Sunday, October 16, 2005

Reuters: Provinces in focus as Iraq counts votes. [...] The key could lie in the northern province of Nineveh and the city of Mosul. Sitting some 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad, Mosul has a volatile mix of about two million Sunni Arabs and Kurds near some of Iraq's richest oil fields. [...]

AP: Sunnis turn out to reject Iraqi charter. [...] Sunni Arabs voters turned out in surprising numbers Saturday, many of them heeding calls of their clerics to reject the charter. If two-thirds of voters in three Sunni provinces reject the constitution, it will be defeated, even if it wins a majority nationwide. But even if minority Sunnis fail to block the charter's ratification, a strong "no" vote within the community - which dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein - raises questions about whether the charter will fulfill Washington's goal of luring fighters away from the Sunni-led insurgency. [...]

Focus English News: Kurds in Northern Iraq voted actively in today’s referendum on a new Constitution of Iraq.

ABC News / AFP: Counting underway in Iraq referendum. Iraqi officials are counting ballots after a historic vote on a US-backed constitution, with the fate of the document hanging one a few provinces where Sunnis may muster enough "no" votes to block it. [...] Election officials said partial results from the vote could be available as early as Sunday, but that it would take several days for the verdict to become clear. [...]

Spiral of Lies blog: Why it was worth it. I am watching the results of the Iraqi Constitutional voting, amazed. Amazed that no one is talking about this vote in the proper historical context. Because today will be as important to the War on Terror as the fall of the Berlin Wall was to the Cold War.