The Philadelphia Inquirer

NEW CARROLLTON, Md. – Saad Alda raised his index finger, stained with purple ink. For the young Iraqi, it was the color of freedom.

“This makes me feel much better for my country,” said Alda, who drove overnight from Boston. “Anything I can do to help my country, I will. From far away, the only thing we can do is vote.”

Amid extraordinary security, expatriate Iraqis around the world began voting Friday for a new National Assembly. In this Washington suburb hard by the Capital Beltway, known chiefly as an Amtrak stop, Iraqis from hundreds of miles away arrived to cast a paper ballot in a meaningful election, most of them for the first time in their lives.

The setting, in the low-slung concrete conference center of a Ramada Inn, seemed slightly bizarre, but the voters spoke as if they had reached nirvana.

Whether clad in elegant furs or casual work clothes, they wore the same expression of pride and near-tearful joy.

“This is truly a historic day,” said Fawaz Saraf, a 47-year-old structural engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation. “It represents a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel, but only a glimpse. We can only see the light when all Iraqis work together to build a better Iraq.”

Mahdi Abdullah, a New York City physician in a dark, formal suit, said he asked his six-year-old son what democracy meant.

“He told me, “It means you can vote the good people in and the bad people out,”‘ Abdullah said.

Voting continues until 5 p.m. Sunday, and many of the Philadelphia-area Iraqis who registered to vote here last week said they would return during the weekend.

Intisar Issa, who was five months pregnant when she walked across mountainous terrain to escape Iraq nine years ago, plans to drive down with her husband and son today.

“I’m crying because I’m so happy,” said the mother of three and business student. “Finally, I get to vote for my country.”

Also planning to arrive Saturday is Philadelphia cabdriver Rahman Alamaru. “It’s very important,” he said. “We want to find a solution for our people in Iraq, to stop the killing and live in peace.”

The Ramada Inn is the only official polling center for expatriate Iraqis living in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States. Election officials originally predicted that as many as 20,000 people might vote at this site, but only 2,048 registered, according to Jeremy Copeland, an official with the Iraq out-of-country voting organization.

Eligible Iraqis may be American citizens, but must be at least 18, born in Iraq, hold citizenship or prove that their father was Iraqi.

About 26,000 of 240,000 eligible Iraqis in the United States registered to vote, Copeland said. There are four other polling centers, in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Nashville.

Tens of thousands more are expected to vote at sites in 13 other countries, mostly in Europe and the Middle East.

Voters began arriving in bitter cold New Carrollton shortly after 7 a.m. Friday, at a hotel surrounded by police vehicles, Jersey barriers, bomb-sniffing dogs and edgy security officers. Most of the Iraqis were escorted through the metal detectors with little fuss.

Once inside the exhibition hall, which was decorated with posters, lists of instructions on how to vote and large sample paper ballots, voters checked in with the registrars. They were given paper ballots listing more than 200 party slates.

The voting booth consisted of a 3-foot-high cardboard shield that provided a bit of concealment from the myriad television cameras present.

Voters indicated the slate of their choice with a single mark, then dropped their ballots into a large clear plastic barrel placed on a desk. To prevent fraud, their index fingers were rolled on a purple ink pad.

The entire process took no more than 10 minutes.

After depositing his ballot, Husamuddin Sadalla appeared ready to burst into tears.

“This is the first time I am voting of my own choice for my future, for my country, for my family,” said Sadalla, a security official who came to the United States in 1996. “This means a lot for freedom, for liberty and for my people, the Kurds.

“This is the first time the Kurds have been able to vote freely,” he said.

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Fatima al Khasaji, 19, was born in Iran; her family moved to Virginia from the Netherlands just six months ago.

“I feel so great to be able to vote,” she said. “It gives us new life, a new beginning.”

Dean Ali, a self-employed Bostonian, came to the United States in 1991 and said it didn’t matter how far he had to come, this vote “will free Iraq.”

“I’m very happy for Iraqis,” he said. “We’re going to have a good government.”

The security at the hotel, however, couldn’t fail to remind many voters that, for friends and relatives back home, voting on Sunday may be a much more dangerous exercise.

“I don’t know whether I would have voted if I was in Iraq,” said Saraf, the engineer. “I truly appreciate and respect the courage of those Iraqis who will risk their lives on Sunday to build a better Iraq.”

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(c) 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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GRAPHIC (from KRT Graphics, 202-383-6064): 20050117 USIRAQ voting

AP-NY-01-28-05 2019EST

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