For Shi'ite Najaf, a new direction

NAJAF, Iraq -- At choked polling stations, couples in their fanciest abbayas and suits jostled in long lines with turbaned clerics, widows in wheelchairs, and one-legged war veterans.

This holy city of shrines, pilgrims, and learned clerics represents a political current expected to be among the most influential in the new Iraq: middle-class Shi'ite Muslims who support the political process yet believe in deep ties between religion and government. Najafis yesterday crowded into polling stations, most casting their votes for Islamic parties, according to preliminary results from election officials.

Najaf's election day was more peaceful by far than in most parts of the country. In a city dominated by the preeminent Shi'ite clerics called marjaiya, election day was an opportunity for a celebration of reclaimed rights for Iraq's Shi'ites and for individual religious parties to compete in the provincial race.

"I feel I've just been born, and like a newborn baby I want to cry, but with joy," said Alaa al-Husseini al-Hilli, 40, a teacher of Islamic philosophy at the Hawza, the group of Shi'ite schools that make Najaf a center of religious study.

Although the city was one of the most peaceful places in Iraq yesterday, security forces were on edge because of intelligence that terrorists had infiltrated the police to plan an attack.

An explosion shattered the calm about 4 p.m., sending police officers careering throughout the city, pointing rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns at every passing car. Within a half-hour they learned that the blast was a controlled detonation of explosives at a US base nearby.

The incidents did not dampen the enthusiasm of Najafis: An estimated 85 percent of registered voters turned out, the Independent Electoral Commission said.

Hilli stood in the sunny courtyard of an elementary school after marking a ballot the size of wallpaper, lit a cigarette, and smiled.

"Saddam Hussein tried to destroy the Hawza by killing the clerics and the people who prayed," he said. "I haven't done anything like this my whole life."

Men like Hilli were singled out for torture and imprisonment under the former regime because Hussein saw a threat to his power in the Shi'ite clerics, with their network of schools and charity groups.

On election day it was clear how much has changed for Najaf.

The clerics no longer have to operate in the shadows. Brazen posters declared the marjaiya's endorsement of the Shi'ite List in the national elections.

The women of Najaf voted in groups, swarming in black abbayas toward the polling station.

Former exiles who returned to Najaf prepared to build its political future, including the current governor, Adnan Zurfi, who lived for nearly a decade in Chicago and Detroit, and his probable successor, Asaad al-Taee, who spent his exile in Finland.

In other parts of Iraq, returning exiles are viewed with suspicion. Often, so are foreigners.

But Najaf is different. Of the top four ayatollahs in the city, three are foreigners.

Basima Hassan Jaffar, a teacher, and her husband, Abdulrazzak al-Hakim, 63, an agricultural engineer, put on their Sunday best to go to the polling station shortly after it opened at 7 a.m.

They had returned to Najaf nearly two years ago. During their long exile in Holland, the couple went through the mechanics of democracy, voting in Dutch elections. "But it was not my country," Basima said. "This is the first time I've gotten to vote in Iraq. I had a lot of motivation inside me."

A half-hour after sunrise, Najafis cautiously filtered toward the city's polling stations, marked by long cords of black, red, and green tape, strung like streamers from the polling station entrances to the nearest main street, often a distance of 100 feet.

Najiha Hassan Raadi, 62, was pushed in her wheelchair to a polling station by her son. "I am here to cast my vote," she announced. "Saddam killed six members of my family. This is the best revenge."

After sunset, poll workers counted votes by candlelight, sitting on the floor of an emptied classroom at Fadhila primary school. It took them two hours to count the roughly 500 ballots cast in the national election. Two observers from political parties watched as an elections worker cut open the seal on the ballot box.

Ahmed Hamid Shneed, 32, was an observer for a party called the Movement for a Democratic Society. "We were watching to make sure no one tried to force voters to choose a certain party," he said, squinting at the counters through the candlelight. "We are watching to make sure everyone is honest."

The school guard wore AK-47 machine guns slung on each shoulder, and he taped an Iraqi flag to the wall as the sun set.

Like the poll workers, he planned to stay late into the night, until the ballots and tally sheets were delivered to the Najaf province headquarters of the Independent Electoral Commission.

"We haven't slept in many nights, but we are not tired," said a jubilant Fouad al-Yasiri, director of the polling center.

A stone's throw from the shrine of Imam Ali, the holiest site of Shi'a Islam, bookseller Amar Muslem al-Dujaili stood outside his publishing house.

Triumphantly, he stabbed his finger -- stained with indelible ink to mark him as a voter -- at a banner hanging above his shop proclaiming his loyalty to Imam Ali, the founder of the Shi'ite sect.

"Hanging this banner alone would have been enough to send me to prison," Dujaili said.

Under Hussein's rule, religious publishers like Dujaili circulated secret photocopies of books, such as a 10th-century treatise on Islamic morals. The offense landed him in jail for months, he said.

In all, Dujaili said he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for publishing religious texts, but with exorbitant bribes served only four years.

"I pray for George W. Bush and his family every day because he is the reason why we got rid of Saddam," Dujaili said.