Our Last Real Chance

In early June 1920, Gertrude Bell, the extraordinary woman who helped run Iraq for Britain, wrote a letter to her father on some "violent agitation" against British rule: "[The extremists] have adopted a line difficult in itself to combat, the union of the Shi'ah and Sunni, the unity of Islam. And they are running it for all it's worth… There's a lot of semi-religious semi-political preaching… and the underlying thought is out with the infidel. My belief is that the weightier people are against it--I know some of them are bitterly disgusted--but it's very difficult to stand out against the Islamic cry and the longer it goes on the more difficult it gets." In fact, the "agitation" quickly turned into a mass (mostly Shia) revolt. British forces were able to crush it over three long months, but only after killing almost 10,000 Iraqis, suffering about 500 deaths themselves and spending the then exorbitant sum of 50 million pounds. After the 1920 revolt, the British fundamentally reoriented their strategy in Iraq. They abandoned plans for ambitious nation-building and instead sought a way to transfer power quickly to trustworthy elites.

There are many differences between Britain's experience in Iraq and America's current course. But there is a distinct danger that what we are witnessing in Iraq could turn the national mood against the United States. Recent polls suggest that Iraqis remain tolerant of, though not happy with, American forces in their country. But that support is clearly waning. Images of America's massive operations in Fallujah have generated anti-American sentiment across Iraq. The United States could be entering a ruinous cycle. As attacks on its troops grow, it uses full-blown military might, which produces anti-Americanism, which helps insurgents. When pro-American members of the Governing Council resign in protest, it must be that they sense a shift in the public mood.

There is an additional dynamic at work, particularly in the south. The contest to succeed the Americans is beginning. Shia religious leaders and politicians are beginning to speak out against the American occupation because being against foreigners--"Out with the infidels"--is an easy way of demonstrating nationalist credentials. There is a growing market for anti-Americanism in Iraq, and politicians are beginning to compete for it.

The "weightier elements" within the Shia community, like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, do not support the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; nor does al-Sadr have a large following. But if things deteriorate, his direct, passionate appeals for anti-American action might well drown out Sistani's carefully crafted statements urging calm and negotiations. And if not al-Sadr, someone else could well emerge. Extremists thrive on instability. After the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, Islamic fundamentalists did not take power. In fact, the leading figures at the time of the transition--"the weightier elements"--were Western-style liberals like Prime Minister Abolhassan Bani Sadr. But within a year Bani Sadr had been impeached, his successor assassinated, and the clerics were firmly in power. In revolutionary situations, the Leninists usually win.

America has gotten thousands of things right in Iraq. It has repaired roads, opened schools, provided food, built hospitals and introduced local self-government across the country. But nation-building ultimately succeeds or fails on the basis not of engineering but of politics. And Washington has made crucial political mistakes. Those errors, alas, have jeopardized the heroic work of thousands of American soldiers and civilians.

It is conventional wisdom that the United States should stay engaged with Iraq for years. Of course it should, but for this to work Iraqis must welcome the help. In the face of escalating anti-Americanism, U.S. involvement in Iraq will be unsustainable. For one thing, the American people are not likely to want to keep spending blood and treasure in Iraq. It will be the end of Washington's grand plans for a new Iraq, and the United States will face the dilemma that Britain did in 1920: how to get out while still saving face, maintaining stability and preserving its interests.

The United States does not face this dilemma yet. The trends that I outlined are just beginning and are not irreversible--yet. Washington has a final window of opportunity to end the myriad errors that have marked its occupation and adopt a new strategy.

The tragedy is that so much of this was avoidable. The Bush administration went into Iraq with a series of prejudices about Iraq, rogue states, nation-building, the Clinton administration, multilateralism and the U.N. It believed Iraq was going to vindicate these ideological positions. As events unfolded the administration proved stubbornly unwilling to look at facts on the ground, new evidence and the need for shifts in its basic approach. It was more important to prove that it was right than to get Iraq right.

The history of external involvement in countries suggests that, to succeed, the outsider needs two things: power and legitimacy. Washington has managed affairs in Iraq so that it has too little of each. It has often been pointed out that the United States went into Iraq with too few troops. This is not a conclusion arrived at with 20-20 hindsight. Over the course of the 1990s, a bipartisan consensus, shared by policymakers, diplomats and the uniformed military, concluded that troop strength was the key to postwar military operations. It is best summarized by a 2003 RAND Corp. report noting that you need about 20 security personnel (troops and police) per thousand inhabitants "not to destroy an enemy but to provide security for residents so that they have enough confidence to manage their daily affairs and to support a government authority of its own." When asked by Congress how many troops an Iraqi operation would require, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki replied, "Several hundred thousand" for several years. The number per the RAND study would be about 500,000.

