LAST JANUARY, tens of thousands of Shiite protesters took to the streets of Baghdad. Some were followers of the young, antagonistic Muqtada al-Sadr. Most, though, were loyal to Iraq's senior Shiite cleric, the reclusive ascetic Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Regardless of the protesters' loyalties, the motivations for their occupation of the wide thoroughfares surrounding the Green Zone were simple and unequivocal: free elections and an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

At the time, Iraq's capital seemed a dystopia. Sporadic electricity meant most everything was running off heavily polluting diesel generators. The drinking water was contaminated, and kidnappings weren't uncommon. Unemployment was widespread, and the costs for basic goods and services were escalating.

Added to this social nightmare was the presence of a U.S. occupying force that frequently targeted civilians for abuse. Rumors of torture in the gulag Abu Ghraib were widespread among Iraqis long before Seymour Hersh's explosive exposés in the New Yorker. A few people I interviewed told me that under the U.S. occupation, Iraq had become a more lethal police state than it had been under Saddam Hussein's reign.

On a cool, crisp morning a few weeks after that protest, I went to the Kadhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad, the site of one of Iraq's holiest Shiite mosques. It was Eid al-Adha, the Day of Sacrifice, and thousands had gathered to hear the words of Sheikh Jawad, an influential force behind secular organizing efforts and a popular religious scholar.

"Elections should be held in a free Iraq, without occupation," the sheikh told me during an interview at a nearby religious school following the Eid celebration. For the sheikh, free elections were incompatible with an occupation. Not only could the Americans not guarantee the safety of those going to the polls, but they would also interfere politically, thereby casting doubt over the legitimacy of the results.

A year has passed, and an unmitigated disaster has devolved into utter chaos. Iraq's elections, scheduled for Jan. 30, will be a debacle. Many Sunni organizations are boycotting the elections because of persistent violence and a lack of independent election oversight. Already, a few of the advertised polling places have been attacked and political parties initially taking part in the elections have withdrawn from participation. Voters going to the polls will be selecting party slates rather than candidates, who have withheld their identities for fear of reprisals from the resistance. Voters will also be risking their lives, as election-day attacks are a certainty.

Free elections cannot take place under occupation. Jawad pointed this out more than a year ago and under very different circumstances. Iraq is now a much more dangerous and desperate place than when I spoke with him. And the United States continues to be an occupying force – 150,000 strong.

Rob Eshelman is a San Francisco-based journalist. He can be reached here.