Bobby F.
12-15-2005, 04:00 PM
Boy. These people really seem like they want Sadaam back...:rolleyes:
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Twenty-Seven Million Iraqis against 10,000 Terrorists
By Vera Kämper and Alexander Schwabe
Once again, it is time for the Iraqis to cast their ballots. This time, however, more Sunnis than ever before are likely to vote. Violence has been mounting in recent weeks in anticipation of the vote, but the people of Iraq refuse to be cowed.
AP
An Iraqi woman shows her ink-stained finger after casting her vote in the Iraqi election at a polling station in the town of Az Zubayr, in southern Iraq on Thursday.
The line winds through the enormous atrium of the old post office on Luckenwalder Straße in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg; waiting time is some two hours. Old men, pregnant women, and little kids stand around, some keeping warm by wrapping Iraqi flags around their shoulders. They don't mind waiting. These exiled Iraqi citizens in Berlin are taking part in the second democratic election since the fall of Saddam.
Sarmand Dashti is one of them. "Being allowed to vote here only strengthens the optimism that's been spreading since the war," he says. "The fact that Iraqis in exile can vote proves the democracy movement is coming along." Instead of voting by mail, the 56,000 Iraqis in Germany have the option -- in Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, and Cologne -- of casting their votes at polling stations, on a four-page ballot with more than 230 parties and party alliances. The idea of guiding Iraq's future from abroad makes the community buzz with excitement, and buses full of voters from Poland and Chechnya have come to Berlin, which is home to about 3,000 Iraqis. Abdullah Seuki came here from Kiel to vote in person. "I feel as though I've been reborn," he says.
Policemen and snipers guard the streets around a polling station in Kreuzberg. Before the Iraqis go inside, they pass through a security check, like airline passengers. They're very patient; this election is serious. "We've got a chance to help our children live in peace," says Soror Hussain, a mother of two girls who emigrated to Berlin in 1981. But she refuses to divulge her ethnic and religious background. "We're Iraqis above all," she says. "That's what counts." Khonaw Dashti, a Kurd, agrees and says she doesn't mind waiting in line with Shiites and Sunnis. "We have to get beyond that eventually," she says.
In Iraq, too, the stark boundaries between ethnic and religious groups have started to soften. Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi leads a secular list with great expectations; and an interfaith alliance of Shiites has brought in a number of Sunni parties, thanks to the influential Sunni cleric Adnan al-Dulaimi. Last January, of course, Sunnis boycotted the first free election Iraq had seen in decades.
Sunnis to take part in the vote
This time, over 1,000 Sunni leaders have signed a fatwa to urge the faithful to vote. And Sunni participation is essential if the democratic process is to have any chance at all. Sunni regions still see the worst resistance to the newly forming state, and only a high turnout among the Sunni minority -- which held the most powerful positions under Saddam Hussein -- can bring about a government recognized by all the factions in Iraq.
The signs are good. Like Iraqis in Germany and in a further 14 countries worldwide, those at home in Iraq are today heading for the ballot box. Six insurgence groups, including al-Qaida, have announced that they will not attack polling stations on election day. Rather, only the war against the foreign occupation forces will be continued during the elections.
In other words, it may be that US President George W. Bush was right earlier this week when, during a speech in Philadelphia, he said the Iraqi people were choosing freedom over terror. Some 8 million of the 15 million eligible Iraqis ventured to the ballot box in January's election to form an interim government. In October, when the country held a referendum on its new constitution, that had grown to 10 million. Today, without a widespread boycott by the Sunnis, electoral participation is expected to be even higher.
There have, of course, been setbacks recently. Violence is still an everyday fact of life in Iraq and attacks have increased once again in recent weeks. A leading Sunni candidate, Mizhar Al-Dulaimi, was shot and killed two days ago in Ramadi and a number of other parliamentary candidates have come under attack. Even former Prime Minister Allawi had to flee a stone-throwing mob in Najaf.
