Seattle Times Archives
Nation & World: Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Close-up
Postwar Iraq to challenge U.S. forces keeping peace
By Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is bracing both for war in Iraq and a postwar occupation that could tie up two to three Army divisions in an open-ended mission that would strain the all-volunteer force and put soldiers in the midst of warring ethnic and religious factions, Army officers and other senior defense officials say.
While the officers think a decade of peacekeeping operations in Haiti, Somalia, the Balkans and now Afghanistan makes the Army uniquely qualified for the job, they fear that bringing democracy and stability to Iraq may be an impossible task.
An occupation force of 45,000 to 60,000 Army troops — the range under consideration by the Joint Chiefs of Staff — could force an end to peacetime training and rotation cycles in a service already deployed in Germany, South Korea, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Sinai.
Calling in the Marines?
Army officials note they missed reserve recruiting goals in January and February, as potential reservists faced lengthy overseas deployments instead of the regular commitment of 39 days a year. There is even talk among senior officers that the Marine Corps may be assigned peacekeeping chores in northern Iraq to share the burden.
But the greatest sources of concern among senior Army leaders are the uncertainty and complexity of the mission in postwar Iraq, which could require U.S. forces to protect Iraq's borders, referee clashes between ethnic and religious groups, ensure civilian security, provide humanitarian relief, secure possible chemical- and biological-weapons sites, and govern hundreds of towns and villages.
Should U.S. forces succeed in overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, they will inherit a country divided among armed and organized Kurdish factions in the north, restless majority Shiites in the south and a Sunni population that has been the backbone of Saddam's Baath Party rule. Adding to the complexity will be the interests of at least two bordering powers — Turkey, which has its own Kurdish minority and opposes any move toward greater Kurdish autonomy, and Iran, which has historic ties to Iraqi Shiites.
"There's going to be a power vacuum," said one senior defense official sympathetic to the Army. "How will that be filled? I'm not an expert in the region, but if you use the Balkans as a model, we may be getting into the middle of a civil war."
"The Army is wary of being the one left to clean up after the party is over," added retired Lt. Col. Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash commanded the first Army peacekeeping operation in the Balkans in 1995. He also occupied the area around the Iraqi town of Safwan on the Kuwaiti border with three battalions for 2-1/2 months after the 1991 Gulf War. During that mission, his troops dealt with recurring murders, attempted murders, "ample opportunity for civil disorder" and refugee flows they never could fully fathom, he said.
Nash said he believes 200,000 U.S. and allied forces will be necessary to stabilize Iraq, noting that up to two divisions alone — 25,000 to 50,000 troops — could be required just to guard any chemical- or biological-weapons sites that are discovered until the weapons are disposed of properly.
"There's apprehension inside the Army as to the extent of the mission and a concern that there hasn't been the recognition by the senior leadership — I read civilian — as to the enormity of the challenge," Nash said.
The Army's concern bubbled up publicly two weeks ago when Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army's chief of staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "several hundred thousand soldiers" could be necessary for peacekeeping duties. Two days later, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz — one of the architects of the president's postwar ambitions in Iraq — took the unusual step of publicly differing with the Army chief, dismissing his estimate as "way off the mark."
Shinseki and other defense officials have said they hope allied forces will contribute significantly to the postwar mission, though it is unclear how much other countries would be willing to pitch in. The Bush administration has experienced difficulties recruiting other countries to send forces to the Afghan peacekeeping mission.
Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Clinton-administration official, said recent history shows that 60,000 peacekeepers were needed in Bosnia to separate warring ethnic factions, just one facet of the mission that could confront the Army in postwar Iraq. And Bosnia's population is 4 million, 17 percent of Iraq's 23 million.
Postwar Iraq promises to be highly volatile. In the north, two well-armed and well-organized Kurdish factions have enjoyed semi-autonomy under the protection of U.S. and British jets patrolling the northern "no-fly" zone. Longtime rivals, they have achieved an uneasy truce in anticipation of a U.S. invasion to unseat Saddam.
They have been warned by the administration not to push for a Kurdish state. In turn, the Kurds have warned Turkey not to send troops into northern Iraq once the fighting starts to establish a buffer zone to control Kurdish refugees.
In the south, around Basra, Shiites — who represent a majority of Iraq's population — have bitterly opposed Saddam's leadership since 1991, when the Iraqi president crushed Shiite uprisings after the Gulf War.
Many Shiites, led by the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, still hold the United States responsible for facilitating the slaughter by allowing Saddam's military to fly attack helicopters against them.
Hundreds of Shiite militiamen, backed by the Supreme Council and the Iranian government, have recently set up an armed camp in northern Iraq, from which they plan on fighting the Iraqi military once a U.S.-led invasion begins.
Worries over power vacuum
The heart of the country, greater Baghdad, a sprawling metropolis of 6 million mostly Sunni and Shiite Muslims, is also likely to be riven by strife and intrigue, with revenge killings of officials from Saddam's Baath Party likely after its brutal reign.
Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst who argues in favor of invading Iraq, said he believes most Iraqis would see U.S. troops as liberators, at least initially. But he said he is worried "that we won't have enough troops to provide the kind of immediate security presence to ensure that there isn't going to be a power vacuum."
The Army and the Marine Corps have extensive experience conducting stability operations in Iraq. They deployed 20,000 troops for 3½ months after the Gulf War ended to conduct Operation Provide Comfort, a humanitarian mission to protect the Kurds.
Bad memories
While U.S. forces began that mission by confronting the Iraqi military, they ended up squaring off with Kurdish militia, a cautionary tale for U.S. peacekeepers entering the north.
"It was really a wild time, a very bloody time," recalled one officer, noting that the operation involved multi-front fighting in which Kurds attacked Iraqi security forces, and also attacked each other, while the Turkish military attacked one Kurdish faction.
Interestingly, several commanders from Provide Comfort are key figures in the current confrontation with Iraq and have made clear that lessons learned 12 years ago have not been forgotten. One of them is retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the Pentagon's coordinator for relief and reconstruction efforts in postwar Iraq.
Another, Marine Gen. James Jones, who commanded Marines during the operation and was accosted at one point by Iraqi forces, is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's combatant commander in Europe. A third is Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, an American of Lebanese descent who speaks fluent Arabic. He is now deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for executing an invasion of Iraq, and defense officials speculate that he may be designated the U.S. military commander for postwar Iraq.
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