Iranians Planned Kidnapping And Held British Captives Taken In Iraq

On December 30, 2009 British computer technician Peter Moore was released from captivity by the Iranian backed League of the Righteous in return for the freeing of their leader, Qais Khazali. Moore and four British bodyguards, Alan McMenemy, Alec MacLachlan, Jason Swindlehurst, and Jason Creswell, were originally kidnapped from the Iraqi Finance Ministry building in downtown Baghdad on May 29, 2007. The Guardian claims that not only was this an Iranian organized operation led by their Revolutionary Guards Qods Force, but that the British hostages were held in Iran for most of their two and a half year captivity.

The events surrounding the kidnapping are a complicated one beginning with a series of American raids against Iranian operatives working within Iraq. In 2006, President George Bush okayed the killing and capturing of Iranians in Iraq who were supplying weapons and training to Shiite militias. In December 2006 that led to the arrest of General Mohsen Chirazi, the number 3 man in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods Force, which is in charge of Tehran’s Iraq policy. That was followed by a speech by President Bush in January 2007 where he said that the U.S. would stop Iran’s interference in Iraqi affairs. Later, on January 11, five Iranians were arrested in Irbil, Kurdistan. The Americans actually missed their targets, Mohammed Jafari, the deputy of Iran’s National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the intelligence chief of the Revolutionary Guards, when Kurdish peshmerga stopped U.S. forces at the Irbil airport. Tehran retaliated by leading a raid on the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center in conjunction with the League of the Righteous that led to the deaths of five U.S. soldiers in January. In March 2007, U.S. and U.K. forces detained the League’s leaders Qais and Latih Khazali in Basra in March 2007.

Qais Khazali was one of the leading figures in the Sadr movement when Moqtada’s father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, created it in the 1990s. Qais helped keep the movement alive underground after Saddam killed the elder Sadr. When Moqtada emerged as one of Iraq’s new leaders after the 2003 invasion, Qais was one of his top lieutenants. He would split and then rejoin Moqtada several times before creating his own group, the League of the Righteous in 2006. That year he was also selected to lead the Special Groups that Iran was creating to gain more direct control of Shiite gunmen in Iraq.

Iran planned the May 2007 raid on the Finance Ministry as part of the tit for tat exchange with the United Sates, while the League of the Righteous wanted hostages to gain the release of the Khazali brothers. 80-100 members of the League drove up to the Ministry’s buildings in SUVs in Baghdad, and kidnapped the five Britons in just about 15 minutes. Iraqi intelligence officers from the Defense Ministry who happened to be in the Ministry at the time told the Guardian that they followed the kidnappers to Sadr City where the captives were kept for one day before being transferred to Iran. They passed this information to the Defense Ministry who did nothing. In Iran, the Britons were moved around to several locations. General David Petraeus confirmed this in a recent interview with the BBC where he said he was 90% sure that Tehran held the captives for a time. All negotiations for the release of the hostages occurred in Qom, Iran, but the British Foreign Office refused to directly talk with them, which greatly complicated things.

Almost two years later, Iraq, England, the U.S., Iran, and the League worked out a release plan with Lebanon’s Hezbollah acting as a middleman. In March 2009 a deal was cut whereby the Americans would release all of the League of the Righteous members they held including Laith and Qais Khazali in return for the British captives. In that month a video was released of Moore, followed by the freeing of Laith Khazali. After that U.S. prisons were emptied of some 300 League followers they held under the guise of an Iraqi reconciliation program, along with some of the top Qods Force members that were arrested in 2006-2007, in return for the bodies of Jason Creswell, Jason Swindlehurst, and Alec MacLachlan. Alan McMenemy has yet to be released, but it’s believed that he is dead as well. Sources told the Guardian that the Iranians killed all four bodyguards because for one, they were not considered important since they were only security men, and two to show that they were serious to the British government. The process finally ended with the release of Peter Moore and Qais Khazali. Some American military officers were against this deal, but the Status of Forces Agreement signed between Washington and Baghdad at the very end of the Bush administration in December 2008 requires the U.S. to release all the detainees they hold unless they have broken Iraqi law.

The kidnapping and release of Moore, MacLachlan, Swindlehurst, Creswell, and McMenemy mark the end of one period of post-Saddam Iraq. Washington and Tehran were involved in a covert war for influence within Iraq after the 2003 invasion. The U.S. focused upon Iran’s Qods Force and their support for Special Groups like the League of the Righteous. The U.S. tried to kill or capture as many militiamen and Qods Force operatives as they could, but interference by Iraqi officials meant that this effort could only go so far. The smashing of Shiite militias by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s offensives in 2008, along with Iran’s greater interest in political influence through support of Shiite parties in the 2009 and coming 2010 elections, means that their military policy has been put on the back burner. The League even renounced violence in 2009, and briefly flirted with running in the upcoming vote, before withdrawing in early December. What that means for the League is unknown. Qais Khazali is said to still have sway with many Sadrists, which has made Moqtada very worried about his leadership, but its too late for them to run as a party in 2010, which would greatly limit their influence if they wished to join Iraqi politics. There’s a good chance that the League will fade from the scene just as the military confrontation between Iran and the U.S. in Iraq has.

SOURCES

Chulov, Martin, “Shia cleric’s release by US forces provided key to Peter Moore’s freedom,” Guardian, 12/30/09

CNN, “U.S. raid on Iranian consulate angers Kurds,” 1/11/07

Cochrane, Marisa, “The Fragmentation of the Sadrist Movement,” Institute for the Study of War, January 2009

Cockburn, Patrick, “The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis,” The Independent, 4/3/07

Fordham, Alice, “Hostage Peter Moore’s fate tied to that of Laith and Qais al-Khazali,” Times of London, 12/31/09
- “Peter Moore freed after US hands over Iraqi insurgent,” Times of London, 12/31/09

Hines, Nico, “Peter Moore: 31 months of Iraqi captivity,” Times of London, 12/30/09

Lake, Eli, “GIs Raid Iranian Building in Irbil,” New York Sun, 1/12/07

Linzer, Dafna, “Troops Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq,” Washington Post, 1/26/07

Mahmood, Mona, O’Kane, Maggie, Grandjean, Guy, “Bush threats and an $18bn secret: why Iran’s kidnap squad struck,” Guardian, 12/31/09

Roggio, Bill, “US releases ‘dangerous’ Iranian proxy behind the murder of US troops,” Long War Journal, 12/31/09

Woodcock, Andrew and Johnson, Wesley, “Petraeus ‘90% certain’ that UK hostage was in Iran,” Independent, 12/31/09

Wright, Robin and Trejos, Nancy, “U.S. Troops Raid 2 Iranian Targets in Iraq, Detain 5 People,” Washington Post, 1/12/07

Former British Diplomat Confirms That U.N. Inspectors Were Means To War With Iraq

On November 24, 2009 England began its third inquiry into the Iraq War, this time headed by John Chilcot. On November 26 Britain’s former ambassador to the United States Christopher Meyer testified. He confirmed what has been reported here before, that the Bush White House had decided upon war before the United Nations weapons inspectors returned to Iraq in November 2002. He told the inquiry, “The U.S. military timetable was already in place before weapons inspectors went in.” Meyer said the original invasion date had been set for January 2003, but was pushed back to March. He believed that the inspectors had no time to complete their work by that date, and instead the U.S. and England turned the process into a means to find evidence of Iraq’s WMD to provide a “smoking gun” to justify the war. Meyer told the inquiry, “It was another way of saying, ‘It’s not that Saddam Hussein has to prove he’s innocent, we’ve now got to bloody well prove he’s guilty.’ And we – Americans and British – have never really recovered from that because of course there was no smoking gun.” England’s former ambassador to the United Nations Sir Jeremy Greenstock agreed that the inspectors never had the time to do their job because the drive for an invasion was so strong in Washington.

Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair had been the original impetus to go to the United Nations and have weapons inspectors return to build support for an invasion. On March 12 and 13, 2002 Blair’s political adviser David Manning met with National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice in Washington where he suggested that inspectors be sent back into Iraq to build a legal base for war, and convince the international community of the U.S. and British’s case against Saddam because it was expected that he would refuse to give them unlimited access to his country. Later, on March 17, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had lunch with Ambassador Meyer, where he suggested that inspections would be a way to trip up Saddam over WMD, and help justify regime change. In April President Bush met with Blair in Texas, where the Prime Minister again emphasized the need to go the U.N. route if the U.S. wanted British support. Bush finally agreed after Secretary of State Colin Powell lobbied him on the same point during dinner on August 5, 2002.

U.N. Resolution 1441 was eventually passed on November 8, 2002 and weapons inspectors entered Iraq shortly afterward. The U.S. and England saw them as a means to provide a justification for overthrowing Saddam however, rather than a way to disarm Iraq. When the inspectors found breaches of 1441 but no “smoking gun” Bush went ahead with the war anyway as planned in March 2003.

