What Went Wrong in Iraq

Larry Diamond

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004

Summary:  Although the early U.S. blunders in the occupation of Iraq are well known, their consequences are just now becoming clear. The Bush administration was never willing to commit the resources necessary to secure the country and did not make the most of the resources it had. U.S. officials did get a number of things right, but they never understood-or even listened to-the country they were seeking to rebuild. As a result, the democratic future of Iraq now hangs in the balance.

Larry Diamond is Co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. From January to April 2004, he served as a Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

BUILDING A GOVERNMENT

The Bush administration does deserve credit for adjusting its posture dramatically after the rapid implosion of its plan for a political transition in Iraq. After abandoning Bremer's original approach-which had been to transfer sovereignty to Iraq only after a permanent constitution was written and a new government was democratically elected-Washington issued an ambitious new timetable on November 15 that called for the adoption of an interim constitution (the "Transitional Administrative Law") by February 28, 2004; the indirect election (through a tiered system of caucuses) of a transitional parliament in the spring; and the election by that parliament of a government that would receive sovereignty on June 30. By mid-March 2005, a constituent assembly would be directly elected to write a permanent constitution, which would be submitted to a referendum by August, followed by direct elections for a new government by the end of the year.

This plan was an important improvement over the original, in that it recognized the need to accelerate the transfer of power and to provide a specific date by which it would occur. Much has been made of the choice of June 30, with critics of the Bush administration insisting it was driven by the American electoral calendar. But this criticism never made sense. In Iraq, it was always clear that Washington was being driven by an even more palpable imperative: the need to give Iraqis back their dignity and to empower them to determine their own course.

But June 30 was viewed skeptically by the Iraqi public, much of which was deeply suspicious of everything the United States said and did. And the plan had a more serious problem. From the very start, Ayatollah Sistani denounced it because the transitional parliament it envisaged would not be directly elected. Most Arab Iraqis (Sunni and Shiite) were unhappy with this element and feared that the caucus system proposed for elections would give far too much initial power to groups (such as the GC and the various local and provincial councils) that the CPA had appointed. To be fair, the problem was a complicated one. When it crafted the plan, the CPA had tried to vet it informally with Sistani through an intermediary. But as often happens when one works through intermediaries, the signals became crossed, and the CPA thought that Sistani had consented-perhaps because the ayatollah (a careful scholar) had not been able to study the plan in writing and so did not grasp the features that would later cause him to denounce it.

In the face of Sistani's criticism, the CPA was initially inclined to move forward anyway, on the theory that one man should not be allowed to veto a process. The GC supported the plan (after all, it would have had a significant role in selecting the caucus participants), as did other Iraqi groups working with the CPA. But a political confrontation over the plan started building in Iraq, and it became clear that the United States could not referee a dispute involving itself. Then, in December, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser (who had recently been given overall authority to coordinate policy on Iraq), and her top NSC deputy on Iraq, Robert Blackwill, were advised that it might be possible to persuade the UN to re-engage in Iraq in some kind of mediating or facilitating role. Even better, they heard that Lakhdar Brahimi, an Algerian diplomat who was then completing a successful UN constitution-building mission in Afghanistan, might be recruited to lead this effort. Rice and Blackwill greeted this prospect with genuine enthusiasm and initiated negotiations with the UN. In January, the parties agreed that the UN would return to Iraq in early February, initially in the form of a small mission led by Brahimi.

Although Bremer had initially wanted the UN to play only a limited role, he gradually accepted a broader mandate for Brahimi's mission and ordered the CPA to give the UN its full cooperation. This enabled Brahimi and his advisers (some of whom had gotten to know the new Iraqi political landscape well while working under de Mello) to negotiate a breakthrough compromise by the end of their visit on February 13. Brahimi persuaded Sistani, through patient and methodical discussions, that "reasonably credible elections" simply could not be organized by June 30, and that it would take at least eight months to achieve them once preparations began. This led Sistani to accept the famous compromise, which was affirmed by Security Council Resolution 1546 on June 8. Elections for a transitional parliament (as well as for prime minister and a cabinet) were postponed until December of this year at the earliest or January 31, 2005, at the latest. Meanwhile, the ponderous caucus system for choosing a government was scrapped. And an unelected Iraqi Interim Government with limited powers, created in consultation with the UN mission, was to be given power on June 30 (in fact, the date was June 28).

The selection of the new government by Brahimi, in consultation with the CPA, the GC, and a wide range of other Iraqi constituencies, did not proceed so smoothly. Ambassador Blackwill favored a straightforward handover of transitional power to the GC (with perhaps another 25 members added to make it more inclusive), despite its lack of popularity. Brahimi, who better understood the low esteem in which Iraqis held the GC, favored a truly new government with an outsider as prime minister. The members of the GC wanted to elevate themselves to positions of power and jockeyed intensively for the top jobs. In the end, each side got part of what it wanted. The Bush administration got its choice for prime minister, the most powerful position: Ayad Allawi. And Brahimi largely got the cabinet he wanted, composed of a number of very competent and respected Iraqi ministers, including some existing officials widely considered to have been honest and effective. Significantly, 6 of the 31 cabinet ministers were women. Powerful forces on the GC were not pleased, however. Having demanded the post of prime minister or president in what they viewed as a binational Arab-Kurdish state, the two Kurdish parties had to settle for the posts of deputy premier and deputy president. Dawa and sciri, which had also coveted the top slots, were given the other deputy presidency and the finance ministry, respectively. And two individuals lost out completely: Adnan Pachachi, perhaps the most liberal member of the GC and the one most responsible for the democratic features of the interim constitution; and Ahmed Chalabi, who, in seeking to satisfy many different constituencies and to finesse his once close relationship with the United States, may have finally outwitted even his own brilliant self.

CONSTITUTIONAL CONUNDRUMS