Iraq: Next Steps

S. HRG. 108–293 IRAQ: NEXT STEPS—HOW TO INTERNATIONALIZE IRAQ AND ORGANIZE THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO ADMINISTER RECONSTRUCTION EFFORTS HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION SEPTEMBER 23, 2003 Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 91–525 PDF 2004 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin BARBARA BOXER, California BILL NELSON, Florida JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Staff Director ANTONY J. BLINKEN, Democratic Staff Director (II) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 C O N T E N T S Page Atwood, Hon. J. Brian, Dean, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Univer- sity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota ....................................................... 4 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 8 Dobbins, Hon. James, Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center, RAND Washington Office, Arlington, Virginia .................................... 12 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 16 Hamre, Hon. John J., president and chief executive officer, Center for Stra- tegic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. ........................................... 19 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 21 APPENDIX Statement submitted by Richard N. Haass ........................................................... 47 Additional material submitted by Dr. John J. Hamre Iraq’s Post-Conflict Reconstruction: A Field Review and Recommendations, July 17, 2003 ........................................................................................................ 49 A Wiser Peace: An Action Strategy for a Post-Conflict Iraq, January 2003 ...... 58 Final Report of the Bi-Partisan Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction, January 2003 ........................................................................................................ 69 Statement submitted by the American Association of Engineering Societies .... 86 (III) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 IRAQ: NEXT STEPS— HOW TO INTERNATIONALIZE IRAQ AND ORGANIZE THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO ADMINISTER RECONSTRUCTION EFFORTS Tuesday, September 23, 2003 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, D.C. The committee met at 2:32 p.m., in room SD–106, Dirksen Sen- ate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar, chairman of the com- mittee, presiding. Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Biden, Sarbanes, Nelson, Fein- gold, and Corzine. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA The CHAIRMAN. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is called to order. Our colleagues have been involved in the normal Tuesday party caucuses, and I suspect they will be ambling in. Either that, or they know more than I do, and we are about to have a roll call vote, and they are staying there. I would mention at the outset that the leaders have indicated we will finish the Interior appropriations bill this afternoon, and that usually leads, unfortunately, to roll call votes, including final pas- sage. I understand the time requirements of our witnesses, as well as Senators, and I will do the best that I can to balance all of this and to keep the continuity of the hearing moving. But for that reason, I will commence with my opening statement, and I will recognize, of course, the distinguished ranking member, Senator Biden, for his statement when he appears. Then we will proceed to the witnesses so that we will have the testimony before us and then answers to questions from the Senators. It is indeed our pleasure to welcome Ambassador Jim Dobbins, Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation; Dr. John Hamre, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, currently President of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Dean Brian Atwood of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Min- nesota and former Administrator of the U.S. Agency for Inter- national Development. We had hoped also to have Ambassador Richard Haass here in his new capacity as President of the Council on Foreign Relations, but with the revised schedule due to the hurricane—and we appre- (1) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 2 ciate each of our witnesses being so accommodating—Ambassador Haass could not be here today, but we have received his excellent testimony which will be inserted in the record. The committee also looks forward to hearing our distinguished panel’s views on what is needed to internationalize and make suc- cessful the reconstruction effort in Iraq and how the United States Government can more effectively administer its own reconstruction activities. Each of you has been involved at the highest levels in United States foreign policy decision-making, and we are grateful to you for your willingness to share your experience with us today. This hearing is the first in a series of hearings on Iraq by this committee. The series will frame the issues the Congress must ad- dress as it reviews President Bush’s proposed $87 billion supple- mental funding request for maintaining and sustaining United States military forces and supporting Iraq reconstruction efforts. However, our intention is to look well beyond the scope of this sup- plemental. Tomorrow, we have scheduled two additional hearings that will examine our long-term planning in Iraq and the prospects for Iraqi democratization. And we are pleased that Ambassador Jerry Bremer is in Washington and will be available for the morn- ing hearing. During the last several weeks, the Bush administration has ex- panded its efforts to secure international financial, humanitarian, and military contributions for Iraq. Secretary Powell and our dip- lomats are exploring, even as we speak, Security Council resolution language that would facilitate greater United Nations involvement in Iraq. As the President emphasized in his UN speech this morn- ing, the administration is providing new estimates and plans devel- oped by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and President Bush has delivered an address to the American people about the necessary commitment of United States resources in Iraq. I com- mend the President on these steps, which have the potential to greatly improve our prospects for success. There is general consensus in the international community and within the United States Government that the critical task at hand is to establish a sovereign Iraqi government as quickly as possible and to prevent Iraq from becoming a so-called failed state. To achieve this goal, we need to reach agreement on the roles and re- sponsibilities of the international community in Iraq and on how we can more effectively organize our own efforts. The stakes for United States national security in Iraq remain extraordinarily high. Beyond the obvious implications for U.S. credibility, the out- come in Iraq may determine how we are perceived in the Islamic world for a generation. And it will affect the degree of international cooperation in the war on terror. It will affect the status of our own military and the prospects for economic growth in the United States. We must succeed in Iraq while conserving United States resources through efficient decision-making and international involvement. In previous hearings, I have expressed my own view that secur- ing greater support from the international community for the oper- ation in Iraq is essential. International assistance is needed not only to get more personnel on the ground but to make available more military professionals with the right skills. American military VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 3 forces have performed brilliantly, but we do not have enough per- sonnel with so-called nation-building skills, including police and civil affairs experts, to meet the needs in Iraq. And further, with the United States economy facing a rising def- icit, other nation’s resources are needed to reduce the burden of Iraq reconstruction. Ambassador Bremer said on July 31, 2003, that it would take $50 billion to $100 billion to reconstruct Iraq. The administration’s supplemental asked for $21 billion for that purpose. Clearly, help from other donors is needed to fill the gap. Finally, we need other nations to be involved in Iraq to help as- sure the Iraqis that the results of our nation-building are legiti- mate and that the international community is committed to a suc- cessful reconstruction of the country. The pledging conference scheduled in October will be an opportunity for all nations to ex- hibit that leadership. An important way to ease anti-Americanism in Iraq is to show the Iraqis and the world that we have a step-by-step plan to re- build Iraq that involves a broad coalition of nations and Iraqi rep- resentatives. This plan does not need to include an exact time line, but it should identify the sources of revenue that will be used to fund reconstruction during the next 5 years at least and provide benchmarks that can be used to measure success. As we seek international contributions, we must ensure that our own efforts are efficient. We do not have time to waste on inter- agency rivalries. There must be seamless planning and cooperation among U.S. agencies with the Defense Department in charge of the war-fighting and security and the State Department in charge of nation-building and diplomacy. Now, in April, Congress provided extraordinary flexibility to the President in administering resources devoted to Iraq reconstruc- tion. Bureaucratic disagreements and the resulting delays in fund- ing projects in Iraq during the first few months after major combat slowed progress on reconstruction and reduced the confidence of the Iraqi people in our intentions and in our abilities. In July, Dr. Hamre’s team of experts commissioned by the De- partment of Defense stated in their excellent report that we cannot conduct Iraq reconstruction as business as usual. This report rec- ommended: The CPA should be given complete flexibility to spend money, even appropriated funds and vested assets, as it views necessary without project-by-project oversight by Washington. In assessing the President’s supplemental request, Congress must ask: Are the best mechanisms in place to provide resources for Iraq reconstruction? What role should each U.S. Government agency play in that reconstruction process? How should we reorga- nize our own Government to recruit the necessary personnel and provide the best administration of national and international re- sources in current and future nation-building endeavors? And how much authority should U.S. agencies, the Coalition Provisional Au- thority, and even the Iraqi Governing Council and the Iraqi min- isters it has appointed have in allocating those resources and set- ting priorities? VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 4 In addition to being the first of our current series of hearings on Iraq, this is the 10th hearing on Iraq held by the Foreign Relations Committee this year. We have tried to provide a forum in the com- mittee for the constructive discussion of Iraq policy. In our last hearing on July 29, I said that our national sense of confidence and commitment in Iraq must approximate what we demonstrated dur- ing the Berlin Airlift, a sense that we could achieve the impossible, despite short time constraints and severe conditions of risk and consequences. I still believe that America can achieve our objec- tives in Iraq, and I look forward to this series of hearings which will help inform the congressional component of these efforts. At this point, I welcome again the witnesses, and I know that we have a batting order for testimony today, which I would suggest be, first of all, Brian Atwood; second, Jim Dobbins; and third, John Hamre. I think that comports with your understanding. At this point, Dean Atwood, I would recognize you for your testimony. STATEMENT OF HON. J. BRIAN ATWOOD, DEAN, HUMPHREY INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF MIN- NESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA Dean ATWOOD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is very nice to be back at this table before the Foreign Relations Com- mittee, and I very much appreciate your leadership and that of Senator Hagel. I think you have enlightened the American people on several of the issues that we confront today. Mr. Chairman, I support our efforts to transform Iraq. I opposed going in without the support of the international community, but that is the past. If we now fail to build a stable and democratic Iraq, we will have handed terrorism a major victory. I also support the President’s request for supplemental resources for Iraq, but only if there are conditions attached to this appropria- tion that alter the approach that we have heretofore taken. In my view, proceeding on the current path could mean throwing good money after bad. My experience with post-conflict situations leads me to conclude that there are no prototypes. Every situation is messy. Each re- quires a strong security umbrella, deft diplomacy to achieve a sem- blance of agreement among factions, effective humanitarian relief for the victims of violence, and strong reconstruction and develop- ment programs that reinforce the effort to reconcile differences and give palpable hope to the population. These situations also require a strong international presence that establishes the legitimacy of the transition, signals the concern of the global community, and enables many nations to utilize their strongest assets and their resources to build a new nation. This multiplicity of missions and organizations, from military units to humanitarian NGO’s, creates very difficult interfaces between orga- nizational cultures and not a small amount of tension. Still, if there is a well-understood plan and a vision for the future that the local population shares, the transition can surmount the bumps in the road and move forward. Several of these key elements are missing in Iraq. Most impor- tantly, there is no clearly understood plan that is embraced by the Iraqi people and by the organizations working there. The constant VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 5 shifts in position by the Coalition Provisional Authority are con- fusing to Iraqis. No one knows whether we are building the nation from the top down or from the bottom up. Is the United States really interested in creating an Iraqi democracy, or are we fearful that giving power to the Iraqi people will produce policies counter to our interests? Perhaps the worst manifestation of this confusion is a growing belief on the part of ordinary Iraqis that the chaos they are experiencing must be what we Americans really want. I do understand that a new plan, a 98-page plan, has been re- leased to the Congress and sent here. I welcome that. I do think it’s very, very important that that plan be made public and that the Iraqi people embrace it. Clearly, that is a step in the right di- rection. No transition can proceed apace without security. Today there is no pervasive security presence on the ground in Iraq. Our troops are either protecting key institutions or they remain garrisoned in secure locations. They are seen only rarely by Iraqis, usually in fast-moving convoys going from one location to another. We are spread too thin to offer the security umbrella needed to protect the essential transition activities. Mr. Chairman, the Brahimi panel on UN operations, on which I served, warned the Security Council that UN peacekeepers should not be deployed unless and until they had mustered a force of suffi- cient size and capability to defeat or deter the ‘‘lingering forces of war.’’ The coalition led by the United States and Britain did not heed that advice in Iraq. The consequence is that many of our sol- diers have paid the ultimate price and Iraq has become a magnet for terrorists who see it as part of the international battleground for their cause. We do not have the option of leaving Iraq in this era of ter- rorism. Yet, we owe it to our military to give them the force struc- ture to protect themselves. To date, the young men and women of our military services have not been well served by the civilian lead- ership of the Pentagon. It is critically urgent to establish a security umbrella for Iraq and to secure a UN resolution authorizing a UN peacekeeping force. When this is in hand, we should then request that NATO form the core of that force. A failure in Iraq would be a direct threat to our European allies in that it would facilitate the spread of terrorism. This is, therefore, a legitimate role for NATO. We have a strong case to take to the leaders of the NATO nations, but we cannot take that case to them until the UN acts. We must also accelerate the training of an Iraqi military force and a separate police contingent, but we cannot rush that process, and we are perhaps already guilty of having done that. In the meantime, we urgently need a pervasive blue-hatted UN presence in the country. Mr. Chairman, I fear we will fail in our effort to gain an inter- national consensus and a strong UN resolution so long as we con- tinue to insist that the civilian transition be under an American administrator. The French Government’s position that we should transfer power to the Iraqis within months is wrong. I agree with Secretary Powell that if we rush this transfer, we will have created a very fragile government whose legitimacy will be questioned each VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 6 time a crisis arises. But in the interim, the administration of Iraq should be UN not U.S. The U.S. does not need the high profile it now has in Iraq. In fact, this profile has both raised and then dashed Iraqi expectations with the sad result that Iraqis today believe that their current state of chaos is an American plot. It is time, it seems to me, to announce that we are at least willing to step aside after a short transition period in favor of a representative of the UN Secretary- General who will coordinate the multi-faceted transition activities. This is important in encouraging other donors to come forward and enabling all relevant UN specialized agencies to play an even larg- er role. A concession on this point, Mr. Chairman, may make other Secu- rity Council members more likely to accept U.S. leadership of the peacekeeping force. I believe that having an American military commander, hopefully of a NATO core force, would be well worth the price of giving up the American civilian administrator, and I might add this is not a reflection on Ambassador Jerry Bremer, a former colleague of mine at the State Department, who is a very competent professional. Rather, it recognizes that our goals can better be accomplished with a broader UN-sanctioned international coalition and a lower American profile. It is also time, Mr. Chairman, to end the Pentagon’s control over the civilian side of the reconstruct effort. My experience in working with the military in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Haiti is that they are highly efficient in undertaking both engineering and logistical mis- sions in post-conflict transitions. These capabilities and the secu- rity umbrella they provide contribute greatly to a reconstruction ef- fort. The problem is that DoD’s tasking procedures and their co- ordination protocols do not translate well in a fluid transitional ci- vilian environment. NGO’s do not work well under Pentagon task orders, nor do the contractors whose expertise lies in various essen- tial development or humanitarian fields, such as education, health care, or democratization. Furthermore, DoD has precious few pro- fessionals who have worked in foreign cultures. DoD professionals tend to approach a transition as if it were a linear exercise, pro- ceeding from mission to mission. What is needed are multiple ac- tivities undertaken simultaneously, humanitarian relief, reconcili- ation programs, infrastructure repairs, political and economic de- velopment. These are not part of the Pentagon’s playbook. Mr. Chairman, I would urge this committee to separate out the reconstruction portion of this supplemental request and authorize it for expenditure by the State Department and USAID. State can use these resources to leverage other donors. It also can make re- sources available to UN agencies through its International Organi- zations and Refugee Bureaus, and AID should vastly expand its ground presence and those of its NGO and contractor network. Its Office of Transitions Initiatives has great flexibility in transitions, and its professionals are comfortable working in foreign environ- ments, even very difficult ones. Such a move also would allay the concerns of other potential donors who normally work on the ground with State and AID and who feel uncomfortable working di- rectly with the Department of Defense. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 7 These two actions by our Government, yielding control of the ci- vilian operations to the UN and removing the Pentagon from full control of the reconstruction funding, would dramatically improve the international climate and enhance our prospects for burden- sharing. It is vitally important that we begin immediately to inter- nationalize this effort. American talent and resources are des- perately needed if the transition is to succeed, but we do not need control, and we most certainly do not need such a high profile. If we back the UN, the UN has a greater chance of success than does the near unilateral approach we have taken to date. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the window for democracy is still open in Iraq, but it will not be open much longer. Political par- ties are proliferating, and yet there is little understanding there of how the search for power relates to other democratic values, such as the protection of minorities. Iraqis are pleased that Saddam is gone, but at the same time, they consider themselves to be ungov- ernable. Some say that they need 12 Saddams to govern the coun- try. Many equate democracy with the chaos and the street violence that they are now experiencing. They also believe that the Ameri- cans could stop all of this and bring order if we wanted to. So once again, we are reminded that progress in these situations is tied to security. Democracy in Iraq cannot be imposed from the top down. If that is the exit strategy of the administration, it will fail. It does seem to be the strategy of the French Government, and I disagree with it intensely. Before the window of opportunity closes, it is urgent that we start a bottom-up democratization and community rec- onciliation effort now. This means electing neighborhood councils, school boards, and eventually village and municipal councils. These communities understand their needs, and if they are given the legitimization of their fellow citizens through localized elections, they can be the channel for informing the reconstruction efforts. The next step would be for communities to work together in re- gional institutions. The combination of representative local govern- ment and rising levels of hope that will flow from tangible progress in fixing the nation’s infrastructure will prepare the foundation for a national constitution and elections. Mr. Chairman, the time is short, and we have already wasted precious moments. The only way to overcome the very poor begin- ning we have made in Iraq is to fundamentally change our ap- proach. That means internationalizing the effort under UN aus- pices, shifting responsibility for civilian reconstruction operations to civilian agencies, and moving from a top-down to a bottom-up re- construction strategy. The first requirement is, as always, security. A UN force large enough to defeat and/or deter our potential en- emies, commanded by an American and with NATO at its core, is the sine qua non for success. To achieve that goal, we will have to give up American control of the civilian transition. We should do this because it is consistent with our long-term objectives. I urge this committee to separate out the reconstruction resources re- quested in this supplemental to enhance our prospects for inter- nationalizing the effort. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Dean Atwood follows:] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 8 PREPARED STATEMENT OF J. BRIAN ATWOOD Chairman Lugar, Senator Biden, members of the Foreign Relations Committee, it is good to be back at this table. Thank you for inviting me. I am pleased to offer my thoughts today on the President’s supplemental request for the reconstruction effort in Iraq. This committee’s inquiry is vitally important to Americans who are today preoccupied with the threat of terrorism and who are becoming increasingly worried that our intervention in Iraq has run off the tracks and has not made them safer. Mr. Chairman, I support our efforts to transform Iraq. I opposed going in without the support of the international community, but that is the past. If we now fail to build a stable and democratic Iraq, we will have handed terrorism a major victory. I also support the President’s request for supplemental resources for Iraq, but only if there are conditions attached to this appropriation that alter the approach the ad- ministration has taken to date. Proceeding on the current path will mean throwing good money after bad. I worked on several post-conflict reconstruction missions during my tenure at USAID. I also served on a panel created by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to review UN peace operations. The panel’s report, known as the Brahimi Report, after our chairman, offered several recommendations for improving UN peace-keeping and peace-building operations. More recently, I participate in the joint CSIS and U.S. Army Association study on Post-Conflict Reconstruction chaired by my fellow panelist John Hamre and General Gordon Sullivan. I was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Commission that produced the study tided ‘‘Iraq: The Day After.’’ And finally, I serve on the Board of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), an organization that is working in Iraq to build support for democratic change. Ref- erences to Iraqi opinion in this testimony are derived from recent focus group re- search conducted by NDI in 15 locations in Iraq. Mr. Chairman, my experience with post-conflict situations leads me to conclude that there are no prototypes. Every situation is messy. Each requires a strong secu- rity umbrella, deft diplomacy to achieve a semblance of agreement among factions, effective humanitarian relief for the victims of violence and strong reconstruction and development programs that reinforce the effort to reconcile differences and give palpable hope to the population. These situations also require a strong international presence that establishes the legitimacy of the transition, signals the concern of the global community and en- ables many nations to utilize their strongest assets and their resources to build a new nation. This multiplicity of missions and organizations—from military units to humanitarian NGO’s—creates very difficult interfaces between organizational cul- tures and not a small amount of tension. Still, if there is a well-understood plan and a vision for the future that the local population shares, the transition can sur- mount the bumps in the road and move forward. Several of these key elements are missing in Iraq. Most importantly, there is no clearly understood plan that is embraced by the Iraqi people and by the organiza- tions working there. The constant shifts in position by the Coalition Provisional Au- thority are confusing to Iraqis. No one knows whether we are building the nation from the, top down or from the bottom up. Is the United States really interested in creating an Iraqi democracy, or are we fearful that giving power to the Iraqi peo- ple will produce policies counter to our interests? Perhaps the worst manifestation of this confusion is a growing belief on the part of ordinary Iraqis that the chaos they are experiencing must be what we Americans really want. No transition can proceed apace without security. Today there is no pervasive se- curity presence on the ground in Iraq. Our troops are either protecting key institu- tions or they remain garrisoned in secure locations. They are seen only rarely by Iraqis, usually in fast-moving convoys going from one location to another. We are spread too thin to offer the security umbrella needed to protect the essential transi- tion activities. Mr. Chairman, the Brahimi panel on UN peace operations, warned the Security Council that UN peacekeepers should not be deployed unless and until they had mustered a force of sufficient size and capability to defeat or deter the ‘‘lingering forces of war.’’ The coalition led by the United States and Britain did not heed that advice in Iraq. The consequence is that many of our soldiers have paid the ultimate price and Iraq has become a magnet for terrorists who see it as part of the inter- national battleground for their cause. Iraq today is reminiscent of the situation the Clinton administration faced in So- malia in 1993–94. We did not have a clear mission there and we did not have enough troops to protect ourselves. When we suffered through incidents such as ‘‘Black Hawk Down,’’ the inadequacy of our force size became obvious. Our depar- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 9 ture from Somalia followed, a Secretary of Defense resigned and the ‘‘Somalia syn- drome’’ inhibited decision makers for several years. We do not have the option of leaving Iraq in this era of terrorism. Yet, we owe it to our military to give them the force structure to protect themselves. To date, the young men and women of our military services have not been well served by the civilian leadership of the Pentagon. It is critically urgent to establish a security umbrella for Iraq and to secure a UN resolution authorizing a UN peacekeeping force. When this is in hand, we should then request that NATO form the core of that force. A failure in Iraq would be a direct threat to our European allies in that it would facilitate the spread of ter- rorism. This is, therefore, a legitimate role for NATO. We have a strong case to take to the leaders of the NATO nations. We must also accelerate the training of an Iraqi military force and a separate po- lice contingent. The Iraqis need to take control of their own security, but this proc- ess cannot be rushed. Arming Iraqis before vetting them and training them thor- oughly would be very dangerous. We are already guilty of having done that. In the meantime, we urgently need a pervasive blue-hatted UN presence in the country. Mr. Chairman, I fear we will fail in our effort to gain an international consensus and a strong UN resolution so long as we continue to insist that the civilian transi- tion be under an American Administrator. The French government’s position that we should transfer power to the Iraqis within months is wrong. I agree with Sec- retary Powell that if we rush this transfer, we will have created a very fragile gov- ernment whose legitimacy will be questioned each time a crisis arises. But in the interim, the administration of Iraq should be UN, not U.S. The United States does not need the high profile it now has in Iraq. In fact, this profile has both raised and then dashed Iraqi expectations with the sad result that Iraqis believe that their current state of chaos is an American plot. It is time to step aside in favor of a Representative of the UN Secretary General who will coordi- nate the multi-faceted transition activities. This also will encourage other donors to come forward and enable all relevant UN specialized agencies to play an even larger role. A concession on this point, Mr. Chairman, may make other Security Council mem- bers more likely to accept U.S. leadership of the peacekeeping force. I believe having an American military commander, hopefully of a NATO core force, would be well worth the price of giving up the American civilian administrator. This is not a re- flection on Ambassador Jerry Bremer, a very competent professional. Rather, it rec- ognizes that our goals can better be accomplished with a broader UN-sanctioned international coalition and a lower American profile. It also is time, Mr. Chairman, to end the Pentagon’s control over the civilian side of the reconstruction effort. My experience in working with the military in Kosovo, Bosnia and Haiti is that they are highly efficient in undertaking both engineering and logistical missions in post-conflict transitions. These capabilities—and the secu- rity umbrella they provide—contribute greatly to a reconstruction effort. The prob- lem is that DoD’s tasking procedures and their coordination protocols do not trans- late well in a fluid transitional civilian environment. NGO’s do not work well under Pentagon ‘‘task orders,’’ nor do the contractors whose expertise lies in various essen- tial development or humanitarian fields, such as education, healthcare or democra- tization. Furthermore, DoD has precious few professionals who have worked in for- eign cultures. DoD professionals tend to approach a transition as if it were a linear exercise, proceeding from mission to mission ad seriatum. ‘‘What is needed are mul- tiple activities undertaken simultaneously—humanitarian relief, reconciliation pro- grams, infrastructure repairs, political and economic development. These are not part of the Pentagon’s playbook. Mr. Chairman, I would urge this committee to separate out the reconstruction portion of this supplemental request and authorize it for expenditure by the State Department and USAID. State can use these resources to leverage other donors. It also can make resources available to UN agencies through its International Organi- zations and Refugee Bureaus. USAID should vastly expand its ground presence and those of its NGO and contractor network. Its Office of Transitions Initiatives has great flexibility in transitions and its professionals are comfortable working in for- eign environments, even very difficult ones. Such a move also would allay the con- cerns of other potential donors who normally work with State and AID and who feel uncomfortable working directly with the Defense Department. These two actions by our government—yielding control of the civilian operations to the UN and removing the Pentagon from full control of the reconstruction fund- ing—would dramatically improve the international climate and enhance our pros- pects for burden sharing. It is vitally important that we begin immediately to inter- nationalize this effort. American talent and resources are needed if this transition VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 10 is to succeed, but we do not need control and we most certainly do not need such a high profile. If we back the UN, the UN has a greater chance of success than does the near-unilateral approach we have taken to date. Mr. Chairman, the focus group research conducted by NDI shows that the window is still open for democracy in Iraq. Political parties are proliferating, yet there is little understanding of how the search for power relates to other democratic values, such as the protection of minorities. Iraqis are pleased that Saddam is gone, but, at the same time, they consider themselves to be ungovernable. Some will say they need 12 Saddams to govern the country. Many equate democracy with the chaos and street violence they are now experiencing. They also believe that the Americans could stop all of this and bring order if we wanted to. Once again, we are reminded that progress in these situations is tied to security. Democracy in Iraq cannot be imposed from the top down. If that is the exit strat- egy of the administration, it will fail. Before the window of opportunity closes for- ever, it is urgent that we start a bottom-up democratization and community rec- onciliation effort now. This means electing neighborhood councils, school boards and eventually village and municipal councils. These communities understand their needs, and if they are given the legitimization of their fellow citizens through local- ized elections, they can be the channel for informing the reconstruction efforts. The next step would be for communities to work together in regional institutions. The combination of representative local government and rising levels of hope that will flow from tangible progress in fixing the nation’s infrastructure, will prepare the foundation for a national constitution and national elections. Mr. Chairman, time is short and we already have wasted precious moments. The only way to overcome the very poor beginning we have made in Iraq is to fundamen- tally change our approach. That means internationalizing the effort under UN aus- pices, shifting responsibility for civilian reconstruction operations to civilian agen- cies and moving from a top-down to a bottom-up reconstruction strategy. The first requirement is, as always, security. A UN force large enough to defeat and/or deter our potential enemies, commanded by an American and with NATO at its core, is the sina qua non for success. To achieve that goal, we will have to give up American control of the civilian transition. We should do this because it is consistent with our long-term objectives. I urge this committee to separate out the reconstruction re- sources requested in this supplemental to enhance our prospects for international- izing this effort. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Atwood. I would like to call now on the ranking member, Senator Biden, for his opening statement. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S. SENATOR FROM DELAWARE Senator BIDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will not take the time to do my whole opening statement except to begin by wel- coming three distinguished witnesses. We are truly grateful that you are here. You have had vast experience, all three of you, and I am anxious to hear what all three have to say. I will just say that I was pleased the President went to the United Nations. I share Brian’s concern about the French plan, which I think is a plan for failure, but I also am disappointed that the President did not more definitely put the French in the position where their plan was able to be shown to be one that did not make much sense. Instead, I had hoped that he would speak more about what our objectives were in concrete terms and our willingness to share that responsibility and ask for participation and help. But I will refrain from the rest of my statement, except to say, Dr. Hamre, your report, I think, was absolutely first-rate. I am fearful that that window is closing, and there is not much room left now. What you and your committee warned us all about may come to pass. So I hope that your testimony today. and Mr. Bremer’s tomorrow and others’, can generate some consensus to flow from this moment VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 11 on about how to do what we all acknowledge we have to do. We either get the world community involved in paying part of the freight and taking part of the responsibility, or we do it all our- selves. I mean, that is it. This is not rocket science. This is not that hard in terms of the basic objective. Or we walk away, which would be an absolute, unmitigated disaster. So, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my statement be placed in the record. I hope we get a chance to pursue some of—and you are kind of going to be preaching to the choir I think. This is an issue where the division politically has been negligible in terms of partisanship up here. We all want to succeed. So I look forward to having a chance to have a little discussion with you after your testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Senator Biden, and your statement will be published in full in the record. [The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR BIDEN Secretary Hamre, Dean Atwood, Ambassador Dobbins, it is a pleasure to welcome you before the committee. Each of you has a wealth of experience and wisdom to offer as we seek to chart a course that will lead to success in Iraq. Two weeks ago, President Bush made an apparent U-turn in his Iraq policy that, in my judgment, finally sets us in the right direction. It was a change in course that many of us had been advocating for months. First, the President vowed to make Iraq the world’s problem, not just our own, by going back to the U.N. and seeking the support of its members for troops and money. Second, the President began to level with the American people about the hard road ahead to win the peace. It will take years, require billions of dollars, and call on tens of thousands of troops. He acknowledged that our mission in Iraq is far from accomplished. In fact, it has only just begun. The administration’s mid-course correction is belated recognition that we have not, as some administration officials seemed to suggest, won some sort of a prize in Iraq. Far from it. Iraq is an enormous challenge with a hefty price tag. But it is a challenge we must meet. If we fail, the impact on our national security would be grave. Failure is not an option. Losing the peace in Iraq could condemn that country to a future as a failed state. We know from bitter experience that failed states are breeding grounds for ter- rorism. Equally bad, losing the peace could mean the return of the old regime, emboldened by the belief that it had defeated America. Losing the peace would enhance the power and influence of hard-liners in Iran and Syria. It would put moderates and reformers in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Ara- bia on the defensive. It would make reviving the Middle East peace process even more difficult. Combined with a potential failure in Afghanistan, losing the peace in Iraq would even risk Pakistan, a nuclear armed state, falling into the hands of extremists. In short, losing the peace in Iraq would mark a major victory for the forces of tyranny and terrorism and a significant setback for the forces of progress and mod- ernization. Our credibility in Iraq, the region, and across the globe would hit rock bottom. America and Americans would be far less secure. We must show the wisdom and the commitment to help Iraq write a different fu- ture. If we succeed in transforming Iraq into a stable, unified country with a rep- resentative government, there will be significant benefits to our national security. Success in Iraq could begin the process of altering the strategic map of the region. It could boost reformers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere. It would put Syria and its allies in Hezbollah on the defensive. Success in Iraq would improve the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. It would deal a significant setback to those who argue that the only future for Arabs and Muslims is one of religious extremism, perpetual conflict with imagined en- emies, economic stagnation, and autocratic government. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 12 It is critical that we inject a sense of urgency into our efforts. Time is running out. Dr. Hamre, your report of two months ago emphasized that the window of op- portunity was closing fast. If Iraqis don’t begin to see law and order, basic services, and the economy improve rapidly, we may well lose them. If that happens, it will make the current insecurity look mild by comparison. Not only do we risk losing the Iraqi people, we may lose the American people if they believe that we are not telling them the truth or doing all we can to share the enormous burden in Iraq. That is why we need a Security Council resolution that gives political cover to leaders around the world so that they can contribute funds, troops, and police. With- out that assistance we will continue to provide nearly 90% of the troops, take more than 90% of the casualties, and pay for well over 90% of the costs of reconstruction. Some may argue that a new Security Council resolution is not worth the effort because it will not immediately result in a large number of foreign troops or finan- cial aid. That argument misses the point. A new resolution will increase the legit- imacy of our efforts. And, over time, if the President demonstrates a sincere commit- ment to working with our international partners, it will yield tangible results. Relations that were strained for more than two years by this administration’s ‘‘our way or the highway’’ approach will not be mended overnight. What is important is that we start the process of repairing them. That is what a new Security Council resolution represents and why it is so important to achieve. I urge the President to not waiver from the path he appeared to choose when he addressed the nation two weeks ago. Dr. Hamre, Ambassador Dobbins and Dean Atwood, I hope you will give us your best judgment today on what we need to do over the next several weeks and months to get on track in Iraq. What are the most urgent tasks on the ground? How do we accomplish them? How do we convince more countries to share the burden? What should we be prepared to give up to get them on board. And Dr. Hamre, I’d especially like to know from you whether the recommendations you made in your report two months ago are being followed. I look forward to your testimony. The CHAIRMAN. I would like to recognize now Ambassador Dob- bins. STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES DOBBINS, DIRECTOR, INTER- NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY CENTER, RAND WASHINGTON OFFICE, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA Ambassador DOBBINS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am honored to be called to testify before this committee and to do so in such distinguished company. At RAND, we have recently completed a study of the American experience in nation-building, going back to Germany and Japan after 1945 and then Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghani- stan in the ’90’s, into the current decade. I think looking at the early months in Iraq, one would have to conclude that the most im- portant lesson learned from the Iraq experience is that we have not learned the lessons of our experience over the last 60 years ade- quately and particularly the experience of the last decade. After all, this is the sixth major nation-building exercise which the United States has launched in a decade; and incidentally, five of those have been in Muslim nations. Now, the issue therefore is we have had a lot of experience in this. We should be getting better. We are not. And the question arises as to why not. For the last decade, successive administrations have tended to treat each new operation as if it was the first they had ever en- countered and tended to send new people with new ideas to face old problems, and not surprisingly, they often made old mistakes. But perhaps more seriously we have tended to treat each of these missions as if it is the last we are ever going to do, and the result is, when the mission is concluded, we tend to dissipate the people VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 13 who participated in it. We do not have a system of studying the les- sons, of integrating them into our strategy, into our doctrine, into our planning for future missions. We do not have a system by which personnel who engage in this are rewarded, they are kept within the system, are trained, and are made available for future such operations. Now, this endless and repeated improvisation reflects a view that nation-building is an aberration, a once off mission that is not like- ly to be repeated. Yet, in the ’90’s, the Clinton administration con- ducted a major nation-building exercise operation on the average every 2 years, and the current administration, which came into of- fice strongly disinclined to continue engaging in these kinds of ac- tivities, has found itself compelled as the result of circumstances to launch two such operations within 18 months. So I think that the conclusion that all of us need to come to is that nation-building is, in the current world environment, an inescapable responsibility for the world’s only superpower and one, therefore, that we need to learn to do better. Our first task obviously is to do better in Iraq, and I appreciate the opportunity to comment on how the United States can best or- ganize itself and the international community to succeed in that task. But I do urge that we look beyond Iraq and also ask ourselves how we can do better next time, how we can ensure that the les- sons we learn in Iraq are integrated in our efforts to handle the next such mission. In our studies, we found that both the German and Japanese oc- cupations, as well as the more recent nation-building experiences of the 1990’s, have lessons to teach that are applicable in Iraq. But of them, I would have to say that Iraq is more like Yugoslavia in the 1990’s than it is Germany or Japan in the 1940’s. Germany and Japan had homogeneous populations and first-world economies. Iraq and Yugoslavia, on the other hand, were both multi-ethnic states carved out of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the Second World War. Both comprised populations that were sharply divided along ethnic and religious grounds. And of course, Iraq like Bosnia and Kosovo is Muslim. One major difference between Bosnia and Kosovo, on the one hand, and Iraq on the other, is that the latter is roughly 10 times bigger than either of the former. This means that Iraq’s stabiliza- tion and reconstruction was always likely to require roughly 10 times more men and 10 times more money than was the case in Kosovo or Bosnia. Now, the very scale of the task upon which we have embarked does suggest that broad burden-sharing on the model of the 1990’s would have been more appropriate than the largely unilateral ap- proach taken by the United States to its nation-building experi- ences in the 1940’s. In the 1940’s, after all, the United States produced 50 percent of the world’s wealth; 50 percent of global GDP was made in America. We could afford to bear the burden of German and Japanese recon- struction largely unaided. In fact, there was no real alternative. Ei- ther we did it or nobody was going to do it. But today, and in the 1990’s, the United States represents only about 22 percent of the world’s wealth. This meant that burden-sharing and broad partici- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 14 pation became both more feasible and, for the American taxpayer, more essential. As a result, through the last decade, the United States and its allies grappled with the need, on the one hand, to preserve adequate unity of command in these kinds of operations because that is important, while on the other hand maximizing participation, recognizing that other countries would participate significantly only to the extent they were given a voice in the man- agement of the enterprise commensurate with their participation. In Somalia and Haiti, we experimented with a chronological divi- sion of labor. The U.S. led a largely U.S.-funded, U.S.-manned coa- lition for the first 6 months, and then we turned it over to the UN after 6 months. That worked very poorly in Somalia. It worked a little better in Haiti. In Bosnia and Kosovo, we looked at a dif- ferent division of labor. It was functional rather than chronological. It was a division of labor, where NATO, under American leader- ship, managed the military tasks while either an ad hoc coalition in Bosnia or the UN in Kosovo managed the civil tasks. It does seem to me that the Bosnian and Kosovo experiences can serve as useful models in considering how to organize the inter- national role in Iraq. In both cases, the military tasks were orga- nized by NATO. They integrated a number of non-NATO nations, as well as NATO allies. In Bosnia, the United States contributed 22 percent of the total in troops and money. In Kosovo, we got that down to 16 percent and yet were able to exercise adequate leader- ship and strong unity of command. On the civil side, there are two models. One would be the model that Brian has already alluded to of a UN administrator, but the alternative model in Bosnia is an administrator that genuinely rep- resents a coalition, not the UN, but a coalition of countries that are contributing to the achievement of the mission. That also, I think, is a viable model for Iraq. Whatever the specific institutional arrangements that emerge from the current negotiations in New York, the United States will, in any case, have to take the lead in integrating the efforts and contributions of other nations. On the civil side, this is pre- eminently a job for the State Department, assisted by Treasury, AID, Justice, and others. But State is going to have a difficult time coordinating the participation of others in an exercise in which it bears little direct responsibility. Now, looked at solely from an internal U.S. perspective, one can make a good case for either State or DoD having the lead in civil reconstruction. State has the expertise. DoD has the resources. And unity of command is important, and the military role at this phase is the dominant role. Within Iraq itself, this distinction makes little practical dif- ference. General Sanchez and Ambassador Bremer both report up separate command chains. Neither of them works for the other. In Washington, the appointment of a single lead agency does fix responsibility, but it also tends to disincentivize the other agencies whose participation is important. And whatever the virtues of the current arrangement inside the Washington beltway, the centralization of civil responsibilities under DoD does present an obstacle to broader multinational par- ticipation. However the United States chooses to organize itself, VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 15 other nations are going to continue to assign civil responsibilities to civil agencies, and those civil agencies will expect to be able to collaborate with their American homologues. Now, Iraq is not the last time that the United States is going to find itself leading a multinational effort to rebuild a shattered na- tion. Failed states in ungoverned territories represent fundamental challenges to the international system, as we discovered on Sep- tember 11th, and there are all too many of them around the world. Over the past decade, the United States has made a very signifi- cant investment in the combat efficiency of its forces. We have seen, as the result of that, how we can, from one combat to the next, from the first Gulf War to Kosovo to the second Gulf War, do more with less, defeat larger, more capable adversaries with smaller forces, with lower casualties more quickly. There has been no comparable increase in the capacity of the U.S. armed forces or of the U.S. civil agencies to manage the post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization missions. And the reason for this, in my judg- ment, is there has been no commensurate investment in their capa- bility to do so. In the last decade, there was a gradual learning curve. We never got good, but we did get better. Haiti was better managed than So- malia. It would be hard not to be. Bosnia was better managed than Haiti; Kosovo was better managed than Bosnia. There was a mod- est learning curve which has not been sustained into the current decade. If agencies are to make investments to improve their capacity to conduct post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization, they need, first of all, a clear sense of their future responsibilities. In the 1990’s, in the aftermath of the Somalia debacle, the U.S. military’s role in nation-building was probably excessively circumscribed. It was too narrow. For instance, tasks that might have better been done by DoD, like training the Bosnian and Croatian armies, were left to the State Department. In the current decade, we seemed to have moved in the opposite direction in which civil responsibilities that DoD has not exercised since 1952 were transferred to it en masse a few weeks before the beginning of the current conflict, which at a minimum imposed huge additional start-up costs to an already complex, difficult exercise. If we are going to do this better in the future, what we need is a playbook that everybody has bought into, the Congress, the ad- ministration, Democrats and Republicans. In my view what is needed is a comprehensive and definitive description of each agen- cy’s responsibilities in such circumstances, laid out in legislation that enjoys bipartisan support and is the result of close collabora- tion between the executive and legislative branches. Just as the Goldwater/Nichols Act and preceding legislation provides the institutional framework for which America prepares for and conducts its wars, so a similarly enduring arrangement should be established for the conduct of post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization. I also would suggest that there could be some streamlining and reform on the legislative side. At present, reconstruction funding tends to take many forms: development assistance, economic secu- rity assistance, peacekeeping funds, humanitarian assistance, ref- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 16 ugee and migration assistance, foreign military assistance, human rights assistance, et cetera. Each funding source comes with dif- ferent mandates and restrictions. Each is allocated to and con- trolled by different elements of the administration’s bureaucracy. Each has different constituencies and different oversight arrange- ments in the Congress. No coordinator, no matter how exalted his title, can exercise adequate control over these disparate funding sources and ensure that they are tailored to the needs of the mo- ment. I know, having tried to do so in Somalia, in Haiti, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and finally in Afghanistan, and it was only in the Bal- kans where Congress had already consolidated most of our inter- national assistance to that region into a single account that it be- came possible for the coordinator to actually match resources with policy in cooperation with the relevant committees and, in par- ticular, with the staff of this committee. In sum, I recommend that Congress and the administration work to regularize and institutionalize the manner in which the United States handles its post-conflict responsibilities, allocating roles among the agencies in a manner most likely to endure from one ad- ministration to the next and from one party to the next. With those kind of long-term expectations, one can expect investments to be made in personnel, in capabilities, so that the relevant agencies will bring to the next contingency the capabilities and the require- ments which will be needed in those circumstances. As I have suggested, Iraq is the sixth major American-led nation- building mission in the last decade. We should be getting better, but we are not. Iraq is the biggest nation-building challenge the United States has faced at least since the 1940’s, but it will not be the last. We should, therefore, begin now working to avoid the im- mense and largely unnecessary start-up costs that our lack of fore- sight, planning, and investment have imposed on the current and previous operations. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Ambassador Dobbins follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR JAMES DOBBINS Chairman Lugar and members of committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today on the next steps in Iraq’s reconstruction. If there is any lesson to be learned from our ‘‘post-conflict’’ involvement in Iraq to date, it is that we have failed to adequately learn the lessons from previous such experiences. This is not to say that the lessons are undiscovered, obscure or in dis- pute. On the contrary, nearly all who have studied or experienced previous such cases agree on the salient lessons to be drawn. But we have not institutionalized that knowledge; we have not integrated it into our doctrine, our training, and our planning for future operations. Neither have we regarded people with experience in this field as a national asset, to be retained, rewarded for good service, trained fur- ther and placed in positions from which they can be made available the next time such skills are called for. In its early months, the U.S.-led stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq has not gone as smoothly as might have been expected, given the abundant, recent, and rel- evant U.S. experience. This is, after all, the sixth major nation-building enterprise the United States has mounted in the past decade and the fifth such in a Muslim nation. In these previous cases the United States and its allies have faced many similar challenges. In Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Afghanistan we also saw the col- lapse of central state authority. In each of those instances, local police, courts, penal services, and militaries were damaged, disrupted, disbanded, or discredited and con- sequently unavailable to fill the post-conflict security gap. In Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan extremist elements emerged to fill the resultant vacuum VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 17 of power. In all of these cases organized crime linked to political extremists became a major challenge to the occupying authority. In Bosnia and Kosovo, U.S.-led sta- bilization forces ultimately proved adequate to surmount these challenges. In Soma- lia, Afghanistan and Iraq, they did not or have not yet. Nation-building has been a controversial mission over the past decade. The inten- sity of our domestic debate has inhibited agencies from making the investments that would be needed to do these tasks better. Institutional resistance in departments of State and Defense, neither of which regards nation-building among their core missions, has also been an obstacle. As a result, successive administrations have treated each new mission as if it were the first and, more importantly, as if it were the last. Each time we have sent out new people to face old problems, and seen them make old mistakes. Each time we have dissipated accumulated expertise after an operation has been concluded, failing to study the lessons and integrate the re- sults in our doctrine, training and future planning, or to retain and make use of the experienced personnel in ways that ensure their availability for the next mission when it arrives. This endless and repeated improvisation reflects a view that nation-building is an aberration, a mission unlikely to be repeated. Yet, in the 1990’s, the Clinton admin- istration conducted a major nation-building intervention, on the average, every two years. The current administration, despite a strong disinclination to engage U.S. armed forces in such activities, has felt compelled by circumstances to launch two major nation-building enterprises within 18 months. It should now be clear that na- tion-building, whatever our preferences, is and is likely to remain an inescapable responsibility for the world’s only superpower. The first task before us must be to organize our own and international efforts in Iraq to the best effect. But it is not too early to look beyond Iraq, and to begin to put in place institutional arrangements within the U.S. government that will better equip us to handle such responsibilities the next time the need arises. Both the German and Japanese occupations and the more recent nation-building experience of the 1990’s have lessons to teach applicable to Iraq. But Iraq today is more like Yugoslavia in the 1990’s than Germany or Japan in the 1940’s. Germany and Japan had homogeneous populations and first world economies. Iraq and Yugo- slavia are or were multiethnic states with second world economies carved out of the Ottoman empire in the aftermath of WWI. Both comprise populations sharply di- vided along ethnic and religious lines. And of course Iraq, like Bosnia and Kosovo, is Moslem. One major difference between Bosnia and Kosovo, on the one hand, and Iraq, on the other, is that the latter is roughly ten times bigger than either of the former. This means that Iraq’s stabilization and reconstruction is likely to require roughly ten times more money and manpower than either of the earlier cases. The very scale of the task upon which we have embarked suggests that broad burden sharing, on the model of the 1990’s, would be more appropriate than the largely unilateral ap- proach taken by the United States to its nation-building responsibilities in the 1940’s. In the 1940’s, when the United States took on the democratic transformation of Germany and Japan, our nation produced half the world’s wealth. We could bear the burden of German and Japanese reconstruction largely unaided. Indeed there was no real alternative to our doing so. In the 1990’s, as the demand for nation- building again rose, the United States produced only 22% of global GDP. Burden sharing in such enterprises became both feasible, and, for the American taxpayer, essential. Throughout the last decade we grappled, therefore, with the need to pre- serve adequate unity of command while assuring the broadest possible participation, recognizing that other countries would participate only to the extent that they were given a voice in the management of the enterprise commensurate with their con- tribution. In Somalia and Haiti we experimented with a chronological division of labor, one in which the U.S. led the first relatively brief phase, and then passed responsibility to the UN. This worked poorly in Somalia, somewhat better in Haiti. But Haiti was a benign environment. In Bosnia and Kosovo we developed a functional rather than chronological division of labor, in which NATO, operating under a UN mandate, took on the military roles while either an ad hoc coalition, in Bosnia, or the UN itself, in Kosovo, took on the civil tasks of reconstruction and stabilization. The Bosnian and Kosovo experiences can serve as useful models in considering how to organize an expanded international presence in Iraq today. Under both mod- els, the military tasks were undertaken by a coalition of the willing operating under a UN mandate. NATO offered a ready-made instrument for managing those coali- tion operations. Having proved itself in Bosnia and Kosovo, NATO is now taking on the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 18 On the civil side, the Bosnian model, if applied to Iraq, would yield a coalition of the willing, again with a UN mandate, but managed outside the UN framework. Under such an arrangement Ambassador Bremer or his successor would be respon- sible not simply to Washington, but to a broader group of donors, who would staff and pay for the civil aspects of Iraq’s reconstruction. Under the Kosovo model the UN would assume these responsibilities. Under either arrangement, management positions would be allocated according to the size of each nation’s contribution, which is to say that leadership would effectively remain with the United States as long as it was the largest troop and money contributor. Whatever specific institutional arrangements emerge from the current negotia- tions in New York, the United States will need to take the lead in integrating the efforts and contributions of other countries. On the civil side, this is preeminently a job for the State Department, assisted by Treasury, AID, Justice and others. State will have difficulty coordinating the participation of others in an enterprise for which it bears little direct responsibility. Looked at solely from an internal USG perspective; one can make good cases for either State or DoD leadership of civil reconstruction. State has the expertise, DoD the resources. Unity of effort in such operations is important. Within Iraq itself, this distinction makes little practical difference. General Sanchez and Ambassador Bremer both report up separate command chains, and nei- ther works for the other. In Washington the appointment of a single lead agency fixes responsibility, but also tends to disincentivize other agencies. Whatever the virtues of the current arrangement inside the Washington beltway, however, the centralization of civil responsibilities under DoD presents an obstacle to broader multinational participation and true burden sharing. Other nations will continue to assign responsibility for civil tasks to their civil agencies, and will wish to collaborate with their accustomed partners on the U.S. side. Iraq is not the last time the United States will find itself leading a multinational effort to rebuild a shattered nation. Failed states and ungoverned territories rep- resent fundamental challenges to the international system no matter how distant, inaccessible or impoverished they may be, as we discovered so tragically on Sep- tember 11, 2001. Even as we work to get our efforts in Iraq on a better track we need to consider how to handle the next such operation more successfully. Over the past decade, the United States has made major investments in the com- bat efficiency of its forces. The return on investment has been evident in the dra- matic improvement in war fighting demonstrated from Desert Storm to the Kosovo air campaign to Operation Iraqi Freedom. There has been no comparable increase in the capacity of U.S. armed forces or of U.S. civilian agencies to conduct post com- bat stabilization and reconstruction operations. Throughout the 1990s, the manage- ment of each major mission showed some limited advance over its predecessor. In the current decade, even this modestly improved learning curve has not been sus- tained. The Afghan mission can certainly be considered an improvement over Soma- lia but cannot yet be assessed as being more successful than Haiti. It is too early to evaluate the success of the post-conflict mission in Iraq, but its first few months do not raise it above those in Bosnia and Kosovo at a similar stage. If agencies are to make the investments necessary to improve their capacity to conduct post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization missions, they will need, first of all, a clear sense of their future responsibilities. In the 1990’s, in the aftermath of the Somali debacle, the U.S. military’s role in nation-building was excessively cir- cumscribed. The State Department was sometimes called upon to manage tasks bet- ter left to the Defense Department—training the Bosnian and Croatian armies for instance. More recently we seem to have moved to the opposite extreme, with the Department of Defense assuming responsibilities for a wide range of essentially civil tasks. Whatever the virtues of this arrangement, the choice, in the weeks leading up to the recent conflict, to assign to DoD a broad range of responsibilities that it had not exercised since 1952 certainly imposed significant additional start-up costs upon an already challenging enterprise. There are proposals circulating to create new positions or institutions to handle nation-building responsibilities in the future. In my own view what is needed above all is a comprehensive and definitive description of each agency’s responsibilities in such circumstances, laid out in legislation that enjoys bipartisan support, and is the result of close collaboration between the Executive and Legislative branches. Just as the Goldwater/Nichols Act and preceding legislation provides the institutional framework through which America prepares for and conducts its wars, so a simi- larly enduring arrangement should be established for the conduct of post-conflict re- construction and stabilization missions. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 19 There is also room for reform on the Legislative side. At present reconstruction funding takes many forms—development assistance (DA), economic security assist- ance (ESF), peacekeeping funds (PKO), humanitarian assistance, refugee and migra- tion assistance, foreign military assistance (FMF), democratization and human rights assistance etc. Each funding source comes with different mandates and re- strictions, each is allocated to and controlled by different elements of the bureauc- racy, each has different constituencies and different oversight arrangements in the Congress. No coordinator however exalted his title and plenipotentiary his powers can exercise effective control over the manner in which these funds are allocated and spent. I know, having tried to do so Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and finally Afghanistan. Only in the Balkans, where Congress had combined most forms of as- sistance into a single account were we able, with the active and constructive partici- pation of this committee’s staff, to consistently match resources and policy. I thus recommend that the Congress and the administration work to regularize and institutionalize the manner in which the United States handles its post-conflict responsibilities, allocating roles among agencies an a manner likely to endure from one administration to the next and mandating those agencies to create a body of learned lessons, to develop accepted doctrine and to establish standing capabilities. With responsibilities clearly allocated among agencies, and with recognition that these agencies will likely have to meet those responsibilities soon and often, long- term investment will become feasible. Such investment should focus upon the selec- tion, retention, training and career management of personnel willing to serve in such situations, the objective being to create a cadre of individuals available to ful- fill these missions when the need arises and a set of standard operating procedures to guide them in so doing. As I have noted, Iraq is the sixth major American led nation-building mission in the last decade. We should be getting better at this, but we are not. Iraq is the big- gest nation-building challenge the United States has faced, at least since the late 1940’s, but it will not be the last. We should, therefore, begin working now to avoid the immense and largely unnecessary start-up costs that our lack of foresight, plan- ning and investment have imposed on the current and previous operations. The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Ambassador Dob- bins. Your remarkable experiences with these nation-building ef- forts, as well as your continuing scholarship, really make you a most timely witness, and we are delighted you could be with us today, and we look forward to asking questions of you. Dr. Hamre, you have already been mentioned favorably by at least two Senators, and I suspect the rest of us would share in that commendation. We very much look forward to your testimony today. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN J. HAMRE, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTER- NATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, D.C. Dr. HAMRE. Chairman Lugar and Senator Biden, all distin- guished Senators, thank you for inviting me back. It really is an honor to be here. This is such a crucial time. The national consensus to carry on with the responsibilities we assumed when we went to war is start- ing to break down. If it collapses with the lack of a clear plan on what we are going to do, we will have created a nightmare for ourselves. What you are doing—what you, the committee, you, the chair- man—is hammering out in a forging process through a major de- bate the kind of consensus we are going to need to carry us through. This is going to be a very difficult problem, and we will not succeed if you do not have these hearings. So let me thank you, as a citizen, for holding these hearings for the country. We will not have a consensus unless you create the debate, and so I thank you for that. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 20 When we returned from Iraq this summer, we said that it was our view that the window for success was closing. I think there is still a chance to win in Iraq. I am not sure that the chances are high if we stay with the current strategy. Probably you have heard, I think, both of my colleagues speak to that today. We are going to have to contemplate some changes. We are making more progress on the ground than you would see looking at the press reports. I think we are making progress on the ground. But frankly, the bad guys are making progress too. The Saddam loyalists are becoming more skilled in their attacks, and the jihadists are becoming more numerous in their presence. These are trends that are going to continue, and the current strategy of trying to do it with American-led military forces is probably not going to work. We are going to have to do two things: broadly indigenize the re- construction effort in Iraq and internationalize in a much more broad-based way than we have to date. I think there is progress on the indigenization, although let me highlight something I learned just the other day. We have been re- cruiting policemen to serve on the beat. We need that seriously. In the United States Army, when you train recruits, you take 17 new recruits and you will have 1 drill instructor. When you get through basic training and you go to advanced individual training, there will be 50 recruits and 1 instructor. In Iraq today, the average right now is 1 trainer for 200 policemen. We do not have enough resources going into what has to be the lead strategy for success. We have got to put more resources into the training of com- petencies on the ground for the security operation. This has to be a bigger effort on our part. As I said in other venues, we are spend- ing $48 billion a year to occupy a country that only has a $30 bil- lion gross domestic product. Clearly, our current formula is not working. We have got to find a way to get Iraqis more involved, and that means to train them. I believe that is, frankly, a lead mis- sion that we could share with the international community, genu- inely share with the international community, not simply assign them roles, but genuinely share with them. The rest of the world, frankly, does a very good job with policing, and we could use their help very much in this endeavor. The President has sent to you a budget request of $87 billion. I used to be the Comptroller for the Defense Department, and I know how you put estimates like this together. They are fairly crude. My experience was that I could always gain your acknowl- edgement and support if I was very transparent about how I devel- oped the estimate, with the facts that I had I could count on and the assumptions I had to make to develop estimates for that which I did not know. I think that we have not had as transparent and interactive a process with the Congress as we are going to need to get your support. I strongly support the request for the appropriation, but the depth of support is not going to be present if we do not have a full transparent accounting for how we developed the estimate. You need to be able to go back to your constituents to explain why it is we are spending this amount of money and what we are going to get from it, and I do not think we have had that level of detail VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 21 yet that is able to support you in making the decision you are going to have to make. We have to appropriate these funds. We cannot avoid it. If we do not fund the civilian reconstruction, we are going to be there longer, or it will collapse precipitously, and it will be far more dangerous. So I plead with my friends in the DoD. Come and share every- thing you know and what you do not know; share the assumptions that you have had to make to develop your request. I believe the Congress will work with DoD. You always did with me. I know you will work with the administration if they were very open about how they came to the conclusions. I think that becomes important. This raises the question that Brian and Jim have raised, and that is, do we have the organization right here in Washington for the reconstruction? I understand the President’s desire to get a di- rect and single chain of command and line of accountability. That strategy would work if the Department, my beloved Defense De- partment, were adequately collaborative in working with others. It does not have the competencies it needs to do all of the tasks at hand. Unfortunately, the patterns of collaboration have broken down. There is not the level of cooperation and trust that is needed to reach across the Government to pull together everyone. We all have to be sitting in the same direction with our hands on the oars, everybody pulling in the same direction, to get the boat to move forward. And we are spending too much time battling each other with our oars. We have got to find a solution to that. Otherwise, if we cannot fix the collaboration problem, then I think the Presi- dent needs to reconsider how he has chosen to align the respon- sibilities for the reconstruction. This is a clear case. Finally, let me say—and I will end—I strongly agree with what Brother Dobbins has said here today. While we are preoccupied with the current problems in Iraq—and we have got to fix them— we should use this opportunity to design a better system for the Government, so that we do not have this problem over and over and over again. We continue to have these post-conflict problems because we have not created the competencies or resourced them adequately in the Government to handle this on an ongoing basis. There are bills in front of you that propose changes. Whether they emerge in this form or not later on is not the issue. You will create a better bill by debating it. But we have got to start creating better competencies in the administration. We needed it when I was there. We need it now. Thank you for the privilege of being here, and I would be de- lighted, of course, to answer any questions. [The prepared statement of Dr. Hamre follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN J. HAMRE Chairman Lugar, Senator Biden, distinguished members of the committee on For- eign Relations, it is an honor to be able to testify before you today on the issue of next steps in Iraq. This is a critical hearing. There must be ‘‘next steps’’ for Iraq. America is now a Middle East power. We cannot forsake our responsibilities or avoid our obligations. We must succeed in rebuilding Iraq in order to help create a government that is representative of its people, at peace with its neighbors, and offers a future of hope and promise for its citizens. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 22 CSIS Post-Conflict Assessment Trip to Iraq This past July, I was privileged to be able to testify before this committee after my colleagues and I returned from our assessment trip to Iraq on behalf of Sec- retary Rumsfeld. We returned with two broad suggestions—we need to dramatically ‘‘indigenize’’ the security program in Iraq and we need to expand the international base of support for the operation. At that time, we indicated that the Coalition Pro- visional Authority was rapidly running out of money and would soon need supple- mental funds. We also stated that the security situation in Iraq remained problem- atic and, without dramatic improvements, the remainder of the rebuilding effort would be substantially impeded. In the 10 weeks since we visited Iraq, I believe there have been some security improvements in areas that do not get coverage in the American media, especially in the northern and southern portions of the country. We receive reports from friends and acquaintances in Iraq that attest to this, despite the attacks on our forces. Even with these advances, the country is still far from having a secure envi- ronment. Just last week the major pipeline from the oil fields north to Turkey was attacked yet again. Assaults on our troops have become more sophisticated and dar- ing. The economic plundering of the country continues. We continue to believe that the highest priority for enhancing security should rest with expanding the role of Iraqi security personnel. The administration has launched new efforts to recruit security personnel, as contract security officers for specific installations, as policemen, and, increasingly, as border guards. These ac- tions are a step in the right direction, even more so because it does not appear, at this point, that there will be significant contributions of foreign military per- sonnel. We have to continue to build the Iraqi’s own capacity to bring security to the country. President’s Request for Supplemental Funds for Iraq President Bush has requested that Congress appropriate an additional $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that there is a great deal of controversy associated with this request. Nonetheless, Mr. Chairman, it is critical that the Congress appro- priate these funds. As I said at the outset, for better or worse, America is now a Middle East power. We now own this problem. We cannot walk away from it; rather we must now shoul- der it. The American people need to know that this investment is necessary, that the plans are well conceived, and the budget meets critical unmet needs. Here I be- lieve the administration has not followed through adequately. To date, there has not been a satisfactory accounting of how funds are being spent or how these additional funds are being planned for. I used to be the Comptroller at the Defense Department and I know full well that we live in a world of estimates. The best, planned estimate will always be wrong. I know this from first hand expe- rience. But I also know, from the same experience, that the sharpest critic would accept estimates so long as I offered a complete accounting of the facts upon which I based them and the assumptions I had to make to get there. Congress will accept estimates so long as they understand how they are made and if they can conclude that they are reasonable. I have full confidence in the current DoD Comptroller, Dr. Dov Zakheim. I have worked with him for years, and I know he is a thoroughly honest man. Unfortu- nately, over the past two years, a general level of distrust has developed between the administration and the Congress on budget matters and on defense issues. The lack of trust is limiting the development of an enduring consensus to the long-term challenges we face. Therefore, I strongly encourage the Defense Department to provide as complete and comprehensive an assessment as possible of the costs that they are incurring and are forecast to incur during the coming year on its Iraq operation. This as- sessment will enable the Congress to become more directly engaged in supporting the administration’s efforts to help bring security to the region and ultimately to America. Assigning Responsibility for Next Steps in Iraq I continue to believe that we have too narrow an institutional base to support the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. I think it was an excellent idea for Ambassador Bremer to establish a liaison office here in Washington, headed up by Mr. Ruben Jeffries. But, I also believe Mr. Jeffries has too few people to support him and too little authority. In general, the efforts to enlist a wider base of support in the fed- eral government for the reconstruction effort remain insufficient. This raises the question whether or not the federal responsibilities for rebuilding Iraq should be assigned exclusively to the Defense Department. I understand and VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 23 appreciate Secretary Rumsfeld’s view that the Defense Department would over- whelmingly field the assets required for reconstruction, and therefore the Depart- ment should have complete authority to undertake the task. In theory I agree with this point. But, in practice it has not worked. The patterns of cooperation inside the government broke down during the past year. DoD now has to manage tasks for which it has no background or competence, and it has not been effective in inviting the support of others in the government who have that background and competence. Either DoD needs a new approach for collaboration with others, or the President needs to change the assignment of responsibilities. The challenge of rebuilding Iraq is enormous and our ability to be effective in this effort is being eroded by the bu- reaucratic struggles here in Washington. Conclusion Mr. Chairman, Senator Biden, distinguished Senators, we must succeed in our task to rebuild Iraq. This isn’t a matter of America’s credibility. This is a question of our security. We will be substantially less secure as a nation if we fail. We have made important progress during the past four months. The task of rebuilding Iraq is challenging, but it is not hopeless. We have the capacity to succeed, and I join you in offering my full efforts to make this possible. Thank you. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have at the ap- propriate time. The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much once again, Dr. Hamre. The chair would suggest that we try for 10 minutes for each Sen- ator on the first round. Other Senators may join us during the course of that time, and perhaps we will want a second round if our witnesses are able to stay with us. I would like to begin the questioning by saying at the outset all of us, in one form or another, have indicated that we have to pull together. As you have pointed out, Dr. Hamre, our organization for nation-building is deficient. I think Ambassador Dobbins pointed out that we have been on a modest learning curve as to the experi- ences that he was describing. Yet some of that momentum has been lost in the process. This is too detailed a thing for us to work out together in the question and answer period, but I would just say at the outset I have encouraged the President in a face-to-face conversation to think through how our Government is organized, how we should try to organize it. It is a tough thing to do in the middle of a crisis. Yet, at the same time, it is important to get at least the rudiments, the pulling together, the inter-agency cooperation, even while we try to identify these resources that we are talking about, sometimes in the form now of very talented reservists who come from other walks of life. I saw—and perhaps you have—some of these talented reservists in Baghdad when Senator Biden and Senator Hagel and I were there. But they are going to be gone in 3 months. In other words, we just simply are not really prepared, and we have to be. Having said that, we have now come to the point of the request by the President. Jerry Bremer will be before us tomorrow, and we will ask him about it directly. But he has been quoted as saying $50 billion to $100 billion is needed for reconstruction. Others have refined that more to say $75 billion. So Senators have been asking each of us, okay, if that is the case, why do we hear about $20 bil- lion or $21 billion? Is this a 1-year project, 2 years, 3 years, and so forth? Some answers seem to be that we are really talking about at least maybe 3 years of time and that the blanks between the $21 billion we are putting in and $25 billion this year and then X dol- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 24 lars next year are going to be filled in by the pledging conferences, our allies, some new UN focus, and what have you. Skeptics say that it is very unlikely that the pledging conference in October, without enormous pressure by the United States, may yield very much, even this year, quite apart from next year or the year after. Therefore, another supplemental of comparable form may very well arise next year and the next year. At that point, some Senators and our constituents say, now, hold on here. We are trying to get the job done. This is a big figure, $87 billion even after you subtract the $64 billion or what have you for our military component, and get down to the reconstruction. How much do we need, and where does it come from? I would ask you, first of all, for your opinion on the adequacy of the sums and the sources. Furthermore, two other questions arise almost simultaneously with this. If this sort of a sum is required, why not set up Iraq, Incorporated or pseudo-sovereign Iraq, so that Iraq can borrow from the IMF, from the World Bank, from a con- sortium of banks and so forth? After all, are there not these ex- traordinary underground resources of oil that seem to go on poten- tially forever? The oil could be clearly strong collateral. If in fact the country is to be reconstructed, why don’t Iraqis pay for it? However, the rebuttal to this quickly comes from some who say, well, first of all, you have to understand that Iraq owes a lot of money to countries. How much? We do not know. Some suggest $65 billion. It gets to $100 billion. Some bid $200 billion. There are all kinds of claims coming in from various countries as to what the former regime owed. And there is a moratorium, at least for an- other year and 3 months I guess, in terms of repayment or people really exercising their claims. But who will be responsible? The United States or the UN? Who will reconcile this debt to begin to work it down to 0 so that there is some hope that this money com- ing in, maybe $75 billion, is not totally overwhelmed by inter- national claims. How do we work out the international cooperation? In other words, if a consortium of international groups are involved—to name four, say, France, Russia, Germany, Kuwait maybe—and they all are involved in the business plan, can we take for granted that they will abstain from directing funds back to those who are owed money in their countries? Who protects Iraq in this situation, even while we are internationalizing the responsibility and trying to make this thing work? These are the complex questions that we would like for you to muse over. There are no definitive answers, but they are important answers; because in the event that we are left doing it all by our- selves, we—the United States—make the judgments. One way or the other, we pay the money. As you are pointing out, there are some problems with this in terms of perhaps too much of an Amer- ican presence and antagonism toward us even while we are trying to do good. Senator Biden and I were just musing here about Iraqi members of the Governing Council running around New York. I saw a couple of them at the UN yesterday, which might suggest that Iraq might become sovereign right away. The UN might recognize them as if they have any of this money, reconstruction ability, and what have VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 25 you, but seriously entertaining this idea of them as Iraqi leadership commensurate with other leaders in the world. So help us in any way you can in your responses. I call on you, Dr. Atwood, first of all, because you started our discussion this afternoon. Dean ATWOOD. Mr. Hamre said good. [Laughter.] Dean ATWOOD. Those are tough questions, Senator, but they are the right questions. I would answer it this way. Not knowing a lot of the detail, I have seen the description of what the administration has asked for only in abbreviated form. I have not seen the plan. But it seems to me that that $20 billion is for two purposes. One, it is urgently required for infrastructure. There has to be some movement on the ground in this regard so that some hope can be generated among the Iraqi people. The second part of it is obvi- ously for leverage. We really do want to go to that donor conference with something in hand, and when the United States does not come to the table with sufficient resources, other countries will not come forward. I do think there are reasons why other countries will be reluctant, which is why I made such a strong pitch for making some concessions as to how we control the civilian transition. The other thing the United States has to do at this juncture is go to other nations to whom Iraq owes money and ask them to for- give the debt. There is a good deal owed, for example, to Saudia Arabia. I should think that we should go to these countries now, France and some of the European countries as well, and try to get them to forgive this debt and clean the books because Iraq should not be responsible for Saddam’s debt. The same is true of the multilateral organizations. There are about $52 million owed to the World Bank and some similar amount to the IMF, and we need to clear the books there. That is going to be much more difficult because it is difficult to get other nations’ consent on that, but if we must try to get this kind of a clearing of the books for Iraq so that when it does have access to its oil resources, it can start to invest those in the country and di- versify its economy. This, after all, was a command economy. It is going to need the same kind of transformation that we have seen in other places like Bosnia and the former communist world. So it is going to be very difficult for them to start and get to the point where they can generate wealth on their own. So they do not need to carry debt forward. Obviously, there is a good deal of attention being paid to any ac- tion the United States takes with respect to the oil. So there is going to be a great deal of nervousness if we begin to talk about using oil for collateral in the future. I am just not sure what the politics of that are at this juncture. It seems to me that we should be putting more emphasis on leveraging other donors’ resources and clearing the debt. The CHAIRMAN. Ambassador Dobbins. Ambassador DOBBINS. Well, very briefly, I think the amount that the administration has requested is not out of line with the amount that was devoted to previous operations which we assigned an ex- tremely high priority, Bosnia, for instance. Based on the Bosnia analogy, our own analysis suggested that Iraq might require up to VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 26 $16 billion in reconstruction assistance a year for the first several years. So this is within that ball park. The big difference between Bosnia and this, of course, is first of all, Iraq is 10 times bigger, and second, we are going to be funding probably 90-some percent of the total assistance rather than 20- some percent. So in the end, it is going to cost us 40 times more, and I suspect if you go back and look at what the Congress appro- priated for Bosnia in the first year or 2 and multiply it times 40, you will get something close to what the administration’s request is. So I think that it is a request that is commensurate with the real need and, unfortunately, with the real likelihood that other do- nors will come up with resources in the short term. And in the short term is what matters here. So I do support this. In terms of lending, Iraq is not heavily indebted to the inter- national financial institutions, and therefore, once they are pre- pared to lend, it should not be a big obstacle. In Haiti’s case, for instance, we and other donors simply paid off their arrears using our own assistance funds so that they would be paid up in the World Bank and others, and then those institutions were able to make loans far larger than what we had paid. And if we paid the $52 million to the World Bank, if that is what the number is, we could probably get several billion as a result, provided the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the EBRD, et cetera are pre- pared to lend, and they are probably not going to be prepared to lend until there is a sovereign Iraq or until the international com- munity is prepared by consensus to make an exception. And that is what is going to be required. Given Iraq’s huge overhang of existing debt, it is going to be hard for it to get commercial credit or governmental credit, and it is going to be hard for us to argue that they should pay our debts but nobody else’s. So direct lending is going to be difficult I imagine. They could securitize their oil not by borrowing, but by actually selling it on an advance market. The problem is, of course, that that money is desperately needed just to buy food and medicine and other things for the population and is not going to be in a posi- tion to be drawn upon for investment for some considerable period. The CHAIRMAN. My time is up. I will put a fine point on what you said, Ambassador Dobbins. I suppose in this particular case, the United States would have to try to clear up not only the inter- national debt with the agencies, (that is, IMF or World Bank) but likewise the rest of the debt. Ambassador DOBBINS. No, I do not think that is feasible. The CHAIRMAN. You do not think that is feasible. In order to get Iraq up to the table where they could conceivably borrow money. Ambassador DOBBINS. The international financial institutions will be willing to lend once there is an Iraqi government to lend to and it has cleared up its very small existing debts to them. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Biden. Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much. I have three or four points I want to get through, so to the extent you can answer me quickly, I would appreciate it. Jim, you talk about the learning curve, that we have not seemed to learn from our experiences. For a while there, it looked like we were learning. It seemed to me that through the last administra- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 27 tion we learned. We did it marginally better every place we did it. If you go from Bosnia to Kosovo, there was a learning curve. You were there. We actually moved. And this is a question you may not want to answer, but my im- pression is not so much of climbing a learning curve but of hitting an ideological wall. Half this administration knows the learning curve. Half this administration proposed doing a number of the things that you have already suggested and you said we have learned. The other half that seemed to have gotten the President’s ear has just said no. They are stuck in the same spot that they were. The same ones who are not the nation builders, the same ones who thought this was a very bad idea, and the same ones who have basically, it seems to me, set out a set of assumptions of what would happen after we went in and took down Saddam. The as- sumptions turned out not to be correct. There is no plan B. So how much of this is the failure to understand versus the fail- ure to be willing to concede an ideological point? I guess what I am trying to say is it is little bit like me as a practicing Catholic being forced deny the Trinity. The neo-conservatives are very bright guys in this administration, serious people. For them to acknowledge that their assumptions are wrong seems to me to be something that is unreasonable almost to ask them to do. They are not going to do it. And what is plan B? Or is it just that they do not know? Is it just that people are sitting there going, gosh, I really do not know what to do here from the experience? Dr. Hamre pointed out—the three of us went to that police acad- emy. The guys running the police academy are guys that I have known, you have worked with, Jim, in Kosovo, worked with in Bos- nia. They know the learning curve. They sat there and told us. They told us what they needed. They told us what the money would be. They told us if they had all the resources they wanted available to them, it was going to take them at least 12 months to 3 years before they got to the point where they had a prison system that functioned, got to a point where they had a functioning police agency in the city, let alone the country. And everybody knew it, but nothing happened. So we end up, Doctor, with 1 to 200 when they said they need 5,800 European-trained police officers imme- diately. We put out a little report saying before they went in they needed this. So it does not seem to me to be a learning curve. It seems to me to be—and I am not being a wise guy here—an ideological view of what in fact is the way things should proceed and, when they do not, an unwillingness to go to another plan. Am I missing some- thing here? Ambassador DOBBINS. I think it is a bit of both. Clearly this ad- ministration would rather look for its models in the 1940’s than the 1990’s because they did not want to draw on what they considered a failed record of the last administration. And certainly there were failures, but as you said and as I have said, we never got good, but we did get better and there were lessons to have been learned. But there is also an institutional problem. Neither State nor De- fense ever regarded nation-building as part of its core competency, and they never invested in it. The State Department’s idea of insti- tutionalizing the lessons was simply to keep appointing me every VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 28 time, and eventually that is going to play out. And there was no- body sort of in the wings to take over who had been trained and recruited for it. Senator BIDEN. A valid point, one that the chairman has been making for 8 months here, not about you, but about the need, insti- tutionally, to alter how we look at this. The second point: I agree with much of what you said, Brian, but with all due respect, all your suggestions are too late. I am not being a smart guy when I say that. The idea that going in and get- ting the police force, all the things you said are things we have been saying here for 6 months. Now to get to that point, it seems to me, is incredibly difficult, which leads me to my third point here and a question. I am perplexed as to why we cannot not only win the military battle, which we so clearly won at the front end of this under- taking, but also win what I think is a diplomatic war going on. I think the French are deliberately being obstreperous. I think part of their foreign policy is to demonstrate that the superpower is crippled, the superpower cannot do this. I think there is a piece of that that is real in terms of the French effort, notwithstanding their criticism that sometimes is correct about us. Why do we not go to the French and say, look, no problem? We are ready to work out—one of you said that what we need here is a strategically understood plan. No one has laid out a strategically understood plan for the rest of the world, let alone the American people, as to what it is. Why do we not go to the French and to the Germans and say, okay, we are ready to look at it your way, but we want to make sure? Are you prepared immediately to for- give all the debt that is owed you? Are you prepared to sign that on right now? Are you prepared to do that? Why are we not willing to move? The chairman always raises very practical but profound ques- tions. Who is going to lend money to a government that is not a government that is recognized by anybody, particularly the Iraqi people? Who is going to lend money to that entity that is under the control of the United States? And if they are not going to do it under either of those two circumstances, there has got to be a third way here. You have got to transfer this entity somehow, some way, in some form, at some time in the nearer term, rather than in the longer term, to the United Nations or to an international umbrella organization that gives sanction to this new government or this new transitional government. Which leads me to this: The only failure in Afghanistan, in my view, is we have not followed through. We have not followed through. But what we did do is the international community went out with our leadership and came up with a guy named Karzai, came up with a mechanism by which we would transition power to that government and put it in place. Why is that model vis-a-vis the international community not a model that is appropriate for Iraq? Is that not the way to get the international community to sanction, take some partial responsibility for? And still the UN model has always been, Brian, whoever is pay- ing the biggest chunk of the tab, whoever is providing the biggest chunk of the forces gets to be in command. That is the way it has VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 29 always worked. I do not see anybody rushing up to say—I mean, we could not give the French command. If we said to the French, you are in charge of the military, they would not take it. When Sergio de Mello was alive, we met with him in Jordan. I said, Serge, what happens if we were tomorrow to say to the UN, it is yours? He said, we would not take it. We would not take it. So there is sort of a straw man out there. The straw man out there is that somehow the UN wants to grab this power, everybody is ready to take over and call the shots, yet there is no possibility of that. Conversely, the UN sets up a straw man, acting like they want more control, they want more say; they have an ability to point out where they disagreed with us, and imply that if only we turned it over to them, they would work this out. Why do we not we just say, okay, we will work this out with you? We will give you our strategic plan. The United States says we are going to have elections within 9 months to 12 months after a con- stitution is written. We set a deadline for the council to draw up a commission, who is going to be on that constitutional commission within 60 days. They have to have the constitution drawn up with- in the next 6 months, a first draft. There will be elections mon- itored by or run by the United Nations somewhere between 10 and 14 months down the road. Do we not need something concrete like that? Jim, you have been through all this. You have watched this play out other places. I mean, do we not need to be able to do that both to box the French a little bit, as well as force the hand of the United Nations? Be- cause, with all due respect, Brian, they ain’t ready to run in and do anything in terms of dollars. They have the capacity, but no one is knocking down the door to get to Iraq, including the United Na- tions right now. But everybody seems strategically settled in their political position that allows everybody to basically do nothing and us hold the bag. That is a little bit of a diatribe. I would like you to respond to it. Dean ATWOOD. Well, since I made the recommendation, I will ini- tially talk about it. But I think this is part of the negotiations. We have to have a strategic plan, and I have not seen the plan that has been released yesterday here, but that might be a start. But it seems to me that there is also something symbolic that is stopping us from getting the consensus we need on the Security Council and that is our apparent unwillingness to yield full control of the operation. I am suggesting that if the UN put a non-Amer- ican in charge of the civilian operation, for example, we would still be the predominant force behind that representative. Now, Jim worked with Lakhdar Brahimi. I did on the peace oper- ations panel. We have worked with him in Haiti and other places. There are certain individuals within the UN system—or you could choose someone from outside the UN system—that would be per- fectly competent. We worked with Carl Bildt in Bosnia who was a high representative of the coalition that was there. There are mod- els that can be used which do not require the United States to be in the lead. So I think the combination of having a strategic plan and basi- cally engaging other countries on that basis and being willing to VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 30 step aside a bit to make it work. The most important thing afterall is that it does work in the end. Senator BIDEN. Anybody else? Ambassador DOBBINS. I think it is going to be hard to retrieve the international situation at this stage because the dialogue has so clearly broken down between those who supported the conflict and those who were most active in opposing it. I do think that what is missing, above all, is the private dialogue which leads to a consensus, which leads not to an American plan but to a common plan put forward. After all, we did not have an American plan for Bosnia. We did not have an American plan for Kosovo. We had a NATO plan which was a genuine compromise among the principal NATO members that was worked out in small, quiet groups of the French, the British, the Germans, the Italians, and us, hammering this out over months so that when we came forward publicly, we were doing so on the basis of a deeply under- stood commonality of approach. And that is going to be difficult to construct. I think the United States should take the principal position that we are prepared to provide others a voice in the management of the enterprise commensurate with their contribution; the larger the contribution, the greater the voice. That means that if the civil as- pects of this are to be multinationalized, it means that the civil ad- ministrator has to respond not to a single capital but to a group of capitals, paying attention to them based on how much they are contributing. If they are contributing 5 percent, they get 5 percent of his attention. If we are contributing 90 percent, that is where he gets 90 percent of his guidance. But the principle is that he does not have one boss. He has got as many bosses as people who are contributing. On the military side, I do think NATO offers a ready-made vehi- cle for combining American leadership with true multilateral par- ticipation. Dr. HAMRE. Sir, just very quickly. When I used to be the Comp- troller and we would blow it on a cost estimate, we would always say, good estimate, bad actuals. I think that what we have here is the administration is basically saying the plan is good. It is just we have had flaws in its execution. I think the plan probably is flawed, and we are going to have to go back and ask do we need a different approach? That is a debate, frankly, that is going to come from the interaction between you and the executive branch. My fear is the support of the American public is wearing pretty thin on thinking that this plan is going to work. How long they are going to be willing to tolerate you appropriating $78 billion every year is an open question in my mind. I do not think we can afford to fail and then just pull out. That will not work. So we clearly need a new plan. Senator BIDEN. The irony is a guy like me—and I suspect others up here—who fundamentally if not totally disagreed with the ad- ministration’s post-Iraq plan, is supporting them getting the money and getting blamed by the American people. Understand, I am not whining about this. I am a big boy. But the irony is that supporting them now, which we have to in my view—we have to support this effort now—is turning out to be a gigantic political liability, which VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 31 goes with the territory. But I wish they would make it a little bit easier to make this thing work. Anyway, thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Biden. Senator Hagel. Senator HAGEL. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Gentlemen, thank you for spending some time with us. You are all experienced, dedicated public servants who continue to con- tribute to our country and the world, and we appreciate it. Your testimony I found, each of the three of you, was on the mark, excel- lent. All actually contributed to a better understanding of what I happen to believe we need to be looking at in order to move forward. We cannot fail. There is no other option here. We have to be suc- cessful in Iraq, Afghanistan. We have to get back on top of the Mid- dle East peace process. They are all, in my opinion, connected, and we need to take a wider lens view of this as we proceed. Your testi- mony, the three of you, has been very helpful. If we could continue along the same line of questioning that Sen- ator Biden was engaged in. What do the three of you think is real- istic at the donors conference, obviously in terms of dollars? Then I would be interested in your thoughts on force structure. What is realistic? As Senator Biden said, we talk in great theories and ideas and plans, but what do you believe is possible here? Because it seems to me we, the United States, are going to have to come to a new sense of reality. I think the administration is get- ting there. I think the realities are now in play, and that has forced the administration to do some things that I suspect 3 months ago they did not have in their playbook. I cannot answer for that. That is my assessment of it. But as this thing defines itself in more un- controllable ways over in Iraq and we lose more time, then it is going to become more and more apparent that, as the three of you have suggested in different ways, we are going to have to alter some course here and change maybe not direction, certainly strate- gies, tactics, some dynamic of who is in charge and how much deci- sion-making consideration are we willing to share. What I have always found about that issue a bit ironic and strange is in fact if we wish to internationalize, if we wish to enlist the support of our allies and our friends, which we now are ac- knowledging publicly that we need in order to succeed, then why in the world are we still at least appearing to carry the burden our- selves? The administration in my opinion has not come to grips with that or at least articulated that in a way that is clear to the American public. It gets back to the transparency issues, John, that you talk about, and I think you are exactly right. But for this question, what is realistic to come from that donors conference? We will start with you, Dr. Atwood. Good to see you again, Brian. Dean ATWOOD. Likewise. I would say today I would be very pessimistic. I agree with Jim. I think it is going to be very difficult to get international engage- ment, and I am not sure that we have enough time. If in fact we made the concessions I recommended and we really looked like we were sincere in wanting to internationalize this, then I think we VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 32 would really need time to work in these capitals to get them to come up with the resources necessary. We bring $20 billion to the table. Normally the United States does 25 percent of what is pledged at a conference. That is about what is expected of us. But $20 billion is a lot to bring to the table, and I cannot imagine that we would, at this juncture—given the attitudes in the international community—be able to come up with even that much in additional funds at a donor conference now. I am not giving up on it. I do think we should make a major ef- fort and see if we can overcome some of the problems we have with our allies in Europe and in other parts of the world. I am pretty pessimistic. Senator HAGEL. Thank you. Ambassador Dobbins? Ambassador DOBBINS. Well, on the donors conference, I have seen press reports suggesting the administration does not expect more than, say, $1 billion in resources from other countries over the next year, and that seems to me to be realistic based on the current situation. It is going to be very difficult to give other coun- tries a real feeling that they have a stake in this enterprise be- tween now and October. No matter how forthcoming the adminis- tration is over the next few weeks, it is going to take longer than that I expect. The pledges will be multi-year pledges, not just 1-year pledges. So the numbers will look higher and probably will be higher, maybe $5 billion or even $10 billion, but that will be over a 5-year period. In terms of comparing it to the bill before you and the $87 billion or the $20.3 billion, the comparable figure is likely to be, I would guess, about $1 billion. And one of the reasons is that in any of these donors conferences, the big pledges come from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, others, and they are not going to be pledging this time around, which is a significant obstacle. On forces, there has been a debate in Washington in which ev- erybody is agreed we need more, but they cannot agree on what we need more of. So neo-con editorialists have been arguing we need more American troops, and neo-liberals have been arguing we need more allied troops, and the Pentagon has been arguing we need more Iraqi forces. I have to say I think they are probably all right. The dimensions of this problem probably are going to require great- er efforts on the part of all. On the other hand, I do respect General Abizaid’s view that this operation is already too Americanized and that itself is becoming an obstacle in terms of winning the support of the Iraqi people. So because of that, while I certainly would not take off the table the possibility that we might actually need to put more American troops in, I would say that our priorities ought to be more inter- national forces and moving more rapidly to put Iraqis on the street. But we have to be careful not to just give friendly Iraqis guns and send them out on the street because they may be friendly to us, but they are not going to be friendly to each other, and we are going to end up with a bunch of communal or ethnic or religious militias which in the long term are going to make keeping the country together more difficult. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 33 So it is a difficult problem. We desperately need more police there. In Kosovo, we had 5,000 armed international police with ar- rest authority and weapons. As far as I know, we do not have a single one yet in Iraq, and we really need to move more quickly in those areas as well. Senator HAGEL. Thank you. Dr. Hamre, welcome. Dr. HAMRE. Thank you, sir. The administration is going to ask for $20 billion. They are hop- ing to get $10 billion, and they will be lucky to get $5 billion. Senator HAGEL. That is your top estimate. Dr. HAMRE. That is my guess. Senator HAGEL. What is your thought on force structure? I thought Ambassador Dobbins laid it out pretty well. Do you dis- agree with what he said, or do you think there is a different direc- tion? Dr. HAMRE. No, sir. I agree. We are only dealing with one of the three security problems in Iraq right now. We are dealing with the Saddam loyalists I think fairly well. I do not think we are dealing with general criminality in the streets. When an Iraqi family has to pass through our checkpoint, that security does not go back with them to their home. So they do not feel safe in their home. And we do not have the policing that really goes into the neighborhood. So frankly what little security they feel now is vigilante security. Senator HAGEL. May I ask a specific question on force structure? Turkish troops, other Muslim Arab nation troops? Helpful? De- pends on where you put them? What is, the three of you, your quick assessment on that question? Dr. HAMRE. My personal view. The best way to use Turkish troops would be to secure the border from the Turkish side of the border so that we can stop the movement of black market smug- gling going back and forth and people. I think if you are going to use Turkish troops inside Turkey, you have to be pretty careful on where you put them and how you use them and supervise them. But I think that we can clearly ask for a stronger border control. Senator HAGEL. Thank you. Dr. Atwood? Dean ATWOOD. Turkey has its own national interests that may not, in this case, comport with ours. They are highly controversial in the Kurdish areas in the north, obviously. I agree with Dr. Hamre. I would not want them there. Senator HAGEL. Ambassador Dobbins? Ambassador DOBBINS. The necessity of using Turkish troops as part of the security force is a sign of our true desperation because in principle it is a bad idea to involve any of the neighboring states in securing a country of this sort. As to more Arab or Muslim forces, yes, to a degree. But you know, countries do not like to be occupied, and they particularly do not like to be occupied by people who look like them. If you are going to be occupied, you want to be occupied by someone who comes from a long way away, who is very rich, so he does not have an incentive to loot or rip your country off. You do not feel as hu- miliated by being occupied by someone who does not look like you, who clearly is richer and from a different technological status than VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 34 you do by people who look just like you, who are from the same economic status, and against whom you have always measured yourself. That tends to be more humiliating. So as a rule, countries would rather be occupied by distant, different types. Now, the fact that language and religion would be similar would suggest that having some Egyptian, Moroccan, Malaysian, Indo- nesian troops would certainly make sense, and I would certainly encourage it, but I do not think you should look at it as the core of the force. I think the core of the force has to be a U.S.-West Eu- ropean core, that is, countries that can do two things: that can themselves, with their own resources, deploy and sustain a signifi- cant expeditionary force; and second, countries that also have large aid budgets so that when they take over a sector, they put in the judges and the administrators and the technical advisors and the money so their sector is a success. And there are only about half a dozen countries that can do that, and if they are not on our side, we are going to have a difficult time prevailing. Senator HAGEL. Thank you, all three of you. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Hagel. Let me mention for the information of all Senators that the lead- ership on the floor, bipartisan, is trying to arrange stacked votes on the Interior bill to begin about 4:45. So at least for 45 minutes, it appears that we have clear sailing. We have three Senators who have questions. We will proceed with the thought that we may need to bring the hearing to a conclusion within an hour, but for the moment, why, we have an opportunity to continue our ques- tioning. I call upon Senator Nelson for his questions. I am sorry. Senator Feingold. Senator FEINGOLD. Senator Nelson, thank you, and, Mr. Chair- man, thank you. Let me first say we always say thank you so much for holding the hearing, but I want you to know how sincerely I feel that. I really believe what was said about the role of this committee. Had it been followed by those who were planning this Iraq operation, things would have gone very differently, and I want to particularly credit the three top members of the other party who serve on this committee, the three top ranking members, Senator Lugar, Senator Hagel, and Senator Chafee, who along with some of us—perhaps I should repeat what I was saying. That microphone was not work- ing. Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize how important this commit- tee’s work has been with regard to trying to get this Iraq situation right. It began when one party was in charge and had the majority, but it continued I think without missing a beat when the other party took over. I give you, Mr. Chairman, and the ranking mem- ber a lot of credit, but in particular, the three ranking Republicans, the chairman and, as I indicated, Senator Hagel and Senator Chafee. I have been able to tell my constituents that the questions that I have been raising and that others have been raising about how well this was planned were not Democrats’ questions or Repub- licans’ questions, but were questions that we all tried to raise con- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 35 sistently starting at the very end of July of 2002 and straight through to today. This is a quiet room today, but I really believe the kind of testi- mony we are hearing from these gentlemen can do more to help us get through this very difficult situation than just about anything else. So I thank you for this, and I think as the information from these hearings gets back to the American people, it can at least give them some assurance that the right questions continue to be asked and that some people are trying to provide good answers. So thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Senator Feingold follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR RUSSELL FEINGOLD I thank Chairman Lugar and Senator Biden for holding this important hearing, and I thank all of the witnesses for being here today. Today the American people are being asked to go an additional $87 billion into debt, primarily to finance U.S. activities in Iraq. These activities have been ex- plained with a wide array of shifting justifications, while U.S. troops on the ground continue to be saddled with a massive reconstruction job in the midst of ongoing guerrilla-style attacks on them and on Iraqis associated with transition authorities. The very least that we can do to meet our responsibilities to the American people is to make every effort to ensure that our efforts are organized effectively and trans- parently and that they attract rather than alienate other potential donors. I want a bright future for the people of Iraq. I also want a bright future for the American men and women serving in Iraq today, and for the next generation of Americans, who will be called upon to pay off our massive debts. The stakes are very high, and after listening to my constituents, including many of Wisconsin’s military families, I do not believe that we can take it on faith that we are on the right track today. I look forward to today’s testimony, and to the additional hearings scheduled for tomorrow. Senator FEINGOLD. Let me ask a question of all of you. I have just a few comments. I want to quote from some remarks that re- tired General Anthony Zinni delivered to the Marine Corps Asso- ciation at the Naval Institute’s Forum earlier this month. He talked about the challenge of trying to win the war now that we are confronted with disorder in Iraq, and he talked about our troops who are currently holding the bag, so to speak, when it comes to this monumental task. He said, . . . You have to build an economy, restructure the in- frastructure, build the political system, and there is some poor lieutenant colonel, colonel, brigadier general down there stuck in some province with all that saddled onto him with NGO’s and political wanna-be’s running around with factions and a culture he doesn’t understand. Does it make sense to hold the U.S. military responsible for get- ting these jobs done? And what steps can the United States take over the long term to ensure that the lion’s share of this important burden does not fall on the shoulders of our men and women in uniform? Let us start with Mr. Atwood. Dean ATWOOD. Well, I agree with General Zinni. There are roles at all of the agencies that play a part in these things have to play. In this case, our military is still engaged in combat operations. They obviously ought to be also engaged in peacekeeping oper- ations, but to the extent they can be supported by other military VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 36 forces in a UN force, they may be free then to conduct the oper- ations they have to conduct in the Suni Triangle. But it really is important for there to be a team effort here, and in the cases that Jim Dobbins is familiar with, and I have worked on, we have always had good coordination with the military. They are very important, when they feel that they can, in building roads. Their Corps of Engineers in these situations can be a very impor- tant part of the reconstruction effort. But it really is, it seems to me, unfair to ask them to do things that they are really not equipped to do. But then that leads to the other problem we have as a Government, and that is that the international affairs budgets do not enable State and AID to do all that is necessary to do on the ground in a situation like this. So you turn to the military to be doing things that civilians ought to be doing. In this case, I think there is an opportunity to transfer some of those resources to the agencies that have the capability and to un- burden our military so they can do what they are supposed to do. Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you, sir. Mr. Dobbins. Ambassador DOBBINS. Well, I think one of the reasons that that lieutenant colonel is out there having to handle these political and economic responsibilities is that the State Department and the other civil elements of the Government have not been able to mobi- lize and deploy personnel and resources quickly enough to respond to the situation. And I think Bremer’s operation continues to be understaffed. He continues to have difficulty recruiting and retain- ing top-flight people, and I think there are several reasons for that. One is, as I have suggested, anytime you assign one agency the lead, you tend to disincentivize the others, and I am not sure that is the best way of organizing ourselves. The second is, as Brian has suggested, that State has been under-resourced for a decade or more and the result, it simply does not have the reserves to surge. There is no surge capacity in the State Department. There are no people waiting around for a crisis. To send people to Iraq, you have to stop them doing something that they are doing that also has some priority. And third, as I have suggested, the State Department has not made the investments to develop the capacity so that it would have people pre-identified with this kind of experience who had, from their previous experience, recognized this was a career-enhancing experience, that if they went there, it would lead to promotion and advancement in the service. In fact, the record is quite the con- trary, that you are not in the mainstream, you are shunted aside, and you are not likely to profit from it. So naturally there are few real adventurers, people willing to take the risk either out of a na- tional commitment or a sense of adventure, but people who have their own career prospects in line would really rather go to Paris or London or even some less advantageous place just to do main- line State Department work. So if this does not become mainline State Department work, you are going to have a hard time getting people to do it consistently. Senator FEINGOLD. Dr. Hamre? Dr. HAMRE. Sir, when I was over in Iraq, our team went around to nine different cities outside of Baghdad and met with a lot of the VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 37 military. They have done a very good job of getting a local town council up and running. Some of these guys said, ‘‘I have never even been to a town council meeting. I do not know what they are like, but we made one.’’ But every one of them said the same thing to us. They said, ‘‘I do not know what to do now. I desperately need the CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority, out here.’’ One of our recommendations to the Secretary was take the CPA infrastructure from Baghdad and put it out into the 18 provinces. We desperately need to get the CPA into the field. That really has not happened. I think there are only three field offices. And the military want CPA field representatives. The military is not fighting to keep the civilians out. Quite the reverse. They des- perately want to have them in. We talked to a soldier who said the farmers were showing up with wheat and saying, ‘‘Here is where we always brought the wheat before. Somebody bought it from us.’’ He asked us what he should do; he had never had this experience. He told us he desperately needed somebody to help him. And this is coming from our officers. They have done a wonderful job, but they are the first ones to say they are at the edge of what they can do. I think Ambassador Bremer still has a request for 300 staff per- sonnel that has not been filled yet, and that is just for the head- quarters. He needs structure in the field. We thought he needed be- tween 20 and 30 people in each of the field offices. Now, if you have 18, that is still only 500 people. We ought to be able to figure out how to get that, and until we do, it is too much of a military oper- ation, and the military does not have the competencies—and they will be the first to say it—to do the tasks they have got. So we have got to tackle what you just raised. Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you. You referred to transparency in another context. Let me ask you about the degree of transparency with which the CPA spends reconstruction funds today in Iraq. How transparent is that spending, Doctor, to the Iraqi people, to the Iraqi Governing Council, to other countries that could potentially become donors? And what can we do to improve that transparency? Dr. HAMRE. Sir, when I was over there, I spent a lot of time per- sonally on the budget. I used to be the Comptroller, and frankly, most of the people who were there used to work for me, and so we had quite open discussions. I was impressed that they had a rel- atively good, rudimentary, but relatively good budgeting and pro- gramming process. It was relatively simple, but it was a method of categorizing the different potential ways to spend money, assigning values, positive and negative values, to those proposals, evaluating the operational constraints, and then a tradeoff process. So it was pretty good. We did not have a very good process for communicating that out- side of the headquarters, frankly, and I think in general, we have not done as good a job as we have to in public communication. Sad- dam used to shut of the electricity anytime he was mad at a com- munity. Well, now when the electricity goes out, they think we are punishing them. We are not telling them some jackass just blew up your transformer. That is why it went out. And we have got to com- municate what is going on and we have not done that. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 38 We certainly have not done it to explain to them, here is how much money you have got, here is how much is coming in, and here is how we plan on spending it for you. I honestly believe they are very disciplined about only spending Iraqi money for the benefit of Iraqis, enormously disciplined. I was really impressed by that. But we certainly have not explained it in any adequate way. I was only there in July, and I think since that time, the Governing Council has been formed. They may, indeed, have a much better process that I am not familiar with. But in general, we have to do a much better job of explaining what we are doing in Iraq. Senator FEINGOLD. I thank the witnesses, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator. Let me follow on Senator Feingold’s questioning about the setup of the nation-building group. I am, I suppose, really in a quandary as to really how we start doing this. This is difficult to do as a con- gressional project. In other words, it suggests that we ought to have a new agency of Government, and maybe we do not want an agency. Maybe, as you suggested, there are personnel in various groups that we have now who need to talk to each other, who need to be coordinated by the National Security Council or the President or whoever does this sort of thing. This is a difficult part of this. We keep making these suggestions for reorganizing for something that we really have not wanted to do as a Nation very badly in the past, as all of you have pointed out, but now we find that we really need to do. Furthermore, are we to put greater reliance upon the State De- partment and let us say that there is better cooperation between Defense and State? In other hearings we have complimented Sec- retary Powell on starting up the Foreign Service exam again, for example, so that young Americans have a chance to come into this. For 3 years in the last decade, we did not have an exam for various years. It is like having no 2nd lieutenants in the Army for a whole year. But in terms of our diplomacy, we have been downsizing in terms of money and people. So suddenly we have some problems even if we were to determine who ought to do what, who has the skills, how they are to be found, and what kind of experiences they have. We have gone through hearings on hardship cases and the fact that a lot of hardship posts do not attract senior people. We have junior people there, and they are doing a great job, but they are not exactly fitting the idealized mold of what everyone thinks ought to be on the firing line of that which is very dangerous. In other words, what we are coming into is sort a host of defi- ciencies. It is bipartisan because it covers several administrations. Nothing necessarily happened on a particular individual’s watch, but there we are now with this stressful situation. I am just simply curious. Each one of you is taking a look at our Government from outside of it. You have all been intimately in- volved in the past, maybe you will be again in the future for that matter. How do you go about doing this, even as we have these hypotheticals today of what we need to do, if our country really is to be equipped for national foreign policy, security policy, the com- bination of the two, given the interdependency in the world, and VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 39 how close we are, and how vulnerable these new circumstances are? Dean ATWOOD. I will start by introducing the fact that John Hamre and General Gordon Sullivan have chaired a commission on these issues, and I have served on that commission, and I think there are a lot of excellent recommendations. So I am going to pass the ball to John to comment on this, but I will say one thing: When I first got to AID, there was so much criticism coming from my de- partment at the time—I was the Under Secretary of State at the time—that AID just could not move very quickly on anything. I felt it was necessary for us to create a capacity to move, and the Office of Transitions Initiatives was the result. Now, we started with $20 million in that budget. It is up to $50 million, and I think they borrow and beg and steal from other parts of the Government. It is a crucial part of Ambassador Bremer’s op- eration right now on the ground in Iraq. They can move very quick- ly. They have managed to look at all of the different things that one needs to do to reconcile differences within a society, whether it is community-based work or whether it is starting up a radio sta- tion that is contributing to reconciliation within a society, whether it is putting human rights monitors on the ground. They have done a whole variety of things that one needs to do to fill this gap be- tween humanitarian relief, which I think is a well-run operation within AID, and eventually getting to a development stage within a country. But we have some very specific recommendations in this commis- sion as to how the U.S. Government ought to organize. Then I think that we really do need to think a lot about how the U.S. Gov- ernment interfaces with both the UN and with other donors in these situations as well. The CHAIRMAN. Would you name the title of the report and where it can be found? Dr. HAMRE. Yes, I surely will. It was a blue ribbon commission that the Association of the U.S. Army and CSIS jointly hosted. I will send you copies. I will have them up here this afternoon. I would ask maybe you could put it in the record because the rec- ommendations inside are designed to help improve our com- petencies where they exist today. [The report referred to by Dr. Hamre appears in the appendix to this hearing on page 69.] May I offer a few that even go beyond that? The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Dr. HAMRE. Again, they are just my personal views but they are the kind of ideas I think we need to entertain. First, I think Jim said it very well. There is no mobilization ca- pacity in the Foreign Service. We frankly have starved the Foreign Service fairly heavily during the last really 15 years. What quali- tatively makes the Defense Department different and why we get asked to do things all the time is we can be different tomorrow than today. We can mobilize people. We can get out in the field and do things. There is not enough depth inside the State Department to be able to do exceptional things. You know, you work everybody VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 40 overtime, but that is not adequate. So, first of all, you need more money and more people. Second, there is not a lessons-learned process in non-DoD agen- cies. In the military, we have a very disciplined lessons-learned process. J–7 is in charge of it. Every time we have an exercise, we systematically go through at every level to determine what worked, what did not work. It is just as important to find out why it did not work. What we tend to do in the civilian agencies is when we get done with something, people move on. We need to learn from that past and collect that knowledge and then train that knowl- edge. We do not do that systematically on an interagency basis. So we need to do that. We need a training and simulation capability, an interagency simulation capability. The reason we do simulation in the military is for several reasons. One is try out our war plans, obviously, to train capacity to spontaneously adapt to circumstances you had not foreseen, and most important, to develop a vocabulary of terms and concepts that you can use in real-world circumstances that you have experienced in a simulation before. Right now, when NGO’s, the international civil servants, the military, and the State Department all get together, they do not talk the same language. When the military uses the word ‘‘doc- trine,’’ it scares the hell out of the NGO’s. ‘‘Operating procedure’’ probably is not such a frightening term. If we can work on simula- tions, we can develop a vocabulary we can share with each other and actually test our ideas first. I think we should be doing some- thing like that. In the military, when congress enacted the Goldwater/Nichols Act, it was such a profound change in the quality of the military. If there was one single thing that Goldwater-Nichols changed more than anything, it was when it stipulated that you cannot become a general officer until you have had an assignment in another serv- ice. It is called the joint duty assignment. Maybe we ought to have a requirement that stipulates that you cannot be an SES in either the State Department or in the Defense Department until you have had a joint duty assignment as a GS–15 in the other Department. I am not saying I have got a well thought-out plan here, but it is an idea worth pursuing. If you really want to say you are not going to become an ambas- sador, you are not going to become an SES, you are not going to become a flag officer unless you have had joint duty in another agency, these people will not always be the enemy every time you sit down at the interagency table planning something. They are going to be your allies trying to figure out how to do it together. So we should think of that. We need money. I do not know how many times Brian was up here pleading for funds to get something going or to get his small coffers restored after having done something. It was just unending. We have got to get more resources for other agencies. Now, there are tools. We have budget authority. We have credit authority. We have got contract authority. Maybe we could be granting contract authority to people like AID so they can enter into contracts, know- ing that a supplemental appropriation is going to come in 6 months to honor those contracts. