In Iraq, a democracy out of dust?

What lies ahead in Iraq may well mark the biggest test of winning the peace since World War II.

The fundamental question: Can the US turn a harrowing dictatorship into a democracy as well as it has executed the war?

Washington is implementing a plan that has a civilian American administration moving soon into pacified sections of Iraq. Its goal is to put the country back on its feet while an interim authority "emerges" from the Iraqi people.

Iraqis would take over what the administration calls "soft" ministries first, while the US holds the reins longest in security and intelligence areas. Perhaps two years down the road, when a constitution could be approved and elections held, a major US presence could wind down.

It's a scenario that critics say is naively optimistic for a country coming out of a brutal dictatorship and too dependent on one power - the US - that is not popular in the Arab world. But on the other hand, it is a plan that some Iraqis say has the virtue of having faith in the Iraqi people to rise quickly to the task of rebuilding their own country.

And it's a plan with a powerful backer in President Bush. "From Day 1, we have said the Iraqi people are capable of running their own country," the president said this week after meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "The position of the United States of America is the Iraqis are plenty capable of running Iraq, and that's precisely what's going to happen."

The US plan starts from the assumption that Iraq is not Afghanistan, but rather, a well-educated country with natural wealth in its oil. It's also thought of as having a developed (though deteriorated) infrastructure and civil service, and a broad middle class. Historically, these elements have fostered democracy.

Yet while all that may be true, others see potentially grave dangers lurking in too few details and an apparent faith that a new Iraqi leadership can quickly emerge.

"The end vision is fine, but the administration has not clearly mapped out a path for Iraq - how the country will get from one point to the next, what the benchmarks will be along the way," says Victoria Holt, a former State Department official and now nation-building expert at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington.

No lesser figure than Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the first President Bush, is warning that attempts to move too quickly and without international backing could backfire. "I'm a skeptic about the ability to transform Iraq into a democracy in any realistic period of time," Mr. Scowcroft said this week in remarks at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. A US-dominated reconstruction of Iraq, even with British participation, could pique the "wrath and enmity of the Muslim world," he said, and risks opening a door to new despots.

"What's likely to happen is that the meanest, toughest [leaders]," perhaps even radical religious leaders, he added, "will rise to the top, at least for a couple of generations."

Some Iraqi exiles say such thinking does not give the Iraqi people credit for the ability and stamina to build a new democratic regime. A go-slow approach that waits for debate and approval from the United Nations risks missing a unique opportunity for the Middle East, they say.

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