revenues or even oilfields with the Sunnis. To give the Shi’a and Kurds an incentive to reach an agreement to share oil, the United States would inform them that the U.S. military, which is the only thing propping up the Iraqi government, will be exiting quickly. The administration has dug itself so deeply into the Iraqi hole that no perfect solution exists to avoid the impending civil war. But this solution at least stops the digging and begins filling in some dirt.

Bush Estimates Iraqi Death Toll in War at 30,000

By Peter Baker

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 12 -- President Bush estimated Monday that 30,000 Iraqis have died in the war since U.S.-led forces invaded in March 2003, but he offered no second thoughts about ordering the attack and said the threat of terrorism against the United States has subsided as a result.

"Knowing what I know today, I'd make the decision again," Bush told a questioner after a speech here. "Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country."

The estimate marked the first time Bush has personally provided an assessment of the Iraqi death toll, a highly sensitive subject that his administration largely avoids discussing at any level, much less from the presidential lectern. Although the Pentagon keeps careful track of Americans killed in Iraq -- now exceeding 2,100 troops -- military officers have said they do not count Iraqi dead.

Bush cautioned that further casualties lie ahead, casting Iraq as the key battleground in a war with terrorist groups that could play out elsewhere as well. "The long run in this war is going to require a change in governments in parts of the world," he said. Bush did not elaborate on which ones he had in mind, but a few moments later he mentioned his confrontation with North Korea over its nuclear program and earlier he had tough words for two of Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Syria.

The comments came during a rare audience question-and-answer session after a speech here on Iraq's upcoming elections, the third of four speeches leading up to Thursday's vote. After being criticized for refusing to honor the custom of taking questions at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington last week, the president opened the floor after his address to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

The first person he called on was Didi Goldmark, 63, a former libel lawyer from New Hope, Pa., who asked him how many Iraqis have died in the war. Unlike aides who have been asked that question, Bush gave a direct answer.

"I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," he said. "We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."

Bush moved on to the next question without identifying how he arrived at the figure or how many were killed by U.S. forces and not Iraqi insurgents and foreign militants. Aides later said it was not a government estimate but a reflection of figures in news media reports. Still, Bush offered it without qualification, in effect accepting it as a reasonable approximation.

The Iraqi death toll has been the subject of considerable debate. A group of British researchers and antiwar activists called Iraq Body Count estimates civilian casualties between 27,383 and 30,892, not counting Iraqi troops or insurgents, by tabulating incidents reported in media and human rights reports. Iraqi authorities have said that roughly 800 people die a month in violence there, a rate that if typical over the course of the conflict would come to 25,600.

An epidemiological study published in the British journal the Lancet last year estimated 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months since the invasion based on door-to-door interviews in selected neighborhoods extrapolated across the country, an estimate that other experts and human rights groups considered inflated.

The violence has not stopped the country's transition to a democratic government, a process that reaches a milestone with Thursday's election of a new parliament. On the eve of the vote, a poll by ABC News and other media outlets found rising optimism among Iraqis.

Seventy-one percent said things were going well in their own lives, and 44 percent felt the same about the country. Schools, crime, health care, security, water, electricity and jobs were all rated in good condition by more people than in February 2004. Still, the poll found Iraqis souring on U.S. involvement, with 50 percent now judging it wrong for the United States to have invaded and 65 percent opposing the presence of U.S.-led forces.

Bush used his speech to hail the progress toward a new democratic order. While acknowledging "challenges, setbacks and false starts," he defended his insistence on pushing forward with a succession of deadlines despite his administration's failure to win acceptance by the Sunni Arab minority, whose discontent fuels the insurgency.

Speaking at a hotel just blocks from Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution was debated, he noted that America traveled a rocky road forging its own democracy. But he said "the call of liberty" in Iraq would echo across the region. "From Damascus to Tehran, people hear it and they know it means something," he said. "It means that the days of tyranny and terror are ending and a new day of hope and freedom is dawning."

To make the point, Bush chose the home state of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), whose call for pulling out of Iraq caused a sensation. He was accompanied by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

But a few blocks away, Murtha offered a rebuttal to Bush's comparison to the American experience. "If they'd have kept the French here after 1776 . . . we'd have thrown them out," he said. "And that's what I say about what's happening in Iraq right now. The Iraqis are not against democracy. They're against our occupation."

