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News, 02-09/04/03 (8) ASSUMING THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN * Pentagon squares off against Powell, Europe * Iraqis fear Americans may run country after war * UN spells out limits of US post-conflict rights * Empires don't go home * The Bush administration's dangerous colonial adventure * Can U.S. Rebuild Iraq Without Baathists? * U.S. may rely on Baathists after war * Lead role for US, UK in post-war Iraq reaffirmed * Former general to head post-war administration * US begins the process of 'regime change' * UK to appoint deputy for interim authority * US and UK focus on legitimacy of interim rule ASSUMING THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED03Ak06.html * PENTAGON SQUARES OFF AGAINST POWELL, EUROPE by Jim Lobe Asia Times, from Inter Press Service, 3rd April WASHINGTON - Even as United States troops grind their way toward Baghdad, the administration of President George W Bush remains at odds over its post-war plans to occupy Iraq. The main issue - who will be in charge of the occupation - pits the Pentagon against the State Department and its allies in Europe, notably British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Pentagon appears determined to maintain as much power for itself and its favorites in the opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC) as possible, while the State Department, backed by the intelligence community and Blair, is arguing for major roles for other US allies, the United Nations and other opposition figures. The Pentagon recently vetoed as many as eight current and former State Department officials for key posts in the occupation administration, according to the Washington Post. Excluded were a number of former ambassadors and high-level foreign service officers with expertise in the Arab world. Some sources said that they were vetoed because they were "run-of-the-mill" and not "doers", while others revealed that they were opposed by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, who has supported Israel's Likud Party in the past and is said to consider some candidates to be too pro-Arab, a bias that neo-conservatives believe is endemic to the State Department's Near East bureau. Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld has also reportedly insisted that all relief and aid work come under the jurisdiction of retired army general Jay Garner, the coordinator of the Pentagon's office of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance, who will report directly to the chief of the US Central Command, General Tommy Franks. Secretary of State Colin Powell argued in a letter to Rumsfeld last week that US government relief work should be headed by the US Agency for International Development, which reports to the State Department. He reportedly said that international agencies and voluntary relief groups were unlikely to accept an arrangement in which they reported to the military. The aid groups themselves have called for the United Nations to assume control of relief operations. But the Pentagon rejects that scheme. In testimony late last week, Feith insisted that as long as the situation on the ground is insecure, the military has to remain in control. "If things go well, we will be able to hand things over to the Iraqis so there would be no need for UN participation," he said. In addition to being opposed by Powell and the relief groups, the Pentagon's anti-UN position has come under fire from Blair and the European Union, which has long called for a major role for the world body in any relief and reconstruction effort, similar to that it assumed in Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban. "We believe that the UN must continue to play a central role during and after the crisis," EU leaders said last week. France, in particular, has threatened to veto any Security Council resolution that subordinates the UN to a US occupation authority. The breach between the Pentagon on the one hand and Powell, the aid groups and the Europeans on the other, has become so serious that 29 prominent Democrats, neo conservatives and right-wing Republicans published a joint letter this week that they proposed as the basis for an acceptable compromise. Signed by analysts and former policy makers from the mainstream Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations and from right-wing think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, the letter called for Washington to "seek passage of a Security Council resolution that endorses the establishment of a civilian administration in Iraq, authorizes the participation of UN relief and reconstruction agencies, [and] welcomes the deployment of a security stabilization force by NATO allies". "While some seem determined to create an ever deeper divide between the United States and Europe, and others seem indifferent to the long term survival of the trans-Atlantic partnership," the letter stated in what some sources called an implicit rebuke to both Rumsfeld and French President Jacques Chirac, "we believe it is essential, even in the midst of war, to begin building a new era of trans-Atlantic cooperation". "To my mind, it's a statement of opposition to the 'scorched earth' sense we have crossed the Rubicon and we can do everything by ourselves," said one right-wing signer, Tod Lindberg of the Hoover Institution. "The message is: 1) The US doesn't need to go it alone; and 2) That it can't," said Lee Feinstein, another signer and former Bill Clinton official currently with the Council on Foreign Relations. While the administration may indeed opt for such a solution, it appears clear for now that the Pentagon is still insisting on complete control of the occupation. The Washington Post reported on Monday that the Defense Department was insisting on a prominent role for former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director R James Woolsey, a protege of the controversial former chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB), Richard Perle, who has also been one of the most outspoken champions of radical change throughout the Arab Middle East. Woolsey, who also helped lead the media campaign to link Iraq to al-Qaeda and who has blamed Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi establishment for anti-US sentiment in the region, was reportedly being promoted by Feith as the occupation's minister of information, but other officials thought that his previous link to the CIA might reduce his credibility in that post. Woolsey has also been one of the strongest Washington supporters of the INC, and its controversial leader Ahmed Chalabi. Both Woolsey and Garner have been associated with the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), which promotes military and strategic ties between the US and Israel. Woolsey serves on the board of advisers of JINSA, as well as the Pentagon's DPB, and several other neo-conservative groups, including Americans for Victory Over Terrorism. Garner, who was also promoted by Feith and Perle as the best candidate for administering the occupation, helped