A member of the Iraqi Forum for Democracy, a Michigan-based nonprofit group that promotes pluralistic democracy for Iraq, Derweesh is a self-described “Iraqi mutt”–his mother is a Shia Arab of Turkish extraction and his father a Kurd whose family lived for generations in Baghdad. Both leading scientists of the vanguard left, Derweesh’s parents were imprisoned and tortured for refusing to join Saddam’s Baath Party. In 1979 they escaped to England, and then to the United States.

Derweesh, 32, is just one of millions of Iraqi expatriates around the world who watched with a mixture of joy, fear and, for some, rage as U.S. forces took control of the Iraqi capital earlier this week. His thoughts, like many of his countrymen living abroad, are focused on the political and cultural future of his country. Derweesh spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker about his ideas for rebuilding Iraq.

NEWSWEEK: How does it feel to witness Saddam’s apparent ouster?

Ithaar Derweesh: In some ways I’m euphoric. I cried. I’m cautiously optimistic about the future–I think the Iraqi people are smart, industrious people and I think they’re going to surprise a lot of people.

What does the fall of Saddam mean to you in terms of the coming need for rebuilding a civil society?

I think immediately, obviously you’re seeing the euphoria of people finally being able to breathe free after 25 years of totalitarian rule and oppression. Iraq is a scarred country. It will be. One of the ironies when you look at this is the personalization of politics–when people are out there cheering, they’re cheering for Bush. Ordinary Iraqis are coming up and saying, “Thank you, Bush.” It’s not “Thank you, America,” it’s “Thank you, Bush.” It’s Saddam versus Bush. It’s that type of cult-of-personality politics that is going to need to be broken.

Last week’s images of Baghdad were strikingly reminiscent of when the Berlin Wall came down. Do you see similarities there?

You draw a very prescient parallel between what happened in East Germany and what’s happening in Iraq right now. I think that a political culture is going to have to be re-established where people can feel free to express their views and not be afraid that someone is going to come and get them.

Is there a precedent for that or a base off of which they can work, some kind of pre-Saddam vestigial political culture?

When you look at the [Kurdish-controlled] north of Iraq, you see how quickly political discourse has been able to evolve to a sophisticated level in the last 10 or 12 years. I think you can have hope for the rest of Iraq. The Kurdish areas were traditionally some of the most neglected or some of the most impoverished. If this can happen in the Kurdish areas, certainly I think it can happen in the rest of Iraq. Iraq is an educated society, at least by Middle Eastern standards–it had a large educated middle class. It’s been impoverished by Saddam, but it’s there. Iraq also has a history of having had different political parties and different points of view. The left intellectually in Iraq was very strong at one time. I am hopeful.

Yet right now Iraqis need infrastructure–they need water, they need electricity, they need transportation.

If you look at what happened in the 1991 gulf war, you have a 45-day sustained bombing campaign that was much more damaging to Iraq’s infrastructure than this present campaign. Without the help of the United Nations, Iraqis were able to rebuild large parts of it. Iraqis are resilient people; they will be able to rebuild. And now with international help, I think that will come about even more rapidly and sufficiently.

But in the immediate run there must be some concerns about a humanitarian crisis.

I think that that will be averted in the next few months. You’re not going to see Iraq descend into Ethiopia. It didn’t even descend to those levels after Saddam butchered 200,000 Iraqis at the end of the last gulf war.

So what sort of interim or permanent government would you like to see next in Iraq?

I think that the Coalition’s idea of an interim government with Iraqi dissidents and indigenous Iraqis from all different groups who were not Baathists–is a good idea. What it will do is the following: you’re going to get institutional reform, civil-service reform, de-Baathification and also simultaneously [it] will allow time for the formation of political parties, local provincial elections that will lead to national elections. But Iraqis need to be at the forefront of this process. It’s very important that the United States or the Coalition not be seen as imposing a permanent Iraqi government.

And you think they’re making the right moves and the right noises so far?

I think so. The final Iraqi government that’s a permanent government needs to be approved by the people. The whole world is going to be looking at this, particularly the Middle East. And if this is something that happens, then this really will be not just a paradigm shift; it will be paradigm shattering. Today’s pictures really are a paradigm-shattering event.

Is there a desire within the expatriate community to come back to Iraq or do they risk being greeted with some resentment for not having stayed under Saddam?

A lot of these people have relatives there. I think a lot of the expatriates or dissidents or exiles who are returning and being put into this transitional authority are coming back there on a temporary basis. You’re going to see people who are businessmen or entrepreneurs coming back. I think those people will stimulate economic activity. The contracts that have been given are temporary contracts–these are people whom I know who intend to go back for a limited circumscribed period of time and assist in the initiation of the reform restructuring process. Even having said that–can an exile win a popular election in Iraq? I think the jury’s out on that. However, even if we look at Eastern Europe when we see in Bulgaria and Poland, exiles have been able to come back and do well in national elections.

So prominent exiles like [Iraqi National Congress leader] Ahmed Chalabi or Adnan Pachachi [former Iraqi foreign minister] might be well-received?

Could Chalabi win an election? Possibly. He’s from a very well-connected Shia family. People knew these guys. Could this person establish links with other Iraqis and recruit him to his cause? Quite possibly. This is another reason why I think that a transitional Iraqi authority is very good–it will allow a congealing of expatriate and indigenous sources. Pachachi is somebody else who has been well spoken. I don’t think he’s been as consistent in his opposition to Saddam or has been as outspoken as Chalabi. Pachachi and Chalabi are kind of like the George W. and Al Gore of Iraqi politics–both of these guys are scions of very wealthy, well-connected families. Chalabi’s father was the speaker of the Parliament in the royalist period. Pachachi, his father was a royalist prime minister. They’re elements of the ancien regime.

Who are some of the other people or parties that we should keep an eye on?

The Kurds are obviously going to have a role. There’s the SCIRI [the Iranian-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution], they’re kind of a wild card in this. Do they become supportive of this new structure that’s congealing or do they stand in opposition? Iraq is largely a secularized society, especially in its urban centers, so I don’t necessarily see an Islamist party being able to attract a plurality of votes that would overwhelm everybody else.

This Islamicization of Iraq, or at least Saddam, seemed less genuine than a thumbing of the nose at the U.S.

Thumbing the nose at the U.S., and he was looking for legitimacy. All of these guys eventually try to find it by going to the Qur’an, but I don’t think it’s fooled anybody. It wasn’t going to quite work out–you weren’t going to have somebody from the Sunni minority who’s a secularist [fall for it]. And I’m not even sure that Shia Islamists can muster a majority of support within their community. And then Shia Islamism isn’t necessarily going to appeal to Sunni Islamism. There’s a significant Christian minority there. Iraq’s political scene is far more heterogeneous than most other Middle Eastern nations, and I think that needs to be kept in mind.

Do you have plans to go back now that Saddam has lost power?

I consider myself an American. I look and see how instrumental the Jewish diaspora has been in aiding the state of Israel–there’s also a very large and educated Iraqi diaspora in the United States and Britain and elsewhere. Saddam chased out 5 million of us. I can see myself going back for short periods of time, or being able to facilitate training of Iraqi physicians here or organizing seminars or fellowships, or sending American physicians over there. People like my father and mother will probably stay here also. Both still being academicians and involved in science, they may go back and help restructure for a few months. But we’re going to be here.