In Britain facilities were made for local Iraqis to vote in special designated centres. The elections took place from 12th - 16th December 05 and given the dramatic events in London of the previous July everyone involved was naturally nervous about security and procedural control. A senior team was asked to help with ensuring security during the voting procedures in London and Manchester.
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The team was selected after a rigorous tender exercise and awarded the contract because of their particular knowledge of Iraq and the Iraqi people and their working knowledge of Arabic. While the main priority was to ensure that there was no vote tampering by extremist groups or non-supporters of democracy in Iraq, the British and Iraqi authorities recognised the potential risk of a terrorist attack by local Muslin radicals who may wish to attack the polling stations in protest at US and UK foreign policy. The team therefore devised a two tier programme designed to provide normal public security and scrutiny, together with a much more sophisticated level of security planning to mitigate against a major incident.
All of these measures had to be carried out in a way that would not alienate those British based Iraqi citizens who would react badly to overt security measures, and also in a way that would recognise the sensitivities of different Iraqi groups arriving at the polling stations during the day. Working closely with national and local security and law enforcement agencies the team was able to ensure that both Polling centres operated fully and effectively to deliver the right facilities to facilitate a fair and open election process, while also ensuring a high level of security was maintained at all times. While there were a number of potential difficult periods the whole operation was managed successfully, confidently and in the most normalised way possible. The team involved in this exercise received praise from both the Iraqi clients and local British agencies involved in the operation.
