[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/06/international/middleeast/06IRAQ.html]U.S. Is Completing Plan to Promote a Democratic Iraq[/url]
January 6, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER and JAMES DAO
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — President Bush's national security team is assembling
final plans for administering and democratizing Iraq after the expected
ouster of Saddam Hussein. Those plans call for a heavy American military
presence in the country for at least 18 months, military trials of only
the most senior Iraqi leaders and quick takeover of the country's oil
fields to pay for reconstruction.
The proposals, according to administration officials who have been
developing them for several months, have been discussed informally with
Mr. Bush in considerable detail. They would amount to the most ambitious
American effort to administer a country since the occupations of Japan and
Germany at the end of World War II. With Mr. Bush's return here this
afternoon, his principal foreign policy advisers are expected to shape the
final details in White House meetings and then formally present them to
the president.
Many elements of the plans are highly classified, and some are still being
debated as Mr. Bush's team tries to allay concerns that the United States
would seek to be a colonial power in Iraq. But the broad outlines show the
enormous complexity of the task in months ahead, and point to some of the
difficulties that would follow even a swift and successful removal of Mr.
Hussein from power, including these:
Though Mr. Bush came to office expressing distaste for using the military
for what he called nation building, the Pentagon is preparing for at least
a year and a half of military control of Iraq, with forces that would keep
the peace, hunt down Mr. Hussein's top leaders and weapons of mass
destruction and, in the words of one of Mr. Bush's senior advisers, "keep
the country whole."
A civilian administrator — perhaps designated by the United Nations —
would run the country's economy, rebuild its schools and political
institutions, and administer aid programs. Placing those powers in
nonmilitary hands, administration officials hope, will quell Arab concerns
that a military commander would wield the kind of unchallenged authority
that Gen. Douglas MacArthur exercised as supreme commander in Japan.
Only "key" senior officials of the Hussein government "would need to be
removed and called to account," according to an administration document
summarizing plans for war trials. People in the Iraqi hierarchy who help
bring down the government may be offered leniency.
The administration plan says, "Government elements closely identified
with Saddam's regime, such as the revolutionary courts or the special
security organization, will be eliminated, but much of the rest of the
government will be reformed and kept."
While publicly saying Iraqi oil would remain what one senior official
calls "the patrimony of the Iraqi people," the administration is debating
how to protect oil fields during the conflict and how an occupied Iraq
would be represented in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries,
if at all.
After long debate, especially between the Pentagon and the State
Department, the White House has rejected for now the idea of creating a
provisional government before any invasion.
Officials involved in the planning caution that no matter how detailed
their plans, many crucial decisions would have to be made on the ground in
Iraq. So for now they have focused on legal precedents — including an
examination of the legal basis for taking control of the country at all —
and a study of past successes and failures in nation building, reaching
back to the American administration of the Philippines after the
Spanish-American War.
The plans presented to Mr. Bush will include several contingencies that
depend heavily, officials say, on how Mr. Hussein leaves power. "So much
rides on the conflict itself, if it becomes a conflict, and on how the
conflict starts and how the conflict ends," one of Mr. Bush's top advisers
said.
Much also depends on whether the arriving American troops would be
welcomed or shot at, and the Central Intelligence Agency has been drawing
up scenarios that range from a friendly occupation to a hostile one.
Yet under all of the possibilities, the American military would remain the
central player in running the country for some time. The Pentagon has
warned that it would take at least a year to be certain that all of Mr.
Hussein's weapons stores were destroyed.
Notably, the administration's written description of its goals include
these two objectives: "preserve Iraq as a unitary state, with its
territorial integrity intact," and "prevent unhelpful outside
interference, military or nonmilitary," apparently a warning to
neighboring countries.
Administration officials insist American forces would not stay in Iraq a
day longer than is necessary to stabilize the country.
"I don't think we're talking about months," one of Mr. Bush's top advisers
said of the planned occupation. "But I don't think we're talking a lot of
years, either."
The Command
Military Joined
With Civilian
When administration officials first began publicly discussing the idea of
an American military administration for Iraq, the reaction in the Arab
world was swift: The Arabs wanted no American Caesar in Iraq, no symbol of
a colonial governor. "The last thing we need," a senior official said, in
an allusion to General MacArthur, "is someone walking around with a
corncob pipe, telling Iraqis how to form a government."
As a result, the steering group on Iraq policy is now discussing a hybrid
command with an American military commander in charge of security and some
kind of civilian administrator — of theoretically equal influence — to get
the schools running, the oil fields pumping and the economy jump-started.
It is not clear whether that administrator would be an American or if the
United Nations would take the lead in that part of the operation.
It is widely assumed that in the first chaotic months, the military
commander will have unquestioned authority. "Remember, you will have
decapitated the command and control for the Iraqi military forces," a
senior official said. "Who is going to make sure that score-settling does
not break out, that there is not fights between the various ethnic
communities? It is going to have to be the U.S. military for some period
of time, and if there is a military command, there will certainly be a
military commander."
-- continued --