Iraqis will be handed a country in disarray

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- On the eve of sovereignty, Iraq is a nation in disarray, riven with bombings, assassinations and sabotage, yet many people here appear cautiously optimistic that a tough-talking new government run by Iraqis can confront the withering cycle of violence better than their U.S.-led occupiers.

Talk about imposing martial law or restoring the death penalty -- proposals that would likely cause an uproar in most any country putatively on the road to democracy -- have been welcomed by many among a war-weary populace.

"We need a tough ruler," said Burwa Tayyeb, who owns a boutique in Baghdad's Mansour section. "I have very high hopes and am looking forward to the first of July."

On Sunday, in his inaugural news conference, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi pledged to "crush" Iraq's enemies and said the nation's resources would be directed against terrorism. He said he was considering imposing "emergency law" in some areas, but he didn't elaborate.

Other Iraqis are skeptical that Allawi's tough talk can translate into effective action and fear that things may only get worse. Many are wary that the new government may be nothing more than a front for Washington -- the charge frequently leveled at the now-defunct and widely discredited Iraqi Governing Council, appointed by outgoing U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III.

"Power will rest in the hands of the United States," said Uday Mohammed, co-owner of a women's cosmetics shop here. "It will be nothing more than a puppet government. Words are not enough."

Outsiders agonize about whether Iraq is even governable now that the Pandora's box of the nation's ethnic and religious currents has been opened -- accompanied by a roiling insurgency that has thwarted the world's strongest military force.

But, with some noted exceptions, many Iraqis profess less concern at the moment about whether the nation is governable than with the need for independent Iraqis to do the job, not outsiders or U.S. puppets.

"These are our people: We know how to handle this," explained Hamid Rubai, an adviser to the interim leadership.

However unrealistically, many seem to want to believe that Allawi's caretaker government will be more capable than the U.S. administration of diminishing violence.

"He needs to be strict and firm. This is the only way he could bring security to this country," said Fawzia Abdul-Jabbar, a widowed housewife. "We are tired of living in fear."

Relatively few Iraqis are familiar with Allawi, a physician and former Baath Party member who split with Saddam Hussein, spent decades in exile and was later associated with CIA attempts to overthrow the dictator. But the interim prime minister's tough talk and pedigree have already won him some allies -- despite deep misgivings about his close CIA ties and his status as Washington's favorite to be prime minister. His government is due to guide Iraq through a crucial period, including elections scheduled for next January.

"If he was a Baathist, this means he was familiar with the ins and outs of Iraqi society," said Tayyeb, the boutique owner, who as an Iraqi Kurd is part of an ethnic group that suffered greatly under Saddam. "This is to his credit."

Others see Allawi as simply benefiting from being the new big man on the block after thorough disenchantment with the U.S. occupation.

"I would be happy if Mr. Allawi managed to bring tranquillity to this country," said Wamid Nadhmi, a prominent and independent political scientist. "But when I think about it objectively I reach the conclusion that things are getting worse."

It is now virtually conventional wisdom among Iraqis that the top-heavy U.S. proconsul style exemplified by Bremer has been a failure, if not a disaster. Iraqis and Americans alike see the pressing need for an Iraqi way of running the country, whatever that might entail.

"We've got to get away from this Douglas MacArthur the occupier, generalissimo thing," said Col. Dana Pittard, the 1st Infantry Division officer who commands the restive Baqubah region northeast of the capital. "We don't want to have to fight our way out of this place. This has to be an Iraqi show."

At the end of a troubled 14-month occupation, most Iraqis and Americans appear to agree on one thing: the less direct U.S. involvement the better.

Sovereignty is clearly somewhat illusory, with about 150,000 U.S.-led foreign troops in the country and the new U.S. Embassy with 1,000 foreign service officers, a behind-the-scenes powerbroker with vital control over the purse strings of reconstruction. U.S. advisers will be sprinkled about key ministries.

