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S. HRG. 109–312

POLICY OPTIONS FOR IRAQ

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JULY 18, 19, AND 20, 2005

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska

MEL MARTINEZ, Florida

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

BARBARA BOXER, California

BILL NELSON, Florida

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois

KENNETH A. MYERS, Jr., Staff Director

ANTONY J. BLINKEN, Democratic Staff Director

(II)

CONTENTS

IMPROVING SECURITY IN IRAQ—JULY 18, 2005 Page

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware ..................................... 3

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 5

Cordesman, Dr. Anthony H., Arleigh A. Burke Fellow in Strategy, Center

for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC ................................ 27

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 30

Hagel, Hon. Chuck Hagel, U.S. Senator from Nebraska ...................................... 65

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana ............................................ 1

McCaffrey, GEN Barry R., USA (Ret.), president, BR McCaffrey Associates,

LLC, Arlington, VA .............................................................................................. 21

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 23

Pollack, Dr. Kenneth M., director of research and senior fellow, Saban Center

for Middle East Policy, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC .............. 7

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 10

ADVANCING IRAQI POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—JULY 19, 2005

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware ..................................... 105

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 105

Feldman, Dr. Noah, professor of law, New York University, New York, NY ..... 99

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 102

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana ............................................ 81

Marr, Dr. Phebe, senior fellow, U.S. Institute of Peace, Washington, DC .......... 83

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 85

Van Rest, Judy, executive vice president, International Republican Institute,

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 92

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 94

ACCELERATING ECONOMIC PROGRESS IN IRAQ—JULY 20, 2005

Barton, Frederick D., senior advisor, International Security Program, Center

for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC ................................ 159

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 161

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware ..................................... 172

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 172

Crane, Dr. Keith, senior economist, RAND Corporation, Arlington, VA ............ 151

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 152

Dodd, Christopher J., U.S. Senator from Connecticut .......................................... 149

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana ............................................ 147

Mohamedi, Fareed, senior director, Country Strategies Group, PFC Energy,

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 164

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 165

Murkowski, Lisa, U.S. Senator from Alaska ......................................................... 150

(III)

(1)

IMPROVING SECURITY IN IRAQ

MONDAY, JULY 18, 2005

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:33 a.m., in room

SH–216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar

(chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Alexander, and Biden.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S.

SENATOR FROM INDIANA

The CHAIRMAN. The Foreign Relations Committee is called to

order. Today the committee launches a series of four hearings on

Iraq. Each of these hearings will focus on one aspect of Iraq policy.

As the American people and policymakers debate our course in

Iraq, I believe the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can contribute greatly by being a bipartisan forum for advancing ideas to

improve the situation. Our intent in these hearings will be to go

beyond describing conditions in Iraq or assessing what is working

and what is not. Our goal will be to examine options for making

things better.

With the help of our experts, we will consider whether changes

in military tactics, alliance strategy, resource allocations, or other

factors should be adopted. I am hopeful that this process will inform our own policymaking role, as well as help stimulate constructive public debate on forward-looking alternatives.

Traditionally, Congress has looked to the executive branch for

foreign policy guidance and expertise. We should always carefully

consider the recommendations of the President of the United States

and his team, who are charged with implementing foreign policy.

But I believe that our oversight role involves more than critiquing

the President. Congress should also examine ideas and express its

own views on critical issues.

At the end of this four-hearing series, the Foreign Relations

Committee will have held 30 full committee hearings on Iraq in the

last 30 months of time. In addition, we have held numerous other

hearings that have partially touched on the subject of Iraq. We

have maintained this focus because success in Iraq is critical to the

United States national security. Permanent instability in Iraq

could set back American interests in the Middle East for a generation, increasing anti-Americanism, multiplying the threats from tyrants and terrorists, and reducing our credibility.

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We know that the planning for postwar Iraq was inadequate. We

should not pretend, however, that a few adjustments to our reconstruction strategy or an extra month of planning could have prevented all the challenges we now face in Iraq. Even in the best circumstances, political and economic reconstruction of Iraq after the

overthrow of an entrenched and brutal regime was going to stretch

our capabilities, our resources, and our patience to the limit. We

are engaged in a difficult mission in Iraq, and the President and

the Congress must be clear with the American people about the

stakes involved and the difficulties yet to come.

Almost 1,800 heroic Americans have died in Iraq during the past

2 years. During the insurgency thousands of Iraqi Muslims have

been killed by other Muslims, including, most recently, a group of

small children deliberately targeted by a suicide bomber. Like the

recent terrorist attacks in London, the continuing insurgent attacks

in Iraq are tragic, senseless, and often indiscriminate. Each day the

Iraqi people are living with the fear caused by similar irrational,

barbaric acts, but they continue to show their resilience. The Iraqi

people get back on the buses, and open their shops for business.

They return to their jobs as police officers, teachers, and doctors.

They continue to hope that life will become normal and that the

violence will end.

Today we take on the responsibility of examining options for improving security in Iraq. Tomorrow we will address options for advancing Iraqi political development. On Wednesday we will turn

our attention to the Iraqi economy. Finally, on a date to be determined, we will assess the regional dynamics related to the situation in Iraq as we ask questions about the impact on Iraq of Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

We have determined that these hearings will follow a unique format. Discussion in each hearing will be organized around four policy options for improving the situation in Iraq. Accordingly, after

Senator Biden and I have offered our opening comments, instead

of hearing comprehensive statements from the witnesses, we will

put the first policy option and associated questions before our expert panel.

Just as a matter of housekeeping, I will read the question and

recognize one of the witnesses to commence his or her answer to

that question. Each witness in turn will provide his or her views

on the option being presented. Then we will put the second option

before them, then the third, then the fourth and so on.

Recognizing that options exist beyond our published hearing

plan, we will ask our witnesses if they would like to offer any additional ideas for improving security that have not been discussed

previously.

After this sequence, committee members will be recognized in

turn to address questions on any of the policy options to any member of the panel. My hope is that through the expertise of the witnesses, and the questions of the members, we can achieve a systematic evaluation of the options presented for improving Iraqi security. After the hearings, the committee will publish a record of

all the policy options we have discussed.

This morning we will ask our experts whether the basic

counterinsurgency strategy that we are pursuing is the right one.

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We will ask whether it is possible to prevent infiltration of Iraq by

foreign insurgents and whether it is feasible for other nations to

assume a greater share of our border security burdens. We will ask

how we can improve the critical process of training Iraqi forces, so

that greater numbers of Iraqis will be capable of assuming the full

range of security duties. We will examine whether changes should

be made to the current United States force structure in Iraq.

In this endeavor, we are joined by three distinguished experts.

First, we welcome Dr. Kenneth Pollack, Senior Fellow and Director

of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at The

Brookings Institution. Dr. Pollack has provided exceptional security

analysis to this committee in the past, and we are pleased that he

has returned today.

We also welcome GEN Barry McCaffrey, President of BR McCaffrey Associates. General McCaffrey, who has recently returned

from a trip to Iraq and Kuwait, served as a professor at West Point

after his distinguished military career, which included experience

across the Middle East.

Finally, we are pleased to welcome back Dr. Anthony

Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair for Strategy at the Center

for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Cordesman also has recently returned from a research visit to Iraq.

We thank our witnesses for joining us and we look forward to

their insights.

I would like to recognize now the distinguished ranking chairman of our committee, Senator Biden.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S. SENATOR

FROM DELAWARE

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank

you for holding these hearings. We have indeed had a number of

hearings examining ideas and new ideas and alternative ideas, and

we have jointly and separately drawn from those ideas and made

our own recommendations to the administration.

Quite frankly, not many have been listened to. One of my frustrations I expressed to you—and I am sure you must feel it, although I speak only for myself—as we began this hearing is that

there are no administration witnesses on the schedule for this series of four hearings. I think that is important for one significant

reason. We all know no foreign policy can be sustained, especially

General McCaffrey, being in the field and being wounded in Vietnam and leading troops in Vietnam, no foreign policy can be sustained, no matter how well informed, without the informed consent

of the American people.

The American people—it is not a judgment on my part about the

policy. It is a judgment by the American people. The American people clearly have begun to lose faith that we have a sense of how

to proceed in Iraq, that we have a strategy for winning. I do not

believe that it is the body counts, as tragic as it is, that is causing

the diminution of support for our effort, but I think it is a failure

to understand or believe we have a winning strategy.

I compliment the President for having made his speech a couple

weeks ago now. But I think it is important the President and the

administration witnesses come before us in our oversight capacity,

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not just to seek new ideas, but to literally oversee the administration’s policy and let us know what their benchmarks are, what

their objectives are, and how they are proceeding, because I otherwise think we are going to continue to lose the support of the

American people unless something dramatically changes on the

ground, which could be, I am hoping. I am always hopeful. Because

I think we not only want the President to succeed in Iraq; his success is America’s success and his failure means America has a

problem.

I still—I am one who still believes, as I think we all do up here,

that we can succeed in Iraq. By ‘‘success,’’ I want to redefine it

here, or define it again, I should say. I am not looking for Jeffersonian democracy. I never have been. I am looking for a country

that is secure within its own borders, that is not a breeding ground

or a haven for terror, that is not a threat to its neighbors, where

everybody thinks they have a piece of the action. We will begin the

process, which will be long and arduous.

It has now been 6 weeks since I have returned from Iraq. There

are some good things that are happening. But the security situation is still very, very much in doubt. With General Petraeus’ efforts, some very positive things are happening, but I believe General Abizaid, in his recent assessment, is correct that the

insurgency’s strength is about the same as it was 6 months ago,

not in its last throes.

Iraqi forces are gradually improving. I wish we would stop talking about 172,000 trained Iraqi forces. They are in uniform, but all

of the folks I spoke to on the ground were a long, long way. What

it does in my view is undermine the administration’s credibility

with the American people. If we have 172,000 trained Iraqi troops

and 130,000 American, 140,000 American troops, they ask me in

my district why, with over 300,000 troops, are we not doing better?

You know, it is a problem. They know we ain’t telling the truth.

Since a month ago, we have been in contact with General

Petraeus. Things are even improving beyond what it was 5 weeks

ago.

There has been some progress with the Sunnis. It seems to me

that we have turned a political corner of sorts and that they have

realized they have to get in the game. But that is a long way from

being able to actually have a political strategy that is likely to

work.

The thing that I have found—and I am anxious to hear our witnesses—I found when I spoke to our military folks for the first time

they were talking about, not the probability, but the possibility of

a civil war. They were talking about things breaking down, not getting better. Now again, I do not want to exaggerate it. It is just

that it is my fifth trip—I went a couple times with my colleagues

on my left—and this is the first time I started hearing about that.

I came back—and I will end with this, Mr. Chairman—and spent

a lot of time with a lot of people, including one of the witnesses.

I have tried to, like you do, we all do on this committee—one of

the great, great benefits and privileges of this committee is the best

minds in the country will come and talk to you and sit down with

you and visit with you. I went visiting on a regular basis with half

a dozen—it’s a rotating group, but essentially the same half a

5

dozen of three- and four-stars who have in the past, like General

McCaffrey, had significant responsibilities, including CENTCOM as

well as NATO.

Everybody I spoke to in the field, and spoke to back here, talks

about something that is different than I think we are going to hear

today, that is encouraging—we may hear something different—

about what constitutes a counterinsurgency, that, really, it is hard

to figure out what our counterinsurgency plan is. Again, these

guys—they happen to be all men in this case. I told General

McCaffrey this. Folks are talking about you cannot deal with a

counterinsurgency unless you can occupy, at least for a while, the

territory and you can not do a whole lot if the border is totally porous, and I understand we are going to hear today that maybe

there is not a reasonable prospect of being able to do anything

about the border.

At any rate, I am anxious to hear what the witnesses have to

say. I have an inordinately high regard for all three of the witnesses and I think the way you are proceeding is a really very good

format for us to use, targeting what, at least, is on our mind. It

may be that the witnesses will conclude not all of it is relevant,

what we are asking. But at least they will tell us.

I would ask unanimous consent that my statement be placed, the

remainder of my statement be placed in the record as if read, Mr.

Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S. SENATOR FROM

DELAWARE

Mr. Chairman, thank you. I, too, welcome our witnesses. This is a superb panel.

And I applaud the other hearings you’ve held to explore policy options in Iraq.

I am frustrated, though, that none of the witnesses before us today, or scheduled

in the days ahead, work for the administration.

I have said from the outset and repeat today: No foreign policy can be sustained

without the informed consent of the American people.

The American people have not been informed about the reality on the ground and

the very difficult challenges that lie ahead. They do not believe we have a coherent,

realistic plan for success. And the gap between the administration’s rhetoric and the

reality on the ground has created a credibility chasm that is endangering public

support for our efforts in Iraq.

I give the President credit for starting to level with the American people in his

recent speech. But to fully regain their trust and support, I believe it is very important for the administration to set clear benchmarks for progress and to report on

them to us, in public, on a regular basis.

I want the President to succeed in Iraq. His success is America’s success; his failure means America has a problem.

I believe we can still succeed in Iraq. I define success as leaving Iraq better than

we found it. Not a Jeffersonian democracy, but a country with a representative government in which all the major communities have a stake; a country that is not a

breeding ground or a haven for terrorists; and a country that is not a threat to us

or its neighbors. Full stop.

Based on my recent trip to Iraq—my fifth trip there—I believe we need to change

course, not simply stay the course, if we are to succeed.

There are some positive developments. But the security environment in Iraq remains precarious. I found considerable evidence to support General Abizaid’s recent

assessment that the insurgency’s strength is about the same as it was 6 months ago.

The Iraqi security forces are very gradually improving thanks to the leadership

of General Petreaus.

But let’s not kid ourselves when we hear reports of 172,000 ‘‘trained and

equipped’’ Iraqis. When my constituents in Delaware hear numbers like that, they

ask why we still have 139,000 American troops in Iraq. The answer is because very

6

few of those forces are trained to the only standard that counts—the ability to operate independently, without our support.

A month ago, just a handful of the more than 100 Army battalions met that

standard, while many more could operate alongside the coalition or with strong

backup.

The January elections were a remarkable achievement, but the goverment in

Baghdad has very limited capacity and reach beyond the green zone. This has created a power vacuum that is being filled by Sunni insurgents, foreign fighters, local

militias, mafia gangs, and agents of neighbors like Syria and Iran.

Ethnic tension is rising to the point where civil war, though not yet a probability,

is a real possibility.

In the absence of security and governing capacity, reconstruction cannot go forward. Iraqis will not put their faith in the government, and we will not be able to

withdraw responsibly.

I look forward to hearing our witnesses’ ideas on meeting the security challenge.

Here is what I believe we must do:

First, we must take advantage of foreign offers to train Iraqi forces outside Iraq.

Iraqi recruits could then focus their energy on learning instead of simply staying

alive.

Second, we should accelerate the training of an Iraqi officer corps. That is one of

the keys to standing up an Iraqi military that won’t melt when it comes under fire.

We should train large numbers of midranking Iraqi officers here in the United

States and encourage NATO allies to do more of the same in their countries.

Third, we should press our NATO allies to come up with a small force of some

3–5,000 to help guard Iraq’s borders. NATO has the plans for such a mission; the

President needs to lead to give the alliance the political will to implement those

plans.

Fourth, we need a serious field mentoring program for newly trained Iraqi police

recruits. It is wrong to throw freshly minted and ill-equipped police officers against

suicidal insurgents and desperate criminals. They must be partnered with experienced officers—initially international police professionals and ultimately Iraqis.

Fifth, we must refocus the Iraqi Government on a plan to eventually integrate militias in Iraq. Integration won’t be easy. But without it, you cannot build a unitary,

functioning state.

Mr. Chairman, security is about much more than having competent security

forces. Real security depends on a political process in which all the major communities believe they have a stake. It requires a reconstruction program that increases

electricity, clean water, sewage treatment, and jobs in a country where unemployment is estimated at more than 40 to 50 percent. We will hear more about that in

the days ahead.

I look forward to the testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. Your statement will be placed in the record in

full. I thank the distinguished ranking member.

Senator BIDEN. I welcome the witnesses and thank them for

being here.

The CHAIRMAN. We will proceed now with the witnesses. Let me

state the first option for comment by our witnesses. In this case I

will ask Dr. Pollack to comment first, then General McCaffrey and

Dr. Cordesman. Option one is: Should the coalition revise its current counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq? To follow up to that:

Should the coalition and Iraq security forces create safe zones and

put more emphasis on fighting street crime and organized crime,

deemphasizing the hunt for insurgents, so that Iraqi economic and

political life can take root? Should the coalition attempt to take advantage of divisions within the insurgents, for example Sunni nationalists versus foreign jihadists? Can a political solution be

reached with Sunni insurgents and could this lead to Sunni cooperation in isolating, capturing, or killing the international insurgents?

Would you proceed with your thoughts on this area, Dr. Pollack?

7

STATEMENT OF KENNETH M. POLLACK, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND SENIOR FELLOW, SABAN CENTER FOR MIDDLE

EAST POLICY, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON,

DC

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you, Senator Lugar. Thank you, Senator

Biden, other assembled Senators. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to come before you to speak on this critical topic.

As you have all repeatedly pointed out and I think very correctly,

security undergirds the entire reconstruction of Iraq. Our problems

with security are hampering, if not crippling, both the political, economic, and social development of the country. I increasingly believe

that we have the wrong strategy in Iraq.

Ultimately, with security there are two overarching and interlocking problems that we face in Iraq. The first is a diverse insurgency, but one rooted on the Sunni tribal community with an admixture of other elements. The second is the state of semilawlessness that exists elsewhere and throughout the country as a result

of the security vacuum that we have left throughout much of the

country.

Our current strategy is one that I would describe as being one

of postconflict stabilization, and its principal goal is to try to enforce security simultaneously across the entire country, largely by

concentrating the available coalition forces, and primarily American forces, on those areas of greatest insurgent activity to try to

quell them quickly and prevent them from spreading.

This approach has several problems because of these two interlocking and overarching problems that we face. First of all, it plays

into the classic failure of counterinsurgency operations, when in

particular you do not use a true counterinsurgency strategy. The

government forces, in this case the coalition forces, move into an

area, they take down an insurgent stronghold, but, of course, the

insurgents do not stay to fight. It is not in their nature to do so.

It is not their objective to do so. They flee. They melt back into the

population and, as a result, the major conventional assault has little impact on the actual strength of the insurgents.

The insurgents then move on into other areas, and when our own

forces, when the coalition forces, then shift on to follow them to

their new strongholds, we often leave too few forces behind to secure the area that we have just taken down. The result is that we

continuously chase insurgents across the country, we have little

impact on their actual strength or even their ability to operate, and

we continuously allow the insurgents to creep back into areas that

we have already had to pacify.

The second problem is that by pulling our troops out of the populated areas, by focusing them, I would say inordinately, on hunting

down the insurgents in their strongholds and in their lairs, we

have left far too few troops in the rest of the country to secure the

vast bulk of the Iraqi population, particularly the Shi’a and the

urban Sunnis, who desperately want reconstruction to succeed, but

are increasingly distraught by our failure to provide them with

basic security both against the insurgents and against typical

crime, organized and unorganized, and to provide them with the

basic services, like electricity and clean water and sanitation and

gasoline and jobs, all of which are crippled by these first two secuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
8

rity problems, by the problems of the insurgency and by the general lawlessness in the society.

In addition, even where our troops are trying to guard the population, oftentimes our methods are counterproductive. We have

placed a tremendous emphasis on force protection, on the protection of our own forces. While obviously force protection has got to

be a major concern of United States and coalition forces, we have

at times put that priority at the expense of the Iraqis’ own security.

Our troops stay in heavily defended cantonments. When they get

out, they typically get out in motorized columns that move very

quickly through Iraqi areas. There is very little presence. There is

very little patrolling. There is very little sense of real security provided by our troops for the Iraqi people themselves.

As a result, Iraqis are increasingly frustrated because 2 years on

they do not see any real benefits from our continued occupation of

the country, and they have come to resent our occupation, not because they want us to leave, not because they do not want us there,

but because they do not see us as providing them with the first

benefits of reconstruction, basic security, and basic services.

What I argue that the United States ought to adopt and what

I increasingly hear from field-grade officers, American field-grade

officers in Iraq and back here in the United States, is a true

counterinsurgency strategy. Very briefly, very broadly, what would

a counterinsurgency strategy look like for Iraq? It would be based

on the classic model of a counterinsurgency strategy, which is typically referred to as a spreading inkspot or a spreading oil stain.

The idea would be to start with a smaller area, do not try to secure the entire country simultaneously, because frankly we do not

have the forces in place to do so. Instead, we would start by securing a smaller portion of the country, one where the population

would be already supportive of reconstruction. Of course, there are

huge swaths of Iraq where the vast bulk of the population is enormously supportive of reconstruction and their anger at us is not because we are there, but because we are not there and not providing

them with the security and the services they so desperately desire.

We would concentrate our forces principally in that area or in

those areas to make them safe for the Iraqis, to make them safe

for Iraqi life to revive, for the Iraqi economy to revive, for Iraqi political affairs to revive at the local level. We would use foot patrols,

a general presence, and an emphasis on law and order in these safe

zones.

We would then pour in economic resources into these safe zones

to give the Iraqis tangible material benefits from our presence. We

would help them to help their economy to revive. We would help

them to rebuild their political processes at the local level and they

would do so in an environment made safe by the coalition presence

there.

This process of pouring in resources, combined with the general

greater safety, would create much greater popular support for our

presence and would ultimately—and historically this has been the

only solution to the problem—would solve the intelligence problem

that we face in Iraq. The problem is you can never find all the intelligence you need if what you are doing is simply chasing insurgents. As the British learned in Northern Ireland and again in MaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
9

laya, as we learned in Bosnia and Kosovo, the only way that you

get the intelligence that you need is by convincing the people that

they are safe and that they are benefiting from your presence.

Under those circumstances, the people come forward with all of the

intelligence that you need and it becomes extraordinarily difficult

for the insurgents to operate.

We would also use these safe areas, these secure zones, to train

indigenous Iraqi forces, both formal training, the kind of training

that we have been doing in Iraq, but also informal training, the

training that takes place after a unit has finished its basic training, its basic training cycle, but still needs to have unit cohesion,

command relationships, and a sense of connection with the community all gel, all of which can only happen in actual operations in

safe areas where there is a permissive environment in which these

units can cut their teeth and not be stressed by high-intensity operations.

The success of the secured areas should make other Iraqis, those

outside the secured areas, more desirous of having us expand our

presence, and as the number of indigenous forces that we train

came on line and actually developed capability grew we would then

use that expanded security presence to spread into other areas of

Iraq as well. This is why this strategy is typically called, traditionally called, a spreading inkspot strategy.

In so doing, the goal of this would be to deprive insurgents of a

popular base and, in so doing, cause them to wither. This again is

the classic model of counterinsurgent operations. It is how

insurgencies have been typically defeated in the past and it is typically only when a government force has failed to employ this kind

of strategy that they have failed, that is, failed to defeat the insurgency.

It has a proven track record and, what is more, we have seen instances in Iraq where this strategy has been made to work. Wherever we have taken the time to put our people on the street, establish presence, mix with the Iraqis, establish mixed forces where the

Iraqis are working with Americans, so that the Iraqis see both an

American face and an Iraqi face to the presence, it has worked.

Before the January elections we did this in cities like Mosul. We

sent out foot patrols, and the Iraqis were stunned, and during that

period of time security greatly increased in those cities where we

did it.

Fallujah is, in some ways, another good example. Fallujah, I

would say, is an example of both the good and the bad. We took

down Fallujah, we chased out the insurgents. Unfortunately, they

moved to other areas and, as we have seen, there has been no actual diminution of the lethality or the extent of the insurgency.

We did leave some forces behind in Fallujah. We left the Marines

behind, who actually have a very good record in counterinsurgency

operations, and to some extent Fallujah is better than it was before

we took it down because we did leave a residual presence, and we

have tried to put some economic resources in to take advantage of

that somewhat better security environment.

But we failed to put in enough troops and we have failed to make

good on all of the economic commitments to Fallujah, and as a result the insurgents are creeping back, and I know that General

10

McCaffrey will tell you more about the fact that Fallujah is, as yet,

nothing to write home about.

Mr. Chairman, I think that there is a strategy that can work in

Iraq. It is the strategy that I have just outlined and which I have

gone into much greater detail in my written testimony. But I think

that we need to recognize that it is not a strategy without a price.

Politically, it will be very difficult. It will take a long time, at least

the decade-plus that Secretary Rumsfeld outlined, and it is one

that will require us to admit to having made some mistakes and

to force us to actually shift, very significantly, our approach to reconstruction in Iraq—very painful political choices.

I think if we are willing to do that, I think there is a way out

of this. I think that success is entirely possible in Iraq, because so

much of the population wants reconstruction to succeed. But I

think it is incumbent upon us to adopt a true counterinsurgency

strategy to deal with the twin problems of a full-blown insurgency

and the state of semilawlessness that we have continued to allow

the country to wallow in.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Pollack follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. KENNETH M. POLLACK, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND

SENIOR FELLOW, SABAN CENTER FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. Chairman and Senator Biden, thank you for allowing me to come before you

to discuss the future of Iraq, and particularly our efforts to secure that country to

make reconstruction possible. As you have both repeatedly reminded us, the reconstruction of Iraq is a vital interest of the United States, just as it is vital to the

people of Iraq. As we all know, and have repeatedly had reinforced to us, security

is absolutely critical to the broader reconstruction effort. Without security, reconstruction will fail. And until we have dealt with the pressing problems of security,

it will be impossible for us to perceive, let alone solve, many of the other matters

troubling Iraq. If we get security right, everything is possible, although nothing is

guaranteed.

I have confined my remarks to the four options you have outlined. I will begin

with your first option, and address each in turn.

Option 1: Should the coalition revise its current counterinsurgency strategy in

Iraq?

Mr. Chairman, I believe that after 2 years of trying to secure Iraq with our current strategy, it is becoming increasingly clear that we have the wrong strategy for

the job. Our current approach probably was the appropriate strategy in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, but the inadequate number of troops we

brought to Iraq and a series of other mistakes rendered this approach largely infeasible. Today, our problems have metastasized, and I believe that we must fundamentally change our strategy to cope with the new challenges we face.

Our effort to secure Iraq faces two overarching and interlocking problems: A fullblown insurgency and a continuing state of semi-lawlessness. Both are equally important. Reconstruction will likely fail if either is unaddressed. I believe that current U.S. strategy in Iraq is misguided because it is not properly tailored to defeat

the first problem and largely ignores the second.

Today, and since the fall of Baghdad, the United States has employed what I

would call a ‘‘post-conflict stabilization’’ model of security operations. The key element of this strategy is providing simultaneous security for the entire country by

concentrating coalition forces on those areas of greatest unrest to try to quell the

violence quickly and keep it from spreading. Had the United States brought sufficient ground forces to blanket the country immediately after the fall of Saddam’s

regime—as many warned—and had we not made a series of other mistakes, like

failing to provide our troops with orders to maintain law and order, to impose martial law and prevent looting, I think this strategy might very well have succeeded.

However, our continued reliance on this approach is failing. To borrow a military

term usually employed in a different realm of operations, today we are reinforcing

11

failure. By continuing to concentrate our overstretched forces on the areas of greatest insurgent activity we are depriving most of Iraq’s populated areas of desperately

needed security forces, and by emphasizing offensive search-and-sweep missions, we

are making ever more enemies among Iraq’s Sunni tribal population. In other

words, we are failing to protect those Iraqis who most want reconstruction to succeed and we are further antagonizing the community that is most antipathetic to

our goals.

This approach runs directly contrary to the principal lessons of counterinsurgent

warfare.

In 1986, Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich, then a major in the Army, published what

is widely regarded as the seminal work on American military performance in Vietnam, titled ‘‘The Army and Vietnam.’’ In this book, Krepinevich demonstrated that

the Army high command—for reasons entirely of its own choosing—largely refused

to employ a traditional counterinsurgency strategy against the Viet Cong and North

Vietnamese Army Forces. The Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV) repeatedly shut down other efforts, by the Marines and by Army Special Forces, to

employ a traditional counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. Krepinevich further demonstrated that these stillborn COIN campaigns had all proven far more successful

before they were terminated than MACV’s cherished offensive operations.

Mr. Chairman, I do not know why it is that the United States has not yet adopted

a traditional counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. I suspect that it is for reasons far

more mundane and far better intentioned than MACV’s rationale was in that earlier

war, because I know General Abizaid to be a superb soldier and a wise commander.

However, whatever the rationale, it is clear that the United States has so far failed

to employ a traditional counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, just as we did in Vietnam, and as a result we are failing in Iraq just as we failed in Vietnam.

Mr. Chairman, if you were to pick up a copy of Dr. Krepinevich’s book, you would

find, I think, a great many chilling passages. Passages where Krepinevich explains

how history has demonstrated that a guerrilla campaign can be defeated, and how

the United States failed to employ such a strategy in Vietnam. These passages are

unsettling precisely because they so closely echo our problems and mistakes in Iraq

today. We are once again failing to use a true COIN strategy in Iraq, and committing too many of the very same errors we made in Vietnam.

The crux of a traditional counterinsurgency strategy is never to reinforce failure,

but always to reinforce success. As Mao Zedong once wrote, the guerrilla is like a

fish who swims in the sea of the people—thus, if you can deprive the guerrilla of

support from the people, he will be as helpless as a fish out of water.

The goal of a true-COIN campaign is to deprive the guerrilla of that access. The

COIN force begins by securing a base of operations by denying one portion of the

country to the insurgency. This portion can be as big or as small as the COIN force

can handle—the bigger the COIN force available, the larger the area. Within this

area, the COIN force provides the people with security, in all senses of the word.

In Iraq, this would mean security from insurgent attack as well as from ordinary

(and organized) crime. In so doing, the COIN force creates a secure space in which

political and economic life can flourish once again. Ideally, the COIN force would

pour resources into this area to make it economically dynamic and take advantage

of the security the COIN campaign has provided, both to cement popular support

for the COIN campaign and to make it attractive to people living outside the secure

area so that they will support the COIN campaign when it shifts to their region.

The increasing attractiveness of these safe areas also solve the intelligence problem that COIN forces inevitably face. Ultimately, there is no way that a COIN force

can gather enough intelligence on insurgent forces through traditional means to exterminate them. Instead, as the British learned in Northern Ireland, the only way

to gather adequate information on the insurgents is to convince the local populace

to volunteer such information, which they will do only if they are enthusiastic supporters of the COIN campaign and feel largely safe from retaliation by the insurgents. When these conditions are met, the counterinsurgents enjoy a massive advantage in intelligence making the further eradication of the insurgents easy, and almost an afterthought.

In addition, the COIN forces use these ‘‘safe zones’’ to train indigenous forces who

can assist them in subsequent security operations. Once this base of operations is

truly secure and can be maintained by local indigenous forces, the COIN forces then

spread their control to additional parts of the country, performing the same set of

steps as they did in the original area.

Dr. Krepinevich describes this set of interlocking features as follows:

After the army has driven off or killed the main guerrilla forces, its units

must remain in the area while local paramilitary forces are created and the

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1 Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., ‘‘The Army and Vietnam’’ (Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 13–14. 2 Ibid, p. 15.

influence of the police force is reestablished. The paramilitary forces should

be drawn from among the inhabitants of the area and trained in

counterinsurgency operations such as small-unit patrolling, night operations, and the ambush. Resurrection of the local police force is equally important. Properly trained, the police can make an invaluable contribution

to the defeat of the insurgents by weeding out the political infrastructure,

thus preventing the reemergence of the insurgent movement once the army

departs.

Thus, if the paramilitary forces can perform the local security mission,

and if the police can extinguish the embers of the insurgent movement

through suppression of its infrastructure, the people will begin to feel secure enough to provide these forces with information on the movements of

local guerrilla forces and on the individuals who make up the cells of the

insurgent movement. But before any of this can occur, it is necessary for

the government’s main-force army units to demonstrate that they will remain in the newly cleared area until such time as the people are capable

of assuming the bulk of the responsibility for their own defense. Should the

army depart the area before the paramilitary units and the police force are

capable of effective operation, it will have accomplished nothing. The insurgent infrastructure will quickly reemerge from hiding, and the guerrillas

will return to reassert their control. The temporary control reestablished by

the government must be followed by the implementation of measures designed to achieve permanent control. Thus, the counterinsurgent must direct his efforts, not toward seeking combat with the insurgent’s guerrilla

forces, but at the insurgent political infrastructure, which is the foundation

of successful insurgency warfare. Keep the guerrilla bands at arm’s length

from the people and destroy their eyes and ears—the infrastructure—and

you can win.1

This approach is typically referred to either as a ‘‘spreading ink spot’’ or a

‘‘spreading oil stain’’ because the COIN forces slowly spread their control over the

country, depriving the guerrillas of support piece by piece until, in Krepinevich’s

words, ‘‘Once the security of the population and its attendant resources is accomplished, the initiative in the war will pass from the insurgent to the government.

