In Iraq's Salahuddin Province, the heartland of the insurgency, animosity and resentment are poisoning hopes of a strong turnout among the region's Sunni Muslim population in the January 30 elections, in which Iraqis will choose a 275-member National Assembly and regional legislatures. 

Here, in the home region of the former leader Saddam Hussein, the fall of the old government and the rise of the new democratic Iraq are viewed with suspicion.

Fatal attacks are carried out daily against Iraq's new security forces.

It is a land of tribes and violence, where Saddam evaded US forces for nine months before soldiers caught him, bearded and hair askew, hiding in a hole on a farm in December 2003 near his hometown of Tikrit.

What was hoped would be the end to the fighting instead was a prelude to a far more dangerous, fragmented and splintered resistance.

Just days ahead of the election, violence continues to escalate. Nowhere is it more visible than in the capital of Baghdad. Wednesday, insurgents unleashed a wave of five car bombings across the capital, killing about a dozen people.

North of Baghdad, insurgents killed a British security officer. Iraqi police also said insurgents kidnapped a Japanese engineer, but yesterday officials in Tokyo cast doubt on the report.

Gunmen also fired on the Baghdad office of a major Kurdish party and two senior officials escaped assassination in separate attacks in the north.

The US military put the death toll from the day's Baghdad bombings at 26, although Iraqi officials gave a lower toll -- 12 people killed in the bombings and one at the Kurdish office.

Sunni Muslim insurgents have threatened to disrupt the elections, and the five car bombings killing four within a span of 90 minutes underscored the grave threat facing Iraqis at this watershed in their history. US and Iraqi forces have stepped up raids and arrests in Baghdad, Mosul and other trouble spots as the elections approach.

Cities like Samarra, Baiji, Balad and Duluiya to the north of Baghdad have become synonymous with violence.

While claiming progress, the top US commander here, General John W. Batiste, acknowledged that the resistance has grown in the so-called Sunni Muslim triangle.

Many in the province cannot hide their ill will toward the Americans nor their apathy toward the elections, the first free and fair vote in half a century.

"We cannot be bothered," said Saad al-Janabi, 49, a resident of the oil refinery town of Baiji.

"This election is just a game. What will the government do? Will they chase out the occupiers? Will they free the prisoners? We will not accept any election in Baji. We will not allow them to mock us."

Just to the east of Baiji in Siniya, Abu Ahmed, a representative of the Committee of the Muslim Scholars, an influential collection of Sunni clerics, poured scorn on the whole electoral process.

"This is ridiculous. The election's purpose is only to implement the plans of the occupation."

The Committee of the Muslim Scholars has called on all Sunnis to boycott the elections.

Siniya resident Matar Nasser al-Shumari expressed a similar skepticism.

The widescale distrust points to a huge gap between America's vision for Iraq and those in the country's Sunni Muslim conservative backwaters.

"My sense is a lot of Sunnis don't believe they have a choice. They have a world view about occupation, (America) in the service of Israel ... The US wanting their oil and being here to stay and that very much blocks their ability to recognize they have other political choices," a US embassy official said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna said yesterday it had abducted and killed a Briton and a Swede in the central Iraqi city of Beiji, according to an Internet statement.

"The lions of the faith of Prophet Mohammad were able to ambush and kidnap two agents - a Briton and a Swede - working for the intelligence agency of the infidel forces in Beiji and God's law was enforced by killing them," said the statement which was posted on an Islamist website. The statement, whose authenticity could not be immediately verified, did not say when the ambush took place.

In Samarra, where US forces re-took the city from insurgents in October, the military still has a long way to go in winning the propaganda war. Feelings of humiliation linger, despite arguments by the Iraqi Government and the Americans that they liberated Samarra from criminals and murderers.

(China Daily January 21, 2005)