Reconstruction: A Checklist for Would-be Nation-builders in Baghdad After the Fall of Saddam
By Joe Siegle, Kenneth M. Pollack
Newsweek Special Edition, Issues 2003, December 05, 2002
How Iraq is rebuilt will, to a great extent, depend on how Saddam Hussein is taken down. Consider three options. First, a military coup or an assassin's bullet. Would that alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people-or our own problems with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Probably not. The reason is that Saddam's
tyranny pervades Iraqi society. Virtually all senior Iraqi officials are relatives, kinsmen or close compatriots who share his vision of a repressive, tightly controlled state. They have overseen the murder
of at least 200,000 Iraqis and the torture of several hundred thousand more. Saddam's 500,000-strong security apparatus has penetrated every Iraqi organization, where access to even basic necessities-food, housing and medicine-is a reward for loyalty. Advancement under such a system requires an extraordinary capacity for violence. Yet it is from these that a coup leader, with control of Iraq's weapons, would arise.
Another temptingly easy option is to install an interim government, possibly headed by a member of the Iraqi diaspora. This approach avoids the problem of "Saddamism without Saddam." But since we know little about what the Iraqi people want it would be dangerous to assume that they would accept such a government as legitimate. Moreover, it would lack the strength to rehabilitate Iraq's deeply corrupted bureaucracy. And its very fragility would invite a series of coups or territorial seizures by warlords. Iraq could slide into chaos and civil war.
The third and hardest option, in the short term, would be to establish a viable democratic government under international auspices. That would require an occupying ground force of 100,000 to 200,000 troops, to dispose of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and create the stability for a new political structure to take root. These military forces could be scaled back significantly after the first year or two, but a substantial contingent would have to remain for anywhere from three to 10 years, and possibly even longer. Even so, this is the only prospect for a stable Iraq at peace with its neighbors.
For a hint of what might be achieved (and how to go about it) we need not look far afield. In the decade since the Persian Gulf War, the Kurds of northern Iraq have lived in quasi independence with competitive
elections, a free press, a growing economy and basic civil liberties. Their example bolsters our optimism that the reconstruction of Iraq will be difficult but hardly impossible. Drawing on lessons from other recent reconstruction efforts-Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Cambodia and East Timor, as well as Japan and Germany after World War II-we can suggest some useful steps:
l Involve the United Nations. Doing so will help temper feelings that an intervention was a U.S. imperialist crusade or a ruse to gain control over Iraq's oil wealth. In Kosovo and East Timor, the United Nations learned much about effectively administering such trusteeships.
l Create an oil-management board. Iraq's elites will vie for control of the country's $12 billion to $27 billion in anticipated annual oil revenues. They will favor an interim government precisely because they
could control it-and ultimately corrupt it. Establishing a transparent institution to equitably disburse Iraq's oil revenues could be the single most far-reaching contribution to the country's reconstruction.
l Reconstitute Iraqi institutions. Existing ministries are so thoroughly criminalized that, in rebuilding them, all but junior staffers should be quickly replaced. (In Haiti, as in various post-communist transitions, failure to cut out institutional rot allowed core problems to fester. And it was the rehabilitation of
Germany's and Japan's civil institutions that set the stage for their postwar recovery.) Saddam's extensive intelligence services, the Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard, should be dissolved. Police must be made accountable to local municipalities rather than central authorities. Because it retained some degree of professionalism, the army may be the one Iraqi institution to enjoy any degree of credibility with the population. If it is reformed so that recruiting draws proportionately on all segments of society, it could serve as the core of a rehabilitated security force.
l Go slow, but steady, on democracy. The Baath Party's 35 years of totalitarian rule have left Iraq nearly devoid of independent civil organizations. Yet free speech; the ability to express and debate priorities; participation in civic and political organizations, and the popular accountability of government officials are indispensable to democracy. Creating the norms and institutions of civil society will take time and require massive efforts by international NGOs. It would be a mistake to rush prematurely into elections.
Doing so would merely return Iraq's old elites to power. Initial steps should include a constitution,
crafted by recognized Iraqi experts under the auspices of the United Nations, as the legal and democratic foundation to the new Iraqi state. Drafts should be popularly debated and approved by national referendum following a massive public-education campaign, along the lines of what was done in East Timor. Democracy should be built from the grassroots up.
Devolving political authority from Saddam's centralized system to local leaders would give ordinary Iraqis a greater say on issues affecting their daily lives, even as they remain under international administration . A model would be the gradual process employed by the United Nations in Kosovo, say, where self-government has been delegated in stages to municipal authorities over the past three years, the most recent stage being the successful elections in October. The experience gained in this manner would help prepare a new generation of democratic Iraqi leaders to run for regional and national office. If electoral jurisdictions were properly drawn, geographically, Iraqi politicians would have to appeal to a variety of ethnic and religious groups. This would help to knit together a federal Iraq.
l Strengthen Ties that Bind. While encouraging the devolution of power to regional and local levels, we should build up those institutions that would foster national cohesion and identity. In particular, maintaining a strong central role in the administration of Iraq's oil wealth would create an incentive for cross-ethnic collaboration. A professional national media will be indispensable to creating shared Iraqi images as well as enhancing the protection of minorities. Likewise, a new Iraqi state would greatly benefit from a strong central bank capable of regulating monetary policy, federal business and trade organs responsible for facilitating internal and external commerce, and a national army representative of the entire Iraqi populace.
l Mind the neighbors. As in Liberia or Rwanda, Kosovo or Cambodia, conflict tends to spill across borders. Iraq's neighbors will have legitimate security concerns, post-Saddam. Left unaddressed, Iraq could become a battleground as each seeks to increase its influence at the expense of others. In addition, radicals in Iran and Syria may see U.S. troops in the country as an attractive target for terrorist operations, like the 1983 attack on the Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon. These potential threats call for aggressive political and economic measures that boost incentives for regional cooperation.
No one needs to be reminded that these are significant challenges. But it is also important to remember that Iraq has a number of critical assets. Its tremendous oil wealth is sufficient to fund a rapid rehabilitation-an advantage no previous nation-building effort has enjoyed. The Iraqi population is among the best educated in the Arab world. Although impoverished during the past decade, Iraq still possesses a large,
capable (and mostly secular) middle class. Given its strategic position as a crossroads and the fertile river basin of the Tigris-Euphrates, the Iraqi economy possesses major building blocks to generate employment and economic dynamism. Radical Islam is not a major draw in the country. Removing Saddam is likely to unleash a more positive dynamic: the Iraqi people's native entrepreneurism.
While it is tempting to equate regime change in Iraq with simply getting rid of Saddam, the reality is more complex. By understanding this, we can avoid substituting one set of problems for another.
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Pollack served on the National Security Council in the Clinton White House and is the author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. Siegle is the Douglas Dillon fellow at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
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