The insurgent will either have to fight to maintain control of the people or see his

capabilities diminish. If the insurgents decide to fight, they will present themselves

as targets for the government mobile reaction forces.’’ 2

The key, as Krepinevich and every other expert on counterinsurgency operations

observes, is to start by securing the population and providing them with material

incentives, in the form of real security and a thriving economy, that will cause them

to reject the insurgency and support the COIN campaign. This is why a COIN strategy is best understood as a strategy of reinforcing success, because the

counterinsurgents concentrate their forces where their support is strongest, and

where they therefore can do the most good.

Instead, the approach we are employing in Iraq—concentrating our forces in Iraq’s

western provinces where the insurgents are thickest and support for reconstruction

weakest—means reinforcing failure. Such an approach has repeatedly resulted in

failures in guerrilla warfare throughout history. Our efforts to ‘‘take the fight to the

enemy’’ and mount offensive sweep operations designed to kill insurgents and eliminate their strongholds have failed to even dent the insurgency so far, and likely will

continue to do so, as was the case in Vietnam and other lost guerrilla wars. Here

is Dr. Krepinevich on the false promise of hunting guerrillas:

Should government forces attempt to defeat the insurgency through the

destruction of guerrilla forces in quasi-conventional battles, they will play

into the hands of the insurgent forces. Insurgent casualties suffered under

these circumstances will rarely be debilitating for the insurgents. First, the

insurgents have no need to engage the government forces—they are not

fighting to hold territory. Second, as long as the government forces are out

seeking battle with the guerrilla units, the insurgents are not forced to

maintain access to the people. Therefore, the initiative remains with the

guerrillas—they can ‘‘set’’ their own level of casualties (probably just

enough to keep the government forces out seeking the elusive big battles),

thus rendering ineffective all efforts by the counterinsurgent to win a traditional military victory.

13

3 Ibid, pp. 11–12. [Emphasis in original].

As a result of these circumstances, the conventional forces of the government’s army must be reoriented away from destroying enemy forces toward

asserting government control over the population and winning its support.

Government forces should be organized primarily around light infantry

units, particularly in phases 1 and 2 of the insurgency. These forces must

be ground-mobile in order to patrol intensively in and around populated

areas, keeping guerrilla bands off guard and away from the people. The

counterinsurgent must eliminate the tendency fostered by conventional doctrine, to cluster his forces in large units. Only when the insurgency moves

into phase 3 will the need for substantial numbers of main-force conventional units arise.

Winning the hearts and minds of the people is as desirable for the government as it is for the insurgent. This objective can only be realized, however, after control of the population is effected and their security provided

for. Developing popular support often involves political participation—at

least on the local level; public works—irrigation ditches, dams, wells; and

social reform—land reform, religious toleration, access to schools. These actions are designed to preempt the insurgent’s cause, as, for example, land

reform in the Philippines during the Huk rebellion . . . Nevertheless, even

though the attempts to co-opt the insurgents may prove successful in winning the hearts of the people, they will be for naught unless the government provides the security necessary to free the people from the fear of insurgent retribution should they openly support the government.3

Against a full-blown insurgency, such as we are facing in Iraq, offensive operations cannot succeed and are ultimately counterproductive. The guerrilla does not

need to stand and fight but can run or melt back into the population and so avoid

crippling losses. If the COIN forces do not remain and pacify the area for the long

term, the guerrillas will be back within weeks, months, or maybe years, but they

will be back nonetheless. Meanwhile, the concentration of forces on these sweep operations means a major diversion of effort away from securing the population. In

Iraq, this has left the vast bulk of the population largely unprotected both against

insurgent attacks and normal crime—organized and unorganized.

Moreover, the tactics of our offensive operations have contributed to the alienation

of the Sunni tribal community, driving many otherwise agnostic Iraqis into the

arms of the insurgents. Many American units continue to see the targets of their

raids as enemies and treat them as such—invariably turning them and their neighbors into enemies regardless of their feelings beforehand. Often, the priority American formations place on force protection comes at the expense of the larger mission—the safety, psychological disposition, and dignity of Iraqis. Busting down

doors, ordering families down on the floor, holding them down with the sole of a

boot, searching women in the presence of men, waiving around weapons, ransacking

rooms or whole houses, and confiscating weapons all come with a price. Because too

much of the intelligence that the United States is relying on is poor, it is not a rare

occurrence that houses raided turn out to be innocuous. In some cases, the wanted

personnel may have been there at some point and fled, but in others no one in the

house was guilty at all. Indeed, too often, U.S. Forces are directed to raid a house

or arrest a person by someone else who simply has a grudge against them and turns

them in to the Americans as an insurgent to settle a personal score.

An example of both the potential of true counterinsurgency operations and the

danger of refusing to employ them can be found in the experience of the Iraqi town

of Fallujah. Until the fall of 2004, Fallujah was a major insurgent stronghold. The

town was then taken by U.S. Forces in a full-scale conventional assault in which,

American commanders touted as major victories both the number of insurgents

killed and the psychological gains of taking this stronghold from the enemy. However, within just a few months, the insurgents had reemerged with no noticeable

impact on their operations or lethality. On the other hand, unlike many other towns

in the Sunni triangle, a fair number of American and Iraqi Forces remained in

Fallujah after the assault, providing it with greater security than in most neighboring towns, but not as much as was the case immediately after the assault when

large numbers of American ground troops were present. Likewise, the United States

and the Iraqis did begin to pump resources into the city, and reached out to local

shaykhs to try to form a new political process, and to give local residents an incentive to participate in the national political process. As a result, Fallujah has been

a modest success story. However, because promised funds have not been forthcoming, because the Marines in Fallujah are spread thinly and the Iraqi Forces are

14

not indigenous—and are often Shi’a—the insurgency has begun to make a come

back in Fallujah.

Thus Fallujah demonstrates what a successful approach might look like, but only

if it is handled properly. And unfortunately, Fallujah is more the exception than the

rule. Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. Forces clear the areas without staying in force, without

leaving behind indigenous security forces willing and able to secure the area, and

so without leaving the kind of security environment that would make it possible to

try to revive either the local economy or the local political process.

Southern Iraq and the persistent popularity of Muqtada as-Sadr—and other, similar figures—is another example of the problems created by our current security

strategy. The predominantly Shi’i southeast of Iraq is overwhelmingly supportive of

reconstruction, yet we find growing frustration with reconstruction, the United

States, and the transitional Iraqi Government throughout that community. Why?

Because the people are still plagued by organized and random crime, which makes

their economic life difficult, keeps unemployment high and incomes low, contributes

to frequent power outages and gasoline shortages, and prevents the restoration of

clean water and sanitation, among other problems. This frustration, allowed to fester over time, is driving Iraqis into the arms of the Muqtada as-Sadr’s of Iraq,

whose message is a simple one: The Americans are either unwilling or unable to

provide you with the basic necessities of life, but we can. They employ the model

that Hizballah and Hamas have used to such success, providing tangible, material

benefits in return for support. This is exactly what Muqtada as-Sadr provides the

residents of Sadr City and what other shaykhs, alims, and other would-be potentates provide other Iraqis in different parts of the country.

This is a disastrous course that could push Iraq into fragmentation and civil war.

It is already convincing any number of groups—and not just the Kurds—that they

should pursue autonomy from the central government, which is increasingly seen

as out of touch, corrupt, and wholly focused on its own (irrelevant) squabbles over

power.

Mr. Chairman, this analysis leads me to the conclusion that the United States

must dramatically reorient our strategy for securing Iraq. We must adopt a true

counterinsurgency strategy, of the traditional ‘‘spreading oil stain’’ variety. We must

simultaneously recognize that even if we do so, securing Iraq is going to take a very

long time. In this respect, I was heartened to hear Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld

acknowledge that success in Iraq would likely require over a decade. He is surely

right, but he is only likely to be right if the United States adopts the right strategy

to do so.

Painted in broad brush strokes, a true counterinsurgency strategy for Iraq would

focus on securing enclaves—Kurdistan, much of southeastern Iraq, Baghdad, and a

number of other major urban centers, along with the oilfields and some other vital

economic facilities—while, initially, leaving much of the countryside to the insurgents. The coalition would consolidate its security forces within those enclaves,

thereby greatly improving the ratio of security personnel to civilians, and allowing

a major effort to secure these enclaves to allow local economic and political development at a microlevel. The coalition would likewise redirect its political efforts and

economic resources solely into the secured enclaves—both to ensure that they prosper and because those would be the only areas where it would be worth investing

in the short run. Such a strategy might, therefore, mean foregoing such things as

national elections or rebuilding the entire power grid, because they might be impossible in a situation where the coalition forces had abdicated control over large areas

of the country.

The concentrated security focus should allow local economic and political developments to make meaningful progress, which in turn should turn around public opinion within the enclaves—making the Iraqis living in the enclaves more willing to

support the reconstruction effort and, hopefully, making those Iraqis outside the enclaves more desirous of experiencing the same benefits.

Once these enclaves were secured, and as additional Iraqi security forces were

trained or foreign forces brought in, they would be slowly expanded to include additional communities—hence the metaphor of the spreading oil stain. In every case,

the coalition would focus the same security, political, and economic resources on

each new community brought into the pacified zone. If implemented properly, a true

counterinsurgency approach can succeed in winning back the entire country. However, it means ceding control over swathes of it at first and taking some time before

Iraq will be seen as a stable, unified, pluralist state. Nevertheless, it may be the

only option open to us if, as is the case at present, the U.S.-led coalition cannot control large parts of the country and cannot keep the peace in those areas where it

does operate.

15

At a more tactical level, a true COIN campaign in Iraq would make securing the

Iraqi people its highest priority. American Forces in Iraq, unfortunately remain preoccupied with force protection and with tracking down the insurgents who are attacking them, and as a result they are providing little security to the Iraqi people.

U.S. Forces generally remain penned up in formidable cantonments. They are cut

off from the populace and have little interaction with them. In the field, they come

out to attend to logistical needs and to conduct raids against suspected insurgents.

In the cities, they generally come out only to make infrequent patrols—which are

virtually always conducted mounted in Bradley fighting vehicles or HMMWVs—the

ubiquitous ‘‘Humvees’’ or ‘‘Hummers’’—at speeds of 30–50 kms per hour. Indeed,

prior to the January elections, American Forces did—temporarily—engage in foot

patrols in cities like Mosul and the result was an immediate, but equally temporary,

increase in morale and support for the U.S. presence.

It is a constant—and fully justified—complaint of Iraqis that the Americans have

no presence and make no effort to stop street crime or the attacks on them by the

insurgents. Many British officers, and some Americans, too, argue that the United

States should instead be employing the kind of foot patrols backed by helicopters

and/or vehicles that the British Army learned to use in Northern Ireland, and that

all NATO Forces eventually employed in the Balkans. This is the only way that

American Forces can get out, reassure the Iraqi civilians, find out from them where

the troublemakers are, and respond to their problems.

Adopting a true counterinsurgency strategy, coupled with its attendant tactics

such as guarding population centers and key infrastructure, foot patrols, presence,

and the eradication of crime and attacks on Iraqis would doubtless expose U.S. personnel to greater risks. However, they are absolutely necessary if reconstruction is

to succeed in Iraq. There is no question that force protection must always be an

issue of concern to any American commander, but it cannot be the determining principle of U.S. operations. American military forces are in Iraq because the reconstruction of that country is critical to the stability of the Persian Gulf and a vital interest

of the United States. In their current mode of operations, our troops are neither safe

nor are they accomplishing their most important mission. Consequently, executing

that mission must become the highest concern of U.S. military commanders, and

their current strategy—focusing on force protection and offensive operations against

the insurgents—is misguided. If it does not change, the reconstruction may fail outright and all of the sacrifices of the American people and our service men and

women will have been for nothing.

Option 2: Could the United States successfully press its allies to increase aid and

provide manpower to protect Iraq’s borders and prevent foreign infiltration?

Mr. Chairman, at some level the answer to this second question is undoubtedly,

‘‘yes,’’ but I do not see it as an ‘‘option’’ that would solve our problems in Iraq. At

best, it might help ameliorate our current problems, but no more.

Given how little Iraq’s neighbors seem to be doing to arrest the steady flow of

Salafi jihadists, Sunni tribesmen, and others into the country, it is unexceptionable

to suggest that they could not be doing more than they currently are.

Syria is the country that we have focused our attention on, although it is hardly

the case that they are the only problem, or probably even the major source of the

problem. Many U.S. and foreign intelligence analysts believe that far more foreign

fighters are infiltrating into Iraq through Saudi Arabia. I have little faith in technical fixes to the problem of infiltration across the long Syrian border, simply because it is so long and long borders are notoriously difficult to seal—our own problems with Mexico being an obvious case in point. Many Sunni tribes span the IraqSyria border and there is considerable trade.

Certainly, a political solution might persuade the Syrians to do more to police the

border, but our expectations should remain modest here as well. Should we wish

to try, I see only a policy of real carrots and real sticks as having any real likelihood

of success. The Syrians need to have positive incentives to cooperate and see real

threats if they do not. However, we must keep our hopes for such a policy in check.

Syria’s handling of its border is part of the larger issue of Syrian relations with the

United States that remains very much undecided in Syria right now. Indeed, it may

be necessary to craft a much broader set of carrots and sticks with Syria designed

to get at the whole range of United States-Syrian differences if we are to have any

real prospect of success. The Syrian regime is deeply divided over its course, particularly with regard to its relations with the United States. Until Damascus decides what kind of country it wants to rule, and what its relationship to the region

and the world should be, it is unlikely to make major changes on any piece of its

foreign policy, especially as one as tightly bound to that broader set of issues as its

relationship with Iraq.

16

Consequently, tackling infiltration across the Syrian border may require a new

American policy to Syria, and the Syrians revamping their own broad foreign policy

goals. Neither seems likely in the short term.

With regard to infiltration across the Iranian border, the news is both worse and

better. Worse because all of the problems related to Syria—a long border, intermingled populations spanning it, a government divided over its relations with Iraq

and the United States, and an inability to isolate its Iraq policy from the overarching question of what kind of country it wants to be—all go double for Iran. The

situation is better, however, because Iran is not the problem when it comes to the

Iraqi insurgency. The insurgency is overwhelmingly Sunni and while not everything

that Iran is doing in Iraq is helpful to us, they are not providing any significant

degree of assistance to the Salafi Jihadists, Sunni tribesmen, former regime officials, and various other groups who comprise the bulk of the insurgency.

Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey are all staunch United States allies

and it is likely that more could be accomplished with them, but also not without

a price. All four of these countries is wary of American intentions in Iraq, and fearful that whatever our intentions may be, we are not making the kind of effort that

will result in a stable Iraq. All four are Sunni Muslim nations with differing degrees

of skittishness about the emergence of a Shi’i-led Iraq. On top of this, the Turks

have their own longstanding concerns about Kurdish separatism. All four—but particularly the Saudis—have been ambivalent at best about slowing the flow of goods

and supplies across their border to Iraq. And it is complicated by the fact that there

is a portion of Saudi society that actively favors the Sunni ‘‘jihad’’ against the

United States and the Shi’a in Iraq.

The governments of all of these countries have not been bashful about their own

concerns in Iraq, and their price for greater cooperation is likely to be a straightforward one: A greater say in the reconstruction of Iraq. This is a tricky proposition,

but not an unworkable one. Indeed, the solution is probably overdue.

The United States and the new Iraqi transitional government should convene a

contact group consisting of all of Iraq’s neighbors—including Iran and Syria. This

group would meet frequently and regularly to receive information about reconstruction issues important to them, and to provide advice both to the Iraqis and to the

United States regarding developments inside Iraq. The function of the contact group

should be purely advisory—neither we nor the Iraqis should be bound by its recommendations but that advice should not be ignored lightly either. In a great many

cases, simply tempering a policy to make it more palatable to Iraq’s neighbors, or

merely acknowledging their concerns and providing a full explanation of why their

recommendation will not be the one adopted, can make a considerable difference.

In return for their expanded role, all of the neighbors should be presented with detailed, and concrete plans for stemming illegal traffic across their borders and theft

membership in the contact group can be made conditional upon their meeting these

criterion.

Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, none of these measures is likely to have more than

an indirect impact on the success or failure of reconstruction in Iraq. As noted in

my response to Option 1, the insurgency is only one of our problems in Iraq, and

the insurgency is not principally driven by external factors.

Our intelligence regarding Iraq has consistently established that foreign fighters

comprise only a small percentage of the insurgents in Iraq. What’s more, anecdotal

reporting suggests that foreign-born jihadists are playing a less important role in

the insurgency. Early on in the conflict, the foreigners brought with them critical

know-how in terrorist and guerrilla operations that the Iraqis largely lacked. However, today, more than 2 years after the fall of Baghdad, the Iraqis have learned

what they need to know and so are much less reliant on the foreigners for training.

Likewise, while it was once the case that suicide bombings in Iraq seemed to be the

exclusive purview of the foreign-born jihadists who came to Iraq to martyr themselves, this is no longer the case. The evidence is sparse, but it does seem to be the

case that a growing percentage of suicide attacks are being carried out by Iraqis

themselves.

Thus, even if you could somehow hermetically seal Iraq’s borders, doing so would

be unlikely to extinguish the insurgency, nor would the elimination of the insurgency solve all of Iraq’s problems. The best intelligence indicates that the bulk of

the insurgency is drawn from Iraq’s Sunni tribal population, a great many of whom

were recruited for Saddam’s Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard, the

Fidayin, and other key security forces. They have lost their prestige and their paychecks; they have been dispossessed by a society they once ruled; and they are fearful that we intend to put the Shi’a and the Kurds into the same position of authority

their community once occupied—and that they will be oppressed in the same manVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ner that they once oppressed the Shi’a and the Kurds. Thus there are plenty of

Iraqis fighting us out of fear and a lack of anything else to do.

As I have argued elsewhere, there are much better ways to make major dents in

the insurgency. One method would be to allow the Iraqi economy to revive in a manner that it so far has not. Many of Iraq’s angry young men would probably be quite

a bit less angry if they had jobs, steady sources of income, and all of the benefits

that come with it.

Another approach would be to effectively buy off the Sunni shaykhs. Although our

intelligence remains sketchy, it is clear that an important element of our problems

with the insurgency comes from the active participation or passive acceptance by

a huge range of Sunni shaykhs. In some cases, they appear to be ordering the young

men under their authority to take up arms against the United States and the new

regime because they feel politically and economically excluded from it, and they are

well aware of the corruption of the new government, and probably exaggerate it to

themselves, because they do fear a Shi’ite dictatorship, and because no one is paying

them not to. In other cases, they simply make no effort to stop their tribesmen and

followers from participating because they have no incentive to do so.

However, for centuries, if not millennia, the central government in Baghdad successfully paid these shaykhs to cooperate with the regime rather than fighting

against it. This seems unpalatable to American ears, but it is part of Iraq’s societal

traditions. The tribes of the west and south were never fully under central government control and would often fight against it or simply ignore its efforts at law and

order unless they were paid not to do so. But in return for such payments—which

could come in the form of government contracts, infrastructure development, and

other forms of aid, not just cash—the shaykhs generally were quite content to avoid

attacks on the goverment and even to keep order in those areas effectively beyond

Baghdad’s control.

In the 20th century, the shaykhs were often paid not to attack and even to police

the roads, bridges, power lines, and pipelines the insurgency currently targets. At

times when relations between the shaykhs and Baghdad soured, attacks on this infrastructure invariably increased.

Moreover, the shaykhs have shown a willingness to ‘‘do business’’ with a wide

range of governments in Baghdad: The Ottomans, the British-backed monarchy,

various Iraqi military dictators, and Saddam’s Stalinist regime. Of course, all of

these regimes were all Sunni-dominated, at least for their facade, and it does remain to be seen whether they would give such fealty to a Shi’a-led government, but

there is every reason to expect that, coupled with an effort to increase Sunni tribal

representation in the new government, the Sunni shaykhs would be willing to decrease or even end their support for the insurgency. To a great extent, it would

mean giving this key segment of the Sunni community a real stake in the success

of the new Iraqi Government—just as we have talked about doing right from the

start—and doing so in a very tangible way.

Indeed, anecdotal reporting indicates that whenever American military and political personnel have reached out to local Sunni shaykhs, and provided them with material incentives to cooperate, they have been willing to do so, at least on a selective

basis. This, too, provides evidence that it should be possible to co-opt many, perhaps

most, of the Sunni tribal shaykhs and get them to stop fighting us and instead help

us.

Even if we were to successfully find ways to buy off the Sunni tribal shaykhs, we

should not expect this to end the insurgency altogether. The Sunni shaykhs probably could convince a significant number of their followers to desist, either by their

authority, or by the patronage they would in turn buy among their people with the

resources we would be paying them. However, because the insurgency is so diverse,

others would likely fight on: The foreign fighters, of course; homegrown Salafi

jihadists, of whom there is also a significant number; true regime ‘‘dead-enders’’ who

have so much blood on their hands that they could never expect anything but a

hangman’s noose from a new, democratic Iraqi Government; and a number of others

of diverse motives. But it is clear that this would be a greatly diminished cohort

from present numbers.

Thus, if you are looking to weaken the insurgency, shutting down Iraq’s borders

can’t hurt, but doing so will be much harder and less likely to have real impact than

convincing Iraq’s tribal shaykhs to withdraw their support from the insurgency. The

first approach assumes that the insurgency is principally a foreign-driven phenomenon, which it unquestionably is not, the latter relies on traditional Iraqi techniques to get at what is largely a homegrown problem.

Option 3: Should the United States reprioritize the training schedule of Iraqi Forces

and support more training in other countries?

18

With regard to the specifics of the actual training of various Iraqi security personnel, my understanding is rudimentary at best, but I know of nothing particularly

amiss. Instead, let me offer some comments regarding the duration, goals, and location of training.

Without question, longer training schedules are better than shorter ones. Iraq’s

security forces need to be taught a range of military skills. However, of equal or

greater importance, they need to be given the psychological tools to handle their

very difficult responsibilities. They need to be integrated into multiethnic formations. They need to be convinced that reconstruction is the best course for Iraq and

that their own sacrifices are crucial to the success of reconstruction. They need to

believe that what they are doing is of immediate benefit to their country, their people, their sect, their town, and their family. They need to be able to trust their comrades, their American and coalition allies, and themselves. All of that takes a great

deal of time.

In addition, even after their formal training is completed, Iraqi units need time

to further gel. Unit cohesion needs to be formed in training, but it is inevitably tested by the first operations that a formation undertakes. So, too, with the confidence

of Iraqi recruits. So, too, with the leadership skills of their officers. What’s more,

the process of vetting—weeding out those unsuited for the tasks at hand, or those

working for the enemy—is a lengthy one, and it is not infrequent for soldiers and

officers to do well in training but fail once placed in actual combat situations, especially if the initial test is an extremely challenging one.

For all of these reasons, it is critical that Iraqi units begin their operational tours

under the most permissive conditions. They need to crawl before they can walk. This

has not always been the case, although Iraqi and American friends tell me that it

is increasingly so. If so, this is a very positive development. However, it once again

emphasizes the length of the training process and the need to do it right and do

it slowly. Nothing will undermine morale across Iraq’s security forces—and undermine Iraqi confidence in reconstruction—so much as large-scale disintegration of

their formations in combat, as was the case when units were rushed into combat

in the spring of 2004.

As far as the goals of training are concerned, while we do need some highly capable Iraqi units capable of conducting special forces type missions to help assault insurgent strongholds, of far greater utility will be large numbers of competent and

trustworthy Iraqi formations capable of conducting basic protection missions—patrolling, searches, ambushes, point defense, infrastructure defense, and the like.

Again, these are the tasks that are critical to victory in counterinsurgent warfare,

as our experiences in Vietnam and elsewhere have repeatedly demonstrated.

As far as the location of training is concerned, I don’t think beggars should be

choosers. Training forces out of country has positive and negative elements. Obvious

positives include greater access to higher caliber trainers and reduced likelihood of

attack by insurgents. Another less obvious benefit of such training is that taking

a group out of their accustomed environment might change their perspective and

encourage the formation of bonds of loyally to one another. Negatives include the

distancing of the group from mainstream society and the possibility that the training will be less realistic—or simply less tailored to the circumstances they will face.

In addition, there is the possibility that the population at large will be suspicious

of them and may even treat them as foreign ‘‘agents.’’

On the whole, I see these various plusses and minuses as effectively canceling one

another out. As a result, I see the key issue as our need to train as many Iraqis

as we can, and be able to provide them with the luxury of time and proper training—not to mention the related issue of proper equipment—so that they are someday able to shoulder the burden we need them to. If there are countries willing and

able to provide such training abroad—and if not sending Iraqi units or personnel

abroad would limit that training—then so be it. Our need for properly trained Iraqi

security forces, in all senses of the words ‘‘properly trained,’’ should be decisive

given the rough equivalence in the liabilities and incurred compared to the benefits

to be derived.

Option 4: Should the President change the force structure of the United States presence in Iraq?

Mr. Chairman, I believe that it would be of tremendous benefit for the United

States to significantly increase the number of high-caliber foreign troops in Iraq.

Ironically, this is vital if the United States sticks with its current approach to security, which I have already described as a ‘‘post-conflict stabilization’’ model; but is

only desirable, not necessary, if the United States shifts to a true counterinsurgency

strategy.

19

We simply do not have the troops on hand—American, allied, or fully capable

Iraqi—to handle the number and extent of the tasks at hand. We do not have the

forces available both to provide security in Iraq’s populated areas and to suppress

the insurgency in western and southern Iraq. In truth, we do not have sufficient

troops for either one of those missions independently. As a result, with our current

force structure, we can reduce towns in the Sunni triangle, but we cannot secure

them long term. Inevitably, the forces needed to take down an insurgent stronghold

must move on to the next one, allowing the last to quickly slip back into guerrilla

control. This is a classic mistake of counterguerrilla warfare and it is tragic that

we are repeating it. Moreover, our focus on trying to come to grips with the insurgents and clear out their strongholds has largely denuded southern and central

Iraq’s cities of sizable coalition forces, leaving them prey not only to insurgent attacks, but to crime and lawlessness more generally.

If we stick with our current strategy, I see no alternative to a major increase in

coalition forces over the next 2–3 years, probably on the order of 100,000 or more

troops, if it is to have any chance of success. At some point, if our training program

is allowed to mature, we will have several hundred thousand capable Iraqi security

personnel able to take over responsibility for most, if not all, of the security mission.

However, we are still several years away from that day, and in the interim, someone

will have to make up for that deficit. Given the reluctance of our allies to provide

significant numbers of ground troops, only the United States can do so, although

providing so many more ground troops for several years to come may necessitate

a thorough restructuring of U.S. ground forces more generally.

At the risk of being redundant, let me repeat this point for the sake of clarity:

We do not presently have adequate numbers of troops in country to execute the

strategy that we have set out for ourselves—setting aside the question of whether

this strategy can succeed at all. As a result, we have provided too little basic security for the bulk of Iraq’s population, and have inadequate forces even to suppress

the insurgency in western and southern Iraq. Only a massive increase in troop

strength—which the Iraqis will be unable to provide for several years—is likely to

remedy that problem.

Could we simply muddle through with the inadequate forces we have on hand.

Perhaps. However, this would be a huge gamble for the United States, Iraq, the region, and perhaps the world. As I noted earlier, there are powerful centripetal forces

in Iraq that are gaining influence because of our failure to deal with the various

problems of the insurgency and basic insecurity. We may be able to keep them at

bay until several years down the road when sufficient Iraqi Forces become available

to address these missions. But doing so strikes me as reckless and irresponsible.

Moreover, any objective analyst would have to recognize that the chances of this

bet paying off look poor at this time. The Iraqi people are frustrated and growing

more so. And it is this frustration that is our greatest threat. Because it is out of

frustration with the inability, or unwillingness, of the United States and the transitional Iraqi Government to deliver on basic security—and the basic services like

electricity, gasoline, clean water, and jobs for which basic security is the prerequisite—that Iraqis are beginning to turn to local shaykhs, alims, and other

would-be warlords to provide them what the reconstruction authorities cannot. Thus

it seems, at least, equally likely that the current trend will produce a slide toward

fragmentation and civil war, as it is that it will allow for muddling through until

the Iraqis can handle the security situation by themselves.

Another advantage of adopting a true counterinsurgency strategy, however, is

that while it would certainly benefit from the addition of more troops, it is not required. COIN strategies work by building popular support and using that popular

support to deny support to the insurgency, as well as to generate indigenous forces

capable both of fighting the insurgency and providing protection to ever greater portions of the population. When employed correctly, it is a self-generating and selfsustaining strategy, which it is why it is able to defeat the converse strategy that

lies at the heart of any insurgency. The size of the initial commitment of resources

principally influences only the length of time that the COIN strategy takes to work.

Thus, in theory, one could begin with nothing but a platoon, although starting with

such a tiny force pool means that it would take an extraordinarily long time for the

COIN strategy to succeed.

In Iraq, we are fortunate to have a very large segment of the population that is

at least passively supportive of the goals of reconstruction, as well as a force base

of over 150,000 American, Iraqi, and coalition troops. That is a pretty good starting

point for a true COIN strategy. It looks even better when one considers that the

Kurdish population is fully supportive of reconstruction—at least in the sense of desiring an end both to the insurgency and to the state of semilawlessness in much

20

of the rest of the country—and already has the security forces to effectively police

their own territory,

With these forces alone and employing a true COIN strategy, the coalition could

probably secure much, perhaps all, of southern Iraq with its strongly pro-reconstruction Shi’a and urban Sunni populations. Along with Iraqi Kurdistan, this is a very

good start, and suggests a reasonably rapid window of success, perhaps as little as

8–10 years, although probably more like 10–15, because it is the nature of COIN

strategies to work slowly. It would be difficult, with only the forces on hand to also

secure central Iraq, possibly including Baghdad and some of the key infrastructure

of that area like the Bayji oil refinery, as well as roads, power lines, and oil pipelines connecting the north and the south.

An alternative initial pacification effort could include Baghdad, and given its importance to Iraq, there is a compelling logic to do so, but in this case, the forces

on hand probably could then only secure a more limited number of the Shi’i cities

of the south, leaving large chunks of an otherwise supportive population outside of

the initial ‘‘secure’’ zone, and possibly driving them into the arms of the opponents

of reconstruction. In other words, a true COIN campaign would have difficulty including both Baghdad and all of southeastern Iraq in its initial security zone with

only the forces currently on hand.

It is for that reason that even a COIN strategy would greatly benefit from more

fully trained forces right from the start. The addition of another 30–50,000 troops

might prove sufficient to make it possible to begin the COIN campaign by securing

both Baghdad and key sites in central Iraq and nearly all of southeastern Iraq—

in addition to Kurdistan. This is a very preliminary assessment that would require

considerable additional planning and analysis, but it does seem likely at first blush.

This would obviously be a far more desirable starting point, since it would mean

including both the large Shi’a population of southeastern Iraq as well as the vital

capital within the initial ‘‘oil stain’’ of the COIN campaign. Under these circumstances, it might be possible to achieve success within as little as 5–8 years, although 8–10 years still seems more realistic.

Thus, under any circumstances, more first-rate forces in Iraq would be highly desirable, although if we persist with our current strategy, then they are indispensable.

There is one last element of this option that needs to be addressed, and this is

the question of whether more U.S. troops will help or hurt the cause of reconstruction. I am wholly of the opinion that, on balance, they will greatly help the cause

of reconstruction.

First, it is wrong-headed and perverse to suggest that more American troops in

Iraq will simply stimulate more terrorist attacks, either because they will provide

more targets or because they will generate more animosity. As for the insurgents,

they have repeatedly demonstrated that they oppose not just the United States

presence, but the entire project of reconstruction and—for the Sunnis who comprise

the vast bulk of the insurgency—the ascendance of the Shi’ite majority. The insurgents have committed far more acts of violence against other Iraqis than they have

against American Forces. What’s more, they have made clear that they believe they

are already waging a civil war against the Shi’a, whom the Salafi jihadists regard

as apostates and for whom they reserve far greater venom than for infidel Americans.

All of the evidence we have indicates that were U.S. Forces to leave Iraq, the insurgents would be even less restrained and would greatly increase their attacks on

the new Iraqi Government, on the Shi’a, on the Kurds, and on anyone else they

don’t like. If you don’t believe me, ask any Iraqi Shi’ite, any Iraqi Kurd, or any

Sunni Iraqi who simply wants to lead a normal life; they are terrified of the hard

core of the insurgency for this very reason.

