Lessons from Iraq: Invasion and Occupation

Maj M W Shervington, British Army

On 21 November 2001, just 72 days after the most calamitous event in American history, President Bush asked his Secretary of State for Defence “what kind of plan do you have for Iraq? How do you feel about a war plan for Iraq?”P^1P In asking the question, the President initiated a course of events that would, within 16 months, lead to a US-led Coalition invading and subsequently occupying Iraq. He would begin the justification for this war during his first State of the Union address given to Congress on 29 January 2002.

Bush’s speech, the first that he had given to Congress since 9/11 and the first of his Presidency, outlined his Administration’s strategy for dealing pre-emptively with the threat from international terrorism. In corralling those threats, the President spoke of an ‘Axis of Evil’ in which North Korea, Iran and Iraq formed a triumvirate of rogue states that sponsored terrorism and threatened world peace. Bush stated that “…by seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.  They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States.”P^2P Over the coming months, the US continued to narrow its focus on Iraq and developed a twin-tracked policy of coercive diplomacy and military deployment that would “deal with Saddam Hussein once and for all, peacefully if possible; by war if necessary.”P^3P

The diplomatic approach was tackled principally by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the US Department of State. Both Prime Minister Blair and President Bush pursued it reasonably aggressively. This culminated in the unanimous passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 on 8 November 2002.  The Resolution accused Iraq of being “in material breach of its obligations” and that it would “face serious consequences” if it failed to agree access to UN and IAEA weapons inspectors.P^4P When Iraq submitted a 12,000-page “mishmash of a document 73 [which was] effectively an insult to the Security Council and its resolutions,”, the transfer of weight from a diplomatic to a military solution was complete. “For Bush, military invasion was now inevitable and the UN route would only be useful insofar as it nailed Saddam’s perfidy before the world community.”P^5P

CENTCOM had planned a four-phase operation to remove Saddam’s regime and find and destroy his WMD. Phase I (Preparation) would conclude with the establishment of an ‘air-bridge’ that would transport forces into the region to secure regional and international support for the operation. Phase II (Shape the Battlespace) would involve air operations that would shape the conduct of ground operations. That would lead into Phase III (Decisive Operations) that would see “regime forces defeated or capitulated” and “regime leaders dead, apprehended or marginalised.” Phase IV (Post-Hostility Operations) would be the longest phase and arguably the greatest challenge.P^6P

While America’s position was hardening, Great Britain’s approach to Iraq had remained equally apportioned between diplomacy and military action; the Prime Minister remained ‘committed to go with the Americans if there was a conflict [but] he was not committed to conflict.”P^7P The deterioration in diplomacy over the summer had allowed British military planners to join their American counterparts in June 2002 on a strictly “no commitments” basis.P^8P By the autumn the US “wanted the Brits to share the political and military risk”P^9P of an occupation. The evolving and occasionally hesitant nature of Britain’s commitment to a US-led military operation raised a number of concerns. How much did the US Administration want or need British military capability? When would the British efforts at a diplomatic solution be abandoned? One senior British officer in Washington DC summed up the frustrations,

 “How late could we leave the decision [to commit]? Although we were coordinating quite well we didn’t have the integrated planning staff officers in place. There was never a discussion about where we have got to or what are the options? Britain never got its act together. We weren’t welcome and we were not prepared to be in there nor were we able to really insist that we should be and make a song and dance about it because diplomatically we were still pursuing a peaceful solution.”P^10P

Washington Politics and Post-Conflict Iraq

From 9/11 the Pentagon rather than the State Department had emerged as the leading foreign policy advisor to the President. The military-induced collapse of the Taliban had ushered in a period in which the US military was considered capable of collapsing any regime. That position did not change despite the contextual framework shifting to Iraq. However the bipartisan domestic and international support afforded to the Pentagon and the President during the Afghanistan campaign was not replicated in the run up to conflict in Iraq. Decision-making over Iraq now lifted the seal on the ‘internecine and deeply dysfunctional’ politics that existed inside Washington DC’s Beltway.

The struggle for political supremacy, and for the mind of the President, was fought principally by supporters of the US Department of State on one side of the river and the Department of Defence on the other. Vice President Cheney was firmly in the Pentagon’s camp. He used his position to protect Rumsfeld as one senior British civil servant explained,

“The VP had stolen more power from the Oval Office than any living Vice President in living memory…and he used it to protect Rumsfeld’s area. He wanted to make sure that the neo-consP^11P had room to command and control the operation without interference from other parts of the US government.”P^12P

In threatening unilateral pre-emptive action against another sovereign nation based on strong suspicion but little fact, the debate also exposed Washington’s adoption of a generally indifferent opinion concerning political and military advice offered by its international allies, other foreign governments, and the United Nations.P^13P Simply put, international allies would not jeopardise the neo-conservatives agenda for Iraq.P^14P Military action alone would defeat Saddam and thereafter herald a new era of democracy in the Middle East. The problem was that, compared to Phase III, very little thought was given to that new era.

The US and the remainder of the Coalition, “seduced by the idea of quick victory and decapitation [of Saddam’s regime],”P^15P did not plan for a post-conflict Iraq to the same magnitude or with the same resolve that it had committed to winning Phase III. As the British military staff in Washington remarked, “Lots of people were thinking Phase IV and there was planning for worst-case but it focused mainly on the humanitarian side and major infrastructure catastrophe.”P^16P The Pentagon ultimately chose to ignore the US State Department’s ‘Future of Iraq’ project published in late 2002. 

The ‘Future of Iraq’ paper brought together 17 working groups with a remit ‘to systematically cover what would be needed to rebuild the political and economic infrastructure of the country.P^’17P Ultimately a source of ideas emanating from experts drawn from a number of fields, including a large Iraqi expatriate communityP^18P, the project numbered 13 volumes, much of it in Arabic, at a cost of $5 million. It made a number of recommendations of which three were critical. The immediate requirement and “key to coalition and community relations” concerned the urgency to provide electricity and water to the population as soon as military hostilities had ended.”P^19P Secondly, the working groups emphasised that Iraq, once the regime had been removed, was likely to sit in a dangerous power vacuum during which criminals would have “the opportunity to engage in acts of killing, plunder and looting.”P^20P Thirdly, central to Iraq’s future would be an apolitical and re-structured military that would be built after a comprehensive Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme.