For more on the U.N. inspections see:

The U.N. Inspectors Were Right: Iraq Was Not A Threat

Charles Duelfer’s Account Of The End Of The 1990s U.N. Inspections

How The Administration Reversed Itself On Finding Iraq’s WMD

Interview With VP Dick Cheney On Weapons Inspections March 2003

2002 CIA White Paper On Iraq Vs The 2002-2003 U.N. Inspectors

SOURCES

Brown, David, “Invasion lacked legitimacy, Sir Jeremy Greenstock tells Chilcot inquiry,” Times of London, 11/28/09

Manning, David, “SECRET – STRICTLY PERSONAL,” 3/14/02

Marsden, Sam and Cordon, Gavin, “Iraq invasion was of questionable legitimacy, says envoy,” The Independent, 11/27/09

Melkle, James and Sparrow, Andrew, “Iraq war build-up ‘left us scrabbling for smoking gun’ says ex-UK ambassador,” Guardian, 11/26/09

Meyer, Ambassador Christopher, “CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL,” British Embassy, Washington, 3/18/02

Burrough, Bryan, Peretz, Evgenia, Rose, David and Wise, David, “Path To War,” Vanity Fair, May 2004

RTT News, “British Investigation Into Iraq War Begins,” 11/24/09

Sparrow, Andrew, “Iraq inquiry – live,” Guardian, 11/27/09

Sparrow, Andrew and Melkle, James, “Iraq invasion legitimacy was in doubt, Chilcot inquiry told,” Guardian, 11/27/09

Stobart, Janet, “Blair words on Iraq changed after 2002 visit with Bush, Briton testifies,” Los Angeles Times, 11/27/09

Why Didn’t Bush Strike Zarqawi And Ansar al-Islam In 2002?

The August 2009 issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies contains an article by Micah Zenko entitled, “Foregoing Limited Force: The George W. Bush Administration’s Decision Not to Attack Ansar Al-Islam.” Before 2003, the Bush White House singled out Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish Islamist group, and its camp in Kurdistan as a reason to invade Iraq. The U.S. claimed hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters had fled there after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. One of these was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who the administration said was an Al Qaeda terrorist leader. Finally, they said that Ansar was producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and was supported by Saddam’s government. The base appeared to fit all of the criteria of President Bush’s new war on terror because it was an intersection of a dictator that supported terrorists working with Al Qaeda on WMD. In 2002 the U.S. drew up several plans to destroy Ansar’s base, but Bush vetoed the idea with no explanation. Zenko argues that the President made this decision because he thought that military action could derail the invasion of Iraq.

9/11 forever changed the Bush administration’s foreign policy. In the president’s first speech after the attack he said that the U.S. would not only go after terrorists, but the states that supported them. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz went even farther on September 13, 2001 when he said that the U.S. would end states that sponsored terrorism. This new stance was solidified in the President’s January 2002 Axis of Evil State of the Union where he said that preventing countries from possessing weapons of mass destruction and providing them to terrorists would be America’s new top priority. How this was going to be achieved was outlined in an address the President gave at West Point in June 2002 where he said the U.S. had the right to conduct pre-emptive wars to deal with threats in the newpost-9/11 world. This idea was incorporated into the White House’s September 2002 National Security Strategy that was very similar to a Defense Policy Guidance paper written by Wolfowitz in 1992, who was then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under the 1st President Bush that called for unilateralism in foreign policy and pre-emptive war.

In a March 2002 issue of the New Yorker Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a piece about a Kurdish terrorist group called Ansar Al-Islam entitled “A Reporter at Large: The Great Terror.” While on a trip to Kurdistan he was taken to a jail controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) where he interviewed three prisoners who claimed, amongst other things, that Ansar was secretly controlled by Iraqi intelligence. This article caught the eye of the Bush administration.

Ansar was a breakaway group from the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, formed at the beginning of September 2001. They operated in a small camp near the town of Khurmal along the Iranian border. They declared war on the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and invited Islamist militants to join their fight. They received support from Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. They had about 600-1,000 fighters, who were quickly joined by thousands of militants, including Al Qaeda members, fleeing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Jund al-Sham group, Soldiers of the Levant, were one such group who arrived in the Ansar camp in December 2001.

Beginning in March 2002 the Bush administration began discussing what to do about Ansar, its growing camp of militants, and Zarqawi. In May the Joint Chiefs of Staff received its first intelligence briefing that said Ansar was a separate group from Al Qaeda, and that it was working on poisons. The Pentagon also began working on military plans against the camp. In the meantime officials were split over what to do, some were for taking action, and others were not. By June the White House was presented with a recommendation for a joint air-ground strike against the Khurmal base. The President vetoed the plan, but with no explanation even though it seemed like a perfect case to apply the new Bush doctrine to fight terrorism, the spread of WMD, and their state sponsors.

Zenko goes over four theories for why Bush might have made this decision. The first was that the threat was not great enough. The problem with this was that the reports about Zarqawi’s presence in the Ansar camp and the group’s production of WMD was believed to be real and a growing danger. Administration officials, beginning in May 2002 also began mentioning the importance of Ansar as an example of Iraq’s alleged support for Al Qaeda. Second was that there was no actionable intelligence to base the attack upon, but that was countered by the National Security Council’s Director for Combating Terrorism, Kurdish intelligence, and others who all said that Zarqawi was at the camp at that time. Third was that the White House was afraid of any possible negative repercussions of an attack such as dead American soldiers or civilian casualties. Zenko refutes this by going through a series of limited strikes by other presidents that failed, but had no real repercussions. Bush himself was also not against limited strikes as he okayed several missile attacks against Al Qaeda operatives in western and central Asia. The last possible reason was that Bush did not want to derail the drive to overthrow Saddam by a sideshow like attacking the Ansar camp. Sometime in the first half of 2002 the President decided to remove Saddam by force. In April 2002 Bush told the BBC that, “I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go.” In a July 23, 2002 memo from the British cabinet, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, said that after a recent trip to Washington he came away with the impression that the U.S. was now committed to using force to remove Saddam. Geoffrey Hoon, the Defense Minister said that the Americans had come to no specific decision yet, but he expected the invasion to begin by January 2003. Douglas Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy told Zenko in 2006 that a strike on the Ansar camp that turned up nothing would’ve been problematic for the push to remove Saddam. General Jack Keane, who was the Army Chief of Staff at the time, said that he kept asking about striking Ansar in the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003 and was told that it was too close to the invasion date. To Zenko this was the most convincing reason for Bush’s decision.

During the 2003 invasion, U.S. and Kurdish forces took the Ansar camp after four days of fighting. There they found that Ansar was working on poisons and WMD. They did not find evidence that the group was supported by Baghdad however. The group did receive foreign aid, and was considering launching attacks in other countries. Zarqawi was no longer at the camp though, having left when plans for a military strike against Ansar began leaking out to the press in 2002. Khurmal turned out to be the only place in Iraq that the U.S. actually found WMD being produced, which was the major justification for the war in the first place.

Bush’s decision not to attack the Ansar camp and Zarqawi was not only a tactical error, but showed that removing Saddam was the centerpiece of the Bush administration by 2002. Zenko writes that this was a mistake because Zarqawi became a leader of the insurgency in Iraq, was also responsible for terrorist attacks in Jordan, and organized a network that reached into France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Turkey. In late 2004 he also joined Al Qaeda, and gave them a new base of operations outside of their strongholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His reign of terror could’ve been ended before the war. Bush’s decision not to attack the Ansar base also showed that by the summer of 2002 the President was focused upon planning and preparing for the invasion of Iraq, and apparently did not want other operations in the country that could detract from the ultimate goal of removing Saddam from power. This was seen in the fact that the Ansar camp and Zarqawi increasingly became talking points in speeches by the president and other administration officials advocating for war, while people like General Jack Keane were told that the U.S. would do nothing about them.

SOURCES

Eisenberg, Daniel, “’We’re Taking Him Out,’” Time, 5/5/02

Goldberg, Jeffrey, “A Reporter at Large: The Great Terror,” New Yorker, 3/25/02

Karon, Tony, “Why Saddam Remains a Tough Target,” Time, 1/30/02

PBS Frontline, “Chronology: The Evolution of the Bush Doctrine,” War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03
- “Interview Richard Perle,” Truth, War and Consequences, 10/9/03
- “The War Behind Closed Doors – Transcript,” War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03

Zenko, Micah, “Foregoing Limited Force: The George W. Bush Administration’s Decision Not to Attack Ansar Al-Islam,” Journal of Strategic Studies, August 2009

Could The U.S. Have Done Better In Iraq?

In the October 2008 issue of the journal Security Studies, Daniel Byman of Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution, asked the question could the U.S. have done better with post-war Iraq? The article was entitled, “An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle: Policy Failure or Bridge Too Far?” The conventional wisdom is that the U.S. didn’t have enough international support going into the war, didn’t commit enough troops, didn’t expect an insurgency, and then made bad policy choices like disbanding the Iraqi army. That was too many mistakes to be successful. The question then is if the U.S. made better decisions would post-war Iraq have turned out differently? Byman’s answer is no. There were too many structural barriers that limited choices to make things decidedly different immediately after the 2003 invasion.

Even before U.S. forces entered Iraq in March 2003, Byman believes the Bush administration faced three structural impediments to creating a stable Iraq. First, the U.S. knew little about the country. For example, when the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs, the first civilian group put in charge of post-war Iraq was making plans to run Iraq’s ministries, it didn’t even know how many there were. In light of facts about Iraq, Washington instead relied upon a best-case scenario for what the nation would be like after the war, which was that the U.S. would be greeted as liberators, the Iraqi government would still be up and running, reconstruction would be limited and paid for by Iraqi oil, democracy would sprout, and American forces would be out in a number of weeks. Second, many of these ideas of what Iraq would be like came from Iraqi exiles that were actively lobbying the administration for regime change. The liberators scenario for example came after three Iraqi exiles met with President Bush at the White House. This skewed America’s vision of the situation in Iraq, and what the likely outcomes of an invasion would be like. Finally, the U.S. lacked the resources and staff to conduct nation building. As Professor William Olson of the National Defense University recently wrote in an article for Small Wars Journal, the U.S. spent fifty years fighting the Cold War, which privileged spending on the Pentagon and the military over the civilian agencies of the U.S. government like the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Pentagon was thus given control of post-war Iraq because the State Department couldn’t handle the job even if it wanted to. The Defense Department however didn’t have the expertise or personnel either to take on what the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has called the largest rebuilding project in American history. These three issues greatly limited the choices the U.S. could make before and after the war, and put the administration in a hole before it even entered Iraq.