To outsiders, it may seems somewhat counterintuitive -- a nation reeling from more than three decades of despotic rule appears to yearn for authority. But the carnage of the past year seems to have drained many Iraqis of their enthusiasm for noble experiments in government and left them craving a peaceful nation in which lives may proceed without a pervasive fear of random killings.

Not only politically motivated attacks but also common crimes -- notably kidnappings and murders -- have skyrocketed here since the fall of Saddam's regime.

"One thing I wish from Iyad Allawi is that he reinstates capital punishment," said Tariq Sargon, a Christian record shop owner in Baghdad's Harithiya district. "All these crimes are unaccounted for. They (criminals) have to get what they deserve."

Iraqis suffered greatly under Saddam , but the dictator and his all-pervasive Baath Party apparatus did provide a sense of security that many look back on with nostalgia -- however much they despised Saddam and his police state. Iraqis dreaded Saddam's security men, but car bombs, roadside ambushes and mortars on the streets of the capital were not a daily occurrence.

What turn the interim government will take remains a matter of speculation. One prevalent guess is the emergence of Allawi as a kind of secular strongman who would deal harshly with enemies but reach out in an effort to co-opt insurgent forces and Saddam loyalists.

"If those ex-Baathists who have no blood on their hands and haven't committed any crime against this nation, they are Iraqi nationalists and we are going to give them a chance," said George H.Sada, Allawi's spokesman, signaling a conciliatory attitude from the start.

The new government, however temporary, must weigh every move. Any misstep could risk alienating significant elements of the Iraqi population -- including seething Sunni Muslim masses in the center and west, autonomy-minded Kurds in the north and sellout-wary Shiite Muslim ayatollahs based in Najaf.

Already, Kurds are alarmed about the decision by the United Nations not to acknowledge the wording of the interim constitution, which gave Kurds an effective veto of a permanent constitution to be written next year after elections scheduled for January. This omission was widely attributed to concerns among the Shiite mullahs of Najaf, who, like most Arabs, are suspicious about what they perceive as a Kurdish power grab.

Among the seemingly intractable problems that U.S. authorities are bequeathing to the Iraqis are an insurgent Sunni Muslim enclave in the western city of Fallujah and a still-simmering Shiite uprising that stretches from the streets of Baghdad south to the nation's Shiite heartland. In both cases, U.S. forces fearful of causing a bloodbath, and delaying the scheduled June 30 turnover of power, backed away from threatened confrontations but left instability in their wake.

"Fallujah is going to go to hell in a handbasket quick," said one U.S. Marine officer who asked not to be named. "We left a lot of unfinished business there."

But officials of the new government have spoke of reconciliation with the rebellious sheiks, fire-and-brimstone imams and disenfranchised former Baathists of Sunni Iraq.

"Fallujah is not a problem for us," said Sada, the prime minister's spokesman.

Already, the new government has diverged with U.S. authorities on a number of points, including the timing of the turnover of Saddam to Iraqi custody and the participation of militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraqi politics. Bremer has declared al-Sadr ineligible for future governing posts, but Iraqi leaders have practically invited him to participate -- and President Bush himself has said it is for the Iraqis to decide.

"He has supporters, he has constituents, he should go through the political process, and I commend this smart move on his side," interim Iraqi President Ghazi Ajil Yawer said last week when asked about al-Sadr's moves to form a political party.

But al-Sadr and others who remain in the insurgent camp may not find the new government any friendlier. There has been rampant speculation that U.S. forces will have greater leeway to act to crush violent elements once they are responding to a request from a U.N.-recognized Iraqi government, and not acting unilaterally.

"Let the terrorists know that their brutal acts against our people will not affect national unity," Yawer's office declared last week after six Shiite truckers were slaughtered in Fallujah for transporting goods to U.S. forces. "We are determined to develop a free democratic Iraq and capture these enemies."

Los Angeles Times special correspondent Said Rifai in Baghdad and staff writer Peter Hong in Samawah contributed to this report.