Stapled to the project’s recommendations were a series of CIA assessments that urged caution in removing the regime. One report stated that “rivalries in Iraq were so deep, and the political culture so shallow, that a similarly quick transfer of sovereignty would only invite chaos.”P^21P Despite these highly qualified assessments, it was the collective voice of the neo-conservatives that dominated the networks, talk-shows and political discussion in Washington. Ironically, given the Administration’s disinclination to listen either to domestic or foreign advice, it was the influence of a group of Iraqi exiles that would set the course for American foreign and military policy in Iraq.

The ‘London Seven’, a group of Iraq exiles led by Ahmed Chalibi promised a swift reemergence of Iraqi government institutions and security forces. It was an enticing message and one that the neo-conservatives firmly trumpeted. Coalition forces would be welcomed as liberators in similar fashion as Allied soldiers had been at the end of the Second World War. Asked on NBC’s Meet the Press “…if your analysis is not correct and we’re not treated as liberators but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, bloody battle with significant American casualties?” Dick Cheney replied,

“Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. Various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq…The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.”P^22P

In what has now become a famous parable, Rumsfeld’s personal and very precise involvement in building the TPFDD to match Cheney’s outlook ran at odds with a number of senior US General Officers. Foremost among those was General Shinseki, the US Army’s Chief of Staff. In November 2002, when asked about the size of force required for Iraq, General Shinseki told Congress that “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably…required; we’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems.”P^23P The Administration subsequently ridiculed him. Paul Wolfowitz told a House Budget Committee that the “higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand US troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark.”P^24P

The Defence Secretary, who had never really respected his Army Chief of StaffP^25P, now believed that he had ample reason to get personally involved in crafting the invasion force. By interfering in the TPFDD, Rumsfeld scaled back the size of the invasion force to its leanest and lightest level similar in scope to the Afghanistan and RMA-centric model. In General Franks, CENTCOM commander, he had a loyal servant who believed that “the days of half-million-strong mobilisations were over.”P^26P Throughout 2002, American force levels were reduced from 500,000 down to 160,000 and beyond to meet the requirement of a rapid deployment followed by a swift victory against a dilapidated Iraqi Army. General Franks articulated the American approach to war, “this is not 1990. The Iraqi military today is not the one we faced in 1991.  And our own forces are much different. We see that in Afghanistan.”P^27P It was with this confidence that Secretary Rumsfeld persuaded President Bush to sign his National Security Presidential Directive 24 on 20 February 2003, approximately one month before the Coalition would invade Iraq.

Reconstruction and Reintegration

Throughout the latter half of 2002 and early January 2003 the US Administration had begun talking about creating a non-deployable office for post-war planning. NSPD 24 formerly authorised the creation of an Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) under DOD leadership. Rumsfeld was now responsible for not post-conflict operations in IraqP^28P and American foreign and strategic policy “which it is not equipped to do.”P^29P On Rumsfeld’s advice, the President appointed retired US general Jay Garner to lead it. Garner immediately began the task of pulling together a widely experienced team from across the US government. British interests were represented by Major General Tim Cross and a small contingent of British military staff officers.P^30P

Garner immediately convened a Rock-Drill at Fort McNair to which virtually every US government department attended. General Tim Cross recalled that,

“It was a very good rock-drill [including] a variety of presentations ranging from people in the education plan, the de-nazification programme, the Treasury…the entire spectrum of where people had got to; it was during this drill that the idea emerged of deploying ORHA.”P^31P

One of those who had been invited by General Garner was Thomas Warrick, the State department official who had been the principal author of the ‘Future of Iraq’ project.  Garner had great confidence in Warrick and was delighted to have him on the ORHA team. Despite this, Rumsfeld summoned Garner to his office a day before ORHA was due to leave for Kuwait and ordered him to release Warrick and 15 other State Department officials.P^32P He was concerned that they would paint a pessimistic picture of what was required after Phase III thereby derailing the war plans he almost keenly wanted to implement. General Cross bluntly assesses the ‘neo-cons’ grip on the Administration, “…the neo-cons had their own paradigm of what Iraq was going to look like and if your plan didn’t conform then you were out.”P^33P But their plan for post-conflict Iraq was not clear. One American commander summed up the concerns within the Coalition,

“When you remove a regime by military power, you [usually] have some government institution to step in and take control. It’s either inside the country already or outside the country. At the national level, I think that there were some questionable assumptions over what would happen after Saddam Hussein was removed. There was somewhat a naïve sense that somehow the Iraqi population would be very happy that Saddam was not in power, and all of a sudden that they would come out and rejoice and control their own destiny, get back to work, but unfortunately we took some advice from some ex-patriots that probably had no relationship to modern Iraq.”P^34P

Although Franks’s believed that Phase IV “might prove more challenging than major combat operations,”P^35P the heavy weight on emphasis remained with the Decisive Operations of Phase III. One British senior officer noted the level of CENTCOM planning, “Military planning for the military phase had been going on in huge depth.  CENTCOM had been planning this for some time. They had been together since 9/11 and they wanted to execute the Iraq Plan before they broke up.”P^36P

Nonetheless, comprehensive discussions were held in Tampa, the Headquarters of CENTCOM, about the challenges that Phase IV posed. Massive funding would be needed to address the immediate needs of the Iraqi people and thousands of ex-soldiers would need jobs. Political leadership would need to be identified, although a de-Ba`athification programme would take place first. Above all, it was vital to adjust “American expectations that the process would be fast and painless.”P^37P But in reality the discussions failed to provide the answers that ORHA needed: “We asked about the health system, the electrical grid and the sewage treatment plants. The intelligence community could tell us very little. We just didn’t know how decrepit the system was and how easily it could be disrupted.”P^38P

Despite Franks’s concerns and the efforts of Jay Garner, General Cross and others, the reality of ORHA’s late entrance meant that it was not particularly welcome either in DC or in Tampa. The war planners at CENTCOM resented the late arrival of bustling civil servants and retired military officers who were not contributing anything to the main effort of Phase III. Planning meetings now became closed door sessions where the presence of ORHA representatives was rejected: “At one stage there was a onestar US engineer who was introduced to the planning team as being the man who was going to run a task force and the bottom line is that he was cut out [as] not a warfighter.