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 41 There are things we could be doing in this area. We have got to make changes across the board. We have got lots of things we can do and should be doing to develop more of the institutional capacity to do this well when we confront it. I would be happy to send you a list of the things that we have been proposing and the commis- sion has recommended. The CHAIRMAN. I would be pleased if you would. My guess is that at some point obviously the administration must want to do some of this reorganization, but we will probably need some statutory authority. And maybe we will have to have a dialogue between the administration and the Congress to stimulate this given the crisis we have. This is a big stimulus for the moment because we really have to be successful not only in Iraq but in Afghanistan, of course, as we have talked about. We pray not too many other places for the time being. Ambassador DOBBINS. Mr. Chairman, could I just respond to the question? I think there are certain principles that should underlie an approach to trying to structure the U.S. Government’s post-con- flict stabilization and reconstruction efforts, and I would suggest the following. First is that you should look to the agencies that have the exper- tise and have the capabilities as your first source of those capabili- ties and expertise. So the Justice Department should be training police. The Treasury Department should be organizing finance min- istries. So the principles should be where is the expertise likely to be available and it is going to mostly be in State and AID on the civil side, but it should include those other agencies. Secondly, the line of command and communication in the country concerned should be that that has been tried and tested, that is sanctioned in existing legislation, and which says that all military personnel respond through the local commander to the theater commander to the Secretary of Defense, and all civilian personnel respond through the local Ambassador to the Secretary of State, and that responsibility for coordination among agencies in this sit- uation properly rests where it always does, in the White House in the National Security Council—that is why those institutions exist—rather than trying to find some single agency that has over- arching responsibility for functions that it has no competency to perform. Thirdly, as I have suggested, I think there needs to be a single source of funding for the civil aspects of reconstruction, that is, a single appropriation upon which those executing these missions can draw, and a single line of accountability between an official, prob- ably an official in the State Department, and the relevant commit- tees for accountability on that funding. It strikes me that based on those principles, which are all tried and tested, really, over the last 50 years, one should be able to de- vise a system which should transcend administrations and changes of party and which would then lead to agencies being able to make investments in the knowledge that they are going to have to fulfill those responsibilities ultimately. Obviously, they are going to then be needed to give adequate resources to fill those. But the main message has to be that they are going to have to do this soon, they VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 42 are going to have to do it often, and they are going to be evaluated on the basis of whether they are doing it. And then when you get their budget submissions, you can look at those budget submissions and say, have you planned adequately for this range of responsibilities? Where in your budget is the budg- eting to create the surge capability so that when the need comes, you are going to be able to meet them? Finally, with respect to the immediate needs in Iraq, in Vietnam the State Department assigned people to Vietnam whether they wanted to go or not. I mean, it was simply an assignment that one could either leave the service or take. And it may be necessary to do something approaching that in Iraq if you are going to gen- erate—you are not going to get 500 volunteers from the Foreign Service, which is only 3,500 people, to go to Iraq. So if that is what you are going to need, officers are going to have to be told, you are not going to be an ambassador or a deputy chief of mission until you have served 6 months in Iraq. So everybody who wants to go to the top, get in line and get on the plane for Iraq. Dean ATWOOD. Mr. Chairman, one further word and that is the word training. I was once the Dean of Professional Studies at the Foreign Service Institute. I would guess today that there are not courses over there now on reconstruction. There was also the peacekeeping school at Carlyle the Army closed at the beginning of this administration. General Sullivan started that up. I think it is superb. We need that kind of interagency training. Our people in the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance worked very closely with the military because we cannot handle every disaster at AID alone, and there is training that goes on all the time. But if you really want to determine whether we are building capacity, you should look at where we are putting our training funds. The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate each of the points that you are mak- ing. They will be a part of the permanent record of this hearing so that others who want to refer to that wisdom can go through that check-off list. But it is an excellent one for us to think of. Just following your point, Ambassador Dobbins, it makes sense, as you say, to go to Treasury for people who have financial exper- tise or to Justice for those involved in setting up a court system or what have you. It would appear that you would probably need to have, to use the term one of you used, sort of a surge capacity. In other words, when the time comes, we would need to get the monies that are required for all of these people. If the Justice De- partment budget is sort of deficient and lean that year or the Treasury likewise, attempting to move those people or others out of that expertise may require some thoughtfulness. I think some of you made the point that one reason why so much reliance has gone to the Department of Defense is that that has been probably the easiest budget to manage. With some of the others, it has been much more parsimonious throughout and has led to some dilemmas that we are discussing today. Let me just switch the subject to something more grim, if that is possible, and that is, what if we are faced in Iraq, we as the United States, but also others if we have others with us, with al- most an intractable situation of suicidal terrorists? Without picking up the example of people operating in Palestine and Israel pre- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 43 cisely, the lament often comes, as we have discussed with Mr. Abbas when he came through not long ago. Our committee met with him and with Prime Minister Sharon, and both were com- menting on the fact that there are people with suicidal tendencies who, regardless of what the road map is or what the interim plan is or so forth, conduct these activities. What if in Iraq we have a residual of people who, despite all of our best efforts at reconstruction, do likewise? Maybe we must get much better at communicating our message. The Iraqi people like us better than they do now and, as a matter of fact, begin to think about democracy themselves. The UN people still have courage and they come. But there still are people bombing the UN headquarters or going after the Iraqis who want to serve. My experience in interviewing Iraqis who were out at the neigh- borhood council was quite positive. I admired them. They were dressed just like we are in suits ready for business. There were some young American advisors who were helpful and very expert, and they almost all were reservists and they were all going home shortly, but nevertheless, they were offering witness there. The point that I asked was, how did you get here? Well, essentially they were sort of self-appointed. They volunteered. There was no elec- tion. There would not have been one there because people did not want to run. Most people were still in denial, in hiding, keeping their heads low, fearing the Ba’athists, if not Saddam himself, would be back after them. So no dancing in the streets, no embrac- ing of liberty. For the moment, liberty is a pretty dangerous thing even to contemplate in a situation like that if you anticipate that you might be annihilated if you began to practice democracy seriously. Are we in a transitional problem or is this a residual problem of the nature of terrorism or the nature of whoever we are dealing with in Iraq? And if so, how does reconstruction work, quite apart from democracy-building or building confidence in anybody over any period of time if this is the case? Do you any of you have any thoughts about this problem? Dr. HAMRE. I have thought a lot about it. I cannot say I have thought well about it. As Americans, we tend to think about suicide bombers—because we are very much an individualistic society. We tend to think about it in terms of kind of the pathologies of depres- sion that exist in the United States. We do not tend to think about suicide bombing as really a collective identity that is nurtured by or could be constrained by the societal context. And I think we have to start thinking about this in quite a different way. I do not think we can stop the willful acts of suicide by people who want to make a political statement. After all, most of the people who chose to fight us as an orga- nized military committed suicide. We were going to win. It was a sense of duty in a context of their life that they chose to oppose us and die. We are going to have to solve suicide terrorism in a similar way, by going to the context of their lives, the societal context. That seems to me to speak to why we have to get Iraqis invested in their future much more quickly than we currently are doing. This cannot be a prolonged period where only when the ‘‘right’’ VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 44 Iraqis are allowed to stand up will we let them have a government. It is going to have to move more quickly than that. The CHAIRMAN. So we might have to make some compromises on the quality of the Iraqi democracy, or there might be some transi- tional form of government. Dr. HAMRE. Yes, and we have models. The model in Hong Kong, it seems to me, is illustrative. That is not a democracy even yet, but it is a representational government, and it is gradually becom- ing more democratic. It is adopting more of the attributes of demo- cratic governance. It certainly is not a democracy in the classic, purist definition, but it is a start in a direction, and it could very well be a model here. But we have got to be moving in that sense, and until we do, we are not going to have the societal framework that disciplines this sort of unacceptable behavior. The CHAIRMAN. That is a good answer. Let me just turn now to Senator Nelson because he has not had an opportunity for his questions, and I recognize him presently. Senator NELSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having such an enlightening hearing, and thank you, gentlemen, for your comments. Over the next 4 to 5 years, it is estimated that $60 billion or $70 billion are going to be needed for reconstruction in Iraq alone. This is what Ambassador Bremer has just told us at lunch today. $20 billion comes off the front end that he wants to come from the United States. So that leaves $40 billion or $50 billion from others, and he also said that they had only, to this point, been able to se- cure commitments of $1.5 billion. Is it realistic that the inter- national community is going to provide, over 4 to 5 years, an addi- tional $40 billion to $50 billion for reconstruction, or is the United States going to have to pony up that money as well on top of the first installment of $20 billion? Dean ATWOOD. Well, today it is not realistic to expect the inter- national community to come forward. I do think we are looking at a situation where there is a good deal of urgency today in getting things started in Iraq, and the hope is that you will get to a point where there is wealth being created within the society not just from oil, but from other factors as well, and the situation stabilizes and maybe in the end you say we overestimated the amount that was necessary. But my guess is that when we look at the situation a year from now, we are going to want to continue whatever mo- mentum we are able to achieve during that year and we will be coming back for more resources. I think it is desperately important for us to make some conces- sions to the international community. The unilateral approach that we have taken makes it very easy for other governments to say, okay, it is your problem, go for it. And I do not think it is all that difficult to make those concessions. It should not be. I mean, I real- ize there are some problems with somehow admitting a mistake here, but there has been some bad judgment shown. I do not think it is really all that difficult to suggest, for example, that we can begin to yield some of this control we now have over the recon- struction process, while staying in the game in a very big way. If VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 45 we do that, I think we might be more successful in getting other countries to come forward. Ambassador DOBBINS. I think in principle one should be able to realize substantial burden-sharing. The United States normally contributes 20 to 25 percent of the total in cases of this sort, allow- ing others, in particular, the European Union, Japan, and the international financial institutions to contribute the rest. And other countries, in particular, Japan and the European Union, have much larger assistance budgets than does the United States. So in principle, the resources should be there. It will mean that they will have to divert those resources from other priority areas, from the Balkans, for instance, for Europe to Iraq in significant measure if we are to achieve large-scale commitments from them. Under current circumstances, they do not feel they have a stake in this exercise on that scale. They tend to operate on the China shop principle: you broke it; you own it. So giving them a stake, making them feel that this is their operation, that they have not only an interest in it, but a voice in its management is not some- thing we are going to be able to do overnight or over the next 30 days, but it is going to take a major revision in the way the admin- istration thinks about and approaches the issue if, over the longer term, we are to turn this into a genuinely multinational enterprise. Senator NELSON. And I am assuming that in order to be success- ful, it is going to have to be a genuinely international enterprise, at least from a window dressing standpoint, so that we do not have an American face as an occupier in a Muslim country. But you are right. It seems like there is going to have to be some kind of different message to the international community, and I would assume that Secretary of State Powell right now, Mr. Chair- man, is earning his pay because he has got a difficult task. I did not hear it in the President’s speech that it made it all that much more easy for Secretary Powell because I did not hear a plea from the President in his speech saying we need to embrace with the international community and have the kind of attitude of reaching out to try to bring them in. What do you think about the President’s speech? Dean ATWOOD. I think there was at least a nod in the direction of the United Nations in a narrow sense. He basically gave a role to the United Nations, suggesting that they be involved in the writ- ing of the constitution. The nod was in the direction of under- standing that this is a much more legitimate approach to creating sovereignty in Iraq. Other than that, I did not see anything to sug- gest that there was any willingness to give up any control over the operation. Senator NELSON. And I am not advocating giving up military control, which is an established principle. Dean ATWOOD. Nor am I. Senator NELSON. Mr. Chairman, it makes it all the more difficult for all of us when we have to explain to our constituencies that it is in the interest of the United States that we stabilize Iraq and when $15 billion of that $20 billion is to build schools and roads and bridges and water systems and so forth that are so desperately needed in our own States and when we are protecting, in essence, by prefunding this, the debt that they have that is owed in large VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 46 part to Saudia Arabia and Kuwait. That even if you understand that most of their oil revenue, even if they get it up to full produc- tion, is going to be taken up by their internal expenses. And yet, you look at what is their tax structure. Their max tax is 15 percent and we have a max tax of 39 percent. How do we explain those in- equities to our constituents? I am asking this rhetorically. You see the struggles that go on that we deal with when, in fact, the interests of the United States are so inextricably entwined with stabilizing Iraq. It makes it very, very difficult. Let me ask you this as a final question. Do you think that we ought to make our appropriation of that $20 billion of the $87 bil- lion going for infrastructure? Or it is really $15 billion because $5 billion of that is training police forces. So do you think we ought to make that $15 billion contingent on the administration coming forth to the Congress with a plan, which the Chairman of this com- mittee has been pleading with the administration ever since last fall to do? Do you think that is workable? Dr. HAMRE. Well, I have been on the receiving end of a lot of mandates for plans when I was at DoD, and I always considered that my failure when that happened. If I had not worked with you well enough so that you knew what the heck I was trying to do be- forehand, I had failed when you had to mandate in law a plan for me to submit back to you. Senator NELSON. That is right. So you are talking about collabo- ration. Dr. HAMRE. It has to be. Senator NELSON. And where has it been? I think you see the frustration of these Senators about the lack of collaboration. Mr. Chairman, I rest my case. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson. Our com- mittee cannot be weary. [Laughter.] The CHAIRMAN. I think that has been the case that we have been critical of some aspects of the planning certainly and of the oper- ation, but only in the sense that we are determined to work with the administration to succeed. This is not an ‘‘author meets the critic’’ session. It is one in which there is a grim business that has to take place. And Senator Nelson is right. There are some political liabilities in serving on this committee, raising questions, having these de- bates, and what have you; but at the same time, it is one that we enjoy because it is important, we believe. And you believe it is im- portant. You, in your service, have exemplified that. So we appreciate very much your coming today. I think the hear- ing has been very helpful to each of us, hopefully to our colleagues who will read the record or have the advantage of that, and to the American people who have watched your testimony with the same interest that we have had. We thank you for coming. The hearing is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 4:43 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 A P P E N D I X Statement Submitted for the Record by Richard N. Haass 1 PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD N. HAASS 2 Mr. Chairman, Thank you for this opportunity to testify before you and your col- leagues on Iraq and in particular on the question of how best at this point to inter- nationalize U.S. policy. Let me begin by citing the case for internationalization, one that I subscribe to. First, and most obviously, internationalization promises burden sharing. Right now, helping Iraq emerge from decades of Saddam’s misrule, war, and the war’s after- math is proving to be costly in terms both human and financial. Getting others to provide troops and police and provide economic resources and expertise is both nec- essary and desirable if we are to help Iraqis stabilize their country in a relatively short period of time. The scale of this effort is and promises to be enormous. There is a corollary to this point, namely, that the military, human, and financial costs of stabilizing Iraq are stretching us. Iraq is important to be sure, but so too are other foreign policy commitments and so, too, is the health of our economy and the welfare of our men and women in uniform. Second, internationalization should make the presence of external forces and indi- viduals more acceptable to Iraqis and their neighbors. I don’t want to exaggerate this point—the recent bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad illustrates that there are those who oppose any foreign presence in Iraq—but greater involvement of others (and a somewhat reduced U.S. profile) should translate into our being wel- come or at least accepted longer than would otherwise be the case. This is certainly the case if we could persuade one or more governments in the Arab or Muslim world to send forces. Third, internationalization has the potential to heal breaches between the United States and many of our traditional friends and allies (and the international commu- nity more broadly) that opened up as a result of the decision to go to war against Iraq. It is important that we not allow differences over Iraq to spill over and under- mine cooperation elsewhere, be it elsewhere in the greater Middle East, in Afghani- stan, or the war on terrorism. The above notwithstanding, I also feel compelled at this point in my statement to note the limits to internationalization and what it can achieve. The moment is gone (if it ever existed) where it is realistic to expect substantial additional inter- national military involvement. My sense is that the mission is widely perceived in most countries as being too dangerous and the politics at home too controversial for governments to dispatch large numbers of forces if they in fact have such forces at their disposal. This is unfortunate, as everyone shares an interest in Iraq’s future success, but it is nonetheless the reality we must deal with. If this judgment is correct, it highlights the need to emphasize the ‘‘Iraqi-ization’’ of the security situation as quickly as can be accomplished. This makes sense on multiple levels, as Iraqis in uniform are most acceptable to their fellow countrymen, they speak the language and know the neighborhoods, they need the jobs. My prin- cipal concern in this regard is that experience elsewhere suggests that fielding and training local police and military units will take more time and resources than is often anticipated. I also believe there is a danger in too much internationalization in the security sphere. We want a UN authorized force, but not a UN force per se. The United States should retain command of forces in Iraq given the demanding security chal- 1 A scheduling conflict prevented Mr. Haass from attending the September 23, 2003 hearing; his prepared statement is included with the permission of the Chairman. 2 Richard N. Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. This statement rep- resents his personal views. The Council takes no institutional position on policy issues. (47) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 48 lenge. Doing this under a UN umbrella (as called for in the new UN Security Coun- cil resolution being circulated in New York) makes the most sense. I would only add two additional points in this regard. First, we should not ask neighboring states to participate inside Iraq in the security sphere. There is too much potential for mischief—or the perception of mischief that could lead to real problems. Second, we should avoid setting any exit dates for such a force. It is im- possible to know in advance how long the mission will take to be completed. Setting artificial deadlines only raises expectations and creates problems down the line if and when expectations and reality do not coincide. Internationalization of the economic dimension of rebuilding Iraq is also desirable and necessary. The scale of the effort is large by any measure—Iraq is quickly be- coming the mother of all reconstructions—and what Iraqis can be expected to fund themselves is likely to be quite limited for a number of years. The upcoming meet- ing in Madrid will be important. Unfortunately, both the controversy surrounding the Iraq war and what might be described as ‘‘donor fatigue’’ is likely to lead to a result in that what is pledged and delivered falls considerably short of what is sought. But whatever chance there exists of getting substantial economic help lies in first reaching political consensus. Passage of a new UN Security Council resolution is a prerequisite. To put it bluntly, governments and organizations will not pay if they are not allowed to play—and by ‘‘play’’ I mean participate meaningfully in the over- all management of the Iraq project. The obvious difficulty arises in determining the details, i.e., How much should the writ of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) be diluted? In principle, dilution or power sharing needs to be done vis-a ́-vis both the international community and with Iraqis. As regards the former, the United States should resist calls to replace the CPA and its leadership with a UN or other international administrator. Observ- ers can and will argue whether this should have been done from the outset, but given where things now stand, too much time would be lost while a new individual and organization got up to speed; necessary Iraqi-ization would only be delayed. In addition, the United States arguably has invested too much and has too much at stake for this to be acceptable. But this does not mean we can or should continue as we have. Setting up some contact or coordinating group in Baghdad, one con- sisting of key contributors, would help. At the end of the day, the quality of the rela- tionships and consultations will matter more than the formal structure or arrange- ments. Greater Iraqi self-governance is desirable, but here, too, we should avoid specific timetables (the political equivalent of exit dates) and simply commit to transferring authority to Iraqis as quickly as can be responsibly and reasonably carried out is not unrealistic to aim for significant self-government by next summer, although ex- perience in Afghanistan and elsewhere suggests that carrying out constitutional de- velopment and elections will take longer than hoped for. We should also not be averse to introducing meaningful amounts of self-rule at the local level before we attempt it nationally. But trying to give Iraqis full control of their country pre- maturely does them and us no favors. Mr. Chairman, I would like to close with one last thought. Nearly everything about the Iraq war has been controversial, and it has strained U.S. relationships with many of the world’s governments and peoples. Regardless of one’s view on the wisdom of the war, we should make a concerted effort to forge a common approach in Iraq given the stake that we all have in its success. But we should also devote time and energy to consultations about how we can all best deal with future Iraqs, that is, other cases where governments with a history of aggression against their own people or their neighbors develop weapons of mass destruction or support ter- rorism. We also need to be better prepared for assisting societies as they emerge from conflicts. As a result, greater consensus is needed for when force can legiti- mately be used and greater capacity is needed for coping with the after effects. In short, some ‘‘preventive internationalization’’ is called for if we are to be better able to cope with challenges characteristic of this era. Thank you. I look forward to your questions. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 49 Additional Material Submitted by Dr. John J. Hamre IRAQ’S POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION: A FIELD REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATIONS July 17, 2003 [PREPARED BY: IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION ASSESSMENT MISSION, JUNE 27–JULY 7, 2003— DR. JOHN HAMRE, FREDERICK BARTON, BATHSHEBA CROKER, DR. JOHANNA MENDELSON-FORMAN, DR. ROBERT ORR.] FOREWORD At the request of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, I led a team of experts in the field of post-conflict reconstruction to Iraq from June 26 to July 7, 2003 to assess the reconstruction efforts there. The other members of my team were Frederick D. Barton, Co-Director of the Post-Conflict Re- construction Project at CSIS; Dr. Robert C. Orr, the Director of the Washington of- fice of the Council on Foreign Relations; Dr. Johanna Mendelson-Forman, a Senior Program Officer at the United Nations Foundation; and Bathsheba N. Crocker, a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow at CSIS. The attached report synthesizes the issues we focused on during our 11 days in Iraq. The team traveled throughout the country, visiting 11 major cities and two ports, including nine of Iraq’s 18 governorates (provinces). We met with over 250 people, including Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) officials and staff, coalition military officers, international organization representatives, non-governmental organization (NGO) staff, bilateral donor representatives, and Iraqis from all walks of life (includ- ing Iraqi political leaders, ministry and local government officials, police officers, professionals, NGO representatives, and ordinary citizens). We saw significant progress everywhere we went, but the enormity of this undertaking cannot be over- stated; there are huge challenges ahead. We hope the recommendations in the at- tached report will assist in shaping a successful reconstruction in Iraq. We are deep- ly committed to that success. We owe everyone involved our deepest thanks. Without the strong support of the Department of Defense, this trip would not have been possible. Ambassador Bremer and the entire CPA team gave us incredible access and support in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. We thank Justin Lemmon, Matthew Fuller, Dennis Sabal, Paul Hughes, Bill Krause, and Ambassador Hume Horan in particular. We extend special thanks to Daniel Werbel-Sanborn, Milan Vais hnav, Caroline Maloney, Lena Hagelstein, and Vinca LaFleur for their invaluable assistance and support. JOHN HAMRE, President, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Rebuilding Iraq is an enormous task. Iraq is a large country with historic divi- sions, exacerbated by a brutal and corrupt regime. The country’s 24 million people and its infrastructure and service delivery mechanisms have suffered decades of se- vere degradation and under-investment. Elements of the old regime engage in a campaign of sabotage and ongoing resistance, greatly magnifying the ‘‘natural’’ chal- lenges of rebuilding Iraq. Given the daunting array of needs and challenges, and the national security imperative for the United States to succeed in this endeavor, the United States needs to be prepared to stay the course in Iraq for several years. The next 12 months will be decisive; the next three months are crucial to turning around the security situation, which is volatile in key parts of the country. All play- ers are watching chsely to see how resolutely the coalition will handle this chal- lenge. The Iraqi population has exceedingly high expectations, and the window for cooperation may close rapidly if they do not see progress on delivering security, basic services, opportunities for broad political involvement, and economic oppor- tunity. The ‘‘hearts and minds’’ of key segments of the Sunni and Shi’a communities are in play and can be won, but only if the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 50 and new Iraqi authorities deliver in ort order. To do so, the CPA will have to dra- matically and expeditiously augment its operational capacity throughout the coun- try, so that civilian-led rebuilding can proceed while there are still significant num- bers of coalition forces in Iraq to provide maximum leverage over those who seek to thwart the process. To succeed, the United States and its allies will need to pursue a strategy over the next twelve months that: recognizes the unique challenges in different parts of the country; consolidates gains in those areas where things are going well; and wins hearts and minds even as it decisively confronts spoilers. Seven major areas need immediate attention. 1. The coalition must establish public safety in all parts of the country. In addi- tion to ongoing efforts, this will involve: reviewing force composition and structure, as well as composite force levels (U.S., coalition, and Iraqi) so as to be able to address the need for increased street-level presence in key con- flictive areas; quickly hiring private security to help stand up and supervise a rapid expansion of the Iraqi Facility Protection Service, thereby freeing thousands of U.S. troops from this duty; ratcheting up efforts to recruit suffi- cient levels of international civilian police through all available channels; and, launching a major initiative to reintegrate ‘‘self-demobilized’’ Iraqi soldiers and local militias. 2. Iraqi ownership of the rebuilding process must be expanded at national, pro- vincial, and local levels. At the national level ensuring success of the newly formed Iraqi Governing Council is crucial. This will require avoiding over- loading it with too many controversial issues too soon. The natural desire to draw anger away from the coalition by putting an Iraqi face on the most dif- ficult decisions must be balanced with a realistic assessment of what the council can successfully manage. At the provincial and local levels, coalition forces and the CPA have made great progress in establishing political councils throughout the country, but they need direction and the ability to respond to local needs and demands. To achieve this, local and provincial political coun- cils need to have access to resources and be linked to the national Iraqi Gov- erning Council and the constitutional process. 3. Idle hands must be put to work and basic economic and social services pro- vided immediately to avoid exacerbating political and security problems. A model economy will not be created overnight out of Iraq’s failed statist eco- nomic structures. Short-term public works projects are needed on a large scale to soak up sizable amounts of the available labor pool. Simultaneously, the CPA must get a large number of formerly state-owned enterprises up and running. Even if many of them are not competitive and may need to be privatized and downsized eventually, now is the time to get as many people back to work as possible. A massive micro-credit program in all provinces would help to spur wide-ranging economic activity, and help to empower key agents of change such as women. The CPA must also do whatever is nec- essary to immediately refurbish basic services, especially electricity, water, and sanitation. 4. Decentralization is essential. The job facing occupation and Iraqi authorities is too big to be handled exclusively by the central occupying authority and national Iraqi Governing Council. Implementation is lagging far behind needs and expectations in key areas, at least to some extent because of severely con- strained CPA human resources at the provincial and local levels. This situa- tion must be addressed immediately by decentralizing key functions of the CPA to the provincial level, thereby enhancing operational speed and effec- tiveness and allowing maximum empowerment of Iraqis. The CPA must rap- idly recruit and fieki a much greater number of civilian experts to guide key governance, economic, social, justice, and also some security components of the occupation. 