In Fallouja, Ballot Box Is the New Battleground

Graffiti on the wall of an elementary school here proclaimed a message once unspeakable in the heartland of Iraq’s Sunni Arab-led insurgency: “Democratic elections are the only way to end the violence.”

On Thursday, the Palestine School became a polling place where Sunni Muslims cast ballots in force for the first time in a parliamentary election since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Walking, riding bicycles and, in some cases, bused in by police, Sunni voters turned out in large numbers here and across Iraq to reassert their voice in the country’s political life.

Insurgents, who made voting all but impossible here in Al Anbar province in January, held their fire this time. The turnout was so heavy that some polling stations ran out of ballots. A local election official said today that at least 75% of registered voters had cast ballots.

“Today is the day when we choose between the past and the future,” said Muadh Araji, a 28-year-old sociology teacher at Anbar University, after voting at the school.

Iraq’s Sunni minority has largely been absent from government decision-making since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.

The insurgency has been fueled in part by Sunnis angered at losing the dominant role they held under Hussein.

In January, jubilant Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds went to the polls, gaining political power after decades of oppression, while Sunnis largely stayed away. Sunnis decided not to boycott the ballot Thursday, a move the Bush administration hopes will help calm the insurgency and allow U.S. forces to begin a withdrawal soon.

Sunnis are expected to win about one-fifth of the 275 seats in the Council of Representatives elected Thursday, roughly equal to their share of Iraq’s population.

“We want to make a difference this time because we were marginalized,” said first-time voter Ismail Mohammed Abbasi, a 42-year-old merchant who came with five of his relatives to cast ballots in Fallouja.

For the Bush administration, Fallouja has strategic and symbolic importance. In November last year, city streets were littered with bodies after some of the most vicious fighting between rebels and U.S. forces. About 10% of the more than 2,100 U.S. troops who have been killed in Iraq died in Fallouja, along with thousands of Iraqis.

Through rebuilding and political engagement with Sunni tribal sheiks, U.S. officials hope to make the city an example for other parts of Sunni-dominated Al Anbar that are still roiled by violence.

Though many of the city’s 250,000 residents still sympathize with the rebels, tribal and religious leaders advocated participation in the elections. In July, Sunni clerics had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, instructing residents to vote in future balloting, a call repeated by Sunni clerics nationwide as election day approached.

The efforts appear to have paid off. On Thursday, the city was peaceful as voters flocked to the polls to elect the nation’s first full-term parliament.

Mayor Dari Abdul Hadi called the day “a celebration.”

U.S. officials say they hope that Sunni representation in government will help steer disaffected Sunnis from extremist followers of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.

“In that is an opportunity for weakening those who advocate violence and strengthening those who want to participate in the political process,” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in Baghdad this week. “One thing that I am encouraged by more than any other is that change that is beginning.”

A new mood was evident at one school here Thursday when a tribal leader arranged for trays of rice and meat to be brought to voters and election officials. At another, boys on bicycles did figure eights and chimed their bells.

Yet the first taste of democracy turned bitter for thousands of others who couldn’t vote because of a shortage of ballots and boxes.

Just after 1 p.m., election workers stood idle in the empty corridors of the Palestine School, waiting for more supplies. Ballot boxes were full by 11 a.m., and voters arriving later were turned away. Of the 4,800 voters who showed up, 2,000 could not vote, election officials said.

Some of the Sunnis who had finally turned up after shunning earlier elections were being turned away.

“They got so angry,” Ali Shaker, a 27-year-old teacher, said of the disappointed voters. “They were shouting, saying, ‘They don’t want us to win the election!’ ”

Women continued to vote in relatively small numbers. At the Palestine School, 25% of the voters were women, an election official said.

Missing ballots, boxes and incomplete registration of names compounded Sunni suspicion of Americans and the majority Shiite-led government. Some said their efforts showed the futility of the exercise.

The problems will not affect the size of the Sunni region’s representation. Under the rules of this vote, each province will have a set number of seats. The 1.4 million people in Al Anbar will be represented by nine of the new council’s 275 seats. Only 45 representatives will be directly elected, unlike in January, when all 275 members of the National Assembly were.

“The most important outcome is that we’re going to have a National Assembly that has legitimacy in the eyes of all Iraqis, including the Sunnis,” said Laith Kubba, a government spokesman in Baghdad. “That is going to weaken those who are resorting to violence, because Iraqis will argue, ‘Why are you using arms if you can use parliament?’ ”

Other observers counter that rebel Sunnis and those sympathetic to the insurgency will simply adopt politics as an additional weapon.

“I expect the violence will be the same,” said Falah Hussein Tai, a former mechanic in the Iraqi air force. “There are many political contradictions. There is much strife. No one is unified. It cannot come to a stop.”

At Ibn Khaldoom School in Fallouja, that sentiment was echoed by many voters.

Iyad Nazar, 41, a former major in the army, voted for the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, led by Sunni Arab nationalist Saleh Mutlak. Nazar wanted Iraq to stay united and for Iraqi army officers to get their jobs back. But one concern trumped all others.

“The first priority is [an] American pullout,” he said. “There will be no security without Americans pulling out.”

Final voting results will not be available for days. But Sunnis interviewed appeared to be dividing their votes between two Sunni slates and a Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish coalition led by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite.

Political observers believe that Allawi could do well in parts of Baghdad as well as the Sunni stronghold of Tikrit and the northern city of Mosul.

In Fallouja, many voters took a strategic view of his candidacy, hoping he could erode the dominance of the religious Shiite slate.

“I will not say he is the best, but he’s better than this government,” said Amar Hamed, 30.

That Allawi, as prime minister, had signed off on the American offensive that leveled Fallouja last year but had also authorized the use of force in the Shiite city of Najaf proved his fair-mindedness, many said.

In this still bullet-scarred city of mosques, the ballot box had become a new battlefield, said Araji, the sociology teacher. “It’s like a war today, and we have to win that war.”