So he was told to go somewhere else.”P^39P

ORHA’s exclusion from the important discussions being held in Tampa was due to the blurred command relationship between ORHA, CENTCOM and CFLCC that would exist in Iraq. Garner was clear that he was working for General Franks but the NSPD had clearly stated that ORHA was to be the “senior entity” on the ground, usurping both CFLCC and CENTCOM and working directly to Rumsfeld. Was Garner going to be the Viceroy of Iraq? If so, when would the transfer of command between CFLCC and ORHA take place? What exactly was meant by regime change?  No-one could provide the answers. When ORHA deployed to Kuwait on 16 March 2003, three days before the war began, its presence resembled that of an unwanted guest.

In short, post-war assumptions rested entirely on the views of the ‘London Seven’, the majority of whom had not been in Iraq for nearly 25 years. From a purely military standpoint, there was widespread belief that ORHA was not organised adequately across all of the lines of operation to deal with the problems that Iraq would pose 80 regardless of what the exiles said.P^40P General Franks recognised the difficulties that ORHA faced:

“…it was understaffed…under-funded and their mission was not clear to everyone on the team. Jay Garner is going into this situation badly handicapped. Before the war had begun, Garner had spent weeks walking the corridors of power in Washington, hat in hand. He needed people and money. But he could only suggest a hypothetical situation: If the United States went to war, could your department provide…? No experienced bureaucrat would refuse a hypothetical request. They would meet it – with hypothetical resources, vague promises that cost their department nothing in terms of funds or personnel…Penny wise will surely be pound foolish. We will spend dollars today…or blood tomorrow.”P^41P

It was a thought that in time became a reality.

War-Fighting

On 17 March 2003, President Bush publicly issued the order that “Saddam Hussein and his two sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their failure to do will result in military action, commenced at a time of our choosing.”P^42P When the ultimatum expired, Bush informed the world that the Coalition had launched military operations to ‘disarm Iraq, to free its people and defend the world from grave danger.”P^43P For the next three weeks, all eyes were firmly fixed on Phase III. 

The plan that Lieutenant General McKiernan and the staff at CENTCOM and CFLCC had devised was militarily spectacular. Along a western boundary, American forces spearheaded by the 3rd Infantry Division raced alongside the west edge of Euphrates River towards the Karbala Gap and into Baghdad. Along a parallel eastern boundary between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force manoeuvred through the heart of Iraq and attacked Baghdad from the east.P^44P SOF operated throughout the country to destroy strategic threats and secure Iraq’s oil fields. Basrah was occupied by Britain’s 1st Armoured Division while Mosul, Iraq’s 81 3rd largest city, was occupied by the 10th Special Forces Group and 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Ground forces were accompanied by numerous fighter aircraft and strategic bombers as well as a fleet of naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.P^45P Unprecedented Information and Deception Operations were conducted. 

Despite the audacity of the plan to occupy Baghdad, Coalition forces did not manoeuvre through, or engage any Iraqi forces, in the towns and villages in the western corridor running from Baghdad to the Jordanian border. They were not considered a threat. Among them were the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi. It was an oversight not lost on some in the US chain of command, “…historically they were Ba`athist strongholds and probably the location of bad guys and we had bypassed those places.”P^46P Other than the occasional logistics truck driving to Baghdad from Jordan, the Dulaimi and Shammur tribal populations along the corridor never saw frontline US forces.  Instead they listened to the BBC World Service as the towns and cities south of Baghdad fell in quick succession. As Coalition forces pulled down Saddam’s statue in central Baghdad on 9 April 2003, the tribes of the western desert realised that not only was a distant war coming to a close but that Coalition forces had not, and perhaps would not, conquer their towns, cities and tribal areas. Their local councils remained in place and their buildings and infrastructure were still standing; tribal life could continue as it had done for centuries before. However when the hunt for Saddam and his associates spread from Baghdad into the western desert, that perception was shattered. On 11 April 2003, the US Air Force launched six JDAM missiles at a house 11 miles outside of Ramadi in the heart of al Anbar province. The effects were not only destructive to the house, but to American aspirations in what soon became euphemistically known as the ‘Sunni Triangle.’

Window of Necessity

The missile warheads were seeking Saddam’s half-brotherP^47P who was meant to be holding a meeting at the house but had left some time beforehand. The only people in the house were the tribal chief shaykh Malik Al-Kharbit and 21 members of his family. The Kharbit are a major force in the Dulaimi tribal federation, whose 82 stronghold includes the main urban centres in the Triangle - Fallujah, Ramadi, Qaim and Rutbah.P^48P After the attack, in which the shaykh and his family were all killed, the tribes along the western corridor were “no longer willing to help US forces.”P^49P Tribal solidarity, and antagonism towards American forces, now spread throughout the Dulaimi federation. On 17 April 2003, more tribal blood was spilt in Fallujah. The effects were as similarly destructive.

