In Iraq's northwest, an emerging model

Editor's note: This is the second of a three-part series.

It was one of Capt. Kenneth "Hutch" Hutchison's first forays into what he calls "the Wild West," a remote stretch of territory his company patrols near the Syrian border in northern Iraq. Already, he was under fire.

The young officer was meeting with about 50 Iraqi mukhtars, or headmen, in the ethnically mixed town of Muhallabiyah, and complaints were flying like bullets: Flour prices were too low. Roads needed repair. Weapons were everywhere.

As the voices swelled, two wizened elders stood up. Nothing, they declared, had changed since the Americans invaded.

"Saddam! Saddam! We die for Saddam!" they chanted defiantly. All eyes turned to Captain Hutchison. With effort, the 6-foot-plus Kansan kept his cool.

"Great," he retorted. "If you see Saddam, tell me where he is!"

Apparently, composure paid off for Hutchison, whose mission includes nudging Muhallabiyah toward self-rule. Several weeks later in July, he helped the town pull off its first election - or "selection" as US commanders here put it. With a show of hands, 54 representatives from Muhallabiyah and surrounding villages voted into office a provisional town council and mayor.

To be sure, the process was far from perfect. An hour before the votes, Hutchison had to scratch off the ballot the names of four top-ranking Baath Party members and usher them out. "That," he says "gave me some heartburn."

Whether running a local council election, or training a civil defense force, soldiers such as Hutchison are on the front lines of US efforts to bring a semblance of self-governance to postwar Iraq. Armed with little more than M-16s and soldierly ingenuity, 20-something GIs are engaged across the country in thousands of daily tug of wars with the Iraqis they are ostensibly mentoring.

Many Iraqis bristle at the American supervision. Proud and often resentful, even some who are supportive of the US-led occupation stress that they are eager to do things independently, their way. Americans, for their part, voice frustration over what they see as a lack of honesty, civic-mindedness, and initiative among some Iraqis they work with.

Nowhere is the grass-roots push and pull of forging a postwar administration more apparent than in northwestern Iraq.

Here, the 18,000-strong 101st Airborne Division commanded by Maj. Gen. David Petraeus has taken the lead in nation building. It has been the first to train a wide range of new Iraqi forces including infantry, border patrols, and security guards. It has organized local elections in a majority of towns. To stimulate business, General Petraeus ordered the reopening of trade across the Syrian border and is facilitating the first major privatization deal outside Baghdad, a multi- million-dollar hotel contract.

The division has often acted in advance of the civilian-run occupation authority in Baghdad, which for months had virtually no presence in Iraq's 18 provinces.

"We've been a bit ahead of the power curve," Petraeus told the Monitor. Some within the US military worry, however, that as Baghdad asserts itself, it threatens to re-impose the top-down bureaucratic structure that stifled initiative under former president Saddam Hussein. Local officials in Mosul and other cities are also pressing for Baghdad to decentralize power and give them a greater say in national affairs.

The 101st was able to plunge into the nitty-gritty work of putting Iraqis back in charge soon after it rolled into Nineveh Province in April. Iraqi commanders surrendered, leaving the region relatively untouched by the war, and attacks on US troops were minimal.

"The bottom line is, you need to have local leadership at all levels, otherwise there is a vacuum," Petraeus says. "We recognized that ... it would help enormously to have an interim government in place to put an Iraqi face on things."

Page: 1 | 2 | 3