Some of the five questions Bush later took from the audience also challenged his assertions. Faeze Woodville, 44, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Iran and now living in nearby Strafford, Pa., asked why he keeps linking the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to the Iraq war despite no evidence of a direct connection. The president said "9/11 changed my look on foreign policy" and he learned "that if we see a threat we've got to deal with it."

Woodville said in an interview afterward that she felt Bush ducked her question. "He must think we're morons," she said. "There is no link, and he knows it as well as I. And I and others in the audience are insulted that he thinks we don't read, don't think, don't have any opinions."

In response to another question, Bush acknowledged that the United States has "an image issue" abroad but he blamed it on Arabic television stations "that are constantly just pounding America." And he asserted that the invasion of Iraq has diminished the terrorist threat at home. "I think it's been reduced," he said. But "I don't think we're safe."


Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to
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http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/Cockburn%20on%20Kurds.pdf

Iraq's Resilient Minority

Shaped by persecution, tribal strife and an unforgiving landscape, Iraq's Kurds have put their dream of independence on hold for now.

http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/Conetta%20on%20Ira...resentation.pdf

Masque of Democracy: Iraqi Election System Still Disfavors Sunni Arabs, Favors Kurds

Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing memo #35
10 December 2005
Carl Conetta

Insurgents Kill Sunni Candidate in Iraq :

Gunmen killed a Sunni Arab candidate for parliament and militants tried to blow up a leading Shiite politician in separate attacks Tuesday, the last day of campaigning for Iraq's election.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/stor...5476545,00.html

Iraqi Army endures desertions:

Desertion has now become a problem too: Of 209 Iraqi soldiers from their battalion on leave or vacation at the time of the attack, 49 have not returned to duty since, Hall said.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...ws/13395684.htm

Bush Estimates U.S. Invasion Resulted In 30,000 Iraqis Killed : -

In a rare, unscripted moment, President Bush on Monday estimated 30,000 Iraqis have died in the war, the first time he has publicly acknowledged the high price Iraqis have paid.
http://tinyurl.com/98grh

Iraq: 1,000 days of war :

There is no sign yet of the thousand-day war ending. Every month up to a thousand fresh corpses arrive at the mortuary in Baghdad. A new Iraq is emerging but it is already drenched in blood.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle...ticle332812.ece

Iraqi president says will not seek re-election:

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani will not serve a second term after Thursday's election because the post has too little power, his office said on Tuesday.
http://tinyurl.com/99svw

Iraq troop pull-out to begin in months:

BRITAIN and America are planning a phased withdrawal of their forces from Iraq as soon as a permanent government is installed in Baghdad after this week’s elections.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1922836,00.html

Ukraine to withdraw equipment from Iraq starting Dec 20: .

"Our troops will be back home before the New Year," Kyrychenko said.
http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.htm..._issue=11434897

Iraq militant group says won't hit voting stations:

"This does not mean that we back this so-called political process... Our jihad against the Americans and their followers continues," the group said in the statement.
http://tinyurl.com/9kryk

The region will wrest back control when the US stumbles out of Iraq :

This costly intervention has exposed the myth of America as conductor of a grand democratic Middle Eastern orchestra
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...1665668,00.html

Robert Dreyfuss: Bush's Shiite Gang in Baghdad:

The United States has 160,000 troops in Iraq serving as the Praetorian guard for that Shiite regime. We’re killing hundreds of Sunnis all over western Iraq on their behalf.
http://tinyurl.com/cm3v9

What Sunni voters want
The minority group is expected to turn out in force to try to secure
more political sway. By Ilene R. Prusher and Jill Carroll
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1214/p01s04-woiq.html?s=hns

Election stakes highest yet in Iraq MSNBC
Ten months after making ink-stained fingers a joyous symbol of newfound freedom and determination, Iraqis will go to the polls again Thursday in an election with far higher stakes for the country, the region and the United States. "What happens in Iraq will shape the future of the world," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters Tuesday in the fortified Green Zone. In a Baghdad hospital, Mohammed Sadoun voiced more immediate desires.
Four US Soldiers Killed in Iraq Bombing Forbes
Elections will alter political landscape CNN
Newsday - Christian Science Monitor - New York Times - Swissinfo - all 2,005 related »

