Mission not accomplished: What went wrong with Iraqi reconstruction

Abstract

This article argues that the prewar planning process for postwar Iraq was plagued by myriad problems, including a dysfunctional interagency process, overly optimistic assumptions, and a lack of contingency planning for alternative outcomes. These problems were compounded by a lack of civilian capacity during the occupation period, which led to a complicated and often uncoordinated relationship with the military authorities who found themselves taking the lead in many reconstruction activities. Taken together, these mistakes meant that US success on the battlefield was merely a prelude to a postwar insurgency whose outcome remains very much in doubt more than three years later.

Key Words:

• Iraq
• reconstruction
• Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance
• Coalition Provisional Authority

Acknowledgment

This article was originally presented at a conference on ‘US Military Operations in Iraq: Planning, Combat, and Occupation’, sponsored by the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute and the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC, on 2 Nov. 2005.

Notes

¹White House Office of the Press Secretary, ‘President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended’, 1 May 2003, available at <www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html>, accessed 30 March 2006.

²Data as of 30 March 2006. Official Department of Defense casualty figures can be found at <www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf>.

³The Brookings Institution Iraq Index, updated 27 March 2006, 18, 20, and 22, available at <www.brookings.edu/iraqindex>.

⁴Data as of 30 March 2006. See <www.iraqbodycount.org/>.

⁵Tommy Franks, American Soldier (NY: Regan Books 2004), 315 and 329; Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (NY: Simon & Schuster 2004), 36–38.

⁶According to Woodward, Franks briefed President Bush at least six times on the evolving concept of operations (on 28 Dec. 2001, and 7 Feb., 20 April, 11 May, 19 June, and 5 Aug. 2002) and briefed Secretary Rumsfeld even more frequently.

⁷Woodward, Plan of Attack, offers detailed descriptions of each of these three concepts, especially, 96–97, 124–25, 133–36, and 145–48. See also Franks, American Soldier, Chapters 9 and 10.

⁸It is important to note that the ‘Hybrid’ option was never actually implemented, due to the timing and process of approving deployments and the decision to start the war with the aerial attack on Dora Farms. Nevertheless, the ‘Hybrid’ option remained the basis for planning from Aug. 2002 through the start of the war in March 2003.

⁹‘Pre-war Planning for Post-War Iraq’, information sheet published by the Office of Near East and South Asian Affairs within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, <www.defenselink.mil/policy/isa/nesa/postwar_iraq.html>, accessed April 2004.

¹⁰Andrew Rathmell, ‘Planning Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Iraq: What Can We Learn?’ International Affairs 81/5 (Oct. 2005), 1021.

¹¹Woodward, Plan of Attack, 147.

¹²The UN also estimated that an additional 740,000 Iraqis were refugees in neighboring countries. Elliott Abrams, NSC Senior Director for Near East and North Africa, ‘Briefing on Humanitarian Reconstruction Issues', 24 Feb. 2003, available at <www.state.gov/g/prm/rls/2003/18402.htm>, accessed Jan. 2006. See also Woodward, Plan of Attack, 276.

¹³United Nations, Likely Humanitarian Operations, 10 Dec. 2002, para. 17, available at <www.casi.org.uk/info/undocs/war021210scanned.pdf>, accessed Jan. 2006; Joseph J. Collins, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations, DoD News Briefing, 25 Feb. 2003, briefing slides available at <www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2003/030225-D-9085M-011.pdf>, accessed Jan. 2006.

¹⁴The six principles they identified were minimizing displacement, infrastructure damage, and disruption of services; relying primarily on civilian relief agencies; developing effective civil-military relations; facilitating operations of international organizations and NGOs; prepositioning US government relief supplies and response mechanisms; and restoring the food distribution system. See ‘Briefing on Humanitarian Reconstruction Issues’, 24 Feb. 2003.

¹⁵Vice President Dick Cheney, remarks made on Meet the Press, 16 March 2003.

¹⁶Kanan Makiya, one of the Iraqi participants in the Future of Iraq Project, acknowledged after the war that this had been his message to President Bush, and he stated ‘I admit I was wrong.’ Joel Brinkley and Eric Schmitt, ‘Iraqi Leaders Say U.S. Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, But Little Was Done’, New York Times, 30 Nov. 2003. Quote from Woodward, Plan of Attack, 259.

¹⁷Woodward, Plan of Attack, 81.

¹⁸It may also have had some legal implications. Sandra Mitchell, vice president of the International Rescue Committee, recounted that she and other NGO representatives discussed the responsibilities of occupying powers under the Fourth Geneva Convention with representatives of the US Agency for International Development. She noted, ‘we were corrected when we raised this point. The American troops would be “liberators” rather than “occupiers”, so that the obligations did not apply.’ Quote from James Fallows, ‘Blind Into Baghdad’, The Atlantic Monthly (Jan./Feb. 2004), 63.

¹⁹For one of the best descriptions of Baghdad in the immediate aftermath of the war and how it affected the local population, see Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near (NY: Henry Holt 2005). See also Jon Lee Anderson, The Fall of Baghdad (NY: The Penguin Press 2004), and George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2005).

²⁰As the US 3rd Infantry Division noted in its after action report, ‘Because of the refusal to acknowledge occupier status, commanders did not initially take measures available to occupying powers, such as imposing curfews, directing civilians to work and controlling the local governments and populace. The failure to act after we displaced the regime created a power vacuum, which others immediately tried to fill.’ Quote from John J. Lumpkin and Dafna Linzer, ‘Army Says Policy Choice Led to Chaos in Iraq’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 Nov. 2003.

²¹One source reports that the number 50 came up frequently during discussions of how many senior officials would need to be removed. Gordon Corera, ‘Iraq provides lessons in nation building’, Jane's Intelligence Review 16/1 (Jan. 2004), 31.

²²Packer, The Assassins' Gate, 132–33; Transcript of Jay Garner interview, dated 17 July 2003, for a Frontline episode called ‘Truth, War & Consequences’, first aired 9 Oct. 2003, available at <www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/garner.html>, accessed Jan. 2006.

²³Woodward, Plan of Attack, 283.

²⁴This was most notably the case in Bosnia, where the Dayton Accords strictly separated the civilian and military tasks and authorities. For details, see Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (NY: Random House, 1998).

²⁵Paul Bremer, who served as the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, recalls that Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, told him that the Future of Iraq project ‘was never intended as a postwar plan’. L. Paul Bremer III, My Year in Iraq (NY: Simon & Schuster 2006), 25. For more on the genesis and content of the Future of Iraq project, see Fallows, ‘Blind Into Baghdad’, 56–58; and David L. Phillips, Losing Iraq (NY: Westview Press 2005).

²⁶An official Department of Defense fact sheet stated: ‘The rationale for reporting directly through DoD was based on lessons learned from Bosnia and a desire to eliminate a dual reporting and command chain . … Many contend the lack of coordination between the military and the civilian entities [in Bosnia] led to the prolonged involvement of all parties. We did not want to repeat past mistakes.’ See ‘Pre-war Planning for Post-War Iraq’.

²⁷According to Woodward, Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed with this logic. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 282.

²⁸For a comparative study of the occupations of Germany and Japan with subsequent nation-building efforts, including Iraq, see James Dobbins et al., America's Role in Nation-Building (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, MR-1753-RC, 2003).

²⁹Even if they had, though, the political situation after World War II was simply not a good parallel. World War II was a total war, where civilian populations suffered enormously, and Germany and Japan both surrendered unconditionally when the conflict ended. This gave legitimacy and some degree of popular support to the US occupations. Operations in Iraq, by contrast, were supposed to remove Saddam Hussein through a precision campaign that would leave most of Iraq unscathed and most civilians unharmed, and as discussed above, the government would continue to function and the United States would not become an occupation authority.

³⁰One of these retired officers quipped that they were the Department of Defense's version of the Space Cowboys, referring to the Clint Eastwood movie where aging astronauts return to space for one final mission. Brigadier General (Ret.) Buck Walters, quoted in Richard Woods, Tony Allen-Mills, and Nicholas Rufford, ‘Painful Rebirth of Iraq in Cauldron of Defeat’, Sunday Times (London), 13 April 2003.

³¹As Garner later explained, the meeting was called a rock drill because ‘you turn over all the rocks’ to identify any problems or issues with the plans. Garner interview with Frontline, July 2003.

³²Susan B. Glasser and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, ‘Reconstruction Planners Worry, Wait, and Reevaluate’, Washington Post, 2 April 2003.

³³Donald R. Drechsler, ‘Reconstructing the Interagency Process After Iraq’, Journal of Strategic Studies 28/1 (Feb. 2005), 20.

³⁴Garner recounts their conversation as follows: ‘[I] said, “You got to get me into Baghdad.” He said, “You know, it's really hot there right now, it's really going to be hard to protect you.” I said, “I think we'll take our chance.” He said, “Well, let me talk to the military commanders.” It was either the night of the 17th, [or] the night of the 18th, he called and said, “Go ahead, and we'll give you all the support we can.’” Garner interview with Frontline, July 2003.

³⁵Monte Reel, ‘Garner Arrives in Iraq to Begin Reconstruction’, Washington Post, 22 April 2003.

³⁶Garner interview with Frontline; Mark Fineman, Robin Wright, and Doyle McManus, ‘Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace’, Los Angeles Times, 18 July 2003.

³⁷The timing of these decisions led to much speculation that Garner had been fired from his position. Garner has steadfastly denied that this was the case, stating (in the July 2003 interview for Frontline, among other places) that the plan had always been for him to stand up the organization and to transfer power to a permanent envoy after a few months. Critics interpret these events less charitably, arguing that their timing and the White House's lack of public praise for Garner were designed to convey an impression of a clean start and a distancing from ORHA.

³⁸Coalition Provisional Authority, Vision for Iraq, 11 July 2003.

