Is it too late for a popular uprising inside Iraq?

As the drums of a war in Iraq beat ever more loudly, concern grows in some circles that opportunities for a nonviolent solution are being missed.

Could the US take advantage of the first glimmers of public discontent to oust Saddam Hussein and rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction at far less cost in blood and treasure? Could US efforts spark a popular uprising like the one that brought down Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000?

"The key is to figure out how to make Iraq ungovernable, and that is doable, starting with expressions of defiance," says Peter Ackerman, who has chronicled a century of nonviolent resistance in his book "A Force More Powerful."

Ackerman says it's not too late. But others are less sanguine. "There has been a huge potential" to foster a democratic opposition to President Hussein, adds Laith Kubba of the Iraqi National Group, a Washington-based group of Iraqi professionals focused on the future of Iraq. "It has all been overlooked."

Indeed, most experts say that the Bush administration is now too far down the road to military intervention in Iraq and too concerned about terrorism to embrace a nonviolent solution that could take years to bear fruit. Iraq has long lacked the ingredients - free speech, civic organizations, opposition political parties - that made popular uprisings successful elsewhere.

"I see only a very small chance" of a democratic resistance germinating under a regime as harshly repressive as Hussein's, says Charles Tripp, an expert on Iraq at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. "People know the price of joining any open defiance. Getting together to try to overthrow the regime would be seen as suicide," he adds.

Only once has Hussein's government been threatened by popular wrath. In 1991, as Iraqi troops withdrew in disarray from Kuwait before a US-led assault, Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the South rose up angrily to take revenge on the regime's officials.

The revolt was bloodily repressed. Iraqis were dismayed when the first President Bush, who had encouraged them to resist, did nothing to help the rebellion. Later, the US, British, and French imposed no-fly zones that allowed the Kurds to establish an autonomous zone.

That fueled "a lot of misgivings" about US intentions, says Faleh Jabar, an Iraqi scholar at the University of London. "Those who took part in the events of 1991 would not move today unless they were certain it was serious," he warns.

Ackerman, however, says the attacks on Iraqi officers were "absolutely the wrong strategy." The uprising just threatened security forces who then became more dependent on Hussein, he says. Ackerman favors a broad civilian campaign of strikes, and other nonviolent methods that could set off a chain reaction and break the fear. In recent weeks, there have been reports of subtle signs of unrest, including antigovernment graffiti appearing on buildings and statues of Hussein.

Ismail Zayer, an Iraqi activist in Holland, recalls a recent protest by vendors at a Baghdad market, demanding an end to rules obliging them to change money at offices owned by Hussein's son Uday. They marched to the Ministry of Trade, he says, "and at least they were not shot."

The regime is so unpopular, he adds, that the security forces do not enter some "no go" areas in Baghdad at night, and some Shiite Muslims have transformed religious festivals in holy cities in ways that show their disgust with the predominantly Sunni Muslim government.

This past October, angry Iraqi men and women staged a brazen demonstration outside government offices in Baghdad, demanding to know the fate of relatives who had failed to emerge from prisons following a general amnesty.

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