[Marxism] Cheney says Iran is top of enemies list, threatens Israeli attack

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

U.S. troops in Iraq unleash raids in Mosul
(front page)

BY SAM MANUEL
WASHINGTON, D.C.-The U.S. military carried out a series of rapid raids
against forces loyal to the former Baathist party regime of Saddam
Hussein and their allies in Mosul January 16, according to the
Associated Press. Mosul, with a large Sunni population, is Iraq's
third-largest city and is located in one of four provinces the U.S.
military says are likely to be "unsafe" for the U.S.-orchestrated
elections for a national assembly scheduled for January 30.
More than 8,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops will be in Mosul prior to the
vote, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Meanwhile, about 650 British troops have arrived in Basra in southern
Iraq to aid U.S. occupation forces and the Iraqi interim government of
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi leading up to the elections, according to the
January 17 British daily Telegraph. With this deployment, London's
forces in Iraq exceed 9,000 troops.

At about the same time, on January 14, Baathist forces assassinated a
key aid to Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Ali al-Sistani, as part of an
ongoing campaign to derail the elections. Five days later, five car
bombings took place in Baghdad, killing at least a dozen people. Despite
such attacks, which have mounted since the beginning of the year, the
U.S.-led forces and the Allawi administration insist they are going full
steam ahead with the elections and are solidifying support among the
country's Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of the population, and Kurds.


Up to 2,000 U.S.-trained Iraqi special forces troops will be in Mosul to
provide security for the elections, according to AFP. Another 600 troops
from the Iraqi 24th Battalion, also known as the Iraqi Intervention
Force, have moved into the city's police academy. The battalion is
composed of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds who fought alongside U.S. Marines
in the assault on Fallujah last November.

The U.S. and Iraqi troops in the Mosul area will be headed by the
5,000-strong Stryker Brigade. Such brigades, equipped with the Stryker
combat vehicle, are being used effectively in Mosul and are
"well-designed for the decentralized war" U.S. forces are fighting in
Iraq, said U.S. Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia.
The Stryker is lighter and faster than the Bradley fighting vehicle and
capable of transporting more troops over longer distances, he said. Task
Force Olympia is responsible for U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

The Allawi regime recently announced drastic "security" measures for the
elections, reported the January 17 New York Times. These include a ban
on travel between cities and setting up "pedestrian only" areas within
blocks of polling stations. One U.S. general said it was "highly likely"
that all private vehicle traffic would be banned on election day across
the country.

Election officials say no voter registration has taken place in western
Anbar province, which includes Fallujah and Ramadi, cities in central
Iraq where the Hussein regime had a strong base of support, the BBC
reported. U.S. forces routed Baathists from Fallujah in a week of
fighting last November, and have only allowed a few thousand of the
city's former 250,000 residents to return. In an effort to increase the
number of potential Sunni voters in the four provinces where low turnout
is expected-which include the areas around Mosul, Tikrit, and Baghdad,
in addition to Anbar province-residents of these areas will be allowed
to register on election day.

Ansar al-Islam, a Baathist-backed group, took responsibility for the
assassination of Mahmoud al-Mandani, a senior aide to Ali al-Sistani,
reported the January 15 International Herald Tribune. In a sign of the
growing isolation of such groups, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a
leading Sunni group, condemned the al-Mandani's killing as the work of
"criminal agents."

Officials of the interim government recently announced that Saddam
Hussein's cousin, Izz al-Din al-Majid, controlled $7 billion with which
he funded groups like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad, which has
taken responsibility for many bombings and kidnappings and the
beheadings of hostages. The money was reportedly taken from Iraq's
treasury just before the U.S. invasion in 2003. Al-Majid was captured in
December.

Meanwhile, Kurds who were forcibly displaced from Kirkuk and the
surrounding region in the 1980s will be allowed to vote in Kirkuk, said
Farid Ayar, an Iraqi election official. This helped cement a tentative
agreement, which awaits approval by the Kurdish regional parliament, to
drop a threatened boycott of the elections by Kurds in the area. The
Hussein regime forced thousands of Kurds out of Kirkuk in the 1980s.
Their lands and homes were given to Sunni Arabs, many of whom were also
forced to move into the area, in a Baathist "Arabization" program to
strengthen the regime's hold over the oil-rich region. U.S. officials
estimate that recent Kurdish resettlement efforts have so far forced
100,000 Arabs to leave Kirkuk.


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