Nationally syndicated columnist Austin Bay argues today that giving the Iraqi people a stake in their own future could be the key to saving that country from ruin:

Several economists and economic development experts argue that land — specifically “land reform” — is key to ending Iraq’s complex civil conflict. Among them is Peter Schaefer. Mr. Schaefer served in Vietnam as an American military intelligence officer, then in the mid-1970s became deeply involved in economic development analysis and property right issues. A former adviser to Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto, Mr. Schaefer is now working on a business project that involves “commercial scale” property registration in the developing world.

Vietnam sparked Mr. Schaefer’s interest in economic development. In an interview last week, he told me: “I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that the Vietnamese people were so smart and industrious, and yet they were just so damn poor. The [destructive effects of the] war didn’t answer that for me. Why would someone choose Mao over Jefferson?” Mr. Schaefer concluded the Vietnamese communists pursued a calculated land reform policy, one that leveraged Vietnamese villagers’ traditional recognition of property rights. In the 1990s, Schaefer noted, Peru turned the “land reform” tables on the communists. Property rights reform helped defeat Peru’s “Maoist” Shining Path guerrilla movement.

In Mr. Schaefer’s view, property rights reform gives Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government a very powerful political weapon with war-winning potential.

The solution, Schaefer contends, is fairly simple:

“Prime Minister Maliki needs to go on television,” Mr. Schaefer advised, “and say: ‘Citizens of Iraq, 95 percent of the property in this country is not legally in your name. You don’t have title to your own land or your own houses. We’re going to change that right now.’ ”

This reform would launch a liberalizing political and economic revolution, with the democratic Iraqi government empowering Iraq’s people. For maximum payoff, Mr. Schaefer said, Mr. Maliki’s government should support title reform with a mortgage program that provides wholesale money to banks and permits them to do mortgage lending for individual Iraqis, thus “jumpstarting” Iraq’s sclerotic banking system.

Property rights reform also provides a political tool for assuaging sectarian and ethnic fears among Iraqi citizens, Schaefer said. Good title “means Iraqis can protect their houses with the law on their side.”

One of the biggest problems that Iraq faces today is that the population clearly does not trust the government to protect their rights. By guaranteeing the citizens’ right to hold property and prevent others from taking it, the government could go a long way toward rebuilding that confidence. There’s no guarantee it will work, of course, but it’s surely worth trying.