Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=04/11/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01308

TITLE=THE FUTURE OF IRAQ

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: The Future of a liberated Iraq. Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: The regime of Saddam Hussein crumbled as U-S-led coalition forces entered Baghdad. Freed from the oppressive fear that Saddam instilled, crowds took to the streets to welcome the Americans. Iraqis expressed their newfound freedom directly, hammering away at a monumental statue of Saddam. They enlisted the help of U-S troops in pulling down the statue, toppling it from its massive pedestal. The Iraqi crowd cheered as they danced and stomped on the fallen image of the dictator. But the defeat of the regime brings a new challenge: the reconstruction of a free Iraq. What are the prospects for a democratic Iraq that respects the rights of its citizens? I'll ask my guests, Corine Hegland, a correspondent with National Journal magazine; and joining us by telephone from Valparaiso, Indiana, Iraqi expatriate, Feisal Istrabadi. Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Hegland: Thank you.

Host: Corine Hegland, what are the most immediate needs in a post-Saddam Iraq?

Hegland: There are two sets of needs. First of all you need water. If the water is not restored or available immediately, you have illness breaking out across the country and everything could go to hell very, very quickly. After that, though, you need security. If looting continues -- right now looting is focused predominantly on the government buildings and summary distribution of wealth probably isn't a bad idea, but that needs to stop, they need to not have an opportunity to begin looting stores or one another. So, you need immediately, day one, water and then security settling in shortly thereafter.

Host: Feisal Istrabadi, are you there by phone?

Istrabadi: I first agree. I mean, water and food and so on, obviously the humanitarian, immediate humanitarian needs are the first order of the day. Aside from that, I would stay to the same notion but state it slightly differently. I think we need a restoration of calm because looting is one thing, you can understand the frustrations of the population in looting, but looting will lead to what one of my colleagues calls "self-help justice" or a private act of revenge. And that must be avoided at virtually any cost. For the sake of the future of Iraq and the future legitimacy in Iraq, we don't want this period to commence with lynching. So those two things are indeed the first order of business.

Host: Well, Feisal, how does the coalition keep that from happening without putting on a show of force that appears to be the occupation of the country?

Feisal: Well, that of course, is a legitimate concern, a legitimate problem. As you pose it, it's an excellent question. But I do think that to some extent there needs to be a show of the flag, so to speak. Some of the looting which occurred in Basra may have, as I understand it, it was sort of in the interregnum period, when there had been a collapse of the Baghdad regime's control over Basra, but before the entry of the British. In any event, I think we need to show the flag. I think we need to have a greater presence. And it may indeed look like a military occupation for a time. That's to be expected. We hope that any military occupation will be shortish, on the order of months. But nevertheless, it will indeed look like one and then, for a period of time, that is what it's going to be.

Host: Corine Hegland, does the way in which these immediate needs -- both for humanitarian relief and particularly for security -- is the way they are met going to affect the way, over the coming months, the transition is handled to a new Iraq?

Hegland: Absolutely. Who you begin to work with on day one, the extent to which Iraqis in the country living in their communities feel like they have responsibility and authority for the reconstruction abilities sets the tone. If you begin to work directly with the exiles, returning expatriates, who have a crucial role to play but if you begin to favor them over the locals, the locals are shut out. If you begin to play off of the tribal sheik divisions which Saddam has built up over the last ten years and you shunt aside the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy is left out. Who you decide to work with and how you work with them and who you decide to recognize as having authority will be a crucial part of sort of the interim and long-term rebuilding.

Host: Well who is there to work with in Iraq that isn't compromised by the crimes of Saddam Hussein?

