Succeeding Saddam
Apr 7th 2003
From The Economist Global Agenda
Although the war is still being waged, plans for the governance of post-war Iraq are advancing. Opponents of the war, such as France and Russia, favour a significant role for the United Nations, as does Britain, while America wants to run the show for an undetermined period. The debate has already split the Bush administration
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH is making a rare overseas trip—to Northern Ireland, of all places—for a wartime summit with his coalition ally, Tony Blair, the British prime minister. While local observers are hoping that the visit will prompt the Irish Republican Army to give up its illegal weapons, the more substantive discussions will concern the shape of Iraq once Saddam Hussein’s regime has been overthrown. A gulf has opened up between the British, who favour a central role for the United Nations, and the Americans, who insist that the war coalition—in reality, they themselves—who must run the show. A retired American general, Jay Garner, is in Kuwait with some 300 officials, ready to set up an interim administration in Iraq, perhaps even before hostilities end. But the plans for exactly what Mr Garner will do, and who will help him, seem to change by the day, thanks in large part to a turf battle between his bosses at the Pentagon and the diplomats at the State Department.
With victory apparently at hand, the role of the UN will be a crucial part of the discussions between the two war leaders in Belfast. But the American leader is unlikely to be very flexible: after the Security Council fiasco over a second Iraq resolution, even Colin Powell, the most multilateralist member of the Bush administration, has insisted that the coalition must play the dominant role. Condoleezza Rice, the president’s national security adviser, declared on April 4th that, having shed “life and blood” in the war, it was natural that America and its closest allies would lead the reshaping of Iraq. The UN, she said, would have a secondary role in the reconstruction and in guiding Iraq towards elections. This relegation of the UN to a supporting role seems certain to anger opponents of the war, some of whom have characterised it as merely the beginning of a wider plan hatched by neo-conservative policymakers at the Pentagon to redraw the whole Middle East.
France, Russia and Germany, who opposed the war in the Security Council, are determined that any post-war settlement should be a multilateral one. At a meeting in Paris last week, foreign ministers from the three countries called for the UN to be given an immediate and central role in Iraq. Were the United States to heed these calls, it might help to heal the rift caused by the coalition’s decision to go to war without a second resolution. But there is more at stake: America intends to use Iraqi oil revenues to finance the country’s reconstruction. It is hard to see the Security Council agreeing to this if the new administration in Iraq were run by the Americans. “Iraq is not a cake or an El Dorado to be divided up,” said Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister.
Nobody, however, doubts that Iraq will be in the hands of coalition generals in the short term—indeed, it is an accepted rule of military engagement that the victorious army stabilise the security situation before handing over to a civil administration. It is also likely to be the Americans, more than anyone else, who decide the shape of the interim administration. The arguments within the Bush administration are, therefore, just as important as those across the Atlantic.
The rough outline of the American plans for the interim government calls for Mr Garner to run the administration in Iraq, reporting to Tommy Franks, the coalition commander in the region. Mr Garner will be assisted by western experts in running Iraq’s 23 ministries, though they will seek lower-level advice from Iraqi technicians unconnected to Saddam’s Baath regime. The administration-in-waiting in Kuwait is mostly American, but includes a handful of British officials and Australian agricultural experts (Australia is one of the few countries to have sent troops to the Gulf). Mr Garner has a good reputation in the region: he oversaw the restoration of order and humanitarian supplies in Kurdish-held Iraq after the first Gulf war. But he has been criticised for a perceived pro-Israeli bias since signing a declaration praising the Israeli army’s “remarkable restraint” towards Palestinian militants in 2000.
Reports from America suggest Mr Garner could set up a government to rival Saddam’s as early as this week in southern Iraq, sending a strong propaganda message. However, his debut briefing, scheduled for the morning of April 7th in Kuwait, was postponed indefinitely, indicating some wrinkles in his plans. One unresolved issue is the timing of the hand-over of government to the Iraqis. The Americans insist that they want locals in power as soon as possible. Indeed, one of the objections to the UN’s close involvement is that it could lead to a delay in achieving that objective. But nobody is sure just how long the interim administration will last: Paul Wolfowitz, America’s deputy defence secretary, said on Sunday that he thought it would rule for at least six months.
The Pentagon has been eager to establish an administration with a large Iraqi contingent. Its preferred new leader is Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group in exile. However, both the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have severe doubts about Mr Chalabi, who was sentenced in his absence for bank fraud in Jordan, and who is said to lack credibility among ordinary Iraqis. The State Department seems to have won a victory in downplaying his role, and that of his exiled colleagues, in any future administration. In her remarks on April 4th, Ms Rice insisted that Mr Bush planned to open the interim authority to people living in Iraq as well as to exiles.
The Pentagon and the State Department are also rowing over which Americans should be part of the new authority. The State Department lined up a group of former ambassadors to the region. However, these names were withdrawn after objections from the Pentagon, which appears to feel that the diplomats would be too Arabist in their mindset. Moreover, many at the Pentagon regard State Department officials in much the same way as they do the French—as appeasers who never really wanted this war. The Pentagon tried to nominate James Woolsey, a former head of the CIA, as a key player in the interim government, though that plan now seems to have been abandoned after objections from the State Department, which was appalled at the notion of putting a former spymaster in a foreign government. With the American army in the centre of Baghdad, these matters will probably have to be decided sooner rather than later. And the consequences of those decisions will last far longer than the war.
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