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Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
Newsletter
July 11, 2003
Re: L.A. Times Article – Neighborhood Councils in Baghdad
I’ll be honest. I missed this in last Monday’s L.A. Times. I underlined
the most interesting parts for you. This is priceless:
Interim
City Council to Debut in Baghdad
The body
has no power to write laws or set budgets but will serve as
the voice of ordinary Iraqis in dealings with U.S.-led authorities.
By Héctor
Tobar Times Staff Writer
July 7, 2003
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?"
Nonetheless, more than 600 Baghdad residents have stepped forward
to become members of the neighborhood, district and city councils.
Many appear to be savoring their first taste of democratic rules
and procedures.
"I hope I can help the people of Karada and all its neighborhoods,"
Sabah Mohammed Ali Jumah said in a brief speech to his fellow
members of the district council, a pitch to be elected the council's
chairman.
"I worked for the Ministry of Oil starting in 1958, but I was
fired in 1979 after I quarreled with the minister," Jumah went
on. "I was head of the association of Iraqi engineers in Basra.
I hope you will be satisfied with my qualifications."
Jumah was elected vice chairman. The man he defeated in the
race joined in the applause at the announcement of the result.
For the U.S. officials involved in the project, such small
scenes of citizen participation are gratifying. "This has been
a bottom-up governance program," said Andrew Morrison, deputy
civil administrator for Baghdad. "It's involved thousands of
residents of Baghdad."
Morrison and other U.S. officials take pains to specify that
the councils will not be a government: They are an idea conceived
by outsiders.
Iraqis will have to pick their own forms of government, Morrison
said.
The interim councils will provide advice to the civilian and
military authorities, Morrison said, "so we have a sense of
what the people's needs are and their suggestions as to how
we can solve their problems."
Nevertheless, the Americans involved in the project clearly
see another element of their mission: passing on the basic values
of their 2-century-old democracy.
"We're here to understand the democratic process and to discuss
the matters that are important to the baladiya," Johnson
told the Karada District Council, using the Arabic word for
district. "This is the last time I will chair your meeting.
From now on, the chairman you elect will run the meeting and
will be responsible for the agenda."
The council elected its chairman and vice chairman. But there
was a tie in the vote for an alternate to the City Council.
"It is not necessary to ask the American officer what to do
next," the council member counting the votes said in Arabic.
"We will simply vote again and choose between these two who
are tied."
After the vote was completed, Johnson turned to the issue of
neighborhood security and Iraqi complaints about abuses by U.S.
troops during house searches for weapons. Would the members
of the council, he asked, be willing to accompany the U.S. forces
on the searches?
No, definitely not, council member Daffer Kadder said.
"For the time being, the Iraqi people think that every Iraqi
who works with the Americans is a traitor or a spy," Kadder
said. The presence of a council member standing beside American
troops would only reinforce this idea, Kadder said.
The colonel dropped the idea. |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Greg Nelson
213 / 485-1360
866 / LA HELPS toll-free
213 / 485-4608 fax
done@mailbox.lacity.org
email
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