Saddam's Absence on Ballot Thrills Iraqis
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Jan 30, 4:21 PM (ET)
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
ASKAN, Iraq (AP) - In the "triangle of death," where voting is a life-threatening experience, Karfia Abbasi held up her ink-stained finger, elated that for the first time she has been able to cast a ballot for someone besides Saddam Hussein.
"This is democracy," Abbasi said. "This is the first day I feel freedom."
For U.S. Marines helping guard Sunday's vote, the streams of men and women walking into the gritty polling places of this area south of Baghdad was a payoff more impressive than the toppling of Saddam's statue in the capital during the fall of his regime in April 2003 - less spectacular but tougher to bring off.
"That was a work of triumphs - those are always easy. This is the hard work of democracy now," Lt. Col. Bob Durkin of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines said Sunday morning, from a rooftop where Marine marksmen stood watch over voting sites.
"Even my Marines are saying, 'Boy, we're doing a good thing,'" Lt. Col. Vinny Coglianese said in the largely Shiite town of Seddah, where scores of voters lined up outside.
The election for a National Assembly was Iraq's first free vote in more than 50 years, and voters showed up in defiance of insurgents threats to kill anyone who cast a ballot - a warning that rang especially dire in the collection of towns and villages south of Baghdad.
In the past year, the region has become known as the "triangle of death" for the frequent and deadly ambushes on the roads crossing through it from the capital to the south. Shiites have been particularly at risk in the region, falling victim to shootings and checkpoints set up by Sunni guerrillas.
Dozens of Iraqis were killed in attacks on the elections Sunday - mostly in Baghdad. Just to the southeast, a suicide bomber climbed on a bus full of voters and blew himself up, killing at least four people.
But the triangle of death had no deaths reported in attacks Sunday.
Not that there wasn't violence. The night before the vote, green and red tracer fire and white muzzle blasts lit up parts of the sky in heavy shooting. And in the morning, mortar blasts woke the heavily Shiite town of Musayyib to election day.
In the long stretch before dawn, U.S. troops moved the last concrete bomb barriers and razor-wire streamers into place around polling sites and police stations. They scoured for explosives, sealed off roads and bridges, and ferried last-minute needs - like metal detectors, and then batteries to run them - to election workers.
Daylight brought crowded streets, women's black shrouds billowing side to side as parents walked with their children to schoolhouse polling stations.
"We voted before but it was not democracy. You had to choose Saddam," said Abbasi, whose finger - like those of all voters - was stained with blue indelible ink to prevent multiple votes.
Abed Hunni, a stooped, whiskered man who walked an hour with his wife to reach a polling site in Musayyib. "God is generous to give us this day," he said.
In the past, "we were all scared of Saddam, but we could only drop the ballots in the boxes, we could do nothing - Saddam would kill us," said Abdullah al-Seddei, an election worker in Musayyib. "Now everyone can vote for anyone."
On past election days, voters showed frenzied adulation, but only because Saddam's regime demanded it. Sunday, al-Seddei said, Iraqis showed a more realistic seriousness and purposefulness.
The triangle of death is a religiously mixed area. It was once heavily Shiite, until Saddam years ago encouraged Sunnis loyalists to move there from the north and west.
While many towns here have large shares of Sunni Muslims, all the dozen or so voters questioned in the streets and polling places identified themselves as Shiite.
Cpl. Florian Gonzales of Norwalk, Conn., looked on from the sandbagged police station roof.
The 22-year-old had a friend die and at least two others wounded in firefights and bombings on what is his second deployment here. Gonzales' first deployment, in the opening of the U.S. invasion, saw 18 Marines of his battalion killed at Nasiriyah.
"Hopefully, what happens today reflects what we've been trying to do for the last seven months," Gonzales said. "I don't want anyone else to have to come back here and go through what we've been through."
American forces called the elections a successful first test for Iraq's U.S.-formed security forces. So did their Iraqi cohorts.
"When these guys are very old, old guys, they will tell their grandchildren, 'I went to Iraq, to give them democracy and freedom," said Maj. Mohammed Salman Abass Ali Al-Zobaidi, local head of the Iraqi National Guard. |