Second, it is wrong to simply postulate that Iraqis want the Americans out, and

that their resentment of the American presence is a major source of the violence

there. Iraqi views about the American presence are very complicated and, at times,

contradictory.

As best I can glean, both from public opinion polling and my own contact with

Iraqis from across the ethnic and religious spectrum, most Iraqis dislike the U.S.

occupation, but they regard it as more than a necessary evil. Because of the fears

I have just described, and because they are realistic about the state of their country,

the vast majority of Iraqis know that it is vital for American Forces to remain in

Iraq for the foreseeable future because the alternative is chaos and civil war. However, Iraqis are deeply frustrated by the course of reconstruction. They are frustrated that 2 years after the fall of Baghdad they still face electricity and gasoline

shortages, that much of the country still lacks clean water and sanitation, that unemployment remains so high, and that they still do not feel safe in their own counVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
21

try. This frustration is compounded by their sense that American soldiers go to

great lengths to protect themselves and do little to protect them. Indeed, many

Iraqis say that our obsession with force protection for our own troops comes at their

expense; not only do our force protection measures greatly inconvenience them, but

they will argue that these measures actually decrease their own security. For instance, the long lines to get through security check points around American bases

become prime targeting grounds for insurgents and criminals.

Often times, this frustration gets expressed—especially in badly constructed public opinion polls—by the sentiment that the United States ‘‘should just leave Iraq.’’

However, a bit more digging usually reveals the more subtle and, I have found, far

more common, opinion among Iraqis that they want us to stay, but they just wish

that we were doing more to help them with what really matters to them.

I think it’s probably likely that increasing the number of U.S. Forces in Iraq and

redeploying them to Iraq’s populated areas, and to guard key infrastructure, would

probably be resented by some Iraqis. I think a great many others, however, would

feel that it was a move long overdue. Especially if additional American Forces were

deployed to provide security for the bulk of Iraq’s population, were deployed in

mixed formations with Iraqi units, were deployed on regular foot patrols and encouraged to get to know the residents of the neighborhoods in which they were stationed, all of the evidence suggests that Iraqi attitudes would range from grudging

acceptance to positive relief.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Pollack. Let me mention that all of your testimony, prepared testimony, as well as that

which you have delivered, will be made a part of the record. That

will be true for each of our witnesses. We appreciate the careful

preparation you have given to the hearing and your remarkable

opening statement.

General McCaffrey, would you offer us your thoughts?

STATEMENT OF GEN BARRY R. McCAFFREY, USA (RET.), PRESIDENT, BR McCAFFREY ASSOCIATES, LLC, ARLINGTON, VA

General MCCAFFREY. Well, Senator, let me thank you and Senator Biden and the other members of your committee for the

chance to come down here and share some of these ideas. I very

much appreciate the very determined and active leadership that all

of you have shown on this issue.

I just had a terrific session with Congressman Duncan Hunter

over on the House Armed Services Committee and was able to remind them that Article I of the Constitution, the lead on shaping

and forming our Armed Forces, in particular, lies in the Congress,

not in the administration. So I think the resurgence of attention to

these issues in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror is timely

and warranted.

Let me also say I am appreciative of the opportunity to appear

with Ken Pollack and Tony Cordesman, both of whom have works

that I use in my own classes at West Point and I have great respect for their work and their insights.

I have just returned from another periodic visit in support of our

joint military commanders, GEN John Abizaid, GEN George Casey,

our tactical commander on the ground, LTG John Vines, and a brilliant young officer, LTG Dave Petraeus who, as we have mentioned, has been charged with forming the Iraqi security forces. I

do not know of a more talented and determined person we could

have put in charge of that effort.

Going directly to the first question at hand, the nature of the

counterinsurgency and how well are we doing at it, let me, if I may

come into this from a slightly different perspective. It seems to me

we finally have a strategy. We went in there with no notion at all

22

except to knock down a million-man active and reserve army. We

had no phase two. It was astonishing to me the egregious

misjudgments of Secretary Rumsfeld and some of the civilian leadership in the Pentagon. I think they were warned very categorically, and very directly, by many of us prior to that war that we

would end up with 26 million people and we had not confronted the

coercive security forces of the Saddam regime.

That is, obviously, water under the bridge. I think this brilliant

man John Negroponte and John Abizaid, the two of them have

crafted a policy, a strategy, which to my astonishment, just having

gone in and having compared it to the Jerry Bremer, LTG Rick

Sanchez efforts, appears to be gathering momentum.

That strategy, number one, says create a legitimate Iraqi State.

Get a constitution, get a referendum, get an election, get the

Sunnis back in the political process. I think, collectively, the

Sunnis, to my surprise, have decided that they want to get back

in control of Iraq, but this time they are going to get back in the

political process. I think there is a very high likelihood of political

integration of the Sunnis between now and December, although

clearly this is high risk and nonlinear political development.

I think the second part of our strategy is build the Iraqi security

forces. I think Senator Biden has pointed accurately to some terrific overstatements in the past couple years in which we have

kluged together numbers that included oil derrick security guards

as being the equivalent of trained military forces.

Having said that, I think this fellow Dave Petraeus, backed up

by John Abizaid, our Arabic-speaking, extremely experienced joint

commander, I think we have finally got this thing moving in the

right direction. I do not know what the right number is; 170,000

on paper—my gut instinct was there is probably 60,000 or more of

them out there right now that actually are armed and determined

to create a new Iraqi State. Some parts of Iraq, some parts of

Baghdad, they are actually the lead elements. I think the majority

of operations now in country have at a minimum Iraqi participation, if not Iraqi lead.

So build the ISF; that is the effort. I hope we focus on that,

though, because I consider it grossly underresourced. If we are

spending $5 billion a month fighting an active coalition campaign

and then you look at the level of effort on creating a 250,000-man

force of border patrol, customs agents, police, we are not in the ball

game yet in providing the resources we need. We can talk about

it more, but I wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed: We ought to be

talking about 120 Blackhawk helicopters, about 2,000 up-armored

Humvees, about a couple of thousand M–113 up-armored vehicles.

We are not even close to that. We have got these Iraqi kids out

there with AKs, badly engineered light trucks, no maintenance system, no logistics system, no command and control. We’ve got to get

serious about it.

The one parallel besides the domestic politics that strikes me as

eerily similar to Vietnam is the failure to focus on creating the

Iraqi security forces as the dominant aspect of our strategy.

Petraeus is saying it, Abizaid is saying it, but are we actually giving them the tools they need to do their job?

23

Then third, we are doing economic reconstruction. Somebody

ought to bring before this hearing, there is a brilliant young engineer, BG Tom Bostic. We are about to give him his second star.

The last time I was there the economic reconstruction was a zero.

This time around I saw a couple of thousand projects that are painfully under way, corruption being the single biggest threat to the

economic reconstruction of Iraq.

Then finally, we are doing counterinsurgency. I would take a

slightly different viewpoint than Dr. Pollack. I think the

counterinsurgency is the least important aspect of what we are

doing. Every Iraqi police battalion, commando battalion, is worth

15 U.S. Army or Marine battalions in downtown Baghdad, Talifar,

Ramadi. They can spot somebody who is Syrian. They know things

are out of order.

So I think our primary contribution—the Marines are doing a

brilliant job out in Anbar Province doing spoiling attacks and trying to reestablish the border. But I do not think the

counterinsurgency piece is actually central to what is going on in

Iraq.

I think, essentially, we are so dangerous to screw around with,

meaning ‘‘we’’ the United States Armed Forces, the jihadists, a tiny

element of that struggle, are now targeting Iraqi police and innocent civilians as opposed to going after a Third Infantry Division

platoon in Baghdad.

I would also argue that the massive slaughter of the innocents

that these foreign jihadists are carrying out is the least relevant

part of the problem. They will not bring down the Iraqi Government. They will not prevent the consolidation of a new political system and they darn sure are not a major threat to the U.S. Armed

Forces.

What we have to worry about, it seems to me, is preventing this

civil war that is going on now—that is what we are looking at, is

a low-grade civil war—from spinning out of control, either by lack

of wisdom or premature withdrawal. By next summer, in my judgment—we have got 17 combat brigades there right now—we will be

forced into a drawdown and have 10 brigades or less on the ground

by next summer. The Army and Marines are starting to come apart

under this overly aggressive foreign policy in terms of the resources

we have in national security.

So I thank you for allowing me to offer those initial ideas.

[The prepared statement of General McCaffrey follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GEN BARRY R. MCCAFFREY, USA (RET.), PRESIDENT, BR

MCCAFFREY ASSOCIATES, LLC, ARLINGTON, VA

10 OBSERVATIONS FROM IRAQ: JUNE 2005

1. Superb Status of Armed Forces Unchanged (courage, discipline, leadership).

2. Effectiveness of MNF–I Command and Control and Interagency Process is impressive.

3. Growing effectiveness of the Iraqi Armed Forces and Police: 169,000 troops

fielding 100(+) battalions. (60,000(+) armed and effective.)

4. Sunni Political Participation—they will vote in December.

5. Ineffectiveness of U.S. Public Diplomacy—media and military failure.

6. Sustaining the War—Inadequate Base of Army and Marines.

7. Engineering work in Fallujah—an angry city in ruins.

8. Add Helicopter mobility to ISF: 120(+) Blackhawks.

24

9. Add armor to ISF: 2,000(+) M113A3s Up-armor plus Transparent Turret;

2,000(+) Up-armor Humvees; 500(+) ASUs.

10. General Officer turnover and Impact on Region. (General Abizaid/General

Casey/Lieutenant General Petreaus/Lieutenant General Vines—a collective national

treasure.)

Memorandum for: Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Subject: Trip Report—Kuwait and Iraq; Saturday, 4 June, through Saturday, 11

June 2005

1. Purpose

This memo provides feedback reference visit 4–11 June 2005 by GEN Barry R.

McCaffrey, USA (Ret.), to Kuwait and Iraq.

2. Sources

a. GEN George Casey, Commander, MNF–I—one-on-one discussions and staff

briefings.

b. LTG JR Vines, Commander MNC–I—one-on-one discussions and staff briefings.

c. LTG Dave Petreaus, Commander, Multinational Security Transition Command—one-on-one discussions/briefings.

d. LTG Robin Brims (U.K. Army), Deputy Commanding General of MNF–I—oneon-one discussions.

e. Charge d’Affairs James Jeffrey—office call one-on-one with U.S. Embassy Iraq.

f. MG Tim Donovan (USMC), Chief of Staff, MNF–I—one-on-one discussions.

g. MG Steve Johnson (USMC), Acting Commanding General, II MEF—one-on-one

discussion and staff briefing.

h. BG Peter Palmer and BG John Defreitas—MNF–I Operations and Intel briefings.

i. MG Rusty Findley (USAF) and Colonel Bill Hix—MNF–I Campaign Action Plan

Brief.

j. BG Tom Bostick—Army Corps Engineers. Gulf Region Division Brief.

k. MG William Webster, Commanding General, Multi-National Division Baghdad—General Officer Briefing and 3rd ID Battle Staff briefing.

l. 2nd Brigade 3rd ID Commander and Staff Briefing. Bagdad security operations.

m. Ambassador Ahraf Oazi and U.N. Iraq Delegation—Lunch Meeting with Special Representative to the Secretary General of the U.N. in Iraq.

n. MG Robert Heine, Acting Director IRMO (U.S. Embassy Reconstruction Program Officer)—one-on-one discussion/briefings.

o. MG Hank Stratman—Political-Military-Economic Brief, U.S. Embassy.

p. MG Eldon Bargewell, Joint Contracting—one-on-one discussions.

q. Field Visit. U.S. Marine Infantry Battalion. Fallujah.

r. Field Visit. U.S. Army Mechanized Infantry Battalion. Vicinity Tikrit.

s. Briefing Iraqi Army Brigade Commander. Fallujah.

t. Briefing by U.S. Army Embedded Training Team. Fallujah ISF Army Brigade.

u. Briefing USMC Embedded Trainer. Fallujah Police.

v. Briefing U.S. Army Captain. Embedded Training Team. ISF Army Infantry

Battalion—Vicinity Tikrit.

w. Briefing Iraqi Army Colonel. ISF Training Center. Vicinity Tikrit.

x. Lunch discussions. Iraqi Army Battalion XO, S3, SGM. Vicinity Tikrit.

y. Live Fire Demo/Briefing. Iraqi Army Commando Battalion.

z. Demo/Briefing Iraqi Police ERU (Emergency Response Unit). Baghdad.

aa. Field Sensing Session. U.S. Army Combat Division. Fifteen U.S. Army Company Grade Officers.

bb. Field Sensing Session. U.S. Army Combat Battalion. Junior Enlisted Soldiers.

cc. Field Sensing Sessions. U.S. Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine Senior NCOs.

dd. Discussion Sessions. Two U.S. Contractor Teams (Logistics and Security)—

Senior Leadership.

3. The Bottom Line—Observations from Operation Iraqi Freedom: June 2005

1st—U.S. Military Forces in Iraq are superb. Our Army-Marine ground combat

units with supporting Air and Naval Power are characterized by quality military

leadership, solid discipline, high morale, and enormous individual and unit courage.

Unit effectiveness is as good as we can get. This is the most competent and battlewise force in our Nation’s history. They are also beautifully cared for by the chainof-command—and they know it. (Food, A/C sleeping areas, medical care, mental

health care, home leave, phone/e-mail contact with families, personal equipment, individual and unit training, targeted economic incentives in the battle area, visibility

25

of tactical leadership, home station care for their families, access to news information, etc.)

2nd—The point of the U.S. war effort is to create legitimate and competent Iraqi

national, provincial, and municipal governance. We are at a turning point in the

coming 6 months. The momentum is now clearly with the Iraqi Government and the

coalition security forces. The Sunnis are coming into the political process. They will

vote in December. Unlike the Balkans—the Iraqis want this to succeed. Foreign

fighters are an enormously lethal threat to the Iraqi civilian population, the ISF,

and coalition forces in that order. However, they will be an increasing political disaster for the insurgency. Over time they are actually adding to the credibility of the

emerging Iraqi Government. We should expect to see a dwindling number of competent, suicide capable jihadist. Those who come to Iraq—will be rapidly killed in

Iraq. The picture by next summer will be unfavorable to recruiting foreigners to die

in Iraq while attacking fellow Arabs.

• The initial U.S./U.K. OIF intervention took down a criminal regime and left a

nation without an operational state.

• The transitional Bremer-appointed Iraqi Government created a weak state of

waning factions.

• The January 2005 Iraqi elections created the beginnings of legitimacy and have

fostered a supportive political base to create the new Iraqi Security Forces.

• The August Iraqi Constitutional Referendum and the December–January election and formation of a new government will build the prototype for the evolution of an effective, law-based Iraqi State with a reliable security force.

• January thru September 2006 will be the peak period of the insurgency—and

the bottom rung of the new Iraq. The positive trend lines following the January

2006 elections, if they continue, will likely permit the withdrawal of substantial

U.S. combat forces by late summer of 2006. With 250,000 Iraqi security forces

successfully operating in support of a government which includes substantial

Sunni participation—the energy will start rapidly draining out of the insurgency.

3rd—The Iraqi security forces are now a real and hugely significant factor. LTG

Dave Petreaus has done a brilliant job with his supporting trainers.

• 169,000 Army and police exist in various stages of readiness. They have uniforms, automatic weapons, body armor, some radios, some armor, light trucks,

and battalion-level organization. At least 60,000 are courageous Patriots who

are actively fighting. By next summer—250,000 Iraqi troops and 10 division

HQS will be the dominant security factor in Iraq.

• However, much remains to be done. There is no maintenance or logistics system. There is no national command and control. Corruption is a threat factor

of greater long-range danger than the armed insurgency. The insurgents have

widely infiltrated the ISF. The ISF desperately needs more effective, long-term

NCO and Officer training.

• Finally, the ISF absolutely must have enough helicopter air mobility—120+

Black Hawk UH 60s—and a substantial number of armored vehicles to lower

casualties and give them a competitive edge over the insurgents they will fight.

(2,000 up-armor Humvee’s, 500 ASVs, and 2,000 M113A3s with add-on armor

package.)

4. Top CENTCOM Vulnerabilities

1st—Premature drawdown of U.S. ground forces driven by dwindling U.S. domestic political support and the progressive deterioration of Army and Marine manpower. (In particular, the expected meltdown of the Army National Guard and Army

Reserve in the coming 36 months.)

2nd—Alienation of the U.S. Congress or the American people caused by Iraqi public ingratitude and corruption.

3rd—Political ineptitude of Shi’a civil leadership that freezes out the Sunnis and

creates a civil war during our drawdown.

4th—‘‘The other shoe’’—a war with North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, or Cuba

that draws away U.S. military forces and political energy.

5th—The loss or constraint of our logistics support bases in Kuwait. Clearly we

need constant diplomatic attention and care to this vital ally. If Kuwait became unstable or severely alienated to U.S. military objectives in the region, then our posture in Iraq would be placed in immediate fatal peril.

6th—Open intervention by Iranian intelligence or military forces to support rogue

Shi’a Iraqi insurgency. (Assassination of Sustani—armed rebellion by Sadr.)

7th—Continued undermanning and too rapid turnover in State Department interagency representation in Iraq.

26

8th—Lack of continuity in CENTCOM strategic and operational senior leadership.

The CENTCOM military leadership we now have is a collective national treasure.

• General Abizaid’s value to the war effort based on his credibility to U.S. Military Forces—and ability to communicate and relate to the Iraqi emergent leadership—cannot be overstated. • The combination of a three-star tactical Headquarters (LTG John Vines is the

most experienced and effective operational battle leader we have produced in

a generation)—and an in-country four-star strategic commander (GEN George

Casey) has improved the situation from the overwhelmed, underresourced

Bremer-Sanchez ad-hoc arrangement. • LTG Dave Petreaus has done a superb job building the ISF. Relationships are

everything in this campaign. We need to lock in our senior team for the coming

24 months. • Suggest that the three key U.S./coalition military HQS of Casey-Petreaus-Vines

need to stop unit rotation and go to individual replacement rotation. • The very senior U.S. military leadership needs their families based in a Kuwait

compound with periodic visits authorized. (We did this with General Abrams

and his senior leaders during the final phase of Vietnam.)

5. The Enemy Threat

1st—The Iraqi insurgency threat is enormously more complex than Vietnam.

• There we faced a single opposing ideology; known enemy leaders; a template

enemy organizational structure; an external sanctuary which was vital to the

insurgency to bring in fighters, ammunition, resources; and relative security in

urban areas under Allied/Vietnamese government control.

• Iraq is much tougher. The enemy forces in this struggle are principally Sunni

irredentists—but there is also a substantial criminal class determined to murder, rob, kidnap, and create chaos.

• We also face a small but violent foreign jihadist terrorist element. These terrorists do not depend on foreign sanctuary. They can arm themselves with the incredible mass of munitions and weapons scattered from one end of Iraq to the

other.

• Finally, Iraq is encircled by six bordering nations—all of whom harbor ill-will

for the struggling democratic Iraqi State.

2nd—On the positive side of the ledger:

• High Sunni voting turnout and political participation in December will likely

set the conditions for the downhill slide of the insurgency.

• The insurgency can no longer mass against coalition forces with units greater

than squad level—they all get killed in short order by very aggressive U.S./U.K.

combat forces. The insurgents have been forced to principally target the weak

links—the Iraqi police and innocent civilians. This will be a counterproductive

strategy in the mid-term. It has been forced on them by the effective

counterinsurgency operations and information operations of coalition forces.

• Insurgents now have a reduced capability to attack coalition forces by direct

fire: 80 percent (+) of the attacks are carried out with standoff weapons or suicide bombings (mortars, rockets, IEDs).

• Suicide IED attack is enormously effective. However, it will soon likely become

a fragile tool. The jihadists will begin to run short of human bombs. Most are

killed or die while carrying out missions which are marginally effective. This

must be a prime enemy vulnerability for coalition information warfare operations.

• We must continue to level with the American people. We still have a 5-year

fight facing us in Iraq.

3rd—The Fallujah Situation:

• The city has huge symbolic importance throughout Mideast.

• Unrealistic expectations were raised on how rapidly the coalition could rebuild.

• The city appears to be an angry disaster. Money doesn’t rebuild infrastructure—

bulldozers and workers and cement do. The coalition needs an Iraqi/coalition effort principally executed by military engineers—and thousands of Iraqi workers—to rebuild the city. We need a ‘‘Pierre L’Enfant’’ of Fallujah.

• Police stations are planned but barely started. The train station is mined and

the trains do not function. Roads must be paved. We need to eliminate major

signs of U.S.-caused war damage, etc.

6. Coalition Public Diplomacy Policy is a Disaster

1st—The U.S. media is putting the second team in Iraq with some exceptions. Unfortunately, the situation is extremely dangerous for journalists. The working condiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
27

tions for a reporter are terrible. They cannot travel independently of U.S. military

forces without risking abduction or death. In some cases, the press has degraded

to reporting based on secondary sources, press briefings which they do not believe,

and alarmist video of the aftermath of suicide bombings obtained from Iraqi employees of unknown reliability.

2nd—Our unbelievably competent, articulate, objective, and courageous Battalion,

Brigade, and Division Commanders are not on TV. These commanders represent an

Army-Marine Corps which is rated as the most trusted institution in America by

every poll.

3rd—We are not aggressively providing support (transportation, security, food, return of film to an upload site, etc.) to reporters to allow them to follow the course

of the war.

4th—Military leaders on the ground are talking to people they trust instead of

talking to all reporters who command the attention of the American people. (We

need to educate and support AP, Reuters, Gannet, Hearst, the Washington Post, the

New York Times, etc.)

7. Summary

• This is the darkness before dawn in the efforts to construct a viable Iraqi State.

The enterprise was badly launched—but we are now well organized and beginning to develop successful momentum. The future outcomes are largely a function of the degree to which Iraqi men and women will overcome fear and step

forward to seize the leadership opportunity to create a new future. • We face some very difficult days in the coming 2–5 years. In my judgment, if

we retain the support of the American people—we can achieve our objectives

of creating a law-based Iraqi State which will be an influencing example on the

entire region. • A successful outcome would potentially usher in a very dramatically changed

environment throughout the Middle East and signal in this region the end of

an era of incompetent and corrupt government which fosters frustration and violence on the part of much of the population. • It was an honor and a very encouraging experience to visit CENTCOM Forces

in Iraq and Kuwait and see the progress achieved by the bravery and dedication

of our military forces.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, General.

Dr. Cordesman.

STATEMENT OF DR. ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN, ARLEIGH A.

BURKE FELLOW IN STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC

AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, let me express my thanks as well to

the committee for the opportunity to appear here. Let me also

begin with a caution. Some 30 years ago at the collapse of the

forces in Vietnam, the ARVN, I was the Director of Intelligence Assessment and I was asked to do an analysis of our intelligence on

both the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese and the ARVN.

As part of that assessment, we prepared two chronologies. One

was a chronology of all the brilliant ideas we had implemented to

try to defeat the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. The other was

a chronology of all the brilliant ideas we had to try to train and

fix the ARVN forces.

I do not believe there is any classic approach to counterinsurgency. I think people write very interesting classic books

about the issue, and it is very easy to put forward suggestions

when you are 7,000 miles away—as long as you do not have to figure out how much time is involved, the disruptive effect on current

plans, how many men are involved, what the cost is, whether the

end result will be interoperable or standardized, what the political

and internal costs are.

In short, I think you need to be very careful about these options,

because as long as they are a strategic generalization it can always

28

sound very convincing. The problem is we have a long history of

going from generalization to failed practice.

Let me be more specific about the three elements of the option,

that is option one. It is not an option; it is two or three very different suggestions. I do not believe that there is any practical

chance of creating safe zones. Watching what has happened in

Baghdad, in Mosul, and elsewhere, the truth is that to create security simply takes too many men, even in the areas which are relatively stable provinces. As you look at the history of bombings, attacks, and sabotage, the fact is we are talking a vast amount of effort.

I do not believe that we are unpopular because we have failed

to secure Iraq. In the Oxford Analytica polls, the early polls of our

presence in Iraq, some 67 percent of the Arab Sunnis polled saw

the invasion as illegitimate. The figure was roughly 37 percent of

Shiites. Well over a third, even then, of Arab Sunnis supported attacks on coalition forces. Then it was 11 percent of the Shiites.

If we are going to deal with these problems, it is going to have

to be by pursuing the strategy that General McCaffrey has summarized. It is by creating Iraqi forces, Iraqi politics, and Iraqi governments that can establish security. It is going to have to be a combination of denying the insurgents sanctuaries and areas to operate

in and expanding operations in the areas that are threatened.

From what I have seen, we also need to recognize that these differ

sharply by city and by governorate. This is not something that can

be dealt with in terms of generalizations.

I somewhat disagree with the point that Senator Biden has

raised. He is perfectly correct in saying that when we talk about

172,000 trained and equipped troops many of these are not combat

capable to act on their own. But as we saw during the election,

even forces that are not particularly capable in terms of standing

on their own can perform useful functions. Out of those, out of the

172,000 today, 63 to 64,000 are regular police, another 30,000 are

special security forces, which provide area security in the so-called

safe zones. Those units are just becoming ready, and in my written

testimony I outline the pattern of readiness.

They will take probably a year at a minimum to reach critical

mass and readiness. Yet, they are moving toward that. As they expand and develop capability, they will provide the kind of security

in the areas that we can use these forces in while the army units

and other units can begin to move into the west.

But I would absolutely agree with General McCaffrey, none of

this is going to happen unless there is an inclusive political structure that brings a large number of Sunnis into it, as well as the

kind of sticks which make it clear to the Sunni insurgents, who can

be persuaded to change their mind, they cannot continue to operate

safely and easily and have sanctuaries.

I also would have to say that Fallujah, Ramadi, and the rest,

even parts of Baghdad, or for that matter Basra and Mosul, demonstrate that it is not enough to have politics. You also need to

have governance. One of the basic problems we have is it is not

just the United States which cannot occupy space. Today if Iraqi

troops go in, far too often no governance follows them up, or provides a structure of functioning government to supplement the

29

presence of forces. That is critical, because for all of the skills and

talent we bring, Americans rote at 6-month, 3-month, 9-month, and

1-year intervals. There is a major shortage of civilians to supplement the U.S. military in civil-military and political areas that I

do not believe is correctable. The truth of the matter is not only

are we seen as occupiers and crusaders in far too many areas, we

simply lack continuity and area expertise. We simply are not there

long enough to achieve the kind of effectiveness that only Iraqis

can achieve.

Now let me answer two other questions that the committee has

asked. Should the coalition attempt to take advantage of divisions

within the insurgents, e.g, the Sunni nationalists versus the foreign jihadists? I think this begins with a wrong assumption. Politically it is all very well to blame the most extreme bombings on foreign insurgents. People have said there are no such Iraqi bombings. When I was there people talked about 10 percent as being

Iraq. When I then asked how many of these bombings could you

really quantify as to what country they came from and who the

bombers really were, the fact is we had no basis for making these

judgments.

Now, the committee may be able to get more detail in executive

session, but we are making, as we have in the past, far too many

generalizations about the nature of the insurgency. There is the

same filtering process going from the field to the center through to

Washington and then into the political structure, that I saw in

Vietnam, in Somalia, or for that matter Lebanon.

There has to be much better transmission of the hard data and

intelligence and far fewer sweeping generalizations. Having said

that, it is not the United States that can take the lead in negotiating between Sunni and Shiite and Kurd. General McCaffrey

pointed out—and I think this is the key—if Iraq is to work in any

form, there must be an Iraqi political structure which is inclusive.

We need to give as much effort as we can to helping the Iraqis become inclusive, and then use as much influence as we can to keep

them inclusive.

I saw leaders in Iraq committed to inclusiveness, but I saw people under them, Sunnis fearing being purged, Shiites wanting to

purge, Kurds wishing to basically separate themselves from the

government.

Senator Biden raised the risk of civil war. It is very real. This

is a very fragile political structure. I do not believe that the constitution will perform miracles, even if it is passed in a referendum,

and I think the political process is going to take as long as making

Iraqi forces effective, and it is going to take United States focus on

that.

Similarly, when we talk about, can a political solution be reached

with the Sunni insurgents and could this lead to Sunni cooperation;

yes. But here again, let me say that political inclusiveness is something the Iraqis have to do, and from what I have seen a lot of the

reason that Sunnis want to be in the political process. First, they

see that the election has put Kurds and Shiites in control of the

oil money and the power, and second, they see themselves in an

area where, as the less extreme Sunni groups, they are not winVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ning. There is ever more turmoil and uncertainty and instability

and they are not secure from United States and Iraqi forces.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Cordesman follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN, ARLEIGH A. BURKE FELLOW

IN STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, DC

INTRODUCTION

One key issue in answering questions is whether they are the right questions to

ask. Let me begin my testimony by stating that the ‘‘options’’ and questions the

committee has asked us to address are not necessarily the right options and questions. There are five major reasons why this is the case.

• First, the questions as presented in the form of the four ‘‘options’’ do not really

describe options, and include mixes of different issues and questions. As a result,

the answers to each option have to mix positive and negative responses that are

not directly connected. In my responses, I have chosen to address each question

separately.

• Second, from a purely military perspective, the committee does not address what

may be the most important option, or set of issues, affecting the current U.S. effort in Iraq: Whether the mix of Iraqi military, regular police (those on the

street or in stations, in traffic or on highways, and at the borders), and police

units (Emergency Response Unit and Special Police; the latter include Special

Police Commandos, Public Order Brigades, and the Mechanized Police Brigade)

that is gradually coming online in combat-ready form will be effective in replacing coalition forces, how soon this is likely, and what kind of, and when, reductions in U.S. and allied forces will be possible.

The coalition may have made serious mistakes in developing Iraqi forces in

the past, but a recent trip to Iraq indicates that it is now beginning to have

far more success. If current plans are successfully implemented, the total number of Iraqi military, regular police, and police units that can honestly be described as ‘‘trained and equipped’’ should rise from 96,000 in September 2004,

and 172,000 today, to 230,000 forces by the end of December 2005, and 270,000

by mid-2006. The December total could be a bit lower due to the extension of

the police basic course from 8 to 10 weeks, one of several initiatives to raise

the quality of the police and military forces.

There will be a good balance of military, regular police, and police units.

Plans call for about 85,000 military in the MOD by December, and 145,000 special police and police in the MOI. The 85,000 in the military will include about

83,000 in the army (including the ‘‘national’’ forces originally envisioned, along

with the former National Guard; also including combat support, service support

and training units). The remaining manpower will include the Special Operations Forces and the Air Force and Navy. About 100,000 of the personnel in

the MOI will be station/traffic/patrol police; in addition, nearly 20,000 more will

be in the Special Police and the Emergency Response Unit. The remainder covers the Border Forces, the Highway Patrol, and Dignitary Protection. By June

2006, the total number in the Iraqi Security Forces (military, regular police, and

police units) will go to approximately 270K, The MOD will have about 90,000,

and the MOI will have about 180,000—provided that there is no change in the

currently planned level of regular police.

Included in the numbers of individuals trained and equipped will be significant numbers of combat battalions. In July 2004, just after the Iraqi resumption

of sovereignty, neither the Iraqi military nor the Iraqi police had any battalions

that could be deployed nationally. Under current plans, the numbers of combat

battalions in the MOD will total around 106 by December of this year. On top

of this, Iraq will have 35 brigade and 10 division headquarters providing command and control of MOD forces. Of these headquarters elements, some will be

relatively mature, but at least a small number of each will still be relatively

‘‘young’’ or inexperienced.

In fact, much of the force generation effort will have shifted to giving Iraqi

combat forces the combat support and combat service support units they need.

By December, Iraq will have fielded four Motorized Transportation Regiments

(working on the goal of one per division). Iraq will also have generated six bomb

disposal companies (with the goal of one per division). In addition, nearly 70

Headquarters and Service Companies will have been generated (although some

31

equipment shortages will remain). The goal for these Headquarters and Service

Companies is one per battalion. There will be slightly under 30 combat battalions in the police units of the MOI.

By June 2006, the numbers of MOD battalions is planned to reach 114. The

number of the MOI battalions will remain unchanged, although their training

will have been improved through recently initiated advanced programs.

Iraqi planning for Strategic Infrastructure Battalions (to protect oil infrastructure initially and possibly other infrastructure later) is not mature enough

yet to give a solid estimate of how many of those forces will be available on any

given timeline. The MNF is, however, working with the MOD to help ‘‘professionalize’’ the first four or five of these units.

