Voting Begins in Iraqi Elections

Iraqi expatriates and exiles cast the first votes today in their country's first full election for half a century against a backdrop of continuing violence and intimidation at home.

Australia was the first of 14 countries to open polling stations to its Iraqi population and those who cast their votes were in celebratory mood, dancing in the streets and displaying the blue ink on their fingers which confirms their participation in the process.

"When I look at the ink on my finger, this is a mark of freedom," said Kassim Abood, outside a polling booth in a disused furniture warehouse in Sydney.

Elsewhere the mood among voters was more cautious, and in Iraq itself, tough security measures that came into force today were not enough to prevent further insurgent attacks aimed at disrupting the election.

In southern Baghdad, a car bomb exploded next to a police station, killing four Iraqi civilians, police said - the latest in a steady stream of attacks that have killed at least 48 Iraqis and seven US troops since Wednesday - and insurgents shelled a US base south of the capital, injuring three US troops and three civilians.

A helicopter crash also killed 30 US marines and one sailor on Wednesday, the deadliest single incident for the US military since the war began in March 2003.

Iraq sealed its land borders and severely restricted travel between the country's 18 provinces in an attempt to rein in the insurgents' campaign of violence. An extended curfew has been announced in most cities, from 7pm to 6am, and some 300,000 US and Iraqi troops will be on the streets in an effort to enforce order. While the US president, George Bush, has urged Iraqis to "defy the terrorists" and vote, al-Qaida's purported leader in Iraq, the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has told potential voters to stay away and threatened to escalate attacks on polling stations. The militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna also issued a "final warning" to voters yesterday, saying anyone who voted would be marked for death, either during or after the election.

Sunday's vote is the cornerstone of US plans to install democracy in Iraq, but some analysts fear the further alienation of the country's minority Sunnis - who wielded power under Saddam Hussein - could lead to civil war.

The Shias, who make up 60% of Iraq's population but suffered decades of oppression under Saddam, are expected to win political dominance through the polls.

An alliance of candidates formed under the guidance of Iraq's top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is almost certain to win the most votes. If this happens, it will be the first time the Shias have wielded political power in a key Arab country.

The elections will determine the make-up of a 275-member national assembly that will appoint Iraq's next government and oversee the drafting of a constitution.

In neighbouring Syria, Jordan and Iran, security was tight around polling stations for Iraqi absentee voters. Police in Amman set up roadblocks and searched every voter with hand-held metal detectors.

Many administrators and voters appeared nervous, and most refused to have their picture taken and did not give their names to reporters. Many Iraqi exiles did not register for fear of persecution both of themselves and their families still living in Iraq, election officials said.

In Iran, which has one of the largest groups of Iraqi expatriates, and where 75% of those eligible have registered to vote, there were long queues outside Tehran's Karbalaies Mosque, built by Iraqis from the holy Shia city of Karbala.

Voting in Iran holds particular significance. Many of Iraq's Arab neighbours are concerned that the country's Shia majority will elect a government that will strengthen ties with the Shia clerics ruling Iran.

In London, several dozen voters had arrived at the Wembley Conference Centre within minutes of the polling station doors opening at 7am.

One of the first to vote, Handren Marph, a 45-year-old Kurdish marketing consultant from Croydon, said: "This is a fantastic feeling. I feel hope and fear - fear because freedom might not come back but hope because a new constitution may give us protection and opportunity for all."

Around 280,000 overseas Iraqis have registered to vote - a lower number than expected. Around 13 million Iraqis inside the country are eligible to cast their ballots. Sunday's vote has been painted as Iraq's introduction to democracy, but elections were also held when the country was under British control. Some older Iraqis may have even participated in the 1954 elections, considered relatively free by some historians.

However, the vast majority of Iraq's old parliamentary elections would not have passed today's western standards, and regardless of how fair the polls, there was no hope for a true representative democracy in a country controlled by Britain.

"The historical memory [Iraqis] have of democracy is of weak governments that were beholden to the British," said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey in California.

"Once there were elections, the British tried to get the governments that they would like," he said. "That ended up completely destroying democracy in Iraq."

Britain gained control of Iraq from the Ottoman empire in the first world war, but limited resources and a violent Iraqi revolt in 1920 eventually forced London into allowing the League of Nations to grant Iraq independence in 1932.

However, Britain retained de facto control over the country.

"When General [Stanley] Maude went in, he said he was coming to liberate Iraqis, just like us," said Phebe Marr, author of a book on Iraq who describes the country in the 1920s as "much more chaotic" than it is today. The first election under the British was "very difficult to get going", Ms Marr said, noting that a 1923 poll to pick representatives to write a constitution was similar to Sunday's vote for a constitutional assembly.

Elections under the British eventually became "more orderly", she said, but they ran into many of the same problems the US is now facing. Shia clerics as early as 1922 issued fatwas, or religious decrees, declaring participation illegal, said Orit Bashkin, a professor of modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Chicago.

That opposition made it impossible to have elections in the Shia-dominated city of Karbala that year, she said.