According to "The Day After: The Army in a Post-Conflict Iraq,"
a December 2002 paper produced by the War College's Center for Strategic
Leadership, army studies have concluded that even with United Nations
support, "a post-conflict Iraq requirement of 65,000 to 80,000"
U.S. Army personnel is the low-end manpower requirement for a military
occupation expected to last not a matter of months, but "a minimum
of five years and possibly as many as ten."
Read on and you have to wonder whether the White House is just ignoring
unpleasant possibilities, or reveling in a Roveian-Rumsfeldian
cloud-cuckoo-land: While the paper reports that "experts disagree as
to the required time frame needed to accomplish the post-conflict
strategic requirements, particularly the governance and justice aspects,
all agree that it won't be measured in months, but years." Part of
the reason, the study explains, is that the past decade of army
post-conflict stabilization operations has revealed that transitioning
from immediate post-war stabilization to civil society is, for a host of
practical reasons, complicated. It's one of the ironies of modern
conflict: The war itself may go fast, but securing the peace is what
matters, and often nongovernmental organizations and aid agencies don't
have the resources to rapidly take up the slack—which means the military
has to, even though it doesn't really want to. Realistically, the
military will need to facilitate a gradual "measured withdrawal and
handover to appropriate UN agencies and entities," and can't just
toss the reconstruction ball to civil authorities.
While in one post-war scenario, according to the studies, Iraq's
"second-tier technical and professional leaders remain in place and
attempt to resume normalcy" and "the general populace passively
cooperates as coalition forces attempt to stabilize the situation,"
the paper nonetheless forecasts the post-Saddam environment for U.S.
troops as "very unstable." Key governance and legal functions
are likely to be shaky as "police and judiciary are relatively
dysfunctional due to the purging of the top leadership and no
replacements." U.S. soldiers also find themselves in harm's way as
"some Iraqi military units are operating at will and conducting
guerrilla attacks throughout the country. Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish
tribal leaders are ruling respective areas and are initiating frequent
skirmishes in an effort to expand their power base."
The humanitarian undertaking is likely to be formidable as well—a task,
given the dangerous circumstances, that can't be left exclusively to the
UN agencies and NGOs. "Post-conflict humanitarian requirements will
increase dramatically," the paper predicts. "In many cases, the
army will be the only entity capable of providing much needed assistance
and the required security aspects of the relief effort."
And, as the paper notes, "if one 'peels the onion' " of tasks
that fall under the main headers of several key "post-conflict
strategic requirements," the illusion that the army will be a brief,
temporary presence evaporates almost immediately. Take security.
"Post-conflict Iraq security tasks may include control of
belligerents, territorial security, protection of the populace,
protection of key individuals, infrastructure and institutions, and
reform of all indigenous security institutions," the report notes.
Officials at the War College wouldn't make available the authors of the
studies to elaborate. But "The Day After" points out that each
of those task subsets begets more subsets. "For example," the
paper continues, "the control-of-belligerents task includes:
Implement and maintain the ceasefire; enforce the peace agreement, and
support disarmament, demobilization and reintegration. Territorial
security includes border and boundary control, movement, and points of
entry. Protection of the populace includes non-combatants, maintaining
public order, and clearance of unexploded ordnance. The protection of key
individuals, infrastructure, and institutions includes private
institutions and individuals, critical infrastructure, military
infrastructure, and public institutions. The reform of local security
institutions includes national armed forces and non-military security
forces." a military presence, in keeping with Donald Rumsfeld's view
that the military should not be a tool for "nation building."
"It's not like there's a bunch of roving warlords and ethnic or
religious differences on the same scale as Afghanistan," the
official contended. "We're getting word that a large part of the
military and Ba'ath are opposed to Saddam. And I think the Iraqis, the
exiles who want to go back and help rebuild in particular, are getting
angry with people who don't believe they can transition to democracy
without the U.S. sticking around for a long time."
Yet much of this flies in the face of the Army War College's 84-page
"Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for
Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario." Designed as guidance
for military planners, the report provides a detailed "mission
matrix" of 135 tasks essential to Iraq's stabilization and
reconstruction. Its tone has been aptly described by one officer involved
in post-war planning as "Here's everything you need to do to do this
right and get out of Iraq as quickly and effectively as possible, but
don't hold your breath."
