{"id":360,"date":"2004-11-19T22:19:22","date_gmt":"2004-11-20T04:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=360"},"modified":"2004-11-19T22:20:54","modified_gmt":"2004-11-20T04:20:54","slug":"iraqi-unrest-may-delay-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=360","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi Unrest May Delay Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iraqi and American officials have now stated that terrorist activity is endangering the Iraqi election timeline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Elections in Iraq scheduled to take place by Jan. 31 may be postponed because of continued widespread violence or a coordinated boycott by Sunni Muslims, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.<\/p>\n

“I believe we have a good chance of still meeting the target,” Iraqi Ambassador Samir Shakir Mahmood Sumaidaie said at the United Nations. “If, however, at the time it is determined that we need a bit more time, then that situation will be reviewed” by policy makers.<\/p>\n

Under Iraq’s interim constitution, voters would cast ballots by the end of January for a national legislature, which would form a permanent government and write a lasting charter.<\/p>\n

President George W. Bush said Nov. 13 that successful elections in Iraq would be “a crushing blow” to terrorists, and “inspire” democratic change throughout the Middle East, ultimately making the U.S. more secure.<\/p>\n

Security has worsened in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle up to the northwestern city of Mosul, one U.S. official said.<\/p>\n

“We’re worried that in some areas — again, not all, in some areas — it would now be difficult to have elections,” said Bill Taylor, director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. “And it’s that kind of work that we need to do between now and January so that we can have elections in the entire country.”<\/p>\n

Asked about the threat by Sunnis in central Iraq to boycott the election of a 275-member national assembly, Sumaidaie said there might be a delay “if all the Sunnis act as a group.” He added that such unity is “unlikely” because the Sunni leaders who have threatened the boycott don’t represent the entire religious minority of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Unrest spread just after U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah on Nov. 8.<\/p>\n

Air Force Lieutenant General Lance Smith, deputy commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, today disputed a statement by Marines Lieutenant General John Sattler that the Fallujah siege had “broken the back” of the insurgency, saying it was too early to tell.<\/p>\n

….<\/p>\n

Sumaidaie said his confidence that elections can be held in January grew after the U.S.-led incursion into insurgent-held Fallujah. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s decision to increase the number of the election advisers in Iraq also was a good sign, he said.<\/p>\n

“The position of the Iraqi government is that we should plan on holding the elections on time,” he said. “We accept that there continues to be violence in different parts of the country, but the outcome of the recent military operation in Fallujah has been very positive. We clearly have reduced the terrorists’ ability to launch an organized campaign. What happens in the next weeks will be important.”<\/p>\n

Sumaidaie said the UN is about to increase its staff in Iraq to about 60 workers, double the number there now. That should be enough, he said, for the UN to play an important “supervisory” role in the elections.<\/p>\n

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said that, while Annan is deploying more people to Iraq, he was “not aware of any decision by the secretary-general to raise the ceiling further.”<\/p>\n

Sumaidaie said he is confident that next week’s international conference on Iraq in Egypt would also improve the security situation by producing new commitments from Iran and Syria to secure their borders to prevent terrorists from entering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This ain’t good news. That delays at this point in the ballgame are even being considered can only come across as weakness to both the terrorists and the Iraqi people. The gloves are slowly coming off, with the taking of Fallujah and today’s raid on a Mosul mosque<\/a>. However, the Iraqi government better be willing to shift into ruthless mode pretty damn quick.<\/p>\n

To further counter the instability and danger presented by the terrorists, the US is likely to up the number of American boots on the ground<\/a> as the elections near.<\/p>\n

Commanders in Iraq probably will expand their troops by several thousand as the January elections approach, the No 2 commander of US forces in the Middle East said yesterday.<\/p>\n

Lt Gen Lance L Smith told a Pentagon news conference that no final decisions have been made and that the size of the troop increase will depend in part on whether the insurgency grows or weakens in the aftermath of the Fallujah offensive, which he called a major success.<\/p>\n

Smith estimated that commanders would ask for about a brigade’s worth of extra troops, which would be roughly 5,000. He said that probably would be achieved by keeping some units that were scheduled to serve 10 months in Iraq for an extra two months. He did not name the units.<\/p>\n

There now are about 138,000 US troops in Iraq, he said.<\/p>\n

“We will make a further assessment as we get a little bit closer” to the elections scheduled for late January, “and as we understand what the impact of Fallujah is on the entire country,” he said.<\/p>\n

Smith said he believed that terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still in Iraq but that the US-Iraqi offensive this past week had eliminated Fallujah as a Zarqawi base of operations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Any substantial delay in the elections must absolutely be avoided. The Iraqi people need to feel the government is their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iraqi and American officials have now stated that terrorist activity is endangering the Iraqi election timeline. Elections in Iraq scheduled to take place by Jan. 31 may be postponed because of continued widespread violence or a coordinated boycott by Sunni Muslims, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. “I believe we have a good chance of still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,6,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-middle-east","category-military","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}