Democracy Catching On

Friday’s edition of Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article highlighting progress and setbacks in the process of building local democracy in Iraq.

As I posted here, the U.S. is trying to turn Iraq into a democracy, beginning with representative local government. A City Advisory Council was created in Baghdad. This was done by creating 88 neighborhood councils. Those 88 councils elected nine district councils. The nine district councils elected the interim 37-member Baghdad City Advisory Council. Similar town councils have been set up all over Iraq.

The pyramid like local-governance system is intended to instill the principles of representative democracy in a country accustomed to dictatorship. Imad Jonaby, an Iraqi-American working on governance issues in Sadr City explains:

It's a test for democracy.

The point of these councils is to move the country from a top-down system where everything was ordered and based on oppression to one where ordinary Iraqis take on the task of representing citizens, not controlling them.

The idea is for a range of people to learn how to handle a budget, to consider more than their own interests in getting something done for the neighborhood, basically to learn how representative government works.

Now the plan is to eastablish a provisional national government, to be created by July 1, through selection of national representatives involving local councils like Sadr City's.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the district council for Sadr City, one of the 88 Baghdad neighborhood councils, has begun to tackle key local issues, like price gouging by propane cooking-gas distributors, sewage service, and school security. The council is also considering projects for preschools, playgrounds internet cafes, and job-training centers.

As in all democracy projects there have been setbacks. The Sadr City council had to elect a new chairman. The previous chairman was shot and killed last month when he got in a shoving match with a US soldier while trying to enter the building without submitting to a weapons search.

The killing of the chairman resulted in protest marches, a brief boycott by council members, and an education for the Americans working in Sadr. The Americans learned about the Iraqi concepts of honor, blood money, and public apology.

Establishing democracy is not an easy or quick business. Despite setbacks, like the killing of the council chairman, Americans working in Sadr City are making progress. As Maj. Paul Gass, a liaison between the Sadr district council and the American authorities says:

Every day the evidence is a little stronger that the council members understand the benefits of this system, and we even see signs out in the community of it catching on.

I applaud the Monitor for undertaking the effort to publish articles like this one. It is too bad that most of the mainstream media just doesn’t get it. This is the critical aspect of our mission in Iraq. If democracy fails to take hold in Iraq an spread throughout the region the prospects for winning the war on terror dim significantly.