For Voting U.S. Iraqis, It’s a Long Haul in 2 Ways

Hussan Al Taee left Phoenix at 4 a.m. Monday with his wife, year-old son, a cousin and his wife, driving to Irvine to do their part for democracy in Iraq.

Seven hours later, he stood outside the Officers Club at the former El Toro Marine base, proudly showing a small voter registration card that will allow him to vote in his homeland’s first democratic election in decades, starting in 10 days.

The long drive across the desert to register at one of seven U.S. polling places for expatriate Iraqis was a small price to pay for the right to vote, he said.

“I would come anywhere they wanted me,” said Al Taee, 37, who left Kuwt, Iraq, a decade ago and now owns a smoke shop in Phoenix. “Everyone is happy. They want to have a choice.”

By the score, Iraqi Americans began arriving Monday at the closed base, the only location west of the Mississippi where they can register to vote in the election.

Some 67,000 Iraqis living in the Western U.S. are eligible to register at the base. Organizers said they expected about half to make the trek before registration was due to end Sunday, many arriving in bus caravans organized out of Seattle, San Diego and Phoenix.

To vote, registrants must return to the base Jan. 28, 29 or 30. The paper ballots will contain the names of 230 candidates vying for seats in Iraq’s transitional national assembly.

The process will be duplicated in the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Detroit, Nashville and Washington -- two of the cities have two polling places each -- and in 13 other countries: Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. As many as 4 million Iraqis live in these nations.

About 235,000 of the Iraqis who live in the United States are eligible to vote in the election, a fraction of the 14 million who have registered in Iraq. But for those who arrived Monday, it was a deeply satisfying moment.

“For me, it’s a historic day,” said Nick Kenaya, 60, of San Diego, a Baghdad high school teacher who said he was targeted for death 25 years ago by Saddam Hussein’s regime after he refused to join the ruling Baath Party. He escaped with his wife, Barbara, an elementary school teacher.

“We’ve been waiting for this day for over three decades,” he said. “Tens of thousands of Iraqis living in the U.S. escaped the [Hussein] regime to live in this free country. Now, for the first time they can express themselves freely to rebuild the country in a democratic way.

“I can’t express how happy I am.”

Those who arrived at the base went through heavy security. Cars and bags were searched, registrants walked through metal detectors and some were patted down by security guards. None of the steps seemed to dampen the mood, however.

“This is the first time I’ve felt proud to be an Iraqi,” said Melissa Aleshaiker, who drove to the base during her lunch break from her engineering job in Irvine. “I feel like I’m born again.”

Aleshaiker immigrated to the U.S. 20 years ago as a youngster with her parents, who made the decision to leave their homeland after a cousin studying to be a doctor was snatched in the night by government agents and disappeared.

“The majority of people there love democracy and want to be part of a free society,” said Aleshaiker, who married an Iraqi living in Irvine. “To be a woman, it means even more to come because of that. I want the Iraqi girls to have hope in life.”

Qadriah Alasady drove two hours from San Diego with her husband and her son Sajad, 15. Sajad translated for his mother, who speaks only Arabic, expressing the “joyfulness” she felt being able to vote for a country she had fled in 1993.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to vote, and she thanks God,” said Sajad as his mother gestured excitedly, wearing a head-to-toe black chador.

“Saddam tortured us and burned our homes,” he said of his family, Shiite Muslims from Nasiriyah. “People were being assassinated, tortured and killed. My cousin was taken and we haven’t seen him since.... She thanks the U.S. for ridding us of Saddam Hussein.”

Nearly everyone who showed up to register had studied the candidates whose names will appear on the ballot, and most said they knew how they would vote.

A similar scene played out Monday in the northern Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill., where dozens of Iraqi immigrants were lined up and waiting to register when election officials finally arrived with boxes of forms. With the temperature falling to the single digits, voters slowly filed into the Assyrian National Council of Illinois community center.

In the northwest Chicago suburb of Rosemont, more than 60 Iraqis arrived after teaming up to rent a bus from their home in Lincoln, Neb., and make the 550-mile, eight-hour-plus trip.

Despite the hassle, many Iraqis sounded philosophical.

“The reality is, we’re blessed that there is an election at all,” said Ashak Toma, 58.

A former liquor wholesaler, Toma emigrated from the Basra area last year after insurgents destroyed his business and threatened his family.

“This won’t magically fix everything, but it’s a good place to start,” Toma said.

“Could it have been better? Yes. Am I happy that I can vote? Yes. Do I think my vote will count? All I can do is hope for the best.”

In the Detroit area, volunteers from the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center rented buses and vans to take area Iraqis to and from the city’s one polling center, in Southgate.

Election workers used fabric and portable screens at a warehouse to create 60 “rooms” to handle the registration process for the International Organization for Migration, the nongovernmental group chosen by Iraq’s electoral commission to organize the process.

For many, the excitement of registering outweighed the inconvenience and debates over political differences.

“Today, we are all just Iraqis,” said Susan Eliah, 52, who left Iraq for the Chicago area 10 years ago. “We can all agree that having an election is a positive step for our country’s future.”

Some registrants said they felt obligated to vote in the U.S. as a show of solidarity for their relatives in Iraq, many of whom fear that violence will make voting there difficult or impossible.

“This is a turning point in our history,” said Salem Aljawad, an election organizer at the El Toro polling station.

“Everyone is going the extra mile for this. These are the measures that have to be taken to make sure this is a fair and credible election.”

Jean O. Pasco reported from Orange County, P.J. Huffstutter from Chicago.