Bush Defends Iraq War Strategy Los Angeles Times
With Iraqis about to go to the polls for the third time in less than a year, President Bush renewed his argument today that the continuing US military operations in Iraq were helping to establish a constitutional democracy in the Arab Middle East while making the United States more secure. Delivering the final address in a series of four intended to present the U.S. formula for success in Iraq — and to define that success and tick off benchmarks already achieved — Bush said that freedom in Iraq would inspire "reformers from Damascus to Tehran," spreading efforts to install democracies throughout the troubled region. At the same time, he sought as he has increasingly in recent weeks to counter efforts to set a deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. He said that establishing such a timetable would be "a recipe for disaster," sending a wrong message to Iraqis supporting and opposing the U.S. role, to Americans and U.S. allies, and to the troops themselves, because it would suggest the U.S. was willing to run from its commitments, and could be forced into retreat by a violent opposition. Offering what he said was a pledge to the fallen U.S. troops, he said, "we will carry on the fight, we will complete the missions, we will win." The president spoke to an audience assembled by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, an independent Washington-based policy research organization. Bush spent nearly one-third of his roughly 30-minute address justifying his decision to invade Iraq in March, 2003 — a decision that has come under increasing scrutiny with the mounting U.S. and Iraqi casualties and, particularly, the failure to discover unconventional weapons there. The president acknowledged that the intelligence indicating Saddam Hussein was actively trying to produce weapons of mass destruction turned out to be wrong. But, he said, given Hussein's support for terrorism, among other reasons, "my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision." "The United States did not choose war. The choice was Saddam Hussein's," Bush said. He said that American troops were fighting in Iraq because his administration's goal was broader than the "removal of a brutal dictator." Rather, he said, the war was continuing to help spread democracy in the Middle East and counter terrorists' ambitions "to make Iraq what Afghanistan was under the Taliban:" a haven for those who would threaten U.S. interests around the world. "We will never back down and we will never give in and we will never accept anything less than complete victory," Bush said.
Update 7: Bush Defends His Iraq War Decisions Forbes
Bush Defends Iraq Strategy on Eve of Parliamentary Elections New York Times
Bloomberg - AKI - ABC News - CBC British Columbia (Audio) - all 191 related »

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle...ticle333029.ece

Shia relish chance to rule as Iraqis prepare to vote
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 14 December 2005
"I'll certainly vote for the Shia candidates," said Nabil Hassan Majid, a middle-aged Shia grocer in the Jadriyah district of Baghdad. "It is we who suffered and were oppressed under Saddam's regime and now it is our chance to rule."

On the last day of campaigning before the Iraqi election, 1,000 Sunni clerics called on their community to vote. Their appeal was marred, however, by the murder of a Sunni candidate, Mizhar al-Dulaimi, who was shot dead as he campaigned in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

The parliamentary election in Iraq tomorrow is expected to confirm that Shia Arabs are the dominant community after centuries of rule by the Sunni. They can win because at least 15 to 16 million of the 25 to 26 million Iraqis are Shia Muslims while there are only about five million Sunni Arabs and five million Kurds.

It is a historic change. Immediately after the American invasion in 2003, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the immensely influential Shia clerical leader, insisted that the occupiers hold an election, which they were initially reluctant to do. They knew that the Shia majority would be the inevitable victors.

The strongest party coalition in the election is the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the so-called cleric's list, which had 140 seats in the 275-member National Assembly and won 48 per cent of the votes at the last election on 30 January compared to 25 per cent for the Kurds. The Shia and Kurdish strength was exaggerated by the Sunni Arab boycott, but it is still their candidates who are likely to carry the day.

The Shia clerical parties have a very strong hand. They already form the government, along with the Kurds. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the head of the Dawa party, is the Prime Minister. While Ayatollah Sistani has not openly backed the UIA, his office has warned voters against secular parties and small parties. For the pious Shia voter, and most are religious, this does not leave much else to vote for aside from the UIA.

"I expect the Shia religious parties will get about 110 to 115 seats in the new parliament," said one political observer in Baghdad. "They will be in a commanding position." He ticked off their advantages. The largest party in the coalition is the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) under Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, which already controls provincial councils in nine out of 18 Iraqi provinces. It has its powerful militia, the Badr Organisation, and is backed by Iran.

In this election the UIA is joined by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist cleric, whose Medhi Army militia twice fought US forces in Najaf and across southern Iraq last year. He in effect controls Sadr City, the great Shia slum with a population of 2.5 million, in east Baghdad.

