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Sunni Turnout Is High In Vote on Iraqi Charter
Iraqis in the northern city of Mosul wait in long lines to vote in the referendum on the proposed constitution, drafted largely by Shiite and Kurdish leaders.
(By Mohammed Ibrahim -- Associated Press)
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The turnout was also high in several larger cities across the mostly Sunni province, including places where the U.S. military has waged a nearly continuous battle against insurgents. Samarra, which reported 35,636 voters by mid-afternoon, had run out of ballots and was requesting more from U.S. commanders.
Not all Sunnis voted "no." In Baghdad, some said they voted for the charter because of security concerns, hoping that the next step would be rule of law.
"I insisted on voting, even though my neighbors told me it would be dangerous," Haifa Ahmed Satoor, 38, a government worker and a Sunni, said in Baghdad before voting "yes."
"I don't want more people killed in the name of Sunni resistance," Satoor said. "We already lost neighbors -- I don't want to lose relatives."
In Sadr City, a vast Shiite area in northeast Baghdad, Mayyada Ahmed already had. She came to a polling center to vote for the draft on the final day of mourning for a cousin shot by Americans at a checkpoint. A few weeks ago, three other male relatives were abducted from their home and later found dead in heaps of garbage.
"We came because we hope the future will be better," Ahmed said, reflexively waving her ink-stained finger in a now-worn symbol of hope from the last election. "We are hoping it will provide safety. We will keep voting until it does."
U.S. troops in Baghdad and most of the country yielded election security to Iraqi forces, save for American convoys that rumbled through Baghdad. As in January, a one-day ban on private vehicles helped block suicide attacks. Iraqi troops manning checkpoints fell into impromptu soccer games with children, who poured into the streets, roller-skating and biking through the city on Baghdad's most peaceful day in months.
Nationwide, security was a "resounding success," with all of the 13 recorded attacks aimed at election targets failing, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a spokesman for the U.S. military, said in Baghdad. Boylan said Iraqi forces in the Shiite city of Hilla stopped two women -- one from Jordan, the other from Saudi Arabia -- wearing explosive vests.
One of at least two mortar rounds heard Saturday in Baghdad landed inside the Green Zone, where some lawmakers and others voted behind concrete barriers and concertina wire.
In insurgent strongholds, such as Baghdad's southern neighborhood of Doura, where gunmen sometimes take to the streets by the score, the absence of major attacks suggested the Iraqi militant groups had kept their promise of election-day calm. "There was a large turnout," said lawyer Abdul Amir Yousuf, 68, ringed by Iraqi police.
Coincidentally or not, the vote fell on the date of Hussein's last show election, in 2002, when he declared that his government had been approved by 100 percent of Iraqi voters.
January's elections for national and provincial parliaments were the country's first free votes in almost half a century. But the resulting seating of a Shiite-led government April 28 was the cue for what have been unceasing daily bombings and other political violence, killing thousands.
