Iraqi insurgent group pledges not to attack polls

"This is purely a means of trying to gain more votes," said Mayson al Damalogi, a spokesman for the Iraqiya list, a coalition of Sunni and secular candidates headed by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

I'm curious to see how other Iraqi politicians react, particularly the ones involved with the de-Ba'athification circus (you'd think Ali Faysal al-Lami would blow a gasket).

On a not-really-related note, a bit of good news (عربي) via Al-Jazeera: Several Iraqi insurgent groups say they won't target polling stations on March 7, because "spilling Iraqi blood is a waste." A spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Resistance Front (often called JAMI, from the Arabic name) -- a deeply nationalist group -- said it will continue to target the U.S. (and Iran), but will not attack the polls.

The group doesn't speak for the entire insurgency, of course: Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the head of Islamic State in Iraq (the Sunni insurgency's umbrella group), threatened to disrupt the elections earlier this month. But the announcement is obviously good news for Iraqi voters -- and it hints at the divisions within the Sunni insurgency, which doesn't really have a clear strategic goal. Some groups, like ISI, want to create a stridently Sunni Islamic state; others, like JAMI, have more nationalist aims, and they've decided not to restart sectarian warfare against their own countrymen.