The Battle of the Ballot Box

Two briefings provided by the Department of Defense have clearly indicated
that Mosul is going to be the chief battleground between US forces and the
anti-Iraqi forces attempting to prevent Iraqi lections from taking place on
January 30. The first briefing was given by General
Batiste of 1ID, whose area of responsibility is north
central Iraq, which includes Baqubah, Samarra and Tikrit. He was clearly
confident. In "Diyala Province, Baqubah, things are going very well. Very
well. I see no problems there." Moreover, his area of responsibility was
generating the 4th Iraqi infantry division, a formation of 18 battalions. And
although the area had experienced 87 vehicle borne IED attacks in the last 11
months, General Batiste conveyed the impression that not only was he giving
better than he got, he was content to leave the main security duties to Iraqi
forces with the American forces in the quick reaction role.

My 25,000 soldiers -- and by the way, that includes an extra brigade and
twice the helicopters that I had a month ago -- will be in full support. We
will be working with our Iraqi security force partners to make sure that what
they're doing makes sense, to make sure that if they need help we are there to
mentor and advise, and as I said earlier to provide the quick reaction forces
that will be necessary to stomp on the insurgent when he raises his ugly head.

For their part, the anti-Iraqi forces were realigning their own strength,
shifting their strength around for attacks, a fact of which Batiste was well
aware and probably intent on thwarting.

There's no doubt that there will be elections in Samarra. We will set the
conditions and the polling stations will be there. In Baiji there's another
problem set. That's the crossroads for all the insurgents heading from Mosul
to Baghdad, and from Fallujah to Kirkuk. And we are still in the process of
developing and setting the conditions for successful elections in Baiji.

But if north central Iraq exuded confidence, the mood in northwestern Iraq
clearly reflected the crisis conditions in that area. Brigadier
General Carter Ham the commander of the Multinational Brigade-Northwest, and
commander of Task
Force Olympia described the situation in Mosul, where the elections would
only be held with great difficulty.

Two months ago, the security situation in Mosul was rather tenuous. Many of
you recall the 10th and 11th of November, when police largely failed, and the
insurgents conducted widespread attacks. Then, on the 21st of December, a
murderous attack killed 22, and wounded over 70 (the suicide bombing on Marez
base -- Wretchard). More recently, the Independent Electoral Commission of
Iraq staff largely quit in Nineweh Province. Insurgents have mounted a
gruesome campaign of murder, threats and intimidation.

Ham described the steps being taken to replace the electoral workers who had
been frightened away from their posts.

This is the greatest -- this is the biggest challenge that the IECI faces
in Mosul and throughout Nineweh Province right now. To tell you the truth, we
don�t know how many staff there actually were, but we know that at one point
there were essentially none left. There is a coordinator now appointed for
Mosul -- he's present in Mosul, and is building a staff. He has asked the
provincial governor for assistance in recruiting. We learned today that they
have had some success, but they are -- together, the IECI, the provincial
governor, local mayors and local councils are working to identify the workers
that are necessary to operate the polling stations.

There's also some consideration, I believe, being given by the IECI to
bringing in polling center staff from other parts of Iraq to assist in Mosul
and throughout the province. So that's not yet a resolved issue, and it is one
that needs to be resolved very quickly. It is the highest priority for the
IECI staff that is in Mosul today.

The question was why any new electoral workers, having observed the fate of
the old, would stay. The obvious answer was to provide them with better security
and therein lay the rub. Mosul was peculiar in several respects. A huge city of
2 million people, it was one of Iraq's most ethnically diverse urban centers, a
diversity sometimes better described as a ticking time bomb. Mosul was
consciously repopulated with Arabs by Saddam Hussein in order to put his ethnic
allies in control of the oil resources of the region. Today it has a large Sunni
population whose ranks have been swelled by fighters fleeing from Fallujah,
although the surrounding area remains largely
Kurdish. After the largely Sunni police forces fled in the face of insurgent
intimidation, the obvious alternative was to replace them with Kurds who could
be expected to provide security with a capital S.

Q General, Rod Nordland from Newsweek magazine. Two questions closely
related. Can you tell us a bit more about the new police chief and just what
he's doing to get the police going again? And will they actually be on the
streets come election day? And then we've heard from a lot of Sunnis
complaints that after the mostly Sunni police force collapsed that the
solution has been to bring in Kurds and Shi'ia from other parts of the country
for Iraqi security forces, and they're quite unhappy about that.

GEN. HAM: The newly-appointed police chief was selected by the minister of
interior, in consultation with a wide variety of individuals to include the
provincial governor. He has been in Mosul now for a week, and is just starting
the rebuilding process. Representatives of the minister of interior -- in
fact, the minister of interior himself today was in Mosul discussing the
rebuilding of the police force with the new chief and with the provincial
governor.

But to use the Kurds against the Sunnis would be tantamount to ethnic
cleansing, something that was strictly verboten. Thus the problem for US
forces was to pacify a largely Sunni city without resorting to the tools that
had made it Sunni in the first place. Wary of stirring up trouble between rival
ethnic groups,  CENTCOM's way out of the dilemma, in contrast to north
central Iraq, has been to beat the insurgents down with men of no local
identity: American troops. The UK
Times reports:

Thousands of American reinforcements are pouring into Iraq�s northern
capital for a battle that could decide the fate of the country�s elections,
being held in less than two weeks. In the biggest military operation since US
troops stormed the rebel city of Fallujah two months ago, paratroopers,
infantrymen and armoured units have converged on the city over the past two
weeks, increasing the number of Americans on the ground to more than 10,000.
Their objective is not only to wrest back control of the city from insurgents,
but to create enough stability so that Mosul�s inhabitants can be coaxed
into voting in the January 30 elections.

American numbers will be augmented by Iraqi forces from other parts of the
country -- probably with units from the 4th Iraqi Infantry division.

While voters are expected to cast their ballots in the Shia Muslim South
and the Kurdish North, this ethnically mixed city of two million could go
either way. Half the population is Sunni Arab, but there are also large
minorities of Kurds, Christians and other ethnic groups who might well vote if
free from intimidation. On patrol with the Americans it is easy to see how
divided Mosul is. In Kurdish areas the population waves enthusiastically at a
passing patrol. In Arab areas the same Americans are greeted with angry stares
and the troops scan rooftops and alleys for the next ambush.

Through the application of unrelenting terror the insurgents have managed to
discipline their own ranks into pursuing a scorched earth strategy. Since they
are in no conceivable position to retrieve their former position of power in
Iraq, they are bent upon thwarting its attainment by anyone else. By refusing to
unleash sectarian violence against the Sunnis and taking every step to coax
their participation in the elections, the US hopes may hope to drive a wedge
between the average Sunni Arab and the insurgent leadership, whose willingness
to expend an unlimited quantity of blood and cruelty constitutes the ultimate
asymmetrical weapon.

Gunmen killed eight Iraqi National Guard soldiers at a checkpoint in central Iraq on Monday, and eight people died in a suicide car bombing at a police station north of Baghdad, as insurgents struck at Iraqi security forces ahead of national elections. Some of the latest violence, including a series of weekend attacks along a highway southeast of Baghdad, occurred in provinces which U.S. and Iraqi authorities have deemed safe enough to hold the elections and appear to be attempts to scare the country's majority Shiites away from the Jan. 30 polls. Boston Com

"back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried... I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought: My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they that could stand that were not monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling...without passion... without judgment...without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us. " -- Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now, courtesy of Gerard Van der Leun, American Digest