Weighing The Odds

January 05, 2005

Chances that the elections in Iraq scheduled for Jan. 30 now won’t be held have risen from one in 10 to perhaps two or three in 10, and the momentum is working against the vote. Earlier this week, Adnan Pachachi, a senior Sunni politician, reiterated his call for a postponement in the Post . Now, the Iraqi defense minister (a Shiite) has called for putting them off, and the president of Iraq (a Sunni) is raising strong doubts about whether they can be held.

Even Prime Minister Allawi, a staunch advocate for holding the vote on schedule, called President Bush this week to discuss the problems with the vote. Though Allawi is said not to have been “wobbly,” the Times reported that he “may be preparing the ground to make the case for delay to Mr. Bush.”

The president, Ghazi Yawar, called on the UN to step in, saying that the UN “should really step up for their responsibilities and obligations by saying whether [the election] is possible or not.”

Possible? Under current circumstances, the Sunni turnout is likely to be near nil, handing Iraq to Ayatollah Sistani and his Shiite religious parties. That, virtually all experts agree, is a formula for Sunni disenfranchisement and continued civil war.

Meanwhile, Iraqi intelligence officials tell AFP that the resistance in Iraq is far greater than the size usually reported by U.S. commanders:

BAGHDAD - Iraq's insurgency counts more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathizers, the country's national intelligence chief told AFP, in the bleakest assessment to date of the armed revolt waged by Sunni Muslims.

"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," Iraqi intelligence service director General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani said in an interview ahead of the January 30 elections.

Shahwani said the number includes at least 40,000 hardcore fighters but rises to more than 200,000 members counting part-time fighters and volunteers who provide rebels everything from intelligence and logistics to shelter.

The numbers far exceed any figure presented by the US military in Iraq, which has struggled to get a handle on the size of the resistance since toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.
The United States is reportedly planning an assault on Mosul, the city of 2 million in Iraq’s north. Like the destruction of Fallujah, a ruined city of 300,000 that is now just a shell, an attack on Mosul—though likely to be less an all-out attack, but a steady push—will expand the resistance further, creating thousands of new enemies.