It is not that the Jaafari government has been particularly successful. Baghdad is as dangerous as it was a year ago. Kidnapping and crime are rife. There was a pre-election surge in electricity supply this week but there are continual shortages. Abed al-Ruda, a Shia engineer, admitted that Shia parties had "not managed to do anything for the people, but then they didn't have much time". He was still going to vote for them because "I am hopeful for the future of Iraq and the Shia will be the people who will rule this country".

Not everybody is so forgiving. Some Shia see the triumph of "555" - as the United Iraqi Alliance list is universally known - as opening the door to a clerical state and civil war. Mohamed Haki Daoud, a student, said he was planning to vote for Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, as a secular Shia who could hold Iraq together: "He stands against the break-up of Iraq." In Baghdad there is a secular nationalist vote but Mr Allawi's hopes may founder because it is not large and the provincial cities are largely under the control of his enemies. It is too dangerous for him to campaign in many areas. When he went to the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf he was attacked by hostile worshippers whom he said had tried to kill him. Many Sunni Arabs sympathise with him but say they want to maximise Sunni influence by voting for Sunni parties.

Mr Allawi's opponents portray him as Saddam Hussein reborn. Posters show a figure with half his face and half Saddam's face. Umm Hamid, an elderly woman, said she and her entire extended family would vote for the clerical coalition. Then she chanted: "No, No, for Allawi! No, No for the new Baath in Iraq again."

* Four American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing north-west of Baghdad yesterday.

"I'll certainly vote for the Shia candidates," said Nabil Hassan Majid, a middle-aged Shia grocer in the Jadriyah district of Baghdad. "It is we who suffered and were oppressed under Saddam's regime and now it is our chance to rule."

On the last day of campaigning before the Iraqi election, 1,000 Sunni clerics called on their community to vote. Their appeal was marred, however, by the murder of a Sunni candidate, Mizhar al-Dulaimi, who was shot dead as he campaigned in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

The parliamentary election in Iraq tomorrow is expected to confirm that Shia Arabs are the dominant community after centuries of rule by the Sunni. They can win because at least 15 to 16 million of the 25 to 26 million Iraqis are Shia Muslims while there are only about five million Sunni Arabs and five million Kurds.

It is a historic change. Immediately after the American invasion in 2003, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the immensely influential Shia clerical leader, insisted that the occupiers hold an election, which they were initially reluctant to do. They knew that the Shia majority would be the inevitable victors.

The strongest party coalition in the election is the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the so-called cleric's list, which had 140 seats in the 275-member National Assembly and won 48 per cent of the votes at the last election on 30 January compared to 25 per cent for the Kurds. The Shia and Kurdish strength was exaggerated by the Sunni Arab boycott, but it is still their candidates who are likely to carry the day.

The Shia clerical parties have a very strong hand. They already form the government, along with the Kurds. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the head of the Dawa party, is the Prime Minister. While Ayatollah Sistani has not openly backed the UIA, his office has warned voters against secular parties and small parties. For the pious Shia voter, and most are religious, this does not leave much else to vote for aside from the UIA.

"I expect the Shia religious parties will get about 110 to 115 seats in the new parliament," said one political observer in Baghdad. "They will be in a commanding position." He ticked off their advantages. The largest party in the coalition is the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) under Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, which already controls provincial councils in nine out of 18 Iraqi provinces. It has its powerful militia, the Badr Organisation, and is backed by Iran.
In this election the UIA is joined by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist cleric, whose Medhi Army militia twice fought US forces in Najaf and across southern Iraq last year. He in effect controls Sadr City, the great Shia slum with a population of 2.5 million, in east Baghdad.

It is not that the Jaafari government has been particularly successful. Baghdad is as dangerous as it was a year ago. Kidnapping and crime are rife. There was a pre-election surge in electricity supply this week but there are continual shortages. Abed al-Ruda, a Shia engineer, admitted that Shia parties had "not managed to do anything for the people, but then they didn't have much time". He was still going to vote for them because "I am hopeful for the future of Iraq and the Shia will be the people who will rule this country".

Not everybody is so forgiving. Some Shia see the triumph of "555" - as the United Iraqi Alliance list is universally known - as opening the door to a clerical state and civil war. Mohamed Haki Daoud, a student, said he was planning to vote for Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, as a secular Shia who could hold Iraq together: "He stands against the break-up of Iraq." In Baghdad there is a secular nationalist vote but Mr Allawi's hopes may founder because it is not large and the provincial cities are largely under the control of his enemies. It is too dangerous for him to campaign in many areas. When he went to the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf he was attacked by hostile worshippers whom he said had tried to kill him. Many Sunni Arabs sympathise with him but say they want to maximise Sunni influence by voting for Sunni parties.