the humanitarian effort to save hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in 1991. He visited Israel as a guest of JINSA in 1998 and in October 2000 was one of 26 US military leaders to sign a staunchly pro-Israel statement released by JINSA that condemned the escalating Palestinian intifada. http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c =StoryFT&cid=1048313411887&p=1045511312785 * IRAQIS FEAR AMERICANS MAY RUN COUNTRY AFTER WAR by Roula Khalaf in London and James Harding in Washington Financial Times, 3rd April The suggestion that prominent American figures will take part in the running of postwar Iraq has alarmed many Iraqi exiles, as well as European and Arab officials. Among the more bizarre elements of US plans is the suggestion that James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, should be considered for the top job in the administration of Iraq. Although the White House has apparently overruled a Pentagon suggestion that Mr Woolsey be assigned to the ministry of information, he is said to still be under consideration for other posts. Randy Scheunemann, executive director of the committee for the liberation of Iraq - a powerful Washington group in which Mr Woolsey is a member of the advisory board - says the former head of the CIA is being looked at for a number of positions. "Jim would be a huge asset in many areas. He has a very clear vision of how to build a democratic society in the aftermath," says Mr Scheunemann. Notwithstanding the talents of Mr Woolsey, the concern is that appointing US figures to oversee the post-Saddam Hussein government will reinforce perceptions of a neo-colonial American attitude and further undermine the US stated aim of "liberating" Iraqis. "It makes no sense for the US to involve itself in details," argues Adnan Pachachi, the former Iraqi foreign minister who has been lobbying for the UN to oversee the postwar transition. "It's not what Iraqis want and what the international community wants, it's not even what the US's allies want." Within the administration, there is a wider argument raging over the shape of a future Iraqi government. US plans call for a military administration headed by General Tommy Franks, head of the US Central Command, or a deputy, and a form of civil administration directed by Jay Garner, a retired general who is now head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian assistance. The expectation is that Mr Garner will oversee the civilian administration and attach US officials to various ministries, then gradually pass over control to an Iraqi administration. Imad Dia, an exiled Iraqi from Michigan, is now running the Iraq Reconstruction and Development Council, which comes under Mr Garner's authority. This entity has been recruiting Iraqis and training them to assist in a future administration. But disagreements have emerged between the State Department and the Pentagon, stretching from the minutiae of personnel appointments in postwar plans to the defining question of the Bush administration's approach to multilateralism and the role of the United Nations. One of the most serious differences between the Pentagon and the State Department is over the role of the exiled opposition, particularly the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, an ex-banker. People familiar with the debate say the Pentagon sees a far greater role for the INC than the State Department, which views Mr Chalabi with suspicion and questions whether he has any backing inside Iraq. Some experts and former US officials blame the INC for raising expectations in Washington that Iraqis, particularly the southern Shia population, would celebrate the arrival of US troops - a jubilation yet to be seen. "It's the INC that has always told the US that there would not be any significant resistance and that people would greet the US with flowers," says Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the UK's University of Warwick. Mr Chalabi has appeared to distance himself from the US by forging closer ties with Iran in recent months. He has also criticised the US failure to involve opposition groups in the military campaign, blaming this for the ambivalent reaction seen by Iraqis in the south. But diplomats say the INC remains the Pentagon's favourite group to help run Iraq. The other main groups are the two Kurdish parties based in northern Iraq and Sciri, the Iranian-backed shia group. "It would not surprise me if minions at the State Department were trying to block everybody close to the Iraqi democrats from playing a role in post-Saddam Iraq because many don't support democracy in Iraq," charges Mr Scheunemann, whose committee supports the INC. "The enemies of the INC are truly shameless in their argument." The emerging difference of opinion between the State Department and the Pentagon over the Iraqi appointees - not to mention the proposed US names - for the next Iraqi administration is being echoed in a debate inside the White House. Administration officials have recently tempered their public enthusiasm for Iraqi exiles, emphasising the role that Iraqis in the country will play in constructing the next government. The White House has been stressing that the next leadership will come from inside Iraq: "The interim Iraqi authority is to be a group made up both of external opposition, people who have worked on behalf of the Iraqi people on the outside, but also with heavy representation of people who are on the ground in the country." Additional reporting by Victor Mallet in Kuwait and Christopher Adams in London http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c =StoryFT&cid=1048313453147&p=1031119383196 * UN SPELLS OUT LIMITS OF US POST-CONFLICT RIGHTS by Mark Turner at the United Nations Financial Times, 3rd April Mark Malloch Brown, head of the United Nations Development Programme, said on Thursday the US would have little choice but to return to the UN in establishing a post conflict Iraq administration, stressing it had no international right to take over Iraq's oil industry, and warning that rebuilding costs would far exceed current oil revenues. "Under the Geneva Conventions, [the occupying power is] only able to deal with day to day administration: you are not able to change the constitution, or make legal commitments going ahead many years," said Mr Malloch Brown. "Sorting this out in a legally acceptable way drives you back to that little stuffy table [at the Security Council]: all roads lead you back to that," he said. His remarks were the closest a senior UN official has come to a rhetorical broadside against US thinking on Iraq, and were an expression of frustration at the damage being done to economic and political development across the planet. Peppering his remarks with caveats, but growing stronger as he warmed to the theme, Mr Malloch Brown warned of deep disquiet at the damage being done to the millennial development agenda of halving world poverty by 2015, as fuel prices went up, and tourism and investment fell. "All of that has at best been stalled; at most it could be reversed," he said. While the UN was not seeking