5. The coalition must facilitate a profound change in the Iraqi national frame of mind—from centralized autlxrity to significant freedoms, from suspicion to trust, from skepticism to hope. This will require an intense and effective communications and marketing campaign, not the status quo. The CPA needs to win the confidence and support of the Iraqi people. Communication—be- tween the CPA and the Iraqi people, and within the CPA itself—is insuffi- cient so far. Drastic changes must be made to immediately improve the daily flow of practical information to the Iraqi people, principally through enhanced radio ard TV programming. Iraqis need to hear about difficulties and suc- cesses from authoritative sources. Secondly, the CPA needs to gather informa- VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 51 tion from Iraqis much more effectively—through a more robust civilian ground presence, ‘‘walk-in’’ centers for Iraqis staffed by Iraqis, and hiring a large number of Iraqi ‘‘animators’’ to carry and receive messages. Thirdly, in- formation flow must be improved within the CPA itself through an integrated operations center that would extend across both the civilian and military sides of the CPA, and by enhancing cell-phone coverage and a system-wide email system that could ease the timely dissemination of information to all CPA personnel. 6. The United States needs to quickly mobilize a new reconstruction coalition that is significantly broader than the coalition that successfully waged the war. The scope of the challenges, the financial requirements, and rising anti-Amer- icanism in parts of the country make necessary a new coalition that involves various international actors (including from countries and organizations that took no part in the original war coalition). The Council for International Co- operation at the CPA is a welcome innovation, but it must be dramatically expanded and supercharged if a new and inclusive coalition is to be built. 7. Money must be significantly more forthcoming and more flexible. Iraq will re- quire significant outside support over the short to medium term. In addition to broadening the financial coalition to include a wider range of international actors, this means the President and Congress will need to budget and fully fund reconstruction costs through 2004. The CPA must be given rapid and flexible funding. ‘‘Business as usual’’ is not an option for operations in Iraq, nor can it be for their funding. The enormity of the task ahead must not be underestimated. It requires that the entire effort be immediately turbo-charged—by making it more agile and flexible, and providing it with greater funding and personnel. INTRODUCTION The next 12 months will be critical to the success or failure of the Iraq reconstruc- tion effort. The potential for chaos is becoming more real every day, given the un- clear status of the old guard—former Republican Guard members and Ba’ath party loyalists; the small irregular militias throughout Iraq that could wreak havoc in the absence of a strong coalition military presence; the beginnings of attacks on Iraqis labeled as ‘‘collaborators with the United States; and continuing attacks on U.S. military forces and soft targets—such as power plants and civilians (including NGO workers)—that are undermining the CPA’s ability to provide basic service and re- verberating into decreased popular support for the mission in the United States and the United Kingdom. There are real threats to the CPA’s efforts: • the potential use of force (or at least intimidation) by multiple internal and ex- ternal players; • serious security breaches that could challenge U.S. confidence and undermine U.S. credibility; • rising economic insecurity, combined with the entrenchment of pre- existing black-market economic networks; • a lessening of support for the occupying authority within Iraq; • suspicions about U.S. intentions with respect to oil production and use of Iraq’s oil revenue, and the hand-off of the UN oil-for-food program, which has fed large parts of the Iraqi population for years; • the prospect of internal fighting between factions; • the expansion of guerilla-like warfare. In our travels throughout the country, Iraqis uniformly expressed the view that the window of opportunity for the CPA to turn things around in Iraq is closing rap- idly. The following factors coalesce to make the next few months particularly crucial. • The coalition has not addressed the heightened sense of expectation among the Iraqis as to how quickly the coalition can produce results, and frustration levels are growing. • There is a general sense of steady deterioration in the security situation, in Baghdad, Mosul, and elsewhere. • There are several key impending changes of the guard—new coalition military forces are rotating in; the overall lead is shifting from military to civilian; and Iraqis are assuming greater responsibility for key security and governance tasks. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 52 • The national Iraqi Governing Council came together in mid-July. Thousands of Iraqis are now engaged in local political councils, but their function needs better definition in order to link them with the national political scene and take full advantage of their current level of energy and expectation. • The coalition forces and the CPA have set up a skeleton infrastructure under extremely difficult circumstances. The CPA must now become increasingly oper- ational, but it lacks the resources, personnel, and flexibility to move into the next stage of the mission. • The coalition currently has two critical pieces of leverage that must be taken advantage of: significant military forces are still in theater, capable of carrying out priority tasks and handling spoilers and the CPA and the military have some liquidity (due largely to seized assets of the former regime). • A series of upcoming external deadlines will drive policy decisions with respect to Iraq: (1) the U.S. budget process in September; (2) the October/November do- nors’ conference; and (3) the oil-for-food transition in November. The coalition has made significant progress in just sixty days.1 This is due in large part to the exceptional work of the coalition military forces in carrying out tasks far removed from their combat duties. Civil affairs contingents have been key to their efforts, although much more civil affairs capacity was needed in the early stages of the reconstruction. The energy and enthusiasm of the CPA staff is remark- able, as is their sense of mission and dedication. But the enormity of tiis undertaking cannot be overstated; there are huge chal- lenges ahead. Iraq is a large country with historic divisions, exacerbated by a brutal and corrupt regime. The country’s 24 million people, and its infrastructure and serv- ice delivery mechanisms have suffered decades of severe degradation and under-in- vestment. The CPA lacks the personnel, money, and flexibility needed to be fully effective. Military officers and civilians are carrying out post-conflict reconstruction efforts in a war zone. Every small step of progress is counterbalanced by funda- mental problems that must be addressed before the CPA can capitalize on the ad- vances seen in particular towns or provinces throughout Iraq. In order to succeed, the United States and a broadened international coalition will need to pursue a strategy over the next 12 months that: recognizes the unique chal- lenges in different parts of the country; consolidates gains in those areas where things are going well; and advances the national mindset of the Iraqi people while decisively confronting spoilers. To put Iraq on a successful path over the next year, seven major areas need immediate attention. SEVEN PRIORITY AREAS 1. ESTABLISHING PUBLIC SAFETY Virtually every Iraqi and most CPA and coalition military officials as well as most contractors we spoke to cited the lack of public safety as their number one concern. The war continues, but it has entered a new phase of active resistance to the coali- tion’s efforts, involving attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqi ‘‘collaborators’’ as well as sabotage of vital infrastructure. Even outside the ‘‘Sunni triangle’’ (the area from Ramadi in the west, north to Tikrit, and east to Baghdad), there have been attacks on civilians, including NGO workers: their vehicles have been shot at in Mosul, and aid workers in Basra have had stones thrown at them at reconstruction sites. Iraqis (particularly in Baghdad) remain afraid to be out on the streets after dark, and Iraqi women do not attend school or run basic errands without escorts. Although the coalition military presence is large, it is not visible enough at the street level—particularly in Baghdad—nor is it sufficiently agile,2 implying the need 1 For example, in the area of security, the CPA reports that 35,000 Iraqi police officers are back out on the streets, conducting sensitive raids and arrests: a facilities protection service is being trained to guard static sites, with some promise in the south with the Basra River Service. In the area of governance, the CPA reports that 85 percent of Iraq’s towns have town councils up and running. The new Iraq Governing Council was established on July 13, 2003 and includes representatives of all of Iraq’s major political parties, religions, and ethnicities, as well as three women. In the justice realm, de-Ba’athifcation of Iraq’s judges is proceeding: courts are being reestablished and have started to hear cases: and Iraq’s laws have been stripped of Saddarn- era decrees. On the economic front, quick impact projects have begun repairing schools and gov- ernment buildings throughout the country: civil servant and army salaries are being paid; low level economic activity (street markets) is burgeoning. 2 A significant number of U.S. troops are engaged in static support rather than patrolling and policing. 5,000 troops are being used to guard static sites in Baghdad alone, and two and a half battalions are being used to guard the CPA headquarters in Baghdad. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 53 to reassess the force composition, size, and structure. The current configuration of composite security forces (U.S., coalition, and Iraqi) does not adequately support the reconstruction mission; and attacks on coalition forces and civilians and the sabo- tage and plundering of infrastructure continue. Ultimately, Iraqis will have to take responsibility for addressing these types of problems, but it is unrealistic to expect them to have the competence to do so in the near term. The new Iraqi security forces will face well-trained, well financed, and well-organized irregular forces throughout the country, in addition to the Re- publican Guard forces that may be awaiting a return. The new Iraqi security forces (whether paramilitary, the new Iraqi army, the Facility Protection Service, or the Iraqi police) will not be capable of handling security matters without significant international oversight and rapid response capacity for at least two to five years. Joint patrols with coalition forces and Iraqis should be initiated immediately. Inter- national police trainers and monitors are also needed during this time to conduct joint patrols with Iraqis, and train, oversee, and monitor the Iraqi police force. Finally, battalion commanders and Iraqis throughout the country were uniform in their assessment that without an overwhelming presence of coalition forces or inter- national police, potential spoilers will move in, whether in the form of ‘‘self-demobi- lized’’ soldiers or local militia members (e.g., the Iranian-backed Bad’r Corps, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and smaller regional militias such as that operating in the Maysan province). The CPA has not adequately addressed the need for demobiliza- tion, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) of Iraq’s armed forces, in part because of an assumption that the ‘‘self-demobilization’’ of the Iraqi army during and after the conflict means that they are fully demobilized in actual fact. The CPA must launch a major initiative to reintegrate these soldiers and militia members, in order to minimize the opportunity for them to pose security threats in the future. Recommendations • The coalition should reassess force composition and structure and troop levels, commensurate with immediate needs, including that of improving street-level visibility of coalition troops, particularly in Baghdad. • The United States could use wntract private security forces to help rapidly ex- pand security at low-risk installations, freeing up some coalition troops for other security tasks. A standardized policy on uniforms and identification could help alleviate concerns about the proliferation of private militias throughout Iraq. • The United States must recalibrate its expectations of how quickly Iraqis can be expected to address the serious and growing security problems and must plan for U.S. and UK forces to be available in a rapid response capacity wher- ever Iraqi forces are being asked to take over security tasks. The CPA must also raise and rationalize the salary structure of the Iraqi forces.3 • The CPA should decentralize the process of training and equipping the Iraqi po- lice force and Facilities Protection Service to allow for faster and more enduring progress than the centralized training of thousands of police officers. • The CPA must begin serious efforts to recruit international civilian police (CIVPOL) and should open all possible spigots for such recruitment, including the United Nations, the OSCE, and any potential bilateral contributors.4 • The CPA must develop and implement a reintegration program that provides opportunities for demobilized soldiers to gain counseling and placement, either in the new Iraqi security forces or major public works projects or other jobs. Re- integration programs must include all the different militias throughout the country in order to protect against future problems these well-organized forces could pose. 2. IRAQI OWNERSHIP Iraqi responsibility for their own future must be firmly established at the na- tional, provincial, and local levels. At the national level, ensuring the success of the newly formed Iraqi Governing Council is crucial. The CPA runs the risk of over- loading the new council by pushing too many controversial issues to it, which would 3 For example, most CPA and coalition military officials we spoke to in the field thought that the current police salary of $60/month was far too low to ensure a professional, corruption-free police force. 4 The United Nations has considerable experience in fielding CIV POL forces. The Organiza- tion for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) alone does not have the experience or re- cruiting capability to manage a CIVPOL effort along the order envisioned for Iraq. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 54 undermine this otherwise positive development.5 The natural desire to draw anger away from the coalition by putting an Iraqi face on the most difficult decisions must be balanced by a realistic assessment of what the council can successfully manage. The CPA has made great progress in establishing municipal and provincial polit- ical councils throughout the country, but those councils need direction as to their purpose and the ability to respond to local needs and demands. If not properly resourced and hooked into the national governing council and constitutional process, these councils could result in heightened expectations and dangerous levels of frus- tration, rather than positively harnessing demands for change. Recommendations • The CPA must give the Iraqi Governing Council time to build on a series of ini- tial successes. The CPA itself should make more progress on some of the imme- diate, sensitive issues—such as the handling of the remaining escrowed oil-for- food money that supported myriad development projects in the north, retraining and stipends for former soldiers and militia members, and food and agricultural subsidies—before handing them over to a fragile new governing structure. • The CPA should provide local and provincial councils with funds to address pri- ority local infrastructure needs. Local CPA overseers could sign-off on use of funds. • The CPA should formulate plans to link the local and provincial councils to the central political and constitutional processes. The CPA should convene a na- tional conference of town and provincial councils from all over Iraq to launch a process of defining their relationship to the national government and creating fresh channels of cooperation. 3. PUTTING PEOPLE TO WORK AND PROVIDING BASIC SERVICES Rebuilding a functioning Iraqi economy out of failed statist economic structures is a daunting task. A host of thorny challenges persist: difficulty in restarting vital public services, particularly power and water; out-of-work civil servants and former soldiers; Iraq’s crushing international debt burden; a plethora of state-owned indus- tries that are not market competitive; a literacy rate that has been falling for dec- ades; infrastnicture in need of serious investment; shortages of gas (for cars and cooking) and other key supplies; and a population that is predominantly young. The immediate needs will be providing short-term employment opportunities to keep people off the streets and refurbishing basic services such as electricity, water, and sanitation, to avoid exacerbating political and security problems. Low level eco- nomic activity is returning to normal, and markets are filling up. But there are long lines of Iraqis waiting for work wherever it is announced. Many old state-owned en- terprises are not competitive, but they are a major source of employment and should not be closed during this most unstable time. Moreover, a new civil and commercial code will be needed to attract regional and international investment in Iraq’s indus- tries. Recommendations • Develop a series of work initiatives to keep Iraqis from being idle, with a par- ticular emphasis on young, urban populations. • Get and keep state-owned enterprises up and running in the short-term to pro- vide employment, while developing a clear medium and long-term plan for privatizing those enterprises. • Start micro-credit programs in all provinces immediately, placing a special em- phasis on lending to women. • The CPA should do whatever is necessary to improve provision of basic services, such as electricity, water, and sanitation. • Begin developing follow-on for the oil-for-food program, as a food shortage caused by any disruption will cause a national protest. This must include the transparent handling of obligated resources under the program. • The CPA should involve Iraqis personally in the success of Iraq’s oil industry. Personal bank accounts or trust funds funded by oil revenues should be devel- oped, to catalyze the banking system and get cash to the public. 5 These issues include: appointing a new cabinet; approving the national budget; initial prep- arations and plans for a national constitutional process; food subsidies after the oil-for-food pro- gram phases out in November 2003: salary levels; agricultural price supports; the size of the new Iraqi army; de-Ba’athification follow-through; and currency problems. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 55 4. DECENTRALIZATION The job facing occupation and Iraqi authorities is too big to be handled by the center. Implementation is lagging far behind needs and expectations in key areas, at least to some extent because of severely constrained CPA human resources at the provincial and local levels. There is a disconnect between on-the-ground realities and policy formulation at CPA headquarters. Decentralization of key CPA functions will enhance operational speed and effectiveness and allow maximum empowerment of Iraqis. Placing significantly more CPA civilians in the field would help deliver more of what is needed on the ground and improve the general understanding of the reconstruction. Recommendations • The CPA must be given adequate resources and personnel to immediately es- tablish 18 provincial CPA offices, including 18 provincial civil administrators with clear authorities and appropriately staffed offices of 20–30 people.6 Attach- ing one political adviser to each battalion command will not be sufficient. Each CPA provincial office will need funds for operational support and flexible fund- ing and authority for quick impact projects. • The Department of Defense should establish a headhunting capacity in the United States to help identify, recruit, and retain a steady pool of civilian talent to fill the CPA’s needs. Given the broad nature of the tasks, this office should have strong interagency support, from State, USAID, Treasury, Justice, Agri- culture, and other relevant departments. At the same time, the United States must internationalize the recruiting effort for CPA civilians. Potential talent within other foreign governments and international organization officials with experience in Iraq and the region should be identified. This effort must break through the lingering pre-war differences with logical partners on the civilian front. 5. CHANGING THE IRAQI NATIONAL MINDSET The CPA must facilitate a profound change in the Iraqi national frame of mind— from centralized authority to significant freedoms, from suspicion to trust, from skepticism to hope. The CPA needs to effectively communicate its strategy and vi- sion—what will success look like, what does the United States intend to provide, and how long will it stay. This will require an intense and effective communications and marketing campaign, not the status quo. Communication—between the CPA and the Iraqi people and within the CPA itself is insufficient so far. The CPA mes- sage is not getting out, either to the Iraqi people or within the CPA. All potential constituencies are not being adequately exploited; every CPA interaction with Iraqis should be considered a communications opportunity. Radio and television program- ming are the most critical means to getting the message out.7 Without seeing or hearing Bremer and others, disinformation will continue to prevail over truth on key policy issues, such as U.S. intentions about Iraq’s oil money. Under the current set-up, the CPA is isolated and cut off from Iraqis. Most CPA officials we interviewed confirmed that the CPA does not know even close to what it needs to know about the Iraqi people. (This problem is worst in Baghdad; in other areas, CPA and military officers are in more regular contact with Iraqis.) The CPA does receive information from Iraqis at the local, regional, and national levels, but it does not have the organizational tools to assess that information adequately. Finally, there is a need for enhanced communications flow within the CPA struc- ture—both to provide updated, real information to CPA staff about Iraq news and to enhance communication on policy matters between the CPA front office and the rest of the organization, especially the regional and provincial offices. Serious time is also being lost because of the absence of reliable telephone communications na- tionwide, which inhibits the transmission of timely information. Recommendations • The CPA should engage in blanket marketing in every venue it can access, in- cluding using advertising on every channel that feeds into Iraq and public serv- 6 Based on our informal survey of governorates we visited, there is general consensus that each provincial CPA office will need between 20-30 people in order to ensure an effective hand- off from military to civilian lead and give the CPA the operational capacity it needs to address priorities. 7 Based on our interviews, Iraqis are dismissive of the Iraqi Media Network—the CPA-funded indigenous media outlet—noting that it does not have good programming and is only on the air during certain limited times of the day. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 56 ice messages. Every interaction with Iraqis should be seen as a message dis- semination opportunity, including salary distribution centers, oil-for-food dis- tributions, and town meetings. • All day programming is needed on a revamped and upgraded Iraqi Media Net- work, with a focus on television programming. The CPA also should encourage the establishment of more local TV stations, which have proved more successful in getting out CPA’s messages in areas such as Karbala and the north. Creating a ‘‘headline news’’ type of program would address Iraqis’ desire to hear both the CPA global messages and very practical information about such pressing issues as power outages, sensitive arrests, sabotaged infrastructure, and dismissals of former Ba’ath party officials. • The CPA should establish walk-in centers staffed by Iraqis and use Iraqi ‘‘ani- mators’’ to give average Iraqis ways to make their views known to coalition au- thorities. The CPA should utilize international players—particularly the UN specialized agencies—that have been on the ground in Iraq for years to boost its capacity to collect information and views from Iraqis. • The CPA must create an effective fusion mechanism into which all information collected at headquarters and in the field can be fed, to ensure it is being used to the fullest extent. • The CPA headquarters should focus on engaging and building a community among all CPA employees. Regular town meetings featuring Ambassador Bremer and other senior officials would help. Daily email briefs containing real, hard information—including information on the latest attacks and about basic services—should be provided to all CPA employees. • The CPA should convene regular interactive meetings with its regional and pro- vincial offices, whether in person or by video conference. • The CPA should expand current contractor capacity to encourage the provision of regular nationwide telephone service immediately. 6. MOBILIZING A NEW RECONSTRUCTION COALITION Relying on the war coalition will not produce sufficient resources or capacity. The scope of the challenges, the financial requirements, and rising anti-Americanism in parts of Iraq argue for a new coalition that includes countries and organizations be- yond the original war fighting coalition. The recent donor discussions at the United States in late June reflected low projections for donor financial support, further highlighting this need. The Council for International Cooperation (CIC) at the CPA is a welcome innovation, but it must be dramatically expanded and supercharged if a new and inclusive coalition is to be built. Recommendations • The United States, working with the G–7 and the World Bank, should oversee the donor coordination process, including by keeping a central databank of re- source needs and donor fulfillment of those needs. Donor coordination efforts should be broadened beyond the 15 states that are currently members of the CIC, and those efforts should be bolstered by providing the CIC support staff in Europe and the United States. • The CPA should reach out broadly to other countries in its efforts to recruit ci- vilians to fill its staffing needs, as the U.S. government will not be able to fill those needs on its own. • The CPA should take advantage of the UN’s unique capacities in support for constitution drafting, access to regional and Iraqi legal expertise, and gender and education issues. The CPA should utilize the UN’s systems, including the oil-for-food network, as a valuable means of connecting with Iraqis. • The CPA should draw on valuable international expertise to assist the Iraqis in dealing with war crimes and the legacy of Saddam Hussein. 7. MONEY AND FLEXIBILITY The CPA currently has four sources of revenue: appropriated funds, oil revenue, vested assets in the United States, and assets that have been seized in Iraq. Of these, seized regime assets are the most flexible and readily available, but these are finite—and in any case, the overall resources available are inadequate to the chal- lenges at hand. It is highly likely that the CPA will need supplemental appropria- tions to get through fiscal year 2004. Oil revenue projections for the next few years are low—the CPA expects production to reach 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by the end of 2003 and 2.5 million bpd by the end of 2004. It is currently at around VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 57 600,000 bpd. The CPA expects to earn $5 billion in oil revenue by the end of 2003, but this projection may decrease if security problems persist and oil infrastructure continues to be targeted. Power shortages are also hampering efforts to restart oil production. The CPA is badly handicapped by a ‘‘business as usual’’ approach to the mechan- ics of government, such as getting permission to spend money or enter into con- tracts. This approach is not reasonable given the urgency of the situation in Iraq. There also appear to be unnecessary limitations in the area of contracts. Recommendations • The CPA should be given complete flexibility to spend money—even appro- priated funds and vested assets—as it views necessary without project-by- project oversight by Washington. A process should be established to ensure ap- propriate accountability for all spending, through regular reports from the CPA back to Washington. Any funds appropriated in the future for Iraq reconstruc- tion needs should not require prior notification of Congress. Congress could re- quest quarterly reports detailing how appropriated funds have been spent on re- construction activities in Iraq. • The United States needs to ensue that Iraq’s revenues are not encumbered by past or future obligations. This will require resolving the debt issue within the U.S. government, and pushing Iraq’s creditors to forgive or significantly reduce Iraq’s outstanding debt burden. The United States should also avoid encum- bering future oil revenues to generate immediate income. 8 • The relevant United States government agencies should deploy military and ci- vilian contracting officers to the theater to streamline the contracting processes. • The Department of Defense should create a strong office in Washington to sup- port the CPA’s needs, including recruiting of appropriate civilian personnel. CONCLUSION Eleven days in Iraq left indelible images in our minds. Fathers escorting young girls to school; young men waiting in long lines everywhere jobs are announced; young kids flashing the thumbs-up sign (and swarming around us asking for money); a rebuilt prison with a newly installed manager; retrained Iraqi police offi- cers directing traffic; snaking lines of cars at gas stations; a festive 4th of July party thrown by the Kurds in the north (and celebrating 4th of July at Saddam’s palace in Baghdad); racing through small towns in heavily armed convoys; 19-year old American soldiers standing out in 120 degree heat to guard Iraqi sites, and chatting on street corners with Iraqi children; the blackness and heat of the night with power shortages; the pleasure of a shower after days without running water; the en- ergy, commitment, and intensity of Iraqis as they discussed their country’s future; the natural beauty of the mountains in the north and Iraq’s fertile crescent; the pride and professionalism of Iraqi members of newly established town councils; the palpable fear of Iraqis out in the street after the sun ges down, and the security bubble U.S. officials work in; the high expectations of Iraqis as to what the United States can provide, and their frustration and anger over intermittent electricity and water service; the resourcefulness of U.S. and British troops as they restart civil so- ciety; the sincere efforts of civilians to forge ahead despite the looming insecurity; devastated university buildings in Basra, completely ravaged by looters; the opu- lence of Saddam’s palaces; and Iraq’s ancient history and cultural richness. As we traveled throughout the country, it was impossible not to be impressed by the character and drive of the coalition forces, the dedication and enthusiasm of the CPA, the wearied endurance of the Iraqi people, and the enormity of the opportuni- ties, challenges, and risks before them all. The U.S. government has chosen to use a different model for post-conflict recon- struction in Iraq. Not only is it being led by the United States, but it is being led by an institution—the Department of Defense—with relatively untested capacities. There has been progress to date, but using a new model heightens the challenges and requires a new definition of relations and responsibilities. The United States will need significant international assistance—from the United Nations, other international organizations, and bilateral donors. Security forces, CIVPOL, information flows, and ensuring a ready supply of CPA personnel with rel- evant capabilities are just four such areas. 8 It will be critical that the CPA handle oil revenues as transparently as possible. Iraqis we met with spoke of continuing suspicions about U.S. intentions with respect to their oil industry. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 58 The U.S. government—both the executive branch and the Congress—must change certain business as usual practices in order to maximize the CPA’s opportunities to be successful. The CPA needs more resources, personnel, and flexibility. We owe it to our people in the field, and to Iraqis, to provide everything necessary to get this right. U.S. credibility and national interest depend upon it. A WISER PEACE: AN ACTION STRATEGY FOR A POST-CONFLICT IRAQ January 2003 [PROJECT DIRECTORS: FREDERICK BARTON AND BATHSHEBA CROCKER] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • If the United States goes to war with Iraq, winning the peace will be critical. This report takes no position on whether there should be a war. But, the suc- cess of any U.S.-led effort to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and drive Saddam Hussein from power will be judged more by the commitment to rebuilding Iraq after a conflict than by the military phase of the war itself. At stake are the interests not only of the United States, but of Iraqis, the region, and the broader international community. • Past experience from Haiti to Afghanistan has shown that in order for post-con- flict reconstruction efforts to be effective after the shooting stops, preparations must be well in train before the shooting starts. Thus, as military buildups move forward for war in Iraq, it is increasingly important for the United States and the United Nations to step up preparations for post-conflict reconstruction. • Yet, so far, military deployments to the Gulf and humanitarian contingency planning have not been matched by visible, concrete actions by the United States, the United Nations, or others to prepare resources and personnel to han- dle the immense reconstruction challenges post-conflict Iraq will present. • This report recommends ten key actions that U.S. policymakers and the United Nations must take before the conflict starts in order to maximize potential for success in the post-conflict phase in Iraq. These recommendations draw on on- going work by the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, a collaborative effort be- tween the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Association of the U.S. Army, and reflect lessons learned through first-hand experience with post-conflict reconstruction efforts over the past decade. 1. Create a Transitional Security Force that is effectively prepared, mandated, and staffed to handle pre-conflict civil security needs, including the need for constabulary forces. 2. Develop a comprehensive plan for securing eliminating weapons of mass de- struction. 3. Plan and train for other critical pre-conflict missions necessary to lay the foundation for a peaceful and secure Iraq that will enhance regional security. 4. Establish an international transitional administration and name a transi- tional administrator. 5. Begin developing a national dialogue process and recruit a national dialogue coordinator. 6. Recruit a rapidly deployable justice team of international legal experts, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, corrections officers, and public infor- mation experts. 7. Identify and recruit international civilian police officers. 8. Call for a debt restructuring conference and push the United Nations Security Council to begin a review of past war-related claims against Iraq. 9. Begin an immediate review of sanctions against Iraq and prepare necessary documentation to suspend or partially lift those sanctions. 