Baghdad, Iraq ? This week, Iraq got a new sovereign government that is supposed to see it through to January elections.

But what will determine the success or failure of Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is not their democratic credentials or even how independent they are of their U.S. patron.

Iraqis will judge them on whether they can make a frightened public feel safe.

Iraqis are obsessed with issues of personal safety. The continuing spate of car bombs that kill Iraqi civilians makes daily life scary. Assassinations of officials and intellectuals by unknown hands are a regular occurrence.

Middle-class parents fear the criminal gangs that are kidnapping children for ransom. A senior Iraqi official bemoaned to me that all the women in his extended family now feel they have to wear the veil “because they are scared either of Islamists or thieves.”

On the plane from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad, an Iraqi businessman in the next seat froze when I asked him for his business card, then admitted he was afraid of being associated with Americans, which can make one a target for murder. Iraqis are nervous every time they pass a convoy of U.S. soldiers because they might be a casualty of a rocket aimed at the troops or of the Americans’ return fire.

Neither U.S. occupiers — nor Iraqi police — seem able to catch the bombers or break up the criminal gangs. This violence has severely hampered U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraqi’s infrastructure. Electricity in Baghdad, in 105-degree heat, is on for only three hours at a stretch, then off for three hours, due to continued sabotage.

Meantime, the insurgency in the south has expanded the insecure zone to Shiite areas that once seemed safer than Baghdad, and the Sunni triangle still simmers.

That puts the spotlight on the new Iraqi government, and whether it can do better in protecting its people than the U.S. military. Many Iraqis are already yearning for strong leaders, less cruel than Saddam.

Yawar and Allawi may fit the bill.

The new president (a ceremonial job), is the Western-educated scion of one of Iraq’s largest tribes, the Shammar. He wears the traditional white robe and headdress. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer had backed Adnan Pachachi, an octogenarian diplomat who would have been an excellent foreign emissary.

But Pachachi turned down the job because of fierce opposition from other Iraqi political leaders on the former Iraqi Governing Council. The opposition stemmed partly from the belief that a Sunni tribal sheikh such as Yawar would better be able to appeal to leaders of other Sunni tribes in the rebellious area around Fallujah.

“The whole tribal structure welcomes him,” says Muhyi al-Khateeb, secretary-general of the former Iraqi Governing Council. “He is absolutely what the country needs.”

U.S. military civil affairs officers in the Fallujah area have been promoting the concept that tribes are outmoded and democratic institutions should supercede them. Yawar’s arrival signals that tribes are back in vogue.

Even more in the strongman mode is Allawi, the new prime minister, a former Baathist intelligence official who later turned against Saddam and became a CIA asset. I supported the candidacy of a courageous democrat, Hussein Shahristani, but the times may not be conducive to such leaders.

Former Iraqi opposition leaders recall Allawi insisting that Iraqis need security more than they need democracy. Allawi has called for resurrecting the Iraqi army, in the wake of the failure of the United States to train effective Iraqi forces.

“Allawi will take very strong measures” to restore security, says Zuhair Humadi, a longtime Saddam opponent. “The U.S. will say this is an Iraqi decision.”

How Allawi strong-arm tactics would jibe with U.S. promotion of Iraqi democracy, or U.S. military measures in Iraq, is unclear. But an Iraqi public that hungers for security may be ready for a crackdown, even if it means bringing back Iraqi generals who belonged to Saddam’s Baath Party.

Talking to Iraqis on the street, I found that even Shiites who had suffered bitterly under Saddam’s rule seemed ready for a new Mr. Tough Guy.

“Security is our first priority,” snapped Mohammed Abid, an accountant who bitterly recounted fighting in three of Saddam’s wars. “And that can’t be achieved without force.”

This is where Iraq stands today.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.