• Third, the committee has chosen to separate its military options and questions

from the need for an overall strategy to deal with Iraq. In practice, the most important options for military success may not involve changes in military forces

and tactics. This is a political struggle. No purely military options can substitute for success in creating an effective political structure that is both inclusive and protects the rights of minorities, representing each major ethnic and

sectarian faction. No military option can substitute for the creation of effective

patterns of governance at the national, regional, and local level—including the

presence of both police and civil authorities, especially a fair judicial system and

humanitarian detention facilities. No option based on force can substitute for

economic security; dollars are as important as bullets. No American use of force

can be decoupled from public diplomacy that convinces Iraqis that the United

States and its allies will phase out their presence as Iraqi forces become effective. (Note.—Careful with this one. Seems to suggest some one-for-one tradeoff

as Iraqi forces become effective, coalition forces can go home, but only if the security success has been accompanied by political and economic success.)

• Fourth, for the same reasons, the committee ignores the most critical weakness

in U.S. policy and programs in Iraq that currently affects the prospects for military success. The United States seems to have succeeded in restructuring its effort to create effective Iraqi forces. Senior U.S. officials have pressed the Iraqis

hard to create an inclusive political system and there are clear signs of limited

success, particularly in the Sunni representation on the Constitution Drafting

Committee. Although without any specific timeline, President Bush has said

that the United States will eventually withdraw all of its military forces from

Iraq, and this, at least, seems to reassure Iraqis that the United States has no

intention of permanently occupying Iraq or maintaining military bases.

In contrast, much of the U.S. economic aid effort is an incompetent and ineffective nightmare. While the reprogramming of aid to meet short-term security

needs has served a vital purpose in substituting dollars for bullets, and some

projects have been successful, far too much money has been spent and is being

spent on U.S.-conceived efforts that pour money into U.S. and foreign contracts,

spend that money outside Iraq or on overhead and security, and do not lead

Iraq toward effective economic development. This spending has failed to create

jobs and investment activity that has a meaningful macroeconomic scale or that

will act to meet the needs of key sectors and governorates. The USAID and Department of Defense aid planning and contracting effort is a self-inflicted wound

that needs to be replaced by Iraqi planning and management as soon as possible.

• Finally, the committee’s ‘‘options’’ do not address the military problem of shaping

Iraqi forces that can affordably deal with both the risk of prolonged low-level

terrorism and insurgency, and the need to defend Iraq’s borders. This need, for

continued coalition aid that goes beyond counterterrorism and counterinsurgency capability cannot be ignored while the present ‘‘war’’ is being won.

It is a critical issue with long lead times that must be addressed as soon as

possible in terms of shaping mid- and long-term Iraqi force development. Decisions need to be taken about the level of Iraqi forces that the Iraqi budget can

actually afford, and U.S. aid and advisory plans to support this effort. These

issues were not critical while Iraqi forces were small and light; they are critical

as they become large and seek to acquire armor, artillery, aircraft, and ships.

Option 1—Should the coalition revise its current counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq?

At this point in time, the key issues affecting strategy are not military, but politics, governance, aid, and economics. The United States and the Iraqi Government

have largely ‘‘cast the die’’ in military terms, and the issue is not one of strategy

as much as finding ways to ensure that the development of Iraqi forces will actually

succeed.

32

The committee’s questions under this option do, however, raise important individual issues:

• Should the coalition and Iraqi security forces create safe zones, and put more

emphasis on fighting street crime and organized crime, deemphasizing the hunt

for insurgents, so Iraqi economic and political life can take root? Such an approach ignores the fact that Iraqi forces are already being developed into three

major components: Military, regular police, and police units. It is true that the

fact that insurgents and terrorists can attack almost anywhere in Iraq, even

when the coalition and/or Iraqi forces are conducting operations in the border

area or in so-called secure areas. Such coalition and Iraqi military and security

efforts simply make it harder for them to do so.

However, this situation would be much worse if major ongoing efforts were

not being made to defeat them directly in the areas where they have the most

strength and to deny them sanctuaries. Furthermore, reductions in present

counterinsurgency operations outside ‘‘safe areas’’ will tend to cede control to

the most extreme and violent groups and make it even harder to include Sunnis

in such areas in Iraq’s political process and economic development. • Should the coalition attempt to take advantage of divisions within the insurgents—e.g. Sunni nationalists vs. foreign jihadists? The answer is ‘‘Yes’’; but

only as a secondary and supportive endeavor to the efforts made by the Iraqi

Government, and with great care to avoid being seen as somehow dictating government actions or still acting as an occupier. This question puts the lead role

in the wrong place. The United States should—and does—encourage the Iraqi

Government to be as inclusive as possible and to bring as many Sunnis into the

political process as possible; this should not be a U.S.-led or coalition-led strategy. The coalition may need to make some tactical accommodations with insurgents, but any major negotiations must be led by the Iraqis. • Can a political solution be reached with Sunni insurgents, and could this lead

to Sunni cooperation in isolating, capturing, or killing the international insurgents? The basic assumption in this question is wrong. Tying Islamic extremist

groups in Iraq to foreigners, and to al-Qaeda and Zarqawi, addresses only one

part of the threat and ignores the large part—perhaps the true nature—of the

threat. The most dangerous ‘‘international insurgents’’ can operate in Iraq because they are part of Islamist extremist groups with large Iraqi membership.

The key will be to split the more moderate and pragmatic Iraqi Sunni groups

from such extremist groups, and give them an incentive to support government

operations against such extremist groups or take action on their own.

Option 2—Could the United States successfully press its allies to increase aid and

provide manpower to protect Iraq’s borders and prevent foreign infiltration?

The main goal should be to increase the presence of Iraqi forces in securing the

border and in providing security to governance in troubled areas. The MNC–I,

MNSTC–I, and MOD are already working to help Iraq regain control of its borders

in the tough spots (primarily the border with Syria) as soon as possible. This will

take time and is already in its early stages. But reconstruction of the border forts

in those areas, generation of additional border guards, generation of additional Iraqi

Army units, and support for the Ports of Entry (where Department of Homeland Security Border Support Teams are helpful) are all underway.

Border Transition Teams will begin linking up with Iraqi Border Guard units in

the weeks ahead as well; they’re already in Iraq and completing their final prep.

This is a large and complex effort, but it is at least underway and will be very important to reduce the number of foreign suicide bombers and movement of funds/

leaders. It will also have major impact on smuggling, which saps some of Iraq’s economic power. It will also require additional equipment and technology, such as

backscatter x-ray machines (already finding contraband at the Ports of Entry) and

the PISCES system (which requires significant database development to be effective

in the mid-term).

In contrast, it is unrealistic to think that other coalition members or nations are

going to help in the border areas that are really contested as the following answers

to the committee’s detailed questions indicate:

• Is there a reasonable prospect that allied or friendly governments would agree

to increase their military participation for this purpose, which is perceived as

less dangerous than patrolling Iraqi hotspots? The answer is ‘‘No.’’ It would take

very large forces to make even the slightest difference, and foreign countries are

no more likely to deploy troops to remote areas than elsewhere. Moreover,

small, isolated deployments would rapidly become targets, while staying in

large bases would be pointless. As various coalition partners end their role in

Iraq, some say they will be willing to turn their forces from combat to training.

33

1Three detailed papers are available: ‘‘Staying the Course? What Can be Done in Iraq,’’ ‘‘Iraq’s

Evolving Insurgency,’’ ‘‘Iraqi Force Development: Can Iraqi Forces Do the Job?’’ All can be found

in PDF format in the ‘‘Iraq Briefing Book’’ section of the CSIS Web site at www.csis.org/features/iraq.cfm.

This means that it may be realistic to preserve some contributions that are now

planned to decline, but it is unrealistic to assume that any such forces would

go to ‘‘hot’’ areas on the border.

• What would the United States have to do to convince allies to participate in this

manner? Would this free up significant numbers of U.S. troops for other duties,

or would the gains be insignificant? The United States would have to form a

‘‘Coalition of the Mercenary’’ or the ‘‘Compelled,’’ and either drag unwilling allies into the mission or pay them off. The savings in U.S. manpower would be

negligible at best. The United States would have to provide secure logistic support and rapid deployment capabilities to protect such units.

• Can foreign infiltration of Iraq be stopped by enhancing border security? Some

reductions may be possible, but most infiltrators consist of men, not supplies.

Border security and customs posts will remain corrupt, infiltration can shift to

different border points, and better covers and documentation will always allow

infiltrators to enter the country. Attempts to provide reasonable security at the

borders should continue, but the primary battle, in any case, will be inside Iraq

and not at the border.

• If foreign infiltration of Iraq could be stopped or slowed significantly, how much

impact would that have on the insurgency? It would have an impact over time,

particularly on suicide bombings, but it could just as easily lead to a widening

of the attacks on targets outside Iraq. The question may assume that Iraq has

become the target of foreign Sunni Islamist extremists. It has not. It is a target,

along with many other countries as the fighting in Afghanistan and the rest of

Central Asia, infiltration into countries like Saudi Arabia, and the London and

Madrid bombings clearly demonstrate.

Option 3—Should the United States reprioritize the training schedule of Iraqi forces

and support more training in other countries?

A detailed analysis of the current MNF–I and MNSTC–I effort to train and equip

Iraqi forces is attached, and it is requested that this be included in the record.1 It

indicates that this effort has been comprehensively reorganized over the course of

the last year, that it now includes far better readiness standards and significant allied contributions, and the two main issues to be addressed are providing the full

range of civilian advisors needed to supplement the military in training the police

forces, and how Iraqi forces should acquire armor and other heavier weaponry over

time.

Progress in unit generation is necessarily much slower than progress in creating

trained and equipped individuals. According to some press reports, the Iraqi Army

had a total of 81 operating combat battalions by late May 2005, but a new evaluation matrix developed by MNF–I rated only three of those battalions at the top level

of readiness and capability. (At the top level of readiness, a unit is capable of independent operations without coalition support). [Bradley Graham, ‘‘A Report Card on

Iraqi Troops,’’ Washington Post, May 18, 2005, p. A10.] Only one of 26 brigade headquarters had such a rating. However, many other combat battalions were still contributing to the fight, either with some support provided by coalition forces (the second level of readiness) or fighting alongside coalition forces (the third level).

If one included all of the special police battalions, the press reported that the total

force had risen from 81 battalions to 101, but the number of battalions rated in the

top category of mission capability only rose from 3 to 5. Although the other operating combat battalions were contributing to the counterinsurgency to varying degrees, MNF–I concluded that it needed to make further major increases in the number of U.S. advisory or ‘‘transition teams’’ embedded in Iraqi units and was seeking

to deploy rapidly 2,500 more soldiers by mid-June.

Coalition leaders are concerned that detailed reports on the ranking of Iraqi forces

will be used by insurgents to focus attacks on weaker units, but coalition experts

summarized the status of Iraqi forces in mid-June as follows: No special police units

and less than a handful of army units were rated ‘‘fully capable’’ of independent

counterinsurgency operations. Some 40 percent of the special police units and 20

percent of army units were rated capable of leading operations with coalition support. Some 40 percent of the special police units and 45 percent of army units were

rated capable of conducting counterinsurgency operations when ‘‘fighting alongside’’

coalition units. Less than 10 percent of the special police units and 20 percent of

34

army units were rated as ‘‘forming’’ or incapable of conducting counterinsurgency

operations.

Put differently, more than 60 Iraqi Army combat battalions could then perform

a counterinsurgency role when operating with coalition forces; more than 20 combat

battalions were capable of counterinsurgency operations, but needed some specific

coalition support to do so. In the case of special police forces—which included the

Public Order Brigades, the Mechanized Police Brigade, and the Special Police Commando Brigades, there were roughly 27 battalions authorized and 14 actually operational, all of them either fighting alongside or with coalition support. A long way

from a perfect force, but a vast improvement over a single active battalion in July

2004.

Looking toward the future, the focus of Iraqi and MNF efforts has clearly shifted

from force formation to force effectiveness, and the MNSTC–I goal is to ‘‘graduate’’

most remaining units from basic/small unit training at Level 3 (‘‘Fighting Alongside’’

coalition forces). Their progression to Level 2 or Level 1 will follow on varying

timelines. Some ‘‘graduated’’ units may still be assessed as Level 4 (Forming), but

they should be the exception.

• Are Iraqi troops being deployed before they are ready in an attempt to demonstrate progress? This may have been the case through the spring of 2004. It

no longer seems to be an issue. As is noted above, far better readiness and

training standards are being applied.

• Should there be a more gradual training schedule to allow Iraqi units to develop

greater cohesion and capabilities before exposing them to hostilities? Iraqi forces

are deployed into more-demanding missions only on the basis of their actual

performance, as reflected by their transition readiness assessment. The coalition

transition teams that guide them through their initial training and equipping

remain with them as they transition to operational status and as they are slowly introduced to more-demanding missions over time. Keeping them in training

status would make things worse, not better. Their involvement in appropriate

operations will give them needed experience and ensure that leaders and other

ranks are competent and active while they build practical cohesion and capability.

• Should the number of Iraqi security forces be increased by integrating the Badr

brigade (an anti-Saddam Shi’a militia group), the Peshmurga (Kurdish forces),

or other local militias into the Iraqi Army or National Guard? Would the political ramifications of such integration outweigh the security benefits? The problem lies in the word ‘‘integration.’’ If it means properly vetted, fully trained, and

dispersed as individuals into a wide range of units to create truly national

forces, the answer is ‘‘Yes.’’ In the real world, Iraqi forces have been recruiting

militia members as individuals for almost a year—as part of the Transition and

Reintegration of Militias program. Success in these endeavors has been mixed.

Total dissolution of militias will take time and serious negotiations and will

probably be successful only when the political parties see the militias as no

longer required because the central government is providing adequate security.

MNF–I and the Iraqi Government have avoided bringing militias in as entire

elements for very good reasons. The temptation of using militias as an expedient short-term measure to establish control somewhere in Iraq has a major

long-range downside. The biggest single challenge to the Iraqi leaders is to get

all ethnic groups, political parties, religious sects, etc., to work together as part

of the Iraqi State and political processes. This means militias should not be legitimized and that the government should retain the monopoly on the legitimate use of power.

There may be a need to find some mission for selected militia units that will

ensure they do not become involved in ethnic/sectarian struggles, but Iraq does

not need low-grade ethnic and sectarian forces. It needs effective national

forces. Furthermore, not every militia has the goal of remaining a paramilitary

force. For example, the Badr Corps (not Brigade) is trying to be known as the

Badr Organization and to shed its militia image for a political role. This process

may be simply rhetorical, and has certainly not been completed, but offers the

possibility of another approach to the problem.

• Can we increase the number of troops trained in other countries, such as France,

Jordan, and Egypt? Or will these countries provide training only if the cost is

picked up by the United States? Iraq now has at least 10 major training facilities, the better part of a training brigade, special skill training elements/schools,

and countless ranges, shooting houses, and other training facilities—and they

prefer to train their troops at home, as it’s cheaper, done by Iraqis, and avoids

expensive/dangerous movements.

35

There already are typically well over 3,200 Iraqis out of country in training

at any given time. Iraqis are taking advantage of training offers that are fully

funded and provide the training they really want and can’t do for themselves

yet, such as the German training of Iraqi engineer unit cadre and trainers,

which now train Iraqis at Tadji in the UAE. They have other individuals all

over the world in short and long courses. But the movement of large elements

is costly, difficult, and time-consuming to the Iraqis.

The United States can always push for additional increases, and might have

limited success (probably only token). The end result in terms of problems in

interoperability and men simply seeking good foreign assignments might, however, outweigh any benefits. Any apparent cost savings would probably be mythical in the case of Egypt or Jordan; they would end up being paid for by other

aspects of U.S. foreign aid. • Will we be diverting training assets in Egypt and Jordan that would be better

devoted to training Palestinian security forces? The Jordanian training facilities

are operating now at essentially full capacity. Egyptian capabilities require onthe-scene study. • Should we put more emphasis on training Iraqi military officers in the United

States in an effort to create professional military leadership? The MNF–I and

MNSTC–I are pushing hard to create lasting institutions in Iraq. These programs are having considerable success acquiring Iraqi instructors, and being

tailored to local combat conditions. It is always valuable to train cadres in the

United States to ensure that foreign military officers understand U.S. concepts

and values, but this seems a doubtful way of having much impact on Iraq’s

near-term force capabilities. Some limited amounts of training are being accomplished in various elements of the U.S. professional military education and

training system, but the effects of such training may not be felt for years.

Option 4—Should the President change the force structure of the U.S. presence in

Iraq?

If the President has the magic wand necessary to create new forces, and is willing

to ignore the impact on our All-Volunteer Force structure of increasing deployments,

he should make three immediate changes in the U.S. force posture in Iraq. First,

he should deploy far more military specialists in civil-military and counterinsurgency operations with suitable language and area skills. Second, he should extend all tours for the duration so that U.S. troops acquire real operational expertise

and establish stable and lasting personal relations with Iraqis. And third, he should

supplement the U.S. military with large numbers of skilled and highly motivated

civilian counterparts to handle the wide range of civil missions in the field that are

now badly undermanned or handled by the U.S. military. U.S. commanders in Iraq

have every reason to ask why other agencies do not provide the civilians need to

support many types of operations, and ‘‘Where is the rest of the U.S. Government?’’

• Do we have the right number and types of troops in Iraq? Unless we can suddenly create far more forces of the kind we need, the number seems adequate.

The problem is more force quality than force quantity. As is suggested above,

we have serious limitations because we started this war with a global force

structure oriented for conventional war. The need for change has been recognized, at least in some quarters. Change, however, takes time, and must be

made with caution. The U.S. Army is already reorganizing and serious efforts

are underway to create more deployable forces with the necessary training and

area and language skills. These, however, will probably take several more years

to have a major impact. (Note.—You really don’t answer the question about the

number; you do well with the types.) • In the short run, should the United States increase the number of troops in Iraq

to provide greater security in support of critical political milestones, such as the

writing of the Constitution, the October constitutional referendum, and the December 2005 elections? The commander of MNF–I should have this flexibility.

There should, however, be a clearly apparent need for such action and one that

the Iraqi Government and Iraqis clearly recognize and accept. Significant additional mission-capable Iraqi forces should be available by this fall and winter.

Wherever possible, Iraqi forces are what Iraqis should see protecting them. • Would an increase in U.S. troops have a discernable impact on security? The

problem with this question is that it ignores the quality, expertise, and motivation of the U.S. troops involved. Having more highly motivated and expert U.S.

troops deployed in areas with limited political visibility and impact would always be desirable. The United States can always surge troops for specific needs

by altering rotation rates or using the theater reserve. Short of a magic wand,

however, it is not clear where the United States could get enough of the right

36

kind of troops to make a major increase on a long-term basis that would provide

major new mission capabilities, or how it could deploy large numbers in time

to be effective without seriously affecting the length of deployments and future

integrity of an All-Volunteer Force. • Would it upset Iraqi public opinion? Or should we begin drawing down some

forces based on the presumption that the U.S. troop presence fuels the insurgents

and undergirds their propaganda? We need to emphasize Iraqi forces, not U.S.

Forces, but we also need to understand that it is the visibility and actions of

U.S. Forces, not just numbers, that affect Iraqi resentments. No coalition presence will ever be acceptable to true hardliners, whether they are Sunnis or

Shi’ites like Sadr.

PERSONAL RECOMMENDATIONS

My personal priorities and recommendations have already been addressed above,

but there are several points that may be worth stressing. If Iraqi military, security,

and police forces are to be created at anything like the levels of strength and competence that are required, the United States needs to take—or reinforce—the following steps:

United States and Coalition Policy Priorities

• Accept the fact that success in Iraq is dependent on the ability to create effective counterinsurgency forces in the Iraqi police and military forces as soon as

possible, and that this is a top priority mission. U.S. and other coalition forces

can win every clash and encounter and still decisively lose the war after the

war. • Make it fully clear to the Iraqi people and the world that the United States and

its allies recognize that Iraqis must replace U.S. and coalition forces in ‘‘visibility’’ and eventually take over almost all missions. • Keep reiterating that the United States and its key allies will set no deadlines

for withdrawal—or fixed limits on its military effort—and will support Iraq

until it is ready to take over the mission and the insurgents are largely defeated. • Fully implement plans to strengthen Iraqi forces with large numbers of U.S.

transition teams as soon as possible, but clearly plan to phase out the teams

and eliminate Iraqi dependence on them as soon as is practicable. • Keep constant pressure on the Iraqi Government to improve its effectiveness at

the central, regional, and local level in supporting Iraqi forces and in providing

aid and governance efforts that match the deployment and mission priorities of

the security and police forces. (This is an area where the rest of the U.S. Government truly needs to help, particularly with developing the ministerial capabilities needed to complement our successes with the military and police.) Push

the Iraqi Government toward unified and timely action toward promoting competence and removing incompetent personnel. • Make the supporting economic aid effort as relevant to the counterinsurgency

campaign as possible, and link it to the development of Iraqi Goverment and

security activity effort in the field. The aid effort must become vastly more effective in insurgent and high threat areas. One of the most senior officers pointed

out as early as mid-2003 that, ‘‘Dollars are more effective than bullets. Physical

security is only a prelude to economic security.’’ • Take a much harder look at the problems in Iraqi governance at the central,

regional, and local level. Force the issue in ensuring suitable Iraqi Government

coordination, responsiveness, and action. Tie aid carefully to the reality of Iraqi

Government civil efforts to put government in the field and follow up military

action with effective governance.

• Make it clear that the United States and Britain will not maintain post-insurgency bases in Iraq, and that they will stay only as long as the Iraqi Government requests and needs their support.

• Accept the need for a true partnership with the Iraqis and give them the lead

and ability to take command decisions at the national, regional, and local levels

as soon as they are ready. Make nation building real. Some work already being

done with this with the Provincial Support Teams and the Provincial Reconstruction and Development Councils.

• Accept the reality that the United States cannot find proxies to do its work for

it. NATO may provide helpful aid in training, but will not provide major aid

or training on the required scale. Other countries may provide politically useful

contingents, but United States, British, and Iraqi forces must take all major action. Continue efforts to build coalition support, but don’t provoke needless confrontations with allies or other countries over levels of troops and training aid

37

that the United States simply will not get. Concentrate on the mission at hand.

[For a discussion of the futility of placing too much emphasis on NATO, see

‘‘NATO Fails to Agree on Iraq Training Mission,’’ Washington Post, July 29,

2004, p. A18.]

Priorities for Iraqi Force Development

• Continue pressure on the government to be as inclusive as possible in every activity, to find some inclusive and federal approach to draft the new Constitution, to keep the Iraqi forces and civil service ‘‘national’’ and avoid purges of

any kind, and do everything possible to avoid the risk of escalating to civil war. • Prepare and execute a transition plan to help the new Iraqi Government that

emerged out of the January 30, 2005, elections understand the true security priorities in the country, and ensure it acts as effectively as possible in developing

effective governance and efforts to create Iraqi forces. Create an effective transition plan for the December 2005 elections. • Resist U.S. and Iraqi Government efforts to rush force development in ways

that emphasize quantity over quality, and continue the focus on leadership, creating effective units, and ensuring that training and equipment are adequate

to the task. • Continue efforts to ensure that the ethnic and religious makeup of all facets of

the Iraqi military and security forces are ethnically and religiously diverse to

prevent any one group or religion from feeling persecuted by the rest. • Continue the development of Iraqi military and police forces that can stand on

their own and largely or fully replace coalition forces as independent units. In

particular, continue development of the combat support and combat service support forces that will enable Iraqi operations following the departure of coalition

forces, including transportation, supply, military intelligence, military police,

etc. Give Iraqi military and police forces the equipment and facilities they need

to take on insurgents without U.S. or other support and reinforcement. • Ensure that the ‘‘defeat’’ of criminal elements receives high priority. Make creating an effective police and security presence in Iraqi populated areas a critical

part of the effort to develop effective governance. • Pay careful attention to the integration of the former Iraqi National Guard into

the Iraqi Army. Careless integration risks creating a force that is larger, but

not effective. This cannot be dealt with by treating the merger simply as a

name change. • Focus on the importance of political security. Security for both Iraqi governance

and Iraqi elections must come as soon and as much as possible from Iraqi

forces. Iraqi forces will not be ready to undertake such missions throughout the

country through mid-2005 and probably well into 2006, but they are able now

to have local and regional impact. Wherever they are operating, they must be

given the highest possible visibility in the roles where they are most needed.

Careful planning will let them contribute significantly to the success of the constitutional referendum in October and to the full national election at the end

of 2005.

• Create command, communications, and intelligence systems that can tie together the Iraqi, United States, and British efforts, and that will give the new

Iraqi Government and forces the capability they need once the United States

leaves.

• Carefully review U.S. military doctrine and guidance in the field to ensure that

Iraqi forces get full force protection from U.S. commanders, and suitable support, and that U.S. forces actively work with, and encourage, Iraqi units as they

develop and deploy.

• Further develop the Iraqis’ ability to engage in public affairs and strategic communications. Make sure that Iraqi information is briefed by Iraqis, and not by

coalition spokesmen.

• Reexamine the present equipment and facilities program to see if it will give

all elements of Iraqi forces the level of weapons, communications, protection,

and armor necessary to function effectively in a terrorist/insurgent environment. Ensure a proper match between training, equipment, facilities, and U.S.

support in force protection.

• Encourage the Iraqi Government to provide reporting on Iraqi casualties, and

provide U.S. reporting on Iraqi casualties and not simply U.S. and coalition

forces. Fully report on the Iraqi as well as the U.S. role in press reports and

briefings. Treat the Iraqis as true partners and give their sacrifices the recognition they deserve.

Finally, it is not enough to do the right things; the United States must also be

seen to do the right things. This means the United States and its allies need to deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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velop not only a comprehensive strategy for Iraq that ties together all of the efforts

to improve Iraqi forces described above, but also a strategy that can publicly and

convincingly show Iraq, the region, and the world that the United States is committed to the kind of political, economic, and security development that the Iraqi

people want and need.

U.S. public diplomacy tends to make broad ideological statements based on American values. It tends to deal in slogans, and be ‘‘ethnocentric’’ to put it mildly. What

Iraqis need is something very different. It is confidence that the United States now

has plans to respond to what they want. They need to see that the United States

is tangibly committed to achieving success in Iraq, and not an ‘‘exit strategy’’ or the

kind of continuing presence that serves American and not Iraqi interests.

This means issuing public U.S. plans for continued economic and security aid that

clearly give the Iraqi Government decisionmaking authority, and administrative and

execution authority wherever possible. It means a commitment to expanding the

role of the United Nations and other countries where possible, and to working with

key allies in some form of contact group. It also means providing benchmarks and

reports on progress that show Iraqis a convincing and honest picture of what the

United States had done and is doing; not the kind of shallow ‘‘spin’’ that dominates

far too much of what the U.S. Goverment says in public.

Another key to success is to have a public strategy that formally commits the

United States in ways that, at least, defuse many of the conspiracy theories that

still shape Iraqi public opinion, and the private views of many senior Iraqi officials

and officers. The United States can scarcely address every conspiracy theory. Their

number is legion and constantly growing. It can and must address the ones that

really matter.

There are three essential elements that U.S. and coalition public diplomacy must

have to be convincing:

• Make it unambiguously clear that the United States fully respects Iraqi sovereignty, and that it will leave if any freely elected Iraqi Government asks it

to leave, or alter its role and presence in accordance with Iraqi views. • Make it equally clear that the United States has no intention to dominate or

exploit any part of the Iraqi economy, and will support Iraq in renovating and

expanding its petroleum industry in accordance with Iraqi plans and on the

basis of supporting Iraqi exports on a globally competitive basis that maximizes

revenues to Iraq. • Finally, make it clear that the United States will phase down troops as soon

as the Iraqi Government finds this desirable, and will sustain the kind of advisory and aid mission necessary to rebuild Iraqi forces to the point where they

can independently defend Iraq, but will not seek permanent military bases in

Iraq.

This latter point is not a casual issue. Nothing could be worse than trying to

maintain bases in a country with Iraq’s past and where the people do not want

them. Virtually from the start of the U.S. invasion, Iraqis have been deeply concerned about ‘‘permanent bases.’’ Yet even some of the most senior Iraqi officials

and officers have privately expressed the view that the United States was seeking

to create some 4 to 18 such bases.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Cordesman.

Let me raise a second area for our discussion, and in this case

I am going to ask you, General McCaffrey, for the first comment,

then Dr. Cordesman, and then Dr. Pollack. Could the United

States successfully press its allies to increase aid and provide manpower to protect Iraq’s borders and prevent foreign infiltration? Is

there a reasonable prospect that allied or friendly governments

would agree to increase their military participation for this purpose, which is perceived as less dangerous than patrolling Iraqi hot

spots?

What would the United States have to do to convince allies to

participate in this manner, and would this free up significant numbers of U.S. troops for other duties or would the gains be insignificant? Can foreign infiltration of Iraq be stopped by enhancing border security, and if foreign infiltration of Iraq could be stopped or

slowed significantly, how much impact would that have ultimately

on the insurgency?

39

General McCaffrey, would you comment on this area of consideration?

General MCCAFFREY. Senator, it seems to me there is no question that having allies active, with robust rules of engagement,

with strong political backing, who bring their own resources, would

be a vital addition to this struggle, certainly to garb ourselves in

legitimacy of a broader mandate, to have U.N. support. All of this

would be to the good.

I personally believe the misjudgments of the first year, actually,

will prevent us ever getting significant support out of any of our

major allies—the Japanese, Western Europe, Latin America. It is

just not going to happen. No one in their right mind would step

into this mess this late in the game.

I think most of our coalition—and although I am grateful and respectful of their individual sacrifice, the soldiers on the ground—

I think they bring little to bear on the problem, with the exception

of these terrific British forces. The rest of them do not make much

impact in the situation. Some of them are a positive drawback. I

mean, these—and I am sympathetic to the Japanese Self-Defense

Force problems, but they literally have to be guarded while they

are in Iraq.

It is not going to happen. We are just not going to get people to

come in and establish security on the borders, or even to put significant training resources into Iraq. Now, I also think that the few

hundred people crossing the border, many of them out of Syria,

bunches of people coming in out of Iran, massive movement crossborder, intelligence operatives, political operatives, et cetera, and

certainly the Saudi border is completely unguarded—we can attempt to establish an Iraqi border presence. The Marines are doing

that right now, trying to put back in all the posts that were rolled

up.

But that is not going to stop small determined numbers of people

from entering to become jihadists. I also think it’s fairly transparent that we do not have, unlike Vietnam, an external enemy

who has to move munitions and money and leadership and training

bases and sanctuary. That is not what we are dealing with. Poor

Iraq may have had 900,000 metric tons of munitions scattered from

one end of this country to another. Every farmer now has a hundred 155 artillery shells buried in the back yard. They are all carrying automatic weapons.

So I do not think our problem is external. Our problem is internal. I really endorse, fully endorse, the comments of Dr. Cordesman

along those lines.

Now, I would also suggest to you—and this is sort of a parallel

observation—the foreign jihadists who come to Iraq get killed in

Iraq and fairly rapidly. I think many of them find, to their horror,

that they came to get war stories to go back to Kuwait or Algeria

and find out they have been volunteered to be a human bomb.

Those attacks in the short run are going to be a problem for the

insurgency. It is going to, in my judgment, add legitimacy to a

viewpoint by the Iraqi people that they need the police and the

army to protect them.

I think the other thing that struck me as a major shortcoming

of our so-called allies, what we lack is political and economic sigVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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nificant support in the Arab world, and in particular, from Sunni

Muslim governments. Where are the Egyptians, the Saudis, the

Kuwaitis, to come in and tell this minority, 20 percent of Iraq, who

are most of the violence we are facing, most of the political opposition, and for them to enter and say: It is okay, cooperate; we will

back you up, but we want you to get into the government. Where

are the public visits of the Saudi Foreign Minister and the chief of

the armed forces and others that would come in and say: Look, we

are going to try and help you. Never mind significant economic investment on the order of $5 billion a month from the surrounding

oil powers.

So again, I think one thing we have been remiss in the first 2

years of the intervention was some maladroit diplomatic support

for some very brave U.S. military efforts. But I think the rhetoric

of old Europe and the rhetoric really of saying that the military

contributions are insignificant and, therefore, the political contributions follow, has led us to a situation in which it is unlikely that

our allies are going to play a serious role in this. And if we put

the attention anywhere, it ought to be among the Islamic world:

Stand with us, create a new state.

But those six surrounding nations, not a one of them has the

best interests of a law-based democratic Iraq at heart.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Cordesman.

Dr. CORDESMAN. I think that General McCaffrey has raised the

key issues here. I was stationed in Iran. I spent, I guess, 20 or 30

visits to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and previous years. I have

been along the Saudi border and the Syrian border in the past.

