After the Fall
An inside look at the Bush team's plan to run Iraq once Saddam is gone
The last time American armor massed along the Iraqi border for an invasion, the war plan was the mission. Period. This time, if America invades Iraq, the battle plan will be just the beginning. War would not be about simply removing a loathsome dictator. It would be a prelude to a far more ambitious undertaking--transforming Saddam Hussein's dysfunctional police state into a free, democratic nation.
Pentagon planners have been working on the war plan for months. The planning for engineering a post-Saddam Iraq, though, has been far more seat-of-the-pants. Still, in a series of interviews, senior government officials tell U.S. News that a consensus is forming at the highest levels of the Bush administration over how to run the country after Saddam and his regime are history. The plan is being developed by a high-level, interagency task force called the Executive Steering Group. The group, whose existence has not previously been disclosed, is run by the White House and is responsible for coordinating all Iraq war planning efforts and postwar initiatives. The postwar plan calls for a three-phase scenario beginning with a period of military rule, most likely by an American general, and ending with a new, representative Iraqi government within a relatively short but undefined number of years.
Should President Bush have the opportunity to implement the plan, it would represent one of the most ambitious, potentially perilous American commitments to another nation since the end of the Second World War. The plan is all the more striking for the fact that Bush came into office roundly dismissive of nation building. But the officials who spoke with U.S. News for this article say that he is onboard. "I have been with the president when he has been briefed about the need to have U.S. forces there for an extended period of time," a senior administration official told the magazine. "A couple of years is an extended period of time, and that we're prepared for."
War, of course, may yet be avoided. United Nations weapons inspectors were dusting off their old offices in Baghdad last week and settling in for a long stay. Saddam has pledged his full cooperation, but most of official Washington remains convinced that the Iraqi will ultimately block the inspectors' progress, sparking a conflict.
As U.S. forces gather in the Persian Gulf, the planning for a postwar Iraq remains shrouded in secrecy. One reason is that, in a region with a long and unhappy history of colonialism, an American-led Iraq, for however brief a time, would not sit well. The other is that the perils involved in such a venture are, to say the least, daunting. Tribal rivalries, ethnic and religious strife, a potentially violent spasm of retribution and revenge merely top the list.
At the White House, planning for the aftermath of a war had been proceeding slowly over the summer. But after the Executive Steering Group was formed, work accelerated. In the past several weeks, debate over details moved up to the influential Deputies Committee--the small group made of the No. 2 officials at the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff, State Department, CIA, National Security Council, and vice president's office. Usually meeting in the White House Situation Room, the deputies have recently begun to reach agreement on specifics and have briefed cabinet heads several times on their progress. President Bush has been kept apprised of their progress through National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, but he has not yet been asked to approve any specific aspects of the plan.
Some of the most difficult questions, such as the role of the Iraqi opposition, are still the subject of intense and continuing debate. But the Deputies Committee has already made several key decisions. Perhaps the most important to date was to reject proposals to create a provisional government or a government in exile. "We are not going to be in the business," says a senior official, "of choosing" who should lead Iraq.
The postwar plan is contained in a series of classified briefing slides. During the first phase, immediately after an invasion, Iraq would be ruled by the military, almost certainly an American general. The occupying force would be sizable. Officials won't discuss numbers, but the Pentagon's primary tasks would be providing humanitarian support and security. A critical challenge would be minimizing hostilities not just between different tribes but between Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and the Sunni Muslim minority that has traditionally ruled the country. The U.S. military would also have to prevent Iraqis from taking revenge on the government elites and security forces who had propped up Saddam.
The officials who provided details of the plan for a postwar Iraq insist they are not following the model of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who directed Japan's reconstruction after World War II. Rather, they envision more of a caretaker military governor who would help keep the remnants of an Iraqi bureaucracy functioning. Still, at the Pentagon, officials have dug into the archives to review decades-old plans by the War Department for the occupation of Germany and Japan, including the voluminous Joint Chiefs of Staff planning documents from the last two years of the Second World War. "There's a lot of thoughtful analysis," says a senior adviser to the Pentagon, citing plans on cleansing school systems of totalitarian taint and how to denazify Germany, an experience with many parallels to stripping away the pervasive authority of Saddam's Baath Party.
The second phase would be some sort of international civilian administration. This would entail a diminished U.S. military presence. Iraqis would be given an increasing amount of responsibility in the government. Eventually, following a constitutional convention of some sort, power would be transferred in the final stage to a representative, multiethnic Iraqi government that eschews weapons of mass destruction.
Despite this framework, several contentious issues remain, especially between officials at the Pentagon and the State Department. Among them:
Timing. The general hope is that the first phase would last somewhere from six months to a year. The most optimistic officials see a new Iraqi government in less than two years. It could take much longer. Some at the Pentagon want to lay out a short and clearly defined timetable, but officials at State and elsewhere are seeking more flexible criteria. "It's going to be like pornography," says one senior administration official. "You know it when you see it."
