Millions vote in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Millions of Iraqis turned out Sunday to cast ballots in the country’s first free elections in a half-century, the ranks of voters surging as attacks by insurgents proved less ferocious than feared and enthusiasm spilled over into largely Sunni Arab regions where hardly a campaign poster had appeared.

At least 44 people were reported killed in suicide bombings, shootings and mortar and rocket attacks. But for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the haggard capital and other parts of Iraq took on the veneer of a festival, as crowds danced, chanted and played soccer in streets secured by thousands of Iraqi and American forces. From the Kurdish north to the largely Shiite south, at thousands of polling stations, voters delivered a similar message: The elections represented their moment not only to seize the future, but also to reject a legacy of dictatorship and the bloodshed and hardship that have followed the U.S. invasion.

Lines that began small at polling stations grew during the 10 hours of voting, sometimes dramatically. After casting ballots, many Iraqis triumphantly pointed their index fingers, stained with the purple ink that indicated they had voted, and hardly flinched at gunfire and explosions that interrupted the day. At one station, a woman showered election workers with handfuls of candy. At another, a veiled, elderly woman kept repeating, “God’s blessings on you” to election workers. Across town, three Iraqi soldiers carried an elderly man in a wheelchair two blocks to a voting booth.

“It’s like a wedding. I swear to God, it’s a wedding for all of Iraq,” said Mohammed Nuhair Rubaie, the director of a polling station in Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhood of Tunis where, after a slow start, hundreds of voters gathered as the cloudless day progressed. “No one has ever witnessed this before. For a half-century, no one has seen anything like it.

“And we did it ourselves.”

Officials loosely estimated voter turnout at 60 percent nationwide – a figure that, if accurate, would make Sunday’s vote perhaps the freest, most competitive election in an authoritarian Arab world and a rare victory for the Bush administration in Iraq. U.S. and allied Iraqi leaders had looked to the vote as a turning point in a troubled two-year occupation beset by almost daily carnage, rampant crime and deep disenchantment with the United States. Those officials had expressed hope that a strong turnout would deliver elusive legitimacy to the new government, enabling it to defeat the insurgency in Sunni regions and begin a long-awaited economic revival.

In the weeks before the vote, insurgents had vowed to disrupt the elections, and on Sunday they carried out the attacks that have become their trademark: suicide bombings, car bombings and mortar shellings spaced, at one point in the morning, a few seconds apart. Police reported nine suicide bombings, the majority of them carried out by assailants on foot because most cars were banned from streets.

In one of the deadliest attacks, a bomber on a minibus carrying voters to polls in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killed himself and at least four others. In Baghdad, mortar shells struck the neighborhood of Sadr City, and a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a polling station in Zayuna. Other attacks were reported in Balad and Kirkuk in the north and in Mahawil, south of the capital.

Late in the day, a British C-130 military transport plane crashed near Balad, 35 miles north of Baghdad, scattering wreckage over a wide area. Britain’s Press Association reported Sunday night that at least 10 troops were killed.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, a group led by Jordanian guerrilla Abu Musab Zarqawi, asserted responsibility for many of the suicide attacks Sunday in a statement posted on the Internet. The statement could not be immediately verified.

In Sunni-populated regions of central and northern Iraq, where the insurgency has been most fierce, turnout was far lower than elsewhere, a sign of the guerrillas’ strength in those areas and their ability to intimidate.

Despite rumors that food rations would be taken away if residents failed to vote, few defied threats by insurgents to, in the words of one leaflet, “wash the streets” with the blood of voters.

In Ramadi, a western city of roughly 200,000 people along the Euphrates River, residents said only six people voted at one polling station: the provincial governor, three of his deputies, the representative of the Communist Party and the police chief. In Dhuluyah, a town north of Baghdad along the Tigris, the eight polling stations never opened, residents said, and in other towns in the region, voters usually numbered in the dozens as others ignored appeals broadcast by patrolling U.S. soldiers to vote.

But both the violence and the Sunni turnout proved to be the wild cards. After a slow start, growing numbers voted in heavily Sunni districts of the capital, including Khadra, Tunis and parts of Adhamiyah, residents said. Crowds in Baqubah, a mixed Sunni-Shiite town northeast of Baghdad, gathered with their children before polls opened and waited for tardy election workers as mortar shells detonated in the distance.

In the northern city of Mosul, scene of some of the fiercest fighting in recent months, turnout grew among both Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds as intense attacks failed to materialize. In the two weeks before the elections, the United States had increased its troop strength in Mosul by 50 percent, from 8,000 to 12,000, and brought in an additional 4,500 Iraqi security forces.

“God willing, this election will be the nail in the coffin of the terrorists,” Abbas Salem, a real estate agent in Mosul, said after voting.

Across Baghdad, residents who had often placed more credibility in the threats of insurgents than in reassurances by the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces rejoiced at a casualty count that, while dire, was far lower than on some of the capital’s bloodiest days.

“Enough fear,” said Najia Abbas, a 46-year-old woman whose family was displaced by fighting in Fallujah.

Along a street in western Baghdad, a man thrust forward his ink-stained finger.

“Whatever they would do, I would still vote,” said Hamid Azawi, 57. “Even if I was dead, I would still participate.” He hit his chest. “The vote comes from the bottom of my heart.”

The election of a 275-member parliament, local councils in 18 provinces and a legislature in Iraq’s Kurdish region involved more than 6,000 organizers who oversaw 140,000 workers and more than 5,000 polling stations. About 14 million people were eligible to vote in Iraq, as well as 1.2 million overseas voters who were allowed to cast ballots in 14 countries. The U.S. government invested heavily in the project but sought to play down its efforts for fear the elections would be seen as an American-engineered process.

Independent observers noted some irregularities in the vote. Scattered polling stations opened late, and 61 stayed closed. At some, materials were missing or not delivered and many voters were unsure where polling stations were. Some poll workers did not show up.

“Nonetheless,” the Iraqi Election Information Network, a nongovernmental group monitoring the vote, said in a statement, “the election appears to have been conducted without systematic flaws and in accordance with basic international standards.”

In all, 111 parties participated in the elections, ranging from organizations composed along Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian lines to groups with deep historical roots, such as the Communist Party and constitutional monarchists. Opinion polls showed three parties to have the best prospects: a list that joined the two main Kurdish parties in northern Iraq, the party of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and a largely Shiite coalition that had the tacit endorsement of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s most influential religious leader.

“This is the starting point in the path of democracy, rule of law, prosperity and security to Iraq and the entire region,” Allawi said after voting in the fortified Green Zone, which serves as the headquarters of the U.S. and Iraqi administrations.

Despite the flush of optimism Sunday, hardly anyone in Iraq predicted a quick end to an insurgency that has roiled vast regions of the country and deeply undermined the credibility of the U.S. military here. An American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could speak candidly, predicted that attacks might intensify after the elections, posing what may be the greatest challenge to the new government and making it difficult to withdraw the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

“I think the insurgency is going to continue. I do not think it is going to stop. In some places, it’s going to get worse,” the official said last week. “This is a long-term process. There’s no quick fix.”