Frankly, I think the idea that you can secure those borders against

the level of infiltration that takes place today, which is largely simply young men coming in as volunteers, plus limited numbers of

sniper rifles, and a few night-vision devices is unworkable. Nobody

has ever been able to secure those borders against smuggling and

the idea that U.S. or foreign troops are going to somehow stop everybody who is a foreign young man who comes in through the

trade routes or the legitimate lines of communication, or stop gear

from being smuggled in on any border, strikes me as unrealistic.

Right now you have a reasonable number of border forts under

construction. Looking at what it is going to take to train the border

police for the Iraqis, my guess is that it is a minimum of a year,

before enough will be ready. However, if it is not Iraqis working

with Iraqis—and corruption will be a constant problem even then—

having foreign troops wander through various Iraqi villages and

lines of communication near the border is going to make people

angry without really accomplishing a great deal.

It also does not take many outsider volunteers to sustain the

threat. I heard different figures when I was in Iraq. But out of the

detainees, there seem to be about 600 to 700 foreigners out of over

15,000 Iraqis. If that is the case, the problem is not really foreign

terrorists. It is rather that we have a serious problem with Iraqi

insurgency, although it is quite clear that foreign young men are

being recruited and used basically as bomb detonation devices.

The other caution I would give you is, if you do not have those

foreign young men, is it all that much harder to place bombs that

do not use a human being to commit suicide in the same areas in

41

the same attacks, simply using remote detonators or other devices?

The answer is probably not. It may not have the same political impact to Islamists, but it is not going to solve the problem.

I think at this point the only way that we could get more troops

to perform this kind of mission would be a coalition of the mercenary or a coalition of the pressured, and frankly, I think the mission is not the one that I believe we should put effort into. I think

it is far more—if we are going to put pressure on our allies, what

do we want? Well, we’d like to see more debt forgiveness. We would

like to see a forgiveness of reparations. There are lots of economic

and other concessions and forms of aid which would be more important than getting token border defense contributions.

It would be more useful to have people training the Iraqi border

force with the numbers we are likely to get than it would be to put

a few people on a few border forts. External pressure to try to get

more Syrian cooperation may or may not work. Certainly, working

with the Saudis, who have a physical problem simply in securing

the border, would be an issue. We cannot talk to Iran, but we

might wish to have Britain or others talk to Iran and clarify a lot

of the uncertainties about infiltration on that border.

Without getting into detail that I do not think is appropriate this

morning, the problems we have with Turkey along the Turkish border are such where we might wish to see if there is some way, at

least, to establish a better relationship between them, the Kurds,

the Iraqis, and ourselves than exists today. But those only illustrate the kind of problems that General McCaffrey raised. Each of

the neighbors is an issue, not just the border.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Cordesman.

Dr. Pollack.

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me begin by saying that I largely agree with both General

McCaffrey and Dr. Cordesman on this issue as well. I think that

the claims that shutting down the border with Syria or with other

countries—most of the information that I have seen indicates that,

in fact, infiltration from Saudi Arabia is at least as great, if not a

greater, problem than infiltration from Syria, but that closing down

those borders is a little bit like shutting the barn door after the

bull has left the stable, the horse has left the stable.

It assumes that Iraq’s insurgency is largely a foreign-inspired

movement, which our intelligence has repeatedly shown it not to

be. It is overwhelmingly homegrown. Anecdotal reports that I have

heard from Iraqis indicate that that foreign element, even though

we make a great deal of it, is actually less important now than it

was 2 years ago. Two years ago the Iraqis did not know how to

mount insurgent or terrorist operations and were heavily dependent on foreign jihadists to show them how to do things—how to

make bombs, how to set up IEDs, how to set up operational plans

and do everything else for themselves. Today they have internalized most of those lessons and they are increasingly less dependent

on foreigners for the know-how.

Likewise, we tend to blame foreigners for most of the suicide attacks, but there is increasing amounts of information to suggest

42

that even those are increasingly being committed by Iraqis themselves.

So shutting down the borders would obviously be nice. It certainly could not hurt, but I do not think it is going to solve the

problems that we have in Iraq.

If we would like to garner additional support on the borders, I

certainly think that there are some things that we can do. But

again, even these are going to be modest, and again we should keep

in mind the overarching point which I think all three of us have

made, which is that the borders are not the real problem in terms

of security in Iraq.

One solution, one idea that we might try, is a contact group involving Iraq’s neighbors. One of the claims that we have repeatedly

heard from our allies—from the Turks, the Jordanians, the Saudis,

and the Kuwaitis—is that they do not feel that they have enough

of a say in Iraqi reconstruction and in political and economic developments, let alone security developments, inside the country. We

might create a constant contact group at which all of Iraq’s neighbors would be participating, along with the Iraqis and ourselves,

and we would, at least, give them the opportunity to receive regular briefings on developments inside Iraq and provide a regular

forum at which they could express their views.

They would have to understand that this would be a purely advisory function and we and the Iraqis would not be compelled to accept their advice. But nevertheless, it would give them a sounding

board. My own experience in the U.S. Government, both at the CIA

and at the White House, has demonstrated to me that oftentimes

just allowing our allies a say in the matter can be very helpful in

securing some additional support from them.

I will also say that I tend to agree with General McCaffrey’s

opening statement that because of the way that we handled both

the war and the immediate reconstruction projects, I think it very

unlikely that we are going to get major contributions from our allies.

That said, I certainly think that it is possible to get more and

I think that we certainly ought to try to get more. For me, this

comes back to the central question of security that we have been

dealing with. I think it unlikely that we are going to get large foreign contingents of ground troops. I just do not see that in the

cards. Many of our most enthusiastic allies do not have the forces

to send and those that do seem to be most reluctant to actually

commit them.

What we could conceivably get, and what we have been notably

lacking, are personnel with the know-how to deal with the political

and economic circumstances of reconstruction. Before the war I had

the opportunity to go and speak with the 352nd and 354th Military

Civil Affairs Battalions, located out here in Maryland, who are the

ones who are the point of the spear in terms of heading up the civilian economic reconstruction efforts on the part of the military in

Iraq. Before they went in I spent an afternoon with them to try to

help them understand the problems that they were likely to face

in Iraq.

One thing I heard continually from their officers was: Are we

going to have the United Nations with us? Because what they said

43

was: When we were in Bosnia, we did not do development, we did

not do reconstruction; we guarded the people who were actually

doing the development and reconstruction. The people who were

doing development and reconstruction were led by the UNDP, who

could pull in enormous numbers of people with the requisite skills

and experience from around the world who knew how to do these

things.

Those people are notably lacking in Iraq and in many circumstances our own forces and our own personnel are being forced

to learn on the job, and in some cases they have done brilliantly,

in other cases less so. But across the board there are simply too

few of them.

Now, those skills are out there. There are more personnel in the

world who have those skills and could be very helpful in Iraq. But

they will not come because of the security situation.

I will very respectfully disagree entirely with my good friend Dr.

Cordesman’s comments earlier about the ability to create safe

zones in Iraq. It is possible. We have done it in Iraq. We have done

it elsewhere. Other nations have done so, as well. But it is about

making the security of the Iraqi people and their populated areas

the first priority, something that we have notably failed to do in

Iraq. As a result the cities are not safe and we cannot get foreigners to come to Iraq and to participate in the process.

As a final point, let me add that we have all been talking a great

deal about the legitimacy of the Iraqi political process and I, absolutely, 100 percent, agree with both General McCaffrey and Dr.

Cordesman. What I would suggest, though, is that when you talk

to Iraqis their ideas about legitimacy are less rooted in what we

look at. They are not really interested, to tell you the truth, in

what that constitution has to say. For them the legitimacy of this

government is all about its ability to deliver on basic security, electricity, clean water, sanitation, jobs, and the other necessities of

life. That is what they have continuously looked both to us and to

these new Iraqi governments which we have successively put in

place to deliver. The legitimacy, which is absolutely critical for success, is all about security, because the only way that the Iraqis are

going to get those things is if their urban areas and their infrastructure is secure, and it is entirely within our ability to provide

security for, at least, parts of Iraq, in fact, major parts of Iraq.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, doctor.

We will have a third area of discussion. On this occasion I am

going to ask Dr. Cordesman to make the first comment, to be followed by Dr. Pollack and then by General McCaffrey. Should the

United States reprioritize the training schedule of Iraqi forces and

support more training in other countries? Are Iraqi troops being deployed before they are ready in an attempt to demonstrate

progress? Should there be more gradual training schedules to allow

Iraqi units to develop greater cohesion and capabilities before exposing them to hostilities? Should the number of Iraqi security

forces be increased by integrating the Badr Brigade, an anti-Saddam Shi’a militia group, the Pesh Merga, the Kurdish forces, or

other local militias into the Iraqi Army or the National Guard?

Would the political ramifications of such integration outweigh the

security benefits?

44

Can we increase the number of troops trained in other countries,

such as France, Jordan, and Egypt, or will those countries provide

training only if the cost is picked up by the United States? And

would we be diverting training assets in Egypt and Jordan that

would better be devoted to training Palestinian security forces?

Should we put more emphasis on training Iraqi military officers

perhaps in the United States, in an effort to create professional

military leadership?

Dr. Cordesman, would you begin our discussion on these issues

of security training?

Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, if you had asked me this question a

year ago I think I would have said that we had failed to ever begin.

At that point in time we had actually more people being reported

as being in the Iraqi police, military, and security forces than we

have today but we only had one battalion worth of Iraqi forces actually in service in the army and no battalion equivalents being deployed.

But, things have changed. A lot of reference has been made to

General Petraeus. I think that you could give the same praise to

the people under him at almost every level. I think it is important

to give it to General Abizaid and to General Casey, and certainly

to the missions that visited Iraqi under both General Ikenberry

and under General Luck, because a lot has changed.

When we look at Iraqi force strength as of May 2005, we had put

a great deal of emphasis on getting battalion-level elements ready

and in some form where they could perform missions. You now

had, counting the National Guard, 81 battalions, not one.

Now, many of those were not fully ready. You only had 1 out of

26 brigades with an operating headquarters. There was not combat

or service support. But to put forces in the field who could establish

a presence and move toward some kind of security in urban and

other areas was a tremendous change. And if you threw in the special police units, which to me are much more critical in urban security and in providing the kind of counterinsurgency efforts needed

to establish security in stable areas than the Iraqi Army or United

States or foreign troops, the number went up to 101 battalions.

The problem—and here I have to say Senator Biden is correct in

raising the issue—is those numbers are impressive, but their readiness is still so low that it is going to take between 1 year and 2

years to bring to the kind of levels we need and probably 6 months

to a year to really get to the kind of levels where major coalition

reductions would be possible.

Out of those 101 battalions, the top level of readiness, which is

the ability to operate on their own, only applied to 5. If you look

at the other units involved—and all of them could do something—

only about 40 percent were capable of performing the kind of missions where they could provide rear area security, where they could

provide the kind of stability, the political structures, economic

structures, that were really needed.

That is still, however, a tremendous improvement, and I have

broken out the details in the testimony I have given. The systems

involved are too new to make some clear projections, but my guess

is that by the end of this year, if this works, then you will have

enough troops in some of the urban areas so you can get security.

45

Now, let me note that the ability to make this work is again political. For example, there are two councils and, effectively two

mayors, operating in Baghdad. In Basra, even though you had a

Shiite group that was the alliance dominate, the actual local government in Basra is essentially a Shiite Islamist government which

is basically bypassing at this point much of the police force. In

Mosul you have major security divisions along very clear lines and

to move police in is only gradually beginning to happen.

So this is a political issue, not just a military one. Let me be a

little more specific about your questions. Are Iraqi forces being deployed before they are ready in an attempt to demonstrate

progress? No. But they are being deployed before they are combatready. The system General Luck recommended was to put 10-man

training teams into each battalion and each major combat and

service support element to have those units help develop leaders,

to work to develop each unit, so the leaders that stay are the leaders who can lead, and to take the reality, which is many of the people we recruit are not people who are going to stay, and build up

the units with the people who will stay so they actually can come

on line as effective forces.

No amount of training in the rear, no amount of exercises, is

going to create effective Iraqi forces. If you wait for everybody to

have dotted all of the i’s on some theoretical checklist, you are basically going to end up with no real capability and a tremendous

waste of time.

Should a more gradual training schedule to develop Iraqi units,

to develop greater cohesion and capabilities, be adopted? No.

Frankly, the schedule you have is about as effective as it is going

to be. The truth is that the recruiting structure, even though it has

been greatly improved, is always going to have a very high rate of

attrition. So is the leadership structure. You are going to have to

put these people gradually into different missions, raise them up

to the point where they can operate on their own, from the less demanding to the more demanding missions. This is not something

where people can sit around in a base and be trained.

Should the number of Iraqi security forces be increased by integrating the Badr Brigade, the Pesh Merga, and other local militias?

A lot of that, to the extent that it is going to happen, has happened. It is already a serious problem in terms of the Badr Corps,

not the Badr Brigade. Fortunately, the Badr Corps seems to be

more interested in politics now than any kind of military adventures. But it is already seen as a force which is operating against

the Sunnis as a potential cause of civil war.

Taking these units and putting them into the Iraqi police or

army on any terms acceptable to them is simply not a feasible solution. In the case of the Pesh Merga, some units are already operating. Others under the TAL agreement, which I think many people in Iraq as Iraqis still endorse, were to become the border security force as a way of preserving some kind of Kurdish force elements without having them be divided or creating divisive units.

I think that nothing could be worse than trying to use these militias to solve a military problem at the cost of making the political

problem worse. And having watched some of them in operation, I

46

think that the idea that they are going to perform anything other

than ethnic or sectarian missions is a dangerous illusion.

Can we increase the number of troops trained in foreign countries? Sure, you can always do that at the margin. The problem is

scale. Much of this would be on the so-what category. Okay, you

can get a few more people trained here and there, maybe even several hundred or several thousand. But given the numbers involved,

what you also get is a lot of people rotating in and out to foreign

countries. It should not come as a surprise to the committee that

the people who desperately want to go overseas for training, or outside Iraq, are not always among the most highly motivated of the

forces. Nor does bringing them back always produce the best results. They have, actually, often a very serious rate of desertion

after they are required to return.

You have already got about 3,200 Iraqis training outside Iraq. I

think that you need to be very careful about the idea that we can

get any kind of scale that matters.

Diverting training assets in Egypt and Jordan that should better

be devoted to the training of Palestinian forces? I think you have

done as much in Jordan as you possibly can already. There is not

any surplus capacity to take on Palestinian forces at this point.

Egyptian capabilities I cannot generalize on, but I think you need

to be very careful about exactly what you are training the Palestinians to do.

Finally, more emphasis on training Iraqi military officers in the

United States in an effort to create military professional leadership. Let me go back. What we need are people who will stay in

their units, lead in their units, who have the kind of experience to

deal with the missions that need to be developed. It is true over

time we need people to go to academies, to staff schools, to the

equivalent of a national war college or defense university, but those

people are not what we need most at this point in time. The kind

of reorganization that has taken place in the MNF training effort

and in the MNSTCI training effort is a lot more practical than

sending people overseas, something that needs to be done constantly over time, but is not a way to win a counterinsurgency battle.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, doctor.

Dr. Pollack.

Dr. POLLACK. Mr. Chairman, let me start by saying that I completely agree with Dr. Cordesman’s comments, and I know also

that General McCaffrey is going to spend a good deal of time also

talking on the training program that we have. So let me confine

my remarks to making a somewhat broader point.

I think all three of us would agree that we now have in place,

in fact, a very good training program for Iraqis. Again, I am sure

that General McCaffrey will talk more about that. He may want to

tweak it. But I think, overall, it is a good training program.

Let me also say that while we are praising U.S. military officers

for doing a good job and I heartily agree with the praise that has

already been lavished on Generals Abizaid, Casey, and Petraeus,

there is one other person who is worth mentioning, and I think

that this is, for me, the crux of the problem with regard to training,

47

and that is General Eton, who occupied the job that General

Petraeus has before General Petraeus. I think that General Eton

and his team also came up with a very good program, an initial

program.

The problem with the initial program, devised by General Eton

and his team and the American coalition forces who were brought

in to try to start things up, was political pressure, quite frankly.

The word from Washington was: Generate more Iraqi battalions,

get them on line because we desperately need manpower. And it

was the short-circuiting of that original training program which

caused the problems that we have now.

Now, again, we have a new training program in place. I think

it is a very good one. I think the main issue out there is allowing

it to take its course. I completely agree with Tony Cordesman’s

point that training is a process and it is a process that is both formal and informal. There is training that has to go on in the barracks, there is training that has to go on in classrooms, there is

training that has to go on in exercise fields. But there is also training that needs to go on in actual operations. It is a long process

and we need to allow that process to develop.

I think that Tony, again, correctly pointed out the distinction between troops that have some degree of readiness and those that are

fully combat capable. We need to allow all of the Iraqi units to

come up to full combat capability.

I think the key question that we are all asking ourselves, and

that is inherent in the entire nature of these hearings, is the question of how we get from here to there. I think we all agree that

the long-term solution to security in Iraq is a fully capable Iraqi

force that is capable of simultaneously dealing with the insurgency

and providing law and order throughout the country. But we are

not there yet, and it is unclear how long it is going to take.

As I wrote in the New York Times a couple weeks ago, before he

left General Petraeus took the opportunity to pull me aside at an

event that he and I were both at, to try to drill home to me his

feeling that it would take 3 to 5 years to stand up the Iraqi security forces that he needed to do the job. I still think that number

is exactly right, and 3 years may actually be optimistic, looking at

developments right now.

So the question before us is how we get from here to there. I

think that the big question for us is whether we have the right

strategy now to get us to that point, at some point in the future,

or do we need to start making changes.

The CHAIRMAN. General McCaffrey.

General MCCAFFREY. I do endorse the comments of Dr.

Cordesman. In fact, one of the things I think that is unique about

his work has been to painstakingly go through and get numbers

that I trust. I have gotten to be a real skeptic about much of what

I read unless I saw it myself on the ground.

A couple of thoughts. First of all, there is no question that we

have a huge responsibility to train and equip and design the right

kind of Iraqi security forces. I am not sure the distinction between

police commando battalions and army units is all that important.

They tend to be light infantry units, hopefully with good intelligence, that have a will to fight.

48

I think we are off an order of magnitude on the resources we

have provided that effort. When Negroponte got in there he and

Abizaid and Casey and Petraeus finally got it organized. It is starting to happen. I think the last number I saw was 3 billion dollars’

worth of material is coming in country. So you do see AK–47s, light

radios, light trucks, some body armor, 22 SWAT teams that have

the same stuff as the NYPD. It is starting to move, there is no

question.

More has to be done. Some of them are long lead-time items. I

would be astonished if we do not have a minimum right now as an

example of 1,500 aircraft in country. We cannot leave unless there

is an Iraqi helicopter mobility force. It takes a year to get some kid

to fly a Blackhawk. We have got to buy them, and the price tags

on those things are going to look monumental unless you compare

it to the costs of staying in Iraq for 10 years at $5 billion a month.

But I see no foresight yet to get us up to the level of effort we

need to create an ISF that will allow us to withdraw, and I think

we need to push in that direction.

I also have argued we have got to lock our senior military and

political, diplomatic leadership and CIA into that war for the next

24 to 36 months. I have argued to the chairman of the JCS and

others: Go get a compound in Kuwait and keep people like

Petraeus there for 24 months. We are on the line. The State Department people are rotating in and out, 90 days, 180 days. The

most important people in this effort are not rifle company commanders. They are political officers in the U.S. Embassy and

USAID people.

Now, let me also, though, back off this issue. Train and equip;

yes. The Iraqi military were the Germans of the Middle East.

These are some of the most brutal, courageous people in uniform

within a thousand miles of that country. They fought 7 years of

war against the Iranians. They took ferocious casualties. They

fought the Brits, the Americans, the Saudis. They have conducted

brutal internal counterinsurgency.

We should not kid ourselves that—we are fighting, by the way,

an insurgent force that is out of this minority of the Sunni population. I say there is probably 20,000 of them actively involved in

taking shots at us, maybe as many as 80,000 active sympathizers.

Our problem is not organizing the Iraqi Armed Forces. It is creating the political conditions upon which these people think it is

worth fighting and dying for: Either the provincial leadership, the

urban leadership, the national leadership, religious leadership, or

someone. That is why police and army fight and that is what has

been lacking, and I think is now beginning to appear because of the

January elections and so the general notion—and Sistani’s leadership and others—many of the Shi’a, many of the Kurds, are grudgingly seeing a reason to create a federal security force, and that is

starting to happen.

Again, if the constitution, regardless of its final shape, creates

Sunni inclusion in the government, I think we will see more reaction.

I would also suggest to you that—and I think I may be a lone

voice on this one—when we said we are going to disarm the militias, the Pesh Merga need to go away, it struck me as the height

49

of naivete. Why would anybody in their right mind in the Kurdish

leadership agree to disarm and throw their future in the hands of

a federal Iraqi State is beyond me. Why would the Shi’a, who got

slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands—300,00 Shi’a dead,

maybe 180,000 Kurds, out of the Iraqi Sunni dictatorship. Why

would either group disarm?

So my own notion is we ought to recognize that there is a place

for them, certainly in countercriminal operations, counterinsurgency in their own regions. Maybe they ought to be in the national

uniform. But we should not expect that the Iraqis, at any level, will

or should voluntarily disarm.

Nor should we, in my view, expect that in the short run we are

going to get a Sunni police battalion to go into Ramadi on its own

and conduct active intelligent counterinsurgency operations. It will

not happen until they think the Sunnis are in the political process.

Finally on the training notion, in country, out of country. I

watched this process in Afghanistan also with great interest. I

think the single most effective thing is John Abizaid and George

Casey and Petraeus have put these training teams inside Iraqi battalions. A lot of them are Marine and Army Reservists and National Guard. A Utah State Police, Marine major I talked to—it is

not surprising to me they immediately fall in love with the people

they are training. They are happy they are there. They have a

huge sense of courage to stay out there and live out there with

these unknown foreign units. They are starting to have an impact.

I have had a lot of conversations in small groups with Iraqi officers—the leadership of an infantry battalion, two Republican

Guard officers, a sergeant major with 14 years in the Hamurabi Division. The three of them told me: Hey, you gave us our chance,

our lives are unimportant; we intend to seize on this and create a

new Iraq. And I believe them. I might add when I say that, I started my Vietnam experience as an adviser with a Vietnamese airborne infantry battalion. I think it is actually taking hold.

Now, the other thing Generals Abizaid and Casey have done is,

they have put a U.S. Marine or Army battalion linked into each of

these emerging army battalions. That is having a huge impact. I

went up to the 1st of the 30th Infantry southeast of Tikrit. Their

infantry battalion is collocated with them. They are actively out

there, but the people kicking down the door—and by the way, they

are trying to teach them to knock on the door and ask for permission to enter. The entry forces are Iraqi, not United States Army.

I think that is having an impact.

Finally, I agree with Dr. Cordesman. We have got a limited number of fighters and people who are good leaders in that emerging

Iraqi security force. The last thing we want to do is send them to

Germany for the year course in how to be a police officer in Munich

or to send them to West Point for 4 years to emerge with a balanced education.

These people are in the same situation we were in 1941; 250,000

troops to 16 million in the space of 36 months. The Iraqis have got

to stay there and fight because I would argue by the end of next

summer we are going to be halfway out of Iraq, and hopefully with

a stabilizing backup force. But we are reaching end game.

50

I went into Fallujah, an angry, ruined city, which I personally do

not believe three-quarters of the population is back in there;

250,000 people? Come on. I saw 900 threatening looking males

driving around the city. But when you get in there, the Iraqi police

now are manning the checkpoints. The entry control points are

Iraqis and the Marines are backing them up.

Again, thank God for—and I think Dr. Cordesman is right. It is

not just Petraeus. There is a lot of Army Reservists doing this also

and Marine Reservists. They have got a huge sense of momentum

going. But we need an infusion at a serious level of equipment and

then we need to let the political process create legitimacy under

which these Iraqi young people will fight.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, General.

Let me raise now a fourth area, and I will ask Dr. Pollack to initiate the dialog on that, and then General and Dr. Cordesman.

Should the President of the United States change the force structure of the United States presence in Iraq? Do we have the right

number and types of troops in Iraq now? In the short run, should

the United States increase the number of troops in Iraq to provide

greater security and support of critical political milestones, such as

the writing of the constitution, the October constitutional referendum, the December 2005 elections?

Would an increase in United States troops have a discernible impact on security? Would it upset Iraqi public opinion? Or should we

begin drawing down some forces, based on the presumption that

the United States troop presence fuels the insurgents and

undergirds their propaganda?

Dr. Pollack.

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you, Senator.

Let me begin my response by starting with the end of your last

question, because I think it is actually related as much to this one.

This is the question of the militias in Iraq. I completely agree with

Dr. Cordesman that the militias are not ready to go away, nor are

they ready to be integrated into some larger force.

This is part of the dilemma that we face in Iraq. The dilemma

we face is that we have not created the circumstances in Iraq in

which it is politically, economically, or militarily conceivable to do

away with those militias. Frankly, those militias are very popular

in many parts of Iraq because they are the only forces that are providing day-to-day security for the Iraqi people.

In fact, what I have seen over the past year is the proliferation

of militias throughout Iraq, and to a great extent you see all

throughout Iraqi, local alims, local sheikhs, other figures who are

gathering weaponry, gathering ammunition, and tapping personnel

to say, if the balloon goes up, if civil war breaks out, will you be

there to fight for the neighborhood, and putting together their own

militias.

This, I think, is a clear sign that the militias are not ready to

go away because we have not yet solved the security problems of

the country.

Keeping simply the needs of Iraq in mind, moving from that to

the bigger picture, would it be useful to have more troops in Iraq?

Yes, it would be more useful to have more troops in Iraq. I think

regardless of our strategy it would be more useful to have more

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troops in Iraq. I would argue that if we continue with the current

strategy that we have been employing it is absolutely essential because, again, while it is the best solution to have Iraqis performing

these missions for us, we are a long way from having the numbers

of fully capable Iraqi forces who can do these things.

The interim, the period between now and when we will have

those forces available, is very important, because in that interim if

things go awry the country could easily slide into the civil war that

Senator Biden talked about in his opening statement. That civil

war is on the minds of Iraqis. It is always in the back of their

heads. It is something that they fear on a regular basis. It is one

of the reasons why they continue to tolerate and, to some extent,

are enthusiastic about our continuing presence, despite the fact

that we continue to disappoint them in our inability to provide

them with basic security and basic services.

Strangely, I think that if we continue with our current strategy,

it is absolutely essential to have more forces in Iraq and, in fact,

it will require a massive infusion of troops, because, at present, we

do not have the fully capable forces capable of both suppressing the

insurgency, as we are attempting to do, and providing security for

the Iraqi people, and only a massive increase in forces will allow

us to do those two things simultaneously.

The alternative which I have suggested, a true, a traditional

counterinsurgency approach, a spreading inkspot, a spreading oil

stain, would greatly benefit from more troops, but it is not essential. In point of fact, it is one of the reasons why I am increasingly

drawn to this, because it is possible to begin this kind of a

counterinsurgency strategy with a smaller contingent of forces.

Certainly the contingent of forces that we have on hand, given the

widespread support of reconstruction, is actually a very significant

amount of forces and probably would allow us to start building an

enclave, building safe zones, in a very significant chunk of the

country already.

But this is the whole point of a traditional counterinsurgency

strategy. You start with only a portion of the country. You make

it secure, you make people enthusiastic about it, and as you train

additional indigenous forces that allows you to spread out and encompass ever-greater regions of the population.

So it would certainly be useful to have more troops because the

more troops that we have the larger the area that we could start

off pacifying. But if we stick with our current strategy, as I said,

I think it is absolutely critical that we do so.

Now, let me come to the question that you raised at the end of

your option, which is: Would it be counterproductive to increase

American troop levels in Iraq? There I will say unequivocally ‘‘No’’;

it would not. I think it is truly perverse to argue that the presence

of American troops are actually causing the terrorist attacks and

insurgency. This is simply false. The insurgents attack the Iraqis

as much, if not more, than they attack American forces. As Dr.

Cordesman pointed out, the insurgents believe that they are waging the beginning of a civil war.

The removal of American forces would not eliminate the insurgency or the terrorist attacks. It would simply unleash that civil

war.

52

As for whether it would create greater animosity among Iraqis,

here it is a little bit thornier. It is true that Iraqis resent, many

Iraqis resent, our presence in the country. It is also true that some

Iraqis simply have soured completely on our presence. I think that

there truly are Iraqis who may have welcomed us in 2003 and

today just want to see us go at all costs. But it has been my experience and reading the public opinions carefully—and I think you do

have to read them very carefully because they are often very misleading—because oftentimes it is the only moment that Iraqis have

to speak truth to power.

But reading them carefully and listening to Iraqis on a regular

basis, what I consistently hear from Iraqis is, if you start out asking them about the American presence they will say something

along the lines of: Why do you not just leave? But if you push them

hard, if you try to get beyond that initial point, what you typically

hear from them is some version of: Actually, we do not want you

to go at all; what we want is, we want you to actually do something

for us; we want you to provide us with the security and the basic

services that we have been clamoring for for 2 years and frankly

what I think is perfectly reasonable for them to expect 2 years

after the fall of Baghdad.

I think that for the Iraqis an infusion of additional American or

other coalition forces, if somehow we could find those troops, would

grudgingly be accepted. In many quarters it would be welcomed.

But it would only be welcomed if those forces were used to actually

provide security for the Iraqi people themselves. If our forces continue to operate the way that they have and if we continue to have

the priorities that we do, then I think that the Iraqis will look at

it and say: Why are you bringing more forces into our country if

you are not helping us? Under those circumstances it could breed

greater animosity.

But it gets to the point that Senator Biden made at the beginning. Just as I believe he is correct that the American people are

not concerned so much at the rising body count, although that is

obviously tragic for every family who has a member of that list,

they are more concerned about the strategy and their sense that

we do not yet know what we are doing in Iraq.

So, too, I think is that the case for the Iraqis. They are less concerned with the number of American troops in our country than

what it is we are doing in their country.

That, of course, brings me to the last point, which is where do

you find these troops? Frankly, Senator, I do not have a good answer for that question. As I said, the problem that we face is a

short- to medium-term problem. It is the question of what we do

between now and 5 years from now, when we probably will have

large indigenous Iraqi forces that are capable of shouldering most

if not all of the mission at hand.

But there is a long road between then and now. And while I

think it would be extremely beneficial to increase our troop presence in Iraq, I think it would be very difficult, given our current

force structure, to do so over the long term. I do not dispute General McCaffrey’s point about how we are hurting both the Army

and the Marines by this protracted deployment and how we have

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handled it. It is one of the reasons why I think that it may be time

to look at the general force structure of the U.S. military.

We created a military in the wake of the cold war that was sized

for certain missions. I think the Iraqi mission has demonstrated

that that military is incapable of handling this mission, and this

mission is critical, is vital to the national interests of the United

States.

In the short term, I think we probably can plus-up our forces. Alternatively, as I said, we can move to a true counterinsurgency

strategy, which will be a very politically difficult choice to make because it probably will mean saying we are not going to provide security for parts of the country and we are going to focus our efforts

on parts that we think we can secure and there are going to be

parts of it that are going to wind up looking like the Wild West,

and it is going to take us quite some time before we can get there.

That is going to be, politically, very unpalatable.

But I think that may be our only solution, at least in the immediate term. Over the longer term, again we will train Iraqi forces,

but we probably should be thinking about how we can reexpand

our own order of battle so that we can start committing greater

forces to Iraq and be able to sustain them without breaking the

Army and the Marines.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Pollack.

General McCaffrey.

General MCCAFFREY. Well, I would clearly agree that we have a

5-year challenge facing us in Iraq. It will probably take that long

to create a legitimate Iraqi State, get economic reconstruction

under way, and create Iraqi security forces that are fully capable

of, on their own, maintaining internal order and protecting the

country.

But I think the next 18 months are crucial. In my judgment we

are running out of domestic political support rapidly. The U.S. National Guard, this huge professional, disciplined force, is in a stage

of meltdown and within 24 months will be coming apart. The

wheels are coming off the National Guard.

The U.S. Army now using year combat tours. Most of our fighting forces are rolling into their third combat tour since 9/11. The

Marines are running 7 months, a little bit better way of operating

it, a very different force structure requirement. They are starting

into their fifth combat tours.

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps are incapable of sustaining

this campaign. The question of more United States military forces

for Iraq at the start is a moot point. They are not there. They will

not be there. We can surge one, two, three brigades for the election.

We will probably do that. This game is coming to an end.

