Abdul Sattar Jawad is among the Iraqi scholars who were forced to flee the country. He was editor of the Baghdad Mirror and dean of the College of Arts at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. He is a visiting professor at Duke University, where he teaches Arabic literature.

The Iraq Study Group's recommendations were received in Baghdad with mixed response, which reveals the hard, bruising truth of the situation there. For the ordinary Iraqi, the Baker-Hamilton report could be the last-ditch effort to keep the lid from blowing off.

The report is bona fide in describing the situation: "Violence in Iraq, fed by an insurgency, militias and crime, is increasing in scope and lethality. The Iraqi military and security forces are ineffective and corrupt." It's quite evident that the Iraqi government is not governing.

Iraqi warlords and leaders of political blocs, driven by ethnic or sectarian intent, seem unwilling to change a failing course that was wrong from its deluded beginning to its wretched end. They are plainly at odds with the study group's recommendations to form a representative government that unifies the country. Having chosen to advance their causes through violence, death squads and intimidation, Iraq's militia chiefs tend to block any move toward the give-and-take of political compromise. They want to snatch for themselves the largest morsel of the cake.

Furthermore, Iraq President Jalal Talabani's reaction to the ideas landing on his desk is based in part on what they mean for the future of Kurdistan. Neither the Kurds nor the Shiites welcome a regional conference because it could stall the Kurds' and Shiites' drive for more gains at the expense of Sunni Arabs.

What's needed is a national reconciliation brokered by all Iraq's neighbors and the United States to pull Iraq back from the brink of a very dangerous break-up. A regional conference, if convened, should involve all Iraq's neighbors and take into serious account Iraq's Arab identity and its secular culture and tradition.

Above all, a unified Iraq needs a unified government, one that is firm but fair. A functioning government must represent all Iraqis regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds.

We all must learn from our mistakes, experiences and misadventures. Religion is devoutly personal and must be separated from politics. Iraqi clerics should abide by clerical decorum and preach tolerance, coexistence and recognition of other views.

Iraqis were wholeheartedly ready to embrace democracy but not a theocracy. Now fraudulent piety has savagely plunged the country into unprecedented violence and bloodshed.

It's time to stop talking "pabulum about the loveliness of democracy," as John Agresto, a former senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, put it. We need to form a secular government capable of tamping down the ongoing civil war and working hard to heal the wounds, not widen the rift.

There is no magic solution, but good will, forgiveness and political compromise will help Iraqis bury the hatchet. An eye for an eye, if applied, will leave the whole world blind.

The study group calls on the United States to work internationally. The majority of Iraqis, except warlords, cautiously welcomed the study group's report, but they are on tenterhooks as they wait to see whether the U.S. administration has the stomach for a drastic change of policy.

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