IRAQ

Excerpts from:

“America's Role in Nation-Building From Germany to Iraq” By: James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Andrew Rathmell, Rachel M. Swanger, Anga R. Timilsina (Rand Coporation 2003)

“Not since the occupation of Germany and Japan has the United States undertaken such an ambitious task: the military occupation of a sizable country and a stated commitment to wholesale political transformation. Bosnia and Kosovo are the most comparable in terms of ambition, but both are smaller entities and are in moreconducive strategic environments, and the interventions enjoyed more international support. As in Bosnia and Kosovo, there is no consensus on the nature of the Iraqi nation; Iraq has a deeply fractured

polity, with entrenched sectarian and ethnic divides. Unlike the Balkans, Iraq is in an unstable and undemocratic region and is surrounded by neighbors who will be unsympathetic to democratization.

Hence, Iraq combines many of the most troublesome features of the other cases analyzed in this report.

The challenges that the United States faces in Iraq can be grouped into those that are specific to Iraq, those that are common to societies emerging from totalitarian rule, and those that result from the postwar international environment.

Some of Iraq’s troubles mirror those in the Balkans, such as unresolved questions over national as opposed to communitarian identities. In Iraq’s case, the political structures the British created after World War I did nothing to resolve these questions. Instead, Iraq was left with no tradition of pluralist democracy. Instead, politics have always been about authoritarian rule and the settlement of disputes by force. Although a sense of Iraqi national identity does exist, this does not override communal forms of identity along ethnic, geographic, tribal, or religious boundaries. The majority of the population, the Kurds and Shiites, have no real tradition of representation as communities in national Iraqi politics; they will now have to be brought into the polity. More generally, the vibrant Iraqi middle class that emerged in the middle of the 20th century and that provided the basis for a civil society has been hollowed out by over a decade of sanctions and two decades of turmoil under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. In addition to these long-standing political problems, organized crime and banditry are now deeply rooted.

In addition to these particular Iraqi problems, the country faces the familiar challenges of a society emerging from a long period of totalitarian rule. The military, security services, and bureaucracy need to

be radically reformed and purged. Justice needs to be achieved for victims of human rights abuses. The economy needs a major overhaul to make it competitive in global markets.

Any attempt to achieve transformation in Iraq would have had to face these challenges. Because of the diplomatic circumstances of the conflict, the United States has to cope with unsympathetic neighbors—Iran, Syria, and Turkey. All have an interest in shaping Iraqi politics and perhaps in destabilizing a smooth transition. The United States also needs to make sure that events in the wider region, such as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do not undermine its credibility and position in Iraq. At the international level, the prewar splits in the UN Security Council make it much harder for the United States to adopt the burden-sharing models in Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. At the same time, the United States was

unable to undertake prewar preparations that would have eased postwar transition, such as coordinating humanitarian relief with the UN and NGOs, organizing international civil police forces, and establishing an international political authority to rebut Arab suspicions of U.S. imperialism.

Nonetheless, Iraq does have some advantages for nation-builders. First, it has a nationwide civil administration that is relatively efficient. This administration needs to be rebuilt but not reconstructed

from scratch. This administration, staffed mainly by Iraqis, will reduce the need for direct international intervention and will facilitate security and development across the country. Second, the civil administration and the extensive links with UN agencies mean that the humanitarian issues should be soluble. Third, Iraq’s oil means that the country will not remain dependent on international aid in

the medium term.

Meeting the Challenges

The postwar challenges—security, humanitarian assistance, creating a civil administration, political transition, and economic reform—can be considered in the short, medium, and long terms. In the short

term, U.S. military preponderance is likely to ensure security from large-scale violence, but rapid action will be needed to reestablish law and order and to replace discredited Iraqi policing, internal security,

and judicial structures. There will be a need to deal decisively with retributive violence and political power struggles that become violent. A functioning civil administration can rapidly be reconstituted based on the current administrative setup, once it is given an injection of external financial and technical aid. The United States, the UN, and NGOs will have to devote considerable effort to humanitarian assistance. Immediate economic efforts will focus on resuscitating the oil industry to generate export revenues.

In the medium term, all these issues, aside from the humanitarian one, become more challenging. Wide-scale conflict is unlikely if the United States manages to engineer a political agreement that meets the demands of the major armed groups in Iraq and forestalls overt Iranian or Turkish military intervention. However, there will be an ongoing struggle for influence within Iraq that will engage Iraq’s

neighbors, either overtly or covertly. Given the lack of experience in the country with resolving political differences peacefully and the proliferation of weapons and armed groups, it is likely that the protagonists

in this struggle will use violence. Against this backdrop, it will be a priority to reform Iraq’s police, military, and security services to allow U.S. and allied forces to stand back from constabulary

and internal security duties.

Building a stable and lasting civil administration in the medium term will require a substantial overhaul of personnel systems, including purging senior Baathists and a careful integration of expatriate returnees. The long-term evolution of these administrative structures into real centers of power, free of the “shadow state,” will be more difficult. The United States will have to neutralize the informal networks of power that underlie and subvert the formal bureaucratic structures. Substantial reform of key sectors, such as education and health care, will also be vital.

Building the political superstructure will be a medium- to long-term challenge, since the development of the Iraqi nation has been stunted and since it is very difficult to foresee the nature of political dynamics in post-Saddam Iraq. A pluralist electoral process, perhaps starting from the bottom up, may be feasible, but there will be difficult balances to be struck between democratic legitimacy and accommodating current centers of power. It will be important to balance communitarian politics and identity with a commonly

acknowledged national identity. Determining the polity’s constitutional end-state will be vital but fraught with difficulties.

The Iraqi economy has potential for high economic growth, if its human capital can be harnessed, its oil sector modernized, and conditions created for sustained growth. This will require not only substantial investment but also deep structural reform of the legal and financial systems.

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