NAJAF, 31 January 2005 — Mothers carrying babies and blind men helped by relatives were among thousands of Shiites who rushed to vote across southern Iraq yesterday, driven by fervor to shake off decades of oppression.
“I insisted on coming despite my handicap because voting is a religious duty according to Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani,” Iraq’s Shiite religious leader, said blind Jawwad Shkeir, 56, as he went to vote in the holy city of Najaf.
Eighty-year-old Mahdeya Saleh, covered from head to toe in a black chador robe, beamed with pride at being part of Iraq’s first democratic elections in 50 years.
“I was often forced to vote under Saddam Hussein. Today I came freely to choose the candidate of my choice. This is the first and last time in my life,” to vote, she said.
Long queues of voters desperate to end those miserable decades began forming outside polling stations from the minute they opened at 0400 GMT.
Samir Hassan lost his leg in a Baghdad bombing but that did not stop him voting in Iraq’s election yesterday, determined to defy the men who maimed him.
“I would have crawled here if I had to. I don’t want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me,” said Hassan, 32, at a polling station in western Baghdad.
“Today I am voting for peace,” he said propping himself up on crutches as he stood in line to vote in Iraq’s first election since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
In October last year, Hassan was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a suicide bomber struck in Baghdad.
Doctors were unable to remove the metal and decided to amputate his leg, barely managing to save the knee.
Hassan became one of the thousands of Iraqis who have been maimed in the several hundred car bomb blasts that have devastated the country over the past two years.
But Hassan, who hails from the poor, working class district of Hurriya, a mixed Sunni and Shiite Muslim neighborhood near Baghdad’s old city, bears no bitterness.
If anything, he says his misfortune makes him more determined to battle on — via the ballot box — for change in Iraq.
Rubbing the grey stubble on his chin, he was adamant that the only way forward for Iraqis was to vote and show they stand united against the insurgents determined to wreck the polls. “It is the only way, we must vote against them,” he said.
As he moved forward in line in Hurriya, others around him seemed to have a similar resolve. With little emotion, hundreds moved through the polling center yesterday, casting their ballots and quickly moving on.
Police cars crisscrossed Najaf, with loudspeakers mounted on their vehicles, urging voters to “accomplish your national duty”.
Scores of chador-clad women queued to be frisked at separate female-only checkpoints outside polling stations.
One mother carried her baby draped in an Iraqi flag and left the infant with a polling station supervisor as she placed her ballot in a transparent white plastic box that bore four numbered seals. “These elections are a blessing from Allah. I am not afraid of anything,” said Hassan Tajer, 75, as he proudly showed an index finger covered in indelible ink, proof that he had voted.
At the Al-Jedaydeh polling station in Najaf’s old quarter, 200 meter lines had formed by midday as men wearing traditional robes rubbed shoulders with Iraqi policemen and soldiers who had also come to vote.
Heavily armed police marksmen were posted on the roof of the polling station while dozens of security personnel manned the perimeter.
All of the soldiers and policemen in Najaf appeared relaxed but in full control and, unlike their comrades in Sunni towns north of Baghdad, did not bother to cover their faces for protection against insurgents.
“Why should we cover our faces. We do not fear anyone,” said Lt. Col. Mohammed Abdel Wahab, in charge of security at one Najaf polling station.
Inside the building, voters patiently waited their turn in a disciplined fashion.
“We expect turnout of more than 90 percent among the 2,000 electors registered here,” said Ali Mahdi Abdel Saheb, the head of the polling station in the city’s Al-Saad neighborhood.
Further south, not far from Iraq’s second city of Basra, hundreds queued to vote at a girls’ primary school in the town of Abu Al-Khassib.
Announcements over mosque loudspeakers urged the faithful to cast a ballot at one of the town’s 17 polling stations, again appealing to religious duty.
“Oh citizens, young and old, men and women, you must go to the polling station, you must not shirk your duty as a citizen and a Muslim,” wailed the muezzin.
At Djafar Mohammed Baghut school, official Kasim Abdel Hussein said more than 50 percent of those registered had voted by midday. “We have been waiting for this day for a long time,” said Selim Al-Zubair, 22, dismissing fears of violence in the largely quiet satellite towns around Basra.
“Today we are delighted to choose our government, a democratic, pluralist government, without the Baath,” said Jawad Kadham, 65, referring to Saddam’s ruling party, which mercilessly crushed a Shiite revolt after the 1991 Gulf War.
But officials were also upbeat in the Sunni district of Abu Al-Khassib, where electoral official Adjad Abdel Ridha said 2,500 out of the 3,000 registered had already voted by midday at one polling station.
The streets of Najaf emptied as night fell, and poll workers began the painstaking task of counting votes after a hectic day helping voters.
