As coalition forces scored decisive victories in Iraq, at weekly AEI briefings Iraqi dissidents and other commentators offered timely coverage and analysis of the progress of the war and state of diplomacy, as well as advice on how America could gain the trust of Iraqis and on what form of government should replace Saddam Hussein's regime.

At an April 1 briefing, Qubad Talabany, the deputy representative to the United States of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan--the leading Kurdish political party in the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan, described events in northern Iraq: "The Kurdish people were delighted to see the 173rd Airborne Division parachute down. It gave the people a great sense of security. . . . I cannot think of another place in the region, or even in the world, where I think Americans are more welcome than in Iraqi Kurdistan."

At the same event, Rend Rahim Francke, executive director of the Iraq Foundation, depicted an entirely different scenario in the south. She argued that the people of southern Iraq are hesitant to embrace coalition troops because they are wary that the United States will leave before finishing the job, as in 1991.

This distrust could continue to the postwar period because the operation "does not yet have an Iraqi face to it," Francke said. She worried that Washington was missing a big opportunity: "There are so many Iraqis who are prepared to go in with U.S. forces, are prepared to do the work that is required in terms of outreach to the population, and yet, unfortunately, the coalition has not made use of these Iraqis. . . . You need Iraqis from these areas who are able to go into the cities and to the towns and say, 'We are your people; we are your friends; we are your family; we are your neighbors. We are coming here to assure you that this is not an invasion; this is not an occupation; this is a war of liberation, and we, as Iraqis, want to reassure you and want to work with you.'"

In addition to offering this advice to coalition forces for both during and after the war, Francke said America and Britain should establish "safe zones" as soon as possible to exemplify what the new order should look like. In this way, the United States could begin to assure Iraqis that "this war is for them." These zones should become models of what the coalition is trying to accomplish throughout Iraq.

Kanan Makiya of Harvard University, at an April 8 briefing, also spoke of the Iraqi role, both during the war and in the construction of a new government. He regarded the exclusion of ideologically committed members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party as crucial. Including them "would be like trying to set up a government in postwar Germany with Nazis in its composition. . . . In the spirit of de-Ba'athification, no senior high-ranking Ba'athist or army officer should be inside or have anything to do with the Iraqi Interim Authority."

Similarly, Talabany argued that victory should not be measured in battlefield victories, but in political reforms, particularly de-Ba'athification.

Makiya insisted that the most important issue is whether Iraqis and Americans can build a regime that is different from the others in the region. Regarding these changes as possible, he said, "We have the objective prerequisites for that in terms of the wealth of the country and human resources in the country, the state of the infrastructure. This is not Afghanistan. This is a country with many capabilities, which have been used for destructive purposes in the past, but those very same forces of destruction can be turned into forces of construction, if we go about designing the Iraqi Interim Authority in a proper way." If this central goal is achieved, this war "will be remembered in the books as being one of the most transformative moments in modern history of the Middle East."