This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KIRKUK 000290 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/13/2015 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM IZ
SUBJECT: (C) DIYALA ELECTION PREP: MINOR LOGISTICAL AND SECURITY 
ISSUES REMAIN, COMPLAINTS LIKELY 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Richard Bell, Regional Coordinator, REO Kirkuk, 
Department Of State. 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
 
 
 
¶1. (U) This is a SET Ba'quba cable. 
 
¶2. SUMMARY: Three days before the election, the IECI and ISF 
appear to be well prepared for the polling on December 15.  With 
CF support, the involved organizations have repeatedly drilled 
for the election day operations, and a December 10 "dress 
rehearsal" went well.  Potential problem areas remain: the 
Diyala IECI Director, whose lack of organizational ability and 
questionable decision-making made the ultimate success of the 
referendum in Diyala more difficult, has not shown improvement 
so far in the preparations for this election.  AIF intent to 
disrupt the election has been demonstrated in the assassination 
of a local IECI director, and ongoing conflict in the 
northwestern al-Udhaim area may lead to increased targeting of 
polling stations and complaints by residents about how 
operations are run.  Finally, allegations from all corners of 
lack of balance in the IECI have begun, likely prefiguring 
complaints of electoral malfeasance in several areas of Diyala. 
END SUMMARY. 
 
------------------------- 
(U) PREPARATIONS IN PLACE 
------------------------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) The December 15 National Assembly elections in Diyala 
will be conducted at 268 polling centers, consolidated into 246 
sites due to lack of suitable structures for conducting of 
polling.  The numbers of centers and of sites match the numbers 
achieved during the referendum; a last-minute attempt on 
December 11 to add eleven new sites to the original number has 
been shelved after CF and ISF objections to the additional 
burden that would be placed upon security resources and the 
increased potential for operational mistakes given the lack of 
preparation by the IECI or ISF for the new sites.  Some 
municipal governments in eastern Diyala may make bus 
transportation available for rural voters. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Ballots arrived at the Diyala Public Distribution 
System (PDS) warehouse on December 9, where they were secured 
and placed under observation by personnel of the Aegis security 
company - a procedure matching that of the referendum. On 
December 12, IECI personnel (guarded by Iraqi army units) moved 
ballot materials bound for the two eastern qadaas (districts) of 
Diyala to a secured warehouse in Kirkush, the headquarters of 
the Iraqi 5th Division.  On December 13-14, ballots will be 
moved in the same manner both from the PDS warehouse and from 
Kirkush to the individual polling stations in western and 
eastern Diyala, respectively.  IECI workers, guarded by Iraqi 
police, will secure the polling stations upon arrival of the 
ballots. 
 
¶5. (C) As during the referendum, the Iraqi police forces are 
planning to provide static security forces of 8-10 personnel to 
most polling sites; those considered to particularly at risk 
will receive 15-man forces.  In all of the qadaas, the police 
will remain in place until the evening of December 16, longer if 
the retrograde movement of the ballot materials is delayed.  The 
increased number of police in the province since the referendum 
has allowed some areas to hold back reserves of police to act as 
a quick reaction force. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Unlike the procedure during the referendum, ballots 
will be counted once at the Diyala PDS warehouse, where they 
will be stored, rather than at the polling stations.  The 
retrograde movement of the ballots from the polling stations to 
the PDS warehouse will be extended over a period of around 24 
hours, rather than the 12-hour retrograde that occurred during 
the referendum. 
 
¶7. (C) A December 10 dress rehearsal of initial ballot movement, 
polling station setup, and retrograde movement demonstrated 
Iraqi preparedness for the upcoming elections.  With rare 
exceptions, polling stations were secured by IP and occupied by 
IECI workers at the predetermined times.  (Among the exceptions 
to this rule were two polling centers in al-Udhaim, where IA 
reportedly detained IECI workers traveling to staff the posts 
and charged them with breaking the ban on vehicular movement. 
Udhaim will likely be a problematic area during the election; 
see para 13.)  Many polling stations did not have female workers 
to perform searches on female voters and a miscommunication 
between IECI and ISF in Ba'quba led to a premature departure 
from polling stations by IECI workers and IPs; these 
deficiencies will hopefully be remedied prior to the election. 
 
------------------------------- 
(U) POTENTIAL LOGISTICAL ISSUES 
------------------------------- 
 
¶8. (C) The limitations of Diyala IECI Director Amer Lateef 
Majeed's organizational capabilities, clearly displayed at the 
chaotic conclusion of the October 15 referendum, have already 
been evident during the runup to the elections.  CF have worked 
more closely this time with the IECI District Election Office 
(DEO) directors in an attempt to build capacity at that level, 
with the hope of being able to take a backseat role on election 
day; they have repeatedly found instances in which Majeed failed 
to communicate clearly (or at all) his decisions on logistical 
matters to the first tier of his subordinates. 
 
¶9. (C) While this propensity to make decisions without 
communicating them to his subordinates is troubling, the content 
of Majeed's choices has been problematic as well.  In one 
example, after completing the December 12 early balloting of 
ISF, detainee, and hospitalized voters (approximately 4,000 were 
polled) Majeed chose (against CF advice to which he had earlier 
agreed) to store the ballots in his unguarded personal office 
rather than the Aegis- and ISF-guarded PDS warehouse, five miles 
to the north.  The ballots will be watched by IECI employees 
until they are moved to the PDS warehouse for the final count. 
 
