How to grow democracy
From Alan Williams Sir: In your leading article last week you highlight the problems when you say: ‘If the Shias, the Sunnis and the Kurds can resolve their differences ...’. Let’s all hope that they can, but hope will not build a lasting democratic state; it took us centuries of civil strife to build ours, to sort out and accept the balance of power and to come to terms with the checks and balances needed for a democratic society to function. Our democracy was not imposed from on top; it grew from beneath, well-rooted in our culture.
The religious and racial tensions everpresent in Iraq and unleashed by the illadvised invasion could take generations to resolve, and the result could be that our soldiers might need to stay there for a long time; and while they are there, real power will not devolve to the Iraqi government, and dissatisfaction with the West will continue to grow.
Alan Williams
London E1
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