FRANCE: Kamal Alamidawi, a law student, and his wife, Wadiya, spent €400 to travel from Lyon with their baby daughter to vote at the only Iraqi polling station in France, in Paris's 13th arrondissement, yesterday.
Shia Muslims from Nassiriya, the couple, in their 20s, voted for the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition that received the blessing of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. "This is the first step towards establishing a democratic government and stopping the terrorists," Mr Alamidawi said. But he also expressed the widespread sentiment that voting was the best way to force US troops to leave Iraq.
The 111 parties, coalitions and independent candidates on the ballot were ascribed numbers in a lottery. The United Iraqi Alliance, which includes the two biggest Iranian-backed parties, SCIRI and Dawa, was referred to by voters as "list 169". When the results in Iraq and abroad are announced 10 days from now, list 169 is expected to have won the lion's share of the ballots.
The interim prime minister Mr Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia who was long on the CIA and MI6 payroll, has said he wants a "conditions-paced" rather than a "calendar-paced" schedule for US withdrawal. But this was not acceptable to the Iraqis who voted here yesterday. "I want a calendar, with dates, as it says in list 169's programme and the UN Security Council resolution," Mr Alamidawi stressed.
Amir al-Obeidi (34), a Shia Muslim from Babylon, said he too wanted the Americans to leave Iraq quickly. "If we choose a government and a constitution and we ask the Americans to leave and they don't, then it's another story," Mr al-Obeidi said.
"Already we have the right to fight them, but we've chosen another way." The seeds of post-election conflict were writ large in the Shia Muslims' belief that they would be allowed to take power and invite US forces to depart.
John Negroponte, the US ambassador to Baghdad, has explained the US strategy to recent visitors. To prevent the religious Shia of the United Iraqi Alliance from taking over, Washington will encourage all the other parties who win seats to form a ruling coalition. So while the United Iraqi Alliance is almost certain to gain a simple majority, it is likely to find itself in opposition.
As in Iraq, Shia Muslims and Kurds comprised the majority of voters in Paris yesterday. Fatima Rashid (20) fled Dohuk, in Kurdistan, with her family in 1989 and was taken under the wing of the former first lady Danielle Mitterrand. The Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani overcame past rivalries to form a single Kurdish list, to win the biggest possible bloc in the new assembly. "I'm voting for the independence of our country," Ms Rashid said. By "our country", she meant Kurdistan - not Iraq.
I found only one Sunni Muslim voter in the polling station, a 48-year-old dentist named Rafah, from Hit in thxe Sunni Triangle. "Even if the election is not fair, it will be better than living under dictatorship for 35 years," she said. "Even if there are irregularities, we have a chance of changing things." Rafah claimed her fellow Sunnis in Iraq abstained from voting out of fear.
"My family live in Baghdad, in the Amariya-Yarmook district, which is full of followers of the old regime. They wanted to vote, but they could see the threat in the eyes of their neighbours."
Like all the voters I interviewed, Rafah insisted the Americans must leave. "If we have a legitimate government, they will have no reason to stay; the election will help us liberate our country from occupation."
The main difference between the Paris polling station and those in Iraq was security. A busload of CRS riot police sat in the street outside, and there were three searches to enter the building, but no one seemed to feel threatened. "People here are not putting their life in their hands; in Baghdad, they don't know whether they'll survive," said Marion Wambergue of the International Organisation for Migration.
The IOM received a contract from the Iraqi electoral commission to organise voting in 74 centres in 14 countries outside Iraq. But participation has been disappointing. Less than one quarter of the 1.2 millioIraqi expatriates worldwide registered to vote. In France, 1,041 of thousands of eligible Iraqis actually registered.