Despite the grim situation on the ground, almost 70% of Iraqis expect Iraq to be a better country five years from now. ?Seven in ten Iraqis said they would be somewhat better or much better five years from now,? says John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International. ?This reflects what we find in all the Arab countries where we poll - a sense of hope if not optimism, but more so a sense of hope.?
Mr. Zogby was recently in Washington, to lead a panel discussion about fighting and winning the battle for Iraqis? hearts and minds. The Center for Strategic and International Studies sponsored the panel. John Zogby took the opportunity to interpret the findings of his company?s opinion poll of Iraqi citizens. Not surprisingly, it shows that Iraqis are divided as how to best achieve a stable, prosperous country. The split is most obvious when Iraqis are broken down by religion.
When asked whether democracy could work well in Iraq or if democracy is a Western way of doing things that will not work, only 38% said they thought democracy would work. However, when the democracy question was broken down by religious affiliation, 45% of Shia said they thought it could work in Iraq as compared to 26% of Sunni Muslims, who are now offering the most resistance to the U.S. presence.
Nimrod Raphaeli, an Iraqi-born scholar who works as a senior analyst at the Middle East Media Research Institute, says there?s a logical reason for the Shia support of democracy: ?The Shia community wants to ensure that any system that is introduced will not marginalize them again. They want a system that will ensure that their majority will be clearly reflected in the institutions that will emerge after the end of the occupation.?
Perhaps that is why nearly a quarter of Iraqi Shia said they would like Iraq to base its new government on the U.S. model, where a majority rules but minority rights are respected. John Zogby says the U.S. model was the top choice among all Iraqis but the kingdom of Saudi Arabia wasn?t far behind.
Many Iraqis are ambivalent or hostile toward democracy and the American political system. They associate it with American and Western decadence says Thomas Melia, director of research at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. Mr. Melia traveled to Iraq in July on behalf of the National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit organization working to strengthen and expand democracy worldwide.
While there he held a series of discussions with groups of 10 to 12 people who were asked probing questions about Iraq?s future government. They said they wanted security, order, and morality from their government. They fear democracy won?t allow the government to maintain sufficient control.
?So there?s a strong anxiety about insecurity and criminality in the community,? Mr. Melia says. ?There is also a deep unease about indecency, licentiousness, what they?ve heard about Western democracies. It especially comes up in discussions about the role of women, and daughters, and family. There?s this strong sense of unease about what they generally see as the licentiousness of Western democracies in which there are no moral values prevailing.? Thomas Melia says the Iraqis in his discussion groups see Islam as the solution to an out-of-control Western democracy. That doesn?t mean they don?t want the right to elect their leaders and express their opinions.
?People say, ?We need some framework for goodness for giving us guidance and structure.? And for most people they want Islam in their lives,? he says. ?That doesn?t mean they don?t want elections and politics and rights and law and all those things, but they also want Islamic values as a framework for doing the right thing and for making other people do the right thing.?
According to the Zogby poll, only 32% of Iraqis said their country should have an Islamic government, while 60% want people to be able to practice their religion of choice. Among Iraqi Shia, 66% support a secular government. However, John Zogby says the West should not let the numbers mislead them. A theocratic-Islamic government like the one in Iran could come to power in Iraq.