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Workers smuggled into polling stations

Jan-29-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

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HUNDREDS of Iraqi election workers along with voting material were transported overnight by US soldiers to polling sites around Mosul amid intense security measures in the northern city.

With the milestone vote only hours away, the election workers were all given about two hours of training and promised the equivalent of $US500 ($645) for their effort.

Umm Alaa, 40, is the only woman inside a huge tented gym and recreation facility at a US base swarming with nearly 500 rowdy male election workers, most of them flown in early today, hours before from Baghdad or southern Shiite areas.[...]

Preparations for elections only got underway in Nineveh province, which includes Mosul, one week ago. Voter registration never happened here because of the security threats.

The province's number of eligible voters is estimated at about one million, according to Khalid al-Kazar, the electoral commission's representative here.

Umm Alaa and a dozen of her colleagues along with eight carton boxes packed with ballots are boarded into Stryker combat vehicles belonging to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment.

Most say they are motivated to do this by their patriotic duty, the orders of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to take part in the elections and their dire economic and living conditions.

"Let's break the back of the terrorists by putting the ballot in the box," says Ali Dakhil, 39, from Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City.

The group is let down outside the Al-Fadhila girls school in the Al-Mansur working class neighbourhood on the city's west side.

They were escorted by US soldiers through concrete barricades and barbed wire ringing the building and handed over to Iraqi soldiers on the inside.

The soldiers are part of a contingent of more than 4000 army special force members and commandos sent from Baghdad to help secure the elections in Mosul.[...]


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