Administration. Someone will have to oversee the Iraqi bureaucracy that is left in place after the top levels are purged of Saddam's cronies. An obvious choice, which is being discussed, would draw on the model used in Afghanistan for a U.N. administration, which would help ensure widespread international participation. But the Bush team is unhappy with the U.N.'s performance in Afghanistan and believes a stronger hand would be needed in Iraq. Another model is the civilian administration in Germany after World War II that was run by onetime Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy.
Oil. Iraq, of course, is not Afghanistan, primarily because of its vast oil wealth. The Pentagon has the lead role in researching legal frameworks on how to deal with oil revenues under potential U.S. military rule. A few officials have suggested using the oil money to help repay the cost of war, but the Deputies Committee is eager to plow the money into humanitarian causes to show the Iraqis a quick return on liberation. "We need to show them immediately and decisively that we're not after their wealth," explains one top planner. U.S. officials will also have to mollify countries like Russia, which have an economic stake in Iraq's oil industry. Most likely, Washington will maintain the U.N. oil-for-food program in some form for a period of time, especially if the Iraqi currency collapses after the invasion.
Tapping Iraq's oil revenues wouldn't cover all the costs of rebuilding, however. For one thing, Saddam could torch Iraq's oil wells, as he did in Kuwait, in a final act of defiance. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in September that maintaining a peacekeeping force of between 75,000 and 200,000 troops would cost between $17 billion and $46 billion a year. Reconstruction would probably cost a minimum of $30 billion, according to a new American Academy of Arts and Sciences paper by Yale economist William Nordhaus. A more comprehensive rebuilding plan could top $100 billion. "The nonmilitary costs," he predicts, "are likely to dwarf the military costs."
Opposition groups. Perhaps the most contentious issue is the role of myriad Iraqi exile groups, especially the Iraqi National Congress. Some officials in the Pentagon and the vice president's office have long been pushing for a robust role for the INC and are critical of the State Department's reluctance to push for more consensus among the Iraqi opposition. "The State Department has a very laissez-faire attitude toward dealing with the opposition," says one senior administration official. "I respect their approach, but it hasn't worked." Pentagon officials insist that the INC is the only opposition group that has consistently delivered intelligence information and names of Saddam's opponents inside and outside Iraq. Some would even like to fund and run the INC using the model of U.S. support for the contra rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s. "You have to work with the Iraqi exiles," says one booster in the government. "Everyone else has been shot."
The CIA and State continue to view the INC as self-serving and unreliable. One State Department official derides them as the "Mercedes-Benz-riding, fine-hotel-staying opposition." In the first months of the Bush administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell became so fed up with the carping of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, about State's handling of the INC that he offered the entire Iraqi opposition account to Rumsfeld. The defense secretary declined, something Powell has reminded him of several times since. Instead, State is pushing for Iraqis who have remained inside the country to play the dominant role, a view shared by many in the White House.
The opposition groups, meanwhile, are squabbling among themselves. An opposition conference in London originally scheduled for September has slipped to mid-December because the various groups could not agree on who should participate. The INC is still hoping to push its vision for a provisional government that could rule the country upon liberation, but its leadership knows the real battle will not be in London. "I've always said that for us to win in Baghdad, we have to win in Washington," says Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's chairman.
Other Iraqis are pushing competing visions that would leave Iraqis in charge. One proposal comes from Laith Kubba, an independent opposition figure in Washington. He envisions a ruling presidential council made up of three people, one from the Shiite-dominated south, one from the predominantly Sunni center, and one from the Kurdish north. Advisory councils would be created to give both exiles and other Iraqis a voice.
Some in the State Department are intrigued by Kubba's plan, in part because Iraqis inside the country appear to be skeptical of the exiles. U.S. News recently had a clandestine interview with an Iraqi opposition figure in Baghdad. He described speaking with a dozen prominent families about a post-Saddam government. "The people don't like the exiles," he says. "Many people think they are attached to the foreigners."
Damage control. These debates will undoubtedly continue right through any war with Iraq. But Pentagon planners are already working to shape the battle plan in light of the emerging postwar plan. Given the likelihood of keeping forces in Iraq possibly for several years, officials hope to minimize the damage to Iraq's infrastructure and economy. In particular, U.S. News has learned, the Pentagon has agreed to avoid bombing the electrical grid as much as possible.
No matter how well planned the strategy, a war could still go badly. U.S. News has learned that the CIA has conducted several "red team" studies in which analysts gamed out possible trouble during a rebuilding effort. Drawing on the CIA analysis, the deputies have identified three major issues: how quickly the war is concluded, whether Israel gets involved, and the extent of Iraqi civilian casualties. "We'll try to be quick," says a top official. "We'll try to keep Israel out. And we'll try to limit civilian casualties."