¶10. (C) CF work with the IECI to ensure that the mistakes of the 
referendum (which culminated in a massive retrograde drop-off of 
ballot materials at the PDS warehouse without any 
accountability) are not repeated, has led to some friction with 
the Aegis contractors guarding the PDS warehouse. The eight 
Aegis personnel (UK nationals who do not speak Arabic and have 
not been provided with a translator) have contacted UN Regional 
Observer Timothy Bomberg to request his guidance about CF 
presence at the PDS warehouse while ballots are present. 
Bomberg has taken the position that CF assistance to IECI 
preparations is acceptable as long as CF is not present in the 
warehouse when the actual counting of the ballots begins. 
 
------------------------------- 
(U) POTENTIAL SECURITY PROBLEMS 
------------------------------- 
 
¶11. (C) The assassination of Ammar Kamil, the IECI director of 
the Hibhib DEO (east of Ba'quba), and the wounding of his deputy 
in the same drive-by shooting on December 5 have reminded IECI 
employees of the dangers of their profession.  Initial pleas for 
better protection have been referred by CF to the ISF; however, 
most IECI employees appear to have accepted the risks that they 
run and are operating as usual.  As the attack has put the top 
two men in the DEO out of action, however, there may be negative 
consequences for the smooth operation of the Hibhib DEO. 
 
¶12. (C) Heavy ongoing fighting between AIF elements and an Iraqi 
army battalion dispatched at the end of November to secure the 
al-Udhaim area of northwestern Diyala (a particularly dangerous 
section of Iraqi Highway 2, the primary route between Baghdad 
and the Kurdish region) presents a different kind of security 
problem for the elections.  The police chief for Khalis (under 
whose jurisdiction al-Udhaim falls) told the participants in the 
December 7 drill that his forces would be unable to spare the 
manpower necessary to secure five of the ten polling sites in 
the area given the heightened risk profile. 
 
---------------------------------------- 
(U) POTENTIAL PERCEPTIONS OF MALFEASANCE 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶13. (C) As during the referendum, various Iraqi Islamic Party 
officials have given us dire advance warnings of vague electoral 
abuses by all other groups (principally the Kurds), along with 
specific examples of intimidation of Sunni Arabs living in 
Kurdish-dominated areas during the election campaign so far. 
Several areas of Diyala seem disproportionately likely to 
produce allegations of electoral malfeasance.  Jalula, in the 
northeastern qadaa of Khanaqin, is a mixed town of Kurds and 
Arabs, but its government, IECI director, and security forces 
are almost exclusively Kurdish; it featured in Saleh al-Mutlaq's 
vague accusations of fraud following the October referendum.  In 
the Shi'a-run central town of Wajihiya, Sunnis have already 
begun to complain about the composition of the IECI and hint 
that the fix is in.  Based on the examples of past elections, 
the mixed-ethnicity neighborhoods in Ba'quba will likely bring 
allegations of fraud as well, but no allegations have emerged as 
yet.  Al-Udhaim, of course, will likely face complaints of 
unfair treatment no matter how cleanly the election is run. 
 
¶16. (C) Ironically, given IIP complaints, the primary concern of 
the national IECI regarding the elections in Diyala seems to be 
the number of IIP partisans working in the Diyala IECI - so much 
so that it called (Kurdish) IECI Director Amer Lateef Majeed to 
Baghdad for a meeting about the "problem."  Majeed says that the 
information the national IECI presented him on the subject was 
significantly flawed; many of the names that the IECI had 
received as IIP members were in fact unaffiliated Sunnis and 
some were actually Shi'as.  (NOTE: The IIP's supposed control of 
the Diyala IECI is a recurring Shi'a story originally used to 
explain the good showing of the IIP in the January elections. 
Given the high margin of "no" votes in Diyala on a Constitution 
that the IIP leadership supported, the validity of the story 
seems dubious, but many believe it. END NOTE.)  While a serious 
clearing of the IECI does not appear imminent, two Sunni DEO 
directors were fired after the referendum for "influencing 
voting" and the Sunni Deputy Director of the Diyala IECI 
predicted in early December that he would be fired because of 
his ethnicity. 
 
¶17. (C) Separately, we have heard complaints from the 
KDP-affiliated Assistant Governor of Diyala for Technical 
Affairs that Abduljalil Mudhaffar Ali, the IECI Director in 
PUK-controlled Khanaqin qadaa, has worked to minimize the number 
of KDP employees in the Khanaqin IECI.  According to the 
Assistant Governor, Ali withheld the applications of many KDP 
partisans applying for the IECI's September lottery for 
temporary pollworkers, leaving PUK partisans dominating the 
ranks of the temporary pollworkers. (NOTE: The Assistant 
Governor did not know the number of Arab or Turcoman or 
Kurdistan Islamic Union employees working in the Khanaqin IECI. 
END NOTE.) 
 
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(U) COMMENT 
----------- 
 
¶18. (C) It seems likely that the December 15 elections will be 
at least as well-run as the October 15 referendum, which was an 
overall success despite some hiccups in the retrograde movement 
of balloting material.  Unlike in the referendum, however, the 
interests of the major political organizations in the province 
will be diametrically opposed to each other; challenges to the 
vote on the basis of perceived electoral malfeasance should be 
expected. 
BELL