10. Convene a donors’ conference for Iraq. • The United States has declared a commitment to a democratic, economically viable future Iraq. It is time to move from rhetoric to action. • To win the peace and secure their interests, the United States and the inter- national community must commit the resources, military might, personnel, and VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00062 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 59 time that successful post-conflict reconstruction will require in Iraq—and they must start doing so now. PART I: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND WINNING THE PEACE IN IRAQ As the United States and its allies intensify military preparations for a war with Iraq, it becomes more important each day to step up preparations for addressing post-conflict needs. indeed, recent experience in Haiti, the Balkans, East Timor, Af- ghanistan, and elsewhere has demonstrated that ‘‘winning the peace’’ is often hard- er than fighting the war. So far, however, signs of military build-up and humanitarian contingency plan- ning have not been matched by visible, concrete actions by the United States, the United Nations, or others to position civilian and military resources to handle the mytiad reconstruction challenges that wifi be faced in post-conflict Iraq. This situa- tion gravely threatens the interests of the United States, lraqis, the region, and the international community as a whole. The stakes are enormous. For much of the Middle East, Iraq will be a test case for judging U.S. intentions in the region and the Islamic world. The outcome of a war with Iraq and any post-conflict reconstruction efforts will be critical for Turkey, a major U.S. ally; for future relations with other friends and allies in a strategically important region; for world oil flows; for Iran; and for the Israeli-Palestinian con- flict. The United States has declared a commitment to a democratic, economically via- ble future Iraq. Now, it is time to match rhetoric with action. This report recommends ten steps the United States and the United Nations should be taking now and throughout the conflict phase—preferably with the heavy involvement of other multilateral and regional organizations, as well as key allies, donor nations, and regional neighbors—in order to prepare for the post-conflict chal- lenges in Iraq, and to avoid the pitfalls of past experiences. While the recommenda- tions are obviously based on the assumption that there will be a U.S.-led military conflict with Iraq, this report takes no position on whether there should be a war against Iraq. Some of the recommendations—particularly on the Iraqi debt ques- tion—could be relevant even if war is avoided. Moreover, certain recommendations— especially on the economic front—could be an inducement to regime change in Iraq. Attempting to define what a future Iraq should look like would detract from what we are convinced must be a primary goal, namely, engaging Iraqis early and fully in running their country post-Saddam and in making key decisions about its future. That said, the following guideposts would point toward a promising future for a prosperous Iraq at peace with itself and its neighbors: • Provide a safe, secure, and non-intimidating environment for Iraq’s people, while protecting Iraq’s borders and securing oil production facilities. • Secure and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. • Create the opportunity for Iraqis to participate in governing Iraq and to shape their political future. • Begin to develop a rule of law culture in Iraq. • Disencumber Iraq of the financial obligations of the Saddam Hussein regime in order to maximize the potential for Iraq to become a viable, self-sustaining economy. CURRENT EFFORTS: INSUFFIC1ENT AND INCOMPLETE Recent press reports suggest that the Bush administration is formulating a plan for the post-conflict reconstruction of Iraq. According to these reports, the adminis- tration’s plan involves pairing an American military commander (who would provide security for the 18 or so months the American military presence is maintained) with an international civilian administrator who would be tasked with rejuvenating the economy, restarting the flow of oil, reopening schools, rebuilding political institu- tions, and administering assistance programs. Very little information has been pro- vided about the nature of the transitional administration, but the UN Mission in Kosovo has been cited as a potential model. The State Department has also spon- sored a constructive series of ‘‘Future of Iraq’’ working groups drawing on Iraqi op- position groups and others in the diaspora, on such issues as judicial reform, war crimes trials, public finance, and local governance in a post-Saddam Iraq. Similarly, the United Nations is doing some contingency planning, mostly on hu- manitarian issues, for which it has asked the United States and other donors to con- tribute $37 million. While a UN task force has identified major areas that will need VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 60 to be addressed by UN humanitarian agencies if a conflict with Iraq occurs, its re- cently released report only lists ‘‘other matters which require early guidance,’’ in- cluding ‘‘the need to give early consideration, regarding the role, if any, of the United Nations regarding post-conflict administration.’’ 1 The UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) reportedly is planning to create an office that could help administer humanitarian assistance and administer an Iraqi government, but there is no sign of serious discussion of more detailed planning with respect to post-conflict reconstruction needs.2 To turn pre-conflict aspirations into successful post-conflict action, money and manpower have to start moving—and there is not a moment to lose. The following are concrete, measurable steps that would signal a move from planning to action. Constabulary-like forces must be recruited to serve in a transitional security force. Comprehensive plans must be laid for handling weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in post-conflict Iraq. A transitional administrator for Iraq must be named. Inter- national civil servants must be recruited. international civilian police (CIVPOL) offi- cers must be recruited. International lawyers and judges must be recruited to fill any post-conflict vacuum in the justice sector; and Iraq’s laws must be vetted now for consistency with international human rights laws. A conference on debt must be convened. The United Nations and the United States must lay preparations for the suspension or lifting of sanctions. The United Nations or any major donor country must call a donors’ conference to solicit funds for humanitarian relief, a post-conflict civilian mission, and immediate reconstruction needs in Iraq. THE SITUATION IN IRAQ: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES Iraq presents unique challenges and opportunities—political, social, economic and strategic. Evidence suggests that Iraqis at all levels of society are desperate for a return to normalcy after a quarter century of war and economic suffering. That will not, however, mean their passive acceptance of whatever the international commu- nity may seek to impose. In contrast to Afghanistan, Iraq is far from a failed state. It has a centralized gov- ernment with a functioning bureaucracy; indeed, it would be counterproductive if the existing Iraqi administration were purged too radically. Nor is Iraq a haven for religious fundamentalism. In contrast to Iran and Saudi Arabia, its government is secular. Though the rule of law and respect for human rights will have to be rees- tablished, Iraq does have a workable constitution and salvageable legal codes. Iraqi society is divided among Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and other small minority populations. Its population is largely educated, sophisticated, and urban. Any political representation of the Shia—who comprise over 55 percent of the popu- lation—would be a revolutionary change in the balance of power, as the Sunni mi- nority has traditionally ruled. That said, Iraq has little history of inter-ethnic or communal violence, and though scattered revenge killings and reprisals are likely post-Saddam, major violence and ethnic cleansing has historically been state-driven. Some fear that the Shia are potential allies of their co-religionists in Iran, but Iraqi Shia soldiers fought hard against the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq’s enormous security apparatus presents both liabilities and opportunities. The army, secret police, and intelligence services must be disbanded and, to the ex- tent necessary, restructured or reintegrated into society. Much of the existing civil- ian police, however, will be available and should be used; they will be crucial in maintaining secutity in the post-conflict period. Economically, while Iraq has extensive oil wealth, it will not be able to cover all its own post-conflict needs. Whether or not a retreating Iraqi force razes the oil fields, the oil industry’s infrastructure will have to be largely rebuilt; it will be years before Iraq’s natural patrimony can fully be brought to bear on the reconstruction effort. Even then, the pace of Iraq’s recovery will be determined by the international community’s ability and willingness to renegotiate Iraq’s enormous foreign debt bur- den and enforce a grace period that will give Iraq time to get back on its feet. The United Nations is making plans to satisfy the basic humanitarian needs of the Iraqi population for as long as a year, but the bulk of citizens may require as- sistance for much longer. Sixty percent of Iraqis currently depend on government 1 Likely Humanitarian Scenarios, UNITED NATION’S REPORT, Dec. 10, 2002, at http:// www.casi.org.uk/info/undocs/waro21210.pdf [hereinafter ‘‘Likely Humanitarian Scenarios’’]. 2 Colum Lynch, Iraq War Could Put 10 Million in Need of Aid, UN Reports, WASHINGTON POST, Jan. 7, 2003, at A12. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently noted that UN experts are ‘‘doing some ‘preliminary thinking’ about a possible post-conflict political organi- zation and administration in Iraq.’’ Edith M. Lederer, Annan Sees No Reason for Attack on Iraq, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Jan. 14, 2003. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 61 handouts for their most basic needs.3 The agricultural sector has steadily declined over the past decade, and most Iraqis have long since used up their financial and matetial assets. Absent the existing Oil-for-Food program, Iraqis will lean heavily on humanitarian relief organizations, donors, and a future government to provide the basic foodstuffs, clean water, energy, and limited health care to which they are accustomed. Extensive humanitarian support may be required for some time—to allow the Iraqi economy to undergo those reforms necessary to provide the popu- lation with jobs and essential commodities. Finally and crucially, Iraq possessed, and may still possess, significant stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Saddam may deploy WMD in response to an invasion, thereby complicating the military phase of the conflict itself as well as the reconstruction effort. People wili likely flee any affected areas, adding to the one million internally displaced persons already estimated in Iraq. For the international community, halting proliferation of Iraq’s WMD will mean not only finding, secur- ing, and destroying such weapons and materials, but dealing with the skilled sci- entific and technical community involved in their development. RECENT POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION EFFORTS: PERSISTENT PROBLEMS, LESSONS LEARNED While the record from Haiti to Afghanistan shows that some post-conflict recon- struction efforts have been successful, the United States and the international com- munity have faced persistent problems. If we are to avoid these pitfalls in Iraq, we must heed the lessons learned: • Ensure advance planning for civilian missions. In 1999, one dedicated UN em- ployee in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations was responsible for si- multaneously recruiting more than 4,000 civil servants to serve in the UN mis- sions in Kosovo and East Timor. 4 Both missions experienced security, author- ity, and law enforcement vacuums as a result of severe delays in full deploy- ment of the civilian missions. In Kosovo, delays in staffing the international mission allowed spoilers in the form of former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) officers to wrest control of government functions, eventually forcing the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) into negotiations and alliances that have caused long-term difficulties. • Do not underestimate post-conflict security needs. In Afghanistan, the viability of President Hamid Karzai’s government has been undermined by a lack of ade- quate security, due in part to the failure to extend the international security force (ISAF) outside Kabul. In Kosovo, the initial NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) was neither prepared for a major degree of score-settling violence, nor properly mandated to handle law enforcement or constabulary duties, which led to a volatile and dangerous security vacuum. • Appropriately prioritize assistance for the justice sector. In East Timor, donor unwillingness to fund prison-building forced civilian police to release several al- leged serious criminals because of insufficient detention and correction facilities. UNMIK’s early missteps in choosing the applicable law, and delay in bringing in international judges and prosecutors, continue to plague the functioning of Kosovo’s judiciary and have hampered efforts to instill in Kosovars trust and respect for the rule of law, inadequate justice sector assistance in the Balkans has marred longer-term efforts to tackle organized criminal activity that now ravages the region. • Deploy better CIVPOL, faster. The United Nations has repeatedly lagged in re- cruiting adequate numbers of international civilian police officers (CIVPOL), and CIVPOL have generally tended to be poorly trained and equipped, under- manned, and under-resourced. • Find the right balance of external and internal decisionmakers. In Kosovo and East Timor, UN post-conflict missions have been criticized for insufficiently in- volving nationals in decision making and implementation, thereby delaying the development of democratic self-governing capacities. In contrast, the ‘‘light foot- print’’ approach in Afghanistan, which relies too heavily on a single person- ality—Hamid Karzai—is drawing complaints as symbolic of inadequate inter- national commitment to reconstruction. • Ensure sufficient funding for and focus on long-term development needs. About 75 percent of the $1.5 billion spent on assistance in Afghanistan thus far has 3 Likely Humanitarian Scenarios. 4 Joel C. Beauvais, Benevolent Despotism: A Critique of U.N. State-Building in East Timor, 33 INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLITICS 1101, 1124 n.89 (2001). VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00065 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 62 been devoted to short-term humanitarian assistance rather than longer-term re- construction assistance—limiting the government’s ability to deliver benefits to its people, and damaging Karzai’s legitimacy. in Kosovo, three and a half years into UNMIK’s mission, the United Nations is only just beginning seriously to focus on development. Most of Kosovo still experiences rolling power blackouts on a daily basis, and there is no sign of a job creation plan despite an unem- ployment level over 50 percent and the youngest population in Europe. • Improve donor transparency, accountability, and coordination. Every recent post-conflict reconstruction case has suffered from insistence on donor flag-wav- ing, earmarking of funds, and duplication of effort in some areas combined with underfunding of others. The lack of a transparent mechanism to track and ac- count for all funds pledged and coming into a country for post-conflict recon- struction efforts has caused problems in the past due to a lack of donor account- ability, double counting of funds pledged, and delays in disbursement. There are some promising signs of donor coordination efforts in Afghanistan, but an im- balance among donors willing to provide funds directly to the Afghan govern- ment through UN-led trust funds, and those that insist on providing funds bi- laterally or through international non-governmental organizations, has ham- pered efforts to support the fledgling Afghan government. • Insist on close, effective coordination and consistent mandates among military, humanitarian, and civilian actors. In Afghanistan, the U.S. military’s initial reliance on regional warlords conflicted with the international community’s ef- forts to strengthen Karzai’s government and increased instability throughout the country, sending mixed messages about the international community’s com- mitment. In Bosnia and Kosovo, friction between the security forces and the international administrations over capturing war criminals has undercut the authority of the international administrations and undermined efforts to change attitudes in those countries about the importance of the rule of law. We have the opportunity to learn from past cases in order to do better in Iraq— which is particularly crucial given the enormity of the stakes involved. PART II: TEN RECOMMENDATIONS The Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project has identified four broad categories under which a variety of tasks must be performed: security, governance and partici- pation, justice and reconciliation, and social and economic well-being. Within these categories, we have focused on the ten critical recommendations we believe U.S. pol- icymakers and international organizations must pursue if the post-conflict recon- struction of Iraq is to succeed.5 SECURITY 1. Create a Transitional Security Force that is effectively prepared, mandated, and staffed to handle post-conflict civil security needs, including the need for con- stabulary forces. To avoid a dangerous security vacuum, it is imperative to organize, train, and equip for the post-conflict security mission in conjunction with planning for combat. Thus, prior to beginning combat operations, a U.S.-led coalition force should com- plete detailed preparations for the organization and command structure of a Transi- tional Security Force (TSF). The TSF would be part of the combined coalition force but would focus primarily on the mission of civil security—augmenting and over- 5 Our recommendations do not cover the entire spectrum of actions that must take place; for example, they do not address planning and preparation for humanitarian needs in Iraq. Based on past experience, both U.S. and UN humanitarian agencies and NGOs have proved adept at planning and implementing emergency relief programs in post-conflict settings. These organiza- tions possess skilled individuals, are well organized and funded, and can rapidly mobilize re- sources. In addition, our recommendations do not directly address how to deal with Iraqi offi- cials accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. That said, according to media reports, the U.S. government has been building cases against Saddam Hussein and a dozen or so of the most notorious members of his inner circle and is certain to make the prosecution of these offi- cials a top priority if the Iraqi government is ousted. Given the egregious nature of the alleged crimes, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which coalition forces would not make an imme- diate and concerted effort to apprehend and extricate the alleged perpetrators. We also do not highlight the issue of a truth and reconciliation process for Iraq, but this too will be critical. Although the Bush administration reportedly is considering proposing a Truth and Reconcili- ation Commission modeled on South Africa’s, any reconciliation process must be Iraqi-driven, not imposed from the outside. A national dialogue process such as that recommended below would be one venue for Iraqis to address this question. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00066 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 63 seeing civil policing efforts at the provincial and local levels; working closely with an appointed civilian transitional administrator and his staff; and supporting the security requirements of humanitarian and emergency relief efforts. Swift deployment of adequate, experienced security forces mandated in constabu- lary duties is essential to avoid a civil security vacuum in conjunction with regime change in Iraq. The United States must immediately identify and train a core force of U.S. military troops to perform constabulary (i.e. joint military and law enforce- ment) duties in Iraq. Working with its coalition partners, the U.S. must also imme- diately identify and ready other constabulary forces—such as the Italian Carabinieri, the French Gendarmerie, and appropriate regional forces—to ensure their timely arrival in theater. It is equally imperative that coalition leaders begin plans for using the existing Iraqi police force to the maximum extent possible to minimize any gaps in routine law enforcement functions. Although senior Ba’ath party functionaries and members of the security forces will presumably be removed from the police force as part of a de-Ba’athification process, at less senior levels, there should be a significant num- ber of Iraqi police officers who could be used by coalition constabulary forces to help maintain law and order in the immediate post-conflict period. After 1991, the Kurds successfully converted parts of this same force into a useful local civilian police force, once officers loyal to Saddam had been removed. Coalition force planning must include pre-conflict coordination with the des- ignated transitional administrator in order to ensure a common mandate with re- spect to post-conflict civil security requirements, and to establish effective lines of communication that will be critical once the transitional security force and the inter- national civilian mission are on the ground in Iraq. The coalition force also should begin liaising with humanitarian relief organizations and NGOs in order to estab- lish a workable foundation for communication, coordination, and security in a post- conflict Iraq. 2. Develop a comprehensive plan for securing and eliminating weapons of mass de- struction. Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) pose a grave threat to allied forces, the Iraqi people, and regional and global security. Iraq has a long and well-documented his- tory of WMD development and use, including at least ten chemical attacks against Iranians and Kurds. A collapsed Iraqi regime could lead to a massive proliferation disaster if Iraq’s WMD, delivery systems, and scientific and industrial infrastructure are not immediately secured. Eradicating the WMD threat will require detailed planning and coordination across the U.S. government and international spectrum, including UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) inspectors currently in Iraq. Success in planning and execution will rely on an unprecedented degree of informa- tion gathering and intelligence sharing to identify potential weapons sites and rel- evant scientists and technicians. A task force involving all relevant U.S. government agencies—in particular, the Defense, State, and Energy Departments and the intelligence community—must de- velop comprehensive plans for: • Tracking down WMD (the fact that UNMOVIC has not yet publicly confirmed specific WMD locations suggests the need for a detailed and dynamic search during both the combat and post-conflict periods); • Securing facilities (combat forces will have to hold WMD sites and storage/pro- duction facilities until the weapons can be inspected and destroyed); • Making sure Iraqis involved in the weapons programs are contained (the sci- entists and technicians responsible for the Iraqi WMD program must be identi- fied and prevented from fleeing the country); and • Destroying or removing WMD from Iraq. 3. Plan and train for other critical post-conflict missions necessary to lay the founda- tion for a peaceful and secure Iraq that will enhance regional security. In addition to the critical mission of securing and destroying WMD, U.S.-led coali- tion combat forces will be integrally involved in at least six major areas necessary to securing Iraq and enhancing regional security. These mission tasks cannot be del- egated to constabulary or local police/security forces. • Parole. Retraining, and Reintegration of the Regular Army. Coalition forces must begin the extensive preparations necessary for the parole (return to civil- ian life) and/or retraining of the Iraqi Army, which will be an important part of the reconciliation process. Soldiers must be returned to garrison, fed, and clothed. Each soldier must also be identified, photographed, and provided with VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 64 paperwork validating a legitimate parole. Their arms and equipment must be collected and stored securely. Many will be transported home. This must be done in conjunction with the implementation of civil retraining and reintegra- tion programs. Failure to promote former combatants’ reintegration into a legiti- mate security organization or their return to civilian life leads to long-term dif- ficulties for reconstruction and development efforts and can cause serious secu- rity problems. Based on historical precedents, military planners should allow at least 120 days to complete the demilitarization process and begin an aggressive re-training and reintegration program for Iraqi combatants. Long-term security challenges and requirements for defensive self-sufficiency are too great in iraq to justify completely demobilizing the military. Long- standing regional grievances and animosities pose a significant threat to a de- fenseless Iraq. Based on legitimate security concerns, the need to secure 3650 kilometers of border area (including nearly 1500 kilometers with Iran) and the size of neighboring military forces, the Iraqi National Army—currently 350,000 strong—should he restructured and retrained as a defensive force of no fewer than 150,000 regular troops, with a capacity for reserve augmentation. 6 If a co- herent, credible Iraqi army is not quickly recreated, the United States will bear the burden of defending the borders indefinitely. It will be imperative to instill a new, apolitical culture within Iraq’s restructured military as part of the effort to break the political and leadership role the military has traditionally played in Iraq. • Protecting Iraq’s Oil Infrastructure. Iraq is thought to have the second or third largest oil reserves in the world, and the petroleum industry could be harnessed over time to fund much of the reconstruction effort and provide capital to a post-conflict government. It is therefore essential that Saddam be prevented from destroying the country’s oil infrastructure as he attempted to do in Kuwait after the 1991 rout by U.S. and coalition forces. Coalition forces must also iden- tify appropriate units that can safeguard that infrastructure from potential takeover attempts once it is no longer protected by Saddam’s forces. • Protecting Iraq’s Territorial Integrity. Coalition leaders must obtain credible border guarantees from Iraq’s neighbors, particularly Turkey and Iran, and be prepared to use intelligence assets and combat forces in a deterrent role. Simi- lar guarantees must be obtained from the Kurdish opposition parties that they will not declare an independent state of Kurdistan or move militarily on Kirkuk or Baghdad in the wake of regime collapse. While many regional actors have a stake in a post-Saddam Iraq, unilateral actions or influence by such actors will undermine a cohesive and coordinated reconstruction effort. • Demilitarization and Elimination of the Republican Guards and Special Repub- lican Guards. The Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard are dis- tinct entities created to protect Saddam and provide a counterweight to the Reg- ular Army. These units have received enough funding and training to be a threat to a new government and have been sufficiently compromised from a human rights standpoint to be unusable as a viable security force in the future. It is imperative that this force be demobilized quickly and thoroughly. Some members may be eligible for parole after being cleared of potential war crimes or serious human rights violations; others may be subject to war crimes trials or a local reconciliation process and will need to be segregated from the rest of the population until these proceedings take place. • Security of Ba’ath Party Headquarters and Saddam’s Palaces. Coalition forces must prepare in advance to stop destruction of Ba’ath party headquarters and presidential palaces and secure these premises after Saddam falls. It is likely that Ba’ath party headquarters and presidential palaces house information that will be relevant to war crimes and WMD. It is also likely that Ba’ath party offi- cials will attempt to destroy much of this information. • Dismantling of Internal Security and Intelligence Apparatus. Finally, the coali- tion forces must lay preparations now for dismantling Iraq’s internal security and intelligence apparatus after a conflict. The internal security forces and in- telligence structure infiltrate every part of Iraqi society and permeate every Iraqi government institution. They must be completely dismantled in order to eradicate the climate of fear and oppression that currently marks Iraqi society. 6 The number of troops needed for Iraq to maintain a defensive force was derived according to an analysis of the size and relative capabilities of regional nations’ military forces. 150,000 regular troops augmented by reserve forces would be sufficient to maintain Iraq’s territorial in- tegrity and prevent an offensive war without the need for significant assistance from allied forces. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 65 GOVERNANCE AND PARTICIPATION 4. Establish an international transitional administration and name a transitional administrator. The United States has indicated a possible desire to see the United Nations run an international civilian administration in Iraq. The United Nations must begin set- ting up such an administration now so that it is prepared to stand-up a mission by the time the conflict ends. Although preparing a post-conflict mission in a member state would place the United Nations in a politically delicate situation, failure to do so only invites a repeat of past problems associated with hastily planned post- conflict civilian missions that were painfully slow to arrive in the field, and could lead to a destabilizing vacuum of political authority. it also would mean a longer initial period of U.S. military occupation of Iraq, which would heighten anti-Amer- ican sentiment in Iraq and throughout the Islamic world and may be difficult to sus- tain when the United States simultaneously is pursuing a war on terrorism and dealing with a provocative North Korea. Other options for post-conflict governance in Iraq have been considered, but all have serious drawbacks. New leadership from inside Saddam’s regime or a new Iraqi military government would continue the status quo, provide no hope for a dif- ferent future, and potentially lead to erosion of the central government’s control and a breakdown in national unity. The possibility that high-level Iraqi government offi- cials and military leaders have engaged in war crimes, human rights violations, or crimes against humanity would call into serious question their legitimacy. The Iraqi opposition, meanwhile, is split along religious, ethnic, tribal, and ideological lines and has not proved able to coalesce around any one candidate or group of leaders, let alone offer a specific vision of how Iraq should be governed after regime change. It commands questionable legitimacy inside Iraq because it has ties to Washington and has been cut off from daily realities in Iraq. But Saddam has systematically killed or destroyed any potential leaders inside the country, leaving a political void that may take some time to fill. In the interim, a multinational civilian administration in Iraq would avoid pitfalls attached to military occupation and the absence of broadly acceptable Iraqi leaders, while carrying with it the legitimacy of international approval. The UN Security Council must appoint a transitional administrator as early as possible to allow him to immediately begin planning his administration, working with core staff members, and liaising with military officials and humanitarian orga- nizations. If political concerns preclude appointing an administrator before the con- flict begins, the United Nations should appoint a coordinator to oversee the imme- diate process of setting up the transitional administration.7 Waiting until the con- flict is over would be a waste of valuable time, increasing the risk for Iraqis and the challenge for the international community. Similarly, core staff members—in- cluding 18 provincial transitional administrators—should be recruited now, and should make any necessary preparations so they can immediately deploy to Iraq as needed. The United Nations should solicit funds now to spend on planning the civil- ian administration, to pay its salaries and other necessary expenses, and to support ‘‘quick start’’ reconstruction projects—such as reopening schools, providing access to clean water, and rebuilding ports—that could begin right away. The UN Security Council members must begin discussions of the transitional ad- ministration’s mandate and should draft the necessary Chapter VII resolution so that it could be passed as soon as it is needed. The mandate must be robust, flexi- ble, and unambiguous; it must provide the mission full executive, legislative, judi- cial, and financial authority. At the same time, the administration should be streamlined, relying on existing Iraqi infrastructure and technocratic talent rather than importing an international cadre. To ensure that Iraqis play the key role in their country’s reconstruction, the man- date should emphasize maximum use of the existing Iraqi civil service at the local and national levels and call for Iraqi heads of government ministries and the use of Iraqi advisory councils wherever useful. The United Nations should develop a ‘‘de- Ba’athification’’ process for vetting the various Iraqi government ministries and in- stitutions that could begin as soon as the transitional administration hits the 7 In a January 14 press conference, Annan noted that the United Nations is ‘‘doing some thinking, without assuming anything’’ about putting together post-conflict structures for Iraq. But he stated that it would be ‘‘premature’’ to start discussing the appointment of a Special Rep- resentative to the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Iraq. (In Kosovo and East Timor, the SRSGs doubled as the transitional administrators.) Annan, Press Conference, UN Headquarters, Jan. 14, 2003, at—http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/62824 daecd7167ef49256caf001e2a9a?OpenDocument VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 66 ground. The United Nations could start now to identify potential Iraqi ministers— drawing on the pool of talent throughout Iraq, Kurds, opposition figures, and others in the Iraqi diaspora—perhaps working with existing structures such as the coordi- nating committee of 65 Iraqi opposition members or the various working groups of the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project. The mandate also should call for maximum decentralization of government serv- ices, and should stress paying salaries at the municipal level, which could have an immediate beneficial effect. A high degree of decentralization will increase the influ- ence of suppressed regional voices and speed the de-Ba’athification process and the identification and cultivation of lraqis who will become the future leaders of Iraq. 5. Develop a national dialogue process and recruit a national dialogue coordinator. The viability of any new government in Iraq depends on giving all Iraqis a tan- gible role and stake in its formulation. One effective means is a national dialogue process similar to the Loya Jurga in Afghanistan. This would involve a graduated selection of delegates from throughout Iraq and the diaspora, starting at the grass- roots level in all of Iraq’s 18 provinces, who would deliberate on issues key to the future of Iraq—such as whether Iraq should be a federal democracy and a national process for reconciliation and dealing with past wrongs. A national dialogue would maximize Iraqi input into the nature of their future state; open up a political proc- ess in Iraq; create an environment in which local talent and capacity can be devel- oped and thrive; and encourage civil society development. It would ensure that the framework, timetable, and overall structure of Iraq’s future government and polit- ical systems are Iraqi-driven and directed. The United Nations should appoint a special coordinator for the national dialogue process—ideally an Iraqi—who could begin developing the outlines of a model now. The coordinator could work with the coalition force command and the nascent tran- sitional administration to begin planning for municipal and provincial level meet- ings that would lead to selection of delegates to a national assembly. In collabora- tion first with Iraqis in the diaspora and then with Iraqis throughout the country, the coordinator could begin to define the timing, form, and agenda of a national dia- logue process. The agenda might include defining a new political and government system for Iraq; setting a timetable for elections; setting a timeline for phased with- drawal of the international transitional administration; revising or drafting a new Iraqi Constitution and legal codes; and devising a process for dealing with past wrongs, such as a truth and reconciliation commission or a general amnesty. JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION 6. Recruit a rapidly deployable justice team of international legal experts, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, corrections officers, and public information ex- perts. The United Nations should recruit standby teams of justice sector specialists— international legal experts, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and corrections officers—who could rapidly be deployed to Iraq’s 18 provinces, to work with and train existing Iraqi personnel as well as to supplement their capabilities as needed. Another appropriate body—such as the European Union or an experienced NGO— could also be called on to assist in creating these teams. Although there is a signifi- cant amount of human and physical judicial infrastructure that can be built on when re-constituting the Iraqi justice system, there will be undoubtedly be gaps. It is likely, for example, that critical actors in the judicial arena will be seen as tainted as a result of having enforced Saddam’s laws for so long. It may be necessary for international officials to fill their positions temporarily until additional local talent can be harnessed. These teams should be given intensive pre-deployment language, culture, and sit- uational training—in addition to being educated in the body of applicable law in Iraq, once that has been decided. The United Nations should draw on regional and Iraqi talent and expertise to ensure greater grounding in local traditions, including language and customs. In addition to designating teams for the field, the United Nations should create a team of Iraqi expatriate lawyers and international lawyers to vet Iraq’s existing laws and Constitution for consistency with international human tights laws and to decide on the interim body of law to be applied in Iraq after the conflict. When stripped of arbitrary Saddam-era decrees and amendments, the existing Iraqi legal codes should be partially salvageable. The near-total absence of rule of law in Iraq probably has less to do with the content of existing statutes than it does with discriminatory, arbitrary, and lackluster enforcement. If the existing codes can be salvaged once vetted, they could be used as the interim body of applicable law VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 67 in Iraq immediately after the conflict. If not, the United Nations should develop a framework of model laws that could be used as the interim applicable law in Iraq. A careful and thorough vetting—and a firm, advance decision on an interim body of law—is needed to preempt the applicable law debate that has undermined the reconstruction of Kosovo’s justice sector. The past twenty years have eroded the Iraqi peoples’ trust in their judiciary and law enforcement organizations. In order for Iraqis to begin to trust the trans- formation of these institutions from mechanisms of repression to defenders of human rights and rule of law, the international community must undertake a mas- sive outreach and education initiative. To that end, the United Nations should assemble a team of Iraqi and inter- national legal and public information specialists, charged with educating the Iraqi populace about the importance of the rule of law and human rights and the role of the international justice teams. These specialists would educate Iraqis about re- forms to the legal code and promote dialogue between international personnel, com- munity leaders, and the public. 