a role in Iraq - not least because half the world was still looking to it to "stop the conflict" - Mr Malloch Brown said political realities meant it was almost certain that the Security Council would come back together and build a common approach. He warned of a scenario where "large parts of the country are disputed, there is a high level of intercommunal violence, where the US will not have any access". While Jay Garner, the US retired general expected to take over Iraq's administration, was "highly competent", the viability of unilateral plans had to be questioned. "For every reason, everyone is going to want to be back round that table", but "it's going to take some time for everyone to recognise the incentives." http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?id=F947778B-6E4F-479A-995A 74C63526C5B6 * EMPIRES DON'T GO HOME by Andrew Coyne National Post, 4th April As every schoolchild knows, this month marks the 186th anniversary of the signing of the Rush-Bagot Treaty, an event of monumental importance to every Canadian as it is all that stands between us and an American invasion. Those of you no longer of school age will nonetheless instantly recall that the treaty demilitarized the Canada-U.S. border after the War of 1812: each side was limited to no more than four warships on the Great Lakes, none to exceed 100 tons. And so it remains to this day, an inspiring example of the power of international law to restrain American imperialism and the sole guarantee of our security from American attack. I recite all this stale history for the benefit of Stephanie Nolen, The Globe and Mail's correspondent among the Kurds in northern Iraq. Ms. Nolen reports on having recently had the unusual experience of having to defend her country from criticism by the locals, for having opted out of the American-led war against Iraq. (Apparently, in that part of the world, people actually welcome an American invasion.) She made a game try at it. "The people of Canada," she began, "understand that Saddam is a dictator, and that the Kurdish people, like many other Iraqis, have suffered terribly under his regime." But. But "what we object to is unilateral action by the United States. We believe that if the Americans are allowed to decide today that Mr. Hussein must go, they may decide next week that it should be the leader of another country -- perhaps it will be Canada who annoys them, because we will not give them cheap access to our forests or our water." Stephanie, Stephanie. Have you forgotten? It could not happen. We have a treaty. But Ms. Nolen is far from alone. Probe a little beneath the surface of any critique of the war, and you will find the same anxiety: that this is just the start, that America has let slip all civilized restraint, at last daring to assert what previously it had only dreamed of -- empire. Rick Salutin, also writing in the Globe, sees the liberation of Iraq as "the first in a limitless chain of assertions of U.S. power." The Independent newspaper wonders whether the war has "a sinister, wider purpose, warning other rogue states, and perhaps other states, too, that this is what they can expect if they trouble the world's only superpower?" (Emphasis added.) The notion that this conflict heralds the arrival of the American Empire is by now a commonplace. Even America's friends, such as Niall Ferguson or Michael Ignatieff, urge it to embrace the title. It is, they say, an "empire in denial." Some on the American right have taken them up on it, if only for the shock value. Max Boot, fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, likens it to gays who embrace the "queer" label. Aren't we naughty? No, just silly. An empire is an explicit scheme of territorial aggrandizement, born of military conquest and maintained by force of arms. The conquered territory is wholly absorbed within the legal and administrative structure of the imperial power. Most important, this arrangement is permanent. Empires don't go home. There is no comparison with what the Americans are attempting in Iraq, or even the more far-reaching ambitions of the administration hawks for reshaping the Middle East. At most, they hope to displace the rulers of a small number of dictatorships that, like Iraq, have been waging a low-intensity war upon the United States and its citizens for many years -- a situation American governments of both parties have put with for far too long, and which no American government of either party would accept after Sept. 11. In the case of Iraq, this new assertiveness has taken the form of a willingness to go to war (though just barely: say what you will about Colin Powell, Tony Blair and the United Nations, but without them George W. Bush would never have been able to win the support of a majority of the American people for war). But no one sane believes that the Americans intend to permanently annex these territories, as the 51st states and beyond. "Empire" may be useful shorthand for a situation of unrivalled American power, together with a willingness to use it. But that's not, in fact, what the word means. Rome was an empire. America, whatever anyone says, is not Rome. In most respects, America's power has nothing to do with military might. It is found in the richness of its economy, the vigour of its intellectual life, the appeal of its culture. It also wields military power, of course, on a scale that dwarfs any rival. But it is difficult to see how anyone could seriously view this as a threat -- anyone that is, that does not wish it ill. One has only to look, in support, at how that power has actually been used. I have mentioned before that the United States is the only country ever to ask the world's permission to use its own forces: in Korea in 1950, and again in 1991, in Kuwait. But it is worth repeating the reasons it was deployed in both cases: to defend other countries from being annexed by bestial dictatorships; to halt the growth of other empires, not to embark upon its own. Well, that's two examples. Big deal. But the pattern has been repeated again and again and again. Freedom House, the human rights group that rates the democratic and liberal credentials of states around the world, lists 85 countries as "free." (Another 60 are classed as "partly free.") Of these, by my count more than 30 owe their freedom directly to American military power. There are the countries liberated from totalitarian rule in the Second World War, and sheltered from it ever since: France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Germany, Italy and Japan. There are the countries of Eastern Europe, who would still be behind the Iron Curtain had the United States not first contained the Soviet Union, and ultimately outlasted it: Poland, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak republics, a dozen or more in all. There are Taiwan and Israel, lonely outposts of freedom who wouldn't last a minute without American support. And there are the countries in the United States' own backyard: the Dominican Republic, saved from a communist takeover in 1965; Grenada, which was threatened with the same in 1983; Panama, which was freed from the narcocrat Noriega in 1989. In every case, as soon as the troops were done, they came home. I realize that American power has been used to less benign ends. Just as the West made parley with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis, so the United States acquired some unpleasant allies in the darkest days of the Cold War, a rogue's gallery of clients that included Saddam himself. But that was decades ago. And whatever blemishes there may be on the U.S. record, it is incontestable that it has been on balance a force for freedom. Empire? The last permanent addition to American territory by force of arms was in the Spanish-American War, more than a century ago. Empires don't go home. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/04_04_03_b.asp * THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S DANGEROUS COLONIAL ADVENTURE by Patrick Seale Lebanon Daily Star, 4th April The message from Washington and London is that the war in Iraq has entered a "decisive phase." Allied forces at the gates of the Iraqi capital are said to be engaging Saddam Hussein's elite troops in fierce combat. What conclusions can one draw? ‹ First, the coalition's political and military leaders appear to be under great strain, not only in Washington and London, but also in Madrid. They are losing ground to their domestic opponents. Rows are breaking out, such as the widely reported clash over strategy between US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, the US military commander. American and British leaders must now heed the dictum of Field Marshal Von Moltke, chief of the Prussian General Staff and victor of the 1870-71 war against France. "No military plan," he said, "survives the first contact with the enemy". Pressures to bring the war - and the Iraqi regime - to a quick end are now so intense that General Franks is not even waiting for the 4th Infantry Division to join the battle, although it is probably the best mechanized division in the US Army. Having been rerouted from Turkey, its troops have only just started arriving in Kuwait, and will not be ready to fight for another two or three weeks. Yet, in the desperate hope of a quick victory, the US is pressing ahead with the attack on Baghdad. There is clearly immense anger, frustration and impatience at Iraq's continued resistance to the invasion. Arabs were not meant to behave like this! They should have surrendered or run away! In its arrogant expectation of a decisive outcome, America may once again have created mirages in the sand. ‹ Second, the US is adjusting its military means to cope with the new situation. Reinforcements are being flown in and greater firepower - giant bunker-busting munitions and carpet bombing by B-52s - is being used to attempt to destroy Iraq's Republican Guard divisions defending the capital. As a direct consequence of the new strategy, the toll of Iraqi civilian casualties is rising rapidly. The trumpeted "concern" to avoid civilian deaths is now being abandoned by a desperate United States. ‹ Third, anxious to isolate the Iraqi battlefield and deny the Iraqis any help from outside, the US has issued severe threats to Syria and Iran not to intervene. It is worried that weapons, supplies and volunteers might begin to infiltrate across Iraq's porous frontiers and stiffen the resistance. But Syria and Iran may have an interest in weakening the US forces as much as they can so as not to be the next targets of an American attack. Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to Ankara suggests that the US is also concerned to ensure that Turkey does not complicate the situation in northern Iraq by moving against the Kurds as they harass Iraqi positions around Kirkuk. Having fought with American special forces, as in this week's campaign against the al-Ansar enclave, the Kurds will expect a post-war political reward in the form of increased autonomy. This, above all, is what worries the Turks. ‹ A fourth conclusion is that we are witnessing a clash between two military doctrines. The US cannot afford to retreat but nor can it tolerate a long war. Its declared objective is Saddam Hussein's unconditional surrender. Hence its strategy is to blast Baghdad with overwhelming firepower and force the regime to its knees. In contrast, Iraq's strategy is to bleed the American bull (like a picador in a bull ring) and sap its morale by sucking it into a long drawn-out urban guerrilla war. Saddam Hussein appears to have prepared his forces for this sort of war by decentralizing army command and control to the lowest level possible, by delegating responsibility for each urban center to a trusted senior officer, and by supplying each town with troops, weapons, fuel and food. ‹ A fifth broad conclusion is that, in spite of undoubted pressures and internal strains, the mindset of the Bush administration remains so far unchanged. The war we are witnessing is the application of the wrong conclusions America drew from the attacks of Sept. 11. With its ideology shaped by right-wing think tanks and pro-Israeli lobbyists, the Bush administration refused even to consider that America had been attacked because of its biased and mistaken policies in the Arab and Muslim world. Instead it was persuaded that the "roots of terror" lay in the "failed," "sick" and "corrupt" societies of the Middle East. It followed that it was necessary to change these regimes and reform these societies. Hence the Iraq war as a first step to the "remodeling" of the entire region! What is to happen in Iraq after the war? As both the Pentagon and Colin Powell have made clear, the United States wants "dominant control" over a post-Saddam Iraq. It appears to be planning direct rule, somewhat on the model of British colonial rule in Egypt after the 1882 occupation. The civil administration of Iraq, as well as humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, will be the responsibility of retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner, a man notorious for his arms dealing and his close personal ties with Israel's Likudniks, acting as a sort of pro-consul on the model of Lord Cromer in Egypt. Meanwhile, military affairs and security will be the responsibility of General Franks' deputy in CENTCOM, Lieutenant General John Abizaid (apparently on the strength of his knowledge of Arabic!) on the model of Britain's Field Marshal Lord Kitchener. Thus, two US generals, Garner and Abizaid, both strikingly ill-fit for the job, will have the destiny of Iraq in their hands. Backed by US military force, they will be assisted by a small army of American administrators to run the various regions and "ministries." In a throwback to colonial rule, the US even wants to take over the running of Iraq's oil industry, the foundation of its economy, which has been run for decades by Iraqis and employs 50,000 people. No role seems to be in consideration for US-backed Iraqi opposition figures like Ahmad Chalabi or Kanan Makiya who, if they make an appearance at all, will almost certainly be considered traitors and Quislings by Iraqis. The British view is quite different. Prime Minister Tony Blair is pressing for a UN-sponsored conference of all Iraq's political groups. He wants the UN, not the US, to play the leading role. Needing political cover, Blair has other demands as well. He wants real progress toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including a total freeze on Jewish settlements and an effective monitoring mechanism. This is causing a crisis in Anglo-Israeli relations. