Takeover of oil fields part of U.S. plans for Iraq
chron.com
By DAVID E. SANGER and JAMES DAO
New York Times
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's national security team is assembling final plans for
administering and democratizing Iraq after the expected ouster of Saddam Hussein. Those
plans call for a heavy American military presence in the country for at least 18 months,
military trials of only the most senior Iraqi leaders and a quick takeover of the country's oil
fields to pay for reconstruction.
The proposals, according to administration officials who have been developing them for
several months, have been discussed informally with Bush in considerable detail. They
would amount to the most ambitious American effort to administer a country since the
occupations of Japan and Germany at the end of World War II. With Bush's return here
Sunday afternoon, his principal foreign policy advisers are expected to shape the final
details in White House meetings and then formally present them to the president.
Many elements of the plans are highly classified, and some are still being debated as
Bush's team tries to allay concerns that the United States would seek to be a colonial power
in Iraq. But the broad outlines show the enormous complexity of the task in months ahead,
and point to some of the difficulties that would follow even a swift and successful removal of
Saddam from power, including these:
o Though Bush came to office expressing distaste for using the military for what he called
nation building, the Pentagon is preparing for at least a year and a half of military control of
Iraq, with forces that would keep the peace, hunt down Saddam's top leaders and weapons
of mass destruction and, in the words of one of Bush's senior advisers, "keep the country
whole."
o A civilian administrator -- perhaps designated by the United Nations -- would run the
country's economy, rebuild its schools and political institutions and administer aid
programs. Placing those powers in nonmilitary hands, administration officials hope, will
quell Arab concerns that a military commander would wield the kind of unchallenged
authority that Gen. Douglas MacArthur exercised as supreme commander in Japan.
o Only "key" senior officials of the Saddam government "would need to be removed and
called to account," according to an administration document summarizing plans for war
trials. People in the Iraqi hierarchy who help bring down the government may be offered
leniency.
o The administration plan states that "government elements closely identified with
Saddam's regime, like the revolutionary courts or the special security organization, will be
eliminated, but much of the rest of the government will be reformed and kept."
o While publicly stating that Iraqi oil would remain what one senior official calls "the
patrimony of the Iraqi people," the administration is debating how to protect oil fields
during the conflict and how an occupied Iraq would be represented in the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries, if at all.
o After long debate, especially between the Pentagon and the State Department, the White
House has rejected for now the idea of creating a provisional government before any
invasion.
Administration officials involved in the planning caution that no matter how detailed their
plans, many crucial decisions would have to be made on the ground in Iraq. So for now they
have focused on legal precedents -- including an examination of the legal basis for taking
control of the country at all -- and a study of past successes and failures in nation building,
reaching back to the American administration of the Philippines after the
Spanish-American War.
The plans presented to Bush will include several contingencies that depend heavily, officials
say, on how Saddam leaves power.
"So much rides on the conflict itself, if it becomes a conflict, and on how the conflict starts
and how the conflict ends," said one of Bush's top advisers.
Much also depends on whether the arriving American troops would be welcomed or shot at,
and the CIA has been putting together scenarios that range from a friendly occupation to a
hostile one.
Yet under all of the possibilities, the American military would remain the central player in
running the country for some time. The Pentagon has warned that it would take at least a
year to be certain that all of Saddam's weapons stores are destroyed.
Notably, the administration's written description of its goals include these two objectives:
"preserve Iraq as a unitary state, with its territorial integrity intact," and "prevent unhelpful
outside interference, military or nonmilitary," apparently a warning to neighboring
countries.
Administration officials insist American military forces would not stay in Iraq a day longer
than is necessary to stabilize the country.
"I don't think we're talking about months," one of Bush's top advisers said of the planned
occupation. "But I don't think we're talking a lot of years, either."
THE COMMAND: MILITARY JOINED WITH CIVILIAN
When administration officials first began publicly discussing the idea of an American
military administration for Iraq, the reaction in the Arab world was swift: They wanted no
American Caesar in Iraq, no symbol of a colonial governor or commander. "The last thing we
need," a senior official said, in an allusion to MacArthur, "is someone walking around with a
corncob pipe, telling Iraqis how to form a government."
As a result, the steering group on Iraq policy is now discussing a hybrid command with an
American military commander in charge of security and some kind of civilian administrator
-- of theoretically equal influence -- to get the schools running, the oil fields pumping and
the economy jump-started.
It is not clear whether that administrator would be an American or if the United Nations
would take the lead in that part of the operation.
It is widely assumed that in the first chaotic months, the military commander will have
unquestioned authority. "Remember, you will have decapitated the command and control
for the Iraqi military forces," a senior administration official said. "Who is going to make sure
that score-settling does not break out, that there is not fights between the various ethnic
communities? It is going to have to be the U.S. military for some period of time, and if there
is a military command, there will certainly be a military commander."
