IRAQ WAR BRIEFS

Iraqis protest voting irregularities

Hundreds of Iraqis shouted slogans and waved Iraqi flags on Feb. 6 outside Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone to protest irregularities they say prevented tens of thousands of people in Mosul from voting in the Jan. 30 elections.

The demonstrators were mainly Iraqi Christians, Turkomen and Yazidis — members of a small religion in the north — who said polling centers never opened in their neighborhoods in Mosul and in the surrounding Ninevah province.

Electoral commission officials in Baghdad have acknowledged that many polling sites never opened or opened late because of what they said were security concerns. Some sites that opened could not be supplied with ballots and other election materials, officials have said.

“We are protesting because we have been deprived of our right to participate in the elections,” said Shameil Benjamin, a member of a Christian party called the Democratic Assyrian Movement. “There were irregularities and we felt that the injustice was inflicted on us.”

A spokesman for Chaldean and Assyrian parties, William Warda, said the irregularities prevented 200,000 people from voting. (AP)

Kurds accused of rigging Kirkuk vote

Turkmen and Arab political parties in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk have accused Kurds of fixing the result of provincial elections held on the Jan. 30. Official results for the election held on the same day as Iraq’s national vote have not yet been released.

On Feb. 6, Turkmen and Arab parties in the northern city said that Kurds from other parts of the country flooded the city on election day to inflate the community’s vote.

Sunni and Shia parties withdrew from the local election in Tamim province in protest.

“The elections lack credibility because of the major violations and the absence of international observers,” a Turkmen candidate for the provincial election, Saad al-Din Arkaj, said after a meeting of Turkmen parties in Kirkuk. He said the Iraqi election commission should review the whole vote count and investigate the complaints of Arab and Turkmen parties.

Abd al-Rahman Munshid al-Assi said thousands of Kurds had been brought to the city from Sulaimaniya and Arbil provinces on Jan. 30 “to vote a second time in Kirkuk.”

Leaders of the Kurdish autonomous region want Kirkuk as part of their region. (AFP)

40 percent desert Iraqi army when under fire

US commanders have recently admitted that among the 125,000 policemen and soldiers trained so far, the rate of desertion is as high as 40 percent. The desertions are not evenly distributed around the country, with forces in the British-controlled south and Kurdish north having a lower desertion rate. But crucially, where the insurgency is strongest in the Sunni heartlands, Iraqi security forces have failed to stand firm.

Last November, after insurgents stormed police stations in Mosul and ransacked a recently built $90 million army base there, the Mosul police force completely disbanded. There were similar mass desertions last April during a nationwide revolt.

Substantial losses due to "unauthorized absences" were acknowledged Feb. 3 by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who told members of Congress that Iraqi army units, on average, are only 60 percent manned. (AFP, Telegraph UK)

British Army probes 160 Iraq abuse cases

More than 160 separate allegations of abuse by British troops in Iraq have been investigated by army prosecutors, of which nearly a third could lead to courts martial.

Last month, army lawyers had concluded investigations into nine separate incidents involving UK troops serving in Iraq and were considering bringing charges as a result. Last week, the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, confirmed that one of the cases would be against seven British paratroopers who are accused of murdering an Iraqi teenager by a roadside near Basra.

The remaining cases are thought to relate to the deaths of two Iraqi civilians and several shooting incidents that occurred after Saddam Hussein was deposed.

Army prosecutors are continuing to probe a further 34 allegations of abuse, which could result in further courts martial.

Among cases that are understood to be nearing readiness for trial are that of an Iraqi who was shot in the body and then the head. Cases relying on Iraqi witnesses are expected to be heard in the Gulf, raising the prospect of British soldiers facing highly publicized and deeply sensitive show trials in the Middle East. (Observer (UK))

CIA corrects itself on WMD

In what may be a formal acknowledgment of the obvious, the CIA has issued a classified report revising its prewar assessments on Iraq and has concluded that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons programs in 1991, intelligence officials familiar with the document said.

The CIA's decision to distribute the report — titled “Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s” — in classified channels underscores the awkwardness the agency faces as it continues to reconcile its prewar reporting with postwar realities in Iraq. Before the war, the CIA asserted that Iraq had stockpiled biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

The new report from the CIA, which is dated Jan. 18, retreats from the agency's prewar assertions on chemical weapons on almost every front. It concludes that “Iraq probably did not pursue chemical warfare efforts after 1991.”

A Jan. 4 report focused on Scud missiles and other delivery systems. Intelligence officials said future reports would revise the agency's claims that Iraq had stockpiles of biological weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. Those allegations were a centerpiece of the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq. (LA Times)