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has already sent Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to Washington to undermine the British position. Blair will soon discover that Sharon has more clout than himself in the American capital. In Iraq, Blair does not want British troops, already stretched to the limit, to be given policing duties in occupied Iraq, where they would inevitably be seen as lackeys of a US colonial-type administration. British opinion would rebel against any such thankless and subordinate role. But it is unlikely that Blair will get his way with Bush on any of these counts. Indeed, the growing perception that Blair lacks real influence in Washington is beginning to sap his position at home. He has split his own Labor Party, damaged Britain's ties with France and Germany, and shown that the "special relationship" with the United States is nothing but a one-way street, with no rewards for Britain but only burdens. With such a lamentable record, Blair's political future must surely be in doubt. Bush's other ally, Spain's Jose Maria Aznar, is also facing domestic problems and possible defeat at national elections in 2004. He was rash enough to give his support to Bush against the wishes of the great majority of Spaniards. Municipal elections in May are likely to confirm that his conservative party has lost ground to its Socialist opponents, led by Jose Luis Rodrigues Zabatero. Led by Bush and a cabal of neoconservatives, the United States has embarked on a colonial misadventure. It has always opposed the emergence of an Arab power able to challenge its interests. But now we are witnessing a qualitative change in US policy. The United States already has a military presence in almost every Arab country, and exerts enormous influence everywhere. Bush has gone further still. He is applying naked military force against a major Arab country in pursuit of unchallenged hegemony. The coming months are likely to prove the folly of his gamble. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2510213 * CAN U.S. REBUILD IRAQ WITHOUT BAATHISTS? by Paul Taylor Reuters, 4th April CAIRO: With U.S. troops rattling at the gates of Baghdad, leading experts believe Washington may end up having to rely on former members of President Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath party to run post-war Iraq. The Bush administration has talked ambitiously of reshaping Iraq into a democracy that would be a beacon to the Middle East after an initial period of military rule. But Arab and Western analysts say that seems unrealistic in a divided country with no democratic tradition that has endured 34 years of totalitarian rule built on fear, tribal and blood ties and patronage. If the United States wants its troops to go home in the next five years, it will have to limit purges to the highest echelons of the Iraqi power structure and build an administration largely on the technocrats and officials who served Saddam, they argue. "Short-term pragmatic criteria on the part of the U.S. or coalition occupying power may well create the temptation to rely on those who can 'deliver' at least cost to the center," Charles Tripp, a historian of Iraq at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, wrote in the journal Survival. Drawing on Britain's colonial experience in Iraq in 1917-20, Tripp questions the United States' stamina for a nation building project requiring long engagement that could expose U.S. personnel to serious risk with no certainty of success. Iraqi exiles sponsored by the U.S. administration had long been abroad and had little credibility and few contacts in the population, he argued. "The Iraqis inside are the ones who can deliver the goods," he told Reuters, forecasting that U.S. occupation forces "will let the Baathists reinvent themselves." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed to hint as much on Thursday when he appealed to Iraqi military officers not to fight to the end for a doomed cause. "For the senior leadership, there is no way out. Their fate has been sealed by their actions," Rumsfeld told a news conference. "The same is not true for the Iraqi armed forces. Iraqi officers and soldiers can still survive and help to rebuild a free Iraq if they do the right thing." The Baath Party, built on a pan-Arab nationalist and socialist ideology, seized power in Baghdad in a coup in 1968 and Saddam assumed total control in 1979. Initially a tiny vanguard of a few hundred members, the party swelled to a record 1.8 million members in 1990, the year Iraq invaded Kuwait, according to Iraqi historian Faleh Jaber. But membership slumped and the party's importance dwindled after 1991, when many members either took part in a failed uprising against Saddam after the Gulf War defeat or failed in his eyes to do enough to protect him. >From then on, Saddam ruled through his immediate blood relatives, extended family and Albu Nasir tribe, encouraging tribal, clan and informal networks more important than the party or government structures, experts say. The cult of Saddam's personality largely replaced Baathist ideology and a "shadow state" exercised real power. Estimates of the size of the ruling elite vary from some 30,000 to 500,000, depending on which security forces and party officials are counted. "It's almost impossible to weed all these people out. You'd have to go through the state with a fine toothcomb," said Toby Dodge of Warwick University. "I think the Americans will end up ruling through them, accidentally or deliberately." As with the Communist party in the former Soviet bloc, many Iraqis joined the Baath party to advance their interests rather than out of conviction. "People had to be in the party to get an education, jobs or housing," said Judith Yaphe, a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War who teaches at the National Defense University in Washington. "You don't need to get rid of every Baathist," she said. Former Communists converted to social democracy now govern several ex-Communist central and east European states, and a former member of the Soviet KGB intelligence service is today president of Russia. U.S. officials have spoken of putting some Iraqi leaders on trial for alleged crimes against humanity but it is not clear whether the Baath party would be banned in post-Saddam Iraq. Tripp said exiled Iraqi opposition leaders wanted a vast purge, arguing that many thousands of people were involved in crimes during Saddam's rule, including torture, killings, and using chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds and Iranian soldiers. "That might provoke violence, strip the Iraqi state of administrative competence and