January 29, 2005

Sunday, an election will be held in Iraq in circumstances of unparalleled disorder, violence and intimidation. It takes place against the background of 18 months of rising insurgency against the Allied occupation, the U.S.selected prime minister, Iyad Allawi, and his interim government. Despite the ruthless reconquest of Fallujah by the Americans last November at the cost of the town's destruction and the flight of 200,000 refugees, we have seen car bombings and assassinations continue across the Sunni triangle, from Mosul to Baghdad and beyond. Only this week, a senior judge was murdered along with his family. On Wednesday, 37 U.S. soldiers died: 31 in a helicopter crash and five in combat. It is estimated that the Iraqi resistance numbers 20,000 fighters. The writ of Allawi's government has virtually ceased to run in four out of 18 Iraqi provinces. Since the new Iraqi army and police force are acknowledged - even by President George Bush and the U.S. Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld - to be too poorly trained and equipped to defeat the insurgents, it is only the continuing presence of 155,000 American and 9,000 British troops that has prevented Allawi's government being engulfed by its enemies. [more]

Pictured above: Iraqi boys walks past a wall containing graffiti reading 'Down with the USA, down with Allawi, long live Saddam' and 'vote for Saddam', in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, 80miles north of Baghdad, Friday, Jan. 28, 2005. [more]