Beyond Iraq's Elections
Enders, David
By David Enders Illustration by Eric Fortune Beyond Iraq's Elections Khalid Kareem, a truck driver from Hit, a city in western Al-Anbar province, voted in Iraq's parliamentary elections in...
...troops will lead to negotiations to end the insurgency...
...There is terror and there is resistance," Kareem says...
...By David Enders Illustration by Eric Fortune Beyond Iraq's Elections Khalid Kareem, a truck driver from Hit, a city in western Al-Anbar province, voted in Iraq's parliamentary elections in December, but he did not do so because he applauds the Americans...
...I have many friends who were in prison with me who were not part of the resistance before and then joined it after they were released," says an Iraqi colleague of mine who spent eight months in Abu Ghraib...
...The Americans have sovereignty over the night...
...The best recruiting tools for the resistance have been U.S.-run detention centers that are operated without any Iraqi oversight...
...His disgust with the Americans is palpable...
...troops in Baghdad, after-curfew raids could be conducted only by Iraqi forces with U.S...
...curfew enforced by U.S...
...Requesting a timetable for withdrawal, many lawmakers were angry they had not been allowed to vote on the status of U.S...
...They do that all the time...
...troops included Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's deputy Jewad Al-Maliky as well as members of the Sunni, Christian, and Kurdish communities...
...presence than the previous one...
...At the close of the Cairo Reconciliation Conference in November, Iraqi politicians issued a statement reflecting that sentiment...
...Those calling for the right to determine the status of U.S...
...Monather Al-Samarraie is a former ministry of interior official who fled to Jordan after bringing to light evidence that U.S.-trained forces have carried out extrajudicial killings after dark, often targeting Sunnis believed to be lending support to the insurgency...
...David Enders is the author of "Baghdad Bulletin...
...and the Arab League to go into the western part of the country to see what is happening...
...Iraqi parliamentarians in June 2005 used language remarkably similar to that employed in the Cairo statement...
...Dulaimi, along with the association, has long maintained that nothing short of a promise of a pullout of U.S...
...They also killed a woman and her family...
...Arecent Oxford Research Associates poll conducted for a number of Western media organizations found two-thirds of Iraqis oppose the presence of U.S...
...He wrote "In the Shadow of Sistani" in the December issue...
...forces were aware of the abuse long before they raided the Interior Ministry prison...
...Because of the 11 p.m...
...The followers of Moqtada Al-Sadr and Sunni guerrillas, in particular, believe such language gives the United States a pretext to prolong the occupation...
...We want the UN...
...In some cases, these leaders even called upon their people to protect polling stations from Al Qaeda operatives, who threatened death for anyone participating in the political process...
...A survey conducted by Iraqi pollster Saadoun Al-Dulaimi (now the minister of defense) ahead of the January 2005 elections found that 85 percent of Iraqis wanted withdrawal "as soon as possible...
...Majid Abdul Rahman, also from Ramadi, says he voted for Dulaimi...
...They know about all of them," he says...
...I have shops there but I am forced to close them and come here...
...The new assembly, which will have Sunni representation and greater representation from followers of Moqtada Al-Sadr, will be even more hostile to the U.S...
...Al-Samarraie says U.S...
...Other Sunnis joined Kareem at the polls in Jordan...
...Despite President Bush's trumpeting of the elections as a symbol of support for the U.S...
...We want security and stability," Abed says...
...Ibrahim also says the U.S...
...Leaning on the hood of his car while a friend replaced the windshield (it had been shot by American soldiers near Abu Ghraib two days earlier), Ibrahim says he would likely be put out of business by the recent rise in gasoline prices, which many Iraqis blame on the end of rationing and the chaos created by the American presence...
...military, and to a lesser extent, Shiite and Kurdish units of the Iraqi army...
...Even in Fallujah, a city that is one of the most potent symbols of resistance to the occupation and the new government, local leaders and resistance groups risked assassination by jihadis by encouraging their followers to vote and avoid attacking polling stations...
...troops in their country...
...They have cut the city into two parts and if I want to go shopping, I have to cross from one part of the city to the other, and there are snipers...
...military regularly kills people traveling between Iraq and Jordan...
...He boycotted the last election because he felt it was unfair to open polls in the dangerous Sunni areas, he says...
...His name was Bassem Al-Basrawi," he says...
...There is no work at all...
...They have closed the two main bridges into the city, and sometimes we spend the night waiting to get into the city...
...consent...
...troops and that the soldiers were able to act with impunity while President Bush and the United Nations referred to the new government as "sovereign...
...Moayed Jassim Abed is a truck driver from Rama-di...
...They would like to stay in Iraq," argues Falah Hassan, the member of parliament who led the June 2005 call for a timetable...
...Some said they had come to escape the chaos of western Iraq, which has been paralyzed by two years of fighting between guerrillas, the U.S...
...The statement also called for "withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable...
...They killed a man I know a few days ago near the border...
...The Americans have been there three years and they have done worse than Saddam has done...
...Sometimes we wait for seven hours at the checkpoint to get into Ramadi," he says...
...Jassim Mohamed Ibrahim, who works as a driver ferrying passengers from Baghdad to Amman, sees a pullout as a simple quality-of-life issue...
...It will lead to a timetable for the withdrawal of the Americans," says Ghaith Al-Tamimi, a Shiite living in Sadr City and an organizer for the Sadr Movement...
...We want people who will set a timetable for the Americans to leave," says Kareem, who voted in Jordan for Saleh Mutlaq, a secular Sunni candidate...
...But on December 15 he voted for Mutlaq, whose National Trend party competed for the Sunni vote with that of Adnan Dulaimi, a religious Sunni candidate and a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars...
...Iraqis "participated in these elections because they want American forces to leave the country...
...Resistance is the legitimate right of all peoples," it said, but "terrorism does not constitute legitimate resistance...
...He labels the Iraqi troops the United States is training "the forces of the occupiers...
...The price has affected our work so much that all of the money we make is being spent on fuel," he says...
...Bush's mantra, "we'll stand down as they stand up," does not sit well with many Iraqis...
...In the same poll, "occupation forces" came last behind religious leaders, police, the United Nations, the new Iraqi army, and political parties when Iraqis were asked, "How much confidence do you have in...
...efforts, many Iraqi voters, like Kareem, cast their ballots to boot out the Americans...
...Our participation in this election is part of the peaceful resistance that Sayyed Moqtada called for," he adds...
Vol. 70 • February 2006 • No. 2