By next summer the National Guard combat brigades will have

been used up unless we fundamentally change the rules of the

game. Right now it says mandatory 24-month callup once in 5

years. If we change it, we will accelerate the self-destruction of the

Guard. But they are expended as of this summer, so we are now

back to Active-Duty Army and Marines. Who are rapidly trying to

create a fourth brigade in each U.S. Army division using the same

manpower, two-battalion brigades. To some extent it is a shell

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game that will work as long as we are only doing counterinsurgency in Iraq. So the bottom line is there will not be any more

United States forces for Iraq.

Now, the second point. Personally, I would argue the last thing

we are in Iraq to do is to conduct counterinsurgency operations to

pacify the country and to win their hearts and minds. That ideology, that language, belongs in a different environment. It seems

to me we have done a tremendous gift to the Iraqi people and the

region by destroying the Saddam regime and its coercive tools. Now

what we are trying to do is create a new political government, create new Iraqi security forces, and get out of there.

So I would hope by December 2006 you would see perhaps three

U.S. Army and Marine divisions outside the urban areas, particularly near Baghdad, but not involved in counterinsurgency in any

way, but only backing up the emergent security force.

Finally, it seems to me that the larger issue, for your committee

and the Armed Services Committee to face, is not Iraq. We are not

going to—my guess is we have got about a .80 chance of pulling

this off by the end of next summer. I am reasonably optimistic this

is—we are in a race against time, lack of political will on the part

of the American people being the big factor. I would be surprised

if we do not pull it off.

But we have got the wheels coming off the U.S. Armed Forces.

We are running our capital fleet into the ground. It is not being

rebuilt. Some time in the next 5 years, Castro is going to die. We

are going to have a million Cuba refugees at sea. We are going to

have an incipient civil war on the island. We are going to have to

think through Venezuela and our oil energy. We are going to have

to deter aggression against Taiwan. We are going to have to add

military legitimacy to the political dialog with North Korea.

We are—and now the rhetoric coming out of the QDR is let us

go to a one-war capability, meaning you cannot use even the force

you have got because you have told the world when you commit it,

it is gone, there is no backup. So I think we are underresourced

and I believe in personal judgment—I join many others—I think

Secretary Rumsfeld is in denial of the evidence in front of his eyes

that this military structure is not achieving its purpose and that

we have to transform.

I would also probably take partial issue with Dr. Pollack, the

military we had was a World War II military, a cold-war military,

it is tanks and artillery, and these guys just do not get it. That

military took down the Afghan situation in under 100 days. That

military went in and took down a million-man army. The only cohesive force in Iraq for the last 2 years have been U.S. Army and

Marine company commanders and battalion commanders, not on

counterinsurgency, but on economic reconstruction. That is who

built city councils.

We are not new to the counterinsurgency game, for God’s sake.

We have been doing this for 200 years, starting with fighting our

own indigenous warrior, Native Americans. I think when you look

at downtown Iraq, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Stryker units

up north, the combination of armor and special ops and intel and

Army aviation, the force structure is pretty good.

55

It is not to argue against transformation. We get some real problems out there to change SOCOM’s credentials and resourcing in

particular. But I do not think the U.S. Armed Forces are the key

factor, the bottom line, in Iraq right now. They are so tough, so disciplined, so determined, that the insurgency is leaving them alone.

The insurgents are not operating in units bigger than squad-sized

units. They had 50 of them attack Abu Ghraib 60 days ago and we

killed damn near all of them almost immediately.

They have stopped using mortars in most cases against our troop

cantonments and they are going to rockets because when they do

we use counterbattery and nail the shooter, or overhead systems or

Predator.

So I think the military is doing a terrific job. What we need is

this new Ambassador on the ground and a 36-month strategy to get

us out of there and to leave a determined Iraqi Government with

its own security forces.

Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Cordesman.

Dr. CORDESMAN. I think that both Dr. Pollack and General

McCaffrey have raised an issue which is not related directly to

your questions, but absolutely critical. It is somewhat striking that

6 years after we began talking about force transformation we have

one practical example, which is General Schoomaker’s reorganization of the Army, and no meaningful future year defense program,

no meaningful cost containment of procurement, no plans to reorganize our force structure in terms of the Reserves, the Guard, or

any of the other elements that address not only this contingency,

but any other contingency that we face.

I do not know if we are going to talk our way through another

quadrennial defense review, but at this point all I can say is, who

cares? I learned when I worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense if you are not shaping the budget it is all nonsense. What we

have had, frankly, is 6 years, to be polite about it, in which we

have not shaped the budget. And if all of those studies were burned

tomorrow, who would ever know?

That, unfortunately, has set the groundwork that we now have

to face. Whether or not I agree with Dr. Pollack—and I do not—

on how I would use the troops, I would love to have more people

with language skills, civil-military experience. I would love to have

people who could actually stay long enough and provide the continuity that is the key, regardless of how you are using people.

But we have not got them. We have already over-rotated the people who are really good and we really need. Putting more men and

women in simply for the sake of more men and women is not going

to serve a purpose. If we cannot answer the question of where

skilled people are coming from, the question, as General McCaffrey

has said, is moot.

I have to say there is one area where we could potentially find

more people and where it would serve a purpose of, I think, really

helping in the areas which are relatively secure. I found it amazing

how few foreign service officers, who are career officers, have actually volunteered, who are actually performing duties in the field. In

many cases these are people who are taking extended tours. A

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small part of the foreign service is taking on far too much of the

job, supplemented in many cases by young contract personnel.

One real issue here is why do we not have the civilian counterparts for the military? That is one of the critical aspects of the police training effort. One problem has been the Department of

Homeland Security, other elements of the civilian side of the government. These are skills the military do not have. They are also

skills we have not really drawn on.

If I was to look at a priority where there may be some leeway

for action, that is one of the critical ones. A more general issue for

this committee is do we need a foreign service trained to hide in

the embassies and pursue its careers in Washington, and if not

should we change retention, promotion, and recruiting fundamentally?

In a world where we talk about wars on terrorism and constant

risk, having a foreign service oriented toward its own security and

having civilian agencies which cannot be the military counterpart

is a warning that goes far beyond Iraq.

Now let me address the more specific issues here. I do not believe

that it is 3 to 5 years before we find out whether Iraqis can perform the security mission. I agree with General McCaffrey that in

the next 6 to 18 months we either pull this thing together or we

do not. We are going to pull it together by finding out whether

Iraqi forces come on line, not in full strength, but enough strength

to make a difference, in areas which are more secure. We are going

to find out whether Iraqi governants can actually deploy outside

Baghdad and handle the regional issues involved, and we are going

to find out whether Iraqi politics are inclusive.

We are going to find out whether we can hold together the relationship between the Kurds and the Arabs, something that is basically uncertain. We are going to find out whether the Shiite areas

which are relatively secure can establish, not security in any classic sense, but governance, of which effective police forces and security forces are part. Basra is a warning. United States-British

troops could not address a single problem that is a security problem in Basra today. All they could do is add to the tensions between Shiite groups. Over far too much of the south that is the

case.

Iraqi pulls it together with Iraqi security and police forces or

General McCaffrey’s 80-percent chance of success comes a lot closer

to mine, which is 50 percent and dropping.

Similarly, in the Sunni areas we either can put people into the

field who can govern, who can be a police force, and at the same

time pressure Sunnis while the inclusive structure works or we

fail.

That to me is the key set of priorities, and U.S. troops simply are

not capable of handling it. We may have to surge them. There may

be a need, even at the cost of even further future problems for our

all-volunteer force structure, to pull in specialized units to meet

specialized needs. But sheer numbers, 10,000 men and women,

what on earth does that mean? Ten thousand men and women with

what capability to do what?

I was trained from the start in the Department of Defense that

whenever you start quoting total manpower numbers you have beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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come irrelevant. I think in general that is one of the problems here.

If you cannot say who to do what, when, and where, this is the

kind of strategic generalization that does more harm than good.

But let me make a final point here, and that is, would it upset

Iraqi public opinion, is there hostility? I here—I do very much disagree with Dr. Pollack. I think in much of the south people sincerely do not want any kind of foreign military presence. In most

Sunni areas I do not think they want us to do security missions.

I think this is a very sincere nationalism, antagonism. It goes beyond Islamists. It is something I watched in Iraqi from 1971 onward and I do not believe it has changed on the basis of my recent

visits to Iraq. That is why I think, one way or another, either the

Iraqis do this or we fail, and we need to understand that and begin

to accept the risk.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Cordesman.

In our invitation to the witnesses we indicated that at this point

there would be an opportunity for each of you to make concluding

points or to reinforce something that you have said in view of what

others have said. You have all been interacting remarkably in any

event, but let me at this point ask you, Dr. Pollack, if you would

like to make a final comment.

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I have said all

that I need to say about my views about our military strategy and

the need to adopt a traditional counterinsurgency approach. Let me

make just a couple of additional points and I will make them very

briefly.

I do think that we need to adopt as well a new political approach. I think that this is critical and we have all been talking

about the importance of both the political and economic environments in Iraq to solving the security situation. I have repeatedly

come back to the security situation because in my conversations

with Iraqis, in my conversations with Americans working out in

the field with Iraqis, it is security that is the first problem. It is

security that is hampering the political and economic reconstruction programs, and, therefore, if we do not tackle security and start

to make changes there, I think it very difficult to deal with the political and economic solutions, which are critical elements in the reconstruction of Iraq and the solution to dealing with the insurgency

and the broader problems of the country.

But one of the problems that we have facing us—and it is a point

that I made with regard to General McCaffrey’s very apt point

about the importance of a legitimate political process—is that the

Iraqis see this as a legitimate political process. It is all well and

good for the United States to stand up and say this is a legitimate

process, but if the Iraqis do not buy it it is meaningless, because,

back to Dr. Cordesman’s earlier point and his repeated point, that

we need Iraqis who are willing to fight and die for this country.

Unfortunately, what we have increasingly seen is that for many

Iraqis a piece of paper that looks very nice to us does not necessarily do it for them. In particular, one thing that I am increasingly hearing from Iraqis and seeing in both press reports and in

United States Government reports is increasing disconnect between

the Government in Iraq, in Baghdad, in the green zone, and the

58

rest of the country. I am very frightened when I hear Iraqi friends

talking about ‘‘those people in Baghdad,’’ meaning the new transitional governments, whom they seem to believe are not really interested in their lives and are not making much of an effort to help

them, largely because they do not see any sort of improvement in

the basic material aspects of their lives—security, electricity, these

other factors that I have mentioned repeatedly.

This is a tremendous problem. Iraqis complain about the corruption that General McCaffrey mentioned. They complain about the

corruption within the government itself. Here I want to be very

careful. As best I can tell, most Iraqis very much like Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. They believe that he is not corrupt and that

he is very well-intentioned. But other members of their government

do not seem to get that same impression, or give that same impression to the rest of the country.

There is enormous corruption in the country. As I wrote in the

New York Times, the Iraqi oil ministry seems to be nothing but a

sieve. I would urge this committee in particular to try to get to the

bottom of where that money is going, because it is an awful lot of

money that ought to be going to the Iraqi people and does not seem

to be.

But our focus has been on this political process in Baghdad, and

that political process needs to succeed. Do not get me wrong,

please. It is necessary. It is a necessary element of success. But it

is not sufficient. For Iraqis to see this political process as being legitimate, they need a connection to their government which does

not yet exist.

Many of these political parties have not made an effort to put

down roots in the community, to recognize what the complaints are

of their constituents, and to try to bring them real material benefits. As a result, Iraqis often feel disconnected from what we claim

is their political leadership in Baghdad, and increasingly they are

looking to go their own way.

It is why you increasingly hear calls for autonomy, not just from

Kurdistan, but from the Shi’a areas of southeastern Iraq, and that

is extremely troubling. Again, that is the road to civil war.

As a final point, since we have been jousting all morning, let me

make one final rejoinder to Dr. Cordesman, which is his statement

that the Iraqis either do this or we fail. I am in mortal danger of

that statement. I think that is an enormous gamble. What I have

seen from the Iraqis in Iraq, studying them for 17 years—and I recognize that Tony’s numbers are double mine—the Iraqis cannot do

this for themselves.

We need to help them get past the first hurdles, and these are

big hurdles, because they cannot do it for themselves. They are not

culturally, politically, or socially inclined.

Just one point. Let us remember that this is a society that for

30 years Saddam reinforced to the notion that they should not do

for themselves, that the state should do everything for them and

that Baghdad should be the arbiter of all decisionmaking in the

country. When you get out into the countryside of Iraq and you talk

to American personnel, military and civilian talking to Iraqis, they

will say this again and again and again: We cannot get the Iraqis

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to do it for themselves. They expect us, they expect Baghdad, to do

everything for them.

It is going to take time to get past that, and it is going to take

time before we have an Iraqi military that is capable of dealing

with the security system. Just saying that it is either sink or swim,

the Iraqis are going to do it, or not, in 6 or 18 months, frankly, I

would say that the chances of success are a lot less than 80 or 50

percent.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Pollack.

I just have to interject at this point that under my distinguished

friend Joe Biden’s chairmanship, we had a good number of hearings before the war commenced. And distinguished persons just

like yourself sat in front of us. Many of them were what I have

termed to be the ‘‘dancing-in-the-street crowd.’’ They claimed that

we would be welcomed, there was no need to have a whole lot of

troops out there; the Iraqis, once rid of Saddam, would take care

of their situation.

Obviously, these views were not well founded, but nevertheless

that was then; this is now. And I appreciate your testimony this

morning very much.

Let me just indicate——

Senator BIDEN. I think the record should note Dr. Pollack was

not one of them.

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you, Senator Biden.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Biden, for making that interjection.

Senator BIDEN. Others were more inclined to think that.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, we will not go there.

The fact is that there is not an easy bifurcation between security,

politics, and economics. On Wednesday, as a matter of fact, we

hope to discover where the oil money is or how much there is, because, somehow, despite the fact that security must be provided,

and likewise a constitution or a political framework, someone must

pay for all of this. Revenues must be raised in Iraq. There must

be a functioning economy. So we want to discover all of these

things sort of ad seriatim in the early days of this week.

General McCaffrey, do you have some final comments?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, I provided an after-action report, Senator Lugar, to you and your members of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

General MCCAFFREY. I tried to bring together some of the insights, to include a listing of the vulnerabilities I thought we faced,

because I think the situation—essentially, I came back this time

saying, reminding myself how impressed I was by the courage, the

dedication, and skill of the U.S. Armed Forces. We have never had

more creative, brave young men and women in uniform in our history. They are doing a remarkable job.

The second observation, I thought we are finally getting—

Negroponte and Abizaid and Casey put together a decent strategy.

I told them the strategy should not be classified; it ought to be up

on billboards outside all of their encampments. Essentially it says

we are going to create an Iraqi State and Iraqi security forces and

we are leaving in some measured way.

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Then finally, I think I saw some chance that the Sunnis would

decide to participate politically instead of just fighting.

Now, balancing that, a couple of other observations. I steadfastly,

and certainly on TV or radio, never allowed myself to be drawn

into a comparison of Vietnam and Iraq. To be blunt, there are no

political or economic or national security comparisons, except possibly U.S. domestic politics. But one thing struck me this last time.

I was able to move around the whole country because I had this

terrific young group of kids, Texas National Guard, security, two

Blackhawks, two Apaches, advance parties, et cetera.

Baghdad is 10 times more complex and dangerous than Saigon

ever was. I used to live in an air-conditioned BOQ and drive, normally with two beers under our belts, down to Vung Tao to the

beach with two bodyguards. This whole situation in Iraq is a real

demanding, dangerous enterprise, where we have huge national security interests at stake. I personally would underscore in my judgment we had better pull this off. If it requires further resources or

sacrifice on the part of the American people, we will be making a

terrible misjudgment if we do not stay the game.

Finally, sort of a minor observation. About one of the few things

I was critical of the U.S. Armed Forces leaving country was our

public diplomacy, our press policy, our media policy. I think the

media are starting to send the second team to Iraq. It is dangerous.

They are using unknown Arabic stringers to do their reporting.

They are focusing on the bomb blasts with borrowed video. They

cannot get out of their hotels, and the U.S. Armed Forces had better support them.

Conversely, the Pentagon—I, debriefing this trip, said, can you

imagine in World War II; we would have had a guy like Petraeus,

who was widely hammered around Washington for appearing on

the front page of Time Magazine or something—can you imagine

taking in World War II some brave-hearted battle leader with a

doctorate from Princeton who is telegenic and likes creating Arabic

forces and telling him to stay out of the eyesight of the American

people?

What are we doing? The most trusted institution in American society now are the U.S. Armed Forces, hands down. They are up in

the 80th percentile or higher. Our battalion and brigade and division commanders ought to be responding to the American people on

TV and to the print media, and they are not doing it. So I think

there is room for a little energy to get that process going. A free

press, there will be no argument in this hearing room, is essential

to what we are trying to achieve there.

I thank you, sir, to you and your committee for the opportunity

to share these ideas with you.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I appreciate your comments very much. On

the last one, in another forum, I am going to be testifying at a

Wednesday hearing on the media shield law. It strikes me this is

another media shield situation. We really need to have persons

who are articulate and well-informed talking about Iraq.

Senator BIDEN. That is uniforms and not suits at the Pentagon.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Cordesman.

Dr. CORDESMAN. Thank you.

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This is an enormous gamble and the stakes are extraordinarily

high, and they go far beyond Iraq. They affect the gulf, our strategic energy interests, the overall problem that we are struggling

with, which is Islamist extremist terror.

I agree that it is going to take years. I have no idea how many,

whether it is 5, 10, or 12. The point is not that we can set the calendar. The point is we cannot set the calendar and we need a prolonged commitment.

But I think General McCaffrey made the point, perhaps we all

have made it in different ways, we have got to get through the next

18 months to get to those other periods. When I talk about Iraqi

forces, I do not mean they will be ready. We will need significant

United States troops until Iraqi forces can take over, and I do not

know when that is. What I am certain of is that if the current procedure for training and expanding the role of Iraqi forces fails, we

do not have a backup with United States military presence or anyone else.

We have a political calendar where we can make many slippages

in time or content. Iraq already had a good constitution. It did not

really help very much. Perhaps having a better one may help or

it may not. I think in the real world—Ken touched on the issue—

the constitution counts when it touches on three things: Money,

mostly how the oil money gets allocated; power, who has the power

in the center; and then federalism or regionalism, how do you protect the minorities. Everything else is a little too Jeffersonian to

reach Iraqi hearts and minds.

The election that is coming may, or may not, make things better.

We may see a lot more selfish ethnic, sectarian, and service politics. But what we have to have is unity and avoid civil war. To me,

the exit strategy that is inevitable is we cannot fix Iraq if Iraq attacks itself, and we have to bear that in mind and I hope you will

bear it in mind in your hearings on the political and economic dimension.

We have talked here about a number of issues on the military

side. Let me conclude with a few points—you asked for recommendations—that really do not relate to the military side, but

to the other aspects of U.S. policy that I think are critical.

I believe we face three major enemies in Iraq. One is the mainstream of Sunni insurgents, the other is Islamist extremists, and

the third is the management of the aid process here in Washington.

We have now committed as of this week $19 billion out of $20 billion in aid money. Ken noted the problems in figuring out where

the oil money is going. I think time and again it does not matter

whether we have completed most of these projects. If we drew a

map, they will be in the wrong area, they did not affect real world

service, and they are not sustainable.

The reporting going to this committee and to the public is like

the Russian reporting. It is a number of project starts with a member of project completions, nothing on meeting project needs, no

mapping of who it influences. It also is putting U.S. contractors,

U.S. security teams, foreign contractors, and foreign security teams

everywhere that it is operating. Whatever the hostility may be toward U.S. troops, I suggest the committee might want to drive behind some of those personal security detachments for contractors

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some day and see how they behave and see the level of hostility

that is there.

When we talk about Iraqi corruption, let me say that Iraqi corruption is infinitely preferable to ours. At least most of the money

will be spent in Iraq and stay there.

I think you need to ask some very searching questions in your

next hearing. I see that Ambassador Khalilzad has already talked

about moving the management of aid to the Iraqis into the Embassy and to the team in Iraq, and I think anything you do to bypass USAID in Washington and the defense contracting effort in

Washington will be as effective a counterinsurgency action as anything you can do militarily. They are part of the threat, not part

of the solution.

Let me say in terms of public diplomacy here, General McCaffrey

and Ken also raised a critical issue. What bothers me is our inability to communicate in Iraqi terms clearly and unambiguously that

we will not be guilty of the conspiracy theories that they see us as

most potentially guilty of, and those essentially are permanent

bases versus advisory efforts, taking the oil, taking the land.

We do not seem to have the public diplomacy here to support the

public diplomacy in the field, and the public diplomacy in the field

is badly underfunded and badly underpersoned simply because it

is not given the seriousness it needs. So that adds to the aid dimension another issue.

I think we have not touched on international organization. I do

not believe we can go for foreign troops. I do believe we badly need

to go for foreign help, and Ken mentioned the idea of having some

kind of contact groups, of expanding our role here. I think that is

absolutely critical.

Let me just make one final point about oil, and I think it sums

up what the committee might want to focus on. I get a little surprised when I look at my watch and find it is 2005 and I then read

the status report from the Department of State as of 13 July 2005

and read: ‘‘On July 10th, bilateral energy consultations were held

between the Iraqi Oil and Electricity Ministries and the U.S. Departments of Energy and State covering issues such as developing

a needs assessment into Iraq’s natural gas utilization for power

generation.’’

We have spent $19.1 billion out of $20.9 billion and we do not

have a clear assessment of the needs for Iraq’s major source of revenue? We face a situation next year where the Iraqi budget is in

excess of $18 billion. That is virtually the total of its entire oil revenues. And you have not even started planning for your $30 billion

supplemental in aid for Iraq for the coming fiscal year. There is

something wrong here that goes far beyond the military dimension.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Cordesman.

Let me just indicate, before we begin our questioning, how much

we appreciate the preparation each of you have made and even

more the testimony you have given this morning. I think each one

of us has benefited tremendously from the intellectual stimulation

and also, hopefully, more than that from the action steps that we

would feel impelled to take listening to the three of you talk.

But now we want to ask some questions of you. We will have a

10-minute round and maybe more as members may have additional

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questions. I would like to begin my portion by asking you, General

McCaffrey, in your testimony, in your written testimony, you suggest the period between January to September 2006, that is next

year, would be the peak of the insurgency. Can you discuss a bit

more this conclusion? In other words, all three of you have identified this period from July 2005 to the end of 2006 as roughly the

18 months of critical time.

You have introduced, General McCaffrey, the suggestion that 6

months from now, more or less, the insurgency may pick up and

continue on in its strongest form for maybe that 8- or 9-month period. What is your thought about that?

General MCCAFFREY. Well, it will be interesting to see what I

say in January 2006.

My sort of gut instinct was that the new Ambassador we are

going to send in there to replace Negroponte is a national treasure.

This fellow has a tremendous sense of dealing with these kind of

issues. I think if we can lock Abizaid and some of the other senior

military leadership in place, the current trend lines say if the

Sunnis come into the government—and I actually—I have been

sort of fascinated listening to my two colleagues here, in particular

the notion that they used to have a decent constitution anyway, but

it made no impact. So if we can get a constitution that is not

viewed as malignant to the Sunnis and if there is a vote, and if

there is a pluralistic government of some sort in January, and if

the construction of the Iraqi security forces continues on its current

lines, in which by December we are alleging we will have even

more people on the ground, 60 to 100,000 that are determined to

try and support this political process, then I think that would be

the high point of the insurgency.

I have said all along the foreign jihadists, the suicide bombers,

the slaughter of the innocents, the nailing of the Iraqi police forces

as they are lined up to take rollcall, will not materially affect the

outcome of this conflict. What we are watching in Iraq is: Can you

take three warring factions—the Kurds, the Shi’a, and the Sunni—

cobble together some loose federal structure, and have some way of

capitalizing on their oil income and creating law and order?

I am betting that, the current trend lines, we will probably see

January be the high point of the insurgency, and then by, hopefully, the end of next summer, as we are forced into large-scale

drawdowns of our military forces, that the Iraqis will be there to

pick up the energy.

The CHAIRMAN. Each of you in a way talked about our problems,

our military structure. The drawdown seems to be there in the vision. It seems to be with all three of you. But as you are pointing

out, success, whether it is the 80 percent you suggested, General

McCaffrey, or the 50 percent you suggested, Dr. Cordesman, is dependent upon these factors of the inclusion of all the parties in the

government and their respect for this constitution. That means respect for a process that has allocated oil revenues, or for a sense

of federalism or autonomy, as that might be a part of the constitutional structure. The Kurds have certainly called for this, others

maybe, so that there will be some loyalty felt by all the parties toward the center and, therefore, some willingness to fight for it.

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When Prime Minister Jafari came to this country recently to visit

with our President, he stressed against the skeptics that August 15

really is important to get the constitution done. You have barely

got some of the Sunnis around the table. You just appointed a few

the other day. What is being written? How in the world can you

cobble together a constitution by the 15th?

Some have even suggested a little fudging, that it might go on

until September 15 even if the August 15 deadline was sort of kept

there. But in any event, there is going to be a constitution and a

referendum, apparently. But the referendum has some tough qualifications. As I recall, there must be a two-thirds majority in each

of the 18 governmental provinces now, which means a lot of people

will need to be on board to get those kinds of pluralities.

But even then, Prime Minister Jafari was optimistic that this is

going to happen. They proceed on to the elections, which will then

lead to the legitimacy of this elected government that we are talking about, that will have the support of everybody. There will be

some sense as you suggest, I think, Dr. Cordesman, that power is

recognized there and is accepted, that the oil revenues situation

has been worked out, and that even regionalism, the sense of the

Kurds, some sense of autonomy there, has been worked out. They

want to be Iraqis as opposed to Kurds and a greater Kurdistan.

That is the reason Jafari was saying we have got to proceed right

along with these deadlines; these are not to be debated, despite the

practical considerations.

What is your judgment, Dr. Pollack, on how likely it is that the

August 15 deadline, or some reasonable deadline soon thereafter,

will be met with a constitution? Will this referendum in 18 districts, a two-thirds vote, happen with good participation by Iraqis,

with maybe more Sunnis coming out this time? Likewise, will the

officers that are selected under this constitution in December or

January or whenever that event occurs, be accepted? Are they

going to be the kind of people who say, we are Iraqis now?

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think there is a reasonable expectation that August 15 will

happen with—will come to pass and there will be a constitution

agreed upon. I do not think it is a certainty and I would not want

to assign a probability. On the one hand, we have seen the members of this government squabble over almost everything imaginable and the delays that we saw in the formation of this government suggest that we could just as easily see them unable to come

to an agreement.

The TAL was very much a compromise document. It was something that very few Iraqis really liked. Repeatedly they have looked

at the TAL, they have taken runs at the TAL, and they have basically decided to leave the TAL intact because they have not yet

wanted to have the kind of all-out fight they seem to believe that

opening up the TAL again will require.

Now, that is not necessarily bad. As we know from our own experience, constitutions are compromise documents. No one gets everything that they want from a constitution. And I suspect that there

were any number of people who walked away from our constitutional convention very unhappy, bitterly disappointed by the comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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promises that were reached there. But ultimately it was good

enough to make it work.

What, of course, is critical in all of this is whether the Iraqis see

those compromises as good enough to respect it and to live with it.

I think it is conceivable that we could get to August 15 and have

a constitution, and it is also conceivable to me that those compromises, which while unpalatable to a greater or lesser degree by

a whole range of Iraqis, could ultimately be accepted.

Let me say, Senator, that my greater concern is that this will all

be seen as ultimately irrelevant to the great many Iraqis. I think

that if we have a—if we do get a good constitution on August 15

you probably will see a lot of Iraqis come forward to vote and to

approve it in the referendum. For me this is very much like the

January 30 elections, which were as much expressions by Iraqis of

a determination to make reconstruction work as it was actual approval of the candidates who were being elected.

Now, the UIA, the United Iraqi, list was very popular—sorry, the

Inter-Iraqi Alliance—was very popular because Grand Ayatollah

Sistani told people that this was the group that he wanted in place

and because Jafari himself was popular and Hakim has a following, other members of the coalition were themselves somewhat

popular.

But I think it is very important to keep in mind that for a great

many Iraqis they voted and they voted for the United Iraqi Alliance in expectation that this was going to be the group who finally

did bring them security and basic services, and that same group is

becoming increasingly frustrated with this government because

they are not providing those security and basic services that they

seek.

My fear is we could have a constitution, we could have a referendum, we could have an election in December, and we may find

ourselves in exactly the same spot a year from now because that

new government is just as unable to provide the Iraqis with the

basic necessities that they demand and are entitled to as this one

and all of the past ones have.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you for that.

Let me just conclude my portion by saying our focus today was

on Iraqi security, but in the course of that you have all made comments that I think are important about United States armed force

structure and our security, as we face a whole list of potential challenges throughout the world. We are trying to think conscientiously

about how we can allocate the resources that are required in terms

of manpower and money and what have you to Iraq, recognizing

that there is a rest of the world out there.

So this is, hopefully, a wakeup call for all of us about the ambitions of our foreign policy. Whether we have ambitions or not, the

needs of our national defense as well, require that we take a look

at vital security issues.

Senator Hagel, please.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. SENATOR FROM

NEBRASKA

Senator HAGEL. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

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Gentlemen, thank you for your efforts and honest, realistic analysis of our current position in Iraq. I am grateful, as I believe all

who have had the opportunity to listen to you for the last 21⁄2

hours, for your wise counsel based on significant experience, and

certainly that includes recent experience, recent, I would put it,

within the timeframe of the last 3 years, because each of you has

been involved in framing up the challenges even prior to our invasion of Iraq and have been very steadfast in your continued honest

analysis of the realities of what we are up against.

I would want to comment on a point that the chairman just

made. General McCaffrey, you have alluded to it in your summary

remarks, and that is the magnificent conduct of our troops in Iraq.

I know you have just been there and have briefed some of us personally, as you have done here today, and I assume you have had

an opportunity to brief senior members of the Pentagon.

I do not believe it is a matter of whether our troops have performed as magnificently as they have or not. In fact they have. In

fact, we have loaded on our military so much burden and so much

responsibility that I think it is part of the reason, as each of you

have alluded to, some more than others, that we are in danger of

destroying our National Guard and our Reserves as well as our Active-Duty Force.

General McCaffrey, you are one of those young officers that came

out of Vietnam after a couple of tours, as well as Norm Schwartzkopf and Colin Powell and another dozen or two dozen, who stayed

in the military and said we are going to rebuild it, we are going

to make it the kind of military that is worthy of our country and

our people, and you did.

I, too, am very concerned about what is happening to our military and our force structure. You, General, have articulated that

point rather well, as Dr. Cordesman has referred to it as well as

Dr. Pollack. I think we have to be a little careful that we do not

connect this magnificent conduct and the kind of responsibility we

have loaded on our military and the job they are doing with the

policy.

As a matter of fact, the issue was in Vietnam and Korea, every

time we have asked our young men and women to make the ultimate sacrifice and serve this country, in an unquestioned way—

and I would even say—and General, you were there and I was

there—I think our forces in Vietnam fought very valiantly. They

were not near as well trained as the forces in Iraq, nor probably

as well led, certainly not as well equipped.

But what we must assure our military and their families is that

we have a policy worthy of their service and their sacrifices. That

is the issue here. The issue is not whether our troops have performed admirably, and they have. Also, whether we are loading so

much on them that they cannot perform, in fact, can never be successful at what we are asking them to do.

The three of you have made it very clear, and I happen to agree.

This is an issue, this war, this area of conflict, that will be determined by a successful political outcome. It will not be as a result

of the military. The military is a very significant piece of that, as

you all three have noted—security, stability, allowing Iraqis an opVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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portunity to develop. But in the end, it will be the Iraqi people who

will decide.

I would say, in light of that, when the three of you make some

clear points of corruption, endemic corruption, which I hear from

all sources in and out of our government, in and out of the military

side of our government, the civilian side—that is an issue that we

are going to have to deal with and, as you have noted, Dr.

Cordesman, in your summary comments, hopefully we will get into

some of the specifics of that this week at our next set of hearings.

But if there is so much rot so deep down in that institution over

there, then we do a great disservice to our service men and women

asking them to give their lives for something that is not quite as

noble as we like to portray it, or as our leaders like to portray it

to the American people.

The honesty of this effort is key in my opinion, and that is why

the three of you and others we will hear from this week, your input

is so important.

Let me ask just an aside. General McCaffrey, I suspect you have

had an opportunity to brief senior members of the Pentagon, I do

not know, National Security Council people, others. I do not know

who you have briefed. Let me ask Doctors Pollack and Cordesman:

Have you been called in by any senior members of the administration to get your take recently on Iraq? Dr. Cordesman.

Dr. CORDESMAN. I have talked to some of the officials who are

designated for Iraq, but I have not talked to people in the administration.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

Dr. Pollack.

