As Iraq Tallies Vote, U.S. Says Pullout Plans Are ‘on Track’

As Iraq Tallies Vote, U.S. Says Pullout Plans Are ‘on Track’
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/world/middleeast/08iraq.html?th&emc=th


BAGHDAD — As Iraq tallied the votes from Sunday’s nationwide elections to choose a new Parliament, the top American military commander in Iraq on Monday praised the Iraqi military’s performance during the vote and said the United States would proceed with plans to withdraw troops from the country.

“I think we’re on track,” the commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I believe the Iraqi security forces are on track to assume more and more control.”

Iraqis defied a barrage of mortars, rockets and other bombs to show up to the polls in strength on Sunday, in elections that have been seen as a critical test of Iraq’s stability and a last milestone before American troops leave the country.

Official results of the elections are not expected for at least a few days, the Iraqi Election Commission scheduled a news conference on Monday evening to announce the turnout of the vote, which the American ambassador, Christopher R. Hill, said on Monday appeared to be robust.

Insurgents here vowed to disrupt the election, and the concerted wave of attacks — as many as 100 thunderous blasts in the capital alone starting just before the polls opened — did frighten voters away, but only initially.

The shrugging response of voters could signal a fundamental weakening of the insurgency’s potency. At least 38 people were killed in Baghdad. But by day’s end, turnout was higher than expected, and certainly higher than in the last parliamentary election in 2005, marred by a similar level of violence.

Sunnis who largely boycotted previous elections voted in force, and an intense competition for Shiite votes drove up participation in Baghdad and the south, election observers said.

The short and fierce political campaign could end up either solidifying Iraq’s nascent democracy or leaving the country fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines. But it was arguably the most open, most competitive election in the nation’s long history of colonial rule, dictatorship and war.

Despite a long delay, disputes over candidates’ qualifications, arrests, assassinations and finally an all-out assault by insurgents on Sunday morning, the election took place with only a few reports of irregularities. And by Sunday night, a rarity was emerging in a region dominated by authoritarian governments: an election cliffhanger.

After the polls closed at 5 p.m., party leaders said two coalitions seemed to have fared best: the one led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has campaigned for a second time on improved security in Iraq, and another led by the former interim leader, Ayad Allawi, who has promised to overcome Iraq’s sectarian divides.

As expected, neither coalition appeared to have secured an outright majority in the new 325-member Parliament, and so it was unclear whether Mr. Maliki had succeeded in winning another four years in office.

That sets the stage for a period of turmoil — months, not weeks, politicians here predict — as the winning coalition tries to cobble together enough votes to elect a prime minister.

Mr. Maliki’s supporters were already claiming that his coalition had won a majority of votes in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and other largely Shiite provinces in the south. And Mr. Allawi, also a Shiite, emerged as the unexpected standard-bearer of a bloc that appears to have done best among Sunnis in Anbar, Salahuddin, Nineveh and Diyala.

In Washington, President Obama praised the vote. “I have great respect for the millions of Iraqis who refused to be deterred by acts of violence and who exercised their right to vote today,” he said in a statement. “Their participation demonstrates that the Iraqi people have chosen to shape their future through the political process.”

The insurgent attacks began even before polls opened, with explosions reverberating through the early morning haze. For a while at least, the intensity of the barrage was reminiscent of the worst days of bloodshed in 2006 and 2007, when Iraq teetered on the precipice of civil war.

Dozens of mortar shells and rockets crashed down on the capital, including at least six that landed in the Green Zone, where government ministries and embassies are clustered behind heavy fortifications. At least 13 bombs exploded.

The deadliest single attack occurred when what the police said was a Katyusha rocket collapsed an apartment building, located in the Ur neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. The Interior Ministry said 25 were killed.

Mr. Bedawi, who witnessed the carnage, said the attack hardened the resolve of Iraqis to vote. “Everyone went,” he said. “They were defiant about what happened. Even people who didn’t want to vote before, they went after this rocket.”

The extensive use of mortars and rockets suggested that a weakened insurgency had to shift tactics, perhaps because it was unable to get cars or suicide bombers through an intense security lockdown, with some checkpoints erected every few hundred yards.

The insurgents still fighting in today’s Iraq face a far stronger government, capable now of saturating the country with police officers and soldiers. Even more important, they face an Iraqi people far less willing to support, or even sympathize with, violent resistance against the country’s democratic government.

Iraqis, seemingly inured to violence, even mocked the attacks.

“We have experienced three wars before,” Ahmed Ali, a supporter of Mr. Maliki, said in Ur, “so it was just the play of children that we heard.”

After three hours, the barrage subsided, and voting picked up as the country’s politicians implored Iraqis to cast their ballots. A ban on vehicles in the city was lifted, making it easier for people to reach polling places.

Mr. Maliki, the Shiite who has served as prime minister since 2006, cast his ballot at the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone even as explosions rumbled. In a televised interview afterward, he, too, expressed defiance and optimism that turnout would not be diminished by the violence.

“Normally, the beautiful days in life come after fatigue and difficulties,” he said. “The difficult labor produces a more beloved result.”

The attacks united Iraq leaders across party lines.

“These are the messengers of Iraq’s enemies, the enemies of democracy,” said Ammar al-Hakim, a leader of a Shiite coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance, that hopes to deny Mr. Maliki a second term. “It is a desperate and weak message.”

The violence was not limited to Baghdad, though it was less lethal outside the capital. In Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, at least 20 explosions rang through the city of Falluja but no one was reported killed.

In the Jolan neighborhood there, the scene of some of the most intense fighting when American forces besieged the city in 2004, loudspeakers at mosques beckoned voters.

“Don’t be afraid of those cowards,” a police officer shouted from a rooftop to passers-by.

A roadside bomb exploded in Kirkuk, while two struck in Mosul, in northern Iraq, including one near a polling station that wounded seven people. Mortar shells landed in Jurf al-Sakhar, a village south of Baghdad.

A series of attacks also struck across Diyala, the volatile province northeast of Baghdad. Two of them were roadside bombs that struck an American and an Iraqi convoy, according to security officials there. At least four people were wounded, two of them Iraqi soldiers.

Mr. Allawi also expressed resolve after the attacks, though in a late bit of campaigning, he criticized the “weakness” in the government’s security preparation.

“You know that Iraqis do not get scared,” he said. “They will not be scared by tanks, bombings and explosions. They fought the British, as it is known, with simple weapons and kicked out the British empire. So this intimidation will not work.”

Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric whose followers fought against the American military and Mr. Maliki’s government, urged Iraqi Shiites to vote.

Mr. Sadr allied with the Iraqi National Alliance, which appeared to have fallen behind the other largely Shiite coalition, the State of Law, led by Mr. Maliki.

On the eve of the vote from Iran, where he is said to be studying to become an ayatollah, Mr. Sadr seemed to accept Iraq’s political process. “Participation in the election,” he said, “is a sort of political resistance.”


Reporting was contributed by Tim Arango and Ian Fisher from Baghdad; Marc Santora from Baghdad, Najaf and Ramadi; Anthony Shadid from Falluja; Sam Dagher from Kirkuk; Timothy Williams from Basra; and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.