Festive Kurds Vote With Their Hearts

Allied pilots swept low over the towns of Iraqi Kurdistan on Tuesday, banking their warplanes to see the unusual sight below: crowds of Kurds lining up in the baking sun for a democratic election made possible by the planes’ protection.

On the ground, few Kurds looked up to see another of what have become regular flybys to deter any action by Iraqi troops and armor dug in within artillery range of many polling stations. But from peasant to leader, all Kurds seemed to appreciate the importance of their first free election, an unforeseen byproduct of last year’s Persian Gulf War.

“I am proud of our free election. I feel like a very free man. This is the biggest day in the history of Kurdistan,” said Ali Ismail Saadi, a 42-year-old village mayor who was bringing 20 people to vote in his truck.

“This is the day we have struggled for. . . . I didn’t sleep all night,” said Masoud Barzani, who is likely to win the election as overall leader of the Iraqi Kurds and whose Kurdistan Democratic Party may take the most seats in what will be an unprecedented Iraqi Kurdistan National Assembly.

Partial results are expected today.

A victory for Barzani would endorse his gradualist policy toward building self-determination for the 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds, part of a fractured nation of 20 million split among the mountains of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. His main rival, Jalal Talabani, advocates a more radical line, shrugging off Western warnings against moves toward an independent state.

Both sides have pledged to form what amounts to a coalition government of national unity in the new Parliament to “decide on the fate of the Iraqi nation” after the election. The near-exemplary conduct of the campaign and election seems to indicate that a history of factional feuding may now be left behind.

Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad regime has denounced the vote as illegal, but the U.S. government has warned Iraq not to interfere. Iraqi Kurdish police protected polling stations, and guerrillas sealed off many roads into the New Jersey-size Kurdish enclave, but otherwise men left their omnipresent guns at home for the first time in the past year of upheavals.

In an almost festive holiday atmosphere, women decked themselves and their daughters out in traditional long Kurdish dresses of glittering sequins. In the town of Eski Kalat, men in cummerbunds, baggy trousers and checkered headscarves danced in long lines to Kurdish folk singers.

“It’s the happiest election I have ever seen. I don’t think I’ve even seen a poster defaced,” said Michael Meadowcroft, head of Britain’s Electoral Reform Society and coordinator of about 50 international poll-watchers.

Some glitches were reported, however. So many people flocked to the 176 voting stations that when the polls closed at midnight, thousands of voters were left out. Charges of vote fraud were heard from some of the minor parties, whose spokesmen contended that the ink used to identify each voter after the balloting--intended to prevent double voting--was not indelible and could be rubbed off.

In an unconfirmed report, two people were said to have been wounded in a shootout at one polling station after voters, apparently angered over the conduct of the election, attacked a judge who was supervising the vote, and police opened fire.

Throughout the region, tribal leaders rubbed shoulders with Communists, socialists, Islamists and even Christian democrats. All were determined to make a new start after the nightmare of 30 years of conflict, massacres, deportations and destruction, including the Iraqi army’s leveling of 4,000 of the 5,000 villages of Iraqi Kurdistan.

“I was expecting more problems,” Barzani said. “I should thank the Kurdish people and all parties. We should have a clean and democratic election.

“Let’s hope the winner is the Kurdish people.”