By Christine Hauser
New York Times
13 January 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 12 - There are mysterious knocks on his door at night. His friends ask him not to visit. He declines to allow even his first name to be published.
This shadowy figure, a young Sunni Muslim from Baghdad, is neither spy nor criminal. He is an election worker helping Iraq prepare for its historic national poll, scheduled for the end of the month.
Threatened, attacked, kidnapped and killed, Iraq's election workers are finding that being at the forefront of the electoral process means surviving the frontlines of an insurgency determined to stop it.
Things are so bad that one of the officials from the Independent Electoral Commission, Adil al-Lami, compared the workers to a clandestine political movement. "They function like an underground," he said in an interview.
This particular worker says he does it to serve his country. "There are a lot of people around the world who also would fight for what I do," he said after finishing his day recently at the election commission. "I believe in democracy."
Other election workers say they were inspired by calls by religious leaders to vote and the promise of a steady paycheck for a few months.
For about $200 a month, an excellent wage here, thousands of Iraqi men and women in election offices around the country are organizing voting boxes for polling centers, drawing up leaflets about how to vote, distributing posters promoting the elections, working on designs for ballots and sending out registration forms to prepare for the elections on Jan. 30 to choose a national assembly.
Nervously chain-smoking after his shift in the heavily protected Green Zone in the center of the city, the Sunni election worker had to plot his next move, weighing the dangers of entering city streets where his colleagues have been ambushed and assassinated in broad daylight.
The sun was still high in the sky, so he said he would take the long way home to arrive after dark, hoping that the men he thinks have been watching his house from the other side of his street might miss his arrival.
It did not take his stalkers long to focus on him, he said. Since taking his job, his wife told him, strange men have come calling, asking for him. The knocking occurred twice, at around 10 at night. He and his family never answered, and the men outside the door went away.
"My family has asked me to resign," said the man, nervously puffing on yet another cigarette. "I think I will, and other people will too, as the elections get closer."
The more than 6,000 elections employees throughout the country will be joined by thousands more recruited for election day on one-month contracts for about $200 to work at the more than 5,200 polling centers, according to the election commission.
In Baghdad, many election workers are stationed in the Green Zone, behind high concrete walls and checkpoints. For the thousands of others in outlying provinces, there is less security.
But pre-election violence has surged everywhere and is expected to get worse. Election workers have been attacked and killed by insurgents who are also striking Iraqi security forces and government officials they see as collaborators with the American occupying military.
"We are definitely the targets of terrorists," said Muhammad, the director of an election office in Iraq who travels with bodyguards but agreed to be quoted only by his first name for security reasons.
This week, numerous attacks on election workers and their offices were testimony to the dangers. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber attacked the election office in Basra, in the south, but killed only himself. An election official was kidnapped in Baquba, north of Baghdad. And militants in Diyala attacked the house of another election official, Amer Majeed, he and the police said in a report in the newspaper Azzaman. There were no casualties in the attack, which was repelled by guards, Mr. Majeed said.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said "some pockets" of Iraq would be too dangerous for voters, the first time he has publicly acknowledged this.
The prospect for elections is especially grim in areas dominated by the Sunni minority, whose members enjoyed support under Saddam Hussein and are believed to be leading the insurgency.
In Falluja, in the Sunni heartland, a number of elections workers resigned this week, according to Mr. Lami, the election official. "Some left because they got threatened," he said. Election workers from Baghdad had been assigned to replace them.
Many election workers said they never tell their neighbors, friends or even family members what they do.
Intimidation seems to be taking its toll. "I resigned just now because of all the bombings and threats," said one young woman, a Shiite lawyer, who was a former director of an election office, as she left the Green Zone headquarters recently. "It's just too dangerous."
She said she had first joined because as a lawyer, she was motivated to civil service. Although she had not been personally threatened, her fears got the better of her, she said.
Another man at the election offices in Baghdad, a 24-year-old Sunni from Baquba, acknowledged the danger but said other jobs were hard to come by.
One Iraqi man said he slept at an office related to the commission's work rather than go home. The only one who knows what he does is his mother. "All I need is for at least one person to know what I believe in, in case I lose my life," said the man, who is in his twenties.
Some Shiite workers and voters said they were inspired by Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who backs the elections.
"There will always be the possibility of a car bomb or gunmen, but we have got to vote anyway," said Um Ahmed, 57, the mother of the lawyer who had just resigned. "This is what our religious leaders say we must do, because it will empower us."
But recent attacks in Baghdad have added to the uncertainty over how safe polling centers will be for voters on election day, let alone for the workers in the days leading up to the election.
One of the most brazen and well organized attacks on an election worker occurred during morning commuter traffic a few weeks ago.
Hatem Musawi, like other election workers, tried to keep a low profile. He often traveled with bodyguards, did not tell many people about his work in one of Baghdad's election offices, and stayed alert. But on Dec. 19, according to a witness, Mr. Musawi was sitting in the passenger seat next to the driver. Three men, including bodyguards, were in the back. As they approached an intersection, they saw young men in the street who looked like they were in their teens.
The youths stopped their car and appeared to recognize the occupants as election workers. At least one youth pulled a handgun out of his jacket pocket and fired shots into the air. Suddenly, a second line of attackers formed, composed of men who had been waiting at the curb or near buildings, according to the witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear for his safety.
The second group pulled out hidden machine guns. Some threw grenades. One of the bodyguards, Sami Moussa, got out of the car and fired back with a handgun. By the end of the attack, Mr. Moussa, Mr. Musawi and another employee, Mahdi Subeih, were dead.
Two weeks earlier, in Baghdad's Mansour district, masked gunmen attacked an elections office with pistols and machineguns, killing three people and injuring another man who later died.
The attacks disclosed the circumstance by which the names of many of Iraq's election workers can be made public: in death, when they appear in newspaper obituaries. When the electoral commission published a notice in newspapers after the deaths, it said the men were "martyred," carrying out a "sacred" mission.
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Citation: Christine Hauser, "Under Fire, Election Workers in Iraq Are Scared but Resolute," New York Times, 13 January 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/pop/articles/13election.html
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