Strong Turnout Reported Among Sunni Arabs
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 15, 2005; 10:36 AM
BAGHDAD, Dec. 15 -- Iraqi voters turned out in force countrywide Thursday to elect a parliament to remake their troubled nation, with Sunni-led Iraqi insurgent movements suspending attacks for a day so that Sunni Arabs could vote en masse for the first time.
The voting appeared to split along sectarian lines as expected, with many Sunni voters in the Sunni-dominated far west saying they were voting for Sunni candidates. Long lines were reported among Sunnis, most of whom boycotted elections earlier this year or were frightened away by threats.
There were no boycotts this time and insurgents were providing security at some polling places. In Ramadi, for example, guerrillas of the Iraqi Islamic Army movement took up positions in some neighborhoods, promising to protect voters from any attacks by foreign fighters.
This time, Sunni clerics not only lifted a boycott call that had suppressed Sunni turnout in January's national elections but actively encouraged voting.
"Right now the city is experiencing a democratic celebration," Mayor Dari Abdul Hadi Zubaie said in Fallujah, where voters streamed to the polls. "It's an election wedding."
In Najaf, the Shiite holy city in the south, policemen in the country's officially neutral new security force actively campaigned for the Shiite religious alliance now in power.
"We came to vote for the alliance, obeying our clerics' demand," said Ali Hussein, a 45-year-old taxi driver in Najaf.
The outcome of Thursday's vote, which won't be known for several days, is crucial. Voters will seat the country's first full-term, four-year government since U.S. troops overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The new legislators and the government they select will complete Iraq's constitution and decide whether the country remains whole or splits into three or more autonomous substates.
The next government also will have to contend with the violence that has surged under the interim government elected in January, and, the United States hopes, preside over the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
"I wish to assure you we will be with you until you can stand on your own feet. And the sooner the better for us and for the world," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said at a schoolhouse polling site in the largely peaceful southern Shiite town of Hilla, where Khalilzad, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and other visiting American dignitaries playfully dipped their index fingers in purple ink.
Biden stressed Thursday's vote was not the end game for the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, saying the U.S. military would likely need to play a lead role in Iraqi security until Iraqi leaders manage to come up with a representative constitution if they can. Otherwise, "The question is whether we traded dictatorship for chaos," Biden said.
Many of those who cast ballots in Fallujah, a city of about 250,000, located west of Baghdad in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, said they considered it an act of resistance against the continued presence of U.S. Marines in their city.
On election day, polling sites were protected by Iraqi police, while Marines withdrew to provide to a perimeter no closer than 100 yards away. "The main thing I want is the Americans to get out. Maybe they can stay on their bases for a little while and out of the city, but before long they should leave Iraq," said Hakim Rashid, 30, who, along with his younger brother Ahmad voted for the Tawafaq slate, a Sunni religious coalition led by the Iraqi Islamic Party.
Down the street, graffiti outside a high school used as a polling station read "no, no to the infidel constitution," a reference to how most Sunnis voted in the country's constitutional referendum in October. Fallujans, unlike most Anbar residents, turned out in large numbers in the referendum after largely boycotting the country's elections last January, along with most Sunnis. Within hours of the opening of the polls, however, several voting sites ran out of ballots and official boxes to put completed ballots in.
As election workers scrambled to arrange for more ballots to be delivered, many potential voters were turned away. At one station in the Palestine Elementary School near the city center, about half of the voters who showed up were turned away due to shortages, poll workers said. The school was quiet by mid-afternoon as word spread that voting had been disrupted.
"This is not a small problem, it's a big problem," said a U.S. official in Fallujah, speaking to reporters on the condition that he not be named. He said local and national election officials were seeking to obtain more ballots and boxes by the time polls were due to close at 5 p.m. The closing time could possibly be extended, he said.
Several residents also complained that their names were not on the list of registered voters and said the various problems were a deliberate attempt by Iraq's Shiite-led government to suppress the Sunni vote.
"I am 100 percent sure this was intentional because despite what they say, they don't want us to participate," said Arrak Mutlib, 62, a teacher, who, along with 10 other family members walked to five different polling stations and could not find their names. They had voted in the country's Oct. 15 constitutional referendum without incident, he said.
Despite some Iraqi insurgent groups' pledge of a one-day moratorium on attacks, the 7 a.m. opening of polls nationwide was followed by mortar or bomb blasts in Baghdad, Ramadi and Baqubah.
Lines nevertheless formed early outside Ramadi polling places and elsewhere even before they opened. "Even though there were many explosions last night, and even if there are more now or on my way to the polling center, I will come and vote," declared Mizhar Abud Salman, heading to a schoolhouse polling center in Saddam Hussein's home region of Tikrit.
"Ballot boxes are a victory of democracy over dictatorship," Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari told reporters as he cast his vote behind the blast walls of Baghdad's fortress-like Green Zone. "The real triumph is that people are casting ballots -- whoever they choose -- and that they've chosen voting over bombs."
Election day featured a heavy presence by police, security forces and U.S. troops patrolling roads in major cities. A three-day ban on traffic and sealed borders were designed to increase security, as well.
About 15 million Iraqi voters were eligible to select 275 members of the new National Assembly. Complete returns are not expected until late December or early January.
A total of 7,648 candidates are seeking assembly seats, which will be allocated from Iraq's 18 provinces according to population.
The current alliance of Shiite religious parties was widely predicted to win most seats, as it did in voting in January. But members of the Sunni Muslim minority hoped to win more representation, as Sunni religious leaders encouraged Sunnis to participate in the vote.
It was Iraq's third election since the United States invaded the country and toppled the Hussein regime. The first was on Jan. 30 for an interim government; the second was a referendum on a new constitution on Oct. 15.
Finer reported from Fallujah. Special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Salih Saif Aldin in Tikrit contributed to this report. Staff writer Fred Barbash contributed from Washington. |
