Expatriates begin voting

Iraqi expatriates turned out in large numbers at makeshift polling stations in the capital, Damascus, to vote in Iraqi parliamentary elections. Turnout on Tuesday, the first day of voting, was higher than expected, said Hoshang Wazyri, spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, which is organising the out-of-country vote. “We were very pleased with the queues of people we saw,” he said. "We observed operations very closely and there were no problems.” The expatriate vote comes ahead of voting inside Iraq, scheduled for 15 December, when 14 million registered voters will decide who will occupy the 275 elected seats of the national assembly. The assembly will sit for a four-year term. On 13 December, polling stations in 15 countries opened for the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi expatriates eligible to vote. Voting stations were set up in Australia; Austria; Canada; Denmark; Germany; Iran; Jordan; Lebanon; the Netherlands; Sweden; Syria; Turkey; the United Arab Emirates; the UK; and the US. Meanwhile, however, Iraqi refugees who fled to Syria to escape US-led offensives aiming at targets in western Iraq are unable to participate in the voting. “There are up to two thousand Iraqi refugees around the border town of Abu Kamal and Hassake city,” said Abdel Hamid al-Ouali, a representative of the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, in Damascus. Few are able to afford the cost of travelling to the nearest polling station in Aleppo, located between 300-400 km away in northwestern Syria. The refugees' movement has been hindered by the closure of border crossings from Syria to the Anbar and Ninevah provinces in Iraq to all but commercial traffic. According to Iraqi authorities, who ordered the closure on 2 December, the border points will remain closed “until further notice”. The closure is part of a wider series of security measures taken in advance of the elections. “The refugees are being put up by families in the countryside, who are themselves very poor,” said al-Quali. “Many have seen their homes destroyed, and need assistance." The UNHCR is preparing to send food aid to the refugees, many of whom have fled in the wake of recent US-led offensives in the Anbar province. A September UNHCR report revealed that almost half of the displaced are Christians, who represent only five percent of the total Iraqi population. A series of bombings at churches and threats against Christians working with the US occupation authorities in Iraq have forced many families to flee their homes, say Iraqis in Damascus. “I was working with the Americans as a translator for $20 a day,” said 71-year old Hermiz Shilman, a member of Iraq’s small community of Chaldean Christians. “They came to my house and said: ‘You’re an old man, so we’re not going to kill you. But if you don’t leave your job, we will kill you.’” “So I brought my two daughters and son to Syria,” Shilman added. Before the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in April 2003, the number of Iraqis living in Syria was approximated at 100,000. Today, the figure is estimated at between 500,000 and 800,000, the majority of whom now live in the suburbs of Damascus, largely in deteriorating conditions. Syria’s immigration laws require Iraqis to travel out of the country every six months in order to renew their residence permits. Those who cannot travel regularly must live clandestinely.