US predicts more violence as Iraqi government forms
Warning issued after a week of 'horrific attacks'
BAGHDAD -- The US military predicted yesterday that more violence will engulf Iraq in the weeks ahead as the country's splintered politicians and religious groups struggle to form a government.
The warning followed a week marked by what US Brigadier General Donald Alston described as ''horrific attacks" amid deteriorating relations between the Iraq's largest Shi'ite religious group and the Sunni Arabs who make up the core of the opposition.
Alston, spokesman for the US-led coalition force, said the attacks that have killed at least 500 people since the elections on Dec. 15 were a sign insurgents were using the difficult transition to a new government to destabilize the democratic process. Since the elections, 54 US troops also have been killed.
Violence reportedly declined after Iraqis began celebrating the four-day Islamic feast of sacrifice, Eid al-Adha, on Tuesday. But Alston said strife was likely to rise.
''As democracy advances in the form of election results and government formation, and as the military pressure continues and the pressure generated by political progress increases, we expect more violence across Iraq," Alston said at a news briefing.
Final election results have been delayed by Sunni Arab allegations of fraud, but are expected next week. Although leading politicians have expressed hopes a government could be formed in February, most specialists and officials agree it could take two to three months, as it did after the Jan. 30 elections for an interim government.
The governing United Iraqi Alliance, a Shi'ite religious bloc, has a strong lead, according to preliminary results. But it won't win enough seats in Parliament to avoid forming a coalition with Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties.
Alston said that as a new government starts forming, ''those committed to seeing democracy fail will see this time of transition as an opportunity to attack the innocent people of Iraq."
He said the recent attacks, attributed mostly to extremist groups like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq, were part of an ''attempt to discredit and derail the progress of the Iraqi people."
At least 121 people were killed last week in twin suicide attacks against a Shi'ite shrine in the holy city of Karbala and a police recruiting center in Ramadi. A day earlier, 32 people were killed by a suicide bomber at a Shi'ite funeral in Muqdadiyah. Twenty-nine more died in an attack Monday on the Interior Ministry compound in Baghdad. ''The increase in attacks across Iraq this past week clearly indicates that Al Qaeda and other terrorists still have the capability to surge," Alston said.
He rebutted allegations by leading Shi'ite politicians that the United States had restricted the ability of Iraqi security forces to deal with insurgents after Sunni Arabs contended that brutal methods used by Interior Ministry forces have pushed the nation to the brink of sectarian war. Hundreds of abused prisoners have recently been discovered, mostly in prisons run by the Shi'ite-led Interior Ministry -- prompting allegations from US officials.
