Iraqis from Nashville to London took part in their country's first democratic election in half a century, determined to shape the future of their homeland and praying for an end to the insurgency.
On the second day of voting for expatriates, Iraqis in the US drove hundreds of kilometers Saturday to reach the five cities with polling places: Nashville, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington.
PHOTO: EPA
According to the International Organization for Migration, the Geneva-based body conducting the expatriate vote, 5,643 Iraqis voted on the first day of the Jan. 28-30 ballot in the US, about 22 percent of the total that registered.
Tens of thousands more are expected to vote in 13 other countries during balloting that ran through yesterday, the same day as elections in Iraq for the 275-member assembly that will draft Iraq's new constitution.
In Nashville, home to the largest Kurdish community in the US, about 20 Kurds celebrated by dancing and waving flags in the rain.
"It is celebration because for the first time they taste the freedom of this country," said George Khamou, of Little Rock, Arkansas, who watched the dancers. "This is really a big celebration for all of us here -- the Kurdish, the Arabs, the Christians, everybody. All we say now is all of us are Iraqis, because we are all the same."
Voters had their right index finger dipped in ink as a safeguard against voting fraud, then dropped paper ballots into boxes. To be eligible, voters must be born in Iraq or have an Iraqi father, and have turned 18 on or before Dec. 31 last year.
One busload of about 50 Iraqis traveled 835km from Lincoln, Nebraska, to cast their ballots Saturday in the Chicago area.
Arkan al-Hasnawi, 33, of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, has spent the last two weeks in Nashville staying with his family and brother Thaban, 38.
"It's a long time we've been waiting for vote," Arkan al-Hasnawi said. "Everybody is excited to vote, everybody should get that chance -- to vote for a new Iraq."
In Norway, a fleet of buses transporting about 4,000 Iraqis left Oslo bound for polling stations in Goteborg in southern Sweden, 320km away. More than 31,000 others living in Sweden also have registered to vote.
In Denmark, the line for the polling station in the Copenhagen suburb of Taastrup stretched for 700m, despite freezing temperatures. About 4,000 Iraqis voted in Denmark on Friday and another 5,000 cast ballots Saturday, organizers said.
Violence marred the voting at a polling station in Sydney, Australia. Protesters, identified by ballot organizers as Wahhabis -- followers of an austere brand of Sunni Islam suspected of having influence over militants in Iraq -- yelled insults at voters.
Some 50 people fought and scuffled after the protesters began taking photographs of the poll, being conducted in a neighborhood dominated by Iraqi Shiites, organizers said, forcing the polling station to close for an hour.
Many of Australia's estimated 80,000 Iraqis declined to register for the election, fearing that their votes would make relatives in Iraq terrorist targets.
People in other countries complained of low turnout. Less than a quarter of the estimated 1.2 million expatriate Iraqis eligible to vote worldwide had registered by the second day of the poll.
"It is a shame, for me it is very depressing," said Hashim Ali of the Iraqi Community Association in Britain, where 30,961 of the estimated 150,000 Iraqis eligible to vote had registered. "These are great days for Iraqi people. I feel let down by the Iraqi community in the UK."
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