MAÑANA, EL SOL se levantará en las tierras de Mesopotamia. A pesar de todos los intentos -dentro de Iraq, y también muy lejos de allí- de tanta gente para que no ocurriera.

No os olvidéis de visitar este blog, agregando noticias desde el terreno, con información al minuto de los preparativos de hoy y la jornada de mañana.

ACTUALIZACIÓN:

Voting in an Iraqi election for the first time was as personal as it was political for Adim Altalibi. Altalibi, a 55-year-old engineer who left Iraq in 1987, was tearful Friday as he thought about his five nephews killed under Saddam Hussein's regime.

``We lost a lot of our young men and women struggling against Saddam Hussein. It's paid off now,'' he said after casting his ballot at a suburban Detroit voting site.

Altalibi was among hundreds of Iraqis who streamed into polling places in five U.S. cities Friday, the first day they could vote in their homeland's election. Nearly 26,000 people have registered to vote in five metropolitan areas with heavy Iraqi populations: Detroit, Chicago, Nashville, Tenn., Los Angeles and Washington. Tens of thousands more are expected to vote in 13 other countries during balloting that runs through Sunday.

In Iraq and around the globe, the voting has been a cause for jubilation among Iraqis who have long been tormented by Saddam, but the threat of violence is still present. Insurgents bent on disrupting the election process have killed U.S. soldiers -- two more died Friday in Baghdad -- set off suicide car bombs, assassinated officials and bombed polling places.

[...] ``Ten to 20 years from now, all the generations will remember that this is the first time we practiced our freedom of choice,'' said Alshimmari, 49, who worked as a history teacher and was jailed by Saddam before leaving Iraq in 1991.

ACTUALIZACIÓN II:

Tanya Gilly, 30, in gray scarf and robe, deposited her ballot for the Iraqi parliament at a polling station yesterday. One woman. One vote. So much tragic history.

"It's a dream come true for the Kurdish people, after all the suffering we went through," exclaimed the Germantown resident, breaking down in sobs.

Thousands of Iraqi expatriates in 14 countries cast absentee ballots yesterday in their homeland's first free election in decades. More than 280,000 were eligible to participate in the three-day process, a broad effort to extend voting rights to the Iraqi diaspora, including many refugees who fled the government of Saddam Hussein. The election in Iraq takes place tomorrow.

Voters are choosing an Iraqi national assembly that is slated to draw up a new constitution. But to those casting ballots at a regional polling site, the Ramada Inn in New Carrollton, the vote carried greater significance.

"It's closure," said Gilly, referring to the calamitous history of Iraq's minority Kurdish population, which was attacked with chemical weapons by Hussein's government. "We just want to move forward."

"We're hoping this might lead to peace and a more stable government," said Batul Al Zubeidy, 20, of Fairfax, whose family fled the city of Najaf after a failed uprising by Shiites following the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

[...]

State and local police with dogs ringed the Ramada yesterday, where voting began at 7 a.m. During the day, voters arrived in a small but steady stream and were frisked by private guards at an outdoor tent. Entering the conference center, the Iraqis showed their registration slips, signed a voter list, filled out ballots behind cardboard screens, then dropped them in clear plastic urns. The voters' fingers were dipped in purple ink, to prevent double-voting.

The mood was joyous. Some Iraqis snapped pictures. Others burst into applause as family members voted. Ayad A-Saidi of Falls Church hollered, "Thank you, Bush!" as he dropped his folded ballot in the box. He jubilantly carried a sign adorned with U.S. and Iraqi flags, reading, "Thank you USA for liberating my country."

How did he feel?

"Oh, my God! I feel very nice. I feel freedom," said A-Saidi, 37.

Organizers said they expected a heavier turnout over the weekend. "Friday is going to be slow because everyone goes to work and to Friday prayers" at mosques, said Mohamed Taam, one official.

While most voters appeared to be from the Washington area, some traveled long distances.

Ali Hama Amin, 30, flew in from Boston, where he said he studied at Harvard's School of Public Health.

"It's a historical moment for us. It's our first election," said Amin, who wore a blue suit and formal black coat for the occasion. A native of Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdish autonomous zone, he said he voted for the main Kurdish slate.

"I don't like to have radical clerics in Iraq. I want a democratic, free federation of Iraq," he said.

Another Kurd, Lazha Talat, a graduate student at the University of South Florida, flew in with a group of other Iraqi Fulbright scholars.

"It's my duty to participate in the first election we can do," the 26-year-old explained. She noted, however, that turnout was fairly light.

ACTUALIZACIÓN III:

In 1976, when I was 15, my older brother and I left behind our parents, four brothers, three sisters, 500 cousins and our beloved village of Dargala, in the Kurdish part of Iraq, to come to the United States. We also left behind many bad memories: of hiding out in freezing caves in the mountains to escape the Baathists' bombardment of the Kurds, of seeing our uncle's family blown up by government planes.

What we didn't have was any memories of seeing anyone in our family vote. Saddam Hussein's candidates always won 100 percent of the vote, but the election booths in our section of Iraq were in the form of mass graves. There was no indelible ink to prevent fraud in elections, only the indelible pain of broken dreams and the loss of loved ones since our part of Kurdistan was annexed to Iraq in the 1920's.

When I voted in this country for the first time, I thought how lucky Americans were. A vote is taken for granted here, while back in Iraq people died (and are dying now) for it. I've voted in every election here since.

And on Sunday my large family in Iraq will all vote. For my 72-year-old father and my 70-year-old mother, it will be their first time. My mother told me that she would brave the current blizzard in the mountains of Kurdistan to go vote, even though she is very ill. My father, a Kurdish freedom fighter for two decades, looks forward to voting as eagerly as a child waiting to open his Christmas gifts.

ACTUALIZACIÓN IV:

The portrayal of Iraq as a country sharply divided along Shiite and Sunni lines does not do justice to Iraq's complexities. Like any modern society, Iraq is a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities. Shiites and Sunnis living side by side in the cities have, in many respects, as much or more in common with one another than they do with co-religionists in other regions. Also, tribal and clan loyalties often trump ethnic differences, especially within Iraq's several multi-ethnic tribes.

There is an Iraqi identity, and many Iraqis share a sense of common destiny for themselves and their country. They are not intent on replacing the tyranny of a small minority with the tyranny of the majority. Many of the political coalitions on tomorrow's ballot include candidates from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds. For instance, the slates led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi (a Shiite) and President Ghazi Yawar (a Sunni) each contain candidates from multiple ethnicities and religious sects -- as does the Unified Iraqi Alliance, a slate organized by prominent Shiite leaders. In addition, many Iraqis have made clear the need to ensure Sunni participation in the political process. One aide to a prominent Shiite leader told the Arabic daily Al Hayat: "The representation of our Sunni brethren in the coming government must be effective, regardless of the results of the elections."

The critics also seem to forget that the assembly elected tomorrow will be a transitional body -- only the most recent step on the road to Iraqi democracy. Iraq will move from the appointed government that it has today to an elected one. This assembly will select a government and draft a permanent constitution, which will be ratified by a popular referendum and under which a new round of elections will be held in December. Eligible Iraqis who choose not to vote tomorrow will be able to participate in that process and vote later in the year.

ACTUALIZACIÓN V:

Sunni Muslims, who were the dominant force in Saddam Hussein's regime, constitute 20 percent of Iraq's population. And yet the argument is seriously made that a Sunni boycott will invalidate the election results.

If white South Africans had refused to participate in that nation's first-ever free elections back in 1994, nobody on earth would have argued that their lack of participation invalidated the election results.