Officials work to calm Baghdad after rumors of coup

BAGHDAD —
When Baghdadis awoke Tuesday to find their streets sealed off and the
Iraqi capital under virtual lockdown, the rumors began to fly. Army officers had staged a coup in the Green Zone, one version said. No, members of the Baath Party loyal to the former regime had taken over, according to another.

At midday, officials appeared on television to try
to calm the city. “The security forces can’t stage a coup. Our security
forces are professional,” military spokesman Mohammed Askari told a news conference. “The era of coups is gone.”

Rather, he said, the government had ordered the
lockdown to foil a major plot involving car bombings and suicide
attacks against civilian and government targets.

In a later statement, security forces said they had
detained 25 people and confiscated 440 pounds of TNT, 440 pounds of C4
explosives, more than 65 gallons of ammonium nitrate and 60 mortar
rounds.

There may well have been such a plot:
Parliamentarians were told by the authorities that the Iraqis had
received a tip-off from the U.S. military that around six booby-trapped
cars had arrived in Baghdad from the Syrian border area, and were to be used to target sites such as government ministries, said Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman.

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza would not comment directly on the American role, but said U.S. forces
“have a very good relationship with the Iraqis, in both sharing
information and in our efforts to support the conduct of operations”
with Iraqi security forces.

Such attacks have been widely predicted in the
run-up to elections due in March, and in the wake of three recent
similar attacks in that left hundreds of people dead. Whether the
alleged plot had been fully thwarted was open to question, however.

The amounts of explosives uncovered barely added up
to one of the bombs used in those earlier attacks, each of which was
estimated to contain around 2,000 pounds of explosives. The government
did not specify whether the security forces had found the bombs
purported to be circulating.

But the panic showed just how jittery the city is as
the election approaches. Though most roads were reopened by midmorning,
schools were closed and some neighborhoods were sealed off into the
evening. By nightfall, streets that would normally be bustling with
traffic were almost deserted.

“People are feeling very nervous about the security
situation and also about the political situation, which is getting more
complicated every day,” said Nabil Salim, a political scientist at Baghdad University.

There also is a high level of paranoia about the threat posed by Baathists, who ruled under Saddam Hussein.
The government has helped fuel the fears by repeatedly warning that the
outlawed group is plotting to return to power and blaming it for the
bombings.

One of the most widely circulated rumors Tuesday was that a leading Sunni politician, Saleh Mutlak, had been assassinated inside Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Days earlier, a committee charged with checking that candidates don’t
have ties with Baathists had recommended that Mutlak be barred from
taking part in the elections.

Mutlak showed up alive and well at the Iraqi
parliament wearing a marigold in his lapel, after being awakened early
in the morning by people calling to see if he was OK. He laughed off
the rumors. “They tried to assassinate me politically, and now
physically,” he cracked.

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