But the civilian leadership of the Pentagon knew that such troop strength would require large-scale support from allies. Besides, it was convinced that the Clinton administration, the United Nations and the Europeans were feckless and incompetent. Donald Rumsfeld publicly ridiculed the U.N.'s efforts in Kosovo and declared that the administration intended to do its nation-building quite differently--better, lighter, cheaper. Thus America has tried to stabilize Iraq with one half to one third of the forces that its own Army chief of staff thought were necessary.

Even worse, these troops were not asked to make security for the Iraqi people their core mission. After spending a week in Iraq last November, the Brookings Institution's Kenneth Pollack noted that "the single greatest impediment" to the success of the reconstruction efforts was that Iraqis "do not feel safe in their own country. Iraqis resent the fact that American forces take such pains to protect themselves and do so little to protect the Iraqi people." He noted the "constant (and fully justified) complaint of Iraqis: the Americans have no presence and make no effort to stop street crime or the attacks on [Iraqis] by the [insurgents]." Since November, American forces have been moving out of cities into heavily armed base camps in outlying districts, out of sight. In Baghdad, the Army started out with more than 60 small units scattered throughout the city. It will soon be based in eight camps, mostly outside the city. When patrols take place, they are usually quick tours using armored cars and tanks, not the frequent foot patrols that provide order and friendly relations with locals.

The Bush administration's answer to the need for security was "Iraqification," the transfer of security to local forces. It's an excellent idea but takes months or even years to accomplish. The administration solved the problem by dramatically shortening the training schedule, and placed barely trained and vetted Iraqi security personnel on the streets. These hapless and ill-equipped forces command neither respect nor authority. In the last few weeks, at the first sign of trouble, whether in the north or south, the Iraqi Army and police vanished, in some cases siding with the militias and insurgents, in others simply running away.

Allowing militias to gain strength has been another reason for the pervasive sense of insecurity in the country. Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is currently in the news, but also armed and at large are the Badr Brigade, Ahmad Chalabi's troops, Iyad Alawi's ex-Baathists, and the two Kurdish political parties' peshmerga. In some sense, American strategy in Iraq mirrored the mistakes of Afghanistan. Here too we failed to disarm the warlords.

America's lack of presence on the ground is even greater when it comes to civilian authorities--political advisers, engineers, agronomists, economists, lawyers and other experts who could help Iraqis as they rebuild their country. The Coalition Provisional Authority has about 1,300 people working for it. Douglas MacArthur had four to five times as many when he was in Japan--and that was in circumstances where the Japanese state was fully intact and functioning. As a result, the CPA has virtually no presence outside Baghdad. Across much of the country, its acronym is jokingly said to stand for "Can't Provide Anything."

If the administration paid little attention to the need to assert power and authority on the ground, it paid even less attention to the need for legitimacy--whether from international or domestic sources. Weeks after formal hostilities ended, France and Germany made clear that they would be willing to provide major support for postwar reconstruction in Iraq. But they asked that it take place under U.N. auspices, as had all recent nation-building, including Afghanistan's. Tony Blair urged that the United States accept these offers, but Washington spurned them, finding the requirement for U.N. control intolerable. "We're utterly surprised," a senior U.N. diplomat told me in June 2003. "We thought the United States would dump Iraq on the world's lap and the rest of the world would object… The opposite is happening. The rest of the world is saying, 'We're willing to help,' but Washington is determined to run Iraq itself."

Even worse, convinced by Iraqi exiles that Iraq was deeply pro-American, Washington didn't much bother about creating legitimacy inside Iraq. Anyone who had studied Iraq knew that Saddam Hussein had destroyed all rivals. The only political forces that existed in Iraq were tribal sheiks and religious leaders. Given that the Shia constitute a majority, their leaders would be key. One towered above the others: Grand Ayatollah Sistani, a moderate who had tacitly supported the American intervention. He was also a longstanding critic of the Iranian model and argued that clerics should not participate in politics. In other words, he was the key potential ally and should have been the center of American political efforts in Iraq. Yet the U.S. paid insufficient attention to him.

