by Roy Scranton
The major put on his shoes and heaved himself up, threw on some sunglasses, and lumbered out of his cave, snapping for a soldier to follow. We followed too, and he took us out through the courtyard and around to the polling center. Hangdog residents of Sadr City passed in and out as if ashamed. The major took us to the door of an office and went in, closing the door behind him. When the major opened the door again, a young woman in an ornate but demure ochre-colored scarf and robe, her eyes hidden behind massive silver aviator lenses, stood in the center of the room scowling at us. After a brief back and forth between Aziz and the major, Aziz explained to me that this young woman was the local IHEC representative, and that she wasn’t going to talk to me. At all. And she wasn’t going to allow us to see the polls.
“But we can still talk to people, right?” I asked.
“Sure, okay,” Aziz said, and we went out away from the office and stood in the path of the voters coming into and leaving the polls. The major and his soldier stood next to us, and an IHEC monitor hung back near the office, watching. We tried to talk to a few people as they passed, a family, an old man, a woman in an abaya, but everyone took one look at the major, then shook their heads and walked on. Finally, a hardy looking laborer with a proud face stopped and agreed to talk to us. Rahim Ahmed was his name, and he ignored the looks the major was giving as he told me about his hopes for the election.
“We’re looking for change,” he said. “To change the faces in power. Two elections have gone by, and they haven’t done anything for the people. We want to see new faces.” He told me his most important concerns were security and services, and that things were so bad now that life was worse than it had been under Saddam. “Life used to be better,” he said, “and we need the new government to serve Iraqis, not just talk.” When I asked him if he thought that would happen—if he thought Maliki would lose the election—he shrugged, then nodded. “I can’t say for sure. Maybe. Maybe when one of the Grand Ayatollahs speaks, asks the people to make a change—then the answer is yes. But if we want all of Iraq to change, we only need twenty or thirty percent of the seats: that will do something. That will achieve something.”
I was so involved in my conversation with Rahim, following his body language and Aziz’s translations while scribbling down notes and trying to think of the next question, that I didn’t notice two more soldiers and three IHEC staff surrounding us. One of the IHEC guys interrupted Aziz, shouting at him, and another IHEC guy started shouting too. Aziz argued back, then two more IHEC guys got involved. Things got loud, and one of the IHEC guys grabbed Aziz by the arm and started pulling him toward the office. Aziz stood his ground. The IHEC personnel said we weren’t allowed to interview people; Aziz asserted that we were international journalists accredited by IHEC to cover the elections, and that we were following all of IHEC’s guidelines. As the guy tugged again at Aziz’s arm, I readied myself to do something physical, not knowing what, if anything, would be needed or prudent. The IHEC volunteer told us we had to come with him, or else. Then Aziz broke away from the IHEC volunteer’s grip and walked off.
“We need to go now,” he said to me, and I followed him out.
So much for a transparent election.
There were actually two elections. The first had been held on Monday, the “private election” for security forces. They had been given their own voting day because they would be so busy enforcing the vehicular ban and guarding poll centers that they wouldn’t have a chance to vote during regular hours on Wednesday. This seemed a reasonable solution to a potentially serious problem, and a good way to make sure that all eight hundred thousand–plus state security personnel got to vote, even the ones who existed only on paper. As we drove around the city on Monday, we saw trucks full of police and soldiers speed screaming through the streets, the men waving their guns in the air like bandits.
“They will vote,” Ahmed muttered.
The way voting worked was that you went to the polling center with your voter ID card, collected your paper ballot, put your ID card into a card-reading machine, let the machine take your digital fingerprint and read the UPC box on your ballot, had an IHEC staff member cross-check your name on a paper list of registered voters, went behind a cardboard shield to mark your ballot, then folded up the ballot and put it in a sealed plastic box. At that point, you dipped your finger in a bottle of purple ink and returned to life proud at having participated in the sacred ritual of democratic self-determination.