Dr. POLLACK. Certainly no one senior in the administration on

the issue of Iraq, certainly lower level, working-level people have

consulted with me on a regular basis.

Senator HAGEL. Well, I will talk to Mr. Hadley, the National Security Adviser, and I suggested to him, as well as others in the administration at the highest levels of this administration, to reach

out to people like the three of you and listen to the three of you

and others. We are bubbled up to a point I think where we are disconnected from some very basic and dangerous dynamics of reality

over there.

Anyone who has heard the three of you this morning, and discount half of what you have said, it is still damn disturbing. I am

not surprised with what we heard. But the administration would

do well to reach into another universe of thinking and experience

like the three of you.

Thank you very much.

Now, question. I would like to get the three of your thoughts on

the Iran-Iraq relationship. As we know, the Prime Minister of Iraq,

a number of his Cabinet Ministers are in Iran, have just completed

talks there. How deep, how wide is that relationship? Should it develop? What kind of challenges does it present? Is it helpful? Does

this lead to a wider sense of a United States-Iranian opportunity

for a relationship?

Any way you would like to take this, the three of you, I would

appreciate hearing from you, but specifically focus on Iraq’s challenges over the next couple of years. Can Iran play a role there?

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Should they? How close should that relationship develop? Dr.

Cordesman.

Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, it is inevitable that there will be a relationship, that it will be strategically critical to Iraq, as it will be

to Iran, and that whether we like it or not it is going to be a relationship which Iraq has to focus on and focus on visibly. Just as

the Saudis, with much less incentive, had to reach out to Iran and

reach a modus vivendi with Iran, Iraq absolutely has to. It has to

deal with the border issue. It has to convince in many ways Iran

that there is as little incentive to interfere as possible.

There is the problem of reparations. There is the problem of religious traffic across the border. You can go through a whole list of

issues where they have to work things out. Fortunately, the issue

of oil and transportation has somewhat been eased. The Shattal-Arab is essentially obsolete. Basically, modern shipping and oil

traffic will not be moving through there.

But even in terms of border incidents and waterway issues, one

of the things that Iraq is going to have to deal with sooner or later

is expanding its shipments out through the gulf, and if you look at

the hydrology of the gulf to get efficient oil shipments it is going

to have to change its current mooring positions. These are just a

few of the cases.

I do not know how Iran will play this out. I think it could be very

dangerous. If Iran sees anything approaching a civil war buildup

in Iraq, it is going to obviously back the Shiite side. If anything approaching an American power vacuum exists in Iraq, Iran is going

to attempt to deal with that. If Iran comes into confrontation with

us, I am not sure it can resist trying to play the Iraqi card in a

negative way.

But my impression at this point in time is that Iraq knows where

to stop. The current leadership is not going to take risks that have

Iraq seriously involved in training or security or advisory presences

that would somehow threaten Iraqi control of Iraq; that Iran sees

the situation at least for this moment as to its own advantage. We

are effectively fighting a set of threats in their interest.

But if you ask me what this Iranian Government will be 2 years

from now or the moment it comes under pressure or the moment

it sees the political structure in Iraq fail, then I think the current

status could change very rapidly and very unpredictably and almost inevitably for the worse.

Senator HAGEL. General McCaffrey.

General MCCAFFREY. I agree with Dr. Cordesman’s comments. I

think there are—I listed one of the vulnerabilities of CENTCOM of

our current Iraqi policy being the possibility of Iranian intervention, most likely in a covert form, active intelligence agents, money,

cross-border operations, but potentially if the thing started to spin

out of control late next year, with active military support to protect

the Shi’a from being slaughtered by the Sunnis again. I do not

think they will tolerate it.

There are two other background factors, one of which is widely

known, but I would argue is underappreciated. It seems to me that

our vital ally on the ground which is at great jeopardy is Saudi

Arabia. Now, if you wanted to ask me who I am worried about, it

is Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, perhaps,

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the two of them kluged together. They have an enormous fear, as

we all know, of a Shi’a domination of the oil-producing regions of

the gulf. The Saudi eastern oil fields are largely Saudi Shi’a population. If you look at Iraq, the layout of their oil reserves, much of

them, particularly if Kirkuk goes back to the Kurds, end up in nonSunni hands.

So I think there is a political animosity that will unite much of

the Sunni leadership in the Middle East against Iranian-Iraqi cooperation.

Finally, it is nuclear weapons. The Iranians are going nuclear.

They are going to achieve, in the next 5 years, some modest capability, 10 to 20 weapons. It will change dramatically the military

balance of power in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Navy will no longer

go into the gulf without understanding they are literally placing 10

to 15,000 sailors’ lives at risk. I do not see us currently having either the military power or the political will to deal with the several

completely unpalatable options to deal with that.

So flash forward 3 to 5 years. Iran is a nuclear power and with

a huge capability to influence events in Iraq; a situation from

which we will be withdrawing.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

Dr. Pollack.

Dr. POLLACK. Thank you, Senator. I also completely agree with

Dr. Cordesman’s comments. I think they are right on the money.

Let me just amplify a couple of them because I think they are important.

Iran-Iraq relations are going to—are deep and will continue to

deepen. There is no way that we can stop them and it would be

foolish of us to try to do so. One of my fears is that there are elements within this government who see the Iranian bug bear

around every corner, believe that any Iranian influence is inherently evil, and are fighting that influence with everything they can,

not recognizing that they are doing tremendous damage to our relations with the new Iraqi Government and to the new Iraqi Government’s ability to function. Iran will have a major influence in Iraq.

We need to recognize that and accept it.

By the same token, we should not see that influence as necessarily pernicious. As Tony has pointed out, and I think he is absolutely right, the Iranians are most afraid of chaos in Iraq. They

hear the same things that we do, they see the same information

we do. They, too, know that civil war is a very real possibility in

Iraq and that is their greatest concern.

As a result, I think we need to recognize that we have had tremendous tacit cooperation from the Iranians over the last 2 years.

The Iranians have been telling their various allies inside of Iraq to

participate in the process, the political process that we have established. They have been restraining various hotheads in Iraq who

have wanted to act unilaterally, to fight other groups, to engage in

assassinations and terrorist campaigns of their own, and that has

been extremely helpful to us.

The Iranians have not done it out of any goodwill for us. They

have done it, as Tony pointed out, purely because it is in their interest to do so. My guess is that that will continue to be the case,

again as Tony points out, until one of three things happens: We

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succeed; we fail and the place starts to come apart; or we decide

to try to mount military operations against Iran. Under any of

those circumstances, then I think you could see Iran’s perspective

on Iraq changing.

If we succeed, you know what? That is a problem I would very

much like to have. If we succeed in Iraq and our problem is what

do we do about the Iranian competition over a successful Iraq. If

we fail, I think Tony is absolutely right. The Iranians will get into

Iraq as quickly as they can, and they have set up a massive intelligence network inside Iraq to be able to move—to allow them to

move very quickly to arm proxies, to set up safe havens, to create

buffer zones, and to go to war with various groups that are going

to be allied against them.

One point I would make, just a tweak to Tony’s comments, is

that I suspect that a civil war on Iraq may not see Shi’a versus

Sunni; it may see fragmentation and different Shi’a groups against

different Shi’a groups and against different Sunni groups. Under

those circumstances, the Iranians will be looking, and I think they

already are looking, to identify their allies and their adversaries in

Iraq and move very quickly to help their allies and hurt their adversaries as best they can.

Obviously, the big unknown out there is—actually there are two,

and Tony alluded to at least one of them. One is what are the Iranians going to do. They do have a new President. It is unclear if

that new President will have any impact whatsoever on Iranian

foreign policy. Their foreign policy so far has been, in the last 5

years, pretty consistent and arguably quite pragmatic, if not terribly pro-American. That is fine. We can live with it.

If they change their policy, then things could start to be different

inside of Iraq. But by the same token, I think we need to recognize

that American policy toward Iran is very much up for grabs, and

some of the more aggressive policies we have heard outlined toward Iran could have very serious repercussions for us in Iraq.

As I said, we have greatly benefited from Iran’s tacit cooperation

in Iraq. If we go to war with Iran, then we will have very little incentive to continue to maintain that cooperation over Iraq.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Hagel.

Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for a really

useful morning. I hope they had the television on in other buildings

downtown.

As usual, my friend from Nebraska asks the $64 question: Is our

policy worthy of our military? The answer is a flat ‘‘No; it is not.’’

In my view we have no discernible regional policy. I have not been

able to divine it.

We talk about Iran—and I had not planned on mentioning this,

but Iran has certain interests as well. They do not want any permanent U.S. bases. They want a quick exit but leaving stability behind.

Everybody forgets—you guys do not because you are so used to

it. But you know, Persians have a bare majority in Iran. The idea

of the consequence of a civil war, a sectarian war, in Iraq goes a

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lot further than just what the consequences are on other countries

in the region, what the consequences are internally in Iran.

Our policy thus far has been a disaster. General, I think there

is a reason why—I will not bore you with; I have bored you already

privately with my views about my conversations over the last 3

years with foreign leaders who could have helped and offered to

help, and I believe they offered to help, and the way we dealt with

it.

There is an old bad joke about George playing center field. You

basically said it. George plays center field; in the first two innings

he has five errors. The coach pulls George out and says: Tony, you

are in, and he puts Cordesman into center field.

The first pitch, a routine fly ball to Cordesman hits his glove; he

drops it, error. The coach goes nuts, calls time out, and says: Tony,

you are out of there. As Tony Cordesman is crossing the third base

line the coach grabs him by the number and says: What is the matter with you, Cordesman? Cordesman looks at the coach and says:

Coach, George screwed up center field so badly no one can play it.

Well, the truth of the matter is that is part of our problem. We

have screwed up center field so badly, economically, politically, and

I would argue in terms of military strategy from the suits, not the

uniforms, that anybody who tells me—if I go one more time and

someone tells me that we have given the military everything they

want—that is simply not true, not true, not true, not true.

In five trips to Iraq, I find an ascending willingness on the part

of flag officers to say out loud: Hey, I do not have what I need. Because they figured out they are going to wear the jacket, they are

going to be the ones blamed, they are going to be the ones blamed

for a bad policy.

Well, enough of my talking about that. Let me point out, this notion of U.S. interests and intentions, we have a big problem. I

asked the question of this administration why we will not say we

do not want any more bases there, just flat out: We will not have

a permanent base there. Guess what? They have not resolved that

issue internally. That is one of the reasons why we do not have a

good public diplomacy, General. They do not know what to say.

They do not know what to say as to what our policy is.

The reconstruction policy, to quote a great chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, it is incompetent, incompetent, incompetent. The corruption, as you point out, it is not just Iraqi corruption. It really is incredible to me. It is incredible to me the way in

which every time we have been there, from the first time the three

of us showed up together to the last three times. It seems to me

like—Webster seems to me like a guy who can shoot straight and

knows what he is doing, head of the 3rd ID.

He shows me, just like his predecessor Chiarelli did of the First

Cav: Give me PCV pipe, let me run it from the back of the homes

into the Tigris River so there is not 3 feet of water or 2 feet of sewage sitting in the front yard and, guess what, my troops do not get

shot at as much. And he showed me these big overlays only you

guys can do, the Powerpoint deals. Take away the garbage, turn on

the air conditioning a little bit, a couple more hours a day.

Our commander of the Third ID calls it, he refers to ‘‘the greening of Iraq.’’ He does not mean it in a positive way. You can see

72

from a helicopter, the one you flew in, the same ones I flew last

time. We wonder why foreign policy guys do not sign up, foreign

service guys. Guess what, they do not get the Blackhawk I get.

They do not get to travel at 100 feet off the ground at 150 miles

an hour so there is no problem if I were to be shot at, with four

guards with me.

That is the reason they are not volunteering. They do not get to

go outside. They do not get the protection you got, General. They

do not get the protection I got. Go to Fallujah? Give me a break,

go to Fallujah. Get your rear end shot off going to Fallujah.

So what I have a problem with is figuring out how do we do more

of the same. This is a race against the clock. Let me understand

what I glean from you guys, and with the disagreements there

seems to be pretty much a consensus. One, you have got to train

the Iraqis. Ultimately they have got to do the job. They cannot be

trained sufficiently to be able to take over major responsibility, big

chunks, in less than a year.

Tony, you and I may argue about how well they are trained and

I can go back and read your statement from February and read

mine from the same. We really have no difference. You know the

reason they worked in the election, our military shut down the

country. No one was allowed to drive a car. No one was allowed to

move. They were able then to man a checkpoint. That made sense.

But if we did not shut down the country, lock it down, they could

not do it. But we all agree that they are on their way. I think

Petraeus is first-rate. I have been a fan of his since he was up in

the north, and I hope to God they do not take him out of there.

He is the single best thing we have got going on the ground, in my

view, and he is making real progress.

But number one, everyone agrees it is going to take some time,

in the year-plus category, to train up these guys. To create the political conditions to win, we have to do two things. We have to have

elections, participation. But we found out when Sunnis get shot at

they do not show up. What makes anybody think the Sunnis in the

second round are going to show up, even if they helped write the

constitution, if, in fact, the circumstance in the triangle is physically no different for them? Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Second, you know, every poll I have seen and every Iraqi I have

spoken to says to me, in my five trips: I cannot walk out my front

door. You name me a city in America that would support George

Washington reincarnated as President if they could not walk out

the front door, were afraid to walk down the street, to send their

kids down to the local store to pick up a grocery.

So every one of them rates crime in the street higher than anything else. So I do not know how we avoid your position, Dr. Pollack, about we have got to do something to change the condition

on the ground. I guess the thing we do is we train more Iraqis, but

we need more time to train more Iraqis.

Now, we have 6 to 18 months and that will tell the story. Iraqi

troops, what happens outside Baghdad, and whether or not people

can move around. Yet we are going to be asking the American people in the meantime, who are leaving us in droves—because one

thing I think the five of us all agree on, we cannot afford to lose

here.

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So I end up back to the position that I think Iraqi attitudes do

relate in part to their safety. I do think that the strategy, if you

talk to our folks on the ground, as you guys have, all of you, they

say: Look, they’re trying to figure out if you get the Sunnis in on

the deal, then you can isolate the jihadists. And the Sunnis are still

the biggest problem in the insurgency, but if you get them in on

the deal—we need a political solution. It is not going to lend itself

to a military solution.

But the one thing I disagree with you, General, is I think that

the jihadists play a larger role here.

Now, what are the Sunnis outside doing? I sit—and I agree with

all of you. The one thing every place I go, I spend a lot of time,

after the first of the year 41⁄2 hours alone with Mubarak at his request. I spent a lot of time with the King. I spent a lot of time in

the region. All I hear from all these guys is one thing, Dr.

Cordesman. We cannot have a Shi’a state, we cannot have a Shi’a

state, we cannot have a Shi’a state.

Everybody who is Sunni looks first to Shi’a. It is amazing to me.

Then when we say—when they offer to train or do more, we say

to them: We cannot have them train or doing more because they

are Sunni, our folks are saying.

As I look at the security—and I will end, Mr. Chairman. I look

at the security my last trip—and you guys have all done the same

thing—I met with the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, the

Speaker of the Parliament. We have got a Badr Brigade and we

have a Pesh Merga. We all agree it would be ridiculous for either

of them to agree to disband. We do not have enough American

forces. Whether we should or should not have had them, they are

not enough. And we do not have an Iraqi Army trained up yet.

Every Sunni I spoke with said: Senator, do not send anybody into

my neighborhood that ain’t Sunni. The Sunnis are not joining that

military. So send the Badr Brigade into the Sunni Triangle, send

the Pesh Merga by any other name into the triangle, I think you

really do have a civil war, you really do have a civil war.

So what I keep coming back to is, as much as we say our presence is one that is rejected, every single person I spoke to this time,

including the most reactionary Shi’a, who I will not name but I will

tell you privately said: You got to stay, you got to stay.

So it leads me to this conclusion and I will stop, and if you would

want to comment I would appreciate it, but I fully understand if

you do not because the hour is late. One, I do not know how we

move further without following up on some of Dr. Cordesman’s

ideas, and I think they are good because I also have suggested

similar things, so you might think I would think they are good.

One is we need benchmarks here. How can we measure success

or failure if the administration does not state what their intention

is? The idea we are now sitting down and doing an assessment of

oil? What are the benchmarks? What is the goal? What are we setting out? What is the thing we measure success or failure against,

except sit back there and say, I am going to trust these guys for

another 2 years, these same brilliant guys who brought us this

strategy?

The second thing I do not understand is—and I think our new

Ambassador—I fully concur with you, General, he is first-rate. I

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think you are going to see him do, I pray, that he is going to take

all this stuff out of the hands of Brown and Root and the rest. And

let us say they are all good guys, honest, wonderful people. As one

person said to me—and I will not name his name, a flag officer: Do

not build me a tertiary sewer treatment plant; give me the PCV

pipe. Do not tell me you are going to change the whole water supply system; give me generators that I can use right here, right now.

The only guys—the 2,000 projects you talked about are all military. They are the only guys who know how to do it. But that is

not where most of the money is going; 90 percent of it is not. Now,

they just made an adjustment and they are going to put a little bit

more after—what are those funds called? Commander’s Emergency

Response Funds. We should give it all to them, figuratively speaking.

The third thing is we need foreign help. We need more people in

on the deal. Not only do we need a contact group that is, I would

argue, broader, Dr. Pollack, broader than you suggested. I am just

a plain old politician and let me point out to you that if in my State

we had been invaded by—the southern part of the State had massacred the northern part of the State, we had to write a new Delaware Constitution, we are going to bring the State together, we

want to keep it within its existing borders, and I am from the

northern part of the State and I say, by the way, you know what

we could do, we have got to include more of those southerners in

this government—walking into that constituency that just lost

their brother, mother, sister, aunt, uncle, father, I would get my

head ripped off.

But if I walked in and said, you know what, everybody in the

United States of America, the other 49 States, are giving us aid;

they are insisting we have to include them. If we do not, we get

no help. That is the reason why.

These Sunni leaders know they have to get in on the deal and

the Shi’a leaders know they have to let them in. But it is that second, third, and fourth strata. So I would suggest we kind of missed

something without understanding the political dynamic of what it

takes for a political leadership to stand before its constituency, and

it is a constituency of sorts—it is tribal, but it is a constituency—

and make these cases.

So I really think we have to, and I hope you can weigh in with

the administration. We need a contact group. We need some benchmarks. We need some means of measuring what we are about to

do and not lay it all on Petraeus, who is doing a heck of a job.

So those are my comments. Anybody that wants to respond to

them, I would appreciate it. If you do not, I fully understand.

General MCCAFFREY. Senator Lugar, I apologize. I must get on

a plane to Los Angeles or I will be beaten by the supper group that

is waiting for me. I thank you for the honor of being here. I have

great respect for your leadership and thank you for allowing me to

participate.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir.

Senator BIDEN. Again, there is no need to respond, but I would

invite it if either one would like to.

Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, let me just make one very brief response. I think what bothers me a lot is the sheer complexity of

75

this. You mentioned benchmarks. A lot of this is also very local and

very regional now, and necessarily in our hearings we focus more

on gross national trends. Whatever we do out there, we need to

have a much better picture of what is going on in given cities, in

given provinces. We need to make clear distinctions in tribal

groupings and so on.

What strikes me as strange, in addition to the lack of any meaningful articulated grand strategy, is the inability we have outside

the military, where we do tend to map areas of risk, to truly say

what is it we are doing, what we are trying to pull together, how

we are supporting the Iraqis.

I hope as you go through the hearings to follow you are going to

ask people to deal with the complexity of these issues, to go beyond

the sort of sweeping strategic generalizations which far too often

are used in the politics or these strange nationwide measurements

of where the aid goes without any indication of what is happening

economically in those areas, how it interacts with the politics and

how that interacts with the security situation, because frankly it

seems that we have forgotten every lesson we learned in Vietnam

about trying to figure out what is happening and what we are really doing and what the effects are, or we have managed to classify

it to the point where none of the people involved seem to know.

Senator BIDEN. That is exactly what I mean by benchmarks. I

am not talking about one grand strategic plan. I want to know

whether or not in each of the cities there is another 20 minutes of

electrical power going on. I want to know whether or not their intention is to provide in city A, B, C, or D additional generating capacity. I want to know whether or not they intended on having a

county council or a city council elected and whether or not they got

it elected. I want to know, but I have not been able to, except when

I go to Iraq and sit down and almost always, notable exceptions,

with a man or woman in uniform.

Short of that, I do not know where to go to get it, and, therefore,

the ability to measure this is almost impossible.

Dr. POLLACK. Sir, let me just add on. It is interesting, I think,

that Tony and I fixed on the same point that you made in your remarks, which I think are so important. Your point about giving

most or even all of the money directly over to the CERFs, to the

Commanders Emergency Relief Funds, strikes me as being in the

same vein. I think that there is a role for these kind of macrolevel

questions that we have been discussing today, in part because I

think we have some of the macrolevel approaches wrong. But as

Tony is pointing out, we also really need to take a microlevel approach and that is because, in large part, if reconstruction is going

to succeed in Iraq it is much more likely to succeed from the bottom up than the top down.

We have mostly been taking over the last year and a half, maybe

even 2 years, a mostly top-down approach, in part because we panicked because we did not have a plan to do it bottom up and it was

easier to reach out to the top down, in part because I think the security situation is such that it is much easier to sit in a room with

Ibrahim Jafari and 20 other Ministers than it is to send people out

into the field, exactly as you have suggested. It is dangerous out

there and our people get killed because it is dangerous out there.

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But I am very, very nervous about that approach. It has not

worked well in the past in other places and it is not working terribly well in Iraq, and it is creating many of the different problems—political, economic, and military—that we have been talking

about. So it is absolutely critical.

I will make a broad generalization about making broad generalizations, which is that it is critical, as Tony suggested, to get

down to the microlevel to find out what is going on in every city

and every province and every neighborhood of Iraq, because that is

where reconstruction is going to work. It is, of course, also where

we have had a number of success stories. We have all heard any

number of anecdotal reports about the local foreign service officer

or the local military-civil affairs person or some other group who

has been able to do something at the village level and have really

been able to connect with the Iraqi people, and, of course, that is

critically important.

But, of course, we do not have enough people and we do not have

enough resources to be doing that broadly across the country. We

also have these macrolevel problems that are hindering these

microlevel solutions and preventing these microlevel solutions from

either being sustained or catching on and spreading or becoming

part of a larger trend.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Just out of curiosity, either at CSIS or Brookings

Institution do you have graphics of Iraq that show province by

province, maybe as national news magazines in our country would

have, coloring—some are red, some are orange, some are yellow,

depending upon a scale of 10, security is 9-plus here, 7.0 here, or

thereabouts? Or maps that indicate per capita income, if that is an

appropriate figure, or unemployment?

I am curious because I share Senator Biden’s thought about

benchmarks. But I am just wondering who in the world anywhere

has such a critical aid when we are trying to gauge success, not

just success militarily. The American people look at all this in

terms of political support and economic support and so forth for all

this. This is a critical time in terms of our own internal country

dialog.

I am just curious what sort of resources there are out there that

we may be missing.

Dr. CORDESMAN. Well, Senator, I cannot speak for Brookings.

The truth is an awful lot of the data that is being provided on Iraq

is national. A lot of it will not survive engagement with any kind

of investigation as to where it came from. Often the data come from

an Iraqi ministry and some of the Iraqi ministries measure some

things quite well. We do not do a particularly good job of reviewing

that data or transmitting it. Often when we do it does not come

in with the qualifications or the limitations involved.

There has been some survey work done by the UNDP. It has

some significant statistical problems with it, but it does get into

some of these areas. It goes outside the ministries. But I think one

answer to this is that we really do not take a significant account

of what the Iraqi governments are saying. A lot of the time local

governments or provincial governments also gather this data. We

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ward. If it is being gathered in the Embassy, I do not know whether it is there. I think it is in some of our Embassy teams present.

So it is not that the data are not there potentially. It is that they

are not really being tied together. As for what the Pentagon has

in its Situation Room, that is a mystery to me, but I think it is in

some ways a more reassuring view of the data that is generated

and provided in Baghdad, and it does not get into a lot of these

issues.

As Ken pointed out, we really do need to know, because, otherwise, to me the classic example is Basra. We have there a Shiite

Islamist government which is not part of the mainstream alliance,

running its own police force. Ken pointed out it has some of its own

economic goals. And if it was not for press reporting, I do not think

any of us, or listening to the British, any of us would be aware that

there is a major problem in Basra from anything that is being said

in reporting in the United States.

Senator BIDEN. Can I interrupt on that one point? You know,

there are surveys that have been done and we, the United States

Government, presented to us as of July 6 an assessment of the

goals on bridge and road construction, education, judicial, civil society, transportation, and how close we have come to meeting our

targets.

But we can do household surveys in each of these provinces—

they are a sophisticated group of folks—to determine everything

from whether or not the trash is being picked up to whether they

have potable water to whether they have any health care. It is not

absolute, but it is a better means by which—and to the best of my

knowledge we are not doing that. We are not doing that on a detailed basis to get a read as to where the needs are.

I just raise that as an example of what I mean by benchmarks.

I am just trying to figure out how we begin to assess any of this.

Your point, doctor, is correct. But for the fact—I mean, where

would we read some of that stuff?

Dr. CORDESMAN. Senator, let me just give you one example. The

ministry dealing with municipalities did a water survey, indicated

that something like 30 percent of the Iraqis now have a reliable

source of potable water. They did break it down. Now, I suspect

those results were not that accurate in the west. But it is not as

if some of this is not being done.

As for outside telephone surveys or the other kinds of surveys

which are being used, let me say that most of us have forgotten

more statistics than we ever knew and that seems to apply to

many of those pollsters. The samples are simply ridiculous and the

results are ridiculous and the lack of control questions are ridiculous. So I would much rather see if we cannot fix the Iraqi process

of governance, which has got to work anyway, than rely on more

surveys, many of which seem to have four or five pressworthy questions without controls.

Senator BIDEN. I guess what I am saying, I would like to know

what our administration’s policy is as to how to fix the Iraqi Government. I would just like to know what it is.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just add another question that comes

from things that both of you have written. Dr. Pollack, your book

on Iraq was tremendously influential to many of us as we came up

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to that situation. Now your book on Iran is very helpful. Dr.

Cordesman’s work is legion. We all clip that and put it in our files.

One of the background things that you touched upon, and that

I really was struck by, at a recent Aspen Institute congressional

event on Islam regarding borders. I deliberately brought that up in

our questions. But a good many people in the region do not see the

borders that were arbitrarily put in by Great Britain or France or

what have you after World War I as especially relevant to their

lives. They are still thinking in terms of the Saudi Peninsula or the

Ottoman Empire or various other configurations of people, and as

we have heard today, as Shiites or as Sunnis or as differentiations

of these groups.

This whole business of trying to get people to think about being

Iraqis, of actually seeing a nation state that would have the cohesion we are talking about as being successful, is still viewed by

some as a bridge too far. Now, others would say, well, 50 years

have passed and there are a lot of people who have a sense of being

Iraqi, including many Kurds, and so forth. And we all hope that

that is so, so that a nation state is conceivable, as opposed to either

civil war or a fractionalization, even without war, in which people

simply go off on their own way with their militias and have their

own situations.

My hope is that, since you both are influential, you will continue

to discuss the history of the situation and the expectations of people, so that all of us will have that kind of a background, of what

a very large achievement that would be if, in fact, this group of

people find themselves as Iraqis, if they are able to support a constitution for whom they have some allegiance, to share oil revenues, whether they be in Kirkuk or wherever ultimately.

This is why it is important again for us all to understand how

big the place is in terms of differentiation of localities and provinces. Otherwise we may be discovering, not separate nations and

states, but strange alliances with other countries that are around.

We are going to take that up as a part of our hearing. We will explore how people get together with the Iranians. We will focus not

on the relationship of Iraq and Iran, but on specific parts of the

countries that come together on some other basis than arbitrary

borderlines that we may have had before.

I just make this as an observation. You all talked about it, but

I think it was simply important to add.

Finally, let me just say that I appreciate the fact that, as Senator

Biden said earlier, at least those of us who were sitting there at

that point—the Senator, myself, and I am certain Senator Hagel

would share that view, and all of you—we are discussing this today

from the premise that we must succeed. That was the purpose of

this hearing and of the full series of hearings. This is not to be a

forum in which somehow we discuss why we fail and why inevitably we must go downhill from here.

We understand the lay of the land, I think. We know, realistically, how daunting the challenges are. But the purpose of this is

to try to illuminate the facts and ways of collecting data or arguments that are beyond this, and conveying this information to

other policymakers. I would just say, for whatever reassurance it

is, we intend to share broadly with members of the administration

79

the papers that you have written, the record of the series of hearings. We are hopeful that they will find them as profitable as the

members have today.

I thank both of you very much, and General McCaffrey as well,

for remarkable testimony and the contribution you have made. So

saying, the hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

(81)

ADVANCING IRAQI POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

TUESDAY, JULY 19, 2005

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., in room

SH–216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard Lugar (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Lugar, Biden, and Dodd.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S.

SENATOR FROM INDIANA

The CHAIRMAN. This meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee is called to order.

Today the Committee on Foreign Relations again meets to discuss Iraq, specifically how our Government can help advance Iraqi

political development.

Last January we witnessed the strong desire of Iraqis to achieve

a working democracy when 8 million Iraqi citizens risked their

lives to exercise their new freedom to vote.

The resulting Iraqi leadership is working under difficult circumstances to include Iraqis, Shi’as, Kurds, and Sunnis, something

never before achieved in an Iraqi Government. The cooperation

among Iraqi groups has occurred despite the efforts of the insurgents to provoke a civil war or undermine the fledgling government

institutions by perpetuating deadly attacks.

But the political situation is fragile, and success will require

much compromise, as well as progress in the security and the economic spheres. Even as we discuss options for enhancing the development of Iraqi political institutions, we are mindful that relevant

deadlines are fast approaching.

The Iraqi Government must draft a constitution by August 15,

and organize a referendum on it that is planned for October 15.

National elections for a permanent government would follow by December 15, 2005.

These political milestones have come to be seen as integral to the

overall goals of solidifying Iraqi political stability, overcoming the

insurgency, and, ultimately, withdrawing United States forces from

Iraq.

In the last several weeks Iraqis on the Constitution Drafting

Commission have indicated that significant progress has been

made on the constitution, and this is encouraging news. But polling

data indicates that there is still a great deal of uncertainty among

Iraqis about exactly what is ahead in this process.

82

Recognizing the importance of the aggressive constitutional and

electoral time lines to our own interests, we’ll be asking our experts

today whether the time line is achievable, and what ramifications

might occur if deadlines are changed or missed. We’ll examine

whether the current timetable remains the best option for advancing political development. We will also focus on whether it’s possible to change the political climate through a public education

campaign, how we can forestall a Sunni-Shi’a conflict, and how we

can help cultivate Iraqi leaders who will tolerate inclusive political

interaction without resorting to violence or other exclusionary tactics.

Yesterday the committee examined options for improving the security climate in Iraq. Today we will proceed with the same format

that yielded an excellent discussion in Monday’s hearing.

Our discussion will be organized around four policy options for

improving the political situation in Iraq. Accordingly, after Senator

Biden and I offer opening comments—and Senator Biden will be

recognized when he comes to the hearing—instead of hearing comprehensive statements from the witnesses, at that point we will put

the first policy option and associated questions before our expert

panel. Each witness in turn will provide his or her views on the

option being presented.

Then we will put the second option before them, and then the

third and fourth.

Finally, recognizing that options exist beyond our published

hearing plan, we will ask our witnesses if they would like to offer

any additional ideas for improving political development in Iraq

that have not been discussed.

After this sequence, committee members will be recognized in

turn to address questions to any member of the panel. My hope is

that through the expertise of the witnesses, and the questions of

the members, we may achieve a systematic evaluation of the options present for improving the Iraqi political situation.

We are very pleased to welcome a distinguished panel of experts

to help us with this inquiry today. Dr. Phebe Marr is a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. She has been a valuable advisor to our committee on matters pertaining to Iraq, and

she has testified before us on many occasions.

Ms. Judy Van Rest is the executive vice president for the International Republican Institute. From April 2003 to July 2004, she

served as senior advisor for Governance and director of Democratic

Initiatives for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Dr. Noah Feldman has also testified before us previously. He is

a professor of law at New York University, and in addition to his

academic work, he has advised the Coalition Provisional Authority

on constitutional law issues.

These experts have spent a great deal of time analyzing the Iraqi

political situation, and we’re grateful that we can draw upon their

experiences and insights today.

As I mentioned at the outset, we’ll commence our hearing with

the first set of questions, and I will ask—after I’ve read this material—for Dr. Marr to respond, then Ms. Van Rest, and then Dr.

