The Spectator

Democracy can wait

It is hubristic to think that instant decmocracy has a long term future in Iraq

In ten months’ time, according to America’s timetable for the handover of power, Iraqis will be going to the polls. Men and women with large rosettes and wide grins will be walking the streets, kissing babies and expounding on their plans for schools and hospitals. Thereafter, the members for Baghdad South and Basra Central will engage in raucous but civilised debate over the sale of council allotments and the merits of congestion charging.

At present, sadly, these visions of democratic bliss are a remote prospect. What seems more likely is a continuation of the present style of political debate, as typified by last week’s events in Fallujah when four American civilian contractors were brutally ambushed and murdered by Sunni insurgents before their bodies were burned, hung from a bridge and beaten with shoes. The attack coincides with a rise in activity by Shia militias, who have occupied slum districts in Baghdad and seized the governor’s residence in Basra. Ominously, Shias, who constitute a majority in Iraq, are coalescing around a leader, Muqtada al-Sadr.

Against this backdrop of anarchy, the preparations for the handover of power to Iraqis seem a comical diversion. In the 12 months since the fall of Baghdad, Iraq has been deluged with UN officials, constitutional consultants and ‘gender advisers’ working on a blueprint for democratic constitution in Iraq. There has been intense debate, for example, over the precise element of Iraq’s new national assembly that will consist of women.

Such matters would be valid issues for debate if Iraq was a stable country. But to make the country a test-bed for an ideal model of democratic government when cities are still in a state of insurrection is foolish. If coalition forces do succeed in creating some kind of democracy in Iraq at the beginning of next year, it is all too probable that it will end up resembling the brief period of hope in Russia in 1917, between the abdication of the Tsar and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

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