Michael J. Totten: Iraqi Exiles at the Polls

January 29, 2005

Iraqi Exiles at the Polls

There was an article in today's New York Times that gives a vivid picture of the intensity of emotion among so many of the Iraqi exiles who have been voting in this Iraqi election. It has been heartening to see that the American mainstream press, it so far appears, is going to be covering this election:

SOUTHGATE, Mich., Jan. 28 - Ali Mohammed, who spent eight years in the Abu Ghraib prison in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, called the owner of the grocery store where he is a stock clerk before sunup on Friday to say he was putting on his best suit, the charcoal pinstripe he usually saves for weddings.
Glowing like proud papas, Mr. Mohammed and his supervisor, Hussain al-Jebori, cast the first ballots of their lives and lingered at the polling place here for three hours, clapping for friends and strangers and searching for familiar names, including a former cellmate, on the daunting list of 7,700 Iraqi legislative candidates. Mr. Mohammed, 39, said he decided on Friday to start a family, "because now my children's future is secure."

[…]
"I wanted to keep the paper in my hand for long time," Mr. Jebori said. "First thing I imagined how much the paper cost us as a country and a people. It cost us a million people's deaths. Now we get the victory, just now when we elect our representatives. I want to touch the victory. I didn't want to leave it."

My only quibble with this and a great many of the articles on this election is the use of the term "expatriates" both in the headline and, once, in the article. Though the term in its generic sense – it refers to any person who has left his or her homeland whether willingly or not -- may be technically accurate, it is too evocative of Bohemian enclaves of artists and writers in search of inspiration. There is a point beyond which I think you have to use the word 'exile.' Thus, those German Jews with numbers on their arms that I saw as a child in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, were exiles. The millions of people from all over the world who have emigrated to the United States because they are afforded the freedom to live where they please, are expatriates.

"They decided to vote even if they die," Diaa al-Tamimi, 35, said of his relatives remaining in Iraq. "There's danger. But if not to vote, they're going to die anyway. Election, that's the best weapon for us. Terrorists, they use car bombs. We use the election."
[…]

"It's not safe, but they will do it," Mr. Aljayashi said. "We spent our life as a number on paper. Now we count as a people, a citizenship. This is worth a lot. This is worth even dying for."

[…]
No lapel stickers declared, "I voted today." But voters displayed ink-stained fingers as a sign of progress.
"I'm very happy to show everybody my finger now," Mr. Jeburi, the grocery owner, said. "I wish it could stay there for years and years."

These people have been a living embodiment of the bitter reality of exile. Let's save the word 'expatriate' for a time when Iraqis, as we are seeing the start of now, have the freedom to choose.

Mehsin al-Busaid, in tears, voting Friday in Southgate, Mich., in the election for 275 members of the new Iraqi national assembly. Mr. Busaid's son was killed in the 1990-1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein. (photo by J. D. Pooley for The New York Times)

Posted by Jeremy Brown at January 29, 2005 03:39 PM

Comments

That picture chokes me up. God bless those who vote.

Posted by: Mark Poling at January 29, 2005 04:13 PM

Mr. Busaid's son was killed in the 1990-1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein.

Yeah, but he's crying because Bush Sr. encouraged them to revolt against Saddam and then left them out to dry.

/channeling a bitter Lib

Posted by: Carlos at January 29, 2005 04:43 PM

Very moving photo.

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Posted by: dougf at January 29, 2005 07:16 PM

As moving as that picture is, I doubt any of us here will ever understand the full range of emotions that man, and many like him, must be going through this weekend. Sadness, relief, hope, fear, you name it.

God bless them.

Go Iraq Go!

Posted by: MisterPundit at January 29, 2005 07:52 PM

Oh, man . . . that just puts yet another face on the horror which the upcoming Iraqi Civil War is going to unleash.