Feldman, in that order. And we’ll rotate. The first responder for

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tunity to lead off then, and Dr. Feldman on the third, and then

back to you, Dr. Marr, on the fourth.

Option number one: Should the coalition encourage Iraqis to

forgo writing a full constitution at this time; or should we encourage a strict adherence to the current deadlines for finishing a constitution?

Does the current compressed timetable for drafting and approving the constitution aggravate the destablizing differences among

the parties?

Delay would involve setting aside thorny issues that could undermine national cohesion like regional autonomy, the status of

Kirkuk, the role of Islam, and others.

Instead, should we be encouraging Iraqis to promulgate a

miniconstitution covering electoral law, and other items on which

agreement can be reached? Would agreements on limited subjects

build momentum toward cooperation on more difficult items; or

should we stick to the current schedule by pressing for a completed

constitution by the deadlines that have already been established?

What pressures, if any, can or should the coalition exert on the

Iraqi Government to adopt either of these courses?

Dr. Marr, would you lead off? And we welcome you again to the

committee today.

STATEMENT OF DR. PHEBE MARR, SENIOR FELLOW, U.S.

INSTITUTE OF PEACE, WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. MARR. Thank you very much, and I’d like to thank the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, especially yourself, Mr. Chairman, for addressing these issues and for the opportunity to testify.

I must add that my views here are my own, and not necessarily

those of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policy positions.

In my view the coalition should take its lead from the Iraqis and

should not be seen to be intervening directly in the constitutional

process, although it can certainly offer help and encouragement behind the scenes.

The Iraqis, as you say, are intensely engaged, at the moment, in

negotiations on the constitution and have indicated that they think

that they can complete most of the necessary compromises and the

drafting process by the deadline.

If that is actually the case, it would seem presumptuous of us to

urge them to take more time. However, as seems more likely, particularly with the news yesterday and today that the drafting

proves more difficult, or Iraqis, themselves, indicate that they need

more time, we should be encouraging them to take it, not forcing

a deadline. In short, pressure for the deadline should not be coming

from us.

Rather, our message should be the achievement by Iraqis of a

better instrument, one that satisfies Iraqi needs rather than a symbolic achievement of meeting a deadline.

There are several incentives behind the drive to meet the deadline. One is the United States agenda, the need to prove to the

United States public that progress is being made in Iraq.

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A second is the Iraqi election schedule and the desire by the current government to prove itself by meeting the deadline and by

moving to another more permanent election.

Third is the oft cited need to keep people’s feet to the fire. Without a deadline the process could drag on indefinitely postponing the

hard work of compromise, rather than facing the issues.

Lastly, there’s the symbolic fallout of missing the deadline, which

could be seized on by the insurgents for propaganda.

But these arguments, especially the last, in my view, do not outweigh the argument for taking more time, if needed, to produce a

better constitution. Additional time should be evaluated on the

basis of what can be achieved with it.

For example, in the short term, there could, perhaps, be better

public education and outreach on the constitution; a second benefit

might be a greater inclusion of the Sunni community.

But it must be admitted that several issues will be just as difficult to resolve in 6 months as on August 15. One is the thorny

issue of Iraqi identity. The constitution will be expected to lay

down a few principles on this subject. What will it say about nationalities? And will that satisfy the Kurdish need for a distinct

identity? What about Iraq as part of the Arab world? And if Iraq

is declared an Islamic State will that formulation provide space for

secularists, non-Muslims, women?

But the second issue is, perhaps, the most difficult; that is the

issue of federalism and the distribution of power between the central government and various provincial and local units.

This involves, as you know, defining the provincial and local

units. This solution must deal with the Kurdish regional government, whether Kirkuk and other territories are included in it, and

the powers of the local units, especially the KRG and the central

government, particularly, with respect to collection and distribution

of revenue.

Connected with this is the issue of ownership and management

of Iraq’s resources, especially oil. Will this be vested in the central

government, or Iraq citizens, or will some of these resources accrue

to local and regional governments?

There will have to be a compromise and an understanding on

these issues before the broad outlines of a constitution and stability

in Iraq can take shape. If compromise cannot be reached, or at

least, some broad principles laid down by August 15, then Iraqis

should be allowed to extend the deadline as provided in the TAL.

It’s not clear that simply putting out a miniconstitution with

agreement on what they can achieve in the short term and postponing these critical issues is a solution. Neither the identity issue,

nor the federal issue, are likely to be solved with any finality in

a few weeks or even a few months. But by putting them off indefinitely it may make them more difficult to solve later as special interests become entrenched.

Rather, Iraqis should be encouraged to think of this constitution

as the first of many steps in the process of knitting their society

and their country together and in democratizing it.

Whether by August 15 or January 15 they should be encouraged

to achieve a flexible formula for sharing power among communities

and achieving a balance of power between the center and the peVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00088 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
85

riphery. They will need to come out with a constitutional framework firm enough and broad enough to provide for a stable, effective, government with enough sovereignty and legitimacy to instill

confidence in Iraq’s future at home and abroad.

This is particularly important for foreign investors who will not

want to sink money into a country whose government does not appear to be stable. But this instrument must also be flexible, able

to be modified by some acceptable public process, over time, to

allow for growth and development on the ground.

What can and should the coalition do to advance this aim?

First, stop pressure and public policy statements on the need to

meet the August 15 deadline. Let the Iraqis take the lead, but let

them know privately and publicly that if they need more time they

should take it.

Second, make equally clear, however, that the time is not limitless, that the TAL provisions do need to be met and that the time

extension for some reasonable draft should be met, certainly, by

January 15, if not before.

Thus the momentum, which is already underway on the constitution, will be maintained.

Third, encourage all concerned to view the constitution as a

framework, an initial step in Iraq’s constitutional life which can be

adjusted, over time, in a public process to accommodate change.

The constitution itself, of course, should provide for such a process.

And fourth, encourage a more realistic attitude, especially in the

United States, over what to expect of the constitution. Too much

weight has been placed on the constitution as a turning point, and

a means of curtailing the insurgency.

Like the election, the draft constitution will be a positive step,

but, in itself, is not likely to have more than a marginal effect on

the insurgency. Tying the two together is a political mistake.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Marr follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PHEBE MARR, SENIOR FELLOW, U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE,

WASHINGTON, DC

I would like to thank the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

particularly Chairman Lugar and Ranking Member Biden, for holding this hearing

today, and for the opportunity, once again, to offer my views on the political situation in Iraq and to suggest some ideas for increasing the chances for success in Iraq.

I want to add that the views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those

of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policy positions.

The committee has posed a number of penetrating questions and options and

asked for our analysis and suggestions. They have not been easy to answer because

they touch on issues which go to the heart of the difficulties confronting Iraqis and

the coalition forces. But I will do my best to address them.

1. Should the coalition encourage Iraqis to forgo writing a full constitution now,

or encourage strict adherence to current deadlines for finishing the constitution?

The coalition should take its lead from the Iraqis and should not be seen to be

intervening in the constitutional process, although it can offer help and encouragement behind the scenes. The Iraqis are intensely engaged at the moment in negotiations on the constitution, and have indicated that they think they can complete most

of the necessary compromises and the drafting process by the deadline. If that is

actually the case, it would seem presumptuous of us to urge them to take more

time. However, if, as seems likely, the drafting proves more difficult or Iraqis themselves indicate they need more time, we should be encouraging them to take it—

not forcing a deadline. In short, pressure for a deadline should not be coming from

us. Rather, our message should be the achievement by Iraqis of a ‘‘better’’ instruVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00089 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ment, one that satisfies Iraqi needs, rather than the symbolic achievement of meeting a deadline.

There are several incentives behind the drive to meet the deadline. One is the

U.S. agenda—the need to prove to the U.S. public that Iraq’s political process is

moving ahead, that progress is being made, and that the U.S. commitment has some

measurable achievements—sorely needed in the face of insurgent attacks. A second

is the Iraqi election schedule and a desire by the current Iraqi Government to prove

itself by meeting the deadline and consolidating power by moving to another, more

permanent election, as soon as possible. Third is the oft-cited need to keep people’s

‘‘feet to the fire.’’ Without a deadline, the process could drag on indefinitely, postponing the hard work of compromise, rather than facing the issues. Lastly, there

is the symbolic fallout of missing the deadline which could be seized on by insurgents for propaganda value. But these arguments—especially the last—do not outweigh the arguments for taking more time, if needed, to produce a better constitution.

Additional time should be evaluated on the basis of what can be achieved with

it. Here one must make a distinction between what could be achieved if the deadline

were advanced a few more months, and what may take years or decades to achieve.

In the short term, one thing that could be better achieved would be public education

on the constitution and feedback from the public in time for consideration in the

draft. Some effort has been made in this direction; but not enough. If the drafting

committee could indicate, at the end, that they had considered public opinion, it

might make a difference in public acceptance and the feeling the public had a stake

in the process. A second beneficial outcome might be greater inclusion of the Sunni

community. Sunnis have been included in the drafting process but more time might

allow greater consultation and mobilization of support. Third, perhaps most important, more time could help in crafting a new electoral law that was more inclusive,

if the constitutional committee were so inclined. Many Iraqis are suggesting that

the law put more emphasis on districts and provinces, but this would require a census and other measures, which are time consuming. Time should not dictate something as important as the electoral law.

But several issues will be difficult to resolve on August 15—and probably just as

difficult on January 15. One is the issue of Iraqi identity. Is there an Iraqi identity

and if so what is its nature? The constitution will be expected to lay down a few

principles on this subject that various communities inside—and outside—Iraq will

be watching carefully as a pointer to Iraq’s future. What will the constitution say

about ‘‘nationalities’’ inside Iraq and will it satisfy the Kurdish need for a distinct

identity? What about Iraq as part of the Arab world? A statement that satisfies

Arab nationalists, especially among the Sunnis, may not sit well with Kurds and

some Shi’a. And if Iraq is declared an Islamic State, will the formulation provide

space for secularists and non-Muslims? Even the Iraqi flag, as a symbol of Iraqi

identity, will be contentious.

Second is the issue of federalism and the distribution of power between the central government and various provincial and local units. This is undoubtedly one of

the most contentious issues. First, it involves defining provincial and local units and

their territorial boundaries. This solution must deal with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and whether Kirkuk and other territories are included in it. It could

also involve creating larger regional units, for example, in the region around Basra.

Will the current 18 provinces continue to exist? Will provinces be defined on a territorial basis or will there be an ethnic or sectarian component? And what will be the

powers of the local units (especially the KRG) and the central government, especially with respect to the collection and distribution of revenue?

Third is the issue of ownership and management of Iraq’s resources, especially oil.

Will this be vested in the central government, or in Iraq’s citizens as a whole. Or

will some or all of these resources accrue to local and regional governments? Lastly

is the issue of national security, the formation of a national army and the role of

the various militias with respect to the central government.

There will have to be a compromise and an understanding on these issues before

the broad outlines of a constitution—and stability in Iraq—can take shape. If they

cannot be reached, or, at least, some broad principles laid down—by August 15, then

the Iraqis should be allowed to extend the deadline as provided for in the TAL. It

is not clear that simply putting out a miniconstitution, with agreement on what

they can achieve in the short term and postponing these critical issues, is a solution.

Neither the identity issue—which involves relationships among Iraq’s ethnic and

sectarian communities—nor the federalism issue, which involves power sharing

among communities and territorial units, are likely to be solved with any finality

in a few weeks or even months. But putting them off indefinitely may well make

them more difficult to solve later as special interests become entrenched. Rather

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Iraqis should be encouraged to think of this constitution as the first of many steps

in the process of knitting their society and their country together and in democratizing it.

Whether by August 15 or January 15 they should be encouraged to achieve a

flexible formula for sharing power among communities and for achieving a balance

of power between the center and the periphery. They will need to come out with

a constitutional framework firm enough and broad enough to provide for stable, effective government, with enough sovereignty and legitimacy to instill confidence in

Iraq’s future at home and abroad. This will be particularly important for foreign investors who will not want to sink money into a country whose government does not

appear to be stable. But this instrument must also be flexible, able to be modified

by some acceptable public process over time, to allow for growth and development

on the ground. Iraq’s new identity; the relationship between the center and the

provinces; and between its various communities will take decades to grow. The instrument that is written now should provide a framework for that growth, including

the possibility of future discussions and modification. Any thought that a product

achieved on August 15—or January 15—will be ‘‘final’’ is folly. But simply putting

off difficult questions indefinitely is not an acceptable solution either.

What can/should the coalition do to advance this aim?

• Stop pressure and public policy statements on the need to meet the August 15

deadline. Let the Iraqis take the lead, but let them know, privately and publicly, that if they need more time, they should take it. • Make it equally clear, however, that the time is not limitless; that the TAL provisions do need to be met, and that the time extension for some reasonable draft

should be met by January 15. Thus the momentum already underway will be

maintained. • Encourage all concerned to view the constitution as a framework, an initial step

in Iraq’s constitutional life, which can be adjusted, over time, in a public process

to accommodate changes. The constitution, itself, should provide for such a process. • Encourage a more realistic attitude, especially in the United States, over what

to expect of the constitution. Too much weight has been placed on the constitution as a ‘‘turning point’’ and a means of curtailing the insurgency. Like the

election, the draft constitution will be a positive step, but, in itself, is not likely

to have more than a marginal effect on the insurgency. Tying the two together

is a political mistake.

2. Should the coalition conduct a public education campaign designed to stimulate

interest in the constitution and discussion of the insurgency?

This is much easier to answer. The Iraqi Government—not the coalition—should

conduct a public education campaign on the constitution but this campaign should

not include discussion of the insurgency. These are two separate—though related—

issues, which should not be mixed. Doing so would tie the constitution and its content to the insurgency; divert attention from the main subject and fix the two together in the public mind. It could put the constitution at risk and provide a new

target for insurgent attacks. Worse, it could make the constitution’s success appear

contingent on insurgent activity and tie the government’s agenda to the insurgency.

The agenda should be in the hands of the elected government. Discussion of the constitution—as the blue print for Iraq’s future—should stand on its own. But the public discussion should make clear that the political process is open to all and is the

appropriate vehicle to achieving political goals—not violence—in the new Iraq.

Whether a ‘‘massive’’ campaign can be conducted under present conditions is questionable, but certainly considerable public activity can be undertaken on the constitution and its various provisions. Discussion of these issues is important to invest

society in the political process and the government to follow. Certainly issues can

be debated in the media—press, radio and TV; in university and school settings; and

within limits, in townhall settings. These steps will have a number of virtues. This

activity is mandated in the TAL and following TAL procedure will demonstrate adherence to the rule of law. Even more important, it will help build civil society. Various civic groups formed to educate the public will be the basis for future interest

and ‘‘watchdog’’ groups. (Already a number of these have formed and are operating.)

This will lay the basis for future political participation.

Special effort should be made to persuade Sunnis to lead the process in Sunni

areas and to encourage Sunni participation in the discussion. The opportunity to

participate in and influence the constitutional process is essential to give Sunnis a

feeling that they have a stake in the future.

I have a problem with the timing of the process, however. A public education campaign needs to be undertaken both before and after the final draft is submitted, so

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that the public feels it has a say in its content. While some activity has been initiated in this area, the efforts have been little and late. As the deadline nears, it is

unlikely that such efforts will bear much fruit; hence, Iraq may be missing a chance

to help invest the public with a feeling that it has a stake in its outcome. This is

another reason to extend the timeframe somewhat.

There is still an opportunity for public education after the draft is submitted and

before the referendum and this is essential, not only for the vote on the constitution,

but for the political process to follow. It is assumed that the constitution will elaborate principles to be followed by legislation filling in specifics in many areas. The

public campaign can educate various sectors of society on their rights and obligations as specified in the constitution and how it will affect them. The groups which

undertake this campaign will be essential building blocks in furthering this legislation and bringing the public and its various sectors into the process.

3. Should we take steps to forestall a Sunni-Shi’a conflict?

In some ways the question may misdefine the issue. Rather than a Sunni-Shi’a

conflict, the conflict is much broader, and involves all of Iraq’s communities in a

search for a new identity. In fact, there are two complex processes going on. The

first is an increasing polarization of the Iraqi polity among both ethnic and sectarian communities—Kurds and Arabs as well as Shi’a and Sunnis—as Iraq

searches for a new political identity and a new political center of gravity. As is well

known, the elections in January of this year put into office a majority Shi’a ticket—

the United Iraqi Alliance—which got 48 percent of the vote; 51 percent of the seats

in the assembly; and a Kurdish ticket which polled 26 percent of the vote and got

27 percent of the seats. Parties, such as the Iraqi list, led by Ayad Allawi, and the

Iraqiyyun, led by Ghazi al-Yawar, which ran on a more centrist, nonsectarian platform, together polled only a little more than 15 percent of the vote. Sunnis, many

of whom boycotted the election or failed to vote for other reasons, gained only 17

seats in the assembly, 6 percent of the total. The elections reflected a reality that

Iraqi politics now runs largely on the foundation of cultural identity, not on the

basis of interests or party platforms. Helping to move Iraq away from this polarization and encouraging a sense of national identity. should be one of the coalition’s

long-term goals.

But it is well to keep in mind that both the Shi’a and the Kurds have been disciplining their own communities and preventing retribution and retaliation—up to

a point. This has been successful largely because these two groups have benefited

by inheriting power in the new regime, although this discipline may be breaking

down on the ground. A Shi’a rejectionist, Muqtafda al-Sadr has been temporarily silenced, in part by military action, but more importantly by being brought into the

political process. While Sadr himself did not run for election, he allowed his supporters to do so. They did well in the southern provinces and, through their participation on the UIA ticket, got a substantial number of seats in the assembly, and

even some in the Cabinet. The Kurdish leadership, which tends to be pragmatic, has

skillfully managed a younger generation of more extreme nationalists, best represented in the referendum movement, again because Kurds have been included in

power; indeed, a Kurd is President of the Republic.

In the end, rather than a Shi’a-Sunni conflict what we see is that of rejectionists

of a new government and a new political order. This is the second, more critical

process, most virulently manifested in the insurgency. Most of the rejectionists are

Sunnis; most of the government and those shaping the new order are Shi’a and

Kurds. But the Sunni rejectionists need to be understood, not simply as a sectarian

group but as a community whose leaders once occupied power, not as Sunnis but

mainly as nationalists, and now find themselves to be an increasingly marginalized

minority. They not only resent their loss of power and status, but fear discrimination and victimization by the new ruling groups. Many have also lost employment

and economic benefits as well. Moreover, the Sunnis are fragmented and generally

without a strong spokesman or spokesmen who can speak for a broad sector of the

community, although some groups are coming forward.

In general Sunni rejectionists can be divided into several different categories. Extremists, such as the Islamic salafists and jihadis, tied to al-Qaida, and former Saddam loyalists engaged in the general violent mayhem in Iraq, are generally beyond

the pale and cannot, and should not, be propitiated. But a number of other Sunni

oppositionists—army officers, former Ba’th Party members, nationalists opposed to

‘‘occupation’’ and unemployed youth riled by current conditions—can probably be

brought into the fold of the new regime in time and with the proper incentives. Conversations with Sunni oppositionists indicate that their concerns are (a) occupation

and the foreign presence; (b) loss of power and prestige; (c) lack of Sunni representaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00092 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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tion in the political process; (d) increased sectarianism; and (e) the lack of a rule

of law and security, especially for their community.

Attempts to alleviate this problem should focus on addressing these problems.

Several suggestions can be made.

First, encourage the government to bring Sunnis into the political process.

Progress has already been made through Sunni representation on the constitutional

committee. A media campaign to solicit opinions on the constitution would further

this process. If more time is needed to provide security in Sunni areas and to make

sure a level playing field emerges in preparation for elections—both the vote on the

constitution and the next parliamentary election—encourage the government to provide it.

Second, encourage a revision of the election law which moves from a single countrywide election list to a more district-based system, which assures Sunni areas

seats in the assembly regardless of who votes, and allows local leaders to emerge

in Sunni provinces.

Third, encourage the current government to revisit the de-Ba’thification program.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that much of the educated middle class—especially academics and professionals like doctors and lawyers—who may have been party members but who have no criminal records, feel alienated and left out. This class is particularly turned off by increased sectarianism, and by de-Ba’thification which discriminates against them. Many are leaving, thus depriving Iraq of much-needed expertise. A better vetting system, which focuses on individual behavior and records,

rather than a blanket category such as party membership, would help. But it has

to be borne in mind that this is still an extremely sensitive issue for the new Shi’a

and Kurdish leaders, who will need encouragement to move in this direction.

Fourth, many Sunnis complain of a lack of rule of law and security. Strengthening

the court system, the prison system, and the police system would also help. While

this is a long-term effort, it is particularly necessary in Sunni areas and in Baghdad. Much of the security threat is due to common crime, especially kidnappings.

Focusing on developing local police in local areas, and getting international help for

the effort, could allow coalition forces to pull out of difficult cities, alleviating some

of the problems of the military presence in Sunni areas. Many Sunni professionals

could also be employed in the legal justice system, if strict standards of meritocracy

are employed.

Lastly, outside mediation might have some benefit but it needs to be handled

carefully, lest it be seen as interference, especially by the new Shi’a-dominated government. Many key members of the new government have long been in opposition

to the Sunni-dominated Ba’th regime. They face persecution, imprisonment, killing

of relatives and long exile at their hands and hence fear and often distrust them.

This fear and distrust is reciprocated by Sunnis, particularly since many of the

Sunnis who need to be brought into the process may, indeed, have had contact with

those using violence against the regime or have been supporting it. Hence, involvement by key figures in neighboring Arab Sunni States may be regarded with suspicion. However, including some Arab leaders in an international delegation—particularly if the delegation also included Shi’a—might be a good idea.

Any mediation effort involving neighboring states would need a clear definition

of its mission and what it could do to influence and mitigate the ‘‘Sunni’’ problem.

The current government would be interested in efforts to control the border; efforts

to control finances flowing to insurgents; public support for the electoral process and

the new constitution; and public rejection of violence. International and regional efforts along these lines, in return for Iraqi Government efforts to bring more recalcitrant Sunnis into government and local police forces, might be helpful.

4. How can the coalition cultivate new leaders in Iraq and insure that they will

interact politically, rather than using violence?

I am currently involved, as a fellow at USIP, in a study of Iraq’s emerging political leadership and their various visions for the future of Iraq. In conjunction with

this project, I have made two trips to Iraq—one in December to northern Iraq to

interview Kurdish leaders and one in May and June to Baghdad and Basra to talk

to the newly elected members of the assembly and the government and others working at the provincial level. These interviews revealed a rich mix of political leaders

emerging with considerable promise for the future, although that promise may take

some time to mature.

The problem of replacing Iraq’s leadership once Saddam and the Ba’th had been

removed has always been one of the most difficult facing Iraq and the coalition.

After 35 years in power, Saddam loyalists and the Ba’th Party were deeply entrenched not only in the military and security services, but in the bureaucracy and

the education establishment as well. If many had been left in power at lower levels,

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continuity might have been greater, but there would have been little change from

the past and leaving them in would have alienated the opposition which was spearheading the change. Removing and disbanding the previous pillars of state—the option chosen by the coalition—has allowed for entirely new leadership to emerge, but

it has deeply alienated the previous official class and created a large vacuum at the

center of power. Filling this vacuum, has been difficult.

New leadership can come essentially only from two or three sources. One is the

reintroduction of elements of the previous regime, vetted for security purposes. The

second is from exile opposition groups who have been operating outside of Iraq for

decades; and the third is from the indigenous Iraqi population, most of whom have

had little or no leadership experience. Essentially, the coalition opted for the second

solution, disbanding the army and the party and essentially bringing in a large

group of exile opposition leaders, mainly from the West. This group dominated the

Iraq Governing Council (IGC) and its associated Cabinet formed in 2003.

In this first attempt at government, the CPA attempted to balance all of Iraq’s

ethnic and sectarian groups and also brought in most political parties—other than

the Ba’th—that had played a role in Iraq previously. But the dominant members

of the IGC, at this stage, were Western-educated Iraqis with long residence in, and

familiarity with, the West. Many, though not all, were relatively secular. The shift

to an interim government in 2004 did not essentially change that pattern, but the

election of January 2005 brought an expression of popular will and a shift to new

leadership which probably better reflects future trends in Iraq, although it is too

soon to make firm predictions on that score. Several points need to be made about

this leadership to understand the leadership challenge facing Iraq.

First, the current government, like its predecessors, is dominated, at its upper

ranks, by exiles who have spent most of their formative years outside Iraq, or in

the case of the Kurds, running their own government in the north. But there has

been a change in these exiles. Whereas earlier regimes—the IGC and Interim government—were led mainly by Western-educated and Western-oriented oppositionists, the new government is not. Some of these earlier politicians are still present,

but key positions are now in the hands of the Shi’a religio-political parties of the

UIA and the Kurdish parties. The Shi’a members of the opposition have often spent

time, not in the West, but in Iran, or Arab countries like Syria and Lebanon. They

are Arab Iraqis but are interested in instilling more of an Islamic identity in Iraq.

So in one sense, Iraq has exchanged one set of exiles for another. But for now, new

political leadership from inside Iraq—though it is emerging—has still not made its

way to the top leadership posts in any significant numbers.

Second, turnover in posts at the top has been substantial, creating lots of opportunities for social mobility, but little to gain experience. The same phenomenon is true

at local and provincial levels where discontinuity may be even greater. In the current government, over 60 percent of Cabinet Ministers are new to the job. And even

those who are not new, have only held a post at that level for a year or so in a

previous Cabinet. Even then, many have been shifted from one ministerial post to

another, giving them little time to put down roots. While some of this change is to

be expected in a situation of radical change, it means that most new leaders still

have little experience in running a state. Even well-trained exiles, to say nothing

of indigenous Iraqis, will need time and a learning process to acquire this experience.

One exception to this rule is the Kurdish leadership occupying positions in the

central government and in the KRG. They have acquired considerable experience

and maturity, often through the school of hard knocks, from running government

in the north; dealing with the failure of a civil war; holding (imperfect) elections;

and in dealing in foreign affairs with neighbors and with Europe and the United

States. It is not surprising that their area is quiet and gradually becoming more

prosperous. The question with the Kurds, however, is how committed they are to

building Iraqi institutions in the center, as opposed to those in the north and how

to draw this experienced leadership further into the rebuilding of Iraq.

Experience in government also exists among academics and former bureaucrats

some of whom were ex-Ba’thists and affiliated with them. But are they flexible and

open enough to deal with the new situation? Many are still alienated by the loss

of their status and fearful of discrimination. The question here is how to bring them

in and compensate for their loss of status and prestige. Distrust between new and

old must be dispelled and ways found to get both groups working together. There

is some progress here, but it needs to be excelerated.

Lastly there is the problem of differing visions of the future Iraq and where the

various leaders would like to take the country. Arab Sunnis, and certainly exBa’thists, want a unified country, empty of foreign forces, with a strong central government and a rule of law and meritocracy—all of which would favor them. Kurds

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want a federation with a high degree of self-rule. They are largely secular and look

for a separation of mosque and state; and they support the continued presence of

U.S. troops for protection. The dominant Shi’a coalition wants to affirm the Islamic

character of Iraq and strengthen the role of Islamic law; is wary of U.S. forces but

needs them temporarily to assure continuation of its majority rule; and favors elections which it hopes will assure its continued political dominance. And indigenous

leaders would like to ease out the exiles to make room for themselves. All of these

differences will have to be reconciled and political space made for different groups

to live, compete and thrive. This will take years, but the process is already underway with Iraq’s first free election and the negotiations for a constitution. In fact,

the ongoing political process is one of the bright spots in a sometimes bleak picture.

How can this process be facilitated and how can the coalition help?

First and foremost, every effort should be made to open Iraq to the outside world.

While exiles have had some exposure to the outside, those inside have had little.

Education at every level has deteriorated and Iraqis, especially professionals, are

hungry for outside expertise and contact. Give it to them. Visitors programs, fellowships, and scholarships to study at United States and European universities and colleges, providing computers and library facilities to universities and centers, and

similar programs need to be encouraged and funded. While these are already underway—and have been successful—much more needs to be done. The greater interpersonal contacts that ensue will establish networks that can be built on in the future. One of the most positive aspects of my trips was in finding young people, in

their twenties and thirties, who wanted to come to the States to study political and

social sciences—not engineering and computers science—for the first time in decades. We should encourage that.

Second, concentrate on the younger generation which is Iraq’s future. While the

vision of most of the 40- and 50-year-olds in leadership has already been formed—

and often in divergent ways—those in their adolescence and early adulthood are

still flexible. And we should avoid stereotypes. For example, among the most hopeful

and promising experiences of my trip to Baghdad was in talking to this generation,

including several young people from Sadr City, often thought of as a poverty ridden

slum and a nest of radical Islamists following Muqtada-l-Sadr. One was a husband

and wife team involved in local municipal government; both were graduates of universities and one was interested in pursuing a Ph.D. thesis on U.S. foreign policy,

but he needs more training in English. He should get it. Another was a remarkable

young woman in her early thirties, who had been encouraged by her family to get

an education as a doctor. She had almost achieved her goal when Saddam was overthrown. She was appointed to her neighborhood council, and in a new enthusiasm

for politics, she ran the gamut from neighborhood to district to city council member;

then was appointed to the interim national council of 2004 and finally ran, as an

independent, for the new National Assembly—and won, all in two short years. She

has elected a political career and wants to come to the States to learn, first hand,

how to engage in one. What better way to invest in future leadership than to provide her—and others like her—with this opportunity.

Third, encourage and strengthen the many civil society groups that are already

blossoming, despite dire security conditions. Help newly emerging think tanks with

funding they may need to get started and support the interest groups that are

emerging during the constitutional process. Encourage training and conferences that

bring diverse groups together in an environment that allows hands-on discussion

and potential resolution of conflicts. The institution, which is funding my research,

USIP, is a good example, though not the only one, of the many ways in which these

activities can be supported, through grants to local civic action groups; training exercises; support for the constitutional process, and the like. IRI and NDI are doing

yeoman work as well. These activities often do not make the deadlines but they are

critical for developing future leadership with the skills and attitudes necessary for

compromise.

Fourth, strengthen government capacity, both at the national and local levels. The

political process is, justifiably, sucking up much of the time, energy, and resources

of Iraq’s elite. Meanwhile, the more mundane aspects of government—delivery of

electricity, garbage collection, security—are neglected or given over to freelancers

and contractors who may be corrupt or worse. Building government structures and

an honest bureaucracy, which can carry this load and employ the population, especially at local levels, would greatly enhance Iraq’s ability to carry on and to garner

popular support, while it struggles to settle the difficult political problems at the

national level. Encouraging a civil service administration based on meritocracy

would be a good step in this direction.

Lastly, economic development—by and for Iraqis—must take place, despite the security situation. All evidence suggests that this element—and the security that goes

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with it—is the number one priority of the population, not the political process. The

constitutional process, while important, must be supplemented by growing prosperity and a strengthening of the middle class. Over time, nothing will better tamp

down ethnic and sectarian tensions; help mitigate past feelings of victimization and

fears of reprisal; and provide a new and better vision for Iraq’s future and for its

youth, than more economic growth. The public must be given new opportunities and

alternative visions for Iraq’s future which can only come from widening economic

opportunities and real freedom of choice. A failure to couple economic development

to the political progress being made may produce an Iraqi version of what has just

occurred in Iran—the election of a religiously conservative President supported by

the neglected working classes. The potential indigenous leadership in Iraq today is

not hidden secularists and liberals, but the Sadrist movement, which gains support

by its nativist claims (its leaders have not spent time outside of Iraq) and its championship of the poor, uneducated, and jobless. The best way to combat this combination is to make sure (a) that the political process continues to be open to these

groups, and (b) that the younger generation of underprivileged, such as those Sadr

City residents I met, are nurtured, encouraged, and given access to the outside

world.

The views above reflect the testimony at the hearing; they do not represent formal

positions taken by the Institute, which does not advocate specific policies.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Ms. Van Rest.

STATEMENT OF JUDY VAN REST, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. VAN REST. Thank you very much for this opportunity to testify before this committee. I have lived in Washington and worked

in the field for a long time, in the democracy field for almost 15

years, and this is my first opportunity to testify before the Senate.

So I appreciate this chance, and hope that I do you proud.

On this question of whether the coalition should encourage Iraqis

to forgo writing a full constitution at this time, I believe that the

coalition must continue to encourage adherence to the August 15

deadline for the Iraqi National Assembly’s adoption of a complete

constitution.

The risks of a drawn-out process outweigh the potential benefits.

This is an option that should be strongly resisted, and adopted only

as absolute last resort. Several arguments support this view.

First is that most Iraqis, according to a recent IRI National

Opinion Poll, indicate that they do not favor an extension of the

August 15 deadline for the Iraqi National Assembly to complