Election Day in Erbil

Defense Tech super­star cor­re­spon­dent David Axe made it to Iraqi Kurdistan, just in time for the elec­tions. Here’s the first of his reports for the site. (The pics are his, too, sent by sat­phone.)
There’s a party in north­ern Iraq, and everyone’s invited.
While the insur­gency in north-​​central Iraq enters its third year, the Marines root out for­eign fight­ers in the west­ern desert and south­ern Iraq becomes increas­ingly aligned to Islamist Iran, north­ern Iraq is peace­ful, secure and rel­a­tively pros­per­ous, thanks to an uneasy alliance of two rival Kurdish polit­i­cal par­ties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
The Iraqi Kurds had been fight­ing for inde­pen­dence since Iraq’s incep­tion in the wake of WWI. In the wake of Desert Storm, with Saddam Hussein’s army in ruins, the Kurds went on a mas­sive offen­sive and carved out an autonomous province with two cap­i­tals: Erbil the west under the KDP and Sulaymaniyah in the east under the PUK. From 1994 to 1997 the two par­ties fought each other until M. Albright inter­vened. When U.S.-led forces invaded in 2003 the Kurds increased their hold and cemented their truce, field­ing a sin­gle slate of can­di­dates in both the Jan. elec­tions for an interim assem­bly and today’s elec­tion for the first per­ma­nent assem­bly. During these years of peace between the par­ties, the Kurds have built a regional elected assem­bly, high­ways, indus­try, an army, police, a judi­ciary and air­ports. They’ve wel­comed back for­mer expa­tri­ates, includ­ing size­able minori­ties of Jews and Christians. Kurdistan has grown and pros­pered and diver­si­fied.
But cracks are show­ing. More Kurds and demand­ing that their con­trol extend south to oil-​​rich Kirkuk, which would alien­ate the Arabs that form 60 per­cent of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment. Others want for­mal inde­pen­dence, which would piss off pretty much every­body, espe­cially Turkey which has its own Kurd prob­lem. And while the KDP and PUK have stayed tight, they have a new Kurdish rival now, the rad­i­cal Islamic League of Kurdistan. While most Kurds are Muslims, few are rad­i­cal, and the ILK threat­ens to upset the mod­er­ate pro­gres­sive atmos­phere. Recent weeks have seen riots at ILK head­quar­ters. Everyone is blam­ing every­one else.
Today’s elec­tions were typ­i­cal of the votes in Jan. (interim assem­bly) and October (ref­er­en­dum). With my inter­preter and dri­ver we toured three polling places, chat­ted with work­ers and vot­ers and cops and found every­thing in order. It appears the KDP-​​PUK coali­tion will sweep. Tonight, with polls closed, Kurds are danc­ing and singing in the streets. So the peace holds … for now.
I’ll be in Erbil for two weeks, explor­ing local pol­i­tics and get­ting a feel for how Kurds are bal­anc­ing their grow­ing aspi­ra­tions against the con­cerns of their neigh­bors and coun­try­men. Stay tuned.
– David Axe

UPDATE 11:39 EST: Word has it there’s been voter fraud in Kurdistan. Big deal.
It’s Friday evening in Erbil. Election Day eupho­ria is fad­ing. Walking the mar­ket with my C-​​SPAN co-​​cameraman David Burch, we find an inter­net caf with blink­ing flu­o­res­cent lights and a chug­ging gen­er­a­tor pow­er­ing some ancient hard­ware. Everyone’s smok­ing cig­a­rettes at their sta­tions.
“How much?” I ask in bad Kurdish. The pro­pri­eter shrugs. We set­tle on a dol­lar per hour.
I log on and see that NPR is report­ing voter fraud here in cheery Kurdistan.
I’m not sur­prised. Earlier David and I hailed a cab (“How much?” I asked in back Kurdish. The dri­ver shrugged.) and dropped in on our Norwegian buddy Per Thorsdalem at the high-​​security Sheraton hotel — with work­ing toi­lets!
Per is a busi­ness­man. He’s here as an advance party for some Norwegian firm. He fig­ured, hey, I’m in Erbil. Why not be an inter­na­tional elec­tions observer?
He told me this morn­ing that he wit­nessed two types of fraud: fam­ily vot­ing, where fathers dic­tate their chil­drens’ votes; and mul­ti­ple vot­ing. The for­mer is an inevitable arti­fact of a patri­ar­chal soci­ety. The lat­ter is no sur­prise in the Middle East, and easy to per­pe­trate, what with the red-​​dye-​​and-​​finger method of pre­vent­ing it.
But nei­ther Per nor I is as scan­dal­ized as NPR appar­ently is. The elec­tions here went off with­out a hitch. No bombs. No vio­lence at all. Quiet. As orderly as things get in Iraq. And, man, were the Kurds ever thrilled to vote. Per told me that in one rural vil­lage out­side Erbil, info on reg­is­tra­tion pro­ce­dures never got out, and hun­dreds of vil­lagers were turned away from the poll. They were dev­as­tated. Democracy is life to these peo­ple — or, as one Kurdish Christian named Jacob told me: “Democracy is the best reli­gion for mankind.” He meant that, and most Kurds agree with him.
There will always be fraud and cor­rup­tion in Iraq. (In one des­per­ate moment, a cab­bie here charged me 1000 times the nor­mal rate for a short trip!) Nevertheless, these elec­tions have been a resound­ing suc­cess.
– David Axe

December 16th, 2005 | Axe in Iraq (and Elsewhere) | 297613 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2005/12/16/election-day-in-erbil/Election+Day+in+Erbil2005-12-16+12%3A32%3A12jason You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.