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280 thousand iraqi exiles to vote absentee { January 27 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002162036_iraqdig27.htmlhttp://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002162036_iraqdig27.html
Thursday, January 27, 2005, 12:00 A.M. Pacific
Iraq Notebook
280,000 exiles to vote as absentees
AMMAN, Jordan — Around 280,000 Iraqi exiles out of 1 million eligible voters have registered to cast absentee ballots in Iraq's election, organizers said yesterday.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is running the out-of-country voting program, said 280,303 Iraqi expatriates had registered in 14 countries over a nine-day campaign that ended Tuesday.
They will vote from tomorrow to Sunday, the polling day for Iraqis at home, at the same 74 registration centers in 36 cities worldwide. About 100 Iraqis from the Pacific Northwest went to Los Angeles, one of five cities in the U.S. with polling places.
Only 25,946, or 11 percent, of the estimated 240,000 eligible Iraqi Americans registered to take part in an election in which a projected 7 million ballots will be cast.
The political clout of overseas Iraqis would have been limited even in the best-case scenario. Like Iraq itself, the expatriate community is deeply divided along ethnic and religious lines, with Kurds, Chaldeans, Assyrians and Shiites likely to cast their votes for different slates, said Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan.
Turkey fears Kurds will control Kirkuk
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey's military warned yesterday that the migration of large numbers of Kurds into the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk could sway the results of the upcoming elections and possibly lead to clashes that could draw Ankara into the dispute.
Kirkuk is a multiethnic city with Kurdish and ethnic Turkish populations, along with Arabs and Christians — but Kurds have been the strongest group in the city since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Kirkuk is also home to 12 percent of Iraq's oil reserves, and Turkey said the resources must be shared equally by all Iraqis.
Turkey has repeatedly warned that Kurdish control of the city would make an independent Kurdish state more viable, a development that Ankara has repeatedly said it won't accept. Turkey fears that a strong Kurdish entity in northern Iraq could inspire Kurds in Turkey, where Kurdish rebels have battled the Turkish army since 1984.
"Hundreds of thousands of Kurds migrated to Kirkuk and registered to vote," Gen. Ilker Basbug, deputy head of the Turkish military, said at a news conference. "This could make the results of the elections questionable."
"Even worse," he added, "these developments could threaten the territorial and political unity of Iraq. We're worried that such a development would pose an important security problem for Turkey."
Basbug stressed that a dispute over election results could lead to clashes. Sunni Arab and ethnic Turkish parties are still deciding whether to contest Sunday's balloting in Kirkuk.
"This could lead to an independent Kurdish state," Basbug said. "There could be clashes; these clashes could trigger an internal war in Iraq."
European reporters arrive for election
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Yesterday's two flights into Iraq included reporters from Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, France, Germany and the Czech Republic, arriving to cover the election this weekend.
At least 200 reporters have arrived in the past week, said Maj. Kristina Meyle, who coordinates the embedding of reporters with U.S. military units.
U.S. commander cites insurgents' losses
BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed or captured 15,000 people over the past year in their fight against the insurgency, the commander of U.S. forces in the country said yesterday.
In the past month alone, they had seized around 60 leaders of the various Islamist and Baathist groups trying to drive the Americans from the war-torn country, Gen. George Casey said.
"If you look back over the last year we estimate we have killed or captured about 15,000 people as part of this counter-insurgency," Casey, the only four-star American general in Iraq, told reporters.
"Just in this month we have picked up around 60 key members of the Zarqawi network and key members of the former regime," he said, referring to the group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Casey described the insurgents as an assortment of Islamists, Saddam loyalists, common criminals and foreign fighters — although he said the foreigners numbered less than 1,000.
"The level of violence in 14 of the 18 provinces in Iraq is four incidents or arrests a day," said Casey, who commands 150,000 U.S. troops. "It is primarily confined to four provinces. It has not spread to 80 percent of the population."
Casey, whose father was the most senior U.S. general to die in the Vietnam War, said he expected further attacks when Iraq goes to the polls in an election al-Zarqawi and his followers have vowed to disrupt.
"I would see most of the violence in the Sunni areas and a good part of it in the Baghdad area," Casey said. "I would expect low levels of violence in the Shiite areas."
He said that while Iraq had 130,000 trained and equipped soldiers and police officers, they were not ready to take over from the Americans.
"Are they [the Iraqis] capable of taking over the counter-insurgency campaign today? No," he said. "And if you ask the Iraqis, they understand that."
Gadhafi seeks hostage's release
CAIRO, Egypt — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi yesterday called on Iraqi insurgents to release a U.S. hostage, responding to the captive's plea for his intervention.
In a videotape broadcast yesterday, Roy Hallums asked Arab leaders, singling out Gadhafi, to save his life. The video showed Hallums, 56, speaking with a rifle barrel pointed at his head.
"As a response to the begging, we ask the Iraqi resistance in the name of Islam and Arabism to free him, implementing the principle of forgiveness," the Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera quoted Gadhafi as saying in a statement.
Gunmen seized Hallums in November with Robert Tarongoy of the Philippines at their compound in Baghdad's Mansour district. The two worked for a Saudi company that does catering for the Iraqi army. The Filipino was not shown in the video.
Hallums said he had been taken by a "resistance group" because he worked with American forces. No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.
About five Americans are being held hostage in Iraq, and some of them have been captive for months, U.S. officials said yesterday.
"There are three we know are being held hostage, and there's a handful more who are unaccounted for, some of whom might be in a hostage situation," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
The American hostages are among the more than 100 foreigners to have been kidnapped in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. About a third of those have been killed, several by beheading, in tactics that have drawn international condemnation.
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