Improving security, establishing a stable government and reviving the Iraqi economy are the three key steps to resolving the crisis in Iraq.
The facts speak for themselves. More than 260 coalition troops have died in Iraq since May 1. Suicide and roadside bombings continue and international organisations have been pulling out. All the experts agreed that the Americans had got it wrong. How to put it right was where they differed.
For Danielle Pletka, of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, improved security was a matter of being tougher. The United States should ”stop acting as a weak power, because that is what is giving encouragement to the terrorists”, she urged.
”We could stop driving around in Humvees without actually arresting anybody. We could arrest a lot of people, including all of the Ba’athists, the Mukhabarat [secret police] and senior military who are floating around freely in Iraq.”
Closing Iraq’s borders effectively, to prevent infiltration from neighbouring countries, she added, was half the battle.
Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington was relatively sanguine and suggested the difficulties might be short term.
”This is going to be ugly for a while, but it’s not that bad,” he said. ”There are tactical adjustments to the way we use helicopters, for example. But the organisations fighting us have pretty much exhausted their creative talents … I still think it’s going passably well.”
While these sentiments may strike a chord with the Bush administration, many on the panel were eager for the US to pull out as soon as possible — though there was a range of views on how and when that should happen.
US troops in Iraq provided a potent target, said Toby Dodge of Warwick University. ”There has to be the introduction of troops who will not be shot — and that means the United Nations.”
Ba’athist remnants would continue to shoot at UN forces, but the Islamist/ Fallujah element might be persuaded not to. The resistance is fighting in the name of liberation ”and if you had Pakistani, Indian or Sri Lankan troops, that would cut out the occupation argument”.
French expert Guillaume Parmentier disagreed. ”It is the responsibility of the occupying powers to ensure law and order; it is not the duty of the UN.”
Dr Bernhard May of the German Council for Foreign Relations believed US and British forces would now have to stay the course. ”If they get out too soon, the situation will get worse. In the mid-term the solution would be to replace some of their forces with other forces. The problem is: from where? You can’t replace American troops with soldiers from Bangladesh, Egypt and Malaysia. They are not well equipped or properly trained.”
Reducing Americans on the streets and replacing them with Iraqis would be one option, according to Gary Samore of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. ”The plan is for the Americans to withdraw into fortified bases and run specific, targeted, raids from them — just as they have done in Afghanistan,” he said.
Saïd Aburish, who wrote a biography of Saddam Hussein, thought ”some kind of neighbourhood militia” would help. ”This [the neighbourhood] is where the guys with the RPGs are coming from and it is one way to neutralise them.”
Dr Kamil Mahdi of Exeter University distinguished between the security problems faced by Iraqi citizens and the attacks on occupation forces. ”On the second, there’s one way, and one way only, of solving it — the US should announce immediately the date for a firm and complete withdrawal.”
The Arab League’s Ali Muhsen Hamid focused on the US decision to disband Iraq’s army and pointed to its restoration as a possible solution. ”The security problem is going to be solved mostly by the Iraqis themselves. There are people who are afraid of reactivating the old system, but in the Arab world every new regime depends on the old people and gradually reduces its dependence on them.”
Security in Iraq could also be helped by progress on the political front, according to Laith Kubba, one of the founders of the Iraqi National Congress. ”There can be no real security in Iraq without an inclusive government.”
So far, he said, the political process had not engaged the eight main Sunni tribes, who represent two to three million people.
Plans are afoot for a new Constitution and elections. In the meantime, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority has appointed a temporary governing council of Iraqis, though it is widely regarded as impotent and unrepresentative.
The current plan was ”pretty good”, said O’Hanlon, though he would like to see the Iraqis given more control in order to damp down nationalist rallying cries.
Re-establishing Iraqi sovereignty was a priority, in Mahdi’s view. ”The whole situation so far is one of US officers — both political and military — interfering directly in all political decisions in Iraq. That will simply ensure that any political process is compromised and rejected. There has to be immediately a broad Iraqi conference, under the auspices of the UN, the Arab League and the Islamic Conference Organisation, while the US steps aside from domestic politics in Iraq.”
Dodge also favoured a more international approach. ”It is painfully apparent that the Americans do not have the expertise to rebuild a state and/or understand Iraqi society. If this war is to leave a stable, peaceful and, hopefully, democratic Iraq, then the UN, and behind it a true international coalition, has to take up the onerous task.”
But Pletka was more optimistic. ”Things are going, in many ways, better than expected,” she said. ”Surprisingly enough, the Iraqis are working extremely well together. They have great commonality of purpose … Some of the biggest problems really come from us, not them.”
Several experts pointed out that the American political plan — to work out a new Iraqi Constitution and then to hold elections — was taking too long.
One way to shorten the timescale, Hamid suggested, would be to hold elections under a temporary Constitution that would not need a referendum.
There were also different views on federal government in Iraq.
”The federal system is a Kurdish demand,” Hamid said. ”People are asking whether this would involve two regions — Kurdish and Arab — or three. Three federal regions would be harmful, increasing the divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims.”
The important thing, Pletka said, was to avoid federalism based on tribal lines.
Mahdi said the big question was whether federalism would be a step towards national unity or dissolution of the state. A decision should not be rushed.
The removal of Saddam, many noted, had left Iraq without a figurehead.
”What needs to emerge,” Aburish argued, ”is a person, a human being, someone with a name. You put the bicycle pump in and inflate him and the name will become bigger immediately.”
The Iraqi economy is on its knees and the US is planning to pour billions of dollars into reconstruction, but Iraqis are suspicious of US intentions, especially regarding oil.
The experts were unanimous that the first step towards economic revival was improved security but several also highlighted an urgent need to restore infrastructure, without which resentment could only grow.
”People in Iraq now feel that they are worse off than they were under Saddam, so it’s really crucial,” Parmentier said.
Tackling unemployment would contribute to security, May suggested. ”Iraqis need to be given work urgently. Some people are now killing US soldiers not because of ideology but simply to survive. They are paid $1 000 for each American they shoot. It has become a way to make a living.”
Some experts thought much more care was needed in US economic efforts, so as not to arouse Iraqi hostility.
According to Kubba, Iraqi businessmen were complaining that the US had placed them in an unfair situation. ”They said: ‘We lack cash and we have all these Western companies taking contracts and taking all our staff that we trained and struggled to keep all these years.’ I don’t believe in protectionism but you have to protect these people at this delicate stage.”
Mahdi put it even more strongly, arguing that the US was actually destroying Iraq’s indigenous economy.
”So-called reconstruction funds are opening up mass economic destruction in Iraq and will bring benefits to a very narrow group of Iraqis,” he said. ”Businesses cannot operate. Virtually any industry or productive activity is subject to random attacks, and to mafia-style protection rackets.”
Foreign businesses, though, were better placed to survive because they came in with their own security firms and arrangements with the occupation authorities he added. ”These are, in effect, stepping in where local business capacity is being destroyed.”
Meanwhile, Iraqi businessmen ”are being shot, kidnapped and threatened and being forced to hand over money. This effectively hands business over to the big boys on the block who are protected by the occupation. In this way, the occupation acts as the biggest protection racket”.
Hamid linked economic recovery to political stability as well as improved security.
”An independent Iraqi government should also have an independent economic policy serving the interests of the Iraqi people, not the occupying power,” he said. ”Oil is the crux of the matter. But at present nobody knows where the oil money is going.”
Interviews by Brian Whitaker, Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor, Luke Harding in Berlin and Amelia Gentleman in Paris