Posted by: Kimmitt at January 29, 2005 10:21 PM

It's too bad we're not allowed to suppose there might have been WMD's in Iraq or we could smugly predict their use against voters. No, far better to snidely foretell a civil war. And how can civil war not happen? You can target and murder children, clerics, charity workers all you want, but playing around with democracy...that's liable to stir up some trouble.

Posted by: Jeremy Brown at January 30, 2005 12:44 AM

Oh, man . . . that just puts yet another face on the horror which the upcoming Iraqi Civil War is going to unleash--Kimmett

Let's make this easy for you to understand.I will use SMALL words so you don't become confused.IMHO,and I repeat it's just my humble opinion----- you are a sad excuse for a human being.If I had a 'soul'that was as decayed as yours,I would just hide myself away somewhere,so that my emptiness could not be seen by others.
Pathetic

Posted by: dougf at January 30, 2005 01:39 AM

Kimmitt,

Do you EVER get tired of being wrong? I mean, it sounds to me like you can't frikkin' wait for this "civil war," if only to show how right you were.

And please spare me the inevitable lines about how you don't want there to be a civil war in Iraq. Millions of Iraqis voting, and you just can't even crack a smile if it means that your political enemies might get some credit.

I guess the Iraqis were better off under Saddam... I mean, sure they were being murdered by the tens of thousands every year, sure Hussein was filling mass graves, sure he was oppressing the rights of his people, but hey, at least there wasn't a possibility of Civil War.

I fully understand this statement is not going to mean anything to you, but I make it anyway: Kimmitt, you disgust me. You are a dark, nasty person more interested in making political points than celebrating the fact that people are VOTING.

Posted by: Big Brother at January 30, 2005 05:40 AM

I honestly think Kimmitt drops these little nuggets on us just to watch us seethe. (If so, it still doesn't speak well of the overall state of his soul/mental health/karma.)

Don't worry, Kimmitt, you may have lost Iraq, but you still have Iran and North Korea to defend.

Posted by: Mark Poling at January 30, 2005 06:22 AM

I wonder - once the violence in Iraq settles down (fingers crossed) - whether many of the Iraqi exiles/expats in the US, Canada and elsewhere - will actually return to live in Iraq? Re the issue of whether they are properly "exiles" vs expats" - I guess that question will be answered in retrospect. "Exiles" will go home. "Expats" will stay.

Personally I think it would be way cool to one day have the opportunity to visit Iraq as a tourist. I don't travel much but it would be something to see these people - people whom we rarely saw in the Saddam era - and since then have seen largely only in the context of warzone video footage - just face-to-face, up close and personal - just casually walking down one of their streets. Tourist travel packages to Iraq. Tour the old Saddam palaces! A day in Najaf! The spot where Sergio Vieira de mello died! The dark days of Fallujah tour! A 3-day tour of the Kurdish North! If there was history there before there's no denying the fact that history has certainly picked up its pace in recent years!

If it sounds cynical - that's not the way I mean it. Rather I mean that we have such a clear memory of all these places and battles. We've had a front-row seat at history and it simply wouldn't surprise me if many Americans like myself would have a great appreciation for traveling to Iraq and seeing these place for ourselves, courtesy of Iraqi tour guides who would tell us about their own recent (and ancient) history in their own words. Seriously - I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere down the road Baghdad weren't one of the hottest travel destinations in the world! Sort of like Cairo used to be.

Posted by: Caroline at January 30, 2005 10:02 AM

Millions of Iraqis voting, and you just can't even crack a smile if it means that your political enemies might get some credit.

In a country which had to be shut down for a day and run as a military police state by a foreign occupying power, in an election which simply was not held in large swathes of the country. No, what I think of is the probability of cruel farce.

Kimmitt, you disgust me. You are a dark, nasty person more interested in making political points than celebrating the fact that people are VOTING.

Once two things happen, I'll dance in the fricking streets:

1) The newly-formed Iraq government decides it can manage its own affairs and tells us to leave, and we do, and

2) The first peaceful transfer of power takes place in a later election,

In the meantime, this is a time for at best cautious optimism, not celebration and derision of those who don't share your political outlook.

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