Iraqi children start playing with a balloon after a convoy of US tanks rolls through. An elderly Shiite woman, in an all-covering chador, ticks a ballot paper and voices her hope for the future.
Television viewers across the Arab world are being treated to a rare phenomenon ahead of Sunday's landmark vote in Iraq - politicians and their parties taking to the airwaves to woo voters to the ballot box.
In a region of strictly controlled politics, where there is often only one election candidate or the result is a foregone conclusion, Iraq's political parties have registered a first by venturing into the world of the television ad campaign, with music and slogans and bold promises.
The face of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi staring out from the screen is now a familiar sight for viewers as his campaign ads pop up on the Saudi-owned satellite channel Al-Arabiya, between news bulletins dominated by the bloodshed in Iraq and interviews with local officials.
"My priorities include restoring security and stability and enhancing border protection to stop the infiltration of terrorists into our beloved homeland," Allawi pledges in one of his slick US-style spots.
"We will strive to reduce unemployment by using oil investments to create 250,000 new jobs in the public and private sectors," he says.
"That's why we should vote," Iraq residents Sajad and Saleh say in unison.
Al-Arabiya appears to be a favoured slot for the campaign ads, dominated by Allawi's Iraqi National Accord and the front-running Shiite coalition, the Unified Iraqi Alliance (UIA) backed by spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
"Enough injustice," sighs an elderly woman clad in a black Shiite-style chador in the Alliance advertisement.
"We want a constitution that upholds our rights and guarantees the future of our children... since others have failed," she says as she heads towards a candlelit box to cast her ballot, ticking a box marked UIA.
Many of the campaign spots also highlight that Iraq's children are its future. One shows children playing with a balloon after a convoy of tanks passes through, with the slogan "They leave, we stay put."
London-based Iraqi political analyst Ali Abdul Amir Alwan said it was not unlikely that the ads were being paid for by the United States, "which has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars for the elections."
In addition to the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya, election ads are being aired by other Arab television networks including LBC, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation partly owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Walid bin Talal.
"Al-Arabiya is a commercial channel and does not favor any particular candidate. The cost of the ads depends on the time allocated for them," the satellite television news and programs director Nakhle al-Hajj said.
"Every ad is clearly marked as such. The ads are aired on commercial, not political, bases," he said.
Al-Arabiya has taken the lion's share of ads because it has a wide reach in Iraq, Hajj said. "We keep receiving new requests (to run ads) every day."
But the campaign is conspicuously absent from the screen of Al-Arabiya's main rival, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, which is highly popular in the Arab world but has had its offices in Baghdad closed by the Iraqi interim government since last August on grounds that it "incites violence."
"Our policy requires us not to take sides in any political exercise," Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said, though he declined to say if the station had been approached by Iraqi candidates.
"We generally look into requests for advertisements of a non-commercial nature, that is with political connotations, on a case-by-case basis," he said.
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