Despite the terror, more and more Iraqis are gaining in confidence. Trust in the new Iraqi army increased from 38 percent in October 2003 to a current 67 percent according to a survey that SPIEGEL and the US television station ABC commissioned from the universities of Oxford and Baghdad. Improving quality of life in Iraq is helping to fuel confidence. Household incomes have more than doubled in the last two years. Optimism is high with two thirds of Iraqis confident that the situation will be "somewhat better" or "much better" a year from now. Just as many say their life is currently better than it was during Saddam's dictatorship.
"A watershed transformation"
Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an early presidential candidate for the Democrats in last year's election, recently reported on his latest trip to Iraq in the Wall Street Journal. He says: "The Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." The progress in Iraq is "visible and practical". In the largely Kurdish north, security and prosperity are increasing. The primarily Shiite south remains largely free of terrorism and is experiencing greater economic activity. Even in the Sunni triangle, between Baghdad, Tikrit and Ramadi, where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur, progress is being made: Despite the daily examples of brutal violence, Sunni candidates were able to carry out energetic election campaigns.
"It is a war between 27 million and 10,000" Lieberman wrote. "Twenty-seven million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam "revengists," Iraqi Islamic extremists, or al-Qaida foreign fighters."
The Iraqi officials are well equipped. Voters can deposit their vote in a total of 33,000 polling stations. More than 7,600 candidates are fighting for 275 seats in parliament. Of the 230 political parties, forming 19 alliances, five have a real chance of build a majority coalition:
United Iraqi Alliance (list number 555): The Shiite alliance won the elections in January with an overwhelming majority of nearly 50 percent. The most influential Shiite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, openly supported the alliance during the interim elections in January -- the first free election in decades -- and in the run up to the current elections supported, at least indirectly, their re-election.
The alliance is made up of 18 conservative party groups -- some religious, some secular. Three main groupings dominate the political grouping: the Dawa Party, led by the current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari (two thirds of Iraqis say he is doing a good job); the pro-Iranian Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) under the leadership of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim; and the nationalist Sadr movement, which has formed round the populist Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr.
During the campaign the alliance focused on security, sovereignty and national reconstruction. It promises to wipe out the Sunni-supported insurgency. In addition the alliance wants to end the subsidy of daily goods and grant compensation to families who were persecuted under Saddam.
The Kurdistan Alliance (list number 730): This is a secular alliance which is made up of eight groupings. The most influential are the two parties which dominate the Kurdish region in the north of the country: The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), under the leadership of current Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party under Massoud Barzani, the president of the semi-autonomous Kurdish area.
Talabani and Barzani have been pushing for an independent Kurdistan for a long time now. The creation of a Kurdish state is however not popular with neighboring Turkey, where Kurdish separatists have been persecuted. The Kurds won 75 seats in January, making them the second most powerful grouping in the parliament, and allowing them to form a coalition government with the United Iraqi Alliance.
The most important issue for the Kurds is finding a solution for Kirkuk. Kurds, Arabs and the Turkish minority of Turkmenia all lay claims to the town, which forms the center of the North Iraqi oil industry. The group also promises its supporters that it will expand the Kurdish area to include towns and communities which have historic links to the Kurdish population.
The Iraqi National List (list number 731): This secular alliance is made up of 15 groups, and is led by the Shiite Iyad Allawi (interim Iraqi Prime Minster from June 2004 to April 2005). He was the country's first prime minister after the fall of Saddam and is a former member of Saddam's Baath Party. The List does not identify itself along religious or ethnic lines and is doing its best to attract Sunnis, most of whom boycotted the elections in January and decisively rejected the drafted constitution. The influential Sheik Adnan al-Dulaimi has in particular brought many Sunni parties into Allawi's alliance.
In January the List won 40 seats. It wants a strong central government to oversee Iraq. The List also supports including officers who served under Saddam, in the Iraqi army.
Allawi recently criticized the government for having just as much disregard for human rights as Saddam's regime. Observers see this attack on the Shiite-dominated government, as an attempt by Allawi to score points with the Sunnis. According to a study carried out by the SPIEGEL, Allawi has the best ratings off all the politicians, albeit with the modest score of 15 percentage points.
The Iraqi Accord Front (list number 618): The Front is made up of three Islamic Sunni groups which boycotted the elections in January: the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's most powerful Sunni grouping, the Iraqi National Dialogue Council and the General Council for the People of Iraq.
The alliance calls for the withdrawal of foreign troops and more dialogue in order to bring an end to violence. It also wants to amend the constitution in order to give the regions less autonomy than previously agreed.
The Iraqi National Congress (List Number 569): The Iraqi National Congress is led by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, a former Saddam opponent who was instrumental in convincing the United States to go to war in Iraq. The INC is an umbrella group under which 10 parties are collected along with a handful of candidates running independently. One of the independents is Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, a cousin of the last Iraqi king, King Faisal II, who was deposed and killed in a coup in 1958.
"What comes after they leave"
Leading members of former dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath Party were not allowed to participate in the election by Iraq's electoral commission. The election is being observed by some 120,000 observers with around 80,000 of those coming from abroad.
Even before voting has been completed, one prediction seems safe. Given the increased number of parties and party alliances, the new Iraqi parliament will be even more varied than the old one. Plus, the new constitution calls for at least 25 percent of the parliamentary seats to be occupied by women. The ultimate make-up of the parliament has important implications for the future of the country: should two, strong and adversarial parties emerge, the process of building the next Iraqi government will be made more difficult. If, on the other hand, the Sunni minority manages to increase its parliamentary presence concurrent with a decrease in the presence of radical Shiite representatives, the ultimate creation of a peaceful state would be much easier. Should parliament end up with a wide diversity of parties represented, it is, however, likely that the forming of a government will take months.
Nevertheless, it is important for the further development of the Iraqi state that the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds are proportionally represented in the new parliament. Only then can the new government increase its legitimacy and effectiveness, allowing the eventual withdrawal of coalition troops. And only then will the fears of Iraqis such as Nowzad Heider, standing in line at a Berlin polling station, be assuaged. "As long as the Europeans and Americans are in our country, democracy can function," he said. "But what comes after they leave?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twenty-Seven Million Iraqis against 10,000 Terrorists
By Vera Kämper and Alexander Schwabe
Once again, it is time for the Iraqis to cast their ballots. This time, however, more Sunnis than ever before are likely to vote. Violence has been mounting in recent weeks in anticipation of the vote, but the people of Iraq refuse to be cowed.
AP
An Iraqi woman shows her ink-stained finger after casting her vote in the Iraqi election at a polling station in the town of Az Zubayr, in southern Iraq on Thursday.
The line winds through the enormous atrium of the old post office on Luckenwalder Straße in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg; waiting time is some two hours. Old men, pregnant women, and little kids stand around, some keeping warm by wrapping Iraqi flags around their shoulders. They don't mind waiting. These exiled Iraqi citizens in Berlin are taking part in the second democratic election since the fall of Saddam.
Sarmand Dashti is one of them. "Being allowed to vote here only strengthens the optimism that's been spreading since the war," he says. "The fact that Iraqis in exile can vote proves the democracy movement is coming along." Instead of voting by mail, the 56,000 Iraqis in Germany have the option -- in Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, and Cologne -- of casting their votes at polling stations, on a four-page ballot with more than 230 parties and party alliances. The idea of guiding Iraq's future from abroad makes the community buzz with excitement, and buses full of voters from Poland and Chechnya have come to Berlin, which is home to about 3,000 Iraqis. Abdullah Seuki came here from Kiel to vote in person. "I feel as though I've been reborn," he says.
Policemen and snipers guard the streets around a polling station in Kreuzberg. Before the Iraqis go inside, they pass through a security check, like airline passengers. They're very patient; this election is serious. "We've got a chance to help our children live in peace," says Soror Hussain, a mother of two girls who emigrated to Berlin in 1981. But she refuses to divulge her ethnic and religious background. "We're Iraqis above all," she says. "That's what counts." Khonaw Dashti, a Kurd, agrees and says she doesn't mind waiting in line with Shiites and Sunnis. "We have to get beyond that eventually," she says.
In Iraq, too, the stark boundaries between ethnic and religious groups have started to soften. Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi leads a secular list with great expectations; and an interfaith alliance of Shiites has brought in a number of Sunni parties, thanks to the influential Sunni cleric Adnan al-Dulaimi. Last January, of course, Sunnis boycotted the first free election Iraq had seen in decades.
Sunnis to take part in the vote
This time, over 1,000 Sunni leaders have signed a fatwa to urge the faithful to vote. And Sunni participation is essential if the democratic process is to have any chance at all. Sunni regions still see the worst resistance to the newly forming state, and only a high turnout among the Sunni minority -- which held the most powerful positions under Saddam Hussein -- can bring about a government recognized by all the factions in Iraq.
The signs are good. Like Iraqis in Germany and in a further 14 countries worldwide, those at home in Iraq are today heading for the ballot box. Six insurgence groups, including al-Qaida, have announced that they will not attack polling stations on election day. Rather, only the war against the foreign occupation forces will be continued during the elections.
In other words, it may be that US President George W. Bush was right earlier this week when, during a speech in Philadelphia, he said the Iraqi people were choosing freedom over terror. Some 8 million of the 15 million eligible Iraqis ventured to the ballot box in January's election to form an interim government. In October, when the country held a referendum on its new constitution, that had grown to 10 million. Today, without a widespread boycott by the Sunnis, electoral participation is expected to be even higher.
There have, of course, been setbacks recently. Violence is still an everyday fact of life in Iraq and attacks have increased once again in recent weeks. A leading Sunni candidate, Mizhar Al-Dulaimi, was shot and killed two days ago in Ramadi and a number of other parliamentary candidates have come under attack. Even former Prime Minister Allawi had to flee a stone-throwing mob in Najaf.
Despite the terror, more and more Iraqis are gaining in confidence. Trust in the new Iraqi army increased from 38 percent in October 2003 to a current 67 percent according to a survey that SPIEGEL and the US television station ABC commissioned from the universities of Oxford and Baghdad. Improving quality of life in Iraq is helping to fuel confidence. Household incomes have more than doubled in the last two years. Optimism is high with two thirds of Iraqis confident that the situation will be "somewhat better" or "much better" a year from now. Just as many say their life is currently better than it was during Saddam's dictatorship.
"A watershed transformation"
Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an early presidential candidate for the Democrats in last year's election, recently reported on his latest trip to Iraq in the Wall Street Journal. He says: "The Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." The progress in Iraq is "visible and practical". In the largely Kurdish north, security and prosperity are increasing. The primarily Shiite south remains largely free of terrorism and is experiencing greater economic activity. Even in the Sunni triangle, between Baghdad, Tikrit and Ramadi, where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur, progress is being made: Despite the daily examples of brutal violence, Sunni candidates were able to carry out energetic election campaigns.
"It is a war between 27 million and 10,000" Lieberman wrote. "Twenty-seven million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam "revengists," Iraqi Islamic extremists, or al-Qaida foreign fighters."
The Iraqi officials are well equipped. Voters can deposit their vote in a total of 33,000 polling stations. More than 7,600 candidates are fighting for 275 seats in parliament. Of the 230 political parties, forming 19 alliances, five have a real chance of build a majority coalition:
United Iraqi Alliance (list number 555): The Shiite alliance won the elections in January with an overwhelming majority of nearly 50 percent. The most influential Shiite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, openly supported the alliance during the interim elections in January -- the first free election in decades -- and in the run up to the current elections supported, at least indirectly, their re-election.
The alliance is made up of 18 conservative party groups -- some religious, some secular. Three main groupings dominate the political grouping: the Dawa Party, led by the current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari (two thirds of Iraqis say he is doing a good job); the pro-Iranian Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) under the leadership of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim; and the nationalist Sadr movement, which has formed round the populist Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr.
