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Sunnis turn out to demand voice in Iraqi politics
“There are no services and no jobs. We live in poverty. What are they waiting for? To see us beg to stay alive?” asked Kamel Farhan, 66, who lost two sons in a drive-by shooting by insurgents a few years ago and himself bears bullet scars.
“If there is no change, blood will reach the knee. Killings and violence will return to this province,” he declared, sitting in a relative’s shop in the provincial capital of Ramadi.
Minority Sunnis alienated by the US-led invasion spurned the first election for an interim assembly in January 2005. They did not boycott the second, held in December the same year for a full parliament, but still felt shut out of political power.
This time Sunni voters expect a tangible reward.
Turnout in Anbar, a vast swathe of desert stretching from Baghdad to the Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi borders, was a solid 61 percent, only just below the 62 percent national average.
That figure was matched or bettered in other Sunni-majority provinces, according to Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission. Sixty-six percent voted in Nineveh, 62 percent in Diyala and 73 percent in Salahuddin, home to Saddam’s clan.
Security in Anbar has improved dramatically since tribal leaders helped turn the tide of war by aligning Sunni fighters with US-backed Iraqi forces against al-Qaeda from 2006 on.
Most Anbar voters seemed to support either Ahmed Abu Risha, one of those tribal sheikhs, or former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite leading a cross-sectarian list.
“Allawi is the best. He is another Saddam but without the moustache,” said Turki Hamad, sitting with friends who applauded his words -- reflecting popular admiration in this frontier province for leaders in the mould of Iraq’s ousted strongman.
Competitive democracy is new to Iraq, where Saddam won a 2002 referendum on his leadership with 100 percent of the vote.
Sunnis were not immune from Saddam’s iron fist, but did not experience the systematic oppression suffered by restive Kurds and majority Shiites who gained power after his overthrow.
That tormented history sowed the seeds of the sectarian slaughter that nearly ripped Iraq apart in 2006-07.
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