The Iraq vote: Factions at war fight for future

BAGHDAD -- Iraqis are preparing to cast ballots on Thursday, for the third time this year.

Despite continuing violence and vast challenges in the rebuilding of their battered country, many Iraqis are convinced that, if nothing else, an end to the political turmoil is in sight -- at least for the four-year term of the new Iraqi parliament.

But almost everyone acknowledges that a single Iraqi state with a unified central government cannot contain the competing aspirations of religious Shi'ites, tribal Sunnis, and Kurds looking for independence from Iraq's Arab majority.

This is how three individual Iraqis from those competing ethnic groups see the elections and the future of Iraq:

The Shi'ite: Of death and democracy

Thamer Nasser al-Ayegh, 28, knows how costly elections can be.

In January, his older brother Adil was guarding a poll site at a school in their crowded Shi'ite neighborhood, Hay al-Amal.

A policeman with less than a year's experience, Adil blocked and bear hugged a suicide bomber rushing toward voters.

He was 40 years old.

Adil's act saved some of the neighbors whom he had urged to come and vote, but the explosion killed him, and left his family almost nothing to bury.

That death, however, has only reinforced his younger brother's commitment to a democratic process that he thinks is empowering those most oppressed under Saddam Hussein -- poor members of the Shi'ite majority, like himself.

Thamer, in fact, continues in a job as dangerous as his brother's; he's a member of the Iraqi army, and on Election Day he will be guarding poll sites in the violent Sunni hotbed of Ramadi.

''I'll be doing my duty," Thamer said. ''We are happy with this mission. Hopefully, this will be the last election for four years, and things will settle down."

The Ayegh clan lives in the kind of grinding poverty that prevails in Baghdad. Thamer and his brother, Qasim, each have a single room for their families. A third room, belonging to their murdered brother, remains padlocked.

They hew close to tradition. The women all fled to the second room and closed the door when a male visitor came. Although there's no food in the larder, they always serve tea to guests.

Just before sunset, children run through the streets, veiled women hurry to the vegetable stands and the sidewalk rotisserie chicken peddlers.

On the corner of the Ayeghs' street, a pile of used tires teeters in a white clapboard structure the size of a house; their neighborhood is famed for its mechanics and its bazaar of cheap car parts.

Outside, Qasim, the older brother, washed his beat-up blue sedan. Qasim works as a construction worker. He doesn't pay close attention to politics and has little idea about the various competing parties running in the elections. He plans to vote for former prime minister Iyad Allawi, mainly because his brother and other friends support him.

''We are voting for security and order," Qasim said. ''God willing, we want someone good."

Thamer and Adil signed up for the Iraqi security forces on the same day in April 2004. They were unemployed laborers with seven children between them and needed money. The brothers went to the old Scania Factory, which the American army had converted into a base called Camp Falcon.

Thamer was selected to join the 1st Battalion of the Iraqi Army special forces. Adil became a policeman.

On election day in January, the day he died, Adil voted at 9 in the morning. Then he sent for his wife, his extended family, and the young men who lived near his house, Thamer recalled.

''Welcome, welcome, go in, go in," Adil said to all his neighbors as they entered the polling station.

His brother's death, Thamer said, ''was for the country."

''God sent him so that he would save all those kids and those people," Thamer said.

The school has been renamed for Adil Nasser.

''What we want is that all these sacrifices will bring stability to all the Iraqi people," Thamer said. ''We wish the good for everyone."

Elections, in Thamer's view, are a leap of faith.

He wants them to bring intangible benefits like peace and security, and tangible ones like a new house, so he and his brother won't have to rent. He has no idea how those ends might be achieved.

''It's the duty of every Muslim to go and vote," Thamer said. ''Just to have unity in the land of Iraq."

The Sunni: Bitterness over a new Iraq

Retired military officer Sa'ad Tahir Dawod al-Qaragholy, 50, a Sunni Arab nationalist, grew up in the Sunni neighborhood of Aadhamiya, whose history of armed resistance is a pillar of his pride.

Resistance sympathizers in Aadhamiya proudly call their area the Fallujah of Baghdad.

Since American troops first entered Baghdad, it's been one of the fiercest insurgent strongholds. It has also provided a well of support for Sunni Arab hardliners who argue that no Iraqis should participate in a political process overseen by American occupation forces.

At one point, Qaragholy left his neighborhood for the more tranquil Ghazaliya. But a year ago, he and family fell victim to violence.

A suspicious Sudanese man had moved into the house next door; police suspected he might be preparing an election day strike. When they entered the house to investigate, a month before the Jan. 31 elections, the Sudanese detonated a massive bomb, killing himself and all the police inside.

The force of the blast shattered Qaragholy's house as well. He spent nine months unable to walk, as a result of the injuries that were caused when his roof crashed down on him.