7. Identify and recruit international civilian police officers. Building on existing local capacity, international civilian police (CIVPOL) will most likely play the role of advisors, supplementing rather than replacing a sizable Iraqi civilian force. The United Nations should immediately begin a recruitment process to organize a limited force of well-trained, well-equipped international civil- ian police to be utilized as police supervisors, mentors, and trainers in the imme- diate post-conflict environment. The record of recent large-scale CIVPOL deployments in Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor has been mixed, at best. Bringing in substantial numbers of CIVPOL to bol- ster local law enforcement capacity has been resource-intensive and extremely slow going. International CIVPOL have generally tended to be poorly trained, poorly equipped, undermanned, and under-resourced. Deploying limited numbers of CIVPOL, while relying primarily on existing Iraqi personnel and infrastructure, could alleviate some of these problems. Iraq has between 35,000–58,000 civilian police. A mechanism must be developed to vet the existing police force in order to cleanse it of the political remnants of Saddam’s regime. The top tiers of the police force likely will be removed from their positions either as part of this de-Ba’athification process or because they may choose to leave on their own accord. The remaining officers could be employed under the supervision of international authorities—most likely the transitional security force, until CIVPOL is deployed in force. Decentralization should be the first step in revamping the existing force. Police officers should be paid at the local level by municipal authorities in order to break down the overly centralized command and control structure. The United Nations also should begin developing plans for the reconfiguration and standardized retraining of the Iraqi police, the reconstitution of Iraqi police academies, and the administrative decentralization of the police. The transitional administration will need to institute a re-training program in order to instill the new chain of command, reinforce the principles of civilian control of the police, and educate and train Iraqi police on human rights standards and any changes in Iraqi laws. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC WELL-BEING 8. Call for a debt restructuring meeting and push the United Nations Security Coun- cil to begin a review of past war-related claims against Iraq. Iraq’s financial burden is an estimated $383 billion, including foreign debt, com- pensation claims, and pending contracts. Even if this figure were massively dis- counted, Iraq would have a debt-to-export ratio that would place it in the World Bank’s most burdened category, far surpassing the average of 3:1 for highly in- debted poor countries (HIPC). Iraq must be freed from this overwhelming debt and claims burden so that its oil revenues can be used to help pay for reconstruction— estimated to cost tens of billions in the first year alone, and as much as $25 billion to $100 billion overall. Saddam has amassed $62 to $130 billion in foreign debt, most of it in short-term loans from commercial banks but including some long-term debt to foreign govern- ments. Iraq has not been paying its debt throughout the period of the UN sanctions regime. Protection from debt repayment should be included as part of a formal re- negotiation of Iraq’s external debt. The U.S. government should lead the call for con- vening a meeting of sovereign claimants and creditors to discuss a speedy and effec- tive debt renegotiation. This could be done as a formal Paris Club restructuring, VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 68 through the International Monetary Fund, or through a specifically created debt for- giveness/reduction mechanism. Development of a sovereign bankruptcy mechanism for Iraq could also be considered. Major creditors and claimants should agree to a five-year moratorium on Iraq’s external debt, similar to what the Paris Club credi- tors agreed to for Yugoslavia in 2001. Iraq’s overall financial burden includes $172 billion in unsettled claims related to the Gulf War, which have been submitted to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC). In addition, there are $43 billion in claims already resolved by the UNCC, which so far have been paid at a rate of about $4 billion per year from Iraqi oil revenues as part of the Oil-for-Food mechanism. There are also re- ported to be $100 billion in reparations claims related to the Iran-Iraq War, al- though the UN Security Council has never decided on a formal mechanism for re- solving these claims. The United States should begin discussions at the Security Council with regard to calling on the UNCC to cease consideration of all unsettled Gulf War compensation claims. The Security Council also should call on the UNCC to halt or discount further payment of already resolved claims, for which $27 billion is still owed. Finally, Saddam Hussein’s regime has entered into contractual arrangements that could limit funds available for reconstruction. Iraq has pending contracts with Rus- sian, Dutch, Egyptian, United Arab Emirates, Chinese, and French entities esti- mated at $57.2 billion, primarily in the energy and telecommunications sectors. The United Nations should establish a mechanism for reviewing the legality and legitimacy of these contracts. 9. Begin an immediate review of sanctions against Iraq and prepare necessary docu- mentation to suspend or partially lift those sanctions. In order for the United States to mobilize an effective post-conflict humanitarian and reconstruction response in Iraq, certain provisions of the iraq Sanctions Act of 1990 (P.L. 101–513) (ISA) will need to be waived. The ISA and certain other U.S. statutory provisions relating to Iraq’s status as a terrorism list country and WMD concerns prohibit inter alia all U.S. imports from and exports to Iraq (except for cer- tain humanitarian goods as part of the Oil-for-Food program); all foreign military sales to Iraq; all commercial arms sales to Iraq; the exports of dual use items to Iraq; all forms of U.S. assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act and the annual foreign operations appropriations acts, other than emergency medical and humani- tarian assistance; and require U.S. opposition to international financial institutions’ loans or assistance to Iraq. The ISA also blocks all Iraqi property in the United States’ freezing Iraqi bank accounts, for example. The President can waive the ISA’s provisions, upon 15-, 30-, or 60-day advance notice, depending on the sanctions to be waived and the determinations he is re- quired to make. New legislation, or use of extraordinary presidential authorities, would be required to waive certain other sanctions. Although it would probably be desirable to retain certain sanctions even after a regime change—such as restric- tions on sales and exports of military items and nuclear regulatory commission li- censes—some provisions will have to be waived in order for U.S. government offi- cials, humanitarian organizations, and private citizens to participate in the post- conflict reconstruction effort. A working group should be convened immediately involving all relevant U.S. gov- ernment agencies—in particular the Departments of State, Defense, Treasury and Commerce—to begin discussions on which U.S. sanctions should be lifted after a conflict and to start preparing necessary documents. The goal is to prevent undue delay of American humanitarian and reconstruction responses in a post-conflict Iraq. UN Security Council Resolution 661 (August 1990) is the foundation of the inter- national sanctions regime. Resolution 661 prohibits import of Iraqi goods and most exports to Iraq, and freezes Iraq’s funds and assets. Resolution 687 (April 1991) ex- pressly added weapons and military materiel to the list of goods prohibited for ex- port. Subsequent resolutions have built on these and tied lifting the sanctions to satisfaction of demands regarding payment of debt and compensation, weapons of mass destruction, and repudiation of terrorism. Resolution 986 (1995) allowed for limited sale of oil in exchange for humanitarian goods—the Oil-for-Food program— and this remains the only permitted avenue of goods out of and into Iraq. Though it may be possible to continue to provide humanitarian goods through the Oil-for- Food program, further reconstruction needs will demand at least a partial lifting of the UN sanctions. Because these sanctions can only be lifted through a Security Council resolution, a UN working group should be convened immediately to begin discussions and VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 69 drafting language to lift those sanctions necessary to allow a robust humanitarian and reconstruction response. 10. Convene a donors’ conference for Iraq. Funds will be needed right away for at least three critical objectives—to meet emergency humanitarian needs; to start up the international civilian mission; and to launch ‘‘quick start’’ reconstruction projects. The United States should work with major donors, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations to convene a donors’ conference to these ends. Having humanitarian resources available will allow the NGO community to begin its preparations at the earliest date and also could free up some of the Oil-for-Food funds for other purposes, such as restoring local government services (police, lights, trash, and schools) and other tangible community needs. Funds also should be raised ahead of time to pay for the international civilian ad- ministration, to ensure that at least the core administration can be inserted into Iraq immediately after a conflict. Previous UN post-conflict missions have been painfully slow to arrive in the field, due in part to a lack of sufficient, immediately available funding. Even assuming that Iraqi-generated funds could be used for reconstruction projects soon, the potential to use such funds will not be realized in the immediate term. Funds should therefore be raised for reconstruction projects that the inter- national civilian administration could undertake right away. The lack of such funds in East Timor led to protests in front of UN buildings to complain that the UN mis- sion was not ‘‘doing anything.’’ It took over a year for critical reconstruction projects (such as road rebuilding) to get started in Afghanistan, leading to major frustration on the part of the Afghan government with UN agencies and major donor countries. CONCLUSION Winning the peace in Iraq will be critical—for the Iraqi people; for the prospects of a peaceful and secure Iraq free from weapons of mass destruction; for regional stability; and for perceptions of America throughout the Middle East and among Muslims worldwide. Getting post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq wrong could prove devastating to the interests of the United States, Iraqis, and the international com- munity more broadly. Lessons learned from previous post-conflict reconstruction efforts highlight a num- ber of consistent mistakes and pitfalls that can and should be avoided. One clear lesson is the importance of pre-conflict planning, preparation, communication, and coordination. Anticipating and preparing for the myriad tasks that must be per- formed in countries emerging from conflict is an arduous task, but one that must be undertaken before the fighting starts if post-conflict reconstruction efforts are to be effective once the shooting stops. Simply talking about planning is not enough. The United States and the United Nations must immediately take the concrete actions outlined here if we hope to be successful in what will be a long and costly process of reconstructing Iraq. Ad hoc, under-funded, and delayed efforts driven by unrealistic timelines and political con- siderations will not work. The United States and the international community must commit the resources, military might, manpower, and time that will be required in Iraq—and we must start doing so now. FINAL REPORT OF THE BI-PARTISAN COMMISSION ON POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION January 2003 CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (CSIS) AND THE ASSOCIATION OF THE U.S. ARMY (AUSA) PLAY TO WIN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY One of the principal lessons of the events of September 11 is that failed states matter—for national security as well as for humanitarian reasons. If left to their own devices, such states can become sanctuaries for terrorist networks, organized VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00073 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 70 crime and drug traffickers as well as posing grave humanitarian challenges and threats to regional stability. While the United States has great interests at stake, however, U.S. institutions and ways of doing business have not kept pace with the rapidly changing environ- ment since the end of the Cold War. Despite over a decade of recent experience in trying to address the challenges of failed states and rebuilding countries following conflict, U.S. capacity for addressing these challenges remains woefully inadequate. The United States cannot get involved in all failed states or try to rebuild all countries following conflict, nor should it try to do so. The appropriate role for the United States will depend on the interests and values at stake, as well as the role that other international actors can and should play. Although the U.S. contribution will vary from operation to operation, decision makers will nevertheless have to make judgments about what kind of assistance options they want to be able to make available for future U.S. engagement. The notion of comparative advantage should be central to determining the portfolio of long-term capabilities and mechanisms in which the U.S. government should invest to create those options. Some in the United States might argue that enhancing U.S. capacity to work in post-conflict environments is a recipe for automatically dragging the United States into ‘‘other people’s messes.’’ In fact, as a superpower with a global presence and global interests, the United States does have a large stake in remedying failed states. Far from being a recipe to force us to do more in this area, having a clear vision of our comparative advantages, objectives and strategy, as well as cor- responding capacities, will give us more, not less, flexibility and leverage to deter- mine what role we should play and what roles other international and indigenous actors should play. This bi-partisan Commission on Post Conflict Reconstruction was convened by the Association of the U.S. Army and the Center for Strategic and International Studies to make recommendations on what the United States will have to do to enable itself to help countries successfully rebuild themselves following conflict. The commis- sioners—27 distinguished individuals with extensive experience in the U.S. Con- gress, military, various executive branch agencies, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations—met throughout 2002 to consider recommenda- tions that surfaced over two years of research, expert working groups, and vetting with current policy-makers and practitioners. This report represents the Commission’s final assessment of the top priority issues that the United States needs to address. It makes 17 specific recommenda- tions broken out by the substantive pillars of post-conflict reconstruction—security, justice and reconciliation, economic and social wellbeing, and governance and par- ticipation—as well as by the four crucial ‘‘enablers’’ that facilitate successful engage- ment: strategy and planning, implementation infrastructure, training and education, and funding. It is our firm belief that if policy-makers take steps to implement these rec- ommendations, the United States will dramatically improve its ability to protect itself, promote its interests and values, enhance its standing, and improve the lot of people around the globe. THE CHALLENGE OF FAILED STATES September 11 provided an undeniable impetus to revisit the question of post-con- flict reconstruction by forcing the United States to reevaluate its approach to deal- ing with failed states. For national security as well as for humanitarian reasons, failed states—if left to their own devices—can provide safe haven for a diverse array of transnational threats, including terrorist networks, global organized crime, and narcotics traffickers who also exploit the dysfunctional environment. As such, failed states can pose a direct threat to the national interests of the United States and to the stability of entire regions. President Bush has recognized the gravity of the threat in his recently released National Security Strategy, which goes so far as to argue that ‘‘America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.’’ 1 Afghanistan—torn by decades of war, internal strife, and repression—exemplifies some of the dangers posed by failed states. Although Afghanistan provides the first major reconstruction test of the war on terrorism, it will not be the last. Similar challenges exist elsewhere, in locations ranging from the Middle East and South Asia to the Horn of Africa, where terrorist groups have already exploited the vacu- 1 For a more in-depth discussion of failed states, see Gordon R. Sullivan and John J. Hamre,‘‘Toward Post-Conflict Reconstruction,’’ The Washington Quarterly, Autumn 2002. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 71 um of state authority and are likely to seek further advantage as Afghanistan ceases to provide them sanctuary. As much as some in the United States would like to avoid involvement in nation building, failed states are a reality that cannot be wished away. Indeed, some of the possible candidates for failure in coming years are countries in which the United States already has a defined national security inter- est—from Iraq and the Occupied Territories in the Middle East to North Korea and Cuba. As the situation in Afghanistan has demonstrated, the United States and the international community ignore collapsed or weak states at their peril. However, not all failed states are created equal. Not all will be equally important to the United States and the international community. Each stable country must gauge its involvement in failed or failing states according to its own interests. Nor can a ‘‘one size fits all’’ approach be used to address the broad diversity of cases. Although conceptual threads link these situations, the approach to dealing with failed and dangerously weak states must be tailored to each case. At the outset of the twenty-first century, there are many ongoing conflicts rooted in state failure in addition to a number of other causes. It is in the interest of the United States and the international community to bring conflict to a lasting and sustainable close. This is a daunting task. The record of success in assisting failed states emerging from violent conflict is mixed, with fifty percent of nations emerging from conditions of violent conflict slipping back into violence within five years. 2 Cer- tainly, in an interconnected world, with the resources available and the con- sequences so dire, the international community can and must break this dangerous cycle of conflict. Unfortunately, U.S. security and development agencies still reflect their Cold War heritage. The kinds of complex crises and the challenge of failed states encountered in recent years do not line up with these outdated governmental mechanisms. In short, post-conflict reconstruction is an orphan of the post-Cold War world and the United States needs to revamp its governmental structures to reflect present-day re- alities. If regional stability is to be maintained, 3 economic development advanced, lives saved, and transnational threats reduced, the United States and the international community must develop a strategy and enhance capacity for pursuing post-conflict reconstruction. Significant international interventions to help rebuild countries are certainly not the answer for every failed or failing state; nevertheless, international involvement will be essential in many cases. Even when other options are pursued— such as quarantining failed states, carving them up, absorbing them into larger en- tities, establishing a transitional authority, or backing a party in the hopes it can win a war and re-establish order—they will most often succeed when reconstruction capabilities exist and can be used to supplement whatever other measures are un- dertaken. In essence, the question is not whether the United States and the inter- national community will have to help reconstruct states, but rather when and how they will do so. THE COMMISSION ON POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION Over the last year a distinguished bi-partisan group of members of Congress, mili- tary leaders, and senior policy experts who have served in the U.S. government, international organizations and the not-for-profit sector have convened to consider a range of possible U.S. responses to the major challenge posed by failed states. This report reflects the conclusions of the Commission. The Commission was charged with making recommendations to improve U.S. ca- pabilities to undertake post-conflict reconstruction. All its deliberations, however, were undertaken with the explicit assumption that the challenges of post-conflict re- construction are an international problem and responsibility, and that the design of U.S. capacity should take into account the international context and a broad range of international actors. The next section of this report, therefore lays out a general framework for creating a cohesive international response to post-conflict reconstruc- tion. That section is followed by a discussion of the specific role of the United States in post-conflict reconstruction efforts. 2 Jean-Paul Azam, Paul Collier, and Anke Hoeffler,‘‘International Policies on Civil Con- flict: An Economic Perspective.’’ December 14, 2001, p. 2, cited at http://users.ox.ac.uk/∼ball0144/ azam coil _ _hoe.pdf (accessed July 3, 2002). 3 If reconstruction is not effective, failed states often slide back into patterns of instability which seep across borders and drag down fragile regions. In recent years, this dynamic has been all too evident from west and Central Africa, to Central and South Asia, to Southeastern Europe. VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 72 The heart of the report that follows focuses on the challenge of enhancing U.S. response capabilities. It is divided into eight areas that require attention, each with a corresponding set of specific recommendations. Four of the areas requiring atten- tion are the substantive ‘‘pillars’’ of post-conflict reconstruction efforts: security; jus- tice and reconciliation; economic and social well-being; and governance and partici- pation. Creating an effective U.S. response capacity also requires improvements in four key capacity ‘‘enablers’’: strategy and planning; implementation infrastructure; training and education; and funding. It is hoped by this Commission that the recommendations made in these eight areas comprise a realistic, achievable plan to create a more coherent and effective U.S. post-conflict reconstruction capacity, and in so doing, offer current and future U.S. leaders the tools necessary to advance U.S. interests and to reduce the amount of conflict around the world. FRAMEWORK FOR A COHESIVE AND STRATEGIC INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE In many post-conflict environments, the chaos on the ground is paralleled only by the chaos of the international response. Various governmental agencies, inter- national organizations, international financial institutions, and non-governmental organizations come from all parts of the globe to help. They bring much needed re- sources, expertise, and energy, but they also bring very different assumptions, work- ing styles, and goals. While creating a perfectly cohesive effort in any post-conflict country is not pos- sible, there are a number of straightforward principles that, if followed, can maxi- mize the unity of the international effort. The people of the country in question must own the reconstruction process and be its prime movers. Following conflict, indigenous governance structures are often very weak or non-existent and the local human resource base is greatly diminished through war-induced deaths, brain drain, displacement, removal of previously em- powered individuals and groups, and forgone investment in human capital. Though this bleak starting point often forces outside actors to play a disproportionately large role in the early stages of the rebuilding process, every effort must be taken to build (or rebuild) indigenous capacity and governance structures as quickly as possible. Leadership roles in the reconstruction effort must be given to host country nationals at the earliest possible stage of the process. Even if capacity is limited, host country representatives should chair or co-chair pledging conferences, priority- setting meetings, joint assessments of needs, and all other relevant processes. Rep- resentatives should be elected, or may be designated by a peace process. Where these avenues do not exist, the international community must help create mecha- nisms for legitimate host country leaders to be elected or appointed. In addition, all international actors should seek out host country partners from day one. If they do not exist, international actors should help to develop them and impart the knowl- edge and skills necessary to succeed in the job. A coherent international strategy based on internal and external parties’ interests is crucial. While major international actors have called for strategic coordination in post-conflict settings, the simple fact is that no general model of, or processes for, strategy development and coordination exists. For any strategy development exer- cise in these difficult environments to succeed, it must be based on four key tenets. First, all involved must recognize that post-conflict reconstruction is not a technical or ‘‘normal’’ developmental process, but rather a fundamentally political one. Sec- ond, any outside intervention must be designed with the interests of all the key ac- tors involved, both within the country and outside, with an eye to blocking spoilers and empowering legitimate peace-seeking actors. Third, host country leaders and outside actors must agree on top priorities and sequence their interventions accord- ingly. Fourth, while a coordinated strategic plan may exist on paper, only a small team of key external actors working in-country will be able to effectively leverage international resources and influence the interest calculations of key actors. Senior representatives of the international community in partnership with host country representatives should conduct joint assessments of needs, prioritize them, and de- sign a strategy to help shape pledging conferences and other major decision-making fora. The international community must address the problem of post-conflict reconstruc- tion holistically, building and deploying capacity to address a broad range of inter- related tasks. As United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan has noted,‘‘All the tasks—humanitarian, military, political, social, and economic—are interconnected, and the people engaged in them need to work closely together. We cannot expect VerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:01 Feb 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 91525.TXT SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2 73 lasting success in any of them unless we pursue all of them at once as part of a single coherent strategy. If the resources are lacking for any one of them, all the others may turn out to have been pursued in vain.’’ 4 The range of tasks that should be considered in any given post-conflict reconstruction operation are easily identi- fied, and fall into four main areas: security; justice and reconciliation, economic and social well-being, and governance and participation. 5 Security is the sine qua non of post-conflict reconstruction. Though every case is different, there is one constant—if security needs are not met, both the peace in a given country and the intervention intended to promote it are doomed to fail. Unless comprehensive security needs are addressed up front, spoilers will find the weak areas and retain leverage to affect the political outcomes, vitiating the peace. While security is essential, it will never be one hundred percent guaranteed and the per- fect must not become the enemy of the good. In order to achieve acceptable levels of security,‘‘coalitions of the willing’’ and UN peacekeeping operations need coherent military leadership and core troops from a lead nation that provide the backbone of the operation. The international community must also enhance its ability to de- ploy civilian police to address temporary needs. In addition, efforts to design and reconstruct or reform local security institutions, including both military and police, must begin early in the peace process. Success is made on the ground. Another key to effective international involve- ment in post-conflict reconstruction efforts is empowering and organizing represent- atives in the field. Strategy in a post-conflict environment must be closely tailored to the particular characteristics of the country, and as such, should be heavily in- formed by those closest to the situation. Because actors with various mandates are in the field at any given time, they must be left to devise an appropriate division of labor at the country level. Donors and international organizations should there- fore structure their post-conflict authorities to devolve maximum power, money and authority to their representatives in the field.‘‘Country teams’’ which meet regularly inside the country (but which are not necessarily co-located physically) should in- clude representatives not only from the UN system and/or the lead nation, but also the International Financial Institutions, Multilateral Development Banks, key NGOs, and any military or security personnel operating in theater. Civil-Military Cooperation Centers (CIMICs) should be a standard part of the package where mili- tary or peacekeeping operations operate alongside other reconstruction ef- forts.‘‘Friends Groups,’’ which formally bring together governments with means and interests in supporting the peace and reconstruction process, should be cultivated and formed at early stages of the process. International interventions are extraordinary and should take all necessary meas- ures to avoid undermining local leaders, institutions and processes. A significant international presence is often needed in a post-conflict situation in order to provide security, reassure the indigenous population of international financial and moral support, deliver needed services, and build lasting internal capacity. While a large international presence may be both necessary and appropriate in initial phases, a dominating presence can be damaging over the longer term. Therefore, the inter- national community sh […display truncated here — the full text is in the download file]