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US still looking for a winning
team
By Andrew F Tully
WASHINGTON - The United States government is
making broad changes in its administration of Iraq in an
apparent effort to calm an increasingly restive
population.
A week ago, US President George W
Bush announced that L Paul Bremer, a seasoned diplomat,
would be taking over the US civil administration in
Baghdad from retired US Major-General Jay
Garner.
In other changes, Barbara Bodine, who was
the de facto mayor of Baghdad, has been recalled. And at
least three other senior US officials in Iraq are
expected to leave soon. State Department spokesman
Philip Reeker said the recalls are part of a routine
staff rotation and do not reflect inadequate
performance.
Meanwhile, crime and political
unrest show few signs of abating one month after the
fall of Baghdad. The most recent example of civic
dissatisfaction came on Sunday when Grand Ayatollah
Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq's biggest
Shi'ite Muslim political group, the Supreme Assembly for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), demanded that
the United States end its efforts to set up an interim
administration and withdraw so the Iraqis can govern
themselves.
Hakim, who had returned from more
than 20 years in exile, told a crowd in the southern
Iraqi city of Nasiriyah that the people of Iraq should
be allowed to enjoy the same freedoms as Americans. "Do
the Americans accept it if the English govern their
country, even though they share a similar culture? How
can we accept a foreign government whose language is
different than ours, whose skin is different than ours?
O brothers, we will fight and fight so that the
government we have is independent, that it is Iraqi,"
Hakim said.
US officials have stated repeatedly
that they are in Iraq only to help restore order after
the overthrow of president Saddam Hussein. Bremer,
arriving in Baghdad, reinforced that position. "The
coalition forces did not come to colonize Iraq," Bremer
said. "We came to overthrow a despotic regime. That we
have done. Now our job is to turn and help the Iraqi
people regain control of their own destiny, to help the
Iraqi society rebuild on the basis of individual
liberties, respect for the rule of law and respect for
each other."
Foreign-affairs analysts say it has
long been known that Garner would be replaced by someone
with more civilian-oriented credentials. But they say
the departure of several of Garner's top aides makes it
clear that Bremer's arrival signifies more than a
planned personnel change.
Thomas Carothers is
the co-director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a
policy-research center in Washington. He said he
believes the Bush administration now realizes it must
revise its plans for setting up an interim government in
Iraq, a task he called daunting.
Carothers said
the United States faces a task that is vastly different
from that which followed World War II. "This is not like
reconstructing Germany and Japan after [that war]. There
was not an effective central administration [in Iraq]
that was already running the economy and things like
that, as there had been in Germany and Japan. [In Iraq,]
you're trying for the first time [to] create an
administrative and governmental structure that would
actually do a good job of running the country. That's
nation-building. And you have this unusual situation of
almost a complete political vacuum," he said.
In
Iraq, Carothers said, even the political opposition to
the now-overthrown government is either fragmented or
returning from exile after three decades of repression.
He said Iraq has a larger middle class of professionals
than is found in many other Middle Eastern countries,
but that does not mean they will be able to step in
quickly and establish an efficient government and
industrial sector.
"The problem is the middle
class is being overshadowed by the looters and by the
political tensions that are going on between the
political groups who are already struggling for power.
The middle class might be able to come out and begin to
be effective in a more benign environment, but a
well-educated engineer or a doctor or a lawyer sitting
at home right now, unable to go out, or having had their
office cleaned out by looters, isn't able to contribute
very much," Carothers said.
In fact, Carothers
said lawlessness in Iraq is the crux of the matter. He
noted that both in the US and in Europe, much has been
made of the military character of the fledgling
administration in Iraq, even though its chief until now,
Garner, is retired from the US Army. Many Westerners
have applauded the appointment of Bremer, who is a
career diplomat, not a career soldier.
Carothers, however, said that is beside the
point for Iraqis. If they are to abide a US presence in
their country, he said, they do not care whether it is
civilian or military, as long as it restores order.
"America has been very preoccupied by getting a civilian
in rather than a retired military [man], but I think the
Iraqis are counting on the US military to provide
security and order in their country. And I think these
distinctions are probably less important to people in
Iraq, and it's more about the international image of the
occupation that we're trying to project," Carothers
said.
Anthony Cordesman specializes in strategic
issues at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, another Washington think-tank. He said the US
has so far failed to bring civil order to Iraq because
it did not - or could not - properly assess the scope of
the job long before the fighting began in March.
"Frankly, if you look at the warnings given by
the study groups in the [US government's] interagency
community, the fault lies really within the office of
the secretary of defense and the National Security
Council. There was weak coordination, and we were simply
unprepared. And frankly, General Garner and his staff
were neither of the [proper] size, nor did they have the
background and translators to perform their duty,"
Cordesman said.
Further, Cordesman said, US
ineptitude is responsible for the suspicion harbored by
many Iraqis that the United States is not interested in
their well-being but in exploiting Iraqi oil and
establishing a military presence in the Middle East.
And for this, according to Cordesman, Bush has
no one to blame but himself. "One of the other key
faults that I think has to be ascribed directly to the
White House, and frankly to the president, is that
Iraqis simply do not know what the US intends to do in
Iraq," he said. "There's no clear plan in terms of
energy or the economy or the political structure. And as
a result, people have been filled with conspiracy
theories."
Cordesman said that, against this
poor planning, Bremer has a difficult task ahead of him.
He described Bremer as "remarkably competent", but he
added that six months of what he calls sloppy
coordination may put even so skilled a diplomat at a
disadvantage.
(Copyright 2003, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut
Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.)
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