To make the situation worse, the U.S. made several pre-war policy mistakes. First, the U.S. did not adequately plan for post-war Iraq. As reported before, the White House usually had at least two different organizations strategizing for Iraq after the invasion completely independently, and usually with no knowledge of what the other was doing. That meant there was no comprehensive or unified plan for what to do with Iraq. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice tried to coordinate this planning phase, but failed. The best-case view promulgated by the White House also meant that the various agencies tasked with thinking about post-war Iraq never really thought about serious contingencies. There were also some in the administration that didn’t want any detailed post-war planning because they thought it would cause political problems in convincing the country to go to war. Second, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld micromanaged the military planning, and whittled down the invasion force to match his plans for transforming the U.S. armed forces. That meant there were enough troops to overthrow Saddam, but not enough to deal with the country afterward. Third, the U.S. military had also rejected counterinsurgency strategy since the Vietnam war, which made them unprepared for the insurgency that quickly sprouted after the fall of the government. Byman doesn’t believe any of these choices were inevitable. The military for example is known for its in-depth planning, yet failed to do that with post-war Iraq. The U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki famously warned that Iraq would take several hundred thousand troops to run the country, but was ignored by policy makers. The U.S. thus set itself even farther back in dealing with the eventual occupation of Iraq through these decisions.

There were also structural barriers within Iraq. Most importantly, Iraq was a devastated country. In the 1970s it was a middle class and developing nation, but the costs of the Iran-Iraq War and the sanctions imposed after the Gulf War destroyed all that. The United Nations estimated that the standard of living dropped 2/3 from 1988 to 1995 as a result. Many political scientists believe that a middle class is necessary to support democracy, so any attempt by the U.S. to build one would be constrained by this factor. Second, occupations often create backlashes, and the American presence in Iraq caused resentment by both Sunnis and Shiites, some of which took up arms against the U.S. as a result. Third, Saddam’s divide and conquer policies created deep ethnosectarian divisions in Iraqi society, which would explode after the invasion. The fact that the U.S. knew nothing about these issues, and didn’t want to plan for them anyway because it expected everything to go well after the war, had devastating effects upon the country and the U.S. occupation.

As if these barriers within America and Iraq, and poor pre-war choices weren’t enough, the U.S. made more mistakes after the invasion. First, Paul Bremer decided to disband the Iraqi Army leaving thousands of angry and out of work ex-soldiers. Second, Bremer also set up a deBaathification program that went too deep and caused resentment amongst Sunnis. Third, the U.S. didn’t stop the looting, which cost millions of dollars in damages, slowed the administration of Iraq, and made the Americans look powerless. Fourth, the U.S. went back and forth on Iraq’s political future causing confusion and anger. Fifth, the Coalition Provisional Authority implemented a privatization and free trade policy, which failed at turning Iraq into a capitalist country, but did put many Iraqi enterprises out of business, and added to the unemployment problem. Sixth, the U.S. military refused to acknowledge and adapt to the insurgency. Seventh, reconstruction went slowly due to the post-war chaos and lack of security, which caused growing anti-Americanism amongst Iraqis. Eighth, the Coalition Provisional Authority lacked a trained and stable staff. Ninth the U.S. occupation lacked unity of command with Bremer and General Ricardo Sanchez both claiming authority over Iraq, and neither cooperating or liking each other. Finally, the military rotated units in and out of Iraq, which meant a loss of knowledge and local contacts each time a new set of troops replaced an old one. Again, policy makers had various alternative policies they could have pursued, and were often warned about the decisions they did make.

Byman believes the U.S. didn’t follow Sun Tzu’s axiom, “Know they self, know they enemy” when it went it decided to go to war. The U.S. knew next to nothing about Iraq, and didn’t understand the limits of the U.S. government’s capabilities either. That created too many structural barriers, which severely constrained the options open to the administration. To add to that the U.S. made bad choices again and again before and after the invasion. Byman believes that even if the U.S. had made some different decisions it would’ve only marginally improved the situation. For example, if the U.S. had sent more troops that didn’t mean they would’ve dealt with the looting or suddenly adopted counterinsurgency tactics. The results as everyone knows, were a burgeoning guerrilla war, the rise of Shiite militias, political fragmentation, sectarianism, mass unemployment, crime, and the growth of Iranian influence. Iraq quickly turned into a failed state as a result. The U.S. has been trying to make up for many of these mistakes since then. For all of these reasons Byman does not think post-war Iraq could’ve turned out any better.

SOURCES

Byman, Daniel, “An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle: Policy Failure or Bridge Too Far?” Security Studies, October 2008

Collins, Joseph, “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath,” Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, April 2008

Elliott, Michael, “So, What Went Wrong?” Time, 10/6/03

Fineman, Mark, Wright, Robin, and McManus, Doyle, “Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace,” Los Angeles Times, 7/18/03

Government of Iraq, “Iraq National Report on the Status of Human Development 2008,” 12/31/08

Gordon, Michael, “Army Buried Study Faulting Iraq Planning,” New York Times, 2/11/08

McGeary, Johanna, “Looking Beyond Saddam,” Time, 3/10/03

Olson, Dr. William, “Mistakes Were Made, How Not to Conduct Post-Conflict Management and Counterinsurgency,” Small Wars Journal, 7/17/09

Parker, George, Assassins’ Gate, 2005

PBS Frontline, “INTERVIEWS Karen DeYoung,” Bush’s War, 3/24/08

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09

Thompson, Mark and Duffy, Michael, “Pentagon Warlord,” Time, 1/19/03

5 Revolutionary Guards Members Let Go By U.S.

On July 10, 2009 the U.S. released five Iranian operatives that had been in custody for two and a half years. They were let go under the Status of Forces Agreement, which says all prisoners held by the U.S. must be freed or turned over to the Iraqis by 2011. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki requested that the Iranians be released, and he met with them before they were turned over to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad. The Iranians were originally rounded up as part of an American plan to break-up Tehran’s lethal support of Shiite militias that missed Iran’s main goal in Iraq.

On January 11, 2007 the U.S. raided the Iranian Liaison Offices in Irbil and arrested the five Iranians. At that time President Bush ordered that Iranian agents operating within Iraq be killed or captured. The office was a local headquarters for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force. At the Irbil airport the Kurdish peshmerga stopped the Americans from arresting two other Iranians, who were the real target of the operation. The five captured at the Liaison Office were junior offices, while the two that got away at the airport were Mohammed Jafari, the deputy on the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence service. Jafari and Frouzanda were on an official visit to Kurdistan, and met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani. The Kurds immediately protested the detentions, and demanded that the 5 Iranians be released. The U.S. refused saying they were involved in attacks on American and Iraqi forces.

Iranians had been operating in Kurdistan for twenty years, and had offices in Irbil and Sulaymaniya. The two ruling Kurdish parties were based in Iran during Saddam’s time, and both fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq War. It was at that time that the Revolutionary Guards began operating out of Kurdistan.

The offensive against Iran’s Qods Force began the month before. In December 2006, the U.S. arrested Iranian General Mohsen Chirazi and Colonel Abu Amad Davari. They were arrested in the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council’s (SIIC) compound in Baghdad. The two had invitations to be in Iraq from Pres. Talabani. Chirazi was the number three man in the Qods Force, and the highest Iranian captured by the U.S. Both were released a week later after protests by Iraqi officials.

Again, it was no surprise that Iranians were found at this location. The Supreme Council was created by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, and recognized Ayatollah Khomeini as their leader. The SIIC’s militia the Badr Brigade was an official arm of the Qods Force, and fought on the Iranian side during the war like the two Kurdish parties. In fact, Chirazi and Davari were at the SIIC compound to meet the leader of the Badr Brigade when the Americans arrested them.

Later in September 2007, the U.S. arrested the Iranian trade delegate in Sulaymaniya. Iraqi President Talabani protested again and demanded his release. The Kurds claimed the Iranian had been in town for a week working on a new border crossing between Kurdistan and Iran. The Iranian was Mahmud Farhadi. He was a commander in the Qods Force Ramadan Corps. The Corps was one of four created to operate within neighboring countries. The Ramadan Corps set up three regional commands along the Iraqi border known as Nasr, Zafar, and Fajr, to deal with different parts of Iraq. Farhadi was in charge of the Nasr command. He was probably in Sulaymaniya for what the Kurds said as the Qods Force is also in charge of economic ties with Iraq.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 it was seen as a great threat and opportunity by Tehran. They sent in their operatives and friendly Iraqi parties to shape the facts on the ground to their advantage. The SIIC had been able to win over the Americans before the war, and became the main Shiite party they supported. The Qods Force helped put together the United Iraqi Alliance, which won the most seats in the 2005 parliamentary elections, and broke the deadlock to put Nouri al-Maliki into office in 2006. This was all to ensure Shiite rule in Iraq, and maximize Iranian influence. At the same time, the Qods Force began funneling money and weapons to any and all Shiite militias that would fight the Americans to hold them down in Iraq so that they wouldn’t attack Iran, and hopefully eventually make them leave. The arrest of the Iranians was aimed at that military effort. While the U.S. was successful in arresting some Qods Force members and the militias they supported, it’s questionable whether these had any real effect upon Iran’s support for Shiite militants. That didn’t really seem to change until Maliki’s crackdown in Basra in March 2008. More importantly, the U.S. never addressed Tehran’s political policy, and in fact supported the SIIC, the most pro-Iranian Shiite party, and helped integrate their Badr Brigade into the Iraqi security forces. In forging this strategy, the Bush administration got caught up on the security situation, and ignored Iran’s main goal, to ensure that Iraq never became a rival again by putting their allies in power. While the Americans were understandably mad at having to release these five Qods Force operatives, it was another sign of their misinterpretation of Iran’s true motives and goals in Iraq.

