Falluja residents question election readiness
For many, lack of basic services makes an informed vote difficult
By Arwa Damon
CNN
 |  In Falluja there is no running water and no electricity, but preparations continue for Sunday's elections. |
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 Wednesday was the deadliest day for U.S. troops since war's start.
 Pressure increases to find an "exit strategy" in Iraq.
 Iraq is preparing until the last minute for Sunday's voting.
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FALLUJA, Iraq (CNN) -- It's been a week since Yassir Ibrahim Mohammad returned here and discovered that his grocery store was gone. He's built another on the corner of a devastated intersection, but laments his circumstances.
"This destruction here, you can see it with your own eyes. Come try and live this nightmare -- no power, no water, no gas," he said. Those conditions are the aftermath of the coalition's offensive to rout insurgents from the city.
It's the infrastructure problems that will stop Mohammad from voting Sunday, he said. Falluja's lack of electricity has prevented him from hearing and seeing radio and television ads, there are no election posters on the streets and none of the candidates campaign publicly in that volatile region.
"I want to vote for someone who will benefit me, who will benefit the country. But if I can't get any information about the candidates, I will stay home. I can't vote if I don't know who to vote for," he said.
An unemployed schoolteacher made similar remarks. "It's not that the citizens of Falluja don't want to vote. It's that we don't know who is running."
Sheik Ahmad Al-Janabi at the Sayyid Hussein Mosque said he supports election participation, but will leave it to his followers to decide whether they want to vote or not.
"I don't know who to vote for, I don't know how to vote, I don't know where to vote," the sheik said. "From what we know of elections, there are promotions, there is campaigning, there are places to vote. A person knows who to vote for to be able to vote. Have you ever heard of going to vote and not knowing the candidates?"
Election security
Col. Mike Schupp, commander of the Marines Regimental Combat Team 1, 1st Marine Division, said Wednesday that Falluja will be secure and ready for elections. About 3,000 Marines and 3,000 Iraqi security force soldiers will be on duty in the city.
Schupp said he suspects that some insurgents may be filtering back into the city with the civilian population to conduct reconnaissance of the city and reorganize themselves.
However, there's tight security on Falluja's outskirts to prevent people from returning with weapons.
But Lt. Col. Andy Kennedy, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines with RCT-1, said he is more concerned about what weaponry already may be inside.
Since the end of major fighting in Falluja in November, coalition forces have found more than 1,050 weapons caches in the western portion of the city alone, Schupp said. And Marines using mine detectors continue to find more underground.
To protect voters and poll workers, Schupp said voting stations are fortified against expected threats, and snipers will be on duty around voting sites. Voters will go through multiple checkpoints that have weapons- and explosives-detecting equipment. Security forces will search ambulances and fire trucks.
The locations of voting sites remain secret, and workers from the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq will not arrive until 48 hours before election day.
U.S. Marines are hiring 125 citizens to work the polls in Falluja, paying them $500 for a three-day period. Schupp said there would be a bus system in place to get citizens to the polls, since the Iraqi government has banned civilian traffic. At one of the five checkpoints into the city, soldiers are on the look-out for possible car bombs coming into Falluja.
Greater concerns
On the highway leading to Baghdad, Iraqi security forces at a checkpoint are searching vehicles and handing out leaflets promoting the elections.
They said some Iraqis won't take them, and others have no interest in the upcoming voting. They are more concerned with power and gas.
"Vote? My house is destroyed. So I vote?" asked Hatem Khalef, a resident stopped in traffic at the checkpoint. "Go see our houses in Falluja, flattened. And they say go vote after they destroyed our homes?"
A group of three young men, ages 19 to 21, said they want to vote.
"We all want to vote. We want Iraq to unite and have security," said Amar Hussein, one of the three. "But we don't know anything about any of the candidates or the lists."
Lt. Hussein of the 2nd Muthanna Brigade, who is commanding the Iraqi soldiers at the checkpoint, said that the elections are a turning point for the country and that only Iraqis can help themselves.
He and his soldiers are assigned to secure one of the voting sites outside of Falluja on election day.
"I have a message to my fellow soldiers who have not returned to work," Hussein said. "That no one can protect this nation but the sons of its people."
