Iraq's pioneers of democracy listen - but can't do much

They receive a $120-a-month stipend, and hold no other jobs. In return, councilors are expected to facilitate the work of government departments, "but we have great problems doing this," says Mr. Faisal, whose small town and surroundings are home to 37,000 people. "We don't have a single vehicle, we have got no money from the CPA, just words and empty promises.... We are simply left to be embarrassed before the people."

In fact, say Faisal and Muttar, his counterpart a few miles up the road in Suq Ash Shuyukh, the most useful thing they can do is to help settle disputes among local people, or help calm angry citizens disappointed by poor service from a government department.

The scale of the frustration matches the scale of the problems facing the authorities as they plan Iraq's reconstruction. Though Nasariyah and surrounding towns enjoy 24 hours a day electricity from the region's power plant - unlike most places in the country - little else works.

Southern Iraq, populated mainly by Shiite Muslims who suffered brutal repression under Saddam Hussein, has been starved of investment for 20 years or more.

Potentially rich farmland and massive oil reserves have yielded no benefits for local people. "We are like a camel, carrying gold on its back but eating only thorns," complains Mr. Hassan.

The result has been a catastrophic breakdown in local services: The streets of Fadliya and Suq Ash Shuyukh run with raw sewage, drinking water is hardly treated, pipes are broken, mud and straw schools have no windows and little furniture, and the pharmacy at Fadliya's tiny clinic has no analgesics.

"The scale of the problems sometimes makes you want to cover your eyes and wonder what to do first," says Mr. Bourne, the CPA chief.

Delays in setting up a central administrative bureaucracy in Baghdad, Bourne says, have slowed reconstruction efforts, meaning that five months after President Bush declared the war over, there is still little to show local people in the way of improvements to their lives.

He hopes that he will be able to pry money out of CPA headquarters to pay men to demolish the 50 or so buildings in Nasariya that were so badly damaged during the war they cannot be rehabilitated.

But such one-off projects will not solve the region's fundamental problem - the fact that more than 70 percent of local men are unemployed. "Turning that around," Bourne says, "is a mammoth task ... a vast, vast project" that will depend on the overall economic policies that the government in Baghdad applies, and will take years.

In the meantime, none of the unemployed are receiving the emergency payments that former government employees are currently living on, and the hardships they are enduring are embittering many Iraqis in this region. "The only realistic approach is some sort of benefits system, but I don't know if there's enough money,"

Bourne says, "My message to Baghdad is that we don't have much time" before popular resentment boils over into public anger against the coalition, even in a region where goodwill is widespread, built on gratitude to the US-led forces that rid the country of Saddam Hussein.

In the meantime, says Muttar, all he can do is try to lower his fellow citizens' expectations.

"People think that a newly elected council leader has a magic wand to solve all their problems. They don't believe me when I say I don't have any money to help them."

And even Muttar, who says he is 100 percent behind the coalition, says his helplessness, and the lack of any visible signs of progress in his town since the Americans arrived, have raised a question in his mind.

"Did the Americans come with good intentions and bad planning, or with bad intentions?" he asks. "People's confidence in us will last six months, perhaps. If they lose faith, we will resign."

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