Workers smuggled into polling stations
From correspondents in Mosul, IraqJanuary 29, 2005
From: Agence France-Presse

HUNDREDS of Iraqi election workers along with voting material were transported overnight by US soldiers to polling sites around Mosul amid intense security measures in the northern city.With the milestone vote only hours away, the election workers were all given about two hours of training and promised the equivalent of $US500 ($645) for their effort.
Umm Alaa, 40, is the only woman inside a huge tented gym and recreation facility at a US base swarming with nearly 500 rowdy male election workers, most of them flown in early today, hours before from Baghdad or southern Shiite areas.
She and 23 other women from her native Shiite city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, were supposed to work polls in Ramadi, west of the capital, but she was separated from them after she missed her flight and ended up instead in Mosul, another tense, predominantly Sunni Muslim city.
"We must all lend a helping hand to our bleeding nation," says the feisty mother of two, wrapped up in a traditional black abaya and seated on top of her travel bag.
Nearby, a man with a loudspeaker drills a group of frenzied men huddled on the floor with last-minute instructions on how to verify the age of prospective voters tomorrow.
"You are witnessing history," beams a US military officer standing close by.
Preparations for elections only got underway in Nineveh province, which includes Mosul, one week ago. Voter registration never happened here because of the security threats.
The province's number of eligible voters is estimated at about one million, according to Khalid al-Kazar, the electoral commission's representative here.
Umm Alaa and a dozen of her colleagues along with eight carton boxes packed with ballots are boarded into Stryker combat vehicles belonging to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment.
Most say they are motivated to do this by their patriotic duty, the orders of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to take part in the elections and their dire economic and living conditions.
"Let's break the back of the terrorists by putting the ballot in the box," says Ali Dakhil, 39, from Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City.
The group is let down outside the Al-Fadhila girls school in the Al-Mansur working class neighbourhood on the city's west side.
They were escorted by US soldiers through concrete barricades and barbed wire ringing the building and handed over to Iraqi soldiers on the inside.
The soldiers are part of a contingent of more than 4000 army special force members and commandos sent from Baghdad to help secure the elections in Mosul.
They will be directly inside the polling sites and at the entrances searching all voters walking in as US soldiers in armoured vehicles and tanks stand guard close by.
A ban on vehicle travel inside the city is in effect until Tuesday.
US warplanes and Apaches will provide air surveillance while Navy Seal snipers will be posted on rooftops around polling sites, which are expected to number 40 in Mosul.
One such site is the Al-Madrasa Al-Khazrajiya in the city's ancient quarters, an area suspected of being a refuge for insurgents and militant foreigners.
Iraqi soldiers stand guard in front of the one century old boys school and on many of the side streets in the vicinity as barbed wires dominate the scene.
Inside some of them take a rest from their duties.
"Iraq will remain forever great," says one of the slogans that decorate the blue-painted walls.
Chants mourning the deaths of revered Shiite Imams Ali and Hussein blare from the tape recorder of a pick-up truck parked in the school's courtyard.
"If they do not want to vote that's their business, the rest of Iraq is voting," says First Lieutenant Hamad, who did not want to give his last name, referring to the boycott of the elections by most Sunnis.
He is from Hilla and member of the country's majority Shiite community, who are expected to sweep to power after years of oppression under Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime.
A reminder of the level of anti-elections sentiment was on display less than one kilometre away from the school.
Dozens of austere-looking bearded men wearing the hallmark Sunni white skull caps stream out of the Al-Zaywani mosque after Friday prayers under the gaze of US soldiers.
"Your participation in the elections is an endorsement of the Crusaders' campaign against Muslims," says a poster plastered at the mosque's entrance.
A US soldier rips it off and burns it.