Baghdad, Iraq ? Today, Iraqis will summon their courage and cast their ballots in a bold act of suffrage. But it remains unclear whether their bravery will put Iraq on the road to democracy, much less whether the election heralds a new era of participatory government in the Middle East as promised by the Bush administration.

Iraqis and international observers are divided in their expectations of today’s balloting. Some see the vote as a superficial act that simply cannot secure the things that citizens want even more than a vote — security, water, electricity, and economic improvement.

Others view the elections as illegitimate because U.S. troops remain on Iraqi soil and thus the election, they say, is being held at the point of an American gun.

Still others believe that is the beginning of a grand march that will lead to a fully democratic society in the coming years. Indeed, there are real signs of the beginnings of a society in which opposing views are tolerated in a way that is rare in the region and was unheard of under Saddam Hussein.

But in the coming months, the skeptics are likely to carry the day. For these Iraqis, true democracy is dependent upon security. They are more than willing to trade away the freedoms associated with democracy indefinitely if they can get a guarantee of safety and stability.

“In a country like this with zero respect for human rights, no colonial experience of rule of law, no magna carta, how are you going to build a democracy?” a Western official said.

Iraq, like many Middle Eastern countries, has been ruled by a succession of despots, kings and invaders. But even the British, who dominated the country briefly in the years after World War I, did not install the kind of complete governmental system they set up in colonies such as India. And for the past 35 years, Iraq has been run by one ruthless man and his corrupt family and cronies, meaning that the majority of the adult population has experienced only the fear-filled atmosphere of a dictatorship.

Almost since Saddam’s fall in April 2003, Iraqis, especially in the capital, have said they want a leader who is strong enough to get a handle on the security situation. Because the insurgency is strong in the capital, it is a critical point of reference for those who run the country.

Fear stalks the wealthy as well as the vulnerable and poor.

Iraqi security forces guard the entrance to a polling station in the Al Saei district of Basra, southern Iraq, on Saturday. Security remained very tight ahead of the elections taking place today.

“I am a contractor, I have three companies, and I am well known here and I am afraid,” said Mushtaq al Juboori, an architectural engineer who lives a wealthy Baghdad neighborhood. He has stopped going to his spacious office in downtown Baghdad because he fears being killed in one of the bombings.

Juboori is afraid he could even become a target, because he is building a part of a hospital in Tikrit. Although his contract is with the International Committee of the Red Cross, he thinks insurgents might believe he is being paid by the Americans. “Freedom or democracy should not be the goal,” he said. “Look at what the results have been — we lost our security and our water, our electricity.”

The members of the Juboori family are hardly alone in their sense that their life is constrained by the violence. The politicians on every one of the major lists competing in today’s elections has heard them and is running either overtly or more quietly on the promise to do something to improve security.

Implicit, however, is that the freedoms and human rights associated with democracy would have to wait.

For the foreseeable future, the country’s authorities will be focused on providing security. The language of democracy — such as respecting human rights and the rule of law — may have to wait its turn.