In March 2003, as American and British troops entered Iraq, Sistani issued a fatwa asking the people of Iraq "not to interfere" with the foreign troops. His later statements urged ethnic and religious harmony. Sistani was well aware that America had an image problem in the Arab world and that he could not seem to endorse a naked American occupation. "We had demanded from the beginning that the U.N. play a primary role in the political process," he later explained in an interview. He refused to meet with any American. Yet he held meetings with the U.N.'s representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Once Sistani heard of American plans for transferring power to an unelected Iraqi interim government, he objected. But the United States did not try to satisfy him. Indeed, it did not make many overtures to the aging cleric. Sistani's objections were taken lightly until, finally, after weeks of increasingly critical statements, he issued a fatwa declaring the American transition plan unacceptable. Even then it took months--and street demonstrations--for the CPA to appreciate Sistani's power.

Washington believed that its hand-picked Governing Council gave the occupation legitimacy. In fact, besides the Kurdish leaders and a few others, the members of the Governing Council have little support within Iraq. The Council is stacked with Iraqi exiles who are mostly disliked and suspected by Iraqis. Shia leaders in particular are suspicious that American plans for a phased transition and an unelected interim government are ways to empower exiles like Ahmad Chalabi. Sistani has told gatherings of tribal leaders that it is they who must take power in Iraq, not "those from abroad." In the CPA's own polling, Chalabi has the highest negative ratings of any public figure in Iraq. And yet he continues to get plum positions and generous funding (for intelligence!) from the U.S. government.

In order to make possible a long-term commitment in Iraq, Washington needs to correct its mistakes. First, it must make the lives of Iraqis more secure. The experiment with hasty Iraqification has failed. Iraqi security forces and police should be pulled off the streets and given proper training. In the meanwhile, the United States will have to bulk up its forces--and make those forces engage in patrols and crime prevention and provide a general sense of law and order. The Third Infantry Division should be sent back into Iraq. The option of mobilizing reserves or transferring troops from other theaters of operation should not be ruled out. And after July, if the transition to Iraqi self-rule is administered by the United Nations, it should be possible to get other countries' troops involved. Obviously, the numbers offered will be much lower than they would have been a year ago. But something is better than nothing.

Next, the cpa must find a way to create a legitimate interim government. Ayatollah Sistani can provide that legitimacy. America will have to concede to Sistani's objections to the current plans: he is unlikely to endorse any transfer to the current Governing Council, or even a modestly expanded version of it. He has objected to a three-person presidency, and to giving the Kurds a veto over the constitution. He also wants restrictions on the powers of the interim government, and an understanding that the interim constitution can be amended. Many of Sistani's objections are valid, others less so. But in any event, right now his blessing is crucial.

This is not impossible. For now, the interests of Sistani and the United States are aligned. Moqtada al-Sadr is trying to assert power and sideline Sistani and the other grand ayatollahs of Najaf. Most of the other Shia leaders dislike al-Sadr. They need to come together and marginalize him, but they can't do so openly. If they help the Coalition and create a legitimate Iraqi government, al-Sadr will find little popular support for attacks against it. At that point, perhaps al-Sadr should be co-opted by giving his faction a seat at the table. All this will require extremely delicate negotiations, which will have to be carried out by the U.N.'s Lakhdar Brahimi, whom Sistani respects. It is ironic that an administration so hostile to the U.N. finds that it is at the mercy of the U.N. for its salvation.

To defang the Sunni insurgency, military operations will not be enough. Force alone has rarely been able to crush an insurgency with popular support. The U.S. must bribe, cajole and co-opt various Sunni leaders to separate the insurgents from the local populations. It's easier said than done, since there are few non-Baathist Sunnis of any stature. (They were all killed.) But the tribal sheiks, former low-level Baathists and regional leaders should be courted assiduously. In addition, money must start flowing into Iraqi hands. Too much of the money being spent in Iraq is going to American firms. Iraqi unemployment must keep falling fast if people are to believe that their lives are getting better.

Washington's grander plans for a new Iraq will have to be put on hold. The goal for now is to create a stable, credible, even popular Iraqi grouping to which Washington can hand over power. If that means incorporating Islamic fundamentalists, tribal chieftains and even some former low-level Baathists, so be it. If this step is successful, the United States can push for reforms because of its forces on the ground and its offers of aid. It should ask the United Nations to administer the political process and some of the aid, so that the handover is seen as the return of Iraq to the international community with new participation from the world. Otherwise, June 30 will change nothing--certainly not the attacks on American imperialism.

The date, June 30, is less important than the entity to which power is transferred. If that new government is seen as an American puppet, then challenges to it will persist, and America will find itself propping up an unpopular local regime that is doomed to fail. And that dilemma reminds one not of the British in Iraq, but of the United States in Vietnam.