Officials, Iraqis Work Toward Democracy

D I W A N I Y E H, Iraq, Feb. 26, 2004 -- If the United States could get the Iraqis to understand democracy, it would change everything.

That's the challenge facing several hundred U.S. officials who are fanning out across Iraq to help the Iraqis create town councils. The effort is part of President Bush's promise to implement democracy after decades of dictatorship under Saddam Hussein.

In Baghdad, democracy looks within reach. The city is modern, sophisticated. Women have a voice. People are nuts about education. The notion of a free, competitive press took hold the instant the United States unshackled the media.

You see a desire to catch up with everything Iraq missed out on under Saddam: consumer goods, the Internet — kids are whiling away hours in chat rooms in Internet cafés.

But Baghdad is not Iraq, as Iraqis themselves often say. Get out of the capital and then ask how long it will take to create a democracy, because beyond the city limits, it's not the same country.

Drive south from Baghdad and the changes start immediately. This region is poor and traditional and, for miles, simply empty. The roads are dangerous and unprotected. In most directions, it's just desert and sky.

In a place where Iraqis list many other needs — like sanitation, jobs and security — before the right to vote, the biggest obstacle may be that people have no clear idea of what democracy is or why they should want it.

But the Bush administration wants it in place quickly. The American democracy trainers sent to the Iraqi hinterlands hope to show the people what democracy is and that it is for their own good.

A Tough Mission

The team has been given only until June 30 to complete a mission some say needs years. And the squad of seven sent to Diwaniyeh, a city 100 miles south of Baghdad, often find their talents and skills being stretched in areas where some, at least, had never worked before.

James Wade, for example, has been put in charge of women's rights and security, but he was most recently an Army weapons trainer working in Saudi Arabia. Kalim Adul-Kalik, an Arabic-speaker raised in Oklahoma, was an Air Force communications specialist in Japan last year. He runs a jobs program in Diwaniyeh this year.

And Rick Nielsen, retired Navy, responded to an Internet posting — and now he's in charge of press and media issues.

Most of the group sent to Diwaniyeh never lived in an Arab country before.

Sufficient numbers of Iraqis are stepping forward in towns and cities to form councils under U.S. guidance.

But the United States has had to lay down the law on some issues, such as getting the men to include women, which means setting quotas for them. Some of the men don't like that. And in one particular nomination process — to form a finance committee — even some of the women argued for a lower number of slots to be set aside for them.

"Quotas are something that, by and large, we don't like the sound of in the United States," said Chuck Costello, who represents a firm of consultants to which the United States is paying $167 million. "But a lot of countries use them, and if you want to push harder to try to make forward progress, sometimes, especially in a temporary situation, quotas are not a bad idea."

So the candidates made stump speeches, and voting went smoothly. Yet some of the most experienced people in the field have reservations about predicting success.

"It's up for grabs," Costello said. "Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. And one of the reasons I came here is because this is one I don't think we can afford to lose."

Changing Values

But success is not guaranteed, because democracy anywhere is about much more than counting ballots. It's about values. And in Iraq, it's about the damage Saddam has done to those values.

But many insist that every human being is by nature a democrat, and that includes every Iraqi.

Mike Gfoeller, the highest-ranking American in the south, a sort of American governor for the region, said he's there "because I'm a Jeffersonian democrat. I think that democracy is a universal good that can be applied everywhere."

Gfoeller was there last year when Shiites discovered the mass graves of thousands of Iraqis massacred by Saddam. He said it was a terrible moment for these families, but it created tens of thousands of recruits to the vision of a democratic Iraq.

"It made a profound impact on them," he said. "And what it really did was take human rights, the concept that people were interested in, and it raised it to the level of the sacred. So I believe when they talk about democracy, the first thing they mean is no more mass graves, no more oppression."

And so, while the vote in Diwaniyeh went well, in a neighboring town, a meeting ended with political opponents pulling knives on each other. Elsewhere in Iraq, lower-ranking officials who were allowed by the United States to keep their jobs — at least one school principal and several police officials — turned out to be stealing and had to be fired. It is a mind-set the Diwaniyeh team has given a lot of thought to.

"They had no choice," Enscher said. "I would have done it. Anybody would have done it in order to survive."

Representing Events to America

There are some Americans in Iraq who don't make a pretense about it. Democracy working in Iraq would not only be good for the Iraqis, it would also be good for President Bush for Americans to see it happening.

"I want the president to have success in his mission," said coalition worker Hilary White. "And it's an honor for me to be part of that mission as bringing democracy to this country and letting the Middle East see that democracy can work."

In charge of press and media relations for southern Iraq, White's mission — and it is an important one — is to publicize the idea that progress is being made, to get a certain kind of picture out for the world to see. For example, at the opening of a center for women's rights in Diwaniyeh, White helped arrange welcoming remarks on videotape from National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and took a photo of the women around the screen with her image, supporting the American effort.

That's the picture White wanted the world to see, and there is some truth in it. The director, Maha Sakban, spoke of the U.S. role in funding a place where local women can meet — a rarity in public — as well as take English classes and get on the Internet.

"All of the people were not free to do anything," Sakban said. "They used to be afraid of everything, even from close members of their family."

But White's picture also missed so much about that day. The fact, for example, that the local Iraqi governor felt compelled in his speech to reassure Iraqis that Americans are not trying to steal oil.

Also at that opening, there were speeches about women's rights. But when they cut the cake, it was the men who got there first, because that's the way it's always been — women to the back. And an Iraqi woman who reporters were told embraces democracy could not name anything that needed to change in her world.

Sakban said this was natural. Because Saddam oppressed men in the south, she said, men oppressed women. "We have become blank," she said. "Your thinking goes blank, shut off."

Only last month, in fact, Iraq's Governing Council — appointed by the United States — voted in secret to restrict some women's rights further.

It is complicated. Changing values. Building trust. That's some of what wasn't in the picture White wanted the world to see.