PERSPECTIVE ON IRAQ : Getting Past Saddam to Democracy : The U.N. has a duty to force the dictator out, then guide the country into a model of pluralism for the region.

The situation in Iraq continues to grow ever uglier. By all rules of Middle Eastern politics, Saddam Hussein should no longer even be there. It is a tribute to the monstrosity of his uniquely brutal police state that he is able to remain on his throne after 15 years of disastrous misjudgments, defeats, genocide and aggression.

Even now his gunships are roaming the Shiite regions of southern Iraq, not far from U.S. forces in Kuwait, attacking and destroying any resistance to his rule. He declares that the “mother of all battles” is not yet over. He ups his challenge to U.N. authority weekly. The international community must now complete the tasks begun in the Gulf War to ensure that Saddam and his ruling party are brought down. Failure to do so can only ensure that Iraq will remain a permanent, simmering revanchist threat, a spoiler in the region.

The United Nations has a right to intervene again. Saddam, by the enormity of his continued actions, has forfeited the sovereignty of his regime by his actions of war and destruction and the imposition of more than a million refugees on his neighbors. There is no precedent for this in the modern Middle East. The United Nations must administer the transition to a new Iraq much as the Allies did in Germany and Japan after World War II. Even though the best opportunity was missed in the last days of the Gulf War, the Security Council can still unite to call for an end to the Baath regime, U.N.-supervised sponsorship of an interim government, a new constitution, new elections, and a restoration of Iraq’s parliament that was wiped out in the 1958 revolution.

But several harsh realities about Iraq will have to be recognized by Washington, by the Iraqi people and by governments in the Middle East. The re-establishment of participatory government in Iraq has two powerful consequences. First, given the opportunity, the Iraqi Kurds will probably vote to declare their independence from Baghdad. Never comfortable when first incorporated into modern Iraq in the 1920s by the British, after the ravages of the Baath regime the Kurds have little reason or desire to remain part of the state. They completed their first free elections in June under Western protection--the first anywhere in Iraq in three decades. Only a democracy with full autonomy might persuade them not to go for full independence, once Hussein was out of the way. Yes, Turkey and Iran, with their own Kurdish minorities, are very uncomfortable at these developments. But in this era of breakaway nationalism, who is going to stop the Iraqi Kurds if they decide to go, and by what acceptable means?

Iraq’s second reality is that democracy turns the downtrodden Shiites--60% of Iraq’s population--into the dominant political force in the country. But contrary to popular belief, the Shiites have no intention of breaking away from Iraq; they are Iraq. Nor do Arab Shiites want the Persians of Iran to rule them. Impressive numbers of Iraq’s Shiites, now doing some of the freshest thinking in the region on the destiny of Arab politics, see Iraq’s future in democratic, federal terms. They recognize that Iraq’s unique character in the Arab world--multi-ethnic and multi-religious--requires pluralistic government.

How can we get to that new Iraq? The United Nations can declare a second security zone in southern Iraq to protect its population. Saddam’s gunships and fixed-wing military aircraft can readily be shot down from bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. An increased U.N. presence around the country will further weaken and delegitimize Saddam’s writ. Greater recognition can be given to Iraqi opposition forces outside the country. Iraq must remain under full sanctions (except food and medicine) until Saddam Hussein is removed and his successors agree to U.N. intervention.

As harsh as the realities of political change are, Iraq really has few other options, other than remaining under the tender mercies of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi people, one of the most educated in the Middle East, deserve a chance to start over. Iraq could become the model for the new federal politics of the region. If Iraq is not liberated, the region and the West will yet live to regret it.