Iraqi army trains for worst-case election day scenarios; premier warns against intimidation

Iraq training for threats surrounding elections

TAJI, Iraq — From bridge bombings and sabotaged electricity grids to mass casualties, Iraqi soldiers are training to respond to worst-case election day attacks.

Army officers rushed Tuesday through a test run of how they will monitor security during the March 7 vote as candidates ramped up political rhetoric in the already highly charged campaign season.

At a midday campaign rally at a Baghdad hotel, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to send security forces after anyone who discourages voter turnout. It was a veiled warning to Sunni Arab leaders who have threatened to boycott the vote to protest the purge of more than 400 candidates from the ballot.

U.S. officials and international election monitors fear a boycott would throw the vote results into doubt and keep the Iraqi government in disarray for months.

“You will hear from those who lie and forge and distort reality so that they can stop you from participating in the elections,” al-Maliki told cheering supporters. “They will threaten, but I have issued strict instructions to the police and the army to pursue anyone who would try to pressure or intimidate voters.”

It is a crime in Iraq to forcibly prevent a citizen from voting.

The results of the parliamentary elections will set the tone for the country as it struggles to move forward amid terror attacks and the looming 2011 final withdrawal of U.S. forces. Political bickering delayed the elections, first planned for January, by nearly two months. In turn, that delay threatens to hold up the Obama administration’s Aug. 31 deadline to end the U.S. combat mission, which was planned around the timing of the vote.

In Taji, an air base 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers were more worried about threats posed by terrorists than by politicians.

Soldiers hunched over computer screens, looking at maps of Baghdad and poring over ground intelligence for potential risks. In the first day of a two-day training session, U.S. advisers created a fake but potential crisis scenario: A widespread power failure that knocked out electricity in voting booths, followed by bridge bombings. The Iraqis were told to deal with it.

An attack scenario with mass casualties was planned for Wednesday.

“One person tried to attack our forces near the canal,” reported Lt. Col Alaa Zaki, relaying the simulated threat that his team confronted along the Baghdad waterway. “We attacked him back and he died.”

Soldiers said they still needed better coordination and information-sharing between army units who would be protecting polling stations and other areas, and those fielding the election day reports in the command center.

They also need “very, very detailed intelligence information,” said Staff Col. Sa’ib Ahmed, who helped with the training.

“The officers should learn to find the information about terrorists before they put their suicide belt on,” Ahmed said.

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Patrick Christian, another adviser, said many of the troops needed to be reminded to quickly respond to whatever crisis arose — even if it did not fall within a soldier’s specific job description.

“Even if the response is overboard, we want to assure the public that the elections are safe,” Christian said.

Much of the pre-election debate in Iraq has focused on a parliamentary committee’s decision to bar hundreds of candidates suspected of having had ties to Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party. The blacklist is widely viewed as being aimed at Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq under Saddam.

The top American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that the U.S. has “direct intelligence” that two senior Iraqi officials in charge of that committee have ties to Iran.

Gen. Raymond Odierno said Ali al-Lami and Ahmed Chalabi “are clearly influenced by Iran” and have attended senior-level meetings with members of the hard-line Shiite regime there.

Al-Lami, detained in 2008 because of alleged ties to a Baghdad bombing, now heads an Iraq commission that has blacklisted hundreds of political candidates. Chalabi, who is blamed for supplying the U.S. faulty intelligence on Iraq’s weapons program prior to the 2003 invasion, also is a member of the panel.

Odierno told an audience in Washington at the Institute for the Study of War that al-Lami “has been involved in various nefarious activities in Iraq for sometime” and called it “disappointing” that he was put in charge of the commission.

Adding to the election tension, thousands of angry Sunnis protested Tuesday in Fallujah against comments attributed to a senior Shiite lawmaker who allegedly insulted a companion of the Prophet Muhammad revered by Sunnis but demonized by Shiite extremists.

The demonstrations in Fallujah, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, followed a similar protest of hundreds of Sunnis in Baghdad late Monday over the comments by lawmaker Bahaa al-Aaraji.

Al-Aaraji denied that his statement was insulting.

Associated Press Writer Anne Flaherty contributed to this report from Washington.