Iraq’s Sunni parties compete for votes in crucial election

Iraqi Sunnis are weighing whether to vote for candidates on a tribal or party-linked basis, try for independents or maybe not even vote at all.
Iraqis go about their day beneath electoral billboards and placards of candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections, in the district of Adhamiyah in the capital, Baghdad, on Sept. 17, 2021.
Iraqis go about their day beneath electoral billboards and placards of candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections, in the district of Adhamiyah in the capital, Baghdad, on Sept. 17, 2021. - SABAH ARAR/AFP via Getty Images
Shelly Kittleson.jpg
Shelly Kittleson
@shellykittleson

Baghdad streets were teeming by early September with billboards and posters bearing candidates’ faces and the numbers they will be associated with on ballots to be cast in Iraq’s Oct. 10 early elections.

In the upscale, Sunni-majority western neighborhood of Mansour, a large billboard of influential Sunni politician Mohammed al-Karbouli shows him sporting a youthful, black baseball cap.

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