Mr Allawi's opponents portray him as Saddam Hussein reborn. Posters show a figure with half his face and half Saddam's face. Umm Hamid, an elderly woman, said she and her entire extended family would vote for the clerical coalition. Then she chanted: "No, No, for Allawi! No, No for the new Baath in Iraq again."

* Four American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing north-west of Baghdad yesterday.

IRAQ WARS

- A Real Intelligence Failure
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzzzzo.html

Washington (UPI) Dec 13, 2005 - Much has been made of the intelligence failures in assessing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. These failures pale to insignificance, however, in comparison with the failure of U.S. policy and military planners to accurately assess the overall situation in Iraq before engaging in war, and for the risk of insurgency if the U.S. did not carry out an effective mix of nation building and stability operations.

- Former US Envoy Optimistic On Iraq
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzzzzn.html

Talabani says Iraq won't be able to talk about complete US withdrawal until end of 2006.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1214/dailyUpdate.html

New York Times



December 14, 2005
The Elections
Police Seize Forged Ballots Headed to Iraq From Iran

By DEXTER FILKINS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 13 - Less than two days before nationwide elections, Iraqi border police seized a tanker on Tuesday that had just crossed from Iran filled with thousands of forged ballots, an official at Iraq's Interior Ministry said.

The tanker was seized in the evening by agents with the American-trained border protection force at the Iraqi town of Badra, after crossing at Munthirya on the Iraqi border, the official said. According to the Iraqi official, the border police found several thousand partially completed ballots inside.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the Iranian truck driver told the police under interrogation that at least three other trucks filled with ballots had crossed from Iran at different spots along the border.

The official, who did not attend the interrogation, said he did not know where the driver was headed, or what he intended to do with the ballots.

The seizure of the truck comes at a delicate time in Iran's relations with both Iraq and the United States. The American government has alleged that Iranian agents are deeply involved in trying to influence events in Iraq, by funneling money to Shiite political parties and by arming and training many of the illegal militias that are bedeviling the country.

Agents of the Iranian government are believed to be supporting the two main Shiite political parties here - the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party -with money and other assistance. Both parties support a strong role for Islam in the Iraqi state; however, compared to the Iranian government itself, which is a strict theocracy, the Iraqi version is relatively moderate.

In recent months, American officials in Baghdad and Washington, along with their British counterparts, have contended that sophisticated bombs have been smuggled across the border from Iran, and that some of them have been used against American and British soldiers. The bombs are thought to be far more sophisticated than most of the powerful but rather rudimentary ones used to attack American tanks and convoys here.

At a news conference on Tuesday, hours before the ballot seizure, the American ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, spoke of what he said were overt Iranian attempts to influence events in Iraq.

"Iraq is in a particularly difficult neighborhood," he said. "There are predatory states, the hegemonic states, with aspirations of regional hegemony in the area, such as Iran. There are states that fear success of democracy here - that it might be infectious and spread."

"We do not want Iran to interfere in Iraqi internal affairs," Ambassador Khalilzad said. "We do not want weapons to come across from Iran into Iraq, or training of Iraqis to take place."

Mr. Khalilzad has been authorized to speak with the Iranians on the subject of Iraq, but said on Tuesday that he had not yet done so.

Northwest of Baghdad, four American soldiers were killed when their patrol struck a mine, the American military command said, offering no further details.

In a message posted on the Internet, the Islamic Army of Iraq, an insurgent group, claimed to have attacked an American convoy and killed a number of soldiers near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. It was unclear whether the posting was referring to the same attack.

The same group, the Islamic Army of Iraq, posted another Internet message calling on resistance fighters to refrain from attacking polling stations on Election Day, to "save the people's blood." The group urged Iraqis to continue killing American soldiers.

"This does not mean that we approve of what is called the political operation," the statement said, referring to the election.

Both Islamic Army postings were translated by SITE, a Washington organization that tracks Islamic militant groups.

