Winning the Post-Postwar
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, February 16, 2004; Page A27
Even as it tries to orchestrate a handoff to a sovereign government in Iraq, the Bush administration has a chance to avoid repeating a critical error it made a year ago. Then, focused on the imminent military campaign, the administration failed to prepare a workable plan for the postwar occupation. Now, despite its priority of installing an Iraqi government by July 1, it needs to come up with a clear strategy for how to handle the post-postwar Iraq -- a country that will be far from stable but no longer under U.S. administration.
Senior administration officials know, at least, what they most want to avoid: the eruption of a civil war among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, or an attempt by clerics to establish an authoritarian Islamic state. Maybe a few still count on a winning scenario -- a smooth segue to a pluralistic Iraqi administration, a waning of the resistance, a steady easing of the burden on the American military as NATO and Iraqi forces step in.
Either outcome is possible. But more likely is a muddle, a mix of nation building, violence, economic recovery and chaos, with U.S. troops and a huge new U.S. Embassy playing the role of referee and adviser as well as political scapegoat and terrorist target. Even in the best case, the sorting out of these countervailing forces and the emergence of a new Iraq will take years. Which raises a few questions: How will we know when we've succeeded? When will it be safe to scale back or withdraw? And, assuming the parameters of success can be defined, what practical strategies will help achieve them?
If the administration is thinking hard about these questions, there isn't much sign of it -- any more than there appeared to be good plans last February for the immediate postwar. As then, however, lots of people outside the government are working on the post-postwar problem, hoping to have some influence on what too often has been a hermetic policymaking process.
One group with ideas is the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, headed by Frederick Barton and Bathsheba Crocker, two veterans of the State Department, United Nations and National Security Council. Their aim has been to draw up a list of specific conditions that would be present in a successful Iraq, each of which could serve as a barometer of progress.
"It's not a nation-building model," says Barton. "One of the weaknesses in Iraq is that the coalition effort has been bureaucratized to bring order out of chaos, which is probably more admirable than achievable. What you are really trying to do is steer chaos in the right direction." Success should be measured not by whether ideal political conditions are created, he says, but by whether there is movement toward "a tipping point where you can start to hold people responsible."
Rather than focusing on institutions, the parameters describe the experience of Iraqi citizens. Barton and Crocker have written eight statements that "an average Iraqi must be in a position to make in order for reconstruction to succeed." The first, predictably, is: "I can travel around my city or town without fear of attack." The next, "I have a means of income." Those that follow cover expectations that crimes will be prosecuted, that religious and ethnic groups will not be persecuted, that children will be able to go to school, that hospitals and clinics will provide health care, that there will be religious freedom. And: "I have some say in who governs me and how they do so."
Crocker points out that the U.S. occupation administration tends to quantify progress by how many attacks are launched daily against U.S. troops, how many Iraqi security forces have been trained or how many megawatts of electricity are produced. Although they have some meaning, such statistics don't really show whether life for Iraqis is getting better or whether the political situation is moving in the right direction. If the focus remains on them, the administration could end up using its aid money and diminishing political leverage for the wrong ends.
Crocker and Barton say concentration on their list would lead to some smaller-scale and decentralized tactics. Rather than try to repair the entire Iraqi electricity grid by summer, it might be better to import more small generators to areas where blackouts are chronic. More attention might be paid to setting up accountable and representative local governments in cities and towns, while lowering expectations for what the first national government might accomplish.
Most important is encouraging civic participation by as many Iraqis as possible so that over time, a genuine civil society and democratic political movements can grow from the ground up. That, of course, will take patience and staying power. The danger is that, in the absence of clear goals or measures of success, pressure will grow in Washington to declare an arbitrary victory and withdraw. "Don't give these new leaders too much to do too soon," advises Barton. The corollary is: Be prepared to stay until they are able to deliver.
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