Ensnared in Kurdish Election Blame Game
For one IWPR journalist, Iraqi Kurdish poll overshadowed by mystifying allegation of misconduct.
Ensnared in Kurdish Election Blame Game
For one IWPR journalist, Iraqi Kurdish poll overshadowed by mystifying allegation of misconduct.
Anticipation awoke me early on the morning of election day. The following night, dread kept me awake. The day I had spent so long looking forward to had turned into a nightmare.
It began with a visit to a neighbourhood polling station, where I was due to spend a couple of hours as an independent monitor for a local organisation.
I arrived at 7.45 am, a quarter of an hour before polls opened. Long queues had already formed of people waiting to vote.
Entire families were decked out in traditional Kurdish costume – the men in baggy suits, bound with a cummerbund, and the women in bright, sequined dresses. Young children milled around, too young to vote but eager to watch. The very old were there too. Some arrived in wheelchairs. The queue made way for them.
The whole occasion reminded me of Nawroz, the Kurdish new year festival, held every spring. Then too, entire families take to the streets in their finery.
Other people have their own countries but as Iraqi Kurds, we realise we must be part of another country, like it or not. So we look for other outlets for our national pride – like Nawroz and, it seems, election day.
The election campaign this year has been unlike any I can remember. In the past, we voted for our strongest parties, whom we knew would advance the Kurdish cause among Iraq’s Arabs.
This time, a strong opposition group emerged, trying to loosen the ruling parties’ grip on power.
If in the past people voted for Kurdistan, for the right to have our own region, this time they voted on how this region ought to be run.
I work as a lawyer and also as a journalist. Sulaimaniyah’s courts keep me busy and recently I have had little time for politics.
On election day, though it is impossible to escape politics - it comes packaged with your past. I recognised the primary school that was being used as a polling station. We used to play football in its grounds when I was growing up.
In the voting queue were a few familiar faces. Among them was an old school friend whom I lost contact with years ago, when he joined the tens of thousands of young Kurds who leave looking for a new life in Europe.
I recently heard he had been deported from Britain and was back in Kurdistan. Britain had changed him. He was smartly dressed, in striking clothes that you can’t find in our shops. More importantly, he had lost the moustache that is a badge of manhood when you are growing up here.
I have travelled several times to Britain and Germany but I was never tempted to settle there. Whenever I came back from abroad, my friends and colleagues mocked me, calling me an idiot for missing my chance to remain in Europe.
“Other people risk their lives trying to reach the West,” they said. “You go there on a plane with pretty women serving you beer. And yet you choose to come back?”
I never thought I was wrong to return. I have a family and a duty to my country. I prefer to face danger here than to be somewhere in Europe, watching Barcelona football club on TV.
It was hot in the polling station and the electricity kept going off, shutting down the air coolers. The people in the queues fanned themselves with their identity cards.
In a voting room, an old lady managed to dip her left index finger in the ink instead of the right one. There was commotion as people called out, trying to correct her mistake. The woman kept saying, “I don’t know, I just wanted to vote.”
I saw a young woman in the polling station grow distressed because she could not find her name on the electoral roll. She started accusing the officials. “Why is my name not here? I will not vote now, I will go home,” she said.
At 10.30 am, I finished my work as an election monitor, having inspected the seals on the ballot boxes and made some notes. I voted in the same polling station and then spent the rest of the day working with two foreign journalists.
I was still with the journalists when my mobile phone rang, just after midnight that night.
It was my mother. Upset and on the verge of tears, she begged me to come home. I rushed back to find the entire family awake and waiting for me.
A powerful local TV station, allied to one of the ruling parties, had accused an election monitor with the same first name as mine of serious misconduct. They did not state the last name, making me a potential suspect.
The man had apparently been seen distributing campaign propaganda for an opposition alliance outside a polling station in the city. Campaign rules prohibit anyone from campaigning outside a polling station. For an independent election monitor to be doing so would be unethical as well as illegal.
I told my family I could not dream of abusing my position as a monitor on behalf of any politicians. Nor could I have compromised my role as an independent reporter to support one of the lists.
The charge on television was serious but not very specific. After all, there are thousands of people in this city with the same first name as me. Moreover, plenty of witnesses from the polling station could testify I had not broken any rules.
However, perhaps there were only a few election monitors in this city who shared my first name. Could some people in power still suspect me?
For the sake of my family and for my own reputation, I had to clear my name. But I did not realise how hard it would be. In order to defend myself against the charge, I had to first establish whether it had indeed been aimed at me.
I contacted reporters from the TV station. They said it had no further information on the story beyond what had been broadcast. They suggested I simply prepare a written account of my whereabouts on election day.
I first heard the word democracy in 1991 during the Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein. I was 11 years old and did not understand what it meant.
Back then, it was words like Kurdistan and peshmerga, the name of our fighters, that meant more to me. Something inside me would stir every time I heard those words spoken.
I came to grasp the meaning of democracy as I grew older. Working with foreign organisations, I heard the term used with other words such as freedom and human rights.
What we are seeing today is not really democracy. In politics, we have not yet learnt to accept the other side, to accept difference.
As Iraqi Kurds, I believe we have always made the mistake of comparing ourselves to places worse than us. We look to Somalia, or Eritrea or central Iraq in order to feel better about ourselves. But we never look at the examples above us – to see how we could be better.
It is our fault that we have not reached the dream we were all fighting for. I do not blame anyone else, certainly not the coalition forces or the Iraqis in Baghdad.
