03 May 2006
Terrorists Desperate To Derail Iraqi Democracy, U.S. General Says
Country moving toward democracy, away from civil war, says coalition spokesman
Washington – Terrorist bombings and propaganda videos signify a “desperate attack by a desperate enemy,” a coalition forces spokesman says, but adds that Iraq will not be diverted from a stable, unified, and democratic future.
“The will and the strength of the Iraqi people will not be broken or denied,” U.S. Army Brigadier General Thomas Wright told Arab journalists in an April 30 press briefing in Baghdad, Iraq.
Al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) detonated eight bombs in and around Baghdad on April 24 in response to the Iraqi parliament’s historic meeting to select leadership, Wright said. The next day, the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of AQI, posted an Internet video calling on Iraqis to oppose the country’s democratically elected government, as well as the coalition forces. (See related article.)
Wright said that, despite such actions, Iraq continues to make progress towards a unity government, and is developing a rapidly growing, increasingly capable Iraqi security force. These developments, he said, will mean the eventual failure of Zarqawi’s mission “to turn Iraq into a caliphate state that can be used by al-Qaida to control the region.” (See related article.)
“Iraq has a bright future planned for its children, and that future does not include Jordanian-born Zarqawi or al-Qaida,” said Wright.
TERRORISTS TARGETING IRAQI CIVILIANS
Wright also said that insurgents and terrorists continue to conduct violence that is increasingly targeting women, children and civilian men. He reported that 56 percent of casualties from attacks the week of April 24 were civilians; in the past 10 weeks, attacks against civilians increased by 85 percent.
“The insurgents continue to target and intimidate innocent civilians in Iraq,” said Wright. He told of a leaflet recovered following a recent failed ambush on coalition forces warning Iraqi civilians away from supporting coalition forces.
The leaflet told area residents that “the mujaheddin will chop anyone who helps or supports or works with the Americans.” Wright said that the leaflet also accuses civilians who sell fuel or repair generators of being spies, and threatens death to Iraqi trash collectors who, by keeping streets clean, are preventing insurgents from planting the bombs being used to kill other Iraqis.
IRAQ MOVING AWAY FROM CIVIL WAR
Another objective of terrorist attacks, said Wright, is to provoke sectarian violence, particularly between Iraq’s Sh’ia and Sunni Muslim communities.
However, he said, four key tracking indicators can be used to demonstrate that the country progressively is moving away from the prospect of a civil war:
• Whether decisions are being made mainly on the basis of ethno-sectarian identities. Wright told journalists that Iraqis are not acting solely to further their own community’s interests, as demonstrated by the Iraqi parliament’s reaching across communities to form a new unity government.
• The presence or lack of unrestrained, self-sustained sectarian strife across multiple provinces. Wright said that ethno-sectarian violence is concentrated in Baghdad and is decreasing, following a dramatic surge of violence in March. After the February 22 attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra, violence between Iraq’s Shi’a and Sunni communities increased dramatically from a monthly average of 50 incidents per month to 425 in the month of March, but the last week of April there were 83 incidents – fewer than the weekly average of attacks reported in March.
• Local militias mobilizing to carry out acts of violence. Despite obvious attempts by insurgents to intimidate area residents in Baghdad, Wright said, coalition forces have not seen widespread actions by militias to organize for a wider civil conflict.
• The level of forced population movements. Wright said that, contrary to media reports suggesting that large numbers of Iraqi families have relocated due to intimidation and threats of violence, coalition forces know of only a limited number of displaced households. So far, he said, forces have found only four of the reported 16 camps that media reports claimed had been set up to house displaced families. He said that coalition forces investigating these reports have found some incidents of both forced and voluntary movements, but also families who moved for economic reasons.
For more information, see Iraq Update.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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