In Iraq, a democracy out of dust?

"The ultimate historical test of what this war is all about [will be the] Iraqi and American ability to create in Iraq a regime that is different from the norm in that part of the world," says Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi exile who has been working closely with the Bush administration on planning for postwar reconstruction.

Mr. Makiya is one of the architects of the Iraqi Interim Authority, which he calls a "provisional structure on its way to becoming a government." Although all the details are not yet decided, it already has several purposes: to get Iraqis administering progressively broader segments of their own country, to serve as a focal point for developing new Iraqi leadership - and to allow the US to dodge criticism that it is occupying and running Iraq.

Under the current plan, the US would have a key role in ensuring that the top cadres of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party are unable to influence the country's direction. And the US is already gearing up for a central role in the national education system. Its reform - right down to the quick replacement of textbooks filled with Baathist ideology - is seen as crucial to democracy's prospects.

But specialists who question the wisdom of the US assuming so much of the reconstruction role on its own say other recent experiences underscore how much time, money, and dedication are needed. The Stimson Center's Ms. Holt notes, for example, that more than a year into creating an all-new 60,000-soldier national army in Afghanistan, the US has trained roughly 3,000.

Then there is the question of how leaders are supposed to emerge in a country where the only political party that's been legal for 40 years is being crushed. The US insists it has not preordained anyone to rise - a claim it has had to repeat after sending Ahmed Chalabi of the exiled Iraqi National Congress (INC) into southern Iraq to lead a force of "freedom fighters." The move raised eyebrows, since Mr. Chalabi is close to the Pentagon, which has favored preferential treatment for exiled leaders with demonstrated democratic convictions.

One of the administration's stated goals has been to facilitate the emergence of new leaders from both the exile and "internal" communities. The State Department says that next week the US will begin what is to be a series of meetings around the country to bring the two groups together and begin working on formation of the interim authority. One likely goal of such local meetings would be the convening of a national "leadership" conference in Baghdad, officials say.

But others caution that it will be neither easy nor quick to bring together Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups in agreement on a system of government. Marina Ottaway, a specialist in democratization at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that a similar process for democratic rule among South Africa's diverse groups took four years. "There won't be any way around a long period of negotiations with Iraq's exile and internal groups, and that's where the US could run into trouble," she says.

Keeping security in a country that otherwise could slip into instability will require a relatively long-term presence. "But the US cannot afford to be an occupying power for that period of time," Ms. Ottaway says, "particularly not in the Middle East, where it is also concerned with improving its image."

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