What UN role in Iraq?

The latest reports that have come to us from Iraq over the past few days appear to confirm what many analysts in this country have predicted and many laymen have guessed from the start: It may be easy for the U.S.-led coalition with their superior weapons, numbers and technology to win the war against former President Saddam Hussein; winning the peace is a different matter altogether.

There can of course be no denying that Saddam's fall after decades of iron-fisted rule is welcomed by many Iraqis, especially those who have suffered under his rule such as the Kurds in the north, the Shiites and dissenters against the regime -- witness the crowds of men, women and children greeting the arrival of coalition troops and cheering the toppling of Saddam's statues in Baghdad and cities in the north.

Far more impressive than those undoubtedly spontaneous expressions of joy, however, were the scenes of thousands of Iraqi's marching through the streets, either demanding that the U.S.-British coalition troops end their occupation of the country and leave the matter of governing Iraq to the Iraqis themselves, or simply giving vent to their religious sentiments.

Earlier this week, for example, thousands of people demonstrated for two consecutive days in the streets of Baghdad, protesting the rumored arrest by the occupiers of Sheik Mohammad Fartusi, a prominent Iraqi Shiite Muslim leader, who protesters said was on his way from the Shiite holy city of Karbala in the north.

The slogan "Saddam No, U.S. No, Islam Yes Yes" that protesters carried during one of those demonstrations seems to aptly reveal the spirit that prevails among the majority of Iraqis.

All these events seem to presage the difficulties that the occupation forces will find themselves faced with in the coming weeks and months as they attempt to put in place a "democratic" secular government in Baghdad.

Some Indonesian observers, however, predict that so long as the U.S. is in charge of overseeing the formation of a new transitional government, the establishment of democracy in Iraq will not be possible. The problem is that some 60 percent of Iraqis are Shias, led by clerics who would like to see a theocratic state established in Iraq, more or less after the model of the Islamic Republic of Iran. To complicate matters for the occupiers, Shia and Sunni leaders have recently once again demonstrated their capability to unite and cooperate for the sake of the greater shared national goal -- which for the moment is to prevent the U.S. occupation forces from forcing their own desires and aspirations upon the national will of the Iraqis.

Iraq in its present post-invasion condition clearly needs the help of an organization -- or organizations -- that can be relied on to have nothing but the interests of the Iraqi people at heart. Deprived of some of the most essential commodities for decades because of the UN-imposed embargo, the country and the people of Iraq most desperately need humanitarian help, but humanitarian help that is extended with no self-interest or political strings attached.

It is now the duty of the UN to make up for its failure to stop the unilateral U.S.-British invasion, to do what it can to come to the assistance of the people of Iraq. Only in this way can that world body hope to regain some of its tarnished prestige as a global organization in the service of peace and prosperity.