SOURCES

Allam, Hannah, Landay, Jonathan, and Strobel, Warren, “Is an Iranian general the most powerful man in Iraq?” McClatchy Newspapers, 4/28/08

Beehner, Lionel, Bruno, Greg, “Iran’s Involvement in Iraq,” Council on Foreign Relations, 3/3/08

CNN, “U.S. raid on Iranian consulate angers Kurds,” 1/11/07

Cockburn, Patrick, “The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis,” Independent, 4/3/07

Felter, Joseph and Fishman, Brian, “Iranian Strategy in Iraq, Politics and ‘Other Means,’” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 10/13/08

Kagan, Kimberly, “Iran’s Proxy War against the United States and the Iraqi Government,” Institute for the Study of War, 8/20/07

Kaplow, Larry, “Iraq Steps Out of Iran’s Shadow,” Newsweek, 6/6/09

Lake, Eli, “GIs Raid Iranian Building in Irbil,” New York Sun, 1/12/07

Linzer, Dafna, “Troops Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq,” Washington Post, 1/26/07

Myers, Steven Lee, “Americans Release Iranian Detainees to Iraq,” New York Times, 7/10/09

Parker, Ned, “Iraqi militia leader’s death shatters truce,” Los Angeles Times, 9/23/07

Phillips, James, “Iran’s Hostile Policies in Iraq,” Heritage Foundation, 4/30/07

Price, Jay and Taha, Yaseen, “Kurds denounce U.S. detention of Iranian,” McClatchy Newspapers, 9/20/07

Roggio, Bill, “Captured Iranian agent identified, 15 Special Groups operatives captured in Iraq,” Long War Journal.org, 9/30/07
- “Iran’s Ramazan Corps and the ratlines into Iraq,” Long War Journal.org, 12/5/07
- “Iranian involvement in Iraq: an old or a new case?” Long War Journal.org, 10/15/07
- “US releases Iranian Qods Force agents,” Long War Journal, 7/9/09

Roug, Louise and Daragahi, Borzou, “Iraq Edges Closer to Iran, With or Without the US,” Los Angeles Times, 1/16/07

Sanger, David, “Opening a New Front in the War, Against Iranians in Iraq,” New York Times, 1/15/07

Tehran Times, “Barzani vows to seek release of Iranian diplomats,” 10/23/08

Wright, Robin and Trejos, Nancy, “U.S. Troops Raid 2 Iranian Targets in Iraq, Detain 5 People,” Washington Post, 1/12/07

How The Press Failed In Its Job In The Lead-up To The Iraq War

The Summer 2009 issue of Democracy Journal includes a piece by Leslie Gelb and Jeanne-Paloma Zelmati of the Council on Foreign Relations. In it they review and critique the media coverage of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, and Newsweek, what they term “the elite media,” of four events surrounding the beginning of the Iraq War. Those are the congressional vote on the use of force, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations, President Bush’s mission accomplished speech, and the capture of Saddam Hussein. Gelb and Zelmati were inspired to write this piece because they didn’t feel there had been any comprehensive evaluation of the reporting leading up to the war. They believe that a democracy depends upon good information from the press, especially when one is considering whether or not to go to war. Overall, they found that the media did a mediocre job at best. Only occasionally did they question the reasons for the war or analyze the situation in Iraq. The most common form of reporting was simply to repeat the administration’s claims, and quote one or two experts who may or may not agree with the White House. The press only began critiquing the war when it was obvious things were going badly, which was too little, too late. In doing so, the media let the American public down, never giving them a full picture of what the arguments for and against the invasion were, and its consequences.

Gelb and Zelmati reviewed 576 stories and pieces by columnists on four events, the October 2002 Congressional debate an authorizing the use of force, Colin Powell’s February 2003 speech to the United Nations advocating for war, President Bush’s mission accomplished speech in May 2003, and the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003. Each article was ranked 0-5. 0 was completely slanted towards the administration, 1 was somewhat biased, 2 reported statements by officials and experts, 3 raised some questions, 4 had fundamental doubts about the administration’s claims, and 5 did the best job reporting both the critics and the White House’s responses. Obviously they were privileging stories that questioned the White House, but they did that because those critics turned out to be right. On average they thought a story should rank a 3.0 or better on Iraq since it was such an important issue facing the country at the time. Too many times, in the press’ attempt to be neutral however it simply ended up supporting the administration by focusing mostly on what government officials said with little to no questioning.

The first two events largely received the same type of reporting. In October 2002 Congress debated whether or not to authorize the use of force against Iraq. On February 5, 2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations arguing that the Security Council should pass a resolution allowing an attack on Saddam Hussein. In both cases the press mostly repeated the White House and Powell’s claims with little to no questioning. Powell’s speech especially was widely praised. A piece by Michael Gordon in the New York Times said that the Secretary had silenced the critics for example. Few asked whether Iraq really had weapons of mass destruction or were working with Al Qaeda, and even less went into what would happen in Iraq after an invasion. The articles that did mention critics usually had them at the end of the pieces. Columnists at the time were overwhelmingly advocating for the war. Coverage of the Congressional debate received a 2.0, while Powell’s speech got a 1.77, the lowest score of the study.

On May 1, 2003 President Bush gave his mission accomplished speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. Again, the press mostly repeated Bush’s remarks. Reporting on the problems then occurring in Iraq after the invasion was largely not included in the articles. Skepticism was growing however, but it mostly came from reporters in Iraq. Those in Washington were still basing their stories off of government officials. Columnists at this time were also beginning to raise questions, but were only marginally better than the regular stories. For that, the columnists received a 2.36 score, while the press overall got a 2.12.

The final event was the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003 in his home of Tikrit. This time the press coverage was notably different from the other three times. Stories mentioned the insurgency and the reconstruction in Iraq. Many reports were also questioning whether the war was really over or not. For the first time, the media was using more Iraq reports than ones from Washington, which played a large part in changing the tone. What was still missing was any real discussion of the claims the White House made leading up to the war. Because of their questions however, the press received its highest score with a 2.24.

Overall, the reporting never reached the 3.0 standard set by Gelb and Zelmati. They believe that the elite print press should be held to the highest standards. They are the largest outlet for in-depth reporting, questioning, and analysis about decisions that affect the country. Gelb and Zelmati believe that one of the biggest problems with them is institutional. The first job of a reporter is to tell what’s going on. The main way they do that is to report what the government says. The authors argue that editors need to push their staff to bring in more critics in their reporting to provide more of a debate on leading issues in the country. A way to compensate for that is to also use more overseas reporters during foreign policy crises since they are obviously removed from Washington. Another major problem is that many stories emphasize politics over policy. Many reporters simply don’t know enough about any given issue to really go into depth about it, but anyone can talk about Democrats versus Republicans and liberals versus conservatives. In the lead up to the war, that’s what many in the press did.

Eventually the media did change its tone, coming to criticize the White House and its handling of the war, but the study believes they went too far in the other direction. Gelb and Zelmati think this led the media to miss the importance of the Surge when it was launched at the beginning of 2007. When Bush changed policy, the press underreported its effects. They mostly focused just on the increase in troops, and not the new tactics used. They also did not connect the operation with Moqtada al-Sadr’s cease-fire, the emergence of the Anbar Awakening, the creation of the Sons of Iraq, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki becoming a real leader, all of which helped end the sectarian war, and created a new status quo.

Gelb and Zelmati finish by calling for the media to do a better job questioning the government when important decisions come up. This is unlikely to happen as the major media outlets are facing declining sales, and more emphasis upon making profits as a result. A push to make money usually does not contribute to more in depth reporting. The methodology American journalists are trained in, and the culture in pressrooms is also not conducive to much analysis. It’s mostly getting out whatever the top story is as quickly as possible and relying upon proven sources, which usually come from the government. Also, when it comes to war group think usually sets in and the media supports the White House initially. Even now that the media is much more critical of the war, it doesn’t matter much because Iraq has largely disappeared from American reporting. It seems that the press has failed again in the process. It did not give the public the information it needed to assess going to war, and it is doing the same now on what Iraqi is like, and what that means for the U.S. since it is expected to have a major presence in the country for the foreseeable future.

SOURCES

Gelb, Leslie with Jeanne-Paloma Zelmati, “Mission Unaccomplished,” Democracy Journal, Summer 2009

One American Attempt At Building Democracy In Iraq Looks To Be Fading

One goal of the United States before it departs Iraq is to leave it a functioning democracy. The U.S. has facilitated four national elections, two provincial, one parliamentary, and a referendum on the 2005 constitution, since the U.S. invasion. In January 2010 Iraq is to have its fifth balloting for a new parliament. Voting is only the most visible form of democracy. Since 2003 the Americans have been building up local councils to give everyday Iraqis a say in their government. These look to disappear however when the U.S. leaves.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was the first government agency in the U.S. to seriously contemplate democracy building in Iraq. It joined the post-war planning in August 2002. The State Department was supposed to be in charge of governance in Iraq after the invasion, but never came up with anything concrete. That left the USAID to create a policy on its own. They wanted to decentralize power away from Baghdad to the local level. Under Saddam, the Baath party was in control of all levels of government. The USAID wanted to break that hold. They wanted to create neighborhood councils that would create jobs, be in charge of reconstruction, and give common Iraqis a say in their government. When they presented their plans to a National Security Council subgroup on humanitarian issues in Iraq, their ideas were rejected. The official stance was the U.S. was not going to be doing nation building in Iraq, and USAID had just crossed that line.