lay a powder trail for violence," he said. (Additional reporting by Alistair Lyon) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2003/04/05/MN10864. DTL * U.S. MAY RELY ON BAATHISTS AFTER WAR by Matthew B. Stannard San Francisco Chronicle, 5th April U.S. and British forces may be pounding buildings belonging to the Arab Baath Socialist Party and rounding up its members today, but the two countries and the United Nations will probably be working side by side with members of Saddam Hussein's party in the very near future, experts say. Iraq's sole political party may be corrupt and violent, but it is also running Iraq's essential infrastructure, according to a number of experts in Iraq's history and politics. Any new government will probably have to pick members of the party to work with, experts say -- and that won't be easy. "I think this is an absolutely unprecedented, massive experiment in cultural and political change, and I think it's anybody's guess as to how it's going to turn out," said James Noyes, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Near Eastern, African, and South Asian affairs. Since coming to power in 1979, Hussein has used the party apparatus to exert his control over Iraq, experts said, creating a vast network of spies and placing kinsmen and party loyalists in crucial positions throughout society. The nation's civil service boomed -- government employment increased from just 14 percent of the work force in 1968 to more than 45 percent in 1987, according to a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG). Party membership grew even faster, from just 150 or so members in 1968 to 500,000 a decade later and as many as 2 million in the 1980s. As a result, the Iraqi bureaucracy -- which will still be needed to help oversee the rebuilding of postwar Iraq -- is solidly packed with party members. Yet not all party members are equal, nor does membership always imply support for the regime, experts said. They noted that many people have joined the party simply to increase their chances of getting a good job or an advanced education -- or because they had no choice. "The great majority of those who joined the party have done so to put food on the table," said Feisal Istrabadi, a Chicago lawyer and Iraqi activist who has worked with the U.S. State Department on its future plans for Iraq. "I would say the overwhelming number of those -- 90 percent or better -- joined not because of any ideological reason, but because a failure to join when asked could result in something as benign as losing your job . . . to as severe as losing your life." In its report on the future of Iraq, the ICG estimated that the number of Baath Party members fell to no more than 800,000 after the 1991 Gulf War, in a country of 22 million. Of those, the report said, just 10 percent are truly loyal to the regime. But finding those core Baathists won't be easy, even with assistance from nonparty members and the regime's own meticulous documentation. "In Iraq, the most important Baathist member may be the janitor instead of the leader of the English department," Istrabadi said. "The janitor may in fact occupy a higher place in the Baathist hierarchy, and he may be able to give orders to the head of the English department." Cut too little out of the Baath Party, experts said, and you risk leaving quiet loyalists who later could try to regain power. Cut too deeply, however, and a new host of problems emerges. "This is one of the world's worst regimes," said Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "I would like to see the top echelon removed from public life in some way. For the very top, war crime tribunals are valid and have value." The State Department and Iraqi expatriate groups already have begun planning for such trials, with planning assistance from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Some experts said that cutting the Baath Party completely out of a post- Hussein government would effectively take power from Iraq's Sunni Muslims, the party's backbone, and hand it to the country's Shiites, Kurds, Christians, Chaldeans, Turkomans and other groups. All those groups, marginalized by Hussein, have their own histories of strife, and some of them have links to powers outside Iraq that might not want to see a new secular U.S.-backed government emerge in the Middle East. "The role that the Baath Party has played is very similar to the role the Communist Party played in Stalinist Russia: It used brute force . . . to bring a kind of a unified Iraq out of these fragmented pieces," said Abbas Milani, professor of history at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. "Unless people perceive that there is still a center . . . you're going to have chaos." While Baath members might ultimately have to be part of a postwar Iraq, Milani is skeptical that it will be an easy integration. "The Baath is so hated in society, and neighborhood by neighborhood, family by family -- there are people who have suffered at the hand of these people," he said. "It is going to be very difficult, in my opinion, to make out of these guys a viable democratic force." At a minimum, Milani and other experts said, it will take a long time to pick apart the Baath Party and combine it with other elements into a new, democratic country. "This process potentially will take years," said Istrabadi. "(But) I'm willing to let the trains run a little late if it means doing the vetting process carefully and thoughtfully." http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=1821&version =1&template_id=277&parent_id=258 * LEAD ROLE FOR US, UK IN POST-WAR IRAQ REAFFIRMED aljazeera.net, 6th April Condoleeza Rice, national security adviser to US President George W. Bush said the "coalition" will be playing the central role in post-war Iraq while the United Nations' job is currently not under discussion. "The coalition intends to have the leading role. Given what we have been going through, what we are going through, it is no surprise that the coalition should have the leading role," she told reporters. Condoleeza Rice "Rice's comments show that she wants to put an end to rumours or speculations about the post-war administration in Iraq," Al Jazeera's correspondent in Washington Thabet Bardissi said. Russia, Germany and France - outspoken opponents of the war against Iraq - have made clear they want to see the UN taking over after the conflict. Differences between Europe and Washington over how and by whom Iraq will be run emerged during talks in Brussels on Thursday. Britain, Washington's closest ally and partner in the war, has repeatedly said that Iraq will be governed by the Iraqis themselves - a position that contradicted statements made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell last month. Powell said "we would not support essentially handing everything over to the UN for someone designated by the UN to suddenly become in charge of the whole operation." - "Rice insisted the UN's role will be restricted to easing the suffering of the Iraqi people and reconstruction efforts. It will have a supporting and not controlling