Iraqi Americans Ponder Role in Homeland’s Vote

Radiya Al-Marayati, a Pomona Muslim, wants an end to the violence that has engulfed her family back home in Iraq, including an elderly cousin who was recently kidnapped from his Baghdad home and killed.

Father Michael Bazzi, pastor of the St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in El Cajon, near San Diego, wants assurances that the rights of Iraqi Christians will be respected in the Muslim-majority nation.

And Jalal Salihi, an advisor to the Kurdish Community Center of California in San Diego, wants local self-government for Kurds, a largely Sunni Muslim population with its own language and culture, within a governing system similar to that in the United States.

Such diverse dreams are expected to propel as many as 10,000 California Iraqis to the polls this week to help elect Iraq’s 275-seat parliament. The number of seats the various factions in the country win may determine whether the election ushers in a government that will have the backing of a broad spectrum of all of the main ethnic, regional and sectarian groups in Iraq.

Iraqi expatriates born in Iraq or whose father was born there are eligible to vote, even if they are American citizens now, during the balloting Tuesday through Thursday at polling places in Pomona, the Bay Area, El Cajon and five other U.S. cities. Expatriates will be able to cast ballots in 15 nations outside Iraq.

The greater number of California voting locations this time is expected to help triple the local voter turnout over January’s elections for Iraq’s transitional National Assembly, when only one Orange County polling place was established for the entire western United States, according to David Yousif, California spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.

“We are full of hope,” said Yousif, a chemist who says he left Iraq in 1997 because of persecution against Assyrian Christians like him.

“This election is going to make a big revolution, in not just Iraq but all of the Middle East.”

Many of the community’s religious leaders, including Imam Ridha Hajjar of the Ahlul-Beyt Mosque in Pomona and Bishop Sarhad Y. Jammo of the Chaldean Catholic Church, have been using the pulpit to encourage people to play a role in shaping Iraq’s future by voting. The Internet has been abuzz with chatter about the election, as have shared mealtimes at mosques and other community centers, Hajjar and others said.

The imam said he expected at least 90% of his 200 or so Iraqi mosque members to vote.

“It’s something they know they have to do,” Hajjar said. “It is also educational for their families and their children. It is a way of keeping contact with Iraq.”

But excitement about the elections is laced with disenchantment among many Iraqi Americans about Iraq’s current state of affairs.

Imam Moustafa Al-Qazwini of the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County, for instance, said he is unsure whom to vote for or even if it will make a difference. The interim government elected in January has made scant progress in combating terrorism, random violence and corruption, he said, preventing Iraqis from rebuilding their lives.

“I really don’t know who can make a difference,” said Al-Qazwini, whose family’s efforts to build a hospital in the southern town of Karbala have been stymied by incessant demands for bribes.

“No one so far has been effective in unifying the country and bringing about stability. The situation is so confusing and disheartening, you don’t know what government to bring forward.”

Noori Barka, president of the Chaldean American Foundation in San Diego, said the continued chaos has even made him believe that Iraq is not yet ready for elections. He said tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians have left the country because of the violence.

Like so many other Iraqi Americans, Barka’s family has directly experienced tragedy. A few months ago, his wife’s cousin was kidnapped and released when a relative brought $50,000 in ransom. But then the kidnappers grabbed the relative after he handed over the money and killed him two days later.

“This kind of thing is happening every day,” said Barka, a biotech company founder who left Iraq at the start of its war with Iran in 1980.

“What we should have done was bring in a strongman we believe in and given him the power to do whatever he needs to bring stability and security to Iraq. Then think about democracy and elections after that.”

Nonetheless, Barka is planning to vote for a coalition of six Christian organizations in the hopes that they will work for a separation of church and state with similarly committed Muslims.

In California’s estimated 30,000-member Kurdish community, the major issue for many is continued self-rule for Iraqi Kurds, who suffered gassing, forced relocation and other atrocities under Saddam Hussein. After the Persian Gulf War, U.S. and British forces set up a no-fly zone over Kurdish territories in northern Iraq, giving the people more than a decade’s experience with political autonomy.

Salihi of the San Diego Kurdish center said he expects the new government, likely to be dominated by Shiite Muslims, to continue extending local self-rule and to honor a church-state separation. If not, he said, he would support seeking independence from Iraq.

Salihi said the overwhelming majority of Kurds fully backed the Americans as their liberators and wanted them to stay in the country as a “security blanket.” But such sentiments are not shared by all Iraqi Americans. Al-Qazwini, for instance, said the continuing instability has prompted some Iraqis to begin questioning whether America actually wanted to keep Iraq weak so as to better control the oil-rich nation.

And not all Iraqi Americans plan to vote. Al-Marayati’s husband, Sabih, said he felt he had no business getting involved in Iraqi affairs because he immigrated to America more than four decades ago.

“The elections should be for those who are suffering back home,” said Sabih Al-Marayati, 70, a chemical engineer who lost a nephew to Hussein’s forces in 1984.

Radiya Al-Marayati said she was still unsure whether she would vote. For now, she has been leading a group of about 35 women in a special prayer ritual for Iraq.

With necklaces of 100 black beads, the women pray on each bead, offering peace to the Prophet Muhammad and his family in the hopes of eventually performing a million prayers.

“I feel like it’s impossible to really bring Iraq back,” said Radiya Al-Marayati, 62. “But we are hoping and praying. We don’t really want to give up on our hope.”