Hegland: Nearly everybody within Iraq is compromised to some degree or another, everybody in a position of authority. If you define compromised as being a member of the Baath power. In order to have a job, to work in the bureaucracy, to do anything, you needed to be a member of the party. But that's very different from having actual complicity in the active crimes of the regime. Leaving out that top level of conspirators, which in itself is going to be a difficult justice transition process, which Feisal can speak about much better than I, you have the bureaucracy first of all, which is the middle class. For the most part, they were educated in the 1970s when there was a lot of money available going into schools, into universities. They are very good, very, very well respected. An individual who worked with the U-N for a number of years within Iraq commented to me that the Iraqis used to chuckle when the U-N went into the field because they were so much more competent than the U-N. So, you have this administrative bureaucratic class that's had a lot of problems in the last ten years, but they're there and they're ready to work and they want to start earning money again very quickly. In addition to that, you have in the communities local people who are recognized in various formats. In some cases they may actually be municipal administrators. In some cases they're simply well respected. Condoleezza Rice [National Security Adviser] on Wednesday this week commented that people tend to underestimate the degree to which Iraqis know who the leaders are. And I think that's a very pressing observation. Iraqis know who their local leaders are.

Host: Well, Feisal Istrabadi, how are the coalition forces going to figure out who these local leaders are, people who will have the respect of their communities?

Istrabadi: Well, I think for one thing, I'm not sure that there needs to be an immediate rush to turn things over to an Iraqi transitional authority. It seems to me that it makes some sense in fact to have a period of, I'll use the word again, an interregnum before doing so. To begin with, obviously, whatever weapons of mass destruction, etc., that need to be found and destroyed that process will need to unfold. And I'm not sure that any Iraqi transitional authority would have any role to play in that. And so, at some level, I'm not sure that it's necessary to, as it were, turn the keys over immediately to an Iraqi transitional authority. And so I think we have time. Again, I mean two, three, four months. Something like that, less than six months I should think, I would hope. But the key is to strike a balance. To have any sort of legitimacy to any transitional authority you cannot simply impose a group of people who have been in exile for decades. There has to be an indigenous element or component to this, number one. On the other hand, it is also true that the expatriate community has by and large benefited from living in Western countries and learning the ways of democracy and the ways of the West, so to speak. And I think that they will have a role to play as well in transferring this sort of Western world view, weltanschauung, to Iraqis, for whom political life has largely been cut off in the last thirty-five years. Now, at this level we're not talking about sort of a competent democracy which can deliver water, or which can deliver health services. We're now talking about how do you go about the processes of reconstructing civil society? How do you re-engender the rule of law which has been absent, in fact, since before the Baathists came to power, since 1958, in fact, in Iraq. And there, I think that the Iraqis can benefit from the experience of the expatriate community, while at the same time the expatriates will have to realize that they will be, if they're not careful, they will engender resentments, since we have not undergone the hardships and depredations and brutality. Now Iraq is in its third war in less than twenty-three years. We have not experienced any of that and we have to be very conscious of that. The expatriate community has to tread very lightly and any early claims of legitimacy or of primacy will be met with resistance.

Host: Corine Hegland, do you think that will work, where there could be a sort of division of labor, if you will? Where the expatriates come back and work on these sorts of rule of law issues while the day-to-day issues are handled locally?

Hegland: They can be, but some of the rule of law issues also need to be owned by Iraqis who have stayed in there. As Feisal pointed out, there has been a lot of change in the country in the last thirty years. The generation that left after the 1991 Gulf War, the Intifada generation, which was the generation that rose up against Saddam, exiles from that group looked back at the expatriates who had left earlier, who had missed the Iran-Iraq war and said, "Who are you? You've been gone too long. You have no idea what this is." Both of these generations going back into the country are going to be received with similar suspicion by people who are in their third war, who have gone through a decade of sanctions. That's not enough for them not to be accepted. You look at the experience in northern Iraq where a number of returning ministers came from abroad as well as within. At first they were received suspiciously, but if they were good, if they earned credibility, they stayed on and people accepted them. So, you've got three generations coming back all at once. It's going to be a learning experience for the expatriates as they look at what's happened within the country and as they re-familiarize themselves with everything that's changed in the decade. But if they do that, if they take the time to learn, if they take the time to talk to people, then yes, they will be accepted. And the rule of law and the day-to-day administrations can proceed simultaneously.

