Amid violence, how the elections in Iraq will be fought emerges, writes Nermeen Al-Mufti Campaigning for the upcoming Iraqi elections has begun against a backdrop of violence. Pentagon officials say there will be no reduction in the total force of 138,000 United States troops currently in Iraq unless the elections are successful. As the polling campaign took off, US forces went into action in western Iraq, targeting Al-Husaybah and Al-Qaim near the Syrian border in an offensive codenamed "Operation Steel Curtain". This was considered to be the biggest operation in Al-Anbar province since last November when US-led occupation forces raised the city of Falluja to the ground under the pretext of fighting "foreign insurgents". Iraqi Defence Minister Saadoun Al-Duliemi promised to bomb all homes harbouring terrorists, even if civilians were inside. Al-Duliemi's statements have triggered widespread criticism among Iraqis. The minister's warning was put into action when reports spoke about casualties the majority of whom were Iraqi civilians. "The Americans destroyed Al-Qaim. Our houses are destroyed, our children are getting killed. What are we suppose to do now?" an unidentified resident told a local newspaper on Sunday. According to local residents, the city which is home to some 300,000 residents has turned into a ghost town after the majority of the population fled the town. A similar scenario to that of Falluja -- when the city's population were forced to flee under US fire power and thousands of civilians were left dead or injured -- was most likely to repeat itself yet another time in Qusayba. The US-led occupation forces have routinely targeted mostly dominated Sunni areas claiming to be fighting militants. While the results of most of the offences have failed to locate those militants, the common denominator in most of those military attacks was the rise in the number of dead civilians. Iraqi politicians particularly from the Sunni ranks were enraged by Al-Duliemi's remarks warned that the latest military attack in Anbar was "going to shed the blood of more innocent civilians". The National Dialogue Council, one of the group of the Sunni bloc contesting the forthcoming elections, has called for Al-Duliemi to step down who they said should be tried for war crimes for threatening to bring down homes on the heads of its inhabitants who were innocent civilians. Soon after Al-Duliemi made the statement, a Sunni politician Fakhri Al-Qaisi whose group accused the US occupying forces and Ibrahim Al-Jaafari's government of killing civilians in such military operations have been shot at. He was said to be in a critical condition. In another development, two of Saddam Hussein's lawyers were targeted on Tuesday in an attack that left one Adel Al-Zubaidi dead and another Thamer Al-Khuzami injured. This is the second fatality among Saddam's lawyers who have pleaded on Monday that the trial be held outside Iraq since their life and that of their defendant is under constant threat. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, on a visit to Rome, cautioned that the withdrawal of Italian troops by the end of 2006 would constitute "a catastrophe". "A premature withdrawal would be a disaster for the Iraqi people and a victory for terrorism," Talabani told reporters on Tuesday. Along the same line, in a letter addressed to the UN, the Iraqi prime minister has requested the extension of the US-led occupying forces in Iraq whose mandate expires on 31 December about two weeks after the parliamentary elections. The UN voted unanimously in favour of passing the resolution for a year. Meanwhile, Iraqi politicians continued haggling over the details of the elections process. Candidates have been slamming the government while making some outrageous promises of their own. Manal Al-Alusi of the Iraq Umma List told a local television station that, "the current Iraqi leaders must admit their failure. The deposed dictator managed to keep stocks of food sufficient for six months, whereas the current and previous governments couldn't stock more than one month's supply of food." Al-Alusi, who has a reputation for telling the bitter truth, has become less popular since he visited Israel last year. Ahmed Chalabi began his campaign with a promise "to give every Iraqi a share of oil". Many Iraqis found the promise far-fetched in a country that lacks accurate export figures. Judge Radi Al-Radi, chief of the Higher Probity Commission, says that two out of three metres at Basra port are non-operational, which makes it hard to gauge how much oil is loaded into tankers. Sunni citizens told Al-Ahram Weekly that they were hoping that Sunnis would contest elections with a single list. As things stand now, the Iraqi Reconciliation Front (IRF) is poised to sweep most of the Sunni vote, followed perhaps by the Unified Iraqi Front of Saleh Al-Mutlak. Sheikh Fahd Al-Alyan, secretary-general of the National Dialogue Council, has joined the IRF list. The Iraqi Turkoman Front has promised its supporters that Kirkuk would remain a Turkoman city. The Turkoman Front is running in Kirkuk on its own but has entered into alliance with the IRF in Mosul. Several Turkoman candidates are contesting the elections as part of non- Turkoman lists. Iyad Allawi and his National Iraqi List are expected to sweep much of the Shia vote, as many Shias are dismayed with the government's failure to provide security and public services.
