BAGHDAD -- Iraq on Sunday plans to hold its first free elections in nearly half a century, the fruit of 14 years of conflict with the United States that saw two wars, economic sanctions that impoverished the country, the chaos of a dictatorship's collapse and now occupation by foreign troops battling a violent opposition they helped create.
Will it be worth it?
An Iraqi police officer stands guard near a polling station in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Shiites account for an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's population.
(Ghaith Abdul-ahad -- Getty Images)
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Haider Ibrahim thinks so. "We waited a long time for this moment," said Ibrahim, 44, the cashier at a busy Baghdad variety store. "This election is for our children's future."
Ahmed Mohammed thinks not. "It was better under Saddam Hussein," growled the taxi driver, 42, as he pushed his car forward in an eight-hour line for gasoline.
Such stark contrasts define not only the mood of the voters but the vote itself.
Iraqis who go to the polls Sunday will make an unfettered choice of the sort that is rare in the Middle East. The result is likely to be the unprecedented, democratically sanctioned rise to power of a downtrodden majority, creating the only Arab government to be led by Shiite Muslims.
But if Iraq's beleaguered voters do not turn out in significant numbers, the election's legitimacy will inevitably be questioned. Some here say they fear the vote someday will be footnoted as the start of a war that tore Iraq apart. "If the elections are held and the U.S. turns over authority to whoever wins, Iraq will head to civil war," said Hassib Obaidi, a leader in the oil center of Kirkuk and a political scientist.
For all their importance, the elections are still a mystery to many Iraqis. Almost half the probable voters believe they will be picking a president, according to polls; they will not. They will choose 275 members of a National Assembly from among 111 political parties and coalitions whose individual candidates still remain largely unknown to voters. The assembly will select a president and prime minister and write a constitution.
Though it is widely assumed that Shiites, who account for an estimated 60 percent of the population, will emerge with the strongest hand, less is understood about the future of the Sunnis, who lost power with the fall of Hussein. Sunnis loyal to Hussein have been at the heart of the insurgency. Even mainstream Sunni political groups that oppose the continuing violence oppose holding the vote on Sunday because of the danger to voters.
"As a Sunni, I see the Shiites are going to sweep the elections unless we vote," said Nawal Younis, 46, a teacher in a nursing school in east Baghdad. "Unfortunately, the Sunnis have been marginalized."
The election will be a referendum on the past as well as a factor in determining the future. Twenty-one months after the fall of a hated dictatorship, some Iraqis are asking whether their lives are better now than they were under Hussein. The answers are mixed.
Young men who once feared being dragooned or arrested by Hussein's ubiquitous henchmen now stroll the streets and breathe deeply of their freedom. Iraqis who used to refer to Hussein only with a wordless glance over their shoulder, for fear of being overheard and reported, now unflinchingly voice their opinions. And millions who survived on low, fixed wages under Hussein rejoice at changes that have given them more cash to cope with the profusion of consumer goods coming across newly opened borders.
"The money is good," said Tala Hassan, 40, a former army officer whose pension is twice what he earned on active duty, thanks to raises by the new government. And he earns more on the side, operating a small game room and driving a taxi.
"In Saddam's time, we had no refrigerators, no air conditioning in the houses, not enough food," Hassan said. "Now we can buy all those things."
