Iraqis on cusp of landmark election

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Iraqi soldiers display their ink-stained fingers Wednesday after casting their votes in the country’s provincial elections in Najaf. The polls opened Wednesday for members of the Iraqi security forces, detainees and hospital patients. General voting is set to take place Saturday.


Iraqis on cusp of landmark election
By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, January 29, 2009

BAGHDAD — In four unremarkable warehouses in an equally unremarkable corner of Baghdad, household products that will eventually make their way to Iraqi homes move alongside election materials that insurgents are willing to kill and die to disrupt.

The warehouse is part of an election storage and distribution site in a commercial complex. The site has been busy in recent days with workers getting ready for Saturday’s provincial elections.

With Iraq on the cusp of true stability, it is impossible to overstate the importance of this year’s elections. Iraqis will duck into voting booths and, by writing a few small numbers, voice their opinion about where the country has been and where it’s going. But like the consumer goods moving alongside official documents, this election will be an event of contrasts: Hope moving alongside despair.

This election is one that leaders have declared a landmark on the road to Iraqi sovereignty. Nowhere was this clearer than at the storage site itself. A fresh-faced Iraqi second lieutenant oversaw the security of the area. Iraqi army soldiers and Iraqi police manned multiple security checkpoints without a single American, while representatives from the Independent High Electoral Commission managed the site.

U.S. forces helped with security for the site. But the American brigade commander for the area doesn’t even venture into the actual storage area for the election materials except to have tea with election officials.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60311