When the first units of the 82nd Airborne Division occupied Fallujah in mid-April 2003 their presence in local government buildings and schools led to a series of demonstrations. On 28 April, protests at a local school became violent when troops opened fire on the crowd, killing up to 17 civilians and wounding a further 75.P^50P The shootings enraged the city’s population. Nearly all of whom were members of the Dulaimi tribal federation and the incidents galvanised them into a coherent resistance movement. Some accused American forces of “stealing our oil and slaughtering our people” while others urged its forces to not only leave Fallujah but “leave our country completely. We are a Muslim country.”P^51P Other, more sinister pleas were issued, “Now, all preachers of Fallujah mosques [Fallujah is known as the City of Mosques due to it having over 80] and all youths…are organising martyr operations against all American occupiers.”P^52P

Despite the underlying threat that these incidents had for long-term American security in Iraq, the Coalition’s military gaze remained transfixed on Baghdad. The demolition of the statue was meant to not only symbolise the end of Saddam’s rule but also the end of Phase III. On 1 May 2003, a triumphant President Bush bestrode USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that “major combat operations have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed…our coalition is now engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”P^53P However, in place of the predicted Humanitarian and Infrastructure disaster was a rapidly escalating internal security crisis which prevented the transfer of command from taking place. It was into this environment which ORHA arrived and for which it was totally unprepared.

ORHA’s Role in Post-War Iraq

ORHA had spent a considerable amount of time and effort in Kuwait shoring up its capability to implement its plans for the humanitarian and infrastructural crisis that CENTCOM predicted. It had successfully encouraged most US government departments to commit an Advisory Team consisting of three to four specialists.  Additionally, it had surreptitiously flown in specialists from across the Coalition in an attempt to ‘internationalise’ the organisation, though this caused much consternation in Washington which was deeply suspicious of its intentions.P^54P There were a number of absentees, the most notable being any officials from the Pentagon forcing ORHA’s retired military officers to form their own Defence Advisory Team. 

While building up its force structure and cross-area capabilities, ORHA’s staff had been developing its contingency plans to cope with the range of scenarios that CENTCOM had predicted. As one staff officer recalled,

“The consensus was that there were going to be major issues – NBC, lack of water, starvation, [and] doomsday. [All of it was] clearly an exaggeration but it was just difficult to know how much. In trying to get a reality check there was no direction from anyone.”P^55P

Despite a lack of strategic direction, Garner’s concept would see ORHA initially help each Ministry to start operating again by giving small cash payments of between $20 and $25 and promising to help where it could. By August, Garner wanted an Interim Iraqi Authority stood up. The London Seven would then arrive and use the Iraqi military and police forces to establish power. At no stage would Garner assume ‘Viceroy’ status, relying instead on the London Seven set up an administration in which people who have been in Iraq for the last 25 years would have critical roles.  The new government would then be able to write a constitution before staging elections. In proposing such an ambitious plan “no-one told him any differently and certainly no-one in the UK told me how to stand up a government.”P^56P

When ORHA arrived in Baghdad on 21 April most of the infrastructure needed to run the country was still in place. Its headquarters comprised 270 staff officersP^57P, limited communications facilities, no offices to move into, no personal security officers and a security situation on the ground which nobody had either predicted or prepared them for. Its late arrival ensured that it was never able to wrest command and control from CFLCC because it was not equipped to deal with the security crisis. However, Garner insisted that ORHA push forward with its agenda. He chaired two meetings with Iraqi political representatives and the London Seven in Nasiriyah and in Baghdad. These were intended as “initial moves towards the establishment of a national conference, which could set up the interim Iraqi authority and make progress towards constitutional change and the election of a new government.”P^58P In addition, ORHA’s 18 Advisory Teams began the onerous task of getting hold of the Iraqi staff at each of the government’s ministries.

On reaching a particular ministerial building, the Advisory Teams often found members of its staff waiting outside and eager to work. Many had computer disks containing databases of names and addresses for all of the ministerial staff.  Subsequent meetings were arranged at ORHA’s makeshift headquarters in the heart of the former Ba`athist sector and now known as the Green Zone. In choosing the Iraq Convention Centre, ORHA had a central location but one which the majority of Iraqis citizens did not know how to get to the area as it had been cordoned off from the rest of the city since 1968. As Paul Hughes later recounted,

“I was talking to an employee of one particular Ministry outside of the Green Zone one night and told him to come and see me the next day to discuss how his Ministry could be stood up. When I told him where to come he had no idea where I was talking about. When I told him that it was next to the Al Rashid Hotel he became very nervous; he had never been to that part of [Ba`athist-controlled] Baghdad before. We paid in spades for that mistake.”P^59P

Despite the sense of optimism that these meetings generated, CFLCC only had enough troops to guard four of the Baghdad’s 21 ministries.

Security Vacuum

The security situation rapidly deteriorated after 9 April. Buoyed by the presence of tens of thousands of prisoners that Saddam had released before the war had started, widespread looting and destruction of the visible elements of Saddam’s regime now took place. Organised criminal groups and gangs of men armed with assault rifles swept through Baghdad’s commercial and government districts, ransacking buildings and pillaging the residences of the Regime’s officials.P^60P Thieves ‘jumpstarted’ tractors and bulldozers and drove them away. Mobs ransacked factories and warehouses, returning home in a parade of cars, trucks, and wheelbarrows piled with stolen goods.  Government ministries were stripped of all plumbing, wires and furniture before being burned to the ground.P^61P Every unguarded ministry was looted and burned to the ground.

The four ministries that remained standing included the Oil Ministry. To many Iraqis, the sight of American troops guarding its Oil Ministry while its Ministry of Culture and central museum smouldered nearby reasserted the Iraqi perception that the US was only interested in Iraq for its oil. As one bystander remarked, “it’s that they protected nothing else. The Oil Ministry is not off by itself. It’s surrounded by other ministries, all of which the Americans allowed to be looted. So what else do you want us to think except that you want our oil?”P^62P Anarchy threatened as one senior Coalition commander recalls,

“There we are, in a fairly chaotic situation in May timeframe where there are no institutions in operation, from fire departments, police departments, to national political leadership, to regional political and national political leadership. There are no ministries, no prisoners in prisons [because] they’ve all been released, no judicial system, no economic system, there’s nothing. And you have fairly small military footprint at that time for a country the size of California with a population of 26 million people and so you try and deal with it without having martial law authority and without having a government apparatus ready to take control.”P^63P