We have everything here in Kurdistan – everything except the sense to govern ourselves properly.
Rebaz Mahmood is an IWPR-trained journalist in Sulaimaniyah.
It began with a visit to a neighbourhood polling station, where I was due to spend a couple of hours as an independent monitor for a local organisation.
I arrived at 7.45 am, a quarter of an hour before polls opened. Long queues had already formed of people waiting to vote.
Entire families were decked out in traditional Kurdish costume – the men in baggy suits, bound with a cummerbund, and the women in bright, sequined dresses. Young children milled around, too young to vote but eager to watch. The very old were there too. Some arrived in wheelchairs. The queue made way for them.
The whole occasion reminded me of Nawroz, the Kurdish new year festival, held every spring. Then too, entire families take to the streets in their finery.
Other people have their own countries but as Iraqi Kurds, we realise we must be part of another country, like it or not. So we look for other outlets for our national pride – like Nawroz and, it seems, election day.
The election campaign this year has been unlike any I can remember. In the past, we voted for our strongest parties, whom we knew would advance the Kurdish cause among Iraq’s Arabs.
This time, a strong opposition group emerged, trying to loosen the ruling parties’ grip on power.
If in the past people voted for Kurdistan, for the right to have our own region, this time they voted on how this region ought to be run.
I work as a lawyer and also as a journalist. Sulaimaniyah’s courts keep me busy and recently I have had little time for politics.
On election day, though it is impossible to escape politics - it comes packaged with your past. I recognised the primary school that was being used as a polling station. We used to play football in its grounds when I was growing up.
In the voting queue were a few familiar faces. Among them was an old school friend whom I lost contact with years ago, when he joined the tens of thousands of young Kurds who leave looking for a new life in Europe.
I recently heard he had been deported from Britain and was back in Kurdistan. Britain had changed him. He was smartly dressed, in striking clothes that you can’t find in our shops. More importantly, he had lost the moustache that is a badge of manhood when you are growing up here.
I have travelled several times to Britain and Germany but I was never tempted to settle there. Whenever I came back from abroad, my friends and colleagues mocked me, calling me an idiot for missing my chance to remain in Europe.
“Other people risk their lives trying to reach the West,” they said. “You go there on a plane with pretty women serving you beer. And yet you choose to come back?”
I never thought I was wrong to return. I have a family and a duty to my country. I prefer to face danger here than to be somewhere in Europe, watching Barcelona football club on TV.
It was hot in the polling station and the electricity kept going off, shutting down the air coolers. The people in the queues fanned themselves with their identity cards.
In a voting room, an old lady managed to dip her left index finger in the ink instead of the right one. There was commotion as people called out, trying to correct her mistake. The woman kept saying, “I don’t know, I just wanted to vote.”
I saw a young woman in the polling station grow distressed because she could not find her name on the electoral roll. She started accusing the officials. “Why is my name not here? I will not vote now, I will go home,” she said.
At 10.30 am, I finished my work as an election monitor, having inspected the seals on the ballot boxes and made some notes. I voted in the same polling station and then spent the rest of the day working with two foreign journalists.
I was still with the journalists when my mobile phone rang, just after midnight that night.
It was my mother. Upset and on the verge of tears, she begged me to come home. I rushed back to find the entire family awake and waiting for me.
A powerful local TV station, allied to one of the ruling parties, had accused an election monitor with the same first name as mine of serious misconduct. They did not state the last name, making me a potential suspect.
The man had apparently been seen distributing campaign propaganda for an opposition alliance outside a polling station in the city. Campaign rules prohibit anyone from campaigning outside a polling station. For an independent election monitor to be doing so would be unethical as well as illegal.
I told my family I could not dream of abusing my position as a monitor on behalf of any politicians. Nor could I have compromised my role as an independent reporter to support one of the lists.
The charge on television was serious but not very specific. After all, there are thousands of people in this city with the same first name as me. Moreover, plenty of witnesses from the polling station could testify I had not broken any rules.
However, perhaps there were only a few election monitors in this city who shared my first name. Could some people in power still suspect me?
For the sake of my family and for my own reputation, I had to clear my name. But I did not realise how hard it would be. In order to defend myself against the charge, I had to first establish whether it had indeed been aimed at me.
I contacted reporters from the TV station. They said it had no further information on the story beyond what had been broadcast. They suggested I simply prepare a written account of my whereabouts on election day.
I first heard the word democracy in 1991 during the Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein. I was 11 years old and did not understand what it meant.
Back then, it was words like Kurdistan and peshmerga, the name of our fighters, that meant more to me. Something inside me would stir every time I heard those words spoken.
I came to grasp the meaning of democracy as I grew older. Working with foreign organisations, I heard the term used with other words such as freedom and human rights.
What we are seeing today is not really democracy. In politics, we have not yet learnt to accept the other side, to accept difference.
As Iraqi Kurds, I believe we have always made the mistake of comparing ourselves to places worse than us. We look to Somalia, or Eritrea or central Iraq in order to feel better about ourselves. But we never look at the examples above us – to see how we could be better.
It is our fault that we have not reached the dream we were all fighting for. I do not blame anyone else, certainly not the coalition forces or the Iraqis in Baghdad.
We have everything here in Kurdistan – everything except the sense to govern ourselves properly.
Rebaz Mahmood is an IWPR-trained journalist in Sulaimaniyah.
