Scripps Howard News Service June 09, 2003
Many think U.S. will have to stay years in Iraq
By Lance Gay
WASHINGTON - Efforts to make a new government in Iraq are stumbling, threatening to sink the region deeper into despair and incubate even more problems in the Middle East, experts say.
While Bush administration officials have indicated they intend a speedy transition to a new government in Iraq, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Monday that the difficulties of U.S. occupation so far show it is going to involve much more work to rebuild Iraq and will require help from other countries.
"I am talking about years," Lugar said. He said 30 years of rule by Saddam Hussein's Baath Socialist Party has left the country with a run-down infrastructure, no political institutions on which to build a new government and a nation fractured by tribal and factional disagreements.
Lugar said prewar plans for Iraq's reconstruction were obviously not adequate. U.S. forces have failed to get electricity and water service restored in many portions of Iraq and there have been open disagreements over which Iraqi groups should run the country in the future.
"Some of the first steps are fairly halting," he said.
Academics who follow Iraq said the extent of security and infrastructure problems that American military forces are encountering is forcing the Bush administration to scrap plans for a quick withdrawal.
"It's the reality on the ground that is making the change," said Andrea Lopez, an assistant professor of political science at Pennsylvania's Susquehanna University. "I don't think they thought out how hard it would be to get people in place."
She said the administration faces daunting problems in creating a new government out of Iraq's 22 million people since the majority population of Shiite Muslims was frozen out of Saddam's Sunni-controlled government.
Lopez warned there would be even worse consequences if the Bush administration leaves Iraq a weakened and divided Middle East power, with neighboring Syria, Iran and Turkey having interests in Iraq. "A destabilized Iraq would be a great breeding ground for terrorists," Lopez said.
She said problems in forming a new Iraqi government means the Pentagon will have to keep the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for another six months to a year and follow with years of occupation to guarantee order and stability. "It's a long, hard path," she said.
Robin Leeds, a senior analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington think tank, said she cannot detect any U.S. efforts to bring Iraqis into government even on municipal and provincial levels, or a start to making any transition to Iraqi self-government.
"There's not one sign of democracy building in that country," she said. "I think the longer we do not embrace democracy, the longer we will be there."
Leeds said one central problem is that Shiite control of Iraq would give new powers to conservative ayatollahs and anti-democratic forces in the country. She said the United States has to at least start the process and help democratic institutions develop.
Joseph Gonzalez, a lecturer in history at the University of Michigan, said U.S. inaction on forming a transition government has dangers of its own. "I don't think this nation building has been a credit to the United States in the eyes of Muslims around the world, but it could be," he said.
He said American prestige is riding on the outcome because Muslims in Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries with large Muslim majorities are watching how the United States handles the rebuilding of Iraq.
"The war itself was brilliant, but what's followed has been fits and starts and misdirection. I do not know what direction they are now taking in Iraq, and I follow it closely," he said.
Gonzalez said he expects a lengthy period of U.S. occupation in Iraq. After World War II, the United States occupation of Japan took six years, and Germany took five years. The occupation of Cuba after the Spanish-American war took three years.
"These are multi-year commitments, and you risk alienating the people you are trying to help," he said. "You have to stay there a long time, but you risk the terrible consequences the longer you stay, the more you alienate those who want you to go."
On the Net: www.globalsecurity.org
Copyright © 2003, Scripps Howard News Service
