BAGHDAD — In occupied Iraq, the signature of L. Paul Bremer III is the law. According to Coalition Provisional Authority Regulation No. 1, as published in Vol. 44 of the Official Gazette of Iraq, the decrees of the U.S. administrator enter into effect the moment he signs them.
Today, however, a new "interim Baghdad City Council," as it is known by the U.S.-led administration, will meet for the first time. The assembly is the fruit of an ongoing experiment in American-style local democracy led by U.S. military officers such as Army Col. J.D. Johnson.
Johnson has spent several weeks meeting with local leaders in Baghdad -- some picked by U.S. officers, others chosen in rowdy and enthusiastic neighborhood assemblies.
Together, the Iraqis, the colonel and other U.S. military and civilian officials have formed 88 neighborhood "advisory councils." The neighborhood councils in turn elected the members of nine district councils, who then elected the members of the Baghdad City Council.
The councils will not have the power to write laws or set budgets but will be the voice of ordinary Iraqis in dealings with U.S.-led authorities.
"In any process like the one we are beginning now, the most difficult thing is to begin," Johnson told the two dozen members of the Karada District Council, representing several Baghdad neighborhoods.
"We have no phone system, no media ... which makes it very difficult to organize our meetings," the Oklahoman told the Iraqis through an interpreter at a gathering Saturday evening. "But there is a burning desire to move on and establish a government."
Johnson sat at the head of a long table, presiding over an assembly of local leaders as diverse as any in this suffering, war-torn country -- a woman wearing traditional head covering, a dentist and an engineer in button-down shirts, three tribal sheiks in robes and a Muslim cleric in a white turban.
Occupation officials acknowledge that not many Iraqis know the councils even exist. Indeed, at the Karada district meeting, the only audience consisted of an American reporter, his translator and a dozen sleep-deprived U.S. soldiers.
In general, American-created institutions and decrees here are greeted with varying degrees of suspicion and indifference.
"What is the mechanism for choosing the members of the council?" one reporter from the nascent Iraqi press asked coalition officials at a recent news conference. "How are they appointed? Are they just a pretty covering for the Iraqi people while they wait for a real government?"