Even if the war goes smoothly, the challenges of building a democratic and peaceful Iraq are huge. The country's history is littered with repressive strongmen, military coups, and deposed dictators. Saddam's vast political and security infrastructure must be dismantled. During his two decades in power, Saddam has created a massive overlapping structure of a dozen different security forces, blanketing the country with spies and informants. Estimates suggest that Iraq has as many as 150,000 agents and paramilitary troops in these shadowy bodies. "They can form very quickly either a political underground or a well-equipped mafia, or both," says Amatzia Baram, an Iraq expert at the University of Haifa in Israel.
U.S. troops will also have to ensure that the Kurds in the north don't try to achieve their long-standing dream of independence. The Kurdish portion of Iraq has been ruled independently of Saddam in recent years and has enjoyed relative prosperity. Neighboring Turkey, with its own sizable Kurdish minority, is particularly alarmed by the prospect of Kurdish independence. The key might well be in the control of oil. "As long as we insist that the oil revenues remain in the hands of the central government, the country will stay together," says Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Many Iraqis, however, remain skeptical about plans for a commanding American role. Iraq, after all, was once a modern, functioning state that was the envy of most of its neighbors. Its people are well educated, and many are eager to chart their own Saddam-free future. "It will cause a great deal of grief," says Chalabi, the INC chairman. "The best Iraqis will not work under a military government because we are an independent people. That spells disaster for anyone who seeks a political future in Iraq."
Resentment. How Iraqis would treat American soldiers, especially as time wears on, is not clear. After 20 years of Saddam's brutal rule, including two devastating wars and a decade of sanctions, the nation is deeply scarred. "This is a very violent generation," says Faleh Jabar, a fellow at Birkbeck College of the University of London and an independent Iraqi opposition figure. "Unless some of their aspirations are met, they could turn violent and destructive." The current anti-American rhetoric in Baghdad is usually scripted carefully by the regime, but there is real resentment at the decade of sanctions that most blame America for imposing.
Most U.S. officials, mindful of the traditional Arab suspicion of American motives, don't want to be seen as dictating the shape of the next Iraqi government, aside from fostering a multiethnic, representative government within today's borders. For many of the remaining questions, the State Department is hoping that the Future of Iraq program it launched earlier this year will help Iraqis shape their new nation. It is convening 16 working groups of Iraqi exiles to discuss everything from war crimes and political transition to water issues and energy. Their recommendations are not binding, but they provide an indication of where things might end up. On war crimes, for instance, the working group is leaning toward prosecuting only about a dozen of the most senior figures in Saddam's regime and forming a truth and reconciliation commission to provide amnesty for the rest. U.S. officials, meanwhile, are gathering evidence for trials against the top leadership, but they are publicly vague about how deep they want to go.
Such planning is limited by the dearth of information about Iraq. U.S. officials have compiled thick briefing books on every aspect of Iraq. But much of the research is based on estimates and educated guesses. There hasn't been an Iraqi census in years, for instance. Statistics on everything from the economy to healthcare are either spurious or suppressed. Along with serving immediate humanitarian needs, international teams would have to survey every aspect of Iraqi society.
Deciding when to leave Iraq will also be dicey. Nobody wants to see an aggressive Iraqi military re-emerge from the embers of Saddam's regime. But Iraqis live in a dangerous neighborhood. "We should plan a 10-year stay to build the Iraqi military into a force capable of defending itself and tie it closely to the United States," says Clawson. But after several years, that commitment might involve little more than a small U.S. force and broad security guarantees from Washington. "It's a totalitarian state, not a failed state," Clawson adds. "This is not Haiti or Bosnia or Somalia."
All of this planning, of course, is tentative. "Part of this is bureaucrats filling their time," one official points out. "Everything will change when the first bullets fly." Unless, of course, Saddam somehow manages to slip the noose once again.
How times change
Before two wars and a decade of sanctions, Iraq was a richer, more developed nation. Today it is mired in poverty.
Late 1970s Now
Inflation rate 4.6 pct. 60 pct.
Infant mortality 28 per 1,000 58 per 1,000
live births live births
Life expectancy 62 (1980) 59
GDP per capita $4,242* $2,700
*Inflation adjusted
Note: Today's numbers are estimates
Ethnic composition
Arab 75-80 pct.
Kurdish 15-20 pct.
Turkoman, Assyrian or other 5 pct.
Religions
Shiite 60-65 pct.
Sunni 32-37 pct.
Christian or other 3 pct.
Sources: Central Intelligence Agency, World Bank, World Almanac
With Thomas Omestad and Mark Mazzetti
This story appears in the December 2, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.