An interesting rumor I’d heard, from a young Sunni engineering student, was that many soldiers and police had two separate voting cards, one for each election. Aziz had heard the same thing himself and told me he personally knew a police officer who had two cards and planned to vote twice and might be willing to talk to me after the election. I was fascinated and infuriated by the rumor, puzzled that I hadn’t seen anything about it in the Western media, and curious whether or not it was actually true. Even if only half the military and police voted twice, that would still be four or five hundred thousand votes—which, since most (though not all) police and military supported Maliki, could make a significant difference. With around twenty million registered voters, an extra four hundred thousand votes for State of Law might seal the election.
As we went from polling center to polling center, I asked each IHEC spokesperson who would talk to me about the double-card problem and what IHEC was doing about it. All of them admitted that double cards had been issued, and all of them assured me that IHEC knew about the problem and had solved it. One IHEC rep, in the Karrada, told me that only 21,000 doubles had been issued, and that 19,000 had been withdrawn, so the 2,000 remaining cards wouldn’t have a significant impact even if they were used—but, he told me, if somebody did try to use one, the card reader would reject it, since the cards would both have the same information and the reader would know that the person had already voted. The IHEC rep we talked to in Sadr City (at the second polling place we visited there) told me the same. Another, in Zayouna, told me that IHEC had a list of the people who’d received duplicate cards, and that they’d sent letters to them demanding that they turn the duplicates in. All of the voters with duplicate cards were then required to bring a letter that they were supposed to have gotten after they turned in their duplicate cards, without which they wouldn’t be allowed to vote. If they didn’t have their letter, they wouldn’t be allowed to vote. The IHEC rep at the second polling station we visited in Mansour told me that the duplicates had already been collected, but that if somebody did try to vote twice, the IHEC staff would know because of the ink on their finger. I asked him if they had a list of the names of duplicate card holders, and he told me no. I asked him if the machine would read duplicates, and he said probably, yes, but that it didn’t matter because of the ink. The IHEC rep at the third polling station in Mansour also told me that the duplicate cards had already been withdrawn, and that IHEC policy was to fine anyone who voted twice.
During the election and just after, I talked to four different police officers about the duplicate-card problem. Two said they had duplicate cards; two said they themselves didn’t, but they knew lots of others who did. One policeman I talked to on Tuesday told me he’d already voted Monday and planned to vote again on Wednesday, both times for Maliki. The other police officer, who I talked to on Thursday, after the election, told me he voted both days, both times for Maliki. Then he showed me his cards: one for the private election, one for the public. I asked him about the ink; he showed me his finger, which looked clean. “You just dip the tip of your finger in, then you wash it off. No problem.” I asked him about the machines—did he encounter any issues with the card readers? No, he told me, no problems at all, then he pointed out that his cards were identical except for one minor difference: his grandfather’s name on one card started with a “da,” on the other card with a “ra.” I asked him if he’d received any kind of letter requiring that he turn in his card, or if he’d had to take a letter w
ith him to the poll center, and he shook his head and laughed. No. Nothing like it.
What happened, he told me, was that a bunch of officers in his unit had received duplicate cards, and on the day of the public election they were given a couple hours off to go vote again. They went home, changed into civilian clothes, voted, changed back into uniforms, and went back to work. He told me that he personally saw forty or fifty people he knew voting twice, and that he’d heard of many more. I asked him if he had been told whom to vote for or if he’d been paid extra to vote twice. “Nobody told me how to vote,” he said, “but most police and military follow Maliki. Maybe one thousand out of every hundred.” About the extra pay, he denied that he’d been paid extra during the voting period, but said that the army had been. Other police had said the same, and Aziz told me that he’d overheard some soldiers talking about how nice it was to be getting paid extra. This was consonant with other rumors that Maliki was buying votes all over Iraq, promising people land and cash in exchange for support.
