A cursory look at Iraq's fragile political arrangement today will point to a colonial protectorate in the making: The whole world knows that the real man in charge of that country is none other than Paul Bremer, who can hardly pass as an Iraqi himself needless to say.

Aiding the US governor is a host of US-based and trained Iraqi exiles who have been speedily sent back to Iraq to help rebuild the country. Those who were hoping that in the wake of the US pullout from Iraq an Mossadeq may emerge should not hold their breath: not a single US-appointed Iraqi official has dared speak out or make his/her stand thus far. 'Regime continuity' is the key-word here, though the continuity is really between American rule to that of US-backed nominal Iraqi rule.

Lest it be forgotten, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) is mere surface phenomena, and Iraqi in name only: The fact remains that every single member of the Iraqi governing council was appointed by Uncle Sam, and not by the Iraqis themselves. Now the US wants to introduce a caucus system, where the US-picked Iraqi Governing Council would choose delegates to an Interim National Assembly (INA) based at 18 provincial caucuses. The caucuses would be held to choose representatives to another Assembly that has only transitional status. This Iraqi Transitional Assembly (ITA) would in turn choose a provisional government. Note that the keywords here are 'transitional', 'interim', 'provisional' and so on: The set-up that is being

created has a distinctly amorphous character to is, as if Iraqi politics has been reduced to a mere stage-set, filled with part-time players, all of whom can be interchanged and replaced.

Strong advocate

The United States government has always been a strong and vocal almost bully-like advocate of democracy and civil society world wide: Witness the ways and means through which the American government has applied undue pressure on selected governments the world over to 'reform' themselves and turn themselves into what Washington regards as 'true, real' democracies. In the case of Burma, the Americans have been demanding and relentless. Likewise in the cases of Zimbabwe, Syria, Iran, North Korea. Likewise in the case of countless other nation-states whose governments and political elite have not appeared as pliable and compliant as the powers-that-be in Washington would want them to be.

Now, as was the case during the Cold War, talk of 'democratisation' and the 'creation of civil society' is more often than not a mask for cold realpolitik considerations of power, dominance, force and ideological hegemony. What is often disguised behind these lofty labels are very real

differentials of power, structures of domination and exploitation, networks of dependency and patron-client links, and the entire unjust and fundamentally divisive international order that has made the developing world dependent and subservient to the developed nations and the United

States in particular.

Lost also is the fact that despite the apparent power and capacity for violence that the US government and military possesses, there happens to exist other cultural and civilisational centres that have other ways of looking at the world and ordering their social relations on their own terms.

Here is where the real fault-line between Washington and the Iraqis comes in: Despite the universalist claims of the Americans in their 'crusade for democracy', the Iraqis like everyone else on the planet can see that this is nothing less than a crude and violent attempt to leave the American imprint on the social, cultural, political and economic life of Iraq for good. There is, incidentally, a word for this: Imperialism.

Under these circumstances it is easy to understand why the Iraqis feel they have been left out and cheated of their own political future. If the US is so keen to promote democracy elsewhere, and with such haste as in the case of Zimbabwe and Burma, then why not in Iraq? The Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has called for the simplest form of democracy of all: direct elections on the principle of 'one man, one vote'. Millions of Iraqis support this basic demand and already the country has witnessed huge demonstrations in cities like Baghdad and Basra. The 15 million Shias in the country worry that this entire laborious circus is intended to deny them the majority voice in the future post-invasion state. Likewise the Kurds feel that they have been cheated of their share of say and clout in the new country, and Kurdish leaders are furious that they have been denied control of the vital (and oil-rich) city of Kirkuk.

Must come to terms

But when such demands are made, the Americans and their Iraqi cohorts reply by simply saying that it is 'too early' to have a democracy in Iraq! If not now, then when? Will democracy arrive only when Washington has placed all its allies and dependents in place, to ensure that vital US economic and strategic interests are never threatened? Despite the denials to the contrary, millions of Iraqis and foreign observers are claiming that this is the real agenda underway.

In the final analysis, the predicament faced by the US in Iraq now as well as Afghanistan, Iran, Indonesia and the rest of the Muslim world at large is a result of its own cultural myopia and lack of foresight and basic human intuition. The Post-Structuralist and Deconstructionist thinkers of the 1980s did teach us one thing: namely, that the West must come to terms with living in a world of multiple world views and value systems. Islam happens to be one of those systems, and for more than a billion people in the world it happens to provide them with a value system, epistemology, logic, history and discourse to call their own. If the West wishes to promote its values (and not all of them are bad, incidentally), then it should realise that others have the right to live according to theirs as well.

In the end no amount of foreign aid, diplomatic pressure or behind-the-scenes elbowing and manipulation can ever change this. This does not mean that Iraq will turn into another Iran. Nor does it mean it will become an Afghanistan. The people of Iraq simply want to build a society and political system of their own, on their own terms, on their own territory that is rooted in their culture and history and which makes sense to them. Who are the Americans to deny them that? And how would the Americans feel if the situation was reversed, and another superpower attempted to impose its cultural and political values on them?

The fact is that the future of Iraq is in the hands of the Iraqis themselves and it is they, not Washington, the US army, America's crony-allies or the United Nations who will decide their fate. Rather than riding rough over the sentiments and sensibilities of 23 million people, the doyens of 'democratic reform' in Washington would do well to shut up and listen for a change: the people of Iraq have spoken, and they have decided that from this point onwards it is they who will call the shots.

Dr FARISH A NOOR is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist.