This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HILLAH 000378 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM IZ
SUBJECT: MOOD SERENE, SECURITY EXTENSIVE AT DOWNTOWN AL-HILLAH 
POLLING CENTER 
 
REF: HILLAH 0377, HILLAH 0376 
 
¶1. Summary: Family trips to polling places, patriotic music and 
mosque exhortations characterized the activity around one 
downtown Al-Hillah, Babil Province polling station on December 
¶15. Male and female screeners courteously searched voters as 
they moved smoothly through the entrance. Policemen deployed 
around the station in groups of two and three took charge of 
their colleagues' weapons as one by one they entered, unarmed, 
to vote. The quiet activity and calm mood suggested that in at 
least one neighborhood, Iraqis increasingly familiar with the 
democratic process are determined to cast their votes and move 
their country forward. End summary. 
 
¶2. The bustle and blaring patriotic music inside the Babil 
Police General Headquarters in downtown Al-Hillah shortly after 
the polls opened at 7 a.m. belied the quiet outside the walls. 
While no more than a handful of single men had taken to the 
streets to walk to their polling stations in the surrounding 
neighborhood, inside the police compound SWAT team members in 
tan jumpsuits, many of them wearing ski masks, piled into 
pick-up trucks with mounted machine guns and sped away on 
patrols. 
 
¶3. Pedestrian traffic remained slow through the second hour of 
voting, with small groups of Iraqis -- husbands and wives and 
single men -- moving past the police station towards the 
Al-Waili School, a high school temporarily converted into a 
polling center. Iraqi Police deployed regularly along the 
streets outnumbered voters. A group of about twenty youths, only 
a few appearing to have reached the voting age, marched in a 
disorderly knot past the police station towards the school 
banging bass drums, waving giant red and green flags, symbols of 
Shi'a Islam, and chanting the name of Grand Ayatollah Ali 
Al-Sistani in time with the drumbeat. 
 
¶4. At the station itself, the traffic steadily trickled in, 
increasing marginally through mid-morning. A mosque loudly 
blared a tinny call reminding voters to remember Imam Hussein 
and declaring, "this is a day of victory for the Marja'iya" 
again and again. Almost all of those voting arrived as families, 
women in abayas escorted by husbands and fathers, accompanied by 
children, the girls often dressed in brightly colored red and 
pink dresses. Screeners at the gate to the school's courtyard, 
men standing to the left and women to the right inside a booth 
made of cloth curtains, quickly patted down voters and let them 
through. 
 
¶5. Qais Al-Hasnawi, a spokesman for the Babil Province 
Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI), walking out of 
the school, his finger purple with the ink used to show that he 
had voted, said, "the Iraqis are now familiar with elections. 
Electoral education is widespread." He related that by this 
time, about 10:45 a.m., in the January vote and October 
referendum, lines stretched outside the school's courtyard and 
into the street. Al-Hasnawi suggested that in January and 
October voters rushed to the polls as early as they could, 
hoping to be finished and home before a terrorist attack. This 
time, he said, there was no such urgency. Police deployed at the 
site seemed relaxed. They smoked, called greetings to voters 
they recognized, and chatted with friends and IECI staff. 
Periodically, one would hand his AK-47 rifle to a colleague, 
enter the school, and emerge 10 or 15 minutes later, his finger 
purple from voting. 
 
¶6. Voters leaving the school building seemed eager to talk about 
their choices with Western reporters and REO Hillah staff, and 
displayed no unease as other voters and police huddled around to 
listen. About 80 percent of the voters leaving Al-Waili High 
School disclosed that they voted for the United Iraqi Alliance 
(UIA, ballot number 555), but others weren't shy about sharing 
different choices. A 26-year-old policeman named Amir Mehdi 
explained that his vote for Iyad Allawi's National Iraqi List 
(ballot number 731) was a vote against religious interference in 
the government. "It reminds me of the Middle Ages in Europe, 
when the Church dominated the governments," he said. He 
described Allawi as "a strong man," praised the former Prime 
Minister for overseeing the destruction of terrorist camps in 
Fallujah, and said that Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari had done 
nothing to solve Iraq's problems. 
 
¶7. A family of 14, five men, five abaya-clad women, and four 
children, walked together into the polling station at about 11 
a.m. They quickly entered the school, voted, and after about 20 
minutes emerged to tell a group of reporters and REO staff that 
all 10 of the adults had cast their votes for Mithal Al-Alousi's 
List for the Iraqi Nation (ballot number 620). The children, 
like their parents, had dipped their fingers into the purple 
voting ink. One of the women, a 28-year-old named Asmaa Abdul 
Hussein, said that Al-Alousi "represents the people, and feels 
the pain of the people." She said that they had voted for Allawi 
in January, but maintained that "we were not convinced by his 
performance," and that he was now trying too hard to befriend 
the Baathists. The family patriarch, a retired contractor named 
Hamza Abdul Hussein, said that Al-Alousi was an enemy of the 
Baathists. 
 
¶8. Al-Hasnawi, the IECI spokesman, reported that by late 
morning, about 50 percent of those registered had voted at the 
handful of polling centers he had visited. Traffic remained at a 
steady flow of small families and single men, slightly 
decreasing as noon and midday prayers approached. He expressed 
his satisfaction with the conduct of the election monitors, 
which at Al-Waili included representatives of the Badr 
Organization, the Allawi slate (ballot number 731), and two 
Iraqi non-governmental organizations, including the Iraqi 
Election Information Network (EIN). He seemed almost surprised 
as he surveyed the scene. "It's so smooth," he said. 
FONTENEAU