Baghdad's tale of two councils

First, US soldiers helped select representatives to work in the district council building. Then supporters of a radical Shiite cleric kicked them out and installed a rival council. Today, the Sadr City council building stands empty. Two American tanks and yards of concertina wire seal this experiment in Iraqi self-rule off from more controversy, which resulted in one council meeting in private, and another being arrested and disbanded by coalition forces.

Six months into the occupation, the effort to give more power to Iraqis through coalition-sponsored advisory councils is running into a legitimacy problem. A recent poll found more than half of Iraqis don't know the councils exist.

And since none of the dozens of district and local councils installed under the coalition were elected, they're easy to challenge, something eloquently attested to by the tanks in Sadr City, a teeming warren of shacks that's home to 2 million of Baghdad's 6 million people, and is the largest district in the capital.

"The Americans ran this process; we didn't even know they were going to be selecting a council,'' says Naim al-Kabi, an engineer and chairman of the rival council, which was set up with the help of anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "So that's why the people of Sadr City rejected them and elected us."

His position is rejected by the coalition. Maj. Aaron Marler, a political officer with the 2nd Armored Cavalry who has worked with the US-sponsored council says intimidation, not elections, played a role in the creation of the second council.

"In order to have free and fair elections, you can't have undue influence from any group,'' says Major Marler. He says the process to select the first council was fair. "Some people didn't participate in the process, but that was their choice. We will deal with dialogue and input from anyone. But we what won't deal with is threats."

Members of the original council say they're too scared to return to work. Many Iraqis working with the coalition fear assassination; Faris Abdul-Razak, the secretary of the Baghdad City government, was killed on Sunday.

For now, the original council meets at members' homes or at the heavily guarded Baghdad city council building. In early October, they were chased from their Sadr City building following a 10,000-strong protest by Mr. Sadr's supporters. Sadr leads a militia that has fatally clashed with US troops and supporters of rival clerics. Sadr's involvement is a complicating factor, as is the anger within Sadr City, where the overwhelmingly Shiite population suffered more than most under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-controlled government.

The area was called Saddam City until after the fall of Baghdad, when it was renamed for Sadr's father, Mohammad, a deeply loved cleric killed by Hussein in 1999. Sadr the younger has attacked coalition political efforts as illegitimate and favors the creation of an Iranian-style theocracy here.

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