A Taste of Democracy, a Hunger for Security
BAGHDAD — Today, Iraqis are summoning their courage and casting their ballots in a bold act of suffrage. But it remains unclear whether their bravery will put Iraq on the road to democracy, much less whether the election heralds a new era of participatory government in the Middle East as promised by the Bush administration.
Iraqis and international observers alike are divided in their expectations of today's balloting. Some see the election as a superficial event that cannot bring the things that citizens want even more than a vote: security, water, electricity and economic improvement.
Others view the election as illegitimate because U.S. troops remain on Iraqi soil and thus the vote, they say, is being held at the point of an American gun.
Still others believe that it is the beginning of a grand march that will lead to a fully democratic society. Indeed, there are real signs of the beginnings of a society in which opposing views are tolerated in a way that is rare in the region and was unheard of under Saddam Hussein.
In the coming months, skeptics are likely to carry the day. For these Iraqis, true democracy is dependent on security. They are more than willing to trade away some of the freedoms associated with democracy indefinitely if they can get a guarantee of safety and stability.
From this vantage point, it is the strength of the insurgency, not an election, that will determine whether Iraq will become a stable society.
Without security, Iraqi government officials will be reluctant to end the state of emergency and are likely to continue to rely disproportionately on force to accomplish their goals.
Eventually, many observers believe, there will be a confrontation between the security forces, which are mostly Shiite and Kurd, and the largely Sunni Arab insurgency.
"In a country like this with zero respect for human rights, no colonial experience of rule of law, no Magna Carta, how are you going to build a democracy?" a Western official said.
Iraq, like many Middle Eastern countries, has been ruled by a succession of despots, kings and invaders. Even the British, who dominated the country briefly in the years after World War I, did not install the kind of complete governmental system they set up in colonies such as India. For the last 35 years, Iraq has been run by one ruthless man and his corrupt family and cronies, meaning that the majority of the population has experienced only the fear-filled atmosphere of a dictatorship.
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