Iraq poll tension mounting

[bemildred]

This is blather, but it clarifies what is going on now.

Iraq's mainly US-backed Shia parties have insisted that elections should go ahead on 30 January as planned, rejecting mounting calls from other parties and politicians to postpone the polls.

The dispute threatens to widen sectarian divisions as Iraqi fighters and US troops, backed by Iraqi National Guard, clash in most of the country's main cities.

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The Shia statement followed a petition on Friday by 17 political groups for a delay of up to six months to ensure the broadest possible participation in the elections.

The parties that backed the petition drawn up after a meeting on Friday at the house of statesman Adnan Pachachi included the Iraqi National Accord, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party, and the two main Kurdish parties in the north.

al Jazeera

[sandnsea]

1. Any local elections??

Maybe it's just me, but if I were trying to build a democracy, I'd start at the local level. Some mayors and city councils, school boards, things like that. Right away, a year ago. Then work up from there. I don't think they did that, did they?

[lakeguy]

2. yup, suppose if they wanted to have a *real* election

they would have done just that.

[leftchick]

3. Pepe Escobar says the US will bomb Mosul first....

Then on to civil war. Very interesting read....


http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4522

~snip~

Baghdad sources tell Asia Times Online an American assault on Mosul - a city of 1 million - is inevitable. Allawi does not control even a kebab stand in multi-ethnic Mosul. The west bank of the Tigris is under total control of the resistance. The east bank is controlled by both Kurdish political parties and their peshmergas (paramilitaries). And the Turkoman minority controls a few sectors inside the city. There’s a mini civil war already going on. Mosul is already the Iraqi Sarajevo.

A key pointer to this mini civil war was the assassination on Monday of Sheikh Faidh Muhammad Amin al-Faidhi, at his home, by three masked gunmen. Sheikh al-Faidhi, a Sunni, was widely respected by the Shi’ites and the Kurds in Mosul. He was an influential member of the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), which has forcefully condemned the Fallujah massacre and called for an election boycott.

His brother, Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi, a spokesman for the AMS in Baghdad, believes he was killed by the Israeli Mossad, along with "some Iraqi elements", meaning Allawi’s agents. This observation, according to our sources in Baghdad, mirrors two widespread convictions among Sunnis: that the American-Allawi logic is "either you vote in our elections or we will kill you"; and that Israel is actively fomenting civil war inside Iraq.

When the assassination of Sheikh al-Faidhi is compounded with the Fallujah offensive and the American invasion of the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad last Friday - the symbolic birthplace of the Iraqi resistance in April 2003 - then one understands why Sunni anger has reached boiling point.

[struggle4progress]

4. Free Elections Are Best With Civil War and Foreign Occupation ...

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