BAGHDAD, 25 January 2004 — Iraqis, rattled by daily carnage since Saddam Hussein’s fall, fear a sectarian civil war would be the biggest threat to their country, an opinion poll released by the US-led administration yesterday showed.
Nearly 30 percent of respondents said they feared sectarian bloodshed the most, followed by 16.5 percent who were most anxious about large vehicle bombs planted by guerrillas that have killed scores of people.
The poll, conducted from Jan. 1 to 7 in selected cities, canvassed the opinions of 1,167 Iraqis. The findings came amid uncertainty over an American plan to hand over power to Iraqis by July. It is opposed by a powerful cleric in the majority Shiite community who wants direct elections.
Iraqis and their Arab neighbors have long feared that the removal of Saddam could unleash a civil war between Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups.
So far there have been no signs of a civil war brewing but many Iraqis fear it could erupt.
In interviews with Reuters, some Iraqis said they opposed the US occupation but feared civil war if the Americans left. Many have called for an immediate US departure.
The survey said 56.8 percent of respondents said they would feel less safe if US.-led troops left today, 27.8 percent said they would be more safe and 12 percent felt it made no difference.
An official from the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) declined to say which companies had been hired to conduct the survey.
Roadside bombs planted by insurgents and street crimes also rank at the top of a list of Iraqi fears, the poll said.
It said 6.3 percent identified military actions by US-led military forces as the violence that is most threatening to Iraq.
Many Iraqis say US soldiers are quick to pull the trigger during patrols and raids.
When Iraqis were asked about which type of violence was most dangerous to them and their families, 45.9 percent said street crime, 19.1 percent pointed to roadside bombs and 10.6 percent said military action by US-led forces.
Improving security is vital to moving the political process forward and attracting foreign investment for reconstruction.
While looting has decreased since a stealing frenzy after the war ended in May, Iraqis still have many security fears. In the poll, 45 percent of Iraqis said conditions for creating peace and stability had improved over the past three months, 33 percent said it had worsened and 22 percent said it was the same.
Most respondents, 98.3 percent, said creating jobs would be a very effective way to improve security while 88.8 percent said handing all political authority to an Iraqi government would generate solutions.
Meanwhile, a leader of Iraq’s Turkmen minority said yesterday that a plan to expand the autonomy of Iraqi Kurds under a federal umbrella threatened to break up the country.
Kurds on Iraq’s US-backed Governing Council have proposed a federal state granting them wider autonomy beyond the northern zone they have run since 1991. The plan has alarmed Turkey, which fears the move would rekindle separatism among its own Kurds, and among Turkish-speaking Turkmen in Iraq.
Those tensions are highest in Iraq’s ethnically split oil capital of Kirkuk, where protests against the plan earlier this month sparked bloody fighting among the city’s Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs, leaving nearly a dozen people dead.
