Iraq's sovereignty restored, up to a point
Jun 30th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
The American-led coalition has handed power to Iyad Allawi’s interim government two days ahead of schedule. Mr Allawi now faces an enormous struggle to establish his credibility among frustrated Iraqis and, above all, improve security
THE handing over of an envelope followed by a handshake. With a minimum of ceremony, on Monday June 28th, self-rule was restored to Iraqis (on paper, at least)—two days ahead of schedule. After handing the formal sovereignty document to an Iraqi judge, America’s proconsul, Paul Bremer, headed for Baghdad airport and flew out of the country. But the story of the American-led war in Iraq, which began with the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in March last year, is far from over. Around 150,000 foreign troops, mainly American, will stay on to fight the continuing insurgency across Iraq. The country’s interim government, led by Iyad Allawi, the prime minister, will continue to depend on foreign military muscle and financial aid, while struggling to convince ordinary Iraqis that it is no stooge of the Americans.
The surprise move to carry out the handover early and only announce it afterwards seems to have been a good idea. The long-announced scheduled date of June 30th had represented too obvious and tempting a target for the various insurgents and militant groups that are fighting the American-led occupation and/or seeking to carve themselves a slice of power in post-Saddam Iraq. Any spectacular attacks that had been planned to coincide with the handover may not now have the same impact.
Mr Allawi's hopes of convincing Iraqis that he is now in charge and that things will start to get better should be boosted by the formal handing over of Saddam, on Wednesday, to Iraqi legal custody—though he will continue to be guarded by American troops. The former dictator and eleven of his former henchmen made a brief appearance before an Iraqi judge, to be informed of the transfer of custody. On Thursday he is due to appear again, to face charges of crimes against humanity. The new government is expected to restore the death penalty, which had been suspended during the American-led occupation.
Nevertheless, the violence seems set to continue at a high level. On Monday morning, as the handover was taking place, a roadside bomb killed a British soldier in the southern port of Basra. Later, a militant group was reported to have killed an American soldier it had been holding hostage. On Tuesday, three American marines and a British security consultant were killed in separate attacks.
Mr Bremer had originally intended to remain in charge of Iraq until after an assembly had been elected to write a new constitution and then further elections had been held to choose a government under the new constitution—an endpoint which is not due to be reached until late 2005. However, under pressure from Iraqi politicians, Mr Bremer agreed last November to bring forward the transfer to self-rule to this month. Since then a United Nations Security Council resolution has blessed the handover arrangements and authorised the continuing presence of foreign troops until 2006, unless Mr Allawi’s government asks them to leave.
Mr Allawi is a secular-minded member of Iraq’s Shia Muslim majority, who quit Saddam’s Baath party in the 1970s and, with the backing of American and British intelligence, formed the Iraqi National Accord, which opposed Saddam from exile. Having spent so long outside the country, he was little known in Iraq until recently. Some Iraqis are bound to distrust him because of his links to America and Britain, while others may worry about his former links to the old Baathist regime—especially given his decision to reintegrate some Baathists into the re-formed Iraqi security forces.
The prime minister, and the Iraqi president, Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Muslim tribal leader, will have to convince one set of doubters that they are not just the puppets of a continuing American occupation in all but name; while convincing other doubters that they are not just a staging post to a comeback of the repressive Baathist regime. They will have the backing of the American-led forces—though they will not have operational command over the foreign troops. They will also have Iraq’s oil revenues. There are also signs that Iraqis are turning against the insurgents, angry at seeing so many of their compatriots being slaughtered in their attacks. This may give Mr Allawi the popular backing to launch the severe crackdown on the insurgents that he is now promising.
Though Iraqis may now give Mr Allawi and his ministers a chance to prove themselves, any such “honeymoon” is likely to be short-lived and fraught with dangers. Though Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical young Shia cleric, has called off a revolt by his militia after suffering heavy casualties, the new government faces serious threats from a number of other private armies, linked to political and religious factions. Paramilitaries from another Shia group, linked to the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, have been a visible presence in parts of Baghdad in recent days. Sunni militants control the towns of Fallujah and Baquba, after American forces gave up trying to crush them. In the north, Kurdish leaders have refused to disband their peshmerga fighting forces, forcing Mr Allawi to backtrack on his demand that all militias be incorporated into the re-formed Iraqi security forces or return to civilian life. Somehow, Mr Allawi will have to co-opt Iraq’s various, mutually hostile armed factions to pull together instead of pulling the country apart.
Foreign insurgents will continue to do their best to bring the new government down, especially the Tawhid and Jihad group, led by a Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has claimed responsibility for a series of recent suicide bombings and shootings, and the beheadings of an American and a South Korean hostage (though on Tuesday it released three Turkish hostages it had threatened to kill). The coalition forces have recently taken casualties at a much lower rate than at the peak of the insurgency in April. If Mr Zarqawi could now be captured or killed, it might go some way to convincing Iraqis that the uprising is finally being brought under control.
Few troops, little power
Mr Allawi will have to rely heavily on foreign troops to crush the remaining insurgents. For the time being he will have a single armed division of 8,000 Iraqi soldiers plus a National Guard of 40,000 ill-trained local men. He will have no heavy weapons, and just 16 helicopters for transport and reconnaissance, against an opposition heavily armed with mortars and rockets. The prime minister has appealed to Arab and Muslim states to supply weapons in an attempt to circumvent American curbs on rearmament, and has proposed revamping the old regime’s weapons (including a mothballed squadron of MIG fighter jets). But he will have to rely heavily on America to finance the rebuilding of the armed forces. In the 2004 budget, all but $300m of the $1.5 billion for military spending is provided by the United States.
On Tuesday, oil prices fell to their lowest level for two months, amid hopes that the handover would mean less sabotaging of Iraqi oil infrastructure. But improving security will be vital both for restoring oil output and improving Iraq’s electricity generation. Iraqis had been promised they would have 6,000MW of electricity by the start of the summer. Instead, thanks to attacks on General Electric and its Russian partners, they have just over 4,000MW. Attacks on pipelines in the northern and southern oilfields have reduced exports sharply (costing Iraq $1 billion, Mr Allawi says) and have cut supplies to power stations. The lack of security and of energy mean that around 2m of Iraq’s workforce of 7m remain jobless—providing a deep pool of disaffected potential recruits for the insurgents. Much of the lavish aid that America and other donors have promised for the rebuilding of Iraq’s economy has yet to arrive.
Simply surviving this dire situation will be quite a challenge for Mr Allawi and his ministers. But they have to do more than survive: they must somehow strong-arm and cajole Iraq’s squabbling factions to come together and agree some sort of minimal political compact to make the country governable; they must work with the American-led occupying forces to quell the violence while pleading with them to hold back from any provocative actions that might rekindle support for the insurgents. Above all they must convince frightened Iraqis, who are waiting to see which way to jump, that the new, sovereign Iraqi government is here to stay—that Iraq will not fall to pieces, nor will Saddam’s henchmen make a comeback, nor will the much-resented presence of foreign soldiers last forever.