As much a historic inventory of American occupation and post-conflict
stabilization operations as it is a considered view of post-war Iraq,
among other things the paper concludes that "recent American
experiences with post-conflict operations have generally featured poor
planning, problems with relevant military force structure, and
difficulties with a handover from military to civilian
responsibility." While the administration has often tried to
describe a post-Saddam Iraq as something akin to post-war Germany and
Japan, the paper notes that an entire army staff was dedicated to
planning for post-war occupation two years before the end of World War
II. In the case of Iraq, similar foresight has not been exercised.
And while General Douglas MacArthur "had the advantage of years of
relative quiet to carry out his programs" in a post-war Japan that
unconditionally surrendered, this occupation will be taking place in the
Middle East, one of the most volatile regions in the world. In this case,
"all American activities will be watched closely by the
international community, and internal and external pressure to end any
occupation will build quickly," and "regionally, the occupation
will be viewed with great skepticism" on account of the fact that
"the United States is deeply distrusted in the Arab world because of
its strong ties to Israel and fears that it seeks to dominate Arab
countries to control the region's oil."
While the occupation of Iraq "will probably be characterized by an
initial honeymoon period during which the United States will reap the
benefits of ridding the population of a brutal dictator," the report
doesn't expect that to last too long, as "most Iraqis and most other
Arabs will probably assume that the United States intervened in Iraq for
its own reasons and not to liberate the population." Indeed, many of
the report's principal points stand in contrast to what the planning
officer characterizes as the Bush team's "rosy view of how quick and
easy this will be." Among those points: "The administration of
an Iraqi occupation will be complicated by deep religious, ethnic and
tribal differences which dominate Iraqi society."
Noting that "Iraqi political values and institutions are rooted in a
tortured history that must be understood before it is possible to
consider the rehabilitation of Iraqi society," the report
encapsulates the history of several hundred years of recurrent violence
and instability owing to tribal, religious, and occupation-related
tensions. "The establishment of democracy or even some sort of rough
pluralism in Iraq, where it has never really existed previously, will be
a staggering challenge for any occupation force" seeking to change a
political system "where anti-democratic traditions are deeply
ingrained." Indeed, the report adds, "it is also reasonable to
expect considerable resistance to efforts at even pluralism."
As for returning exiles, "it is doubtful that the Iraqi population
would welcome the leadership of the various exile groups after Saddam's
defeat. . . . Iraqi citizens who have suffered under Saddam could well
resent Iraqis coming from outside the country following a war and
claiming a disproportionate amount of power." And even if some form
of democracy does eventually emerge, Uncle Sam shouldn't expect kisses.
"U.S. policymakers sometimes assume that a democratic government
will be friendly to U.S. policies in the Middle East. This cannot,"
the report states, "be assumed in the case of Iraq."
Especially, the report says, if the U.S. isn't well attuned to internal
Iraqi concerns. Although the war has been framed in large part as a
mission of "disarmament," the report notes that the Iraqi army
is one of the "few national institutions that stresses national
unity," and that to "tear [it] apart in the war's aftermath
could lead to the destruction of one of the only forces for unity within
the society," as well as result in demobilized soldiers' joining
tribal militias. And it's a given that the U.S. "will further need
to seek indigenous forces to aid in law and order functions and help
prepare for a post-occupation Iraq," an "inevitable part of
rehabilitating" the country.
But "by developing local allies, the United States makes itself at
least partially responsible for the behavior of those allies. Hence a
pro-U.S. force that attacks any other Iraqi force for private resources
threatens to involve the United States in the complex web of sectarian,
tribal or clan warfare." In that case, the world might see something
not unlike the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, where the actions of an
occupying force's proxies create tensions between the occupier and other
native groups.
That, in turn, could prompt terrorists to "generate strategies to
alienate Iraqis who are initially neutral toward a U.S. occupation."
While any acts of terror against U.S. troops would "undoubtedly
require a forceful American response," actions like that
"seldom win friends among the local citizenry, [and] individuals
alienated from the U.S. occupation could well have their hostility
deepened or increased by these acts." It would take only a handful
of terrorists, the report says, "to attack U.S. forces in the hope
that they can incite an action-reaction cycle that will enhance their
cause and increase their numbers." FULL ARTICLE...
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0312/vest.php