There were also rumors of a widespread trade in voting cards, but the problems with the election weren’t limited to extra cards and vote buying. Many people claimed not to have gotten voting cards at all, and some reports suggested that IHEC failed to distribute cards to more than two million registered voters. Moreover, the voting machines themselves were subject to mechanical failure. One IHEC representative I talked to told me that they’d been having trouble with the machines whenever they were plugged in, but when they left them unplugged (the machine runs on an internal rechargeable battery), they were fine. Another representative told me that the machines malfunctioned when they got too hot—which, given temperatures in Baghdad, was fairly often. The level of competence shown by IHEC representatives varied widely from station to station. One representative in Mansour didn’t seem to know how many registered voters there were in his district, and when I suggested that the number he first told me seemed low, he revised his estimate upward by 150 percent. Allegations of electoral fraud, obstruction, and malfeasance from journalists, bloggers, and opposition candidates were common, including reports from Asharq Al-Awsat, Niqash, Ned Parker and Ahmed Rasheed at Reuters, Struan Stevenson at The Hill, Middle East Monitor, and Al Jazeera.
Perhaps most troubling of all was the limited access granted the media and the paucity of international observers. We visited nine polling stations that day, in five different neighborhoods, and saw a strong media presence at only one—a high-profile center in wealthy Karrada. Except for Karrada, we saw one other journalist all day, a newspaper reporter, in Zayouna. And while every polling center had at least a few internal observers from various political parties monitoring the voting, we saw not a single international observer all day long. Not one. Of the nine polling stations we visited, we’d been forced out of one (in Sadr City) and weren’t allowed to enter two (in Mansour and Karrada). Two other polling stations let us come in but refused to let us take pictures, then pressured us to leave (in Mansour and Saydiya). Given that Baghdad had just over two hundred polling centers, meaning we barely saw 5 percent, it would be injudicious to conclude from this small sample that nobody was really watching the elections or that IHEC was actively suppressing media coverage. That was just my experience. I know there were international reporters out there. I talked to them later. I know Iraqi TV and journalists had cameras at predetermined, officially approved sites. I saw the news. I also know that outside of the officially scripted, managed box, IHEC was sometimes obstructionist, occasionally secretive, and largely unwatched as it went about managing Iraq’s first free postoccupation elections.
Some voters were restrained and noncommittal, nervous about talking to me, and apt to speak in TV-echoing sound bites about the need for security, safety, and stability. Others were more forthcoming. Overall, the impression I got throughout the day was that Baghdadis were tired of politics as usual, anxious about the security situation, and committed to change. What change meant, however, depended on their perspective. For some people, it meant getting rid of Maliki and his Dawa cronies. For one police officer in Sadr City, it meant clearing out the obstructionists in the parliament he saw constraining Maliki’s ability to get things done. For most, the constant refrain was “tahrir”—liberation, freedom, relief, salvation. They’d had enough corruption, violence, and suffering; they wanted a change for the better. At the same time, most people expected that Maliki would stay in power. Some avidly desired it.
Hassan Ali Asim, a police officer in Sadr City, thought Maliki was the only candidate strong enough to beat ISIS and keep the country safe. Asim had been wounded by a roadside bomb during the civil war, on June 24, 2006, and hated to see the country being torn apart again by sectarian violence. If Iraq could achieve stability, he was sure it could be as peaceful and prosperous as any of its neighbors. “We want our country to be like other countries, like Jordan. Look how stable and comfortable it is there. I’m not talking about America—America is a great nation. I’m talking about our neighbors. Honestly, I wish America had stayed. Not in the city, too many people had problems with them there, but on their bases and on the borders. They would have helped us with stability.”
Amaya Faleh, a housewife in Sadr City, was vehement about the need for a new government and the importance of deeds over talk. She was also proud of how many women were active in Iraqi politics. “It’s a good thing. Iraqi women need to vote. We’re not illiterate. We’re not ignorant. We are Iraq.” She was appalled by recent attempts in parliament to pass a new Ja’fari law regulating female behavior, legalizing child marriage, and allowing religious courts to take precedence over civil courts on domestic family issues. “This is awful. It’s not right at all.”