In order to protect its own forces, CFLCC ramped up its own security posture and issued the order for all Coalition vehicle convoys leaving the Green Zone to have a Military Police (MP) escort. The relative scarcity of MP trucks and the pressure on them to accompany military patrols that were attempting to stem the growing violence, meant that ORHA missions dropped down the priority queues. This was highlighted on one morning when every ORHA team assembled in the forecourt of the Convention Centre and waited for MP trucks to escort them to the ministerial meetings. When the escorts didn’t arrive, those meetings were cancelled. “One ORHA staffer arranged to meet 1,000 employees of the Ministry of Planning to give each an emergency $20 payment – a standard subsidy for government workers until a new salary scale can be devised. The military, which didn’t deem his mission a priority, cancelled the convoy at the last minute, leading to hours of arguments and finally an appeal to a general to secure the vehicles.”P^64P

ORHA never could pick up the pace again, a situation made worse by those ministerial staff being unaware of where ORHA’s HQ was. Stranded behind the Palace’s walls, pleading with Washington to give it more authority and with CFLCC to take it more seriously, ORHA disintegrated as rapidly as the security situation around them. Back in Washington, “…Administration officials watched the chaotic images on TV and blamed General Garner. White House officials muttered about ‘Occupation Light’ and decided that Garner, who was strolling around in shirt sleeves and genially chatting with the locals, was a little too chummy with the vanquished.”P^65P

Prepared to Fail

ORHA failed for a number of reasons. Despite the assertions of NSPD 24, Garner was never given the authority as the pro-consul in Iraq over the military commanders. His organisation was understaffed and under-resourced and drip fed a series of erroneous predictions upon which they hatched equally unrealistic plans. Though Garner’s political ambitious for an Iraqi constitution were perfectly reasonable, a mass of detail needed to have been worked out in Washington beforehand for them to work. All of these factors were not insurmountable if the security situation in Baghdad had been benign. ORHA’s plans were ultimately blown away by a dangerously contagious 87 security situation for which CFLCC had neither the resources nor the energy with which to deal. As one senior Coalition official criticised,

“At some point in the campaign [you have] to control the population and dominate terrain, and let me define what I mean by that. Control population – at some point for some transitional period of time you are the defacto authority. In Bosnia it almost was martial law. In Iraq the military is going to be the authority for this transition period. By dominating terrain you are going protect the sovereignty of that nation, control the borders, public buildings, oil [and] electricity that is going to require a presence on the ground which is going to be larger than perhaps the ground presence that you had for the kinetic part of the operation. The numbers needed to control a population is the dilemma.

The logic for military leaders with our experience would tell you that it was a no-brainer: it would take you more people after you break something to control it for a while so that you can turn it over to a stable and secure arrangement.”P^66P

The final nail in Garner’s coffin concerned his freedom to re-invigorate Iraq’s economy by handing out cash. But there wasn’t much available. The money was held back in DC and if it was used a complex auditing process was attached to it. Similarly the economic contracts that would have brought the large reconstruction corporations to Iraq were buried in a political quagmire in DC. If they could get to Iraq they had to have security. Therefore the failure of ORHA was as much as failure of the military plan that was meant to allow it to prosper but in reality never did. The end result was that the Coalition “went in with the minimum force to accomplish the military objectives, which was a straightforward task, never really in question. And then we immediately found ourselves shorthanded in the aftermath. We sat there and watched people dismantle and run off with the country.”P^67P

On 6 May 2003, President Bush appointed Jerry Bremer as his Presidential Envoy to Iraq and “senior leader of the Coalition.”P^68P On 8 May 2003 the USA and the UK informed the Security Council that they had created the Coalition Provincial Authority (CPA), to include ORHA, “to exercise powers of government temporarily and, as necessary, especially to provide security, to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid, and to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.”P^69P General Garner, although he was asked to remain in Baghdad, returned to Washington but was cast a “complete and utter failure by the Administration.”P^70P

Bremer and the Dismantling of Iraq

Ambassador Bremer flew into Baghdad’s Saddam International Airport on 12 April 2003 aboard a US Air Force C-17.P^71P  The initial impressions were encouraging.  Standing next to Jay Garner, Bremer told reporters that “We are not here as a colonial power. We are here to turn over to the Iraqi people…as quickly as possible.”P^72P Although Bremer was a State Department official, “he will report to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and will advise the President, through the Secretary, on policies designed to achieve American and Coalition goals for Iraq.”P^73P As General Cross recalls,

“Bremer flew into Baghdad with the style that Jay should have come in.  Inside the C17 was a containerised office. On the first day he told the military to move your headquarters and you will do what I am telling you to do. He became the CPA, it was embodied in him and it was accompanied by a letter from the President. Soon afterwards there were a lot more people.”P^74P

Within a week of arriving, Bremer enacted three orders that “fundamentally flawed [despite being] told by an awful lot of people that they were fundamentally flawed. It was the only time that I saw Jay Garner lose his temper.”P^75P

On 16 May Bremer announced the “disestablishment of the Ba`ath Party of Iraq.”P<sup>76P</sup> It was the first of an eventual total of 100 CPA orders. The Order set up an Iraqi De-Ba`athification Council (IDC) and charged it with the authority of investigating and “removing roughly the top six layers of bureaucracy.”P^77P The promptness in which Bremer announced the order strongly implies that the decision had been made by the Administration before Bremer departed for Iraq. In issuing it, the CPA hoped that a “representative government in Iraq is not threatened by Ba`athist elements returning to power and that those in positions of authority in the future are acceptable to the people of Iraq.”P<sup>78P</sup> Although the Order was necessary to purge Iraq of the senior political and military leadership of the country, the immediacy of its implementation created not only a groundswell of sympathy for those that had been purged, but left a gaping hole in the ability of a future Iraqi government to lead the country. The decision to de-Ba`athify Iraq was greeted broadly in America although there was immediate concern in Iraq over what would replace it. As for the military decision, Bremer later described it as “the single most popular thing I’ve done since I’ve been in Iraq.”P^79P

