Iraqi expatriates excited over free vote

CHICAGO -- Abdul Albisherawy says he doesn't care who wins the upcoming Iraqi elections as long as his homeland isn't run by a dictator.\n"Any leader that gets in, that's fine, as long as the people run the country," the Chicago cab driver said Monday as he prepared to join thousands of Iraqi expatriates registering to vote in the upcoming Iraqi election.\nAs the seven-day voter registration period opened Monday in the Chicago area and four other U.S. cities, Albisherawy and others talked with excitement about the opportunity to cast ballots in Iraq's first independent election in nearly 50 years.\n"Oh, boy, you can't even imagine the happiness for us, believe me," said Tommy Alyasiry, a 38-year-old school maintenance worker in St. Louis who plans to rent a car and drive his family to Chicago to register later this week. "We waited a long time, but finally we see the freedom."\nFor voters like Alyasiry, driving hundreds of miles to register this week in suburban Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, Los Angeles or Washington, D.C., and then returning Jan. 28 to 30 to vote may be an inconvenience, but many say it's worth the effort.\n"I talked to a guy yesterday, he said if I have to go walking I will go," said Ihsan Alyasiry, executive director of the Mesopotamian Center of St. Louis, who plans to register in Chicago. "My own feeling is even if I have to go 10 times I will do it."\nThe Mesopotamian Center arranged for four vans to take voters from St. Louis to the two suburban Chicago registration sites in Skokie and Rosemont and back this week. The Assyrian National Council of Illinois is picking up others at Chicago homes and churches, said Susan Sarkis, the council's assistant director.\nOn Jan. 28, 29 and 30, those Iraqis who have registered will have the chance to vote for members for their homeland's 275-member Assembly, which will elect a president and two deputy presidents and draft the country's Constitution.\nOfficials don't know how many Iraqis will register in the United States, but if the phones at the Assyrian National Council of Illinois are any indication, the steady stream of people at the council's community center in Skokie on Monday will continue through the week.\nThe 2000 U.S. Census put the number of Iraqi-born immigrants in the United States at about 90,000. With voting open to second-generation Iraqi-Americans, more than 230,000 people are eligible to vote -- at least 31,000 of them in the Chicago area, Sarkis said.\nEdward Shamoun, a Schaumburg resident who fled Iraq in 1976, said he and others expect violence and trouble during the election but they believe in the election process.\n"I'm sure the first election won't make us real happy," said Shamoun, 54. "But we're very happy just to have the opportunity."\nIhsan Alyasiry's sister and family live outside Baghdad and are hopeful about what the votes cast in Iraq and by Iraqis around the world will mean.\n"They think the election is going to be a magic stick, that it will turn everything to gold, everything shiny," he said.\nBut they also believe they are literally risking their lives by voting, he said. After so many years under the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein there also may be some concern that they could somehow end up paying for the votes cast by relatives outside the country.\n"But they don't care," he said. "My sister says, 'Even if I know I'm going to die, I'm going to it for my kids."