Host: Well, Feisal Istrabadi, one of the crucial components of rule of law is just the street-level policing and certainly the security forces of Saddam's regimes will not have any room in a new Iraq. But is there a police force? Is there a civilian police force that has any credibility, any basis for rebuilding that kind of street-level police enforcement?

Istrabadi: Well, this actually raises an issue that Corine touched on earlier. And that is the, you know, one thing that we have to be -- I'll come back to your question in a moment but allow me to go back to a point also and that is that she mentioned membership in the Baath party. We have to be very careful. As Corine pointed out, a lot of people joined the Baath party for non-ideological reasons. If you wanted to go onto college you had to join the Baath party. If you wanted to keep your job, put food on the table, you might have been forced to join the Baath party. Obviously, mere membership in the Baath party cannot exclude you from anything. What we're talking about, looking closely, is at people who are ideological members of the Baath party who are movers and shakers. It may be, to give an example, I'm just drawing an example out of thin air, but it may very well be that the chairman of the Arabic Studies Department at the University of Baghdad while a member of the Baath party, within the Baath party hierarchy, is actually subordinate to the janitor in that department, who happens to be the more important Baathite in terms of the hierarchy of the party. And so, one has to be very careful in how you approach this, even though, seemingly, the professor would have the much more prestigious position, in fact, in terms of wielding real power within the Baath party, it may be the janitor who is the real force. And I think the same is going to be true throughout the bureaucracy, including, coming back to your question, including the police, and the gendarmerie and so on. The problem, I think generally as far as the gendarmerie itself is concerned. They are, I don't think quite identified with the terror infrastructure of the intelligence services -- the various three or four different intelligence services were the real enforcers in Iraq. And so, there may indeed be a core in the police, in the actual sort of police service, which will, to be sure, have to be retrained in modern Western methods of policing. But I don't think that the cop, so to speak, is necessarily identified with the regime as such. It is the intelligence services, the internal intelligence services, if you will, the Iraqi K-G-B-type services, they of course are very much the enforcers of the regime and they will have to be completely dismantled. They have zero legitimacy or credibility.

Host: Corine Hegland, let's move to another issue that's going to be a bit contentious, which is, what kind of role is there going to be for the U-N in post-Saddam Iraq? Is this an issue that the U-S is going to have to address in terms of international politics and is it an issue that's going to affect the chances for Iraqis to really have a chance to get control of their country?

Hegland: Absolutely. Obviously it's in great contention, will be for the next few weeks at least before some sort of rule is established. The U-S, the Defense Department in particular, has made known its desire to run the interim authority, to have the role within Iraq that the U-N has had in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and the other engagements in the last decade. Part of the reason for backing the U-N out is you look at what the U-N has actually done in terms of day-to-day administration within those transition authorities and it's been a problem. The U-N is not viewed -- it's a phenomenal bureaucracy -- it's not very good at crisis management or response. The problem is, the U-N is what brings the rest of the world in. If you don't have the U-N running it, if it is the U-S, then, well, to be quite frank, it is a military occupation. And that's going to spark a much faster backlash within the Middle East, it's going to spark a faster backlash among Iraqis, and it will spark a faster backlash among the rest of the world, who will not want to cooperate in a U-S-led transition. So, you need the U-N to bring together the international community and to give it legitimacy. But the U-N bureaucracy is not very good at doing what the U-N would be called in to perform.

Host: And do you mean by that that the U-N is not particularly good at promoting democratic development within a country?

Hegland: The U-N is not good at running a country. The U-N in and of itself is a bureaucratic format for countries to argue and debate and to run programs and put money out there. What it means to actually bring the U-N into a country, though, to try and administer it, bringing in international staff who don't necessarily have connections to the places, it's not good at it. The U-N's good at programs, the World Food Program, UNICEF, it's phenomenal at that. Administering an entire country, you need more room for locals to buy into it than the U-N so far has displayed.

Host: Feisal Istrabadi, what do you think about the proposed U-N roles?

