SHARQA, Iraq (AP) – With a masked translator at their side, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division have spent weeks on dusty village streets ahead of next week’s Iraqi election. Patrols have collected information on polling sites in case an emergency arises and ensured safekeeping of the nation’s ballots. But when polls open Thursday, the Americans will be miles away.

Soldiers of the 101st Airborne, stationed in predominantly Sunni Arab areas of north-central Iraq, will maintain a distance of at least one mile from polls during voting. That will avoid creating the impression the Americans are controlling and influencing the process.

“We need to put a wholly Iraqi face on this election,” said Capt. James Turner, a troop commander in the division’s 33rd Cavalry Regiment.

Much is at stake in the elections, both for Iraq and for the U.S.-led coalition. Voters will select a parliament to serve for a full four-year term and name the first fully constitutional government in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s rule in 2003.

U.S. officials hope that a successful election, with a big turnout among all Iraq’s religious and ethnic communities, will build confidence in democracy among Iraqis and undermine support for the Sunni-dominated insurgency – speeding the day American and other foreign troops can go home.

Throughout the country, foreign troops will be at the ready in case of trouble but will hand security responsibility around polling stations themselves to the Iraqi police and soldiers. Quick-reaction teams will be ready if insurgents attack, Turner said.

American soldiers from the 101st’s 3rd Brigade, stationed at Forward Operating Base Summerall, will leave security and street patrols within the cities in their sector to the Iraqi soldiers they helped train.

“Though you look at the Iraqi army and they don’t look like us, they’ll do all right,” said 1st Lt. Gary Goodman, 28, of Mahanoy City, Pa. “There’s enough of them, and they know the area.”

In a dimly lit Iraqi police department in Sharqa, where officers gathered around a television to watch a Jeff Bridges movie with Arabic subtitles, soldiers discussed details of election security with their Iraqi counterparts.

Officials in the Sunni village about 150 miles north of Baghdad had not arranged for crowd control barricades. U.S. soldiers also wanted to ensure that ballots were not tampered with before the vote.

U.S. and Iraqi officials fear a surge in insurgent attacks ahead of the elections.

At least 75 people have been killed in suicide attacks in Baghdad since Tuesday, including 32 civilians who died Thursday when a suicide bomber attacked a bus full of Shiites heading to Nasiriyah in the south.

On Sunday, a mob hurling stones and shoes attacked former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and his party in Najaf, forcing them to flee the city under U.S. protection. Allawi called the attack an assassination attempt.

The task of building democracy in a country still recovering from decades of iron-fisted rule has been difficult and painful.

On Friday, soldiers detained two men in Beiji and confiscated a computer drive with videos of Americans being killed by roadside explosions. The Army also identified a soldier killed late last week.

Cpl. Jimmy Lee Shelton, 21, from Lehigh Acres, Fla., died Saturday in a mortar attack that came moments after a call to prayer.

Turner, who notified Shelton’s parents with a telephone call, expressed frustration with efforts to help the Iraqis establish a democracy.

“How do you give a group of people freedom when they don’t understand what freedom is?” Turner asked. “Is it my responsibility to teach them what freedom is? I just don’t know.”