IRAQ: The queues snaking through Najaf's dusty, broken streets were long and getting longer, but no one complained: centuries of waiting were coming to an end.
Iraq's Shias have at various times tried the sword and the gun to win the political power they saw as their birthright. Yesterday, it finally seemed within reach, courtesy of the ballot box.
Despite being a majority, Shias have been history's underdogs, but that began to change in crisp morning sunshine when lines formed outside polling stations for the first democratic election in decades.
For this brand of Islam to dominate a key Arab country is a seismic shift for the Middle East, and at its epicentre is Najaf, the spiritual heart of the Shia world, to which the new Iraqi government will have to pay heed.
As the day progressed and no attacks materialised, the mood lightened, verging on the festive. Ms Shokry Sqhip (71), could not walk and relatives wheeled her on an improvised cart. "I have difficulties, but I must vote. Today is the first chance I have ever had to vote properly," she said.
US and British troops stayed in their base on the outskirts of Najaf, a far cry from last year, when Shia militias were involved in fierce battles with US troops around the gold-domed burial place of Ali, son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed.
For centuries, the Shias, 60 per cent of modern Iraq's population, were subservient to the minority Sunnis. In 1920, the Shias rose against the British, but lost, and the Sunnis, with British backing, continued lording it over them. Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime aggravated that marginalisation and so, in 1991, in the wake of the first Gulf War, the Shias rose again, only to be crushed once more.
Resolving not to repeat those mistakes, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has co-operated with the US, calmed his supporters after they were targeted by Sunni bombs, and lobbied for elections, knowing that the outcome would be a Shia-dominated government, albeit in coalition with Kurds and Sunni groups.
This time it is the Sunnis who have rebelled, and it is their turn to be marginalised, much to the unease of Sunni-led governments in other Arab countries.
"Al-Sistani has played it brilliantly," said one western diplomat. "By reining in his radicals and going for elections, power is falling into the Shia lap." - (Guardian Service)