³⁹Coalition Provisional Authority, Achieving the Vision: Taking Forward the CPA Strategic Plan for Iraq, 18 July 2003. A fifth objective of strategic communications was added later.

⁴⁰Only 1,196 of its 2,117 authorized positions were filled at that time. Andrew Rathmell, ‘Planning Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Iraq', 1026.

⁴¹Bremer notes, for example, that he sent Rumsfeld a memo on 7 July 2003, which emphasized that ‘Washington was being extremely slow in assigning personnel needed by CPA: of 250 people I had requested weeks before, not a single one had yet arrived in Baghdad. Washington red tape would slow down reconstruction funds and personnel for almost a year.’ Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 114.

⁴²Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 125; Rathmell, ‘Planning Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Iraq’, 1026; Ariana Eunjung Cha, ‘In Iraq, the Job Opportunity of a Lifetime’, Washington Post, 23 May 2004; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, ‘Iraq's Barbed Realities’, Washington Post, 17 Oct. 2004.

⁴³Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 125.

⁴⁴Rathmell, ‘Planning Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Iraq’, 1033.

⁴⁵A total of 171,000 coalition troops were deployed in Iraq during May 2003, though continuing force withdrawals reduced that number to 156,000 troops by Oct. 2003 and 146,500 troops by Dec. 2003. See ‘Coalition Troop Strength in Iraq Since May 2003’, The Brookings Institution Iraq Index, 27 March 2006, 20, accessed at <www. brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf>, March 2006.

⁴⁶See interview with Max Boot, 9 Sept. 2003, available at <www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=6249>; and Joseph Galloway, ‘Bremer Exits With Long Record of Bad Decisions’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 July 2004.

⁴⁷Rathmell, ‘Planning Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Iraq’, 1030–31.

⁴⁸Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: PUP 1976), 605.

⁴⁹To be sure, Iraq is not the first time that this dynamic occurred. Military experts, including Andrew Krepinevich, have argued that the military's focus on combat operations and not the more difficult political phases of an operation is an outgrowth of its experience in Vietnam. It is also not a problem that exclusively faces the United States. British General Sir Rupert Smith, for example, recently published a book on precisely this theme. He writes that his operational experiences during the 1990s taught him a key lesson: ‘No more was I part of a world of wars in which the civilian and military establishments each had its distinct role in distinct stages. The new situations were always a complex combination of political and military circumstances, though there appeared to be little comprehension about how the two became intertwined – nor, far more seriously from the perspective of the military practitioner, how they constantly influenced each other as events unfolded.’ Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane 2005), xiii.

⁵⁰For a thorough discussion of the debate over force levels in Iraq, see Woodward, Plan of Attack.

⁵¹General Eric Shinseki, testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, 25 Feb. 2003.

⁵²Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, testimony to the House Budget Committee, 27 Feb. 2003.

⁵³A wide literature exists on the security gap and the lack of international civilian police. See, for example, Michael J. Dziedzic, ‘Introduction’, in Policing the New World Disorder (Washington DC: National Defense UP 1998), 3–18, and Seth G. Jones, Jeremy Wilson, Andrew Rathmell, and K. Jack Riley, Establishing Law and Order After Conflict (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, MG-374-RC, 2005).

⁵⁴One notable step in this direction is the formation of the Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units (COESPU), which was part of an initiative launched in 2004 by the Group of 8 countries. The center is located in Vicenza, Italy, and is run by the Carabinieri. See <http://coespu.carabinieri.it>, accessed Feb. 2006.

⁵⁵Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, ‘Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations’, 28 Nov. 2005, available at <www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/300005.htm>, accessed Feb. 2006.

⁵⁶See, for example, the discussion of CENTCOM's frustration with the lack of policy guidance in Mark Fineman, Robin Wright, and Doyle McManus, ‘Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace’, Los Angeles Times, 18 July 2003. On the persistent tension between State and Defense, see David Rieff, ‘Blueprint for a Mess’, New York Times, 2 Nov. 2003.

⁵⁷For more information on the CSIS project, which is entitled ‘Beyond Goldwater-Nichols’, see <www.csis.org/isp/bgn/>.

⁵⁸The S/CRS mission statement is available on its website, <www.state.gov/s/crs/>.

⁵⁹The report from the conference committee that oversees the State Department's budget included no appropriations for S/CRS, although negotiations are ongoing as of this writing. See PEP Briefing Note, ‘The Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization’, The Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping, Dec. 2005, available at <www.effectivepeacekeeping.org/docs/pep/bn-scrs-1205.pdf>, accessed Feb. 2006.

⁶⁰The text of NSPD-44 is available at <www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-44.html>.

⁶¹See, for example, I.M. Destler, Presidents, Bureaucrats, and Foreign Policy (Princeton: PUP 1972); I.M. Destler, Leslie H. Gelb, and Anthony Lake, Our Own Worst Enemy (NY: Simon & Schuster 1984) especially Chapter 4; and Paul Schott Stevens, ‘The National Security Council: Past and Prologue’, Strategic Review 17/1 (Winter 1989), 55–62.