Encouraging Iraqi Civic Participation Can Spread Hope
Iraqi expert sees 'untapped resource' against Saddam 
By Stephen Kaufman
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- There exists an "untapped resource" of Iraqi civic Participation which, if activated, can encourage a message of hope to counter the fear spread by the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to Laith Kubba, senior program officer for the Middle East at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Laith Kubba, a graduate of the University of Baghdad, has devoted the last eight years to promoting the development of civil society and education in Iraq.  During the past three years, he has been instrumental in implementing a $100,000 NED initiative to develop civic groups in areas of Iraq that are not under the control of Saddam Hussein.

"The key to reviving Iraq, even during the Saddam era, is to stimulate meaningful civic participation and provide space and assistance for civic groups and civic activities," Kubba said in a recent speech to broadcasters and journalists at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Washington.

The prevailing belief among Iraqis, according to Kubba, is that, despite their widespread hatred of Saddam Hussein, he is too powerful to be opposed.

"Saddem Hussein has infected their minds with not only fear, but also with a lot of mistrust and apathy and helplessness. By that he keeps the millions of people paralyzed, and he has a free hand to run the rest of the country with a few agencies," he said.

Kubba explained that Saddam's physical control over the country is minimal. "Today, Saddem Hussein has very, very little physical power in the country.  He does not control cities, he does not control streets. The country has holes all over the place. But yet, he is still in command of people's minds."

The Iraqi leader "rules by symbolism," rather than actual presence, said Kubba.

"To him, the real power is to deter people," he said.

For example, Kubba said that Saddam's portrait is omnipresent not because of sheer megalomania, but rather as "a means of controlling the minds of people."

Kubba maintains that there is an "Achilles heel" in Saddam Hussein's power structure that has been overlooked, and that is the absurdity of how the Iraqi leader has been able to "paralyze" his 22 million subjects.

He says the international community has failed to realize the potential effect of a re-activated Iraqi civil society, and that efforts should be made to encourage participation, rather than to focus upon the regime itself.

"My concern is nobody is doing it. The opposition tries to make the point that Saddam is evil and bad and horrible, rather than try to target and think of how to reach the minds and hearts of Iraqis and get them to move in and do something.  This is the most untapped resource -- the millions of Iraqis who are standing by watching," said Kubba.

He said that many of the Iraqis living outside the country are highly educated, with a strong sense of civic identity.  They could play a role in sending messages to their countrymen over the airwaves, or develop civic initiatives in areas such as northern Iraq, where Saddam Hussein's influence is minimal, he said.

Profiles should be made of the views and concerns of the average Iraqi citizen through polling the population, and then developing credible messages to encourage hope and participation, said Kubba.

"Tell them not to go to the streets to kill, but to do something meaningful and show them what that meaningful thing is and how it can be done," he said.

Eighty percent of the Iraqi people still desire "the rule of law, a stale place," said Kubba.

"They just want the normal things that everybody else wants.  And if you were to tell them that they can do these things without the big complication of big politics and strong agendas, they will be very happy to do it," he said.

The various populations of Sunnis, Shias, Chaldeans, Kurds and others may hold different perceptions of what their nationalism means to them, but they "are all strongly attached to this land, to Iraq, so they all have strong ties," he said.

"If there was a movement that can spark, that can deliver a message that will get the Iraqis to get involved, that can create ... avenues of participation for a number of movements, a number of initiatives - I argue that that small success can easily lead to other initiatives inside Iraq," said Kubba.

As an example, Kubba pointed to the success of very modestly funded programs conducted in northern Iraq as part of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

NED gave a grant of $54,000 to the American Society for Kurds, which funded educational courses for police officers, judges, student leaders and women's organizations in order to develop a network of human rights activists and to produce a human rights advocacy newsletter.

It also provided the Iraqi Institute for Reform and Democratic Culture with $30,000 to build a specialized library and run youth seminars to disseminate literature on democracy and democratic ideals to cultivate the interest of Iraqi Kurdish youth those principles.

Both NED programs had an "excellent response" from the population, according to Kubba, which should encourage more resources, training and assistance towards similar initiatives.

"They succeeded and they are on the increase. The fact that the first program succeeded provided a model for others, and it was copied fairly quickly. You can imagine if you were to put a million dollars into that program, what impact this would have on the country," said Kubba.

Civic life in the main cities of northern Iraq is flourishing, he told the audience, with a growing free media and more participation by the people.

Expatriate Iraqi communities, plus those in northern Iraq add up to at least 5 million people who, Kubba says, can be encouraged through civic development programs and the media.

"We're talking about 25 percent of people who are fully accessible, who interact with their families and relatives with the rest of Iraq, who send money, and do things....  We're talking about all the airwaves that Saddam Hussein does not control in the country, and his weakened grip over the country. We are talking about accessible people, but no message and no modalities of trying to reach out and trying to shift that mindset and mobilize them into some form of civic activity," said Kubba.

Kubba stressed the importance of taking the initiative now, even while Saddam Hussein's regime controls most of the country.

"We do not want suddenly on the day after to leave a vacuum, and to have the country be filled by ethnic and tribal leaders, who do not have a strong sense of national identity," said Kubba.

The Iraqi national identity "has been marginalized and weakened over the last 30 years, and I argue that it is critical to invest in it and try to help it now," said Kubba.

Along with strengthening the damaged sense of national identity, using the advanced technology now available in media would also provide a message of hope and "can lead Iraq at this difficult moment," he told broadcasters.

"Hope is as contagious, as infectious, as fear is, and Saddam Hussein did not take every single person into a cell to instill fear in them, but he spread fear. And I think hope can spread equally fast, and in an effective way," said Kubba.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which employs Kubba is a private, nonprofit organization created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. The Endowment is governed by an independent, nonpartisan board of directors. With its annual congressional appropriation, it makes hundreds of grants each year to support pro-democracy groups in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union.

The Endowment is guided by the belief that freedom is a universal human aspiration that can be realized through the development of democratic institutions, procedures, and values.  More information on NED.

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