 Al Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has declared war on the elections, which he said were aimed at bringing the country under Shiite control, in an audio tape posted on an Islamist website.
| "It ain't fair to have elections if our side's gonna lose!" |
Next Sunday's polls are a "wicked trap aimed at putting the Rafidha [a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims] in the seat of power in Iraq," said the voice, attributed to Zarqawi. "Four million Rafidhi have been brought in from Iran to take part in the elections so that they realise their aim of taking most seats in the atheist [national] assembly... For these and other reasons, we have declared all-out war on this wicked course," said the voice on the 45-minute tape, whose authenticity could not be confirmed. "You must beware of the [US] enemy's plan to apply alleged democracy in your country," the Jordanian-born Zarqawi told Iraqis.
| "You have those elections and by April turbans will be outlawed, nobody'll be able to carry automatic weapons, and there'll be holy men dangling from the lamp posts... Hey! Where y'goin'? I wudn't done yet!" |
After clinching most seats in the 275-member national assembly, the Shiites would "form a majority government that would control the strategic, economic and security mainstays of the state," said the voice. Under the guise of applying democracy and crushing the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, "the Rafidha would start settling ideological scores by eliminating Sunni symbols and cadres such as scholars and preachers," the voice said. They would then go on to "spread their wicked sect among the people" with a combination of enticements and threats, said the man purported to be Zarqawi.
| Kinda like the Sunnis do it, huh? |
It was the second audio tape attributed to Zarqawi in three days in which the Sunni fundamentalist extremist launched a bitter attack on Iraq's Shiite majority, which appears headed for victory in the January 30 polls amid boycott threats by minority Sunnis. Zarqawi's outfit, the Al Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers, has claimed responsibility for some of the most gruesome attacks in Iraq, including deadly bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages and Iraqis branded "apostates" for dealing with US-led forces. |