Bremer’s second decision, announced on 23 May 2003P^80P, dissolved the Iraqi security services, its army and Republican Guard, the defence and information ministries and all military courts without payment or access to pensions.P^81P Although it had disintegrated during the war, the Army’s formal dissolution was a staggering reversal of the publically proclaimed pre-war plan to employ the military as the leading institution to rebuild the country during Phase IV. 400,000 people suddenly lost their only source of income without any consideration for the effect. Overnight, the political and military landscape that had been in existence in Iraq for 30 years was changed. Humiliated, angry and armed, scores of former soldiers and officers decided at that moment to form a resistance movement. Flash demonstrations broke out across the country. US forces, many of whom were still in a ‘war-fighting’ mode, were deployed to break them up. Although they were successful on a number of occasions there were occasional but costly errors.P^82P On 18 June in Baghdad, two former soldiers were shot and killed and several were injured when US troops fired into their demonstration.P^83P

Given the hubristic perception within the Pentagon that both decisions would be welcomed the prospects for ordinary Iraqis were ominous. The point is not that these institutions should have been allowed to carry on ‘business as usual’; the blunder lay in the timing. CPA officials seem to have forgotten to ask themselves what it might mean to turn tens of thousands of military officers loose on the street without at first even the promise of monetary compensation.P^84P Combined with the final decision that Bremer enacted these decisions were fatal.

Within a week of arriving, and advertising Washington’s deep sense of unease with the ‘London Seven’ and the aspirations of Ahmed Chalibi’s in particular. Bremer cancelled the plans for a provisional government. On 13 July he appointed an interim Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) that would assist the CPA in drafting a constitution and planning future elections.P^85P It attracted immediate criticism. Whereas Garner’s conferences in Nasiriyah and Baghdad had given Iraqis real encouragement to shape their own future, the perception was that the exile-heavy 25 member IGCP^86P had a different and more threatening agenda. As General Cross recounts,

“[Garner] slowed down the whole political process. In other words all the meetings that Jay had had, all the work that Jay had put into practice, ‘stop it…now. And stop it now because we want to ensure that the right people emerge to run this government.P^87P

Furthermore, it struggled to find sunni Arabs to join the council thus eroding the meagre legitimacy that it already had.P^88P

The magnitude of Bremer’s three decisions would be played out almost immediately but they would have long-term consequences. First, they dismantled the structure of society that the majority of Iraqis had grown over the course of their lives and built nothing in its place. Secondly, the Coalition’s military onslaught had not only terrified millions of ordinary Iraqis but its subsequent inability to secure the country and provide for its people in accordance with all that Bush had promised on 19 March robbed it of legitimacy and trust. Thirdly, an already wary sunni population immediately became disenfranchised when Bremer re-negotiated the political programme and, seemingly, their role in a future Iraq. When the UN announced Resolution 1483 on 22 May, it confirmed to many Iraqis what they had long been suspecting; their liberators had now become their occupiers. Anyone who had studied Iraq’s history would realise that the Coalition had set an ominous precedent.

Six Months and Counting…

As with all previous counter-insurgency campaigns, the opening moves of the campaign are fundamentally important. The three months that sit either side of 19 March 2003 represent that critical period. In the three months before the campaign, the amount of effort that the US military spent on planning for Phase III completely overwhelmed the effort apportioned to Phase IV. In the three months after G Day, the decisions that the Coalition made, and the situation that was unravelling on the ground, ultimately sealed its fate. Perfecting counter-insurgency is now the clarion call within Iraq. Several moments over the last two years have exposed the fault lines that run across the Coalition campaign in Iraq – UN Resolution 1483 bestowing occupational powers to America and Britain; the killing of the UN Special Representative to Iraq on 19 August 2003; the capture of Saddam Husayn; the Abu Ghraib prison scandal; the Shi`a-led uprising in April and August 2004; the murder of four private security contractors and subsequent military assaults on Fallujah in April and November 2004; the deployment of the Black Watch battle group to North Babil; the countless kidnappings, executions, beheadings and suicide bombings; the training of Iraqi Security Forces and the entire Security Sector Governance (SSG) process; and the elections at the beginning of 2005 and the political stalemate that followed.

Each has its own series of consequences which have dogged the campaign. In analysing the broad lessons that have been identified from the campaign it is necessary to look at the nature of the insurgency that exists in Iraq today. By understanding this, one can put into context the scale of the mistakes that the Coalition has made in the last two years. Western political and military doctrine must now be re-cast.

Major Shervington, Para, has just completed the Higher Command and Staff Course at the Joint Services Command and Staff College.  He is slated for company command and deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

^P1P Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Simon & Schuester, 2004, p.13

^P2P President Bush’s State of the Union address, his first. Cited in James Fallows, Blind into Baghdad,The Atlantic Monthly, January 2004.

^P3P Michael Clarke, “The Diplomacy that Led to War in Iraq,” in The Conflict in Iraq, 2003, edited by Paul Cornish, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp.27-59

^P4P UN Resolution 1441 (2002), S/RES/1441 (2002), dated 8 November 2002

^P5P “The Diplomacy that Led to War in Iraq”, p.43

^P6P All information in this chapter from General Tommy Franks, American Soldier, Regan Books, 2004

^P7P Interview with senior British diplomat, June 2005

^P8P Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq, pp.12-13, cited in Michael Clarke, p.38

^P9P Interview with senior British Foreign Office official, June 2005

^P10P Interview with senior British civil servant, June 2005

^P11P This is a somewhat controversial term referring to the political goals and ideology of the “new conservatives” in the US. The ‘newness’ refers to the term’s origination as either describing converts new to American conservatism (sometimes coming from a liberal or big-government New Deal background) or to being part of a ‘new wave’ of conservative political thought and political organisation. Definition taken from TUhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism_(United_States)UT

^P12P Interview with senior British civil servant, UK, 9 June 2005

^P13P The caveat to this is that the US did listen to certain key individuals from the UN, Great Britain and Australia. Unfortunately these somewhat lone voices had sympathetic ears in DC but were unable to influence the overall direction in which the US was headed.