But the handover of more and more responsibility from the military administration to an
international civilian administration -- and several years down the road to an Iraqi-run
government -- is still murky. Officials, referring to the ruling Baath Party, say
"de-Baathification" of the country will be at least as complex as de-Nazification was in
Germany.
"We know one thing," said a diplomat involved in the planning. "Things will have to come
together a lot faster than they have in Afghanistan."
THE OIL: PROTECTING IT FOR THE IRAQIS
There is no more delicate question for the administration than how to deal with Iraq's oil
reserves -- the second largest in the world, behind Saudi Arabia's -- and how to raise money
from oil sales for rebuilding without prompting charges that control of oil, not disarming
Iraq, is Bush's true aim.
Administration officials have been careful always to talk about Iraqi oil as the property of the
Iraqi people. But in the White House, the major concern is that Saddam may plan to
destroy the oil infrastructure in the first days of any war, while trying to make it appear as if
the destruction was the work of American forces.
"What happens if he started systematically destroying the fields?" a senior official said. "It's
a big source of concern, and we are trying to take account of it as we plan how to use our
military forces."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking on Dec. 29, hinted at such a military plan when
he said, "If coalition forces go into those oil fields, we would want to protect those fields and
make sure that they are used to benefit the people of Iraq, and are not destroyed or
damaged by a failing regime on the way out the door."
The White House has already concluded that the United Nations' oil-for-food program,
under which Iraq is permitted to sell a limited amount of oil to buy civilian goods, will have
to be amended quickly so oil revenues can be used more broadly in the country. But it is
unclear how the administration plans to finesse the question of Iraq's role in the OPEC
countries and who would represent occupied Iraq at the organization's meetings.
The administration is already anticipating that neighboring Arab nations may accuse
occupied Iraq of pumping oil beyond OPEC quotas. One official said Washington "fully
expects" that the United States will be suspected of undermining the oil organization, and it
is working on strategies, which he would not describe, to allay those fears.
THE LEADERSHIP: PLANNING BOTH TRIALS AND INCENTIVES
Bush has been warning since October that Iraqi generals who obeyed any orders to use
chemical or biological weapons against American troops would be punished, perhaps as war
criminals.
Now, as part of the effort to undermine Saddam's government and get evidence that has so
far eluded U.N. inspectors, the White House is putting a slightly different spin on that kind
of talk.
Those who have helped build Saddam's weapons stockpile, officials say, may win some
redemption by helping inspectors -- and American forces.
That approach appears to be part of a strategy to encourage a coup and persuade military
leaders and scientists to give up the country's chemical and biological stockpiles and its
nuclear research efforts. "The politics of Iraq are so opaque that it's just hard to know what
is or isn't rumbling under the surface," one of Bush's most senior advisers say. The result is
that the president is looking to create "maximum pressure" on the top leadership.
Already the CIA and others have drawn up lists of Saddam's top command and the heads of
his security forces who would probably be put on trial.
One State Department working group is studying a kind of "truth and reconciliation"
process, modeled after the one in South Africa, which could publicly shame, but not
necessarily punish, human rights violators.
THE TRANSITION: NO TO INSTALLING PROVISIONAL RULERS
Few issues have divided the administration more bitterly than how to create a transitional
Iraqi government that could serve as a bridge between the American military occupation
and a permanent, democratic government. The issue reflects the administration's
ideological fault lines, and in recent months Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza
Rice, has stepped in, as one senior aide said, "to make sure there was not a public food
fight on this one."
White House officials say that those divisions have now been resolved, and that while
planning is going forward, the United States will not overtly install a provisional government
or designate its leaders.
The division was a familiar one. Senior civilian officials in the Pentagon and some advisers to
Vice President Dick Cheney argued for the creation of a provisional government even before
Baghdad falls. It would be led, at least initially, by Iraqi exiles. The proponents argue that
such a government in exile would speed creation of a permanent government if Saddam was
removed, allowing U.S. forces to withdraw sooner. Among the reported advocates were
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who wants the military's role to be brief.
"The quicker you get a transition from military victory to transitional government, the
better," a senior Pentagon official said. "We want to be there as long as necessary, but as
short as possible."
On the other side of the debate are advocates of giving more power to Iraqis now living in
Iraq. These advocates, mainly in the State Department and CIA, say the Iraqi exiles have no
legitimacy among the Iraqi people. One proposal favored by State Department officials calls
for having an international civilian agency, advised by Iraqis and protected by allied
peacekeeping forces, run the nation while Iraqis elect local governments, create a new
constitution and eventually select a national legislature, somewhat along the postwar model
of Afghanistan.
The White House has tried to finesse those differences by saying it favors a government
formed by "free Iraqis" both inside and outside Iraq. But inside the Pentagon there are
doubts. "The argument that you have to leave seats at the table for people inside Iraq has
one problem: there is no one inside," said a senior official who supports the Iraqi National
Congress.
An official close to Bush acknowledged that "there are not a lot of free Iraqis inside Iraq."
Pausing, he added, "But there will be." |
