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Bush administration failed to anticipate postwar chaos in Iraq

By Khalid Hasan

Washington: The Bush administration failed to anticipate the postwar chaos in Iraq, so focused was it on winning the war, according to a former US ambassador.

Peter W Galbraith, writing in the New York Review of Books, argues that the Bush strategy was based on a hope that Iraq’s bureaucrats and police would simply transfer their loyalty to the new authorities. There was no credible planning for a situation where the civil authority has collapsed, something that was bound to follow invasion and occupation. The US effort to remake Iraq, he argues, never recovered from its confused start when it failed to prevent the looting of Baghdad in the early days of the occupation.

Mr Galbraith, son of the famous economist and former ambassador to India John K. Galbraith, says Americans like to think that every problem has a solution. While maintaining that getting rid of Saddam Hussein’s regime was a good thing for the Iraqis and the world in general, he lists some of the things that have gone wrong since. Among them he includes American loss of life since the war ended, political murders, looting that caused the loss of billions of dollars, massive costs of the war and occupation that have already reached $150 billion, popular Iraqi discontent with the American presence, undermining of US credibility in the world, and the inability of Washington to come up with the diplomatic and political resources to deal with the more serious threats to American national security.

He writes that with the 30 June deadline approaching, there is no clear US plan or decision about how Iraq will be run. The interim constitution that the US brought in is already falling apart. He faults the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority for failing to resist the temptation of settling fundamental constitutional issues in the interim constitution. The document was prepared by American lawyers who worked in secret and no more than 100 Iraqis saw a copy of the constitution before it was promulgated. The Shias have leaders in place and the Kurds are well organised; it is only the Sunnis who have no identifiable leadership at present. Early next year, he predicts, Iraq will see a clash between an elected Shia-dominated central government trying to override an interim constitution in order to impose its will on the entire country. There are also bitter territorial disputes over the oil-rich province of Kirkuk involving Sunni and Shia Arabs, Sunni and Shia Turkmen and Kurds.

Mr Galbraith writes that the Bush administration’s strategies are failing because they are being made up as the administration goes along, without benefit of planning, adequate knowledge of the country or the experience of comparable situations. “The strategies are all based on an idea of Iraq that does not exist,” he adds. According to his analysis, the “fundamental problem of Iraq is an absence of Iraqis.” The Kurds in the north do not wish to be part of Iraq, preferring to be independent. In the south, the long-suppressed Shias express themselves primarily in terms of their Shia identity. If free elections were held, Shia religious parties will gain an absolute majority in parliament. He calls Moqtada al-Sadr “the wild card,” pointing out that if he were allowed to compete in elections, he would take a share of the Shia vote. If he is excluded, his supporters will likely influence the policies of mainstream Shia parties or disrupt the elections. The Shias are not separatists but believe that their majority entitles them to run all of Iraq and to impose their version of an Islamic state.

Mr Galbraith calls the uprising in the “Sunni triangle” a nationalist one. The Sunnis see the Iraqi state as part of the larger Arab nation, which was also the central tenet of the Baath party. As they see the end of their domination, they are likely to further identify themselves with the greater Arab nation. Sunni extremists, on the other hand, want to provoke a civil war in the country between the two main religious groups. The US strategy of holding Iraq together through a strong central government is not going to succeed. The Kurdistan assembly has already put forward a proposal to define Kurdish relations with the rest of Iraq. They also want to retain their armed militia, the Peshmerga. They also wish to make Kurdish along with Arabic one of the two national languages, something not acceptable to Arabs. This places the Kurds on a collision course with both Shias and Sunnis, he adds. The conflicts between Sunnis and Shias are old and acute, he points out. While the former are Arab nationalists, the latter are pro-Iran.

Mr Galbraith concludes that Iraq is not “salvageable as a unitary state.” However, a breakup of the country is not a realistic possibility for the present. Turkey, Iran and Syria, with their own Kurdish minorities, fear a Kurdish state and oppose Kurdistan’s separation from Iraq. The Turkmen consider Kirkuk a Turkmen city and want to enjoy the same status as Kurds. “The best hope of holding Iraq together and thereby avoiding civil war is to let each of its major constituent communities have, to the extent possible, the system each wants,” he argues, adding that this is the only policy that can get American forces out of Iraq. If the Kurds feel secure, they will see advantages in cooperation with other parts of Iraq. If the Iraqi Shias want an Islamic state, the US should let them have their elections and be prepared to accept an Islamic state, but only in the south. A confederation, he argues, will make Kurdistan and the south governable because there are responsible parties there that can take over government functions.

The former ambassador, who has paid several visits to Iraq, concludes, “The three-state solution would permit the United States to disengage from security duties in most of Iraq … If the United States wanted to stay militarily in Iraq, Kurdistan is the place … A self-governing Shiite republic could also run its own affairs and provide its own security … The sooner power in the south is handed over to people who can exercise it, the better. Delay will only benefit anti-American radicals like al-Sadr.” He writes that Iraq demonstrates the folly of the preventive war doctrine and of unilateralism, adding, “I believe United States policy is most successful when it follows international law and works with the United Nations, according to the provisions of the Charter.”

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