Despite assurances from several quarters, Iraqi elections in January will be far from easy to hold. Salah Hemeid reports Although violence in Iraq is mounting, US President George W Bush and Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi have vowed that a 31 January vote for a national assembly will be held. The assembly is to oversee the drafting of a new constitution and also pick a new government to replace Allawi's interim administration appointed by the United States. The assurances came after Allawi made a surprise statement earlier that these elections "may not be perfect" and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that they may not be held at all in 20 to 25 per cent of Iraq because of the continuing violence. The two remarks raised doubts about the elections, seen as the last chance for Iraqis to hold their country together. In his weekly radio address Friday, Bush said steady progress was being made on a two-pronged plan to establish democracy in Iraq and bring US troops home. The plan, crafted with Allawi during his visit to Washington last week, is designed to combine preparations for the election with a full military offensive to crush the 18-month-old insurgency in areas in the Sunni Arab triangle where many local leaders expressed opposition to the balloting, saying they will be carried out under foreign occupation. Neither Bush nor Allawi revealed details of the plan but reports in the American press suggested that the plan calls for US forces to lead an intensive campaign to clean out insurgents in key cities and towns in the volatile triangle, opening them up for Iraqi forces to move in and retain control to prepare for balloting. The goal is to use US military muscle decisively but briefly, and then leave to avoid becoming targets or fuelling further anti-US sentiment. This will include efforts to help train more than 200,000 Iraqi security forces in the next year, rebuild the country's infrastructure and broaden the international coalition backing those efforts. Also, the plan is designed to outmanoeuvre insurgents with what some anonymous American officials dubbed as a creative approach, to ensure that voters will participate in the poll. For example, they said, voter registration will be held at 600 food distribution centres where Iraqis pick up their monthly food packages. The goal is to integrate the electoral process into places that would generate a backlash against insurgents if they attacked there. Bush believes the most important part of the plan is its conclusion: free and fair elections in Iraq in four months. The list of potentially explosive issues remains long. It includes disagreements by various Iraqi political, sectarian, religious and ethnic groups over the nature of the elections and its ultimate outcome. This first national election is seen as so pivotal to the political transition in the war-ravaged country that it is hoped it will ultimately create a government not selected by foreigners. It is one of the biggest challenges for Allawi and his US allies because its outcome will be judged not simply by ensuring the vote is held but also by the national consensus it builds around the shaky political process under way. However, the issue of bypassing the vote in some areas where violence is heaviest has been debated in recent days. In addition to Allawi and Rumsfeld, other Iraqi and US officials have also raised the possibility of partial elections. Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said Saturday that voting might not be possible in all parts of the country when elections are held in January. US State Secretary Colin Powell surprisingly joined the chorus on Sunday when he told several television stations in interviews that the situation "is getting worse" and increasing violence may disrupt the planned elections. Such remarks reflect deeply conflicting opinions by both US and Iraqi leaders. Whatever the outcome of the debate, a key test of the Bush-Allawi strategy will come as the election season formally opens. On 15 October, the independent elections committee will begin mailing out registration forms. From 1 November until mid-December eligible voters can turn them in at centres where Iraqis pick up monthly food packages. Iraqi and US officials are concerned that insurgents will target registration centres in the same way they have attacked police stations as they try to undermine the fragile new Iraqi government. Many Iraqis are increasingly concerned that even where voting does take place as scheduled, the choices will be rigged in advance in ways that under-represent the country's silent majority and thwart democratic elections. The six political parties that Washington has promoted all along are supporting that belief. The parties, which are rooted among the exiles who left Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era and lack broad popular support, are now discussing a plan to run as a single unified ticket rather than competing among themselves on the ballot. That could create essentially a one-party election unless Iraq's fragmented independents manage to organise themselves into an effective new political force. Otherwise, Iraq's first free election may look like the referendums conducted by the deposed Iraqi regime which produced 98 per cent majorities for Saddam. The strongest opposition to the election is coming from Sunni Arabs who have traditionally ruled Iraq since its independence in 1921. Sunni groups like the influential Association of Muslim Scholars have totally ruled out the possibility of taking part in the balloting. Some of the Sunni areas are not now under government control and, even if they are by January, they may be in no condition for a free vote. Radical groups who are already spearheading the anti-American anti- government resistance have vowed to wreck the elections. Shias, too, have their doubts. Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the nation's most powerful Shia spiritual leader, is reportedly growing increasingly concerned that nationwide elections could be delayed and has even threatened to withdraw his support for the elections unless changes are made to increase the representation of Shias. Al- Sistani's biggest concern is that a unified state would effectively parcel out seats in the new assembly in backroom deals before any votes are cast, using a formula that he feels would give the Shias fewer seats in the new assembly than they are entitled to based on their present share of the Iraqi population. That would be less likely to happen if the parties agreed to compete against each other at the polls, letting the voters themselves decide how many seats to give to each party. For full and democratic elections to be held on time, the security situation in Iraq has to be brought under control. Statistics compiled by Kroll Security International, a private security firm working for the US government, indicate that attacks against US troops, security forces and private contractors are greater in number than reported by the US military and have spread to parts of the country that have been relatively peaceful. A classified national intelligence estimate leaked earlier this month predicts a tenuous stability in Iraq at best and, in the worst-case scenario, civil war. As the debate over Iraq's elections continues, Time magazine disclosed this week that the Bush plan ran into trouble with another plan involving the elections -- a secret "finding" written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid candidates favoured by Washington. According to Time, the idea was to help such candidates whose opponents might be receiving covert backing from other countries like Iran, but not necessarily to go so far as to rig the elections. Such reports, which were not denied by the administration, cannot make the prospect for Iraq's much talked about first democratic elections any brighter.
