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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (7921)	9/14/2003 10:32:35 AM
From: NickSE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793756

Utahn sees signs of hope in Iraq by Amy Joi Bryson, Deseret Morning News deseretnews.com But there are other images that aren't getting play in the media — snapshots of young men anxious to form neighborhood soccer leagues, portraits of Iraqi officials stunned to learn they can lead without fear of a bullet to the head if they make the wrong choice. These are the pictures that Utahn James B. Mayfield sees daily. In Iraq, where he is part of an international team of consultants helping guide Iraqis in setting up local government, Mayfield sees the seeds of a pluralized, democratic society starting to take root. He talked of those changes on a recent visit home in Salt Lake City before he leaves again for the Middle East on Monday. The changes, he said, haven't all been easy. Fear and uncertainty about an eventual return to power by Saddam Hussein or his Baath Party followers keep Iraqi government officials indecisive, or reluctant to implement steps that will help establish a representative democracy, Mayfield said. "These are college graduates who are smart, but they've been brainwashed and beaten down for years," Mayfield said. "Having the capacity to make a decision is an alien concept for them." Instead, Mayfield said, all power was centralized in Baghdad with Saddam. A wrong decision by a local leader could mean sudden death. Mayfield said that fear bred a "no-decision" rule that characterized Saddam's bureaucracy. Now, local leaders are stunned to learn they'll know the dollar amount in their government budget and have the latitude to make spending choices. Mayfield, a retired University of Utah professor whose passionate study of the Middle East has spanned more than 40 years and resulted in numerous books, was picked to be one of several regional team coordinators in Iraq to foster the development of sustainable local government. His South Central region has five of the 18 governorates — or states — in Iraq and represents an area that he describes as one of the more stable "pro-American," regions, largely comprised of Shiites. Yet even with the local support of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the task of getting government running has been arduous, with infrastructure hurdles to leap such as no electricity and lack of fuel. Coupled with those problems are societal weaknesses such as unemployment and lawlessness. The effort to overcome the problems is multipronged, with a major focus directed at strengthening local government and its advisory councils. Teams are holding workshops to teach budgeting skills, principles of delivering programs and services and how to solicit input on community needs. In that arena, each neighborhood in every city will form a neighborhood council. In the city of Hillah, that is 40 to 50 councils, Mayfield said. Those councils, made up of five to 10 people, will then identify problems or concerns and prioritize them, working with higher government officials to come to a solution. If it sounds like what happens every day in every city across the United States, it is supposed to. A collective democratic approach, Mayfield said, is the only way the country will ever emerge successfully from its occupied status. "You can't impose democracy from the top down, you have to go out in the neighborhoods and work from there up." Frustration back at home over the continued resistance is understandable, Mayfield said, but Americans need to understand the effort to rebuild Iraq and quell Saddam's followers won't happen in a month, a few months or even a year. "You're talking about the elimination of the remnants of a 35-year-old regime," Mayfield said, adding that a tribal leader summed up the sentiment this way: "He told me, 'We had to live with the dictator Saddam Hussein for 35 years. We ought to be able to give the Americans 35 months.' I thought that was a good way to put it."