BAGHDAD, 14 November 2005 — Iraqi Sunni Arab leaders warned yesterday that military and police crackdowns were alienating their minority community in the run-up to December elections for a new parliament.
In the face of continuing rebel attacks that left at least 10 people dead yesterday, President Jalal Talabani said an immediate withdrawal of US-led troops would be “catastrophic”.
“Large-scale military operations are making the life of local people hell, with disastrous consequences that have led to the deaths of civilians, destruction and arrests,” said a statement from the Islamic Party, a leading Sunni faction.
“The party condemns these military operations and calls for their immediate halt in all provinces, especially Al-Anbar and Diyala,” it said, referring to provinces west and northeast of Baghdad.
Such operations are “likely to undermine both the political process in these provinces and the security situation” in the run-up to the Dec. 15 elections, it added.
“The goal of these operations is to exclude Sunni Arabs from participating” in the elections, charged another Sunni group, the General Conference of the Iraqi People.
The government must “halt its military operations” and release political and religious leaders arrested in Diyala, it added.
Iraqi security forces on Saturday arrested more than 350 people in Baquba, the capital of ethnically mixed Diyala province, including members of the Islamic Party. US and Iraqi troops have also been involved in major operations in Al-Anbar province, near the Syrian border, sweeping through several towns whose residents fled the offensives.
With Iraq’s own fledgling security forces still so heavily dependent on foreign support, Talabani warned that any precipitate withdrawal of US-led troops would be “catastrophic”.
It “would lead to a kind of civil war and ... we will lose what we have done for liberating Iraq from the worst kind of dictatorship,” the Iraqi president told Britain’s ITV television.
“Instead of having a democratic, stable Iraq, we will have a civil war in Iraq, we will have troubles in Iraq (and they) will affect all the Middle East,” he said.
Talabani insisted that Iraqis did not want foreign soldiers to stay indefinitely, but added that Iraqi forces needed to be strong enough before US-led coalition forces pulled out.
However other government officials held out the prospect of significant foreign troop drawdowns next year from the current strength of 172,000.
“By the middle of next year, more than 30,000 foreign troops will pull out of Iraq,” National Security Adviser Muwaffaq Rubaie said in Cairo after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
In rebel attacks yesterday, at least 10 people were killed, five of them in Baghdad, security officials said. The US military said three US soldiers had been killed on Saturday, two in a roadside bombing.