The situation in Iraq after the invasion proved so chaotic, that the U.S. military began implementing some of the USAID’s plans without knowing it. American units wanted Iraqi partners in their area of operation. To find some they began building up local councils across the country. This was done on an ad hoc basis, as there were no orders from above on how to do it. In Mosul for example, General David Petraeus, who was then the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, set up a convention of 270 delegates from the city representing its diverse population, who in turn elected 24 city council members and a mayor. In Najaf, General James Conway of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force started organizing provincial elections, registering parties, finding candidates, etc. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had to step in at that point letting the general know that he could not carry out such a large undertaking because Iraq did not have an election law to legalize any voting. Some were far less representative and participatory. In the Karkh district of Baghdad only around 2,500 Iraqis of 30,000-35,000 showed up to vote for their council. In al-Kindi, fifty-five Iraqis elected 12 members to the council there. The U.S. military funded all of the councils they created, but believed that they would eventually hand them over to some other government body. That never happened, as the USAID lacked the money and personnel to deal with them. The U.S. military is still in charge of running these councils to this day.

The USAID was doing a similar job independent of the military. Iraq’s bureaucracy disappeared with the invasion. The tie between Baghdad and the rest of the country was severed in the process. The USAID tried to step in, offering three contracts to companies to create local councils. One company set up 22 offices across Iraq in the spring and summer of 2003 to complete this task. In April, the USAID also allocated $120 million to start local reconstruction that would assist these local groups. $61.7 million was spent in the end on 1,700 projects.

The U.S. military and USAID’s work eventually clashed with the CPA and the fledgling new Iraqi government. By 2005 437 neighborhood, 195 sub-district, and 96 district councils had been created by the Americans. CPA head Pual Bremer wanted to build a democracy in Iraq and decentralize power as well, but was more focused upon the provincial governments than local councils. The councils also ended up clashing with the Iraqi ministries and director generals over priorities and power.

This became more complicated after the two Iraqi elections in 2005. The provincial and parliamentary votes were closed list, meaning Iraqis voted for coalitions, which in turn picked the politicians. This was a blow to the U.S. military and USAID’s effort to empower local forces as the large national parties were in control of the process. The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and the two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) came out the major winners in both votes. They too wanted to disperse power outside of Baghdad, but into their hands. As the new rulers of the provincial councils and ministries they too came into conflict with the U.S. created councils over authority. A mid-2006 report by the Americans for example noted that the SIIC and its militia the Badr Brigade had tightened their grip on the provincial governments, and were against any new elections or reforms that would weaken their power. The result was that provinces and ministries largely refused to work with the U.S.-backed local councils.

By the time the Surge started in 2007, the situation had grown no better. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) were created to build up local and provincial governance, reconciliation, and reconstruction. They spread out across Iraq and began working with the local and district councils. They still had no real authority in the Iraqi government however. They had a small budget to pay salaries, which they got from the Americans, and some small scale U.S.-funded rebuilding projects, but no real say in ordinances, taxes, larger reconstruction efforts, provincial councils, or Baghdad.

Today it seems like only the U.S. military still considers these councils relevant. Stars and Stripes reported that few Iraqis go to the councils. The Iraqi political parties ignore them as well. If Iraqis want something done they go to the U.S. or Iraqi security forces, sheikhs, or other local leaders. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is also intent upon recentralizing authority in his hands. The attempt to give everyday Iraqis a say in their government was an admirable move. Simply voting does not make a democracy. A culture and norms also have to be created. The local councils were a move in that direction, but they were another sign that the Americans cannot dictate to the Iraqis how to develop their society. For better or worse, the post-invasion Iraqi elites are now in control of this process. That will mean these councils will all but disappear when the U.S. leaves. After all, they will have no more money to run, and have never been able to integrate into the new Iraqi political system.

SOURCES

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09

Warden, James, “Focus turns to matching old, new Iraqi institutions,” Stars and Stripes, 3/1/09
- “Local leaders are making a comeback in Iraq,” Stars and Stripes, 3/2/09

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” Chapter 4 Staging in Kuwait

Chapter 4 of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” review of the American effort to rebuild Iraq is a short one covering the continued problems of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA). As it entered Kuwait before the U.S. invasion it was still ill prepared for what lay ahead. It had staffing and contracting troubles, interference from the administration, and was unaware of other organizations planning for post-war Iraq.

On March 16, 2003 the ORHA left the U.S. for Kuwait. The organization had only been in existence for six weeks and had a staff of 167. When they arrived they found that they could not stay with the military so they had to find their own accommodations. The company KBR set them up at the Kuwait Hilton, while the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) eventually moved to the Radisson. This placed the four groups in charge of Iraq, the ground forces command based in Qatar, the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida, the military’s post-war group Joint Task Force 4 (JTF 4) at a military camp in Kuwait, and OHRA in two hotels in Kuwait, at five difference locations in three different countries. OHRA also had no secure communication, and was thus cut out of the military-White House loop. That symbolized their relationship to the rest of the American actors that would take part in the invasion of Iraq, and their different locations was like the disjointed planning that had taken place as none of these organizations had coordinated with each other.

Right before they were to leave, Jay Garner, the retired general in charge of OHRA, was given a call by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld saying that he objected to some of Garner’s staff. The OHRA had created a plan for a U.S. advisor to be placed in each of Iraq’s ministries to help run them until a new Iraqi government was formed. Most of these spots were to be filled by members of the State Department, which Rumsfeld disagreed with. He told Garner that he was going to personally name new advisors. Garner objected, and then decided to ignore the secretary. After he arrived in Kuwait, Garner was then told that the White House was going to name all of the advisors. Eventually Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote to Rumsfeld telling him that State was only trying to help, allowing Garner to maintain all of his original ministry officials. This was but one example of the interference Garner experienced from his superiors, which held up post-war planning.

Another problem that OHRA had was that the Army had not authorized them to sign any new contracts. They only had $146 million to not only pay for staffing, and supplies, but for contracts, to pay for the Iraqi security forces, and other duties. This meant that as the war started and eventually ended, OHRA was still working on finding the appropriate businesses to do reconstruction. A contract for Bechtel to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure for example, wasn’t signed until April 17, 2003, and their personnel didn’t arrive until May. The staff of OHRA was also growing exponentially to about 2,500 as they arrived in Baghdad in mid-April. A contracting officer said that they were so overwhelmed by the group’s growth and duties that they were completely reacting to situations, and had no planning for what they were doing.

ORHA still had little coordination or knowledge of the other post-war plans. Right before the invasion started on March 20, Garner’s deputy went to meet with CENTCOM commanders and found out about their post-invasion ideas. Angered Garner called for all the different post-war groups to meet at the Hilton on March 27, seven days into the war. The conference proved futile as no unified plan emerged.

For their part, CENTCOM came up with a military to Iraqi transition program. Following the combat forces Governorate Support Teams (GSTs) would contact local Iraqi officials and help them with keeping up administration. The GSTs would then hand over responsibility to OHRA, who would then create an Iraqi interim government that would allow the Americans to depart. Garner planned on forming this new administration by holding a meeting of top Iraqi leaders as happened in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion there. This closely followed USAID’s plans to decentralize power in Iraq down to the provinces, districts, and local municipalities to break the hold Saddam had imposed on the country. This eventually created an unintended long-term problem for Iraq however as it is still arguing over who has authority, the central government in Baghdad or the provinces, and over how federalism is to be implemented.

CENTCOM’s plan fit in nicely with the White House’s narrative that the Americans would be liberators not occupiers, and that reconstruction could be done on the cheap. Officials were telling the American media and public that they would only be in Iraq for a short period, and that reconstruction would not cost the U.S. much. On April 23 for example, a USAID official said that rebuilding Iraq would only cost $1.7 billion because Iraqi oil and foreign donors would pay the rest. That same month National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said that OHRA was not going to govern Iraq after the invasion, but rather transition authority to Iraqis. Both of these statements would prove completely wrong.

When the invasion was finished OHRA staff watched on TV as Iraqis went into the streets and started looting. The ministries that OHRA had planned to take over to keep the country going were being burned and torn apart. The American staff became disheartened, and Garner began to have grave doubts about his mission and what he could accomplish. It was a foreshadowing of the long-term chaos that would overtake both Iraq and the U.S. reconstruction effort for the next several years.

Other Chapters from “Hard Lessons”

Preface

Part I Chapter 1 – Planning for Postwar Iraq September 2001 to May 2003

Chapter 2 – The Agencies Engage

Chapter 3 – The Department of Defense Takes Charge

SOURCES

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” – Chapter 3 The Department of Defense Takes Charges

The third chapter of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s (SIGIR) review of the U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq covers the confusion that ensued when the Pentagon was given control of the post-war effort in January 2003. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed that the Pentagon would provide unity of effort in Iraq after the invasion, but in fact, it just made the chaotic planning even more disjointed. Instead of creating one command, there emerged three separate organizations each with its own leader. Rumsfeld also became personally involved in the war planning and staffing, which undermined the effort as well. These were trends that had emerged from the very beginning of post-war planning, and would continue for years afterwards. This was one of the major reasons why the SIGIR believes the U.S. failed to rebuild Iraq.

In October 2002 the Pentagon decided not to create a civilian organization to plan for post-invasion Iraq because it thought it would give the wrong message when the White House was claiming that it was doing everything possible to avoid war. That left most of the planning to the National Security Council (NSC) and the Central Command (CENTCOM), the military staff in charge of the Middle East. As reported before, (2) this effort was uncoordinated with few of the working groups knowing about each other. On the NSC side, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had created a humanitarian and reconstruction plan, and started signing contracts with companies to carry out the work. The Pentagon was in charge of securing and running the oil sector. The Treasury Department was working on Iraq’s finances. CENTCOM had its own group working on what was called Phase IV, post-war planning. There was no overall agency in charge of this effort however.

In mid-October 2002 the NSC was briefed on what its groups had come up with so far. The planners said that there would be a civil administration of Iraq, although there were no actual plans behind it. The administration didn’t agree with the level of U.S. involvement, which caused major problems. The White House and Pentagon believed that the U.S. would be liberators, but had no concept of how this would actually work.

During this period CENTCOM’s Phase IV group was also getting sidelined for all the invasion work. On August 2002 the Joint Chiefs became worried about this, especially because there were only 2 majors doing most of the planning. In December 2002 they intensified their effort, and got more staff. They gave a briefing to the Joint Chiefs that month saying that there would be chaos after the invasion because there would be no Iraqi government. They believed that eventually either the U.N. or the U.S. would run Iraq, but had no specific ideas on how that would work. After that meeting, the Joint Chiefs realized that Phase IV didn’t have enough workers so it was made into Joint Task Force 4 (JTF 4) with 58 more officers.

The Pentagon became more involved when President Bush said that war was inevitable at a NSC meeting on December 18, 2003. This spurred Rumsfeld to finally create a civilian organization within the Defense Department for post-war planning. Following this Rumsfeld convinced the President to give the Pentagon control of post-invasion Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed to this saying that his agency lacked the personnel and capacity to do the job. Rumsfeld argued that there would be unity of command with Defense in control. On January 20, 2003 President Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 24 (NSPD 24) giving Rumsfeld this authority. The Pentagon went on to create the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA) as a result.

NSPD caused chaos within the administration. It effectively put an end to all the NSC’s projects. The officials that had been working there were shocked at the change. The Pentagon in turn ended up shunning a lot of these other groups that had been working on Iraq previously. More importantly, rather than creating unity of command, it led to three separate organizations with their own leaders. One was ORHA, the other was JTF-4, and the third was CENTCOM. As with the earlier planning, none of these groups worked with each other, and actually competed, causing more problems.

JTF 4 did away with half of CENTCOM’s Phase IV work, and tried to assert its authority over the planning process. Phase IV had a two part plan for Iraq. First humanitarian issues would be dealt with, and then reconstruction would begin. JTF-4 shut down the humanitarian work and just focused upon rebuilding. This happened in mid-January 2003, just two months before the invasion. The Joint Chiefs had also envisioned JTF-4 as the command for postwar Iraq. It was supposed to take over as soon as military operations were over, and coordinate with all the other government agencies. The problem was, that was supposed to be the job of the OHRA.

In early January Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith called up retired General Jay Garner to head the OHRA. Rumsfeld knew him from before, and thought a military man who had worked in Iraq after the Gulf War would be ideal for the job. Garner started his work 56 days before the invasion with no staff and no integration with the military. This was a major drawback as OHRA had no secure communications, and thus was cut out from Washington, CENTCOM, and the military command set up in Kuwait to run the invasion. The lack of staff was also another major drawback. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice told other government agencies to send officials, but it never really happened. One reason was that the other agencies resented the creation of OHRA as they were told about it after the fact. Garner ended up with an ad hoc group made up of retired soldiers, private contractors, military officers, and government officials. This was another trend that would continue for years with the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq. Garner also started his job from scratch as he was not told about the earlier efforts.

When Garner started getting the OHRA up and running it was believed that he would just be operationalizing the ideas that had already been created. Garner found out that there were no concrete plans, and didn’t even find out about all the groups that had been working on the effort. He discovered the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project and Undersecretary of Defense Feith’s Office of Special Plans for example by mistake just before the invasion. On his own Garner came up with three jobs for the OHRA: humanitarian aid, governance, and reconstruction. This closely mirrored the work already done by the NSC and Phase IV. The State Department was to run the humanitarian and governance efforts. This largely took over the work that the NSC had done. Likewise, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) continued on with its NSC job of reconstruction. The USAID had already signed contracts with companies to do this task. One such business, the International Resource Group briefed the USAID in February 2003 telling it that it didn’t have anywhere near the money it needed to rebuild Iraq. An ominous foreshadowing of what was to come.

The cost of reconstruction became a major point of contention within OHRA, and with Garner’s superiors. At one briefing Rumsfeld asked Garner how much reconstruction would cost, and he said billions. Rumsfeld said he must be crazy. In fact, the U.S. went on to spend $50 billion on rebuilding Iraq. There were also heated debates amongst the OHRA staff about what reconstruction actually meant. Some believed it was just fixing war damage, while others thought about how it could lead to a new Iraqi government. This occurred during the earlier planning when the USAID was the only agency that believed rebuilding was an integral part of creating a democracy in Iraq. Rumsfeld and the White House however wanted that form of government without the U.S. doing the work.

What Iraq’s government would look like after Saddam was also a major point of contention. The State Department’s governance group had little to go on because there was so little information about how Iraq worked internally. The Pentagon leadership also thought that the U.S. would pass off Iraqi to Iraqis quickly, and therefore didn’t think that State had to really plan for the matter. Garner went ahead and looked into the issue anyway. A review warned that there would be a power vacuum after the invasion and criminality would result if authority wasn’t established immediately. Many in the U.S. believed that the Iraqi government would continue to operate after the war, and Garner planned to have a senior U.S. advisor help each of the country’s ministries to keep operating. The problem was OHRA didn’t even know how many ministries Iraq had.

Rumsfeld then began interfering as well, just adding to the difficulties. The Defense Secretary demanded that the Pentagon control all three of Garner’s reconstruction efforts rather than have State and USAID involved. This was all part of Rumsfeld’s belief that he was creating unity of command. That was far from reality.

CENTCOM was the third group that thought it was going to be in control of Iraq after the war. Its leadership didn’t like either the JTF-4 or OHRA. Rumsfeld believed that Garner would just be part of CENTCOM, but the military didn’t want him. CENTCOM commander General Franks tried to assert his control over OHRA, but Garner said he was independent because he was created by a presidential directive.

Franks was too caught up in the military planning for the invasion anyway. The original U.S. war plans for Iraq called for 500,000 troops. Rumsfeld was unhappy with this number as it didn’t fit his vision of a transformed military. Eventually Rumsfeld cut down the force to 160,000. At a briefing, President Bush asked whether this would be enough to secure the country and Franks said that it was. He asserted that in every village in Iraq there would be a mayor, a lieutenant, and captains to maintain civil order. In fact, there was no such plan. Others down the chain of command in the U.S. military were also uneasy about the reduced invasion force. Coalition ground commander General David McKiernan for one didn’t think there would be enough troops to secure the country after the invasion.

These ideas and agencies were put to the test one month before the invasion in a drill. All of the different groups that were working on post-war Iraq were present, although the State Department, CENCOM, and JTF-4 were told not to fully participate. The drill brought up major problems that would actually materialize after the invasion, but it was not able to prevent them. First the main difficulty that emerged was securing the country. The 160,000 strong invasion force was simply not large enough to do the job. The drill predicted that there would be civil chaos after the war that would undermine the establishment of a stable Iraq. The second problem was that there was no set reconstruction budget. Instead the U.S. was going to war with no idea about how much it would have to spend on rebuilding or whether it would be adequate. This too could lead to unrest amongst Iraq’s poor, who could rise up as a result. Third the lack of coordination between the various groups within the U.S. government was another hinderance.

President Bush and other top officials were later briefed on the drill and other plans. Garner warned the President that there was still lots of work to be done. Garner said that the Iraqi civil service, police and army all needed to be maintained to ensure domestic order. He suggested that the army be used for reconstruction. Bush okayed this plan. The same day, the President was briefed on a deBaathification plan. The idea was that only the top Baathists would be removed to ensure that the government would keep running. Bush agreed to that idea as well. Two days later Undersecretary Feith presented his plan for the creation of an Iraqi Interim Authority that would help with governance. Bush had previously vetoed the idea of creating a provisional Iraqi government before the invasion. The Interim Authority would now be doing just that using Iraqi exiles and the Kurds that the U.S. had been meeting with. Bush affirmed that idea too. The Authority would initially work with the U.S. military after the invasion before eventually taking over leadership of the country. There were no set plans on how this was to work, and it was decided to do it on the fly based upon facts on the ground in Iraq. None of these plans were actually adhered to.

Finally, days before the invasion was to begin Rumsfeld again interfered with planning. The Secretary told Garner that he had to get rid of two State Department officials from his staff. One was the head of the Future of Iraq Project. Garner was forced to get rid of him, but kept the other member of State. Then two days before the war began, Rumsfeld called Garner telling him that he was going to appoint all of the advisors that were to help run Iraq’s ministries. Garner at first objected, but then gave in.

Years later Garner lamented that the U.S. started too late to have an effective post-war planning effort. His OHRA was put together only two months before the invasion, and never had the staff to do all that was asked of it. Garner was also competing with General Franks at CENTCOM and JTF 4. This was a trend that started early on in planning when the NSC, Pentagon and CENTCOM’s Phase IV were all working independently. On top of all that Secretary Rumsfeld continually imposed himself on planning even though he had no experience in making war or reconstruction. His insistence on reducing the invasion force from 500,000 to 160,000 made it impossible for the U.S. to ensure security in Iraq. He also interfered with Garner’s staff picks, and most importantly did not believe in rebuilding Iraq. Even before the March 2003 invasion the U.S. was setting itself up for failure when it came to dealing with post-Saddam Iraq.

SOURCES

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” – Chapter 3 The Department of Defense Takes Charges

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” – Chapter 2 The Agencies Engage

The second chapter of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” review of America’s rebuilding project in Iraq focuses upon the pre-war planning. Most of it centers upon the work of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). That agency was given the largest responsibility of any in the U.S. government even though it didn’t have the capacity to do all that was asked of it. It was also one of the only that understood the task ahead of it. It thought of how much it would cost to rebuild Iraq, and came up with a plan to integrate that task with building a democracy in Iraq. The White House and the Pentagon wanted the latter, while largely rejecting the former, which highlighted the faulty strategy created before the war.

The USAID was included in the post-war planning in August 2002. The National Security Council (NSC) believed that the agency had experience with disasters beforehand that would allow it to handle any problems that might occur in Iraq. The USAID was made part of the NSC’s Humanitarian Working Group, and took over all of the humanitarian and much of the reconstruction planning. By October most of the agency’s personnel had been tasked with working on Iraq. They proved to have a much richer and realistic view of what lay ahead. They saw rebuilding as only a small part of a much longer process to transform the country into a democracy. In a policy paper released in October it said that the job could take years. The White House and Pentagon thought that the U.S. would only be involved for a few months.

The USAID’s main task was dealing with any humanitarian contingencies that might emerge after the invasion, and then rebuilding Iraq. Their major fear was that Saddam might destroy much of the country during the fighting. After those problems were dealt with the agency would then move to reconstruction. That task was thought of as mostly repairing war damage. The NSC’s Humanitarian Working Group broke up this job amongst different parts of the U.S. government. USAID was given health, water, sanitation, electricity, education, transportation, telecommunications, farming, and rural development. The State Department had governance, Treasury had finance and the economy, while the Pentagon had oil and overall control of the country.

The USAID was given the most responsibility. They came up with a series of benchmarks to meet within a year of the invasion. These included providing dependable water to all cities, basic health services to all Iraqis, reconstructing and improving transportation, raising electricity to 75% of pre-Gulf War levels, privatizing state run businesses, and open private banks. Those later two were part of a plan to promote business and capitalism, since Iraq was mostly a state-run socialist country. It’s telling that few of these have been met six years after the invasion.

The USAID was also supposed to help the State Department. It never came up with a detailed plan however, so the USAID was left to its own devices. It planned to decentralize power away from Baghdad down to the local governments to break the tradition of a centralized state that Saddam had imposed. The general idea was that each neighborhood would elect councils that would then be in charge of jobs and local reconstruction, while teachers and other civil servants would go back to work to keep institutions going. All of this was part of the USAID’s larger plan to build a democracy in Iraq.

When the NSC Humanitarian Group heard about the USAID’s plans they were opposed. The White House didn’t believe in large-scale reconstruction or nation building. Following this, the co-chair of the group only wanted the U.S. to focus upon repairing war damage. The task of rebuilding would be the responsibility of the new Iraqi government, which would pay for it using oil money. This led to statements like those by Vice President Dick Cheney when he said that Iraq was a rich country, with vast resources, that could pay for much of its own reconstruction when he was on NBC’s Meet The Press in March 2003 shortly before the war started.

The problem was that the U.S. knew very little about the state of Iraq’s oil industry. The 1991 Gulf War had damaged much of the country’s infrastructure. The United Nation’s sanctions that followed caused a shortage of spare parts, and a subsequent lack of maintenance. These problems could be seen in 1998 when the U.N. authorized Baghdad to double its crude sales under the oil for food program, but couldn’t.

Even if the Americans did know about these problems it didn’t have the personnel to repair them. This led the government to contract out the work. This job was given to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), which became the most well-known and controversial deal. The company already had an agreement to provide basic services to the U.S. Army. Giving such a deal to KBR was a problem because Vice President Cheney was the former CEO of its parent company Halliburton. The contract was looked at by a series of lawyers in the government, but the Pentagon went ahead anyway saying that necessity and the coming war overrode any public relations fallout that might occur later. As a result KBR was given a $7 billion contract to repair Iraq’s oil infrastructure. This was the largest amount given during the war. A subsequent review by the Government Accountability Office said that KBR should have never been given the task.

USAID also contracted out much of its own work. After the Cold War, 37% of the government’s staff was cut. That led the USAID to largely rely upon NGOs and private companies to do its work. Following this, the United Nations’ World Food Program was given a $200 million contract to provide aid to Iraqis after the invasion. USAID also gave out $41 million in deals to groups like Mercy Corps and Save The Children to meet the humanitarian disasters they were planning for. From February to May 2003 it gave another $1.3 billion in contracts. Bechtel International for example was added in April 2003 to do $680 million in work on Iraq’s infrastructure. This deal was eventually enlarged to $1.03 billion, the largest amount USAID had ever given.

Overall, USAID’s experience showed the contradictions in America’s pre-war stance. The administration was prepared for the worst-case humanitarian crisis, but the best-case reconstruction situation. The humanitarian planning went ahead smoothly because it had the full backing of President Bush. USAID could call upon any government agency to help with this task. Its work on rebuilding however was much more complicated. The White House did not want the U.S. to be responsible for Iraq beyond a few months. It did not believe in nation building. It also saw no connection between rebuilding Iraq and creating a democracy, something that USAID believed were integral. The USAID was also the only part of the government that believed that reconstruction would be a huge task. In 2002 it predicted that it would cost the U.S. up to $90 billion over three to five years. The rest of the administration argued that Iraq would be doing the work and paying for it. In fact, if the rest of Washington knew what the USAID was thinking it would’ve rejected it. Yet, it was the only agency that had a realistic view of what Iraq was going to be like.

SOURCES

Meet The Press, “Interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney,” NBC, 3/16/03

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09

Special Inspector General Testifies To Congress

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) Stuart Bowen recently testified to the House Armed Services Committee on March 25. Much of what he said was based upon SIGIR’s “Hard Lessons” report, which has been partially covered here. The gist of Bowen’s and the paper’s findings are that the U.S. went into Iraq not ready for the task of rebuilding the country. When security quickly deteriorated, so did the reconstruction project. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) set out to reform the entire country whether it wanted to or not, yet never had the money, personnel, oversight, or coordination to do it. Much of the work was done on an ad hoc basis, did not pay attention to the security situation, or the needs of Iraqis. The CPA also never adapted to the situation in the country. It wasn’t until 2007 and the Surge that violence was down enough that some effective reconstruction work was possible. Overall, Bowen believes that the U.S. failed to meet its goals of rebuilding the country due to poor planning and unrealistic goals.

The SIGIR was created in January 2004. Immediately after it started its work it began to find problems with the reconstruction effort. The “Hard Lessons” report detailed much of what they found. In the fall of 2001 post-war planning for Iraq began in the U.S. It was based upon a best-case scenario where the Americans would be greeted as liberators, the U.S. would take care of any humanitarian crises and deal with war damage, and then leave. Washington was warned by several different groups several times of the consequences of invading, but their advice was ignored. The U.S. thus set about the largest nation-building project in history completely unaware of what they were getting themselves into. This led to massive waste and many failures.

The U.S. expected Iraq to largely be functioning after the invasion, but instead it fell into immediate chaos. The U.S. was thus stuck running and rebuilding the country, something it had not planned for. It has been paying for these missteps ever since. When the CPA took over Paul Bremer wanted to change every part of the society whether Iraqis were interested or not. This was beyond its capabilities. The CPA effort was largely ad hoc, with programs and goals constantly changing. The Americans were left responding to or ignoring the security situation rather than creating the conditions necessary for successful rebuilding work. In 2004 for example, it started large projects in Fallujah and in Basra in 2005 when they were being run by insurgents and militias that doomed them from the beginning. This didn’t change until 2007 when the Surge finally created enough safe areas to effectively carry out reconstruction.

The result of this lack of planning has been massive cost overruns that Americans are still paying for today. In 2003 the CPA came up with a $20 billion reconstruction plan, ten times larger than the pre-war plans. Today the U.S. has spent $50 billion, 25 times more than the original plan. The insurgency was largely responsible for these huge increases. The U.S. also did not have the personnel, contracts, resources, or doctrine to achieve its goals. That led Bowen to claim that the U.S. has failed at rebuilding Iraq, although it has put the Iraqi security forces back together.

Bowen warned that many of these problems could be repeated in Afghanistan. In 2008 a Special Inspector General was created for that country, and it found many of the same mistakes that happened in Iraq occurring in Afghanistan. The SIGIR emphasized that a well-planned reconstruction program goes hand-in-hand with a successful counterinsurgency campaign.

The SIGIR finished with his suggestions for how the U.S. should proceed in Iraq, and any other efforts in the future. For Iraq Bowen said that the U.S. needs to maintain its personnel there so there is not such a large turnover, the government needs to increase its trained staff for reconstruction, contracts should be re-thought, the capacity of the Iraqis needs to be increased so that they can do their own rebuilding, and the military’s mini-grant program needs to be institutionalized. For nation-building in general the SIGIR said that the U.S. needs to come up with a general strategy for the concept. There also needs to be a high level official in the White House tasked with dealing with the problem. Security needs to be the top priority before effective rebuilding can begin, locals have to have the institutions and bureaucracy to eventually take over the effort themselves, and their needs should lead the rebuilding. The U.S. also needs better contracts, more oversight, and staff to create background knowledge of wherever the U.S. may need to go. The title of the SIGIR’s review of Iraq is called “Hard Lessons.” Bowen and his fellow inspectors have been detailing the problems there for five years now. The question is if any of these lessons will be integrated into the Washington bureaucracy so that they can be avoided in the future. As Bowen pointed out, many of the same mistakes are already happening in Afghanistan. Will the U.S. be able to recover there in time to not repeat the waste of billions of dollars and failures experienced in Iraq?

