Memo: How to Rebuild Iraq
Reconstruction: Here’s a checklist for would-be nation-builders in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
By Kenneth Pollack and Joe Siegle
msnbc.com
Issues 2003 — How Iraq is rebuilt will, to a great extent, depend
on how Saddam Hussein is taken down. Consider three options.
FIRST, A MILITARY COUP or an assassin’s bullet. Would that
alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people—or our own problems with
Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction? Probably not. The reason is that
Saddam’s tyranny pervades Iraqi society.
Virtually all senior Iraqi officials are relatives, kinsmen or close
compatriots who share his vision of a repressive, tightly controlled state.
They have overseen the murder of at least 200,000 Iraqis and the torture of
several hundred thousand more. Saddam’s 500,000-strong security
apparatus has penetrated every Iraqi organization, where access to even
basic necessities—food, housing and medicine—is a reward for loyalty.
Advancement under such a system requires an extraordinary capacity for
violence. Yet it is from these that a coup leader, with control of Iraq’s
weapons, would arise.
Another temptingly easy option is to install an interim government,
headed by a member of the Iraqi diaspora. This approach avoids the
problem of “Saddamism without Saddam.” But any such government
would lack legitimacy—and, most likely, a commitment to democracy. It
would not have the strength to rehabilitate Iraq’s deeply corrupted
bureaucracy. Its very fragility would invite a series of coups or territorial
seizures by warlords. Iraq could slide into chaos and civil war.
The third and hardest option, in the short term, would be to establish
a viable democratic government under international auspices. That would
require an occupying ground force of 100,000 to 200,000 troops,
substantial numbers of which would have to remain for eight to 10 years, if
not more. Even so, this is the only prospect for a stable Iraq at peace with
its neighbors.
For a hint of what might be achieved (and how to go about it) we need
not look far afield. In the decade since the Persian Gulf War, the Kurds of
northern Iraq have lived in quasi independence with competitive elections,
a free press, a growing economy and basic civil liberties. Their example
bolsters our optimism that the reconstruction of Iraq will be hard but not
impossible.
Drawing on lessons from other recent reconstruction
efforts—Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Cambodia and East
Timor, as well as Japan and Germany after World War II—we can suggest
some useful steps:
Involve the United Nations. Doing so will help temper feelings that an
intervention was a U.S. imperialist crusade or a ruse to gain control over
Iraq’s oil wealth. In Kosovo and East Timor, the United Nations learned
much about effectively administering such trusteeships.
Create an oil-management board. Iraq’s elites will vie for control of
the country’s $18 billion to $27 billion in anticipated annual oil revenues.
They will favor an interim government precisely because they could
control it—and ultimately corrupt it. Establishing a transparent institution
to equitably disburse Iraq’s oil revenues could be the single most
far-reaching contribution to the country’s reconstruction.
Reconstitute Iraqi institutions. Existing ministries are so thoroughly
criminalized that, in rebuilding them, all but junior staffers should be
quickly replaced. (In Haiti, as in various post-communist transitions,
failure to cut out institutional rot allowed core problems to fester. And it
was the rehabilitation of Germany’s and Japan’s civil institutions that set
the stage for their postwar recovery.) Saddam’s extensive intelligence
services, the Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard, must be
dissolved.
Go slow, but steady, on democracy. Saddam’s 35 years of totalitarian
rule have left Iraq nearly devoid of independent civil organizations. Yet free
speech; the ability to express and debate priorities; participation in civic
and political organizations, and the popular accountability of government
officials are indispensable to democracy. Creating the norms and
institutions of civil society will take time and require massive efforts by
international NGOs. It would be a mistake to rush prematurely into
elections. Doing so would merely return Iraq’s old elites to power.
Initial steps would include a constitution, crafted by
recognized Iraqi experts under the auspices of the United
Nations, as the legal and democratic foundation to the
new Iraqi state. Drafts would be popularly debated and approved
by national referendum following a massive public-education campaign,
along the lines of what was done in East Timor. Democracy should be built from the grass
roots. Devolving political authority from Saddam’s centralized system to local
leaders would give ordinary Iraqis a greater say on issues affecting their daily lives,
even as they remain under the overall authority of a strong international administrator.
The ideal would be the gradual process developed by the United Nations in Kosovo,
where self-government has been delegated in stages to municipalauthorities
over the past three years, the most recent stage being the successful elections in October.
The experience gained in this manner would help prepare a new generation of democratic
Iraqi leaders to run for regional and national office. If electoral jurisdictions were properly
drawn, geographically, Iraqi politicians would have to appeal to a variety of ethnic and
religious groups. This would help to knit together a federal Iraq.
Mind the neighbors. As in Liberia or Rwanda, Kosovo or Cambodia,
conflict tends to spill across borders. Iraq’s neighbors will have legitimate
security concerns, post-Saddam. Left unaddressed, Iraq could become a
battleground as each seeks to increase its influence at the expense of others.
In addition, radicals in Iran and Syria may see U.S. troops in the country as
an attractive target for terrorist operations, like the 1983 attack on the
Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon. These potential threats call for
aggressive measures that boost incentives for regional cooperation.
No one needs to be reminded that these are significant challenges. But
it is also important to remember that Iraq has a number of critical assets.
Its tremendous oil wealth is sufficient to fund a rapid rehabilitation—an
advantage no previous nation-building effort has enjoyed. The Iraqi
population is among the best educated in the Arab world. Although
impoverished during the past decade, Iraq still possesses a large, capable
(and mostly secular) middle class. Radical Islam is not a major draw in the
country. Removing Saddam is likely to unleash a more positive dynamic:
the Iraqi people’s native entrepreneurism.
While it is tempting to equate regime change in Iraq with simply
getting rid of Saddam, the reality is more complex. By understanding this,
we can avoid substituting one set of problems for another.
Pollack is the author of “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading
Iraq.” Siegle is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New
York.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc. |