Jodet Marja Jodet, a fifty-six-year-old veterinarian, thought the most important thing was to get past the sectarian violence still bleeding Iraq dry. “We need a strong government that can control the militias,” he told me. “Over politics, over infrastructure, even over poverty, the most important thing is to end the sectarian fighting. It has taken too many innocent souls.”
Haider Hassan, twenty-eight years old, had brought the problem of sectarian violence home with him. Aziz spotted him before I did: a young man in shorts, flip-flops, and a camouflage T-shirt, limping down the hallway of the grade school polling center on Al-Falah Street in Sadr City. I would have missed him among the bustling voters, but when Aziz pointed him out to me, I immediately saw why. Bandages on the young man’s head covered a recent wound, and bloodstains on his T-shirt suggested something more serious than an accident around the house. He was beautiful, too, with the kind of piercing, unrelenting gaze you see in mystics, sociopaths, and traumatized soldiers.
It turned out he was among the latter. He’d been in the Iraqi Army four months—barely out of basic training. Not even a week ago, his unit had been on foot patrol in a suburb west of Baghdad when a roadside IED went off. ISIS forces opened fire from the surrounding houses and date groves, then retreated. Haider had been wounded in his head, leg, and torso, but survived and was evacuated. He was now recovering and had struggled out of bed to vote. He considered it his patriotic duty, just as he considered his military service a duty. “People should be volunteering to protect our country,” he told me. “It’s our responsibility.”
Haider expressed some of the usual desires Baghdadis expressed for security and stability. But as he went on, he waxed passionate: “We want to be like before. When we had pride. We don’t want other countries interfering in Iraq, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. We want to be our own people.” For Haider, change meant a strong military and strong borders. As I watched him limp away, I wondered what he would have said if I’d told him I’d been an American soldier. In 2003, he would have been seventeen. His entire adult life had been lived under an occupation, and now he was fighting a battle America had helped to create. We’d promised him democracy, but what we gave him was a life at war.
As the afternoon passed, I began to fe
el the need to go somewhere dangerous. Nothing had blown up all day, and with the heavy security presence on the streets, I figured even a bad neighborhood would be manageable—or at least more manageable than it would be normally. I’d gotten a tingle in Sadr City, a sweet taste of old danger, and I wanted to try my luck one last time. Aziz and Ahmed suggested we head back to the hotel, then go to the central polling station in the Karrada. I suggested instead Baladiyat, Ghaziliyah, or Dora, in response to which Aziz and Ahmed were silent. I waited, then Aziz told me he didn’t think we’d be able to get into Dora. He might have been right; we’d had trouble getting in before. A sometimes-rough Sunni neighborhood with a bloody history, the police were fond of shutting down its checkpoints in and out.
“What about Saydiya?” I asked, naming a neighborhood near Dora that was widely considered the most volatile area in Baghdad. It had been the scene of vicious fighting during the civil war, and unlike most other neighborhoods, it had remained mixed Sunni and Shia. Saydiya could turn nasty in a heartbeat.
Ahmed smiled. “You don’t go to Saydiya.”
“It’s election day. They’re voting too.”
“We can’t get in there,” Aziz told me.
“Well, why don’t we go see. If we get in, we’ll hit a polling center, then call it a day.”
“My family lives there,” Aziz said, “and my cousin is in the police. Even he tells me not to come to Saydiya.”
“We’ll just check it out,” I insisted.
We didn’t have any problems getting in. And although there was a palpable anxiety coming off Ahmed and Aziz, the neighborhood didn’t look any worse than anywhere else we’d gone. It wasn’t as poor as Sadr City or Baladiyat, and it was mostly empty, like everywhere, because of the vehicle ban. It was coming on to the hot part of the afternoon, when most people went home to rest, so there were even fewer voters on the street than we’d seen earlier. Trash blew across vacant streets; I half expected Ennio Morricone music to start playing.