His family moved back to Aadhamiya. He still can't bend his left leg, and he limps along with the aid of a cheap black wooden cane.

Fear has morphed his contempt for the political process into a desire to have his voice heard -- a path taken by many Sunnis who held favored positions under Saddam Hussein.

''When the Sunnis boycotted, they left a vacuum that was used by the Shi'ite Alliance," Qaragholy said. ''We should participate in the elections so that Iraq can stand on its feet again."

Qaragholy said the current Iraqi government, dominated by religious Shi'ites bent on revenge, has polarized society and created an ethnic rift where there was none before.

''We in Aadhamiya do not like the sectarian discrimination between Sunnis and Shi'ites," he said. ''This is all new to us."

It is a common refrain among members of the old elite, who didn't experience the lethal punishment that Hussein meted out to Kurds and Shi'ites.

And the Hussein punishment also went to clans, towns, and people that challenged his authority.

In addition to his sectarian concerns, Qaragholy also judges the government in terms of what it has done for him personally.

By that measure, all governments since Saddam Hussein's have fallen short: Qaragholy's pension is worth less, his food ration is smaller, and no government has paid him compensation for the house destroyed nearly a year ago.

His wife and two children survived the explosion.

The family, which is now destitute, moved back to Aadhamiya and lives in an office converted into a one bedroom apartment, furnished by donations from neighbors.

He's had to stop physical therapy because he can't afford it.

Qaragholy, with a full head of bushy gray hair and a thick mustache, passes much of his day seated on a busy shopping street in Aadhamiya, with his cane propped against his leg.

He plans to cast his ballot on Thursday not for anything in particular but emphatically against the changes wrought by the US invasion and the political process that followed.

''The current government was a failure," he said. ''You can see the corruption and the sectarianism that it activated."

''What has the government done for us?" Qaragholy asked.

The Shi'ite-led coalition governing Iraq has paid claims to victims of Saddam Hussein, most of them Shi'ites who were killed in the 1980s, Qaragholy said, while brushing off claims from Sunnis who have suffered in recent years.

''Even in death the government discriminates," he said. ''What has the government provided to me so that I would re-elect it?"

The Kurd: Seeing a separate future

Chiya Atrooshi, 26, lives in Erbil, the peaceful capital of the virtually independent Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

His city is isolated from the insurgency that has brought insecurity to much of Iraq. There has been no American occupation in his area, which is policed by Kurdish security forces.

Like many Kurds, he doesn't consider himself an Iraqi. And he sees these elections, like the two that preceded it, as a referendum on Kurdish independence.

''People don't care who will rule Iraq," Atrooshi said. ''They care about the future of Kurdistan, not Iraq."

He has voted every time, and professed great excitement about the political process, which he believes neatly showcases the Kurdish case for secession from Iraq.

''I viewed it as a move to independence," he said of his votes in January and October.

A neatly groomed master's student in English literature, Atrooshi believes his education will help him get rich.

This summer, he spent three months working as an interpreter for US forces in Mosul, he said, partly for the adventure and partly because he felt a duty to help train Iraq's new army.

The leafy campus of Salahuddin University in downtown Erbil feels completely removed from its counterparts in Iraq's other major cities.

Elsewhere, the youth wings of Iraq's political parties have staged violent protests on campus, with Islamist groups demanding that women veil themselves and armed factions forcing administrators from office.

No such disturbances permeate Salahuddin University. Atrooshi and a group of friends, half men and half women, live on campus in a comfortable dorm. They share tea and schwarma at the student union. Men and women flirt and sometimes hold hands -- a rare sight in public in Iraq's Arab heartland.

The rest of Iraq, Atrooshi said, is a drag on the Kurds. He sees it as a foreign Arab nation on the far side of the green line that demarcates Kurdish-controlled area.

Atrooshi has little interest in the political competition among the different political parties in Iraq.

If he cared about Iraq as a unified nation, with room for Arabs and Kurds alike, and members of all sects and religions, Atrooshi said, he might choose to vote for a secular national party based in Baghdad.

''But Iraq doesn't think about the Kurds. They think of us as second-class," he said. ''So Kurds must think of themselves."

That means a vote for the unified Kurdish list, whose platform focuses almost entirely on expanding the borders of the Kurdish region and protecting Kurdish autonomy from Baghdad.

In fact, he said, it is a betrayal for any Kurd to vote for any party other than the Kurdish list.

''It is something emotional, related deeply to our whole life," he said.

Thursday's elections are not about democracy or political pluralism, he said; they are about reclaiming ethnic rights that had been denied by Saddam Hussein.

''People are more for Kurdistan than for Iraq," Atrooshi said. ''We have the basis for an independent country. We are so different from the Arabs."

Cambanis reported from Baghdad and Erbil; al-Izzi reported from Baghdad.