role," Bardissi said. http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=1867&version =1&template_id=277&parent_id=258 * FORMER GENERAL TO HEAD POST-WAR ADMINISTRATION aljazeera.net, 6th April The United States plans to install the first stages of a civil administration to run post-war Iraq in the southern port of Umm Qasr within days, a US official said on Saturday. The official, who was quoted by Reuters and asked not to be named, said member's of the Pentagon's office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA) are scheduled to begin operating in the port as early as Tuesday. Local Iraqis watch as members of 42 Commando Royal Marines patrol in Umm Qasr in southern Iraq OHRA has become the focus of international controversy, with Washington facing criticism for assuming the leading role in immediate post-war Iraq instead of the United Nations. France and Germany, spearheading an anti-war movement in Europe, want the UN to be involved from the on-set in an interim administration. US President George W. Bush appointed retired US General Jay Garner to head a temporary civil administration and the OHRA. Garner's role will be to "introduce a capitalist system where there's been central-control socialism since the 1960s," said Ariel Cohen, a foreign-policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. The US official said OHRA's operation in Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep water port, will expand quickly and is expected to spread to other areas. Garner's team will administer three regions, with retired General Buck Walters in the south, retired General Bruce Moore in the north and former US Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine in the central region. The official declined to comment whether Iraqi-Americans would join the first OHRA group working for Walters at Umm Qasr. He denied reports that Washington would announce a post-war administration of 23 ministries. Some reports have said each ministry would be headed by a US official and four Iraqi advisors. OHRA will be responsible for reconstructing what remains of Iraq and installing a civil administration. There are concerns that Washington would award all contracts to US companies in the reconstruction effort. On Friday, the House of Representatives passed a supplementary budget amendment excluding France, Germany, Russia and Syria from taking part in US-funded reconstruction bids in Iraq because of their opposition to the US-led war. "Basically, the Americans want to run the show by themselves," said Dr. Joost Hiltermann, a researcher at the International Crisis Group. Contracts will likely be awarded to countries' Washington believes "behaved properly," he added. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking recently on Abu Dhabi TV, insisted Baghdad would decide which companies would receive reconstruction contracts, denying accusations that all contracts would be awarded to Washington. Splits have again resurfaced within the US administration of George W. Bush over the role of the United Nations in a post-war Iraq, ahead of a key emergency summit in Belfast next week. Bush will hold talks with Blair on Monday and Tuesday, the second time the two leaders meet in 10 days. The leaders are expected to cover a range of issues including the Iraq war, the Palestinian-Israel crisis and Northern Ireland. The Bush-Blair talks is expected to hammer out an agreement over the role of the UN in reconstruction and administration. US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice made conflicting statements over the world body's role, raising speculation there were splits in the Bush cabinet. Rice said a UN role was not currently under discussion while Powell said a dialogue over the world body's function had started. Rice implied the world body would not become involved in Iraq until after a new government was established. But Powell, speaking on the same day, said, "We are at the beginning of a process of dialogue to determine what the appropriate role of the UN should be; the UN will be a partner in all of this." For his part, Blair recently said on Abu Dhabi TV that an Iraqi interim administration would be endorsed by the UN. Speaking to the Arabic television station Blair said, "Our aim is to move as soon as possible to an interim authority run by Iraqis. This will pave the way for a truly representative Iraqi government." http://observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,930794,00.html * US BEGINS THE PROCESS OF 'REGIME CHANGE' by Ed Vulliamy in New York and Kamal Ahmed The Observer, 6th April The US is ready to install the first leg of an interim government for the new Iraq as early as Tuesday, even while fighting still rages in Baghdad, officials said yesterday. America's readiness to establish the first stages of a civil administration to run post-war Iraq comes at lightning speed and constitutes a rebuff to European ambitions to stall on the process until some kind of role for the United Nations is agreed. It was reported yesterday that the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has also ruled out any key role for the UN. The decision to proceed with an embryonic government comes in response to memoranda written by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week, urging that the US begin to entrench its authority in areas under its control before the war is over. Pentagon officials told The Observer that the administration is determined to impose the Rumsfeld plan and sees no use for a UN role, describing the international body as 'irrelevant'. The proposal is due to be discussed by George Bush and his closest security officials when he returns from this week's Northern Ireland war council with Tony Blair. But according to US offi cials in Doha, elements of an embryonic new government will be established in the southern port of Umm Qasr, taken by coalition forces during the first days of the war. It will be installed by the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, under the former US army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, and answerable to the Pentagon. 'What we are going to start trying to do, even before the fighting is over in Iraq, is to move to the areas in Iraq that are relatively peaceful, places like Umm Qasr, and to start moving [the office of reconstruction] into Iraq,' the official said. 