Sunnis join big Iraq election turnout

By Alastair Macdonald and Luke Baker

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Minority Sunni Arabs swelled the
turnout in Iraq’s largely peaceful election on Thursday,
reversing a previous poll boycott that only increased their
loss of power after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

With nationalist insurgents supporting the poll and even
vowing to protect Sunni Arab voters, there was only sporadic
violence, well below normal Iraqi levels.

Turnout in 10 hours of voting was at least 10 million, or
67 percent, the head of Iraq’s Electoral Commission told
Reuters, much higher than the 58 percent who voted in the
previous election on January 30, when most Sunni Arabs
boycotted.

In Saddam Hussein’s home province more than 80 percent of
voters turned out, a local official said. Polling stations in
parts of Iraq were kept open an extra hour to let those waiting
in line cast ballots.

In Sunni Falluja turnout was 70 percent, officials said,
and in Kurdish regions and the Shi’ite south it was also high.

The mostly tranquil vote, which will raise U.S. hopes that
a stable government can pave the way for American troops to
eventually pull out of Iraq, was in sharp contrast to January’s
election for an interim assembly, when 40 people died.

President George W. Bush, who faces wide U.S. public
disapproval of his Iraq strategy and is eager to show progress,
hailed the election as “a major milestone in the march to
democracy.”

A Reuters straw poll of more than 500 voters across Iraq
showed the dominant Shi’ite Islamist block had retained a
strong following but was being challenged by a secular list
headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) is the senior partner in
the current ruling coalition with the Kurds, but the poll
showed Allawi making up ground from his 14 percent showing in
the January poll and cutting into the Islamist bloc’s 48
percent.

Allawi, who heads a secular slate with candidates from
across Iraq’s sectarian divides has sought to split the
Islamist Shi’ite vote. The Kurdish coalition remained dominant
in its northeastern strongholds, according to the poll.

COMPLAINTS

There were complaints about voting irregularities across
Iraq and allegations flew about attempts to influence the vote
or skew the ethnic balance in some northern cities, but overall
the process went smoothly, the Electoral Commission said.

“This is a day of freedom for us,” said Selima Khalif, an
elderly woman voting in the poor southern province of Maysan.

“We are so happy. The most important thing we need is
security. We want our children to get a better life.”

All polls closed shortly after 6 p.m. (1500 GMT) and
counting began immediately. As electoral workers opened each
ballot box they said a quick prayer. Definitive results are not
expected for two weeks or more, the Electoral Commission said.

United Nations envoy Ashraf Qazi was pleased: “All in all
it was a good day and a historic day,” he told Reuters. The
U.S. ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, was also impressed.
“The turnout has been dramatically higher,” he told Reuters.

While voting went well generally, two people were killed in
mortar attacks on polling stations in Mosul and Tal Afar in the
north and three, including a U.S. Marine, were wounded when a
mortar round landed in Baghdad’s Green Zone as polls opened.

The interior minister said a suicide car bomber was shot
dead in Baghdad and police said they arrested another east of
the capital. The U.S. military separately announced that a
Marine had been killed near Ramadi on Wednesday.

Eight other people, including two Iraqi soldiers, were
killed in other violence. Among those, four insurgents died
when a bomb they were planting exploded on the main road in
Isshaaqi, 90 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

But a nationwide three-day traffic ban, and the presence of
200,000 Iraqi soldiers and police backed up by U.S. troops,
succeeded in protecting the 6,000 polling stations.

Washington hopes that if Sunnis are drawn into the
political process, the revolt will be undermined, letting
Iraqis gradually take over security without provoking a civil
war.

“Ballot boxes are a victory of democracy over
dictatorship,” said Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari after
voting, his finger purple with the dye that prevents double
voting and is a symbol of Iraqi democracy. “They’ve chosen
voting over bombs.”

SUNNIS SHOW STRENGTH

In Falluja, west of Baghdad, scene of the biggest battle
between U.S. forces and rebels a year ago, a shortage of ballot
papers and of vehicles to ferry infirm voters held up voting.

Bitter at the power exercised this year by the interim
parliament of Shi’ite Islamists and Kurds, Sunni militants said
they would defend polling stations in cities like Ramadi
against al Qaeda and other groups who vowed to disrupt the
vote.

“Sunni Arabs made a big mistake in boycotting the last
election. It left us out of … writing the constitution,” said
Talal Ali, 25, as he voted for the first time in Kirkuk.

He backed one of the main Sunni lists which wants to amend
the federalist constitution, agreed two months ago, that Sunnis
say could hand Kirkuk’s oil riches to independence-minded Kurds
and give Shi’ites control over the southern oilfields.

Once a coalition government is formed, which could take
weeks, the first task of the new parliament is to address Sunni
grievances over the constitution. Another challenge is building
up Iraqi security forces so foreign troops can go home.

While those battles lie ahead, there was hope of a better
future among voters on Thursday.

In Baghdad, Shi’ite Hadi Mishaal, wounded in the 1991 Gulf
War and forced by the traffic ban to hobble 2 km (over a mile)
on a crutch to vote with his wife, said: “I hope we can have a
government that will help me and give me my rights.”

In Mosul, Khazal Mohammed Said, a 47-year-old sheep trader,
said he hoped the vote would lay the foundations for an end to
occupation. “There is no Iraqi Muslim who wants a foreigner to
occupy this country,” he said.

In the southern Shi’ite city of Samawa, Allawi supporter
Jasim Faisal, 34, declared: “We want freedom … to drink
alcohol, dance and go to nightclubs.”

Underlying a vote in which Iraqis can choose among 231
lists, is also widespread sectarian fear and mistrust. Healing
the rifts was the campaign theme of Allawi, appointed prime
minister last year under U.S. occupation.

Many believe he could lead a broad coalition government, a
development Washington might endorse after losing patience with
Jaafari, whose term has seen the rise of violent pro-government
militias and warm ties with America’s enemies in Shi’ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Gideon Long,
Alastair Macdonald, Omar al-Ibadi, Waleed Ibrahim, Mariam
Karouny, Hiba Moussa, Mussab al-Khairalla and Paul Tait in
Baghdad, Aref Mohammed and Alister Bull in Kirkuk, Peter Graff
in Amara, Fadil al-Badrani in Falluja, Sami al-Jumaili in
Kerbala, Twana Osman and Cyrille Cartier in Sulaimaniya, Shamal
Aqrawi in Arbil, Abdel-Razzak Hameed in Basra, Ghasawn al-
Jibouri in Tikrit, Ammar al-Alwani in Ramadi, Hamed Fadhil in
Samawa, Khaled Farhan in Najaf and Deepa Babington in Mosul)