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SULAIMANIYAH,
Kurdistan-Iraq, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Many Kurds voting
in Iraq's election on Thursday, far away from
violence plaguing most of the country, saw the poll
primarily as a way to reinforce their ethnic
identity.
"We want to prove to the whole world that we are a
nation and we exist," said Saman Shawkat, a
25-year-old car mechanic who brought his entire
family with him to the polling station in this
northeastern city near the border with Iran.
Asked if he was worried that the participation of
Sunni Muslims in the electoral process after a
previous boycott would dilute the Kurdish vote,
Shawkat shook his head.
"We aren't afraid," he said, standing by a polling
stations wearing traditional baggy woollen Kurdish
trousers. "We admit they are a good nation and just
like us, they have the right to vote. We are a free
nation."
A steady stream of people filed into polling
stations in Sulaimaniya, a city free of the suicide
bombings, killings and kidnappings that have dogged
much of the rest of Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion
in 2003.
Children criss-crossed the main street on bicycles
and some people came out in their cars, standing up
through the sun- roofs, clapping and waving Kurdish
flags.
All non-official cars were banned from Iraq's roads
on election day but authorities in Kurdistan took a
lenient view of those who chose to ignore the ban.
People dressed in their best clothes. Some women
wore traditional colourful sequined dresses and
children had the green, white and red flag of
Kurdistan painted on their cheeks.
Ismael Hana Amin, a 50-year-old government civil
servant, said he had walked for an hour with his
wife, 18-year-old daughter and five- year-old son to
vote.
Amin said he was voting "to determine my people's
fate so we can do what we want and we can separate
from those Arabs".
Since the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds, who make up
about 20 percent of Iraq's 27 million people, have
had effective autonomy in a three-province region of
northeastern Iraq.
For many, however, that is not enough, and the dream
of a fully independent Kurdish state is alive among
many of the population.
Abdullah Sayid, 61, and his wife Rana Abdul Rahman,
53, recalled how they had fled their home for the
mountains three times under Saddam Hussein, who
oversaw a series of brutal assaults on the Kurds
during the 1980s.
"I don't want to flee to the mountains. I want a
good life," she said.
Most people in the Kurdish provinces said they were
voting for the Kurdish bloc, which took around 25
percent of the vote in Iraq's last election in
January. An informal Reuters exit poll found that 41
out 50 voters had given the bloc their vote.
But Abdul Rahman Tawfet, a mullah and religious
teacher, said he supported the opposition Kurdistan
Islamic Union, whose offices were attacked in
several Kurdish towns and cities in the run-up to
the vote, possibly because of their Islamist stance.
"It's a national duty to vote. We are Iraqis,"
Tawfet said, adding that he would cast a ballot "to
make sure our country is independent from war,
terrorists and occupiers."
Reuters
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