Istrabadi: Well, I think it would be, let's view it from the perspective of the United States. I think it would be quite beneficial to us in the United States as a matter of our own foreign policy to bring the United Nations back into the process. The question is how? I agree with what Corine has just said. I'm not particularly interested in having the United Nations run the country. As I said, I think the people of Iraq will accept a period of direct military occupation and rule by the United States, particularly if we start getting services delivered to the people soon, quickly. A period of time, on the order of months, two or three months, something like that. I think that is within the sort of honeymoon period. Beyond that, I think the role of the United Nations could be quite useful. For instance, in convening a Bonn-style conference -- except convening it in Baghdad -- bringing together the various expatriate opposition groups as well as promoting [local] Iraqis who are not soiled through collaboration with the regime. And allowing the Iraqis themselves thereby to pick the leadership of a transitional authority. I think that doing that enhances our position, makes it clear this is not a grab of Iraq, that we are not just handing it to either the Defense Department cronies in the Iraqi opposition or the C-I-A's cronies in the Iraqi opposition, or whoever else's cronies, but rather that we're allowing, to the extent possible, a legitimating process to occur within Iraq, run by Iraqis, to come to a transitional authority, leadership of a transitional authority. It would also have, it seems to me, a beneficial effect largely in legitimating our action in Iraq. If the U-N comes on board at this juncture, I think the United States can argue that this establishes a legitimacy of what the United States and its coalition allies have done in Iraq. A third point is, let us not forget, Iraq continues to operate under resolution 687 and its progeny, which means that there are still sanctions in place on Iraq. The United Nations Security Council is going to have to lift those sanctions at some point.

Host: Corine Hegland, is the U-N Security Council going to lift those sanctions now?

Hegland: At what point, I don't know, but in the very near future, yes. There's no point whatsoever in maintaining the sanctions once Saddam is gone and once the weapons of mass destruction are found and secured.

Istrabadi: There is a point actually for me to dissent from that, the first point of disagreement between us. I have argued that sanctions should not be lifted entirely until a legitimate, duly elected, permanent government of Iraq is certified to the Security Council. And that in the meantime, sanctions should only be suspended, not actually lifted. But, either way, the point is, there's going to have to be the cooperation of France, Russia and China to get those sanctions lifted. So, sooner or later we have to go back to the United Nations anyway.

Host: Corine Hegland, Feisal Istrabadi talks about a role for the U-N setting up something like the Bonn conference that helped to bring political leaders from Afghanistan together. Let's say there is such a conference, what are going to be the divisions and how are they going to be overcome? What are the main political divisions within Iraq at this point?

Hegland: There are at least two levels of political divisions. First of all, you have the exile opposition, people who've been allowed to form political parties, to have leaders. And I will include in that the two Kurdish parties who are extremely well organized and respected, as well as SCIRI [Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq] coming in from Iran. But, within Iraq, the people who haven't had a chance to form political parties, who haven't found leaders. You're going to have a lot of classes. You have a business class which, partially through the corruption of the sanctions and through smuggling and other activities has been gaining an influence in some ways within Iraq. You do have the middle class, the bureaucrats. You have the religious structures which have been driven very deeply under ground but do emerge in bits and pieces, as we've seen when the marines reached a town somewhere in Southern Iraq, I don't remember where exactly, and was told that a senior cleric had been a supporter of the regime. When they arrested him, people massed in the streets threatening suicide attacks against the place where the cleric was being held. There are still religious structures within Iraq that have been driven underground that are beginning to emerge. And that will have to have some role within that sort of conference as well.

Host: Feisal Istrabadi, I'm afraid we have about twenty seconds left. What do you think are the prospects for the various factions within Iraq coming together?

Istrabadi: Oh I think they'll come together. I don't object to there being a lot of factions. That's the stuff of democracy. I would be concerned if they were all marching together in lockstep. I'd be concerned about backroom deals. That there are many factions gives me great hope that they will pull together but that they will each maintain their points of principle.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests. Corine Hegland of National Journal magazine and joining us by telephone, Iraqi expatriate, Feisal Istrabadi. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can e-mail them to Ontheline@ibb.gov

For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.