BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Wednesday
removed the chief military official responsible for security in the capital and
prepared for a public grilling about security lapses after five car bombs
killed 127 people in Baghdad a day earlier.
The bombings also wounded nearly 450 and damaged financial,
judicial and educational institutions. Iraq is bracing for more violence in the
lead-up to elections, now scheduled for early March. Seven people died in
Baghdad Wednesday in three incidents, including two involving bombs placed
inside buses, police said.
In a nationally televised speech, al-Maliki asked weary
Iraqis “for more patience and steadfastness and to continue the path of
unity, confrontation and challenge.”
He also warned political opponents against seeking electoral
advantage in Tuesday’s bloody events.
Lawmakers summoned al-Maliki’s interior minister, Jawad
al-Bolani, to a special session of parliament Thursday, and Maliki may attend
the meeting along with the session, and top defense officials, government
officials said.
“These catastrophes should not be used to … provoke
disagreements under political names or electoral propaganda because if this
structure falls, it will fall over the head of everyone,” al-Maliki said.
“The election will be respected and the electoral rhetoric will be
respected, but with one condition: not to touch sacred things and red
lines.”
Al-Maliki’s office announced that he had replaced the head
of the army’s Baghdad Operations command, responsible for the city’s security,
in what could be the start of a major revamping of security services.
As with earlier bombings in August and October, the prime
minister blamed Iraq’s Arab neighbors for supporting the terrorists. A senior
Interior Ministry official, Maj. Gen. Jihad al-Jabiri, said the attacks were
the work of Sunni Muslim extremists and the suicide vehicles used in some of
the bombings were driven by non-Iraqi Arabs. He offered no evidence, however.
The government also found itself defending the reliability
of hand-held explosive detectors that Iraqi security personnel use to scan
vehicles at nearly 1,500 checkpoints across Baghdad. Senior U.S. military
officers say the devices do little good.
In one of the day’s more surreal events, al-Jabiri held a
demonstration for the news media in an attempt to prove the hand-held explosive
detection device, known as the ADE 651, works.
Last month, U.S. Maj. Gen. Robert Rowe, a senior officer
with the command that trains Iraqi security forces, told reporters that he and
al-Jabiri “do not agree on the technical capability of the device.”
“We have not been able to find for our forces an
assured, highly probable technological solution” that allows U.S.
personnel to detect suicide bombs and vehicles from a distance, Rowe said.
While overall violence in Iraq is down substantially from
2006-2007, the government’s inability to protect its citizens is gnawing at
Iraq’s democracy, and could even cause some Iraqis to support a strongman ruler
who would guarantee security.
However, the attacks in August, October and December have
not — at least yet — provoked new sectarian strife. The terrorists, analysts
say, have switched tactics from trying to spark a sectarian war to striking at
government institutions, and their victims are not from a single ethnic or
religious group.
The site for Wednesday’s demonstration of the electronic
device was not one of Baghdad’s mean streets, but the genteel Interior
Ministry’s officers’ club.
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
