Iraq's new challenge: civil society

It has been sixth months since the US-led forces toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein - and it could be years before they leave Iraq. But some of the most difficult challenges ahead will be taken on not by the military, but by contractors tasked with rebuilding Iraq.

For Ban Saraf (Wednesday's paper), that means teaching Iraqis to make town-hall democracy work. For Mike Douglas (Thursday), it means giving people who have lived in a locked-down state the ability to fly in and out of the country through functioning airports. For Steve Palmer (Thursday), it means providing the most basic of necessities: clean water.

All three are taking part in what is likely to be the most costly and comprehensive postwar rebuilding project in history. Over the next three days, The Monitor will examine what Assignment Iraq looks like for men and women who have an unusual definition of a rough day at the office.

BAGHDAD - Ban Saraf could have kept on selling software solutions in Washington, D.C. Instead, she's selling democracy in Baghdad.

Here, she finds eager but not easy customers.

On this morning, she faces a roomful of disgruntled men, members of the Kalkh interim neighborhood advisory council. "We see promises that don't get delivered," says Jamal Salman, an engineer. "We are extremely exposed as neighborhood council members. We asked for permits to carry guns and they wouldn't allow it."

A chorus ensues. One man pleads for more food; another wants help for a family left homeless by the war. A local hospital must replace a looted sonogram machine.

Ms. Saraf, an Iraqi-American contractor with RTI, which gets its funds from the US Agency for International Development, lets the criticism wash over her before responding. "I cannot promise you anything on that," she says emphatically. "You must understand, I can't do everything."

It would be easy to think otherwise. A sinewy 5-foot, 4-inches, Saraf has the physique and energy of a marathon runner. But she and her colleagues at the Research Triangle Institute are tasked with some of the most amorphous goals of Iraq's reconstruction: spreading concepts about democratic decision- making while helping Iraqis to restore basic services.

The Kalkh council is just one of 88 in Baghdad that Saraf is helping to get off the ground. She and others with RTI, which will receive up to $167.9 million over the next year to foster self- government, have also set up nine interim district advisory councils and an interim city advisory council, recruiting members informally.

The core purpose - to get average Iraqis to make policy and assume civic duties - is seen as key for a country that has largely been run by foreign occupiers, monarchs, or dictators.

Saraf left Iraq as a child but returned briefly in her 20s, and remembers being terrified of making the slightest utterance against the regime, "even in your own garden." Today, it makes her happy to see people participating in local decisions - and, at the very least, feeling free to argue among themselves. The opportunity to help strengthen that dialogue was enough to spur her sabbatical from the US software company she cofounded in 1996.

In her new role, Saraf can help council members learn how to function, prioritize needs, and fulfill at least some of them by connecting with other contractors and international aid groups.

She also pushes the Kalkh council members, who are meeting inside the Iraq Museum, to communicate what they're doing to the 50,000 to 60,000 people they represent. Many of their constituents have no idea that the council is working on anything, or that it even exists.

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