Despite the disavowal of violence on Election Day, the prospect of electing their own representatives to the Parliament appears to have driven a wedge into the Sunni-backed insurgency. While the Islamic Army called for a cessation of attacks on polling centers, an Internet message posted earlier this week by five militant groups, including Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, denounced the elections as a "crusaders' project," but, perhaps significantly, did not threaten to disrupt them.

At the same time, insurgents in Ramadi, a Sunni city west of Baghdad, have distributed fliers threatening residents with death if they go to the polls. Similar menacing messages have been posted on walls in towns in western Anbar Province.

To protect against insurgent attacks, some 225,000 Iraqi police and soldiers have begun taking up positions around the country, about 90,000 more than during the January election. The Iraqi forces are being backed up by more than 150,000 American troops.

Other security measures began going into effect around the country on Tuesday, including an extended curfew, a prohibition against carrying weapons and a ban on almost all driving.

In other violence, a Sunni Arab parliamentary candidate, Mizhar al-Dulaimi, was killed in Ramadi by gunmen on his way to visit relatives, officials said, and a friend accompanying him was wounded. Jihadist groups have threatened to kill Iraqis who take part in the political process, either as candidates, poll workers or voters.

Mr. Dulaimi was a businessman known for his strong support for the Iraqi resistance to the American occupation ,and he participated last month in an Iraqi political reconciliation conference in Cairo. In a recent television interview, he accused Shiites of trying to arrest him on the basis of what he considered a fabricated security case.

So far, the election campaign has been a turbulent endeavor in Iraq. In the past two weeks alone, 11 people associated with a political coalition that includes Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister, have been killed, including one of its leading candidates in southern Iraq. Last Tuesday, gunmen stormed five northern offices belonging to the Kurdistan Islamic Union, killing two party members and wounding 10.

It is often hard to distinguish political killings from the terrorism that has become a part of daily life here, but in both cases, the parties have accused rivals of carrying out the attacks.

Khalid al-Khassan contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and Kirk Semple from Ramadi.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?ed...rticle_id=20737

Chalabi: Will one-time Washington favorite have last laugh at polls?
Long dogged by corruption charges, deputy pm eyes iraq's top post

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

BAGHDAD: Ahmed Chalabi, a one-time Washington favorite and expert at facing down politically deadly scandals, is positioning himself as the candidate who can quell the insurgency and distribute oil wealth to Iraqis after the December 15 election.

The leading Iraqi cheerleader for the U.S.-led invasion and current deputy prime minister has repeatedly survived allegations of corruption, espionage and shady political dealings.

He bounced back from harsh U.S. criticism over allegedly spying for Iran and providing false intelligence to Washington about Saddam Hussein's links to the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

During a visit to Washington last month that refurbished his image, Chalabi described allegations that he fabricated intelligence as "an urban myth," and has made no secret that he would like to be prime minister.

In turn, U.S. officials have called the 61-year-old Shiite Muslim a "viable" candidate in Thursday's legislative poll.

Despite his secular views, Chalabi stood for January 30 elections on a common ticket with Iran-backed Shiite religious parties and became a faction leader in the United Iraqi Alliance, the biggest bloc in the Iraqi Parliament.

Born in October 1944 to a wealthy Baghdad family, Chalabi left the country in 1956 and spent most of his life in Britain and the United States, where he received a doctorate in mathematics.

He organized a Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq in the mid-1990s but hundreds of people were killed and he later fled, returning only when U.S.-led invading forces took control.

In addition to serving as deputy prime minister, Chalabi also served temporarily at the head of the key oil portfolio and held the rotating presidency of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in 2003.

Now the moderate Shiite is heading his own list, the National Conference, which includes his Iraqi National Congress. He faces an uphill battle after Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric urged Iraqis on December 3 to support religious candidates.

Chalabi has campaigned on a platform of rebuilding a "liberated" Iraq, and on October offered a proposal in his daily newspaper Al-Mutamar to share oil revenues among all Iraqis so that "each Iraqi feels that oil wealth belongs to him and not the government."

He has also pledged to shore up Iraq's borders with Syria and Iran, through which the Pentagon believes foreign fighters are regularly infiltrating to join the Iraqi insurgency.

Chalabi has been a key proponent of the post-invasion de-Baathification policy, which some analysts believe helped fuel the insurgency by alienating Sunni Arabs who had served in Saddam's Baath regime.

He met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last month on his U.S. visit though it did not include direct talks with U.S. President George W. Bush.

