Baghdad–Iraqis voted Sunday in an election testing the mettle of the country’s still-fragile democracy as insurgents killed 19 people in the capital and sending down a barrage of mortars intent on disrupting the day.
About 19 million Iraqis are eligible to vote in the election for who will lead the country as US forces pull out and determine whether Iraq can overcome the jagged sectarian divisions that have defined it since the US-led invasion in 2003.
Insurgents who vowed to disrupt the elections–which they see as validating the Shia-led government and the US occupation–launched a volley of mortar attacks just as polls opened across the city and country.
At least 14 people died in northeastern Baghdad after an explosion leveled a building, and mortar attacks in western Baghdad killed seven people in two different neighborhoods, police and hospital officials said. There were also explosions elsewhere in the country, but no further reports of fatalities.
An Associated Press photographer on the scene of the collapsed building in Baghdad’s northeastern Ur neighborhood described rescuers pulling bodies from the rubble.
Insurgents also launched mortars toward the Green Zone–home to the US Embassy and the prime minister’s office–and in the Sunni stronghold of Azamiyah police reported at least 20 mortar attacks in the neighborhood since day break.
Yet voters still came. In Azamiyah, Walid Abid, a 40-year-old father of two, was speaking as mortars landed several hundreds meters away.
"I am not scared and I am not going to stay put at home. Until when? We need to change things. If I stay home and not come to vote, Azamiyah will get worse," he said.
In Hurriyah, a Shia neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad, loudspeakers in mosques exhorted people to turn out to vote–like "arrows to the enemy’s chest."
About 6200 candidates are competing for 325 seats in the new parliament, Iraq’s second for a full term of parliament since the 2003 US-led invasion seven years ago this month.
Many view the election as a crossroads at which Iraq will decide whether to adhere to politics along the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish lines or move away from the ethnic and sectarian tensions that have emerged since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s iron-fisted, Sunni minority rule.
Iraqis hope it will help them achieve national reconciliation at a time when the United States has vowed to withdraw combat forces by late summer and all American troops by the end of next year.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is fighting for his political future against a coalition led by mainly Shia religious groups–the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and a party headed by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He also faces a challenge from secular alliance led by Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister and secular Shia, who has teamed up with a number of Sunnis in a bid to claim the government.
"These acts will not undermine the will of the Iraqi people," al-Maliki said Sunday morning, speaking to reporters after casting his ballot.
Security was tight across the capital. The borders have been sealed, the airport closed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi military and police have flooded the streets.
Extra checkpoints were set up across the city, and in some parts of central Baghdad, people could not go 50 meters without hitting another checkpoint. Authorities lifted the ban on small vehicles in Baghdad to allow people to get to the polls, said spokesman for Baghdad security operations, Qassim al-Moussawi. But many voters continued to proceed to the polling places on foot.
In keeping with the US military’s assertion that Iraqis will run these elections, the only visible American military presence was in the air; four US helicopter gunships could be seen in the sky over the Kazimiyah neighborhood.
The US, which has lost more than 4300 troops in the nearly seven-year conflict, has fewer than 100,000 troops in the country–a number that is expected to drop to about 50,000 by the end of the summer.
Exiting the polls, Iraqis waved purple-inked fingers–the now-iconic image synonymous with voting in this oil-rich country home to roughly 28 million people.
At one polling place in Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood, barbed wire ringed a school, armed guards stood around the perimeter, and police scanned voters with metal detectors.
Despite the violence and frustration that has set in after years of fighting and faulty government services, many Iraqis were still excited to vote.
In the city of Nasiriyah, in the Shia south, crowds of people filled the streets–men in what appeared to be their best clothes were accompanied by women in long black cloaks and often children.
"I voted in 2005. There were a lot less people then," said Ahmed Saad Chadian. "Today participation is much higher."
In the Shia holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, dozens of voters also lined up to cast their ballot.
"We came to participate in this national day, and we don’t care about the explosions," said Sahib Jabr, a 34-year-old old taxi driver.
President Jalal Talabani was among the first to vote Sunday morning in the Kurdish city of Sulamaniyah. Talabani’s party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, is enmeshed in a tight race with an upstart political party called Change which is challenging the two Kurdish parties that have dominated Iraqi politics for years.