^P14P It was at this time that all non-Americans began to realise the effects that 9/11 had had on the American psyche. Simply put, the Americans were at war.

^P15P Interview with Defence Attaché, 19 April 2005

^P16P ibid

^P17P These ranged from a working group to consider ‘Democratic Principles and Procedures’ and a ‘Transitional Justice’ group to ‘Public Finance’ and ‘Oil and Energy’.

^P18P The majority of the exiles belonged to Ahmed Chalibi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) and several Kurdish groups and Assyrian and Turkomen organisations. It also included the Iraqi Constitutional Monarchy.

^P19P Future of Iraq Project, cited in Fallows.

^P20P Fallows. Further predictions were given by Rend Rahim Francke, an Iraqi exile serving in Washington, who told the Senate Foreign Relations Committer that “the system of public security will break down, because there will be no functioning police force, no civil service, and no justice system [immediately after the fighting]…there will be a vacuum of political authority and administrative authority. The infrastructure of vital sectors will have to be restored. An adequate police force must be trained and equipped as quickly as possible. And the economy will have to be jump-started from not only stagnation but devastation.”

^P21P Fallows. These views were shared with the author with senior representatives of the US Council of Foreign Relations, Washington, April 2005

^P22P E.J. Dionne, “Behind the Failure,” The Washington Post, 22 August 2003, p.A22, cited in Carlos L. Yordan, “Failing to Meet Expectations in Iraq: A Review of the Original US Post-War Strategy,” Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 8, No.1, March 2004, p.55

^P23P Senate Armed Services Committee report, 25 February 2003.

^P24P Paul Wolfowitz testifies to the House Budget Committee on 27 February 2003. He went on to say, “It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.” Rumsfeld announced the successor to General Shinseki 14 months ahead of time.

^P25P Rumsfeld thought that Shinseki was a army general of the old-school – ponderous, overly cautious and built from the same mould as General Colin Powell. He subsequently announced Shinseki’s successor 14 months ahead of time by calling out of retirement General Peter Schoomaker. The final snub came when the Secretary did not attend Shinseki’s Farewell Ceremony.

^P26P General Tommy Franks, American Soldier, Harper Collins, 2004, p.394

^P27P ibid, p.333

^P28P NSPD 24 has not been made available to the public. A news article stated that ORHA was tied to the Pentagon and that, while USAID would handle much of the humanitarian and reconstruction work, ORHA would be in charge of the funding. ORHA’s goals were to assist with Humanitarian Relief, defeating and exploiting terrorist networks, dismantle Iraq’s WMD, facilitate the protection and reconstruction of Iraq’s infrastructure and organise the transition to an Iraqi-led authority

^P29P Interview with Major General Cross, May 2005

^P30P The mechanics of the early days of ORHA and the appointments of Generals Garner and Cross reveal the chaos that US and UK political and military planners were involved with. General Garner was a respected retired General who had led the successful US mission to assist the Kurds (Op XXX) from Saddam’s purges after the 2nd Gulf War. Rumsfeld had met him at a conference on the military in space and was impressed enough to ask him to set up the office of post-war reconstruction. Within days he had called a number of retired former military colleagues to join him. They all did, leaving behind well-paid civilian jobs ‘at the drop of a hat.’ General Cross, who had originally been appointed as the 2-star commander of British forces in Turkey (for an expected assault into Iraq from the north) before returning to the UK and then two days later being asked to be the UK representative in ORHA. On accepting the appointment, General Cross similarly telephoned former colleagues to join him. A number of these officers had worked with General Garner in northern Iraq and a mutual professional and personal respect existed between both parties.

^P31P Interview with Major General Tim Cross, Netheravon, May 2005

^P32P The chronicle of events behind Warrick’s sacking runs like a true Washington conspiracy. On 23 Feb, a day before he was due to leave for Kuwait, Rumsfeld asked Garner to remove 16 of the 20 State officials “Jay, have you got a guy named Warrick on your team? “I said, ‘Yes, I do,’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got to ask you to remove him.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to remove him; he’s too valuable,’ But he said, ‘This came to me from such a high level that I can’t overturn it, and I’ve got to ask you to remove Mr. Warrick.’” Warrick was allegedly suspicious of the Iraqi exiles. Newsweek’s conclusion was that the man giving the instructions was Dick Cheney. John Barry and Evan Thomas, The Unbuilding of Iraq, Newsweek, 10 June 2003, Vol.142, Issue 14

^P33P Major General Cross, interview, May 2005

^P34P Interview with senior American general, April 2005, USA.

^P35P Franks, p.352

^P36P Cross, May 05.

^P37P Franks, p.424. It is interesting to note that Franks admits that CENTCOM’s plans included de-Ba`athification and de-mobilisation, decisions that were severely criticized when Ambassador Bremer made them in May 03.

^P38P Interview with Paul Hughes, senior ORHA official, May 2005

^P39P General Cross, interview May 05. This runs against what Franks says in his book: “Jay and his team spent countless hours with the CENTCOM staff and the key planners on the Joint Staff and in OSD, hammering out processes and procedures that would place US army civil affairs specialists in every province in Iraq.” It is easy to criticize CENTCOM but as General Cross highlights General Franks and his team had been on working since 9/11

^P40P The US military uses the acronym DIME to explain the lines of operation that are required in postconflict scenarios. Standing for Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economic, it is clear from my interviews that the senior military leadership did believed that only part of the DIME equation had been sychronised before the war started and that once it did start it was extremely difficult to pull together because the situation on the ground is so fluid.

^P41P Franks, pp.525-526. His emphasis.

^P42P www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases

^P43P ibid

^P44P Williamson Murray and Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr., The Iraq War, Harvard University Press, 2003, pp.59-70. Britain’s 1st Armoured Division was attached to 1 MEF and attacked Basrah.

