Enthusiasm among Iraq's southern voters

By Paul Wood
BBC News, Basra

The voter turnout is expected to be higher than in the last poll

In the foggy dawn, British troops maintained an outer cordon of security and kept their distance from the polling stations in southern Iraq.

The message - this was an Iraqi affair and there could be no hint of interference by the multinational forces.

Iraqis walked through the mist to queue up outside the polling stations.

They went to vote believing, or hoping, that this election would make them truly independent of the coalition. And this election is different - it will produce the first full-term government since the invasion. Previous governments have only been temporary.

Previous governments were also been unable to guarantee security.

That is why, outside the polling station we visited, Iraqis were handing over not just mobile phones, but watches, jewellery and even pins, such was the fear among police of a bomb or a triggering mechanism being smuggled into the voting area.

Optimistic signs

Inside, the Iraqis were indulging in a ritual they have followed three times in the last year - casting a ballot. Still they seemed as enthusiastic as ever about democracy.

Al Zubbiah, the town we visited, has a large Sunni minority and the polling station which we were in is in a district about evenly split between Sunnis and Shias. The Sunnis did seem to be voting in large numbers.

For the coalition that is a good sign, especially if repeated nationally. It could mean a parliament seen as truly representative of all Iraqis and with the political legitimacy to crack down on the insurgency.

However many voters told us that, for them, the battle against the insurgency was one they increasingly wanted left to their own government.

"We're voting for the foreign troops to go home," said one man as he prepared to mark his ballot paper.

This election has been one of the most democratic in the Arab world but still was not perfect. In the heavily-fortified British embassy in Basra we met a candidate who was too afraid to leave her home to campaign.

She was not prepared to be identified either. The reason was she opposed the Shia militias who she said had been terrorising Basra.

"Many who did interviews with the international media about this have been killed," she said. "Such worries have unfortunately become a familiar part of our daily lives."

Many parts of the south were expected to vote in large numbers for the Shia religious groups which make up the United Iraqi Alliance. But whether Sunni or Shia, religious or secular, most Iraqis have the same hope.

It is one shared by the coalition itself - that this election will bring the political stability which will indeed allow foreign troops to leave Iraq.