SOURCES

Bowen, Stuart, “Effective Counterinsurgency: How the Use and Misuse of Reconstruction Funding Affects the War Effort in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Committee on Armed Services, United States House of Representatives, 3/25/09

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09

Iran’s Policy Towards Iraq

In the winter 2008 addition of the Middle East Policy Council Journal, Iranian academic Kayhan Barzegar published an article entitled, “Iran’s Foreign Policy in Post-invasion Iraq.” It was a refutation of many common ideas about Tehran’s stance towards Iraq held by Americans and westerners. Barzegar is a professor of international relations at Azad University in Tehran, who is currently at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Barzegar argues that rather than being offensive and ideological in nature, Iran’s Iraq policy is historically based upon long-standing ideas about Iranian-Arab relations, defensive in response to the new American military presence, and pragmatic, taking advantage of new opportunities that have evolved since the overthrow of Saddam.

Iran’s Worldview

Iran’s worldview has a major impact on its policy towards Iraq. Iran has a long history of conflict and rivalry with the Arab world. Iranian nationalism also says that Iranians are different from Arabs. Together this has led to a common belief that Arabs will always oppose Iran. The period of Saddam’s rule only re-enforced this belief. At the same time pan-Islamic ideas exist that say Iran needs to be involved in the Islamic world. For the decade after the Iranian Revolution this meant trying to spread the ideals of Ayatollah Khomeini, but since the 1990s, Tehran has been trying to reach out to Arab countries in a friendlier manner. Both of these factors have led the Iranian leadership to want to increase ties with the new Iraqi government so that they don’t develop into a rival again, and ensure Iran’s place in the region.

Iran’s Immediate Concerns In Iraq

Iran also has several immediate concerns in Iraq that shape policy. These include security, the history of the Iran-Iraq War, cultural ties, and economics. All of these together lead to a pragmatic approach to Iraq to make sure that there will not be conflict between the two again, that there can be a free flow of people across the border, and an increase in business opportunities.

The first is security. Iran wants to ensure the unity of Iraq, which is divided between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. A break-up of Iraq could destabilize Iran. Iran and Iraq have also been historical rivals, and many Iranians believe that it could return to this role in the future. There is therefore an urge to improve ties between the two so that this won’t happen anytime soon. The Iranian opposition group Mujahadeen e-Khalq is also based in Iraq, which Tehran wants to keep in check.

Second are the lingering affects of the Iran-Iraq War. Many Iranians want to make sure that they did not fight the war for nothing. This has led to popular support for good relations so that another war might be prevented. According to the United Nations Iraq also owes Iran $149 billion in reparations. This has not been brought up by Iran lately, but it is a domestic issue. There are on-going disputes about the border between the two countries as well. Either or both issues could lead to conflicts in the future.

Third, is the desire amongst many Iranians to have good cultural relations with Iraq. This is tied up with access to the Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf in Iraq. Thousands of Iranians cross the border every month to go to these holy sites. Large numbers of Iraqis also go to Iran to visit Mashhad and Qom. Having open borders is important so that people can access to these areas.

Fourth Iran sees tremendous potential for economic gain in Iraq. Before the U.S. invasion most of Iran’s trade was through Jordan, Turkey and Russia. Now that Saddam is gone Iran has increased trade, tourism, and energy connections with Iraq. In February 2009 for example, the two countries signed a number of Memorandums of Understanding on industry, electricity, trade, and housing. They have also signed a deal to develop joint border oil fields. Every month similar announcements are made as the economic connections between the two are increasing.

Conflict With The U.S.

Just as important for Iran’s policy in Iraq is its conflict with the United States. For the last several decades, security in the Middle East has been largely defined by outside powers. From the 1970s on the U.S. tried to play Iran off of Iraq. The 2003 invasion disrupted this balance of power, and the U.S. has been attempting to rebuild it ever since. Iran has been adamantly opposed to re-creating this system, preferring a friendly Iraq rather than a new enemy. This conflict over ideas about security is at the heart of the dispute between Iran and the U.S.

This has led Iran to see the U.S. moves in Iraq as a threat. Initially, Tehran was afraid of the Bush administration’s talk of pre-emptive strikes and regime change. Having permanent American bases in Iraq was another major concern. The U.S. then began to blame Iran for instability in Iraq. The U.S. also portrayed itself as the arbitrator between the various factions in Iraq, which Iranians perceived as an invitation for a long-term presence. Finally, the U.S. has been emphasizing that if it leaves Iraq pre-maturely Iran will fill the vacuum and change the balance of the Middle East. This has led the U.S. to pressure neighboring Arab countries to improve ties with Iraq to counter Iran. Since Iraq is now Iran’s number one foreign concern, it can’t live with an American position that is attempting to turn Baghdad against Tehran. It has thus rejected cooperation with the U.S. because they have diametrically opposed visions. This has meant Iranian policy is as much defensive as pragmatic.

Ties With Iraq’s Shiite Factions

To ensure their interests, Iran has tried to establish friendly ties with all three major Shiite factions in Iraq, the Islamic Dawa party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), and the Sadrists. Tehran’s main emphasis is upon relations with the government and the ruling parties. The Dawa and SIIC have long standing connections with Iran as many members lived in exile in Iran for years during the Saddam era. A lot of Shiites in the government also feel that they need Iranian support for now because the neighboring Sunni governments were none too friendly to Shiites taking power. It also allows for a counterweight to American influence.

Tehran also has ties with the Sadrists, but Barzegar believes this has been mostly tactical and short term to oppose the U.S. presence. The Sadrists are nationalists that have never expressed any desire for strategic relations with Iran. As the recent report by the Combating Terrorism Center revealed, many Sadrists saw aid from Iran as a marriage of convenience as well to gain weapons and money. The reason why the two cooperated was their mutual animosity at the American troop presence. The chances for long-term ties are therefore limited. In Basra for example, Iran supported various militia groups, but when the government launched its offensive against them in March 2008, Tehran stepped in to moderate the cease-fire rather than perpetuate the fighting because ties with Baghdad were more important than the Shiite gunmen. Iran will probably continue to work with factions that work with them such as the Special Groups, but it is not as important as Iran’s other concerns in Iraq.

Stance Towards Iraq’s Other Factions

Iran also has a policy towards Iraq’s nationalist, Sunni, and Kurdish parties. Tehran is not friendly with former Prime Minister Ilyad Allawi. He is a former Baathist that would probably attempt stronger ties with Sunni countries. Tehran also believes that many Sunnis are still deeply anti-Iranian and want to make sure they do not create another Iran-Iraq rivalry. The Kurds have had friendly relations with Iran, but it is worried about Kurdish independence. Any Kurdish state could be pro-Israel and pro-American, which would be a strategic threat to Iran. Tehran has thus tried to balance the Sunni and Kurdish parties in the government with the Shiites.

Refuting American Views of Iran’s Policy

One of Barzegar’s major arguments is that Americans and westerners have misinterpreted Tehran’s policy in Iraq. Many believe that Iran is driven by ideology and is following an offensive program in Iraq. Supporters of this view point to Iran’s ties with the Sadrists. There has also been much written about emerging Shiite power with Iran in its lead. While its true that Iran’s ideals do play a role in its foreign policy, and that for a decade after the overthrow of the Shah Iran tried to promote its revolution in the region, Barzegar believes that Iran has become much more strategic and opportunistic in the last few years. The ability to form an ideological alliance with Iraq’s Shiites for example is unlikely as the SIIC, Dawa, and the Sadrists all have different views of Iraq’s future and their relationship with Iran.

Conclusion

Overall, Iran wants to confront the American presence in Iraq, while taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the post-Saddam environment. Rather than being driven by ideology, Iraq’s worldview, and immediate cultural, political, and economic concerns according to Barzegar are driving Iran’s policy. They want friendly relations with Baghdad to prevent another rivalry, the free flow of people across the Iran-Iraq border, to increase business ties, see the U.S. leave, and stop their plans of creating an anti-Iranian Iraq. Tehran has largely been successful in all of these endeavors. For example, the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between the U.S. and Iraq includes a withdrawal date for U.S. troops, and a promise not to use Iraq as a base to attack its neighbors, two clauses that were supported by Iran. In the January 2009 provincial elections many American analysts said that Tehran was a loser because their allies the SIIC lost, but Maliki still wants a unified Iraq and friendly relations with Iran. Those both fit Iran’s strategic goals. The point being that both Barzegar and the Combating Terrorism Center report argue that Iran is not attached to any individual, Sadr, or party, the SIIC, but rather wants influence within the government no matter who is at the helm. If Barzegar is right, then the question now is if the new Obama administration can accept an Iraqi government that is both friendly with the U.S. and Iran, and find some common ground with Tehran. If not, Iran will continue to oppose the Americans in Iraq, and reject cooperation.

SOURCES

Aswat al-Iraq, “Iraq, Iran sign MoUs in different spheres,” 2/28/09

Barzegar, Kayhan, “Iran’s Foreign Policy in Post-invasion Iraq,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Winter 2008

Eggen, Dan and DeYoung, Karen, “Senior Iraqi Leader Says Pact With U.S. Is Unlikely to Pass,” Washington Post, 10/30/08

Felter, Joseph and Fishman, Brian, “Iranian Strategy in Iraq, Politics and ‘Other Means,’” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 10/13/08

Hiltermann, Joost, “Iraq’s elections: winners, losers, and what’s next,” Global Democracy, 2/10/09

Peterson, Scott, “At Iraqi border outpost, signs of improving ties with Iran,” Christian Science Monitor, 12/22/08

Reuters, “Iraq says still at odds with Iran over border,” 3/9/09

Tehran Times, “Iran, Iraq ink energy cooperation deal,” 2/21/09

Zelikow, Philip, “The new strategic situation in Iraq,” Foreign Policy Online, 2/9/09