A Preview Of The Insurgency's Plan To Disrupt Elections
By Captain Ed on War on Terror
A friend of CQ forwarded an e-mail from a family member serving in Iraq and working on the elections slated for Sunday. In his e-mail, he alerted his friends and family to these instructions on the Arabic forum "Lion's Den" frequented by terrorists and their sympathizers, giving instructions on how to disrupt polling on January 30. None of the following is terribly surprising, but it shows how sophisticated and detailed their plans have become.
"Mudad Iluj" instructed the Iraqi dead-enders last January 1 on specific tasks to wreak havoc. Please note that I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the translation:
My brothers the mujahidin in the Land of the Two Rivers.
This is how you should participate in the upcoming elections on 30 January.
A practical and clear plan to disrupt and distort [the results of] the Iraqi elections.
I know that the mujahidin brothers in Iraq know what they are doing but since they have not witnessed the elections process before, here is a plan which will lead to the failure of these elections, or at least their disruption.
1. Work with all your capabilities to prevent the continuation of participation by any members of the election committees [the people who administer the elections process]. This is done through a number of ways, including persuasion, threats, kidnapping, and other methods of [applying] pressure. Make sure that once they agree to withdraw from the election committee, their withdrawal is not announced except during critical and narrow timeframe [so that] the government cannot replace them with other [members]. In other words, just before the elections, their withdrawal should be announced by the election administration. This will make it extremely difficult to find trained people to manage the elections in such a short period of time.
2. It is known that election committee [lists] are published prior to voting - one, two or a few days before the date of the elections -- and you must attack these offices to seize all documents, voter lists, and the [voting] boxes. Destroy all election-related supplies a day or two before the voting because it will be difficult to replace these supplies just before the elections.
3. The attack on the elections office [takes place] on the day of voting, 30 January -- beginning in the morning and not ending until closing time -- to prevent participation by any citizen in these elections. The attacks also entail seizing all documents and supplies belonging to the elections centers under attack.
4. The elections offices which the mujahidin are not able to reach a day or two before the elections, or even on the day of voting, are to be attacked when the votes are sorted. If the ballots are sorted in another place, the mujahidin should try to attack when the boxes of ballots are being transported. They should also attack the locations where the votes are counted because this process takes a long time. Boxes and ballots should be seized because no election can succeed if votes are missing.
The foundation of the entire elections process is the ballot, and if the ballot is damaged, lost, or stolen, then the elections become a failure. The voter will object since the disappearance of ballots invalidates results.
Therefore, you have an opportunity which has already begun, and that is to move against the election committees, the administrators of the management of these elections. Therefore [this must happen] before the elections, during the distribution of these ballots to the centers along with all of the elections documents a few days prior to the elections. [This opportunity] ends in the evening of -- or the day after -- the elections, depending on the length of the vote sorting processes.
Once the elections supplies, including the boxes full of ballots, have been seized, you must hurry to publish this in the media to show the world that the elections which took place were a failure. In order to prevent them from lying and falsifying [this information], identify the location of each seized box and documents.
And know that by disrupting the elections process, you disrupted Bush's last endeavor in Iraq after the failure of all his previous operations.
Again, while I cannot translate Arabic, the military people working the election have taken this seriously, at least according to my source.
What I find most fascinating is the terrorist reliance on the media and their confidence in manipulating journalists to the terrorist ends. They know from previous experience that the mainstream media salivates over reporting a story of failure in the Iraqi elections, especially at the hands of the insurgency. The sophistication of the planning shows that they have thought this through carefully, and I suspect they've talked with reporters to find out what exactly they need to "prove" the elections have failed.
This missive makes clear that the bombings are just a prelude, a softening of the opposition, in advance of the main attempt to dismantle the elections. In the next two or three days, we need to watch for the following:
1. Sudden withdrawals of large numbers of candidates from the elections just before the ballots go out to the polling stations
2. Ballots stolen before and after the election in large quantities
3. Mainstream media stories showing stolen ballots
4. Of course, all-day attacks on polling stations.
We're just five days away from Election Day, and from this message, it looks as if we can expect these operations to begin as early as tomorrow or Thurday. Forewarned, however, is forearmed. |
