Marines help city prepare for historic vote

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer | Friday, January 21, 2005 11:12 PM PST ∞

NAJAF, IRAQ ---- Despite the threat of election-day violence, many residents of this mostly Shiite city say they are determined to cast their vote on Jan. 30, and are counting on U.S. Marines and local police forces to help them do it.

"I think it is more important than praying even, more important than anything," said Hussein Abud Ali, 43, an Iraqi oil ministry worker who runs a government gas station on the eastern edge of Najaf.

If they are able to vote in great numbers, Shiite Muslims, who represent about 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, stand to gain the majority of seats in a new legislative assembly that will write Iraq's new constitution and choose executive branch leaders.

It would be the first time in Iraq's modern history that any group other than the Sunni elite has called the shots in Iraq. Especially under the oppressive Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein, Shiites have often been the voiceless majority in Iraq.

Ali was among many on Friday who said they hoped the political process could somehow tip the balance in the Shiites' favor and stop or limit the rampant violence in Iraq.

"We need freedom and democracy because we are so tired from the war," he said, expressing a common hope in the city that the vote would somehow stop the violence in Iraq. "We spend hard time, always war, war, war. Now we need only peace."

While Marines stationed in Najaf have helped reinforce polling places and train and equip Iraqi police and soldiers, it will be the local security forces who will protect voters on election day.

Marines said they plan on hanging back on election day, patrolling other parts of the city in support of the Iraqi troops.

Col. Tony Haslam, commander of the Camp Pendleton-based 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, toured police stations and polling places Friday to check the preparations by Iraqi police, National Guard, government facilities guards and border patrol.

Marine and Army engineers have placed large concrete blocks in front of the schools used as polling places to stop suicide bombers from driving their vehicles into crowds at the polls.

Haslam inspected the reinforcements and quizzed local officers on their additional security plans.

"Remember, no one can bring anything into these facilities," he told a gaggle of variously clad and armed Iraqi officers at one schoolyard. "I want everyone in the same way, and out the same way. Got that?"

The officers nodded affirmatively and asked the colonel for more rifles and men.

Haslam said the local forces will have a reassuring effect on the voters, but a determined attacker ---- especially a suicide bomber ---- could probably still sow terror at the polls.

"Is it a perfect set up? No way," said Haslam after inspecting one site Friday. "But they'll do their best. And that's all you can really do with more than 200-some sites."

Standing in his butcher shop amid severed cow and goat heads and among piles of bloody hooves in his small gutting stall, Kdaiur Ali said he was not worried about security.

"We don't feel scared," he said, tapping a Viceroy cigarette against his blood-soaked shirt before sticking it in his mouth and lighting it. "It's a secure city now."

Some residents said voting has become almost like a test of their faith.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite religious leader who happens to live in Najaf, recently told all Iraqi Shiite Muslims that it was their religious duty to vote.

"Sistani say even for women to disobey their husbands if they tell them they can't vote," said 36-year-old Najafi Kasim al Asadi, a Najaf resident who translates Arabic for Marines stationed in Najaf.

With the religious overtones to the election coinciding with the arrival of thousands of Muslim pilgrims for the celebration of the Islamic festival of Eid this weekend, Marine leaders said they worry that the influx of outsiders could mean trouble for the elections.

"In the past, that's when we've had problems," Haslam said Friday as he passed a long line of crowded busloads of pilgrims being searched by Iraqi police before entering the city.

"Within those thousands of people come extra weapons and other things," Haslam said, adding that the car bombings in Najaf and Karbala on Dec. 19 coincided with funerals of prominent residents that brought hundreds of mourners into the streets.

"That's why these searches, these checkpoints, are so important," he said. "It (festivals and funerals) is always an opportunity."

For the most part, however, Haslam said the local residents of Najaf, who have everything to gain in the election, will be their own best defense against terror attacks.

He said their general confidence tells him they don't expect trouble.

"They know there are big changes to come," Haslam said after one stop Friday. "This (election) is just the start of it. So they're enthusiastic."

Contact staff writer Darrin Mortenson at dmortenson@nctimes.com.