Chapter 5 of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” report on the American effort to rebuild Iraq highlights the first turning point in the war. The previous chapters went through the uncoordinated planning and faulty thinking that occurred in Washington before the invasion. Chapter 5 covers the U.S. invasion and its immediate consequences. The chaos that ensued would ensure a long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq.
On March 17, 2003 President George Bush issued an ultimatum for Saddam Hussein and his two sons Uday and Qusay to leave Iraq within 48 hours. On March 20 the bombing began, and the next day Coalition ground forces crossed the border into Iraq. Most of the Iraqi military disappeared, but Saddam’s Fedayeen militia began attacks in the south. U.S. General John Abizaid, deputy commander of the Central Command (CENTCOM), looked at reports on how the war was going and predicted in April that the U.S. would end up fighting an insurgency in the country. American forces were concentrated on getting to Baghdad as quick as possible to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction. That meant large cities, and northern and western Iraq were left to themselves for weeks, a situation which would have a negative impact on security later on.
Pre-war planning had been split between military and civilian authorities with little to no coordination. That continued during and immediately after the invasion. Members of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and military engineers moved behind combat forces to assess the situation in Iraq independent of each other. The first place the USAID teams went to was the port of Umm Qasr in Basra on March 27. They found the facilities in poor condition, but were still able to have a British ship dock there the next day to delivery humanitarian supplies. The engineers found the power system and infrastructure falling apart across Iraq. In Baghdad for example, the communication and water system were knocked out shortly after the bombing began, and on April 4, the power died in most of the city. Before the war, planners in Washington believed that after the invasion, the country would still be running, and that reconstruction costs would be minimal, and mostly paid for by Iraqi oil revenues. The assessments of the USAID and engineering teams found that it might cost up to $35 billion to rebuild Iraq. USAID and Retired General Jay Garner, the head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA), had raised this concern before, but were met with deaf ears by administration officials.
Problems with unity of command even occurred within the ORHA itself. Faced with the dire state of Iraq’s infrastructure, Garner ordered the USAID to begin working on services instead of humanitarian issues. USAID refused, which led to a bureaucratic battle that reached all the way up to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell over who the USAID should answer to. Eventually Garner had to call Powell himself to get the agency to follow his orders.
Garner faced problems even getting into Iraq himself. General Tommy Franks, head of CENTCOM, was following the military’s plan for Iraq. That saw the U.S. overthrowing the government, securing any WMD, and then turning over Iraq to a civilian authority in six to eight weeks, at which time rebuilding would begin. Garner wanted access to Iraq immediately. Garner flew to Qatar to meet with General Franks where he argued that there was a power vacuum in Iraq that needed to be filled by the ORHA. General Franks reluctantly gave in.
The first place Garner’s staff went to was Basra. There they didn’t have a communication system at first, lacked security because there were too few Coalition troops in the city, and reported the first cases of looting on April 2. The chaos that was being unleashed would setback the work on Basra’s Umm Qasr port for weeks, and lead to skyrocketing costs, a foreshadowing of the overall reconstruction effort in Iraq.
The looting and chaos would quickly spread to the rest of the country. On April 7 looting began in Baghdad. Gunfire, robberies, and murders were reported across the city. All of Iraq’s ministries were stripped, and then burned. The exception was the Oil Ministry, which was protected by U.S. troops. That was because the Defense Department had been tasked with running the oil industry in pre-war planning, and issued orders to protect the building during the invasion. Some ministries even continued to be attacked when the U.S. occupied them. The Health Ministry’s offices for example were burned two or three more times after the Americans re-opened it. Iraq’s three main banks, Rafidain, Rasheed, and the Central Bank had their money and safety deposit boxes taken. Iraqis also began going after the petroleum industry, which lasted for ten weeks from March to May 2003, and caused $943 million in damages. Organized gangs and insurgents would eventually take over the robbing and killing. Some neighborhoods in Baghdad, especially Shiite ones, set up militias for protection. This spread to other areas like Amarah in Maysan where Shiite militias took over the city in the absence of Iraqi administrators and Coalition troops. The U.S. ground forces commander General David McKiernan said there weren’t enough troops to maintain security. He was also constrained by the fact that the invasion plan called for soldiers to continue to push north looking for MWD, leaving Baghdad, and much of southern and western Iraq with no Coalition presence. The result was more instability.
This had four major effects upon the U.S. and Iraq. First, it raised the costs of reconstruction by billions. On April 16, Congress appropriated $2.475 billion for rebuilding Iraq. The U.S. would end up spending $50 billion. Second, the lack of security meant Iraqi weapon depots were looted, which helped arm the insurgency and Shiite militias who would go on to destabilize the country after the invasion. Third, the collapse of the Iraqi government and the poor state of Iraq’s infrastructure after decades of war and sanctions meant that the Americans could not get services up and running, which cost them public support. Finally, the situation on the ground in Iraq would eventually mean the White House would give up its strategy of a quick departure.
Despite these setbacks, the U.S. military and leadership acted as if everything was going according to plan. On April 16 General Franks gave his “Freedom Message” saying that the U.S. would only be in Iraq temporarily, and that an American civilian authority known as the Coalition Provisional Authority would soon take over from the military. On April 21, Rumsfeld, taking the advice of General Franks, cancelled the deployment of 50,000 additional troops to Iraq, and began thinking of withdrawal. General McKiernan and Garner were shocked as they both wanted more troops to handle security.
At the same time, Garner was carrying on with his own policies as well. On April 15 he and Presidential Envoy to the Iraqi opposition Zalmay Khalilzad put together a meeting of over 100 indigenous Iraqi leaders in Nassiriya to discuss forming an interim Iraqi government that would take over from the Americans. On April 22, Garner flew to Kurdistan to consult with the Kurdish leaders on this plan as well, while Secretary Powell sent Khalizad and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to meet with Iraqis in the south. This culminated in a meeting on April 28 in Baghdad that included 250 domestic and exile leaders. They agreed to form an Iraqi government over the next four weeks.
All of the ORHA’s work ended in May. Faced with the instability in Iraq, the White House gave up on Garner. National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld both believed that ORHA had lost control of the situation in Iraq. On May 6, President Bush named Paul Bremer as his Presidential Envoy to Iraq to head a new organization, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Bremer had been contacted by the Defense Department and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office at the beginning of April. Garner had been told when he first got his job that he would eventually be replaced, but he didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
The Bush administration’s planning for Iraq had always been haphazard and disconnected. At any one time before the invasion there were at least two different organizations working on a strategy for post-war Iraq, with little to no knowledge of each other. The White House also often interfered with the effort causing more problems. When the invasion started the U.S. military and the civilian OHRA both thought they would be in charge of post-war Iraq. They worked independently, which didn’t help when the country fell into chaos. That instability led the administration to panic, and abandon its early plan to withdraw from Iraq quickly in favor of a long-term occupation under the CPA. The effects of that decision are still being felt today.
SOURCES
Packer, George, Assassins’ Gate, 2005
PBS Frontline, “INTERVIEWS Elisabeth Bumiller,” Bush’s War, 3/24/08
Ricks, Tom, Fiasco, 2006
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09
Woodward, Bob, State of Denial, 2006
Showing posts with label Office of Reconstrction and Humanitarian Affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Office of Reconstrction and Humanitarian Affairs. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
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
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
Saturday, April 25, 2009
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
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
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