Chalabi, once a favorite of U.S. neoconservatives, has been accused by critics of peddling misleading intelligence and seducing the United States into a war which has now killed more than 2,100 American soldiers.

Chalabi's lobbying in Washington in the late 1990s is widely credited with having persuaded U.S. officials of the need for regime change in Iraq.

He provided a steady stream of briefings which were used to bolster the case for war and his Iraqi National Congress party provided a volunteer force which fought under U.S. command during the invasion.

Chalabi's break with Washington followed U.S. accusations that he had been passing top-secret U.S. intelligence assessments to neighboring Iran.

U.S.-educated Chalabi, who led a long exiled campaign against Saddam, denies the charges and an FBI probe into the alleged affair has yet to report.

Iraqi police and U.S. forces raided his home in May last year and seized documents and computers to try to prove the allegations.

But the only formal charge that followed was one of putting forged banknotes into circulation after the raid turned up a small number in his home.

Chalabi, who was out of the country when the charge was announced in August, said the notes were sample forgeries provided by the authorities themselves.

Sources in the Iraqi National Congress said the latest outburst against its leader dealt with allegations Chalabi made about the secret transfer of millions of dollars out of the country.

Chalabi has long been dogged by allegations of corruption and was convicted by a Jordan court of embezzling funds from the collapsed Petra bank in 1992, a case he claims was politically motivated. - AFP

For Kurds, A Surge Of Violence In Campaign

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A01



DAHUK, Iraq -- When hundreds of rioters ransacked and torched the Kurdistan Islamic Union office in this northern Iraqi city last week, their message seemed as clear as the electric-blue graffiti left on the building's blackened shell.

Spray-painted across a stone facade dimpled with hundreds of bullet holes were the words "Long live 730," the numerical ballot designation for the political alliance led by Iraq's two largest Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Along a stairwell, someone had written "traitors."

Mobs carried out similar daylight attacks in four other cities in normally tranquil Dahuk province on Dec. 6, destroying offices of the Islamic Union, which quit the alliance last month to field its own candidates in Thursday's parliamentary elections. Four party members were killed, including two shot in the head here in the provincial capital who died of their wounds Saturday. Dozens were injured, many of them police officers.

Although U.S. officials consider the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq a model of what the rest of the country could someday become, the attacks last week were another reminder that Iraqis have been slow to discard the politics of force and intimidation in the country's lurch toward democracy. They also suggest that as Iraqis prepare to choose their first full-term government since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, some of the deepest social fissures lie not just among its large communities, but within them.

"Is there any doubt the big parties punished us for leaving the coalition? It is impossible that anything like this can happen here without their hand in it," said Omar Badi, an Islamic Union candidate for parliament, standing beside the wreckage of 21 cars set ablaze that day. "This had to be organized. It did not happen spontaneously."

Local officials and police said the KDP, the dominant power in the province, had not orchestrated the attacks. Public animosity had built for weeks against the Islamic Union, a Sunni Muslim party, for portraying the coming election as a clash of believers and nonbelievers in a region known for secularism and religious tolerance, politicians and residents said.

"The Islamic Union must share blame. They stirred this up. Their ideology led to an incident we didn't want," said Dahuk Gov. Tamar Ramadan, who, like the province's police chief and most members of the provincial council, is a member of the KDP. "We wanted to stop it, and we tried to. But it is impossible to stand against a crowd so large."

The following account is based on information from several witnesses to last week's violence and two videos provided by the Islamic Union, as well as interviews with party officials from all sides involved, police and independent election monitors in Dahuk, a city of about 400,000 people less than 50 miles from the border with Turkey.

Dahuk city is nestled in a lush valley ringed by bald, craggy peaks. The undisputed local power is the KDP, led by Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish regional president, whose pugnacious style draws comparisons to Hussein. A hulking statue of Barzani's father, Mustafa, a revered Kurdish separatist leader who founded the KDP in 1946, stands at the edge of the city.

Campaign Heats Up

While the KDP and the PUK have occasionally fought for control over the Kurdish independence movement they jointly lead, they and other Kurdish parties formed a united slate for last January's parliamentary elections. But this time, frustrated by its lack of influence within the alliance, the Islamic Union decided to run on its own, members said.

"The rights of the Kurds in Iraq were secured, and we wanted to work on other issues," said Badi. "We are a separate party and we have the freedom to do this."

The Islamic Union soon began airing advertisements on a party-owned radio sta