U.S. Plan Seeks to Seal Military Ties With Iraq
By Sewell Chan, Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD, March 27 -- U.S. officials are moving rapidly to create a civilian-run Iraqi Defense Ministry that will work in tandem with the American military after the handover of Iraqi sovereignty on June 30 and could form the nucleus of a strategic alliance between the two countries.
Since February, about 50 Iraqi officials have been flown to Washington to attend a Pentagon (news - web sites)-run school on how to recruit, train and equip a military that operates under civilian leadership, according to the retired U.S. Army colonel who directs the program. A class of 25 graduated on Friday from the three-week course, which included meetings with officials in Congress and the Defense and State departments.
In addition, a former militia leader has been picked to lead Iraq (news - web sites)'s new defense bureaucracy, according to two people familiar with the decision. Bruska Shaways, the former commander of an Iraqi Kurd paramilitary force, aided U.S. commanders in northern Iraq last year during the invasion of the country. His appointment comes as the U.S. military is seeking to disband independent Iraqi militias.
With the handover of sovereignty less than 100 days away, the Bush administration and Iraq's leaders have not negotiated a status-of-forces agreement spelling out the rights and responsibilities of U.S. troops in Iraq after June 30. U.S. officials have said U.N. Resolution 1511, passed Oct. 16, and the Iraqi interim constitution adopted this month provide a legal basis for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq. But the establishment and staffing of an Iraqi Defense Ministry appear aimed at ensuring that the Iraqi military's new leaders will be responsive to U.S. interests, regardless of what kind of agreement is eventually reached.
In a nine-page executive order signed on March 21, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, established an Iraqi version of the Pentagon, replete with a chief of staff for the armed forces, an inspector general and directors for budgeting, intelligence and logistics. While the ministry has administrative control of the armed forces, the order calls for Iraqi troops to operate under the command of the U.S.-led coalition.
Positions in the Iraqi ministry are to be filled by civil servants and military officers rather than political appointees. Shaways, as secretary general, would head the defense bureaucracy and answer to an appointed defense minister -- another civilian. U.S. officials said their goal is to stabilize the new military by making it difficult to remove anyone but the minister.
"This is very much like the British model, where the ministry is run by career civil servants and military professionals," a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Thursday. He said Bremer would name an interim defense minister in early April.
Creation of a new Iraqi army has been one of the highest priorities of the occupation authority since Bremer's decision 10 months ago to dismantle the force that served under former president Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Bremer's move proved to be his most controversial. Although he subsequently ordered the formation of a new 40,000-soldier army, many Iraqis say that the dissolution of the original army destabilized society and may have created a vast pool of trained, unemployed fighters ready to join the insurgency that has claimed scores of American and Iraqi lives.
U.S. officials began recruiting and training the new army in August, officials said, and by December they had assembled a team of legal and policy experts to devise a new Defense Ministry that would be insulated from Iraq's fractious domestic politics.
The senior U.S. official acknowledged, however, that the interim Iraqi government could jettison the plan. "That's for the Iraqis to decide," he said. "We believe we have offered the best advice and the best organization, and many Iraqis, including Governing Council members, have embraced this recommendation. We made modifications based on their suggestions."
The U.S.-based training is a key component of the Americans' strategy.
Two groups of about 25 Iraqi officials -- including five women and a handful of former military officers who served under Hussein but were not high-level members of his Baath Party -- have completed a special course at the National Defense University in Washington.
"What we're talking about is, how does one go about managing the development and design of a security force in a participatory, transparent and accountable political system," said Gerald B. Thompson, a former infantry officer who directs the university's Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies.
Neither Thompson nor U.S. officials in Baghdad would identify the graduates of the training course, citing potential security threats against Iraqis who cooperate with the U.S.-led occupation.
Shaways, whom U.S. officials declined to make available for an interview, spent two decades in northwestern Iraq as a commander, military adviser and defense minister for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of two factions that have largely governed northern Iraq since 1991, when the United States imposed a "no-fly" zone in the area. He is a top deputy to Massoud Barzani, the party's leader and a member of the Governing Council.
Although Shaways has been critical of the United States, in particular of the civil disorder that erupted in the northern city of Mosul after Hussein's forces retreated in April, he is popular among U.S. commanders.
Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, which until recently had control of northern Iraq, described Shaways as a "superb" choice.
A legal adviser to Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni Muslim member of the Governing Council, said he liked the idea of a military largely controlled by technocrats and professionals.
"The fact is that, at the end of the day, what Iraqis need are the most qualified people available in Iraq to render service in the rebuilding of Iraq," said the adviser, Feisal Istrabadi, a lawyer who holds Iraqi and American citizenship and has been a vocal critic of Bremer's decision to dissolve the army.
Istrabadi said the security situation in Iraq would make it difficult for political leaders to drastically alter the U.S.-designed system. "Let's be very practical about this, leaving aside issues of national pride and all that," he said. "We have foreigners blowing themselves up and blowing Iraqis up by the hundreds. That has got to be ended. In the absence of an American force, Iraq will descend into absolute chaos."
However, Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite member of the council who is backed by the Pentagon, questioned whether the U.S. plan would have legitimacy when Bremer leaves.
"After July 1, any type of structure created without sufficient coordination, transparency and dialogue with the Governing Council can be reversed, dismantled and rebuilt again," Qanbar said. "This is an Iraqi issue, and we are not going to let anybody -- no matter how strong an ally -- impose or put into place structures without full knowledge of the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people." |