^P45P ibid

^P46P Interview, April 2005

^P47P Tahir Jahir Habbush was, according to Newsweek, working for the CIA and was at the house trying to organise a meeting with a CIA station chief before the missiles were launched. He escaped. See “Unmasking the Insurgents,” Newsweek, February 2005, downloaded from www.msnbc.msn.com on 18 May 2005

^P48P Carl Conetta, “Vicious Circle: The Dynamics of Occupation and Resistance in Iraq,”Al Jazeerah, 17 May 2005 and “Unmasking the Insurgents,” Newsweek, February 2005

^P49P Baram, p.13

^P50P www.washingtonpost.com

^P51P Edmund Blair, “Anger Mounts After U.S. Troops Kill 13 Iraqi Protesters,” Reuters, 29 April 2003,downloaded from www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print/cgi?file=headlines03/0429-01.html on 6 July 2005

^P52P ibid

^P53P “Bush Speech Aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, 1 May 2003,” seen on 6 Jul 05 at www.home.earthlink.net/~platter/speeches/030501-bush-lincoln.html

^P54P Furthermore, each government department in DC had contributed 3-4 of its staff to ORHA. Thus there were representatives from the US Department of Agriculture, Commerce, the Treasury and so on. The Pentagon did not send anyone and so ORHA operated without a Defence Advisory Team.

^P55P Major General Tim Cross, interview, May 05

^P56P ibid

^P57P General Garner asked that General Cross be his Deputy to work alongside an Operational Deputy, an International Deputy and a Long-Term Reconstruction Deputy. General Cross filled the International Deputy role but nobody turned up to fill the other two vacant positions.

^P58P HC Deb, 28 April 2003, c.22 cited in UK House of Commons Research Paper 03/51, “Iraq: law of occupation,” 2 June 2003, written by Paul Bowers

^P59P Interview with Paul Hughes, Washington DC, 19 April 2005

^P60P Robert M. Perito, The Coalition’s Provincial Authority’s Experience with Public Security in Iraq, Lessons Identified, Special Report 137, United States Institute of Peace, April 2005. Downloaded from www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr137.html

^P61P ibid

^P62P Unidentified Iraqi interviewed in David Rieff’s “Blueprint for a Mess,” New York Magazine, 2 Nov 2003

^P63P Interview with senior Coalition commander, April 2005

^P64P Joshua Hammer, Colin Soloway, John Barry, Tamara Lipper, “Who’s in Charge Here?” Newsweek, Vol. 141, Issue 21, 26 May 2003

^P65P “The Unbuilding of Iraq,” Newsweek, Vol.142, Issue 14, 10 June 2003

^P66P Interview with senior Coalition commander

^P67P Thomas White, interviewed in Fallows

^P68P White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “President Names Envoy to Iraq,” May 6, 2003, available at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030506-5.html

^P69P Letter to the Security Council from USA and US, S/2003/538, 8 May 2003. There is widespread dispute over the exact origins of the CPA. “Available information about the authority found in materials produced by the Administration alternatively (1) denies that it was a federal agency; (2) states that it was a US government entity or instrumentality; (3) suggests that it was enacted under the UNSCR 1483; (4) refers to it, and ORHA, as “civilian groups…reporting to the Secretary of Defence”; asserts that it was created by General Franks. Without a clear, unambiguous statement that declares the CPA’s organisational status; clarifies what its relationship was to DOD and other federal agencies, and addresses the competing explanations for how it was created, various questions are left unanswered, including whether, and to what extent, CPA might be held accountable for its programmes, activities, decisions, and expenditures.” CRS Report for Congress, “The Coalition Provincial Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities,” 6 June 2005

^P70P Interview Major General Cross

^P71P Clare Short, the UK’s Cabinet Minister for DFID, resigned on the same day, citing that “…mistakes that were made in the period leading up to the conflict are being repeated in the post-conflict situation.”

^P72P “New U.S. Administrator Arrives in Baghdad to Stabilize Country,” PBS Online NewsHour, 12 May

2003. Seen at www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/bremer_05-12-03.html

^P73P White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “President Names Envoy to Iraq,” May 6, 2003, available at TUwww.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030506-5.htmlUT

^P74P Interview with General Cross, May 2005

^P75P ibid

^P76P Coalition Provincial Authority Order Number 1, De-Ba`athification of Iraqi Society, 16 May 2003; downloaded from www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations

^P77P J. Barry & E. Thomas, “The Unbuilding of Iraq,” Newsweek, 1 October 2003

^P78P CPA Order No.1 dated 16 May 2003

^P79P ibid

^P80P The decision was actually made some two weeks beforehand when Bremer was in DC.

^P81P The order included war widows and disabled veterans who were senior party members, defined as any officers at the rank of colonel or above.

^P82P In what many commanders viewed as an impressive start, the CPA reversed its decision and handed out cash payments to 370,000 conscripts and more than 250,000 officers. In conjunction it initiated a country-wide recruitment drive for Iraqi security forces in the form of Facility Protection Security Forces (FPSF) and a new Iraqi Police Force. In the face of growing violence, military commanders were ordered to hire and arm as many officers as they could find.82 Thousands of former Ba`athists rejoined.

^P83P ibid

^P84P Adeed Dawisha, “Iraq: Setbacks, Advances, Prospects,”, Journal of Democracy, Vol.15, No.1, January 2004, p.8

^P85P Celeste J. Ward, “The Coalition Provisional Authority’s Experience with Governance in Iraq,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 139, May 2005, downloaded from www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr139.html

^P86P The majority Shi`a received 13 of the 25 seats; Sunni Arabs – 5; Sunni Kurds – 5; one Turkmen and one Assyrian Christian representative.

^P87P Interview with Major General Cross, Netheravon, May 2005

^P88P The IGC’s role was set out in a 7-point plan. One of its key tasks was to develop a process for drafting an Iraqi constitution by December 2003. According to this plan, after the document was written, it would be ratified in a referendum, and then a sovereign Iraqi government would be elected. The whole process would take several years.