BAGHDAD, 24 January 2005 — Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi declared all-out war on Iraq’s landmark elections yesterday in a warning intended to scare away voters a week before they go to the polls amid a raging insurgency.
But interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi vowed that his US-backed government would do everything possible to safeguard more than 5,000 voting stations against what he called “evil forces determined to hurt Iraq”.
Zarqawi, a shadowy Jordanian militant who tops America’s wanted list in Iraq, berated the country’s Shiite majority for embracing the coming election and urged Saddam Hussein’s once-dominant Sunni minority to wage a holy fight against it.
“We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it,” a speaker identified as Zarqawi said in an audiotape on the Internet.
“Those who vote ... are infidels. And with God as my witness, I have informed them (of our intentions),” he said.
Zarqawi’s network has assassinated politicians and beheaded foreign hostages. Despite a $25 million US bounty on his head, he has eluded a US-led manhunt.
His group’s almost daily attacks — including most of the deadliest suicide bombings of the past year — have raised fears of a bloodbath during next Sunday’s election, Iraq’s first since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam.
Iraqi officials say Sunni guerrillas are not only trying to wreck the election, which is expected to cement the new-found power of the long-oppressed 60 percent Shiite majority, but also want to provoke sectarian civil war.
In the latest attack, a security guard was killed when a bomb blew up an election office in a lawless region south of Baghdad known as the “Triangle of Death”, police said.
“We are determined to do our best to put an end to the escalation of violence,” Allawi told BBC television.
Many Sunni leaders have called for an election boycott, saying insurgent attacks in the Sunni heartland will prevent voting and skew the outcome in favor of the Shiites.
A low turnout by Sunnis, who had held sway in Iraqi politics since the 1920s, would undermine the election’s credibility.
Electoral Commission official Saeed Al-Battat said he was confident of a big turnout in the southern Shiite city of Basra.
“The security situation in Basra compared with other areas in Iraq is ideal, I would say,” he said.
The British military, however, said there was widespread evidence of intimidation. Officers described posters put up across the area depicting a headless corpse and a thumb stained with red ink, conveying the message: “You vote, you die.” Militants have kidnapped more than 120 foreigners over the last year, killing about a third of them.
A mystery surrounding the fate of eight Chinese laborers taken hostage this month was resolved when the Chinese Embassy tracked them down a day after guerrillas said they had freed them. Their captors had originally threatened them with death.
China, a critic of the US-led invasion, had appealed for their release, saying it had warned its citizens to stay out of Iraq. The eight young men smiled and shook hands with Chinese officials who greeted them at a mosque in the western city of Ramadi. A Chinese diplomat said no ransom had been paid. The US ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte predicted yesterday that Iraqis would be able to cast ballots in most of the country but acknowledged there would be “problematic areas”.
US commanders have said four of Iraq’s 18 provinces, accounting for a quarter of the population, are unsafe to vote.
Allawi said yesterday it was premature to talk about a withdrawal of US-led forces until Iraq’s fledgling security services were fully trained and combat-ready.
Iraqi police and soldiers will guard polling sites, while US-led forces keep their distance to avoid creating the impression of Iraqis voting under occupiers’ guns.
Guerrillas have killed hundreds of Iraqi security men they brand as collaborators with US-led forces.
Yesterday, the Army of Ansar Al-Sunnah released a video of a masked gunman executing an Iraqi National Guard officer, saying it was to “serve as an example for other apostates”.
— With input from agencies
