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ALTUN KOPRI,
Iraq, Dec. 15 - As lines of voters snaked out of two
polling stations along the main road, and as
celebratory gunfire resounded through the
neighborhood, a group of children chanted Kurdish
songs and waved Kurdish flags as they barreled
through the middle of this village.
By all appearances here, today's elections for
national parliamentary seats may as well have been
about Kurdistan and Kurdish dreams. Iraq, or the
idea of Iraq, seemed as distant as the moon.
"I will vote for 730," Fakhri Muhammad, 32, said as
he stood in line outside the village's primary
school, referring to the ballot number of the main
Kurdish coalition. "The list is Kurdish, and it
represents the Kurdish people."
So went the refrain throughout much of the north,
with Kurdish voters shying away from Arab candidates
and siding only with Kurdish groups, particularly
the Kurdistan Alliance, the coalition made up of the
two main Kurdish parties. It was a stark
illustration of how much the vote across Iraq had
split along ethnic and sectarian lines. For many
Kurds, a vote for the Kurdistan Alliance was first
and foremost a bid to secure autonomy for the
mountainous Kurdish homeland in the north, and only
secondarily a vote for the general welfare of Iraq.
Political fervor was especially rampant here in dry,
windswept Tamim Province, whose capital is Kirkuk,
15 miles south of Altun Kopri. Under Saddam
Hussein's rule, the government deported Kurds and
Turkmens and moved in Arabs in order to better
control the oil fields. Kurdish leaders have made no
secret of their desire to incorporate Kirkuk and
other parts of the province into Kurdistan, rather
than allowing the central government to administrate
it.
Having strong representation in the new Parliament
can help achieve that, went the thinking of Kurdish
voters.
"This entire area is Kurdistan; Kirkuk should go to
Kurdistan," said Hussein Sadr, 74, as he shuffled
out of a high school in Kirkuk, his index finger
stained purple - a sign that he had voted - his eyes
peering from behind thick glasses at the crowds of
Kurds all around. "Kirkuk now and the people here
are part of Kurdistan."
Near Mr. Sadr, minibuses filled with voters and
adorned with Kurdish flags sat outside the high
school.
It was unclear who had bused in the voters, and the
scene seemed certain to confirm, at least for some
Arabs and Turkmens that the Kurdish parties were
indeed transporting voters from other provinces to
boost their support here.
In Altun Kopri, a mixed Kurdish-Turkmen village
whose name means "Golden Bridge" in the Turkmen
language, electoral officials at two schools said
that by 10:30 a.m., they had turned away a total of
400 people who did not have their names on voter
rolls. Some may have just gone to the wrong school,
but others may have been trying to vote illegally,
the officials said. Ferman Abdullah, the official in
charge of polling at the village high school, said
the 200 turned away at his school, which had 3,500
registered voters, were primarily Kurds.
"That's the only problem we have right now," Mr.
Abdullah said. "Their names weren't on the lists."
In the weeks leading up to the elections, this
province had come under more scrutiny than any other
because the Iraqi electoral commission had uncovered
possible voter fraud. At the end of August, in the
final two days of voter registration, 81,000 new
names appeared on the province's registration lists,
an increase far above the national average.
Electoral officials announced earlier this week that
many of the applications looked suspicious. They
decided that any of the 81,000 showing up today
would have to present extra documentation to prove
his or her identity.
The surge in registration came from six registration
centers, five of them in Kurdish areas, including
one here in Altun Kopri.
At the village primary school, an electoral observer
representing one of the Kurdish parties complained
to a visiting American diplomat that too many Kurds
were being turned away.
"They say, 'I came from this area, and Saddam kicked
me out, and I can even show you my piece of land.
And now I don't have the right to vote?"' said the
observer, Rashad Wali.
A Sunni Arab observer outside the same school
appeared more satisfied.
"The process is good, everybody is good and it's
going very well," said Haithem Hashem, 25, a
supporter of the Iraqi Consensus Front, a coalition
of religious Sunni groups.
The 690,000 registered voters in this province had
47 choices on the ballot. Of those, 21 were aimed at
appealing to Sunni Arab voters, who largely
boycotted the vote last January for a transitional
government. There was also more diversity this time
around among the Kurdish choices - the Kurdistan
Islamic Union broke off from the Kurdish coalition
to run on its own. (Perhaps as a consequence, gunmen
attacked five of its offices in the north earlier
this month, killing two party members.)
A few voters stepped across ethnic and religious
lines when they cast their ballots today, showing
that maybe, just maybe, the prejudices here could be
uprooted after all.
"I voted for the Kurdistan Alliance," said Dina
Awiya, 22, a Christian student standing in the
courtyard of a polling center in Kirkuk. "We have a
connection with the Kurds. We've lived with them
since we were children. Until now, we've been one
team."
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