In North, Kurdistan Comes First, Iraq Comes Second
By EDWARD WONG
Published: December 15, 2005
ALTUN KOPRI, Iraq, Dec. 15 - As lines of voters snaked out of two polling stations along the main road, and as celebratory gunfire resounded through the neighborhood, a group of children chanted Kurdish songs and waved Kurdish flags as they barreled through the middle of this village.
By all appearances here, today's elections for national parliamentary seats may as well have been about Kurdistan and Kurdish dreams. Iraq, or the idea of Iraq, seemed as distant as the moon.
"I will vote for 730," Fakhri Muhammad, 32, said as he stood in line outside the village's primary school, referring to the ballot number of the main Kurdish coalition. "The list is Kurdish, and it represents the Kurdish people."
So went the refrain throughout much of the north, with Kurdish voters shying away from Arab candidates and siding only with Kurdish groups, particularly the Kurdistan Alliance, the coalition made up of the two main Kurdish parties. It was a stark illustration of how much the vote across Iraq had split along ethnic and sectarian lines. For many Kurds, a vote for the Kurdistan Alliance was first and foremost a bid to secure autonomy for the mountainous Kurdish homeland in the north, and only secondarily a vote for the general welfare of Iraq.
Political fervor was especially rampant here in dry, windswept Tamim Province, whose capital is Kirkuk, 15 miles south of Altun Kopri. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, the government deported Kurds and Turkmens and moved in Arabs in order to better control the oil fields. Kurdish leaders have made no secret of their desire to incorporate Kirkuk and other parts of the province into Kurdistan, rather than allowing the central government to administrate it.
Having strong representation in the new Parliament can help achieve that, went the thinking of Kurdish voters.
"This entire area is Kurdistan; Kirkuk should go to Kurdistan," said Hussein Sadr, 74, as he shuffled out of a high school in Kirkuk, his index finger stained purple - a sign that he had voted - his eyes peering from behind thick glasses at the crowds of Kurds all around. "Kirkuk now and the people here are part of Kurdistan."
Near Mr. Sadr, minibuses filled with voters and adorned with Kurdish flags sat outside the high school.
It was unclear who had bused in the voters, and the scene seemed certain to confirm, at least for some Arabs and Turkmens that the Kurdish parties were indeed transporting voters from other provinces to boost their support here.
In Altun Kopri, a mixed Kurdish-Turkmen village whose name means "Golden Bridge" in the Turkmen language, electoral officials at two schools said that by 10:30 a.m., they had turned away a total of 400 people who did not have their names on voter rolls. Some may have just gone to the wrong school, but others may have been trying to vote illegally, the officials said. Ferman Abdullah, the official in charge of polling at the village high school, said the 200 turned away at his school, which had 3,500 registered voters, were primarily Kurds.
"That's the only problem we have right now," Mr. Abdullah said. "Their names weren't on the lists."
In the weeks leading up to the elections, this province had come under more scrutiny than any other because the Iraqi electoral commission had uncovered possible voter fraud. At the end of August, in the final two days of voter registration, 81,000 new names appeared on the province's registration lists, an increase far above the national average. Electoral officials announced earlier this week that many of the applications looked suspicious. They decided that any of the 81,000 showing up today would have to present extra documentation to prove his or her identity.
The surge in registration came from six registration centers, five of them in Kurdish areas, including one here in Altun Kopri.<?U>
At the village primary school, an electoral observer representing one of the Kurdish parties complained to a visiting American diplomat that too many Kurds were being turned away.
"They say, 'I came from this area, and Saddam kicked me out, and I can even show you my piece of land. And now I don't have the right to vote?"' said the observer, Rashad Wali.
A Sunni Arab observer outside the same school appeared more satisfied.
"The process is good, everybody is good and it's going very well," said Haithem Hashem, 25, a supporter of the Iraqi Consensus Front, a coalition of religious Sunni groups.
The 690,000 registered voters in this province had 47 choices on the ballot. Of those, 21 were aimed at appealing to Sunni Arab voters, who largely boycotted the vote last January for a transitional government. There was also more diversity this time around among the Kurdish choices - the Kurdistan Islamic Union broke off from the Kurdish coalition to run on its own. (Perhaps as a consequence, gunmen attacked five of its offices in the north earlier this month, killing two party members.)
A few voters stepped across ethnic and religious lines when they cast their ballots today, showing that maybe, just maybe, the prejudices here could be uprooted after all.
"I voted for the Kurdistan Alliance," said Dina Awiya, 22, a Christian student standing in the courtyard of a polling center in Kirkuk. "We have a connection with the Kurds. We've lived with them since we were children. Until now, we've been one team."
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