'It is a fair assessment to say that this is the first step to set up a civil administration in Iraq.' The decision is a rebuff to European diplomats who pleaded with US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday to allow for a UN role. By brushing the UN aside at such an early stage, the move also places Tony Blair - whose own preference is for a UN role - in a difficult situation ahead of his meeting with Bush this week. Rumsfeld presented two memoranda to the White House last week, urging the President to begin setting up government institutions in areas under US control. He said the new organs could install Iraqis returning from exile under the tutelage of American civilians answerable to General Garner. But his plan has been opposed even within the administration. Colin Powell is known to favour a military government established after victory is assured, prepared to nurture an Iraqi government centred around citizens resident in Iraq, rather than exiles sponsored by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon. General Garner is already set to make his media debut in Kuwait tomorrow as the man whom the US has named to be Iraq's temporary post-war civilian administrator. The US viceroy of the Southern region will be retired General Buck Walters; one of three governors slated to minister the new Iraqi provinces. The others are General Bruce Moore in the largely Kurdish north and former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine based in Baghdad, governing the central region. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,931986,00.html * UK TO APPOINT DEPUTY FOR INTERIM AUTHORITY by Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, 8th April Britain is planning to appoint a senior army officer to act as deputy to Jay Garner, the former US general appointed by the Pentagon to head an interim authority to control Iraq after the war. Major General Tim Cross, who has been coordinating humanitarian aid to the port of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, has been earmarked for the job, the Guardian has learned. Gen Cross is a logistics expert and has previously organised refugee camps in Macedonia and Kosovo. Officials from government agencies, including Clare Short's Department for International Development, are also being lined up to act as deputies to Americans in the Pentagon's Office for Restruction and Humanitarian Assistance, Whitehall sources said. However, they said the government is far from happy with the Pentagon's appointments to the authority, which include a number of cronies of hawks in the Bush administration, such as James Woolsey, former head of the CIA. Ministers are concerned about the Pentagon's ambitions in Iraq and Washington's antipathy towards giving the UN a role. The issue is on the agenda of the Bush-Blair summit in Belfast. Yesterday, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said he expected his organisation to play an important role in rebuilding Iraq. He named Rafeeuddin Ahmed, a Pakistani UN official, as his special adviser on Iraq. The main Shia opposition and Kurdish groups this week dismissed the Pentagon's plans and the decision to put Gen Garner in charge. Further questions about the shape of the proposed interim authority were raised yesterday when Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group in exile, was reported to have turned up in the southern Iraqi town of Nassiriya at the head of 700 fighters. An INC statement on Sunday said they would take part in delivering humanitarian aid and maintaining law and order. Chalabi is a favourite of the Pentagon but is distrusted by the US state department. http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c =StoryFT&cid=1048313577116&p=1012571727159 * US AND UK FOCUS ON LEGITIMACY OF INTERIM RULE by Guy Dinmore in Washington, Mark Turner in New York and Roula Khalaf in Kuwait City Financial Times, 9th April Discussions between the US and UK on defining the United Nations' role in Iraq focus on how to obtain international legitimacy for the planned interim government - and how to achieve a new UN resolution after alienating the majority of Security Council members in the build-up to war. The UN has repeatedly pointed out that the occupying powers have no right to begin setting up an interim authority in Iraq and that any administration installed by Washington would not be recognised without Security Council endorsement. Otherwise, many nations would refuse to contribute to reconstruction costs, or a future security force. "They [the occupying powers] really have no rights under the Geneva Conventions to transform the society or the polity or to exploit its economic resources or anything of that sort," Shashi Tharoor, UN under-secretary general, said on Tuesday.But he added that the UN did not want the "poisoned chalice" of running Iraq either. Colin Powell, secretary of state, said the US had teams working on a resolution, and that a joint US-UK group was ensuring a common view. Discussions had just started and the media had exaggerated differences between London and Washington, he added. Mr Powell insisted the coalition must have the final say in the transition to putting in place a representative government - a process that opposition Iraqis, as well as the US and UK, believe could take two years. A meeting between US officials and representatives of opposition parties and personalities is expected to take place in Iraq as early as next week. Officials from the Iraqi National Congress, headed by ex-banker Ahmad Chalabi, as well as Kurdish parties, were expected to attend. Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister billed for a possible role in a leadership council, will send his own representative. Exiled opposition parties have complained that they are being excluded from participation in the invasion and in US post-war plans. Mr Chalabi, who is close to the Pentagon, appeared to have secured the most prominent role in the opposition when soldiers belonging to his group arrived in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya this week. The move fuelled speculation that Mr Chalabi, who is not known to have any popular base inside Iraq, was nonetheless being promoted for a top position. But officials in the Iraqi opposition said the meeting was partly designed to send the message that the US was not favouring the INC over other exiled groups. Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, will look for common ground on reconstruction during his tour this week of France, the UK, Germany and Russia. But those countries that opposed the war have no intention of becoming a rubber-stamp. Within the UN, there has been soul-searching over lessons learned from post-conflict experiences, such as in Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor and Bosnia. Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UN Development Programme, said: "The UN should never again take on responsibilities for which it doesn't have the capacity, financial resources or political will. "The secretary-general is extremely wary of being the default solution for Iraq. We have had enough of governments pushing us into these roles, telling us they'd be there throughout and within a year moving on. There is a real caution about the UN taking on roles without a clear consensus." No country disputes that the UN should play a humanitarian role, but recent Security Council wrangles on even temporary amendments to the oil-for-food programme demonstrated how quickly any issues become fraught. Peter Galbraith, formerly the UN deputy administrator in East Timor, argues that a UN role is essential. "One of the most successful things the UN does is organise elections. The elections in East Timor were a lot better than the US presidential election," he said. _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk