Winning the peace is never as easy as winning the war, the old cliche goes. Fears rose last night that the fabric of Iraqi society could fall apart in the wake of the fall of Baghdad. While Britain and the US have spent months planning the reconstruction of Iraq, both are nervous about their ability to hold the country together in the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s fall. The Guardian has identified seven challenges facing the British and Americans.
Law and order
The frenzy of looting that erupted across Baghdad yesterday raised fears that the transitional American-led administration may be confronted by the disintegration of law and order.
With no police on the streets, US forces were caught off guard by the scale of ransacking, which emptied government buildings and shops of any possession that could be carried off, from car tyres to electronic goods.
The anarchy was initially welcomed by senior British and American officials as proof that the invasion was justified. ”This is a lot of pent-up anger which has been a part of these people’s lives for their entire lives,” said Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks at US central command in Qatar yesterday. ”We are not finding hostile behaviour from the population.”
The chaos, he insisted, was to be expected. ”Some of this occurs because of a vacuum between the departure, or the perception of the departure, of the regime and the establishment of conditions of normalcy.”
On Monday the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, told the Commons that Iraqi citizens were ”liberating” items from the regime, ”redistributing that wealth among the Iraqi people”. Encouraged by laughter, he added: ”I regard such behaviour perhaps as good practice, but that is not to say we should not guard against more widespread civil disturbances.”
The danger of a such a power vacuum became apparent yesterday as looting turned violent and the anger pointed towards the dangers of an outburst of revenge killings.
Though British forces in Basra this week rescued a looter from a mob, they have resisted taking on the role of policing, saying they are not equipped for the role and do not have the resources. They have now chosen an unnamed local leader to become interim governor of the province.
The Ministry of Defence in London yesterday said urgent discussions were going on at local levels to encourage those officers not implicated in human rights abuses to return to their jobs.
”We are not a police force,” a representative said. ”We are in a situation which is still dangerous. Our troops have to be able to defend themselves. The looting has already died down a little in the areas where we are in charge.”
Under the Geneva convention an occupying power has the responsibility of establishing law and order. Most of the members of the US office of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance, under the command of retired US general Jay Garner, are still in Kuwait.
The commandant of Basra’s traffic police, Kerala Ati, who was seeking permission from the British to restart the force, said yesterday: ”No authority now. No law now. No anything. Thieves everywhere. Everyone is afraid because no safety. If there is no authority, there will be revolution.”
He said his officers were willing to return to the streets, with or without arms, if they were given the go-ahead by the British. ”If you are calling, they will come,” he said. ”Police without army.”
The pillaging in Baghdad appeared to be on a grander scale. US marines who seized the headquarters of the directorate of general security, one of Saddam’s secret services, had to share their prize. ”The major threat was not running over the 400 looters who were stripping the place,” Major Joseph Clearfield said.
Outside Baghdad, the threat to law and order may be even greater. In Najaf a militia group called the Iraqi Coalition of National Unity, supposedly supported by US forces, was alleged to be robbing residents at will.
In the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, where the Ba’ath party regime systematically forced out Kurdish residents and handed their homes to Arabs from southern Iraq, there are dangers of ethnic clashes.
The nature of Iraqi society, well-educated and respectful of religious figures, may act as a break on the tendency towards anarchy. The authority of the Shia mullahs in the south may ensure that pleas for calm will be heeded.
Leadership
Pillars of Iraqi society, from police to the Ba’ath party’s spies on every street corner, appeared to melt away as US forces assumed control of Baghdad.
Britain and the US, which want to lock up the leading members of the regime, have accepted that other figures beyond the immediate Ba’ath party elite will have to be involved in the reconstruction effort. Without police officers, teachers and local stalwarts, who had no choice but to join the party, Iraqi society would collapse.
Phebe Marr, a specialist in Iraqi history, said: ”This is a technocratic society… We are going to have to rely on these technocrats to run the country.”
David Mack, vice-president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute thinktank: said: ”A lot of people in the Ba’ath could emerge in one way or another as political players in the country.”
Steven Simon, who has written a book on Iraq for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said re-establishing civic control would be ”difficult but not impossible”. Simon added: ”Right now people are scared. They do not know what is going on.”
But officials are unlikely to refuse to return to work on the grounds that Saddam has fallen. ”Many people joined the party because they were interested in advancement or because they were compelled to do so. They might not show attachment to Saddamology.”
Dan Plesch, of the Royal United Services Institute, said he expected the US to seek out sympathetic people throughout Iraq. ”Given that the US are not trained for and do not believe in UN/EU-style peacekeeping, what model will they adopt? It will be to co-opt local people.”
Hospitals
Baghdad’s hospitals were yesterday on the brink of collapse, short of fresh water, drugs, anaesthetics, electricity and medical staff. Their wards were choked with the injured, their morgues filling up with victims of street fighting and aerial bombardment.
The International Committee of the Red Cross was forced to suspend deliveries of emergency surgical supplies in the capital yesterday after a Canadian staff member was killed by gunfire. ”Given the chaotic and totally unpredictable situation in the city, getting from one place to another involves incalculable risks,” it said.
But the collapse of the regime and the establishment of a secure environment in southern and central Iraq may open the way for substantial deliveries of medical aid stored in warehouses in Kuwait, Turkey and Jordan. The World Health Organisation intends to transport 13 tons of medical supplies from Amman to Baghdad today.
Before the conflict disaster relief agencies anticipated floods of refugees leaving the country. Stores were established inside and outside Iraq. For the past week they have been unable to enter the country because much of it has been a battlefield.
But many of these problems are short-term. In Basra city officials met to assess medical and humanitarian needs. At the city’s teaching hospital, which received 200 dead and 750 wounded, only 50 of the hospital’s 150 doctors appeared for work. Most of them had stayed away because of fears about security.
