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'Other Iraq' ignores Saddam poll
By CNN's Brent Sadler
ERBIL, Northern Iraq (CNN) -- In contrast to the 100 percent that Saddam Hussein won in Iraq's presidential referendum, in the north of the country there was no ballot and little or no enthusiasm for the outcome. Three northern provinces, home to around 3.5 million Kurds, have been off limits to the central government in Baghdad since the end of the Gulf War some 11 years ago. In one coffee shop, little interest was shown for the televised outcome on Baghdad TV. These Iraqis speak their minds about the Baghdad vote and the triumphant president: "People are afraid so they choose him and choose his own government and his own party so it's just a play... it's not for real." In the Kurdish safe haven the taxi cabs look the same as they do in Baghdad, so do the traffic police and uniformed security personnel, but that's where superficial similarities end. "We are free in anything we do and we talk about and this is usually not seen in the other area of Iraq," an Iraqi told CNN. At a road bridge linking two very different versions of Iraq the atmosphere is very strange, almost surreal. Motorists coming into Iraq say they are being forced to buy car stickers praising the virtues of the Iraqi president in Baghdad. On one side of the Great Zab river is an Iraqi army machine gun post and nine tenths of the country are under Baghdad's control. On the Kurdish side of the checkpoint is a society which reads dozens of newspapers, reflecting a wide range of opinion and any number of satellite TV channels, including their own. The Iraqi Kurds have been progressing this way since the end of the Gulf War. People are free to visit any web site at Internet cafes, international phone calls are freely available with satellite technology. All this is banned or restricted in the other Iraq. Hoyshar Zebari, from the Kurdistan Democratic Party, told CNN: "We have been governing for the past ten years. We are united more than any time before and being part of Iraq... we will play an important role in stabilising the country." Regarding the threat of war on Iraq, there is a great deal of concern in the region that there may be some sort of action taken economically against the Kurds because they still rely on transport, oil and other supplies between Iraq and the north. On the military level, there is concern that perhaps the Iraqi leader may take some form of maverick action to perhaps upset possible U.S. war plans and which could threaten this area. Kurds themselves are often stating how much they say they have suffered under the regime of the Iraqi president for so very long. They say they look forward to the whole of Iraq becoming, what they call, a liberated country.
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