Iraq election crisis

Seventeen political groups, mostly Sunni, have called for the postponement
of elections in Iraq, scheduled for 30 January. They include the party of the
stooge interim prime minister Iyad Alawi and former foreign minister Adnan
Pachachi.

The Association of Muslim Scholars had already called for a boycott of the
elections.

Despite US forces reducing the city of Fallujah to rubble, resistance to
the occupation continues. The main targets have been the Iraqi security
forces. In Mosul, the 10,000 strong police force has collapsed and 50% of the
National Guard deserted after an uprising in the city.

Now 5,000 US troops are engaged in the ‘sequel’ to the ‘Battle of Fallujah’,
carrying out raids on cities and towns south of Baghdad along the Euphrates.
One senior US commander was forced to admit: "We’re in here for the long
haul".

For ordinary Iraqis the effects of occupation are devastating. Acute
malnutrition amongst young children has almost doubled since March 2003, made
worse by lack of clean water and sanitation. More than a third of children
under five are chronically malnourished.

Free and democratic elections are impossible under imperialist occupation
and the troops should be withdrawn.

If, as the puppet Iraqi government is saying, the elections go ahead at the
end of January, huge swathes of the country, mainly Sunni, will be
disenfranchised risking further polarising Sunnis and Shias.

The use of Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the ethnically mixed city of Mosul
and the increase in ethnically motivated killings show that the threat of
civil war and the break-up of Iraq is a real one.

The socialist’s call for democratically controlled ethnically mixed
militias and the building of workers’ and farmers’ organisations to defend and
of unite ordinary Iraqis against the occupation is therefore an urgent one. As
is the struggle for democratic working-class ownership and control of Iraqi
resources in order to plan society in the interests of ordinary Iraqi people.