”We don’t need food or water. What we lack is safety and protection,” Dr Janan Peter al-Sabah, the hospital’s chief of surgery, said. ”Our message to the coalition troops is to take responsibility for the security of the people, of the homes, of the facilities.”
Most of the country’s hospitals are still operating on restricted electricity supplies from back-up generators. It is not yet clear how severe damage has been to the country’s main electricity grid and how long it will take to repair.
The long-term problem will be redressing decades of underinvestment inflicted by Saddam’s regime siphoning off resources and more recent difficulties caused by sanctions.
According to Unicef, the UN children’s fund, one in eight Iraqi children die before their eighth birthday. The charity hopes to deliver high-protein biscuits, therapeutic milk, water purification tablets and essential medicines to hospitals and clinics.
Water
As temperatures soar above 30C, the need to restore mains supplies will become more acute. In many districts the problems have been caused by the failure of the ageing electricity generating equipment which powered pumps.
Looting at some pumping stations, according to Britain’s Department for International Development, has rendered them unserviceable. American and British air attacks were directed away from such targets but they may nevertheless have sustained damage.
During the standoff in Basra local health workers resorted to pumping water out of the Shatt al-Arab waterway into the pipes. The supply was deemed to be of inadequate quality.
In the short-term a massive tanker operation is swinging into action. Supplies are being sent in by Unicef drivers in Kuwait. ”We have an emergency on our hands now,” said the Unicef representative to Iraq, Carel de Rooy. ”Our actions in the next few weeks will determine the physical and mental well-being of a generation of Iraqi children.”
Media and communications
Taking control of Iraqi media, including state television and newspapers, will be a crucial step towards securing control of the state apparatus. Saddam kept an iron grip on the media, with his son Uday controlling several daily newspapers, including the title Babil.
While state TV will open up, Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, believes the Americans will not want the media to step out of line too much: ”There is a difficult line to tread here. The US will want the media to be supportive, but it must have enough credibility to ensure that Iraqis do not automatically turn to al-Jazeera.”
Steven Simon fears that the Americans have got off to a poor start, with reports that the former CIA director James Woolsey is being lined up to take over the information ministry.
”People have looked askance at appointing a man to run the information ministry who ran the CIA,” Simon said. ”Some people will think that maybe the roles are not that different and that the information ministry will have ties to the intelligence and clandestine agenda. This may appear to be more about propaganda than getting Iraqis to trust the media.”
Placing a controversial figure in a sensitive post will do little to help democracy secure a foothold in Iraq, Mr Simon warned. ”For democracy to take root people have to have some confidence in what their government is saying.”
Oil
American forces, which already control the Rumaila oilfields in the south of Iraq, will want to waste little time in securing Iraq’s other main oilfields near Kirkuk in the Kurdish north.
There are two key reasons for a swift takeover of Kirkuk. First, oil is the main source of Iraq’s dollar revenues. Second, any sign that Kurdish forces have taken control of the oilfields could trigger an invasion by Turkey.
Prof Rogers of Bradford University believes that securing Iraq’s oil supplies goes to the heart of the American campaign. ”The US wants has two core aims: to create a stable Iraq and to secure oil supplies. One requires the other.”
To this end, he believes that the US will establish permanent military bases in three areas of Iraq. These will be close to Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk. ”It will be like the US bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.”
Winning control of the oilfields will not, however, give the Americans the automatic right to control the billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues. The United Nations is the current trustee of Iraqi oil assets, including $2,9 billion held in a special fund, after the oil-for-food programme was handed over to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan.
But the likes of France and Russia, which signed oil deals with Saddam, will argue that a fresh UN resolution will be needed to approve the use of oil dollars by the new administration.
Borders
Some military analysts warned that overthrowing Saddam would destabilise the region so severely that Iraq’s borders would be breached.
Turkey has sent thousands of troops to Iraq’s northern border because it fears that Kurds will feel so emboldened by his fall that they will attempt to forge a common state with Turkish Kurds. Ankara has also made clear that it will not tolerate Kurdish control of the Kirkuk oilfields because that would be a crucial step towards establishing an independent Kurdish state.
Steven Simon said: ”Turkey is of extreme concern. I do not think that they will go in [because] I do not think that the Kurds will win control of the oilfields. The US wants a unitary Iraq, which requires a central government that controls oil revenues. Oil will be the Kurds’ patrimony, but only in as much as they can share it with other Iraqi citizens.”
Iraq’s eastern border with Iran is another source of tension. Tehran, which fought a bloody eight-year war with its neighbour in the 80s, will be deeply unsettled by an Iraqi government which is sympathetic to the US. Iran believes that the political make-up of Iraq has a knock-on effect within its borders because the populations of the two neighbours are predominantly Shia.
But Simon said: ”Iran have been very cautious throughout the war. I do not expect trouble in that domain.”
Prof Rogers agreed: ”It is unlikely that there will be a major incursion of any sort by Iran. But they will get paranoid because the US will establish bases in Iraq. They will not cross the border but will try to establish political influence with Shias in southern Iraq. They will want to have as much influence. But I do not think that will extend to problems on the border.”
Dan Plesch is more pessimistic about Iraq’s borders, fearing that the country could break up along ethnic lines in the way Yugoslavia fell apart. This could lead to a Shia state in the south, a Sunni state in the middle and a Kurdish state in the north. ”The precedent of the Balkans allows one to consider the right of self-determination on an ethnic basis. Britain and the US say they are committed to the territorial integrity of Iraq. But they said they were committed to the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. That is the fear of Iraq’s neighbours. That will destabilise Iraq’s neighbours.” – Guardian Unlimited Â