[jatx]

I hope the naysayers choke on this. God bless the Iraqi people.


January 30, 2005
Amid Attacks, a Party Atmosphere on Baghdad's Closed Streets
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets as Iraqis here and nationwide turned out to cast ballots in the country's first free elections in 50 years.

American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, despite attacks in Baghdad and other parts of the country that took at least two dozen lives. Agence-France Pressereported that the Interior Ministry said 36 people had been killed in attacks.

Preliminary estimates of a 72 percent turnout by a member of the Independent Electorial Commission, Adel Lami, were later revised at a news conference to "about 60 percent" by another commission official. The initial estimate excluded the mainly Sunni Muslim provinces of Anbar and Nineveh. Polling stations closed at 5 p.m. Iraqi time, or 9 a.m Eastern time.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice said the elections are "going better than expected." She added in an interview on ABC TV's "This Week" that "What we are seeing here is the voice of freedom."

A sobering note came later in the day. A British C-130 Hercules military transport plane crashed near Balad, 35 miles northwest of Baghdad, , a Ministry of Defense spokesman in London said. The spokesman said the plane crashed at 5:25 p.m. Iraqi time.

Balad is the site of the largest American airfield in Iraq and is the main military logistical center. Helicopters were hovering over the site of the crash as darkness fell, looking for survivors.

The London spokesman said he had no further details on the crash, but some reports said the wreckage was spread over a wide area, suggesting it may have been shot down. Hercules transport planes can carry up to 42,000 pounds of cargo, or up to 92 people.

The voting in Baghdad streets of Baghdad were closed to traffic, but full of children playing soccer, and men and women walking, some carrying babies. Everyone, it seemed, was going to vote. They dropped their ballots into boxes even as continuous mortar shells started exploding at about noon.

Thirty civilians and six police officers died in mortar attacks and suicide bombings around the country, the Interior Minister reported, according to A.F.P. Twenty-two of the deaths occurred in Baghdad, Reuters reported, where mortar attacks took three lives and 19 people were killed by suicide bombers. At least 29 were wounded in the attacks in the capital, Reuters said.

But if the insurgents wanted to stop people in Baghdad from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner.

No one was claiming that the insurgency was over or that the deadly attacks would end. But the atmosphere in this usually grim capital, a city at war and an ethnic microcosm of the country, had changed, with people dressed in their finest clothes to go to the polls in what was generally a convivial mood.

"You can feel the enthusiasm," Col. Mike Murray of the First Cavalry Regiment, said outside a polling station in Karada, who added that the scene in Karada was essentially true for the whole area.

In Khadamiya, a mixed area in northwest Baghdad, the turnout was also large, with some representatives of political parties saying the turnout could approach 80 percent.

Even in the so-called Sunni Triangle, a hotbed of resistance to the American occupation, people voted, too. In Baquba, 60 miles north of Baghdad, all the polling stations that reported indicated a huge turnout.

In Mosul, the restive city to the north, large turnouts were reported, even in the Sunni Muslim areas. But even before 8:30 a.m., election officials were already getting reports filtering in about roadside bomb attacks, mortars and small arms fire.

"They didn't hit," Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the American commander in Mosul, said after he arrived at the election coordination center. "But that is what we think they were trying to do."

By late afternoon, Maj. Anthony Cruz, the American liaison officer with the electoral commission in Mosul, said that there were thousands of voters appearing at each polling center "across the board."

There was some discontent among Kurds, however, because of a failure to deliver election boxes. They asked for a 24-hour extension of the election, but officials said that was not possible.

There were no reports of violence in Najaf, the holiest city to Shiites, where turnout appeared to be good and there was a festive air. The city is home to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and posters of the Ayatollah beseeching people to vote could be seen all over the city.

One voter, Musel Aziz, 36, said: "I and my people have taken part in this election. We want to lead a normal life, just like people in neighboring countries."

In Ramadi, only six people had voted after seven hours at a polling station on the south side of the Euphrates River across from the town. Many people were apparently intimidated at crossing the bridge over the river, because potential voters would make themselves highly visible.

Lieut. Col. Joseph Southcott, of the 1/9 Battalion of the Second Infantry Division, which has been brought in from South Korea, said he and his men would judge their success not by the turnount, which appeared to be less than 1 percent, but whether they had created safe conditions to vote.

Units of the division, which crossed the bridge into the city, found men and boys on street corners, who shouted "Inshallah!," but showed no signs of hostility.

Several explosions broke out across Baghdad this morning, especially in the southwestern section of the city. American attack helicopters circled over the city center, and the roar of fighter jets could be heard from high above.

Qasim Muhammad Saleh, 45, walking with his two sons, Sajad, 5, and Jowid, 12, had just come from voting at Lebanon High School in Karada. The boys were carrying Iraqi flags, and Mr. Saleh's right index finger carried the ink marks showing he had cast his ballot.

"We now have our freedom," he said. "After 35 years, we finally got rid of Saddam and now we can vote for whoever we want.

"After casting my ballots, I'm hoping that the situation will improve."

Nearby, at the Nawfal primary school in Karada, there was a steady stream of people lining up to go through the barbed wire checkpoint in order to vote. Inside, people were shrugging off the sounds of explosions, and the mood was upbeat, even enthusiastic, as they went through the voting process.

Voters appeared to be turning out in large numbers in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, especially in Sulaimaniya, where attacks have been muted, news agencies reported.

General Ham said that about an hour and a half after the polls opened that there were reports of mortar attacks and small arms fire around the city. The general also said there appeared to be a good turnout in the northwest section of the city, surprising because it is a mostly Sunni area.

The election will create the basis here for the rise to power of a Shiite-dominated government for the first time in the country's 85-year history. But the chaotic situation on the ground seemed to render most predictions about the future composition of the government tenuous at best.

The turnout, and the ease with which the election is carried off, are regarded as major tests of the Bush administration's goal of planting a democratic government in the heart of the Middle East, and for its hopes to stabilize this country and eventually bring 155,000 American troops home. Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said he expected the insurgents to do everything possible to thwart the voting because free elections would "expose the emptiness of their vision for Iraq."

The election is one of a number of landmarks intended by Iraqi leaders and American officials to set up a democratic state here, following the destruction of Saddam Hussein's government in the spring of 2003. Iraqi voters will elect a 275-member national assembly, which will be empowered to write the country's permanent constitution. After that task, to be completed in the autumn, voters will choose a full-term national assembly in December.

Iraqi voters will also be selecting provincial parliaments, and the Kurds in the north will be voting for candidates to the regional government there that was set up after the Persian Gulf war in 1991.


John F. Burns and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article,Christine Hauser contributed from Mosul and Edward Wong from Najaf.