Officials said the administration was bracing for a scenario in which
Sunni insurgents, with help from Syria, would torpedo elections by
detonating scores of car bombs near polling stations on Jan. 30. The attacks
would prevent millions of Sunnis from voting and bolster calls by their
representatives to either annul the elections or guarantee a quota of Sunni
legislators in the planned 275-seat parliament.
The Bush administration remains skeptical over the
likelihood of a dramatic improvement in the security and stabilization of
Iraq.
Administration officials said they could not rule out a collapse of the
central government in Baghdad and a breakdown in order nationwide following
the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq. They said the success of the elections marks
a crucial test of the Iraqi security forces and their prospects in
fulfilling their mission during 2005.
"The Iraqi security forces are essential, in my understanding of the
security plan, and they will very definitely be used — both Iraqi police,
Iraqi National Guard and Iraqi Army," a senior State Department official
said in a briefing on Tuesday. "They will be working in coordination with
coalition forces throughout the country."
Iraqi security forces have been assigned responsibility for the
protection of polling stations and voters amid an intense Sunni insurgency
campaign that has targeted police and army units. Over the last two days, at
least eight suicide bombings were reported around the Sunni Triangle along
with the assassination of the governor of the Baghdad district. On
Wednesday, 20 people were killed when a car bomb was detonated outside a
police academy south of Baghdad during a graduation ceremony.
The result has been increasing reluctance by Sunnis to participate in
the elections. Last week, Iraq's largest Sunni movement, the Iraqi Islamic
Party, withdrew from the campaign.
"It's going to be pretty hard," the State Department official, based in
Baghdad, said. "It's going to require an enormous security effort. Our
colleagues over in the [Multinational] forces headquarters here and the
commands out in the field are working on that now 24/7. I do not want to
underestimate the difficulties."
Officials agreed that Iraq's military and police were far from ready to
assume a major, let alone, independent role in ensuring national security.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said the formation of Iraqi police and
military forces remains difficult and time-consuming and has advocated the
deployment of additional U.S. troops in Iraq. Powell cited a U.S. military
plan drafted by Gen. David Petraeus for accelerated training and equipping
of Iraqi forces.
"It takes time," Powell said. "It takes effort. It takes equipment.
General Petraeus has got a plan that we're all supporting, and I cannot tell
you right now what it's going to look like at the end of 2005."
Iraqi security forces -- including the army, police and National
Guard -- would be used to protect people around
polling stations, officials said. They said the stations would be surrounded
by a security ring that would process people before they approach the ballot
box. Coalition forces would remain on the perimeter and prepared to respond
to any emergency.
Officials said the Bush administration would seek to formulate an exit
strategy from Iraq in the weeks following the Jan. 30 elections. They
acknowledge that the death of 1,300 U.S. soldiers and the serious injury of
more than 10,000 others — more than 90 percent of whom were injured or
killed following the war against the Saddam regime in April 2003 — have
been costly.
The key question for the administration, officials said, was whether the
American people would approve a U.S. military presence in Iraq beyond 2006
to ensure that the country becomes democratic. Officials assert that a
democratic Iraq represents the key to the future of the Middle East as well
as the success of the U.S. war against Al Qaida and its allies.
"If we are successful here, if the coalition is successful here, think
what will have been lost to the extremists," Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld said during a visit to Faluja on Dec. 31. "If the extremists are
able to take this country back and turn it back to darkness, something will have been lost, an opportunity
will have been lost that was historic. So we simply have to have the
patience."
