Amid tight security, Iraqis worldwide bring hopes, fears to the ballot box

LONDON - In the nations bordering their homeland, in a furniture warehouse in Australia and in an events center in London, Iraqis on Friday began voting for an interim government that they hope will bring peace and order.

"Iraqis are finally expressing themselves. It is a victory for all the dead that Saddam Hussein killed," said Falastin Saheb, 25, an Iraqi who has been living in Syria for two years and is running a polling center there, in Rukn el-Din, a Kurdish neighborhood.

Banners outside the center read: "Let us hear your voice."

Security was tight at polling stations in 14 countries that are open through Sunday, when people inside Iraq have their chance to vote.

Private security guards frisked people entering the polling center in Syria, X-ray machines and metal detectors were deployed in Australia, and in the Copenhagen suburb of Taastrup, heavily armed police checked voters as they wound their way through concrete blocs set up on the road leading to Denmark's only polling station.

According to the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, there are 201,000 Iraqis living in Syria, but only 8 percent, or 16,581, have registered to vote. Many of the Iraqis fled around the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq to escape worsening security conditions.

As the low rate of registration signaled, hope was far from universal.

"I am not hopeful at all," said Fusun Atici, an ethnic Turk from Kirkuk who voted in Istanbul. "I think this election will only bring ethnic clashes."

Voters and election officials clapped their hands and sang to celebrate the start of voting in London, and one staff member banged on a drum improvised from a water container.

"It is the first time we have the right to vote and today I feel that I am born again," said Darbaz Rasool, 23, a Kurd who fled Iraq in 1994.