During the campaign the alliance focused on security, sovereignty and national reconstruction. It promises to wipe out the Sunni-supported insurgency. In addition the alliance wants to end the subsidy of daily goods and grant compensation to families who were persecuted under Saddam.
The Kurdistan Alliance (list number 730): This is a secular alliance which is made up of eight groupings. The most influential are the two parties which dominate the Kurdish region in the north of the country: The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), under the leadership of current Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party under Massoud Barzani, the president of the semi-autonomous Kurdish area.
Talabani and Barzani have been pushing for an independent Kurdistan for a long time now. The creation of a Kurdish state is however not popular with neighboring Turkey, where Kurdish separatists have been persecuted. The Kurds won 75 seats in January, making them the second most powerful grouping in the parliament, and allowing them to form a coalition government with the United Iraqi Alliance.
The most important issue for the Kurds is finding a solution for Kirkuk. Kurds, Arabs and the Turkish minority of Turkmenia all lay claims to the town, which forms the center of the North Iraqi oil industry. The group also promises its supporters that it will expand the Kurdish area to include towns and communities which have historic links to the Kurdish population.
The Iraqi National List (list number 731): This secular alliance is made up of 15 groups, and is led by the Shiite Iyad Allawi (interim Iraqi Prime Minster from June 2004 to April 2005). He was the country's first prime minister after the fall of Saddam and is a former member of Saddam's Baath Party. The List does not identify itself along religious or ethnic lines and is doing its best to attract Sunnis, most of whom boycotted the elections in January and decisively rejected the drafted constitution. The influential Sheik Adnan al-Dulaimi has in particular brought many Sunni parties into Allawi's alliance.
In January the List won 40 seats. It wants a strong central government to oversee Iraq. The List also supports including officers who served under Saddam, in the Iraqi army.
Allawi recently criticized the government for having just as much disregard for human rights as Saddam's regime. Observers see this attack on the Shiite-dominated government, as an attempt by Allawi to score points with the Sunnis. According to a study carried out by the SPIEGEL, Allawi has the best ratings off all the politicians, albeit with the modest score of 15 percentage points.
The Iraqi Accord Front (list number 618): The Front is made up of three Islamic Sunni groups which boycotted the elections in January: the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's most powerful Sunni grouping, the Iraqi National Dialogue Council and the General Council for the People of Iraq.
The alliance calls for the withdrawal of foreign troops and more dialogue in order to bring an end to violence. It also wants to amend the constitution in order to give the regions less autonomy than previously agreed.
The Iraqi National Congress (List Number 569): The Iraqi National Congress is led by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, a former Saddam opponent who was instrumental in convincing the United States to go to war in Iraq. The INC is an umbrella group under which 10 parties are collected along with a handful of candidates running independently. One of the independents is Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, a cousin of the last Iraqi king, King Faisal II, who was deposed and killed in a coup in 1958.
"What comes after they leave"
Leading members of former dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath Party were not allowed to participate in the election by Iraq's electoral commission. The election is being observed by some 120,000 observers with around 80,000 of those coming from abroad.
Even before voting has been completed, one prediction seems safe. Given the increased number of parties and party alliances, the new Iraqi parliament will be even more varied than the old one. Plus, the new constitution calls for at least 25 percent of the parliamentary seats to be occupied by women. The ultimate make-up of the parliament has important implications for the future of the country: should two, strong and adversarial parties emerge, the process of building the next Iraqi government will be made more difficult. If, on the other hand, the Sunni minority manages to increase its parliamentary presence concurrent with a decrease in the presence of radical Shiite representatives, the ultimate creation of a peaceful state would be much easier. Should parliament end up with a wide diversity of parties represented, it is, however, likely that the forming of a government will take months.
Nevertheless, it is important for the further development of the Iraqi state that the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds are proportionally represented in the new parliament. Only then can the new government increase its legitimacy and effectiveness, allowing the eventual withdrawal of coalition troops. And only then will the fears of Iraqis such as Nowzad Heider, standing in line at a Berlin polling station, be assuaged. "As long as the Europeans and Americans are in our country, democracy can function," he said. "But what comes after they leave?"