An independent panel headed by two former United States national security advisers on Wednesday said chaos in postwar Iraq was due in part to inadequate postwar planning.
Planning for reconstruction should match the serious planning that goes into making war, said the panel headed by Samuel Berger and Brent Scowcroft, national security advisers to former presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush, respectively.
”A dramatic military victory has been overshadowed by chaos and bloodshed in the streets of Baghdad, difficulty in establishing security or providing essential services, and a deadly insurgency,” said the private report sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.
”The costs, human, military and economic, are high and continue to mount,” the report said.
Two years after after a stunning three-week march on Baghdad, US and Iraqi military forces have been unable to secure and rebuild the country, and reconstruction has fallen victim to a lack of security, the report said.
The critical miscalculation of Iraq war-planning was the conclusion that reconstruction would not require more troops than the invasion itself, the report said.
Not only are more troops needed but they also should be trained for post-war duty, the task force said.
Inevitably, the panel said, the United States will be drawn into complex situations abroad that affect US security. It recommended that President George Bush make reconstruction a top priority.
This includes preparing the US military to take on post-war missions, giving the National Security Council the lead in planning and putting the State Department in the lead on the civilian side of nation-building.
Failure to take reconstruction planning as seriously into account as planning for the war itself ”has had serious consequences for the United States” and not just in Iraq, the report said.
In Iraq, the task force said, postwar requirements did not get enough attention, and there were misjudgements, as well. This, the report said, ”left the United States ill-equipped to address public security, governance and economic demands” after the war.
And this, in turn, the task force said, undermined US foreign policy and gave an early push to the insurgency in Iraq.
In Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, the report said, the post-war period has been marked by inefficient operations and billions of dollars of wasted resources. ”The United States can no longer afford not to learn from it’s experience,” the report said.
Among the recommendations is setting up a $1-billion reconstruction trust fund within the G8 grouping of the world’s leading industrialised democracies and managed by G8 countries, the World Bank and the United Nations. – Sapa