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AFTER WAR: A U.S. military occupation, reconstruction costing billions and management of Iraqi oil fields are some of the challenges that lie ahead.
By PAUL DE LA GARZA, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 30, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The easy part of a U.S. invasion of Iraq may be the war itself. The hard part may be the peace.
Iraqi rhetoric notwithstanding, nobody expects U.S. forces to founder once hostilities break out with overmatched Iraqi forces.
The real challenge for the United States, say U.S. and foreign observers, will be trying to implement democracy in a country of 24-million people that has known nothing but turmoil for decades.
"It's a huge undertaking and you'd be living in interesting times, as the Chinese say," said Pakistani Ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi. "That's one more reason why war should be avoided."
Recent interviews with diplomats, military analysts, members of Congress, and representatives of the Iraqi opposition suggest that the United States would face an array of obstacles after the fall of Baghdad.
The challenges will range from trying to win hearts and minds in Iraq after years of U.S. bombing raids and international economic sanctions, to providing basic government services.
A new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies released last week estimates that it would take tens of billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq in the first year alone. Overall, the study says it would take between $25-billion and $100-billion.
In a 98-page brief prepared for the State Department's "Future of Iraq" project, the Iraqi opposition gives a taste of what to expect in the political vacuum of the immediate aftermath.
"Cities and towns will be left without a civil administration, leading to disruption of law and order, the food distribution systems and emergency health care," says the brief, entitled, "The Transition to Democracy in Iraq."
Fear would be widespread, the report says. Former officials will fear reprisals and revenge, average citizens will fear chaos and factional fighting, "and the population at large will be afraid of what the future holds for Iraq."
To deal with the chaos, the opposition is asking that the White House help establish a provisional government before an invasion. The opposition is also asking for training to help provide law and order.
For the record, the Bush administration will not discuss its plan for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Administration officials, however, have leaked bits and pieces.
The plan reportedly calls for a military presence of at least 18 months, military trials of the senior Iraqi leadership and the U.S. takeover of the country's oil fields to pay for reconstruction.
In an interview released last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would hold Iraqi oil fields "in trust" for the Iraqi people.
"How will we operate it? How best to do that? We are studying different models. But the one thing I can assure you of is that it will be held in trust for the Iraqi people, to benefit the Iraqi people," he said.
Powell added that the U.S. military would not want to run Iraq for long.
While the White House has rejected the idea of creating a provisional government before any invasion -- to the chagrin of the Iraqi opposition -- the plan calls for a civilian administrator to run the country, including the economy, schools and aid programs. An American military commander would be in charge of security.
Last fall, the administration floated the notion of installing an American-led military government, similar to that headed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in postwar Japan. But the administration apparently has scrapped that idea, worried about Arab perceptions of a colonial power reigning in Iraq.
Perhaps the most critical question is how to deal with Iraq's oil reserves, the world's second largest behind Saudi Arabia. The last thing the White House wants is to arm critics who charge that President Bush is after oil rather than weapons of mass destruction.
Yet this interpretation may be inevitable, and it will not help build regional confidence in any postwar government sanctioned by the U.S.
Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador, says that to the Arab layman, the fight is over oil.
People watch the news, he says. They see how Washington is dealing with North Korea and Iran, which with Iraq, make up what Bush has called the "axis of evil."
What Arabs wonder, Fahmy says, is if the goal is to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, why not apply the same standard to Israel, which is suspected of possessing nuclear weapons.
Invading Iraq, the ambassador said, "will add to the perception that you have one standard for Arabs and another standard for Israel."
Joseph C. Wilson, the last American diplomat to serve in Iraq, argues that Arabs will view successful regime change as further humiliation by the West.
"I don't see any good scenarios," said Wilson, who is the last American diplomat to have met with Saddam Hussein, shortly before the Gulf War.
"The mess begins when we have to assume responsibility for things currently done by the Iraqi government," Wilson said. "There is nothing to suggest we won't be taken for suckers by every interest group around."
Once Iraqis figure out the government system Washington implements, Wilson thinks they will take advantage of the United States.
In highlighting the enormous task the United States would face in Iraq after Hussein is gone, those who see war as the wrong choice have more questions than they have answers.
How would Western victors referee among various groups clamoring for power in a post-Hussein government? In an American occupation that could persist for years, how does the U.S. demonstrate that it has not come for land or oil? Would the defeat of Iraq upset the regional balance of power, permitting the rise of Iran as an unchecked regional power?
Moreover, some observers say, the long-term success of a U.S.-approved postwar government in Iraq would hinge on the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"We may have the luxury of fighting one war at a time," wrote Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a recent analysis. "But we do not have the luxury of focusing on a single peace."
Cordesman says that Washington needs to understand how deeply angered the Arab world is by the warlike conditions of the second intifada and by U.S. ties to Israel.
War opponents say an invasion almost certainly will lead to a rise in anti-Americanism.
Ultimately, if people in the region do not see their lives improve -- and a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- "you will end up with the coincidental loading of problems," Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador, said.
"You're pushing the region into radicalization," he said. "The confluence of conflict brings the whole region to a boil."
Yet Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella opposition group, suggests that what happens in Iraq after the overthrow of Hussein need not be a U.S. problem.
Indeed, in the State Department report, the opposition insists that "(n)othing...requires of the United Nations or United States to police or manage into existence the new and budding democratic institutions."
In planning for democracy, the opposition assumes that unseating Hussein's regime "does not take place at the cost of largescale civilian casualties."
"First of all, no war is easy," Chalabi said at a recent news conference. "We take this very seriously. (But) this primarily is not only a headache for the U.S. military or the U.S. It's primarily an issue that concerns Iraqis. It is our concern."
Given the chance to comment, the White House did not respond.
But Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon official widely credited with pushing for an invasion of Iraq, has said his big concern is going to war, not the day after.
"I don't think it's unreasonable to think that Iraq, properly managed -- and it's going to take a lot of attention, and the stakes are enormous, much higher than Afghanistan -- that it really could turn out to be, I hesitate to say it, the first Arab democracy, or at least the first one except for Lebanon's brief history," Wolfowitz told the New York Times Sunday magazine. "And even if it makes it only Romanian style, that's still such an advance over anywhere else in the Arab world."
The White House cautions that no matter how good the plan for imposing democracy in Iraq, several key decisions will have to be made on the ground, after an invasion. A lot depends on how the war unfolds and whether the Americans will be seen as friend or foe.
Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador, would rather see a peaceful resolution.
"We don't know what we're getting ourselves into," he said. "Nobody does."