BEIRUT — When members of the Iraqi Governing Council and L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Baghdad, open talks at the United Nations today, nothing short of the future of the region will be at stake. Having come under increasing pressure over its plan to form an Iraqi government without direct elections, the United States is counting on greater United Nations involvement both to help ease the resistance and secure a lasting democracy. Beyond the involvement of additional stakeholders like France and Germany, can a more determined role on the part of the United Nations translate into government-building? Considering the organization's dismal record of silence during Saddam Hussein's 30 years of totalitarian rule, I'm not so sure.
Having visited Iraq last month to meet with the leadership there, I think the better solution already lies within the nation's borders. To spend a day at the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council headquarters is to learn what all honest people in the Arab world already admit: the most representative of all governments in the Middle East sits in Baghdad. With all its shortcomings and contradictions, the council covers the fullest possible spectrum of Iraqi society, from the Islamists to the Communists, and all the strands in between, including Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmens and Christians.
The continued disagreements in the United Nations over the justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein and problems with securing postwar peace mask the one major achievement in the new Iraq: within the governing council and outside, freedom reigns supreme. It may sometimes look or sound messy to the rest of the world, but a fledgling democracy often does.
In a heartening sign, no one in Iraq, no matter what side of the debate he is on, is afraid to speak his mind. At the Baghdad airport, for example, an Iraqi employee expressed to me his regret that Saddam Hussein had been caught, and his hope that resistance will survive his arrest.
On the other hand, when I asked Dr. Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, Iraq's interim oil minister, about criticism by Baathists within his ministry for his close ties to the United States, he shrugged off the possibility of silencing them. This is especially remarkable, given he had lost several family members to Saddam Hussein's repression.
During my trip, I visited the Bahr al-Uloum home in Najaf, where some 50 tribal leaders from the Middle Euphrates Valley sang of their attachment to Iraq, Shiism and national unity from the mountain to the marsh. The family's patriarch, Sheikh Muhammad Bahr al-Uloum, a member of the governing council and an old friend, is optimistic about Iraq's future. But Sheikh Uloum, who like many struggled for decades against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, is also upset at what he perceives as mismanagement of his country by the United States. More than eight months after the passing of the ancien régime, the scene is of intermittent electricity and phone service, no airport service and surreal lines for gas in a country with the second largest oil reserves.
But security, despite newspaper headlines, is a fleeting concern. After all, armed resistance to the new democratic order has no chance of success against the new spirit of freedom if basic services are restored, and if the national political process takes root. This is clearly the dual challenge ahead, and Iraqis rightly feel they are in the best position to run their country.
The way forward, then, is simple. The 10 members of the governing council whom I met with agree on this: the council, as a national unity government, should be unconditionally recognized as in charge of Iraq's destiny, with the support of the United States-led coalition and whoever else wishes to join in a democratic course of reconstruction.
As such, the council would be deemed the official interim government of Iraq — making the United States plan to select a national assembly by July 1 unnecessary. The council would be empowered to draft a constitution and set the parameters for what a new government would look like and when and how it would be elected. In the long term, this would consolidate the whole process of democracy — something Iraqis both in and outside the council want.
Strengthening the power of Iraqis over their own affairs can come with the proviso that any contender who furthers his own political agenda by violent means should be punished by either being banned from a leadership post or being brought to trial by an international court for those crimes. Human rights monitors, supported by the United Nations or the coalition, should be deployed to further ensure international commitment to the cause of democracy and nonviolence.
Today's meeting at the United Nations provides the perfect opportunity to focus the future of Iraq in the right direction: inward. When I met in Baghdad with Naseer Chaderji, a liberal Sunni Arab who sits on the governing council, he voiced skepticism of of the United States' reaction to a request for an acceleration of Iraqi self-governance. While Paul Bremer was a good listener, Mr. Chaderji explained, he was not following suggestions made by Iraqi leaders.
But after discussing the issue with other council members — including Ahmad Chalabi and Ibrahim Jafari, an Islamist Dawa leader — as well as with American officials committed to Middle East democracy, including Paul Wolfowitz, I am more hopeful. I sense that Iraqis and Americans are far more in agreement on the country's future than the controversies there suggest. Now that the most dictatorial system in the region has been undone, the rest of the world owes Iraq's long-ignored victims a commitment to their national unity government.
Chibli Mallat is a law professor at the University of St. Joseph in Beirut and author of a book on the slain Iraqi cleric Mohammad Bakr al-Sadr.
