Violence continues as Iraqis go for Charter vote
Foreign Desk Report
BAGHDAD—Sunni insurgents determined to derail this weekend’s
constitutional referendum attacked the largest Sunni Arab political
party Friday, bombing and burning offices and the home of one of its
leaders after the group dropped its opposition to the draft charter.
The reprisals came as Sunni and Shiite clerics gave their last advice to
their followers in sermons during weekly Friday prayers — a key
political platform. Shiite imams transmitted the word of the majority
community’s most powerful cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani: Go to
the polls Saturday and vote “yes”.
The message among the Sunni Arab minority was more muddled after the
Iraqi Islamic Party threw its support to the constitution following
last-minute amendments to the draft to try to assuage Sunni objections
ahead of the referendum.
In Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the preacher
at the main mosque denounced the Islamic Party, saying it “broke the
nationalist ranks in return for nothing.” Sheik Rasheed Yousif al-Khishman
told worshippers at Tikrit’s al-Raheem mosque to vote against the
“infidel constitution written by foreign hands.” Mosques throughout the
town told people to cast “no” votes and warned “anyone who does not go
to the polls is not considered a Sunni”.
But in the nearby town of Samarra, Sheik Adil Mahmoud, of the
Association of Muslims Scholars, was more tempered in his sermon. “I
will go to the polls and vote ‘no,’ but I leave the choice to you to
follow you political references,” he told worshippers. “I respect the
opinion of the Iraqi Islamic party and any other party”.
In Baghdad’s biggest Sunni neighborhood, Azamiyah, several hundred
demonstrators marched toward the district’s biggest mosque, Abu Hanifa —
a center for the Iraqi Islamic Party — touting banners proclaiming “No
to the Constitution” and chanting slogans describing the party’s chief,
Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, as “a traitor”.
Before dawn, someone threw a grenade at the house of the main cleric of
the Abu Hanifa Mosque, pro-Islamic Party Sheik Muayad al-Azami, but no
one was hurt. The night before, his son was threatened by Sunni
opponents during prayers, al-Azami said.
Militants detonated a bomb just outside the Islamic Party’s office in
central Baghdad, then set fire to the party’s main office in Fallujah,
police said. No injuries were reported in the capital or in Fallujah, a
city west of Baghdad that was heavily damaged by a U.S. offensive
against insurgents in 2004.
It was a rare instance of Sunni insurgents targeting a Sunni political
party. It “was expected because of (the party’s) new stand toward the
referendum,” Iraqi army Maj. Salman Abdul Yahid said after the Baghdad
blast. “Insurgents had threatened to attack the group and its leaders to
get revenge,” he told.
Alaa Makki, a senior party official in Baghdad, condemned the attack and
said it won’t stop the moderate group’s efforts to “use the political
process to fight terrorism and promote stability in Iraq.” On Thursday,
Iraqi Islamic Party banners urging a “no” vote had been removed from
where they hung near monuments such as the Grand Imam mosque. Other
Sunni Arab parties still oppose the charter. They fear it would divide
Iraq into three separate districts: powerful mini-states of Kurds in the
north and majority Shiites in the south, both capitalizing on Iraq’s oil
wealth. By contrast, many Sunnis fear, their minority would be left
isolated in central and western Iraq with a weak central government in
Baghdad.
In another insurgent attack in Baghdad on Friday, a roadside bomb
wounded four Iraqi civilians when it exploded near one of the many
schools that U.S. soldiers are fortifying with concrete barriers and
barbed wire so they can be used as polling stations, said police 1st Lt.
Mua’taz Saladin. As police removed bloodstained shoes and shattered
glass from damaged cars at the scene, one of the soldiers working there
remained defiant. “This won’t affect anything planned for tomorrow. The
election will go off without a hitch,” Lt. David Forbes said in an
interview with Television News.
In Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near a
Kurdistan Democratic Party office, wounding five civilians, said police
Brig. Sarhad Qadir.
On Wednesday night, Iraq’s National Assembly endorsed last-minute
changes to the constitution worked out by Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni
powerbrokers that will allow a new parliament scheduled to be elected in
December to adopt amendments. The compromise may have been enough to
split the Sunni “no” campaign, boosting chances of the referendum’s
passage.
The draft requires a simple majority vote to pass — but it can be
defeated if two-thirds of voters in any three provinces say “no.” Sunnis
have a majority in four of Iraq’s 18 provinces, but most overcome strong
Shiite and Kurdish communities in several of them. cities of Hadithah,
Haqlaniyah and Parwana for the vote.
Coalition forces have warned of a spike in attacks by the militants
ahead of the vote, and nearly 450 people have been killed in violence in
the past 19 days, often by insurgents using suicide car bombs, roadside
bombs and drive-by shootings.
Hundreds of Iraqi police and army troops have fanned out across Baghdad,
and an eerie calm has settled over the capital and other cities, with
little traffic on the streets, few pedestrians and many shops shuttered.
Coalition forces closed Iraq’s borders and its international airport in
Baghdad in another effort to improve security. On Thursday, a 10
p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew was imposed and government offices and schools are
closed for four days. All civilian vehicles will be banned on Saturday
as Iraqis are expected to walk by the thousands to 6,100 polling centers
in Iraq.
In Shiite areas of Baghdad, hundreds of posters and banners urging a
“yes” vote were plastered on many walls and shop windows. But few such
posters hung in mostly Sunni districts of the city.
In the so-called Triangle of Death, a mainly Sunni area south of Baghdad
that is known for kidnappings and killings, there was no sign of posters
either. On Thursday, Iraqi troops searched cars under the watchful eyes
of comrades manning machine-gun positions nearby. U.S. helicopters
hovered over the area. Traffic on the road through the “triangle” was
thin.
“I will vote ‘yes’ so as to isolate the troublemakers,” said Faisal
Galab, a Sunni Arab sheik from the town of Youssifiyah, about 12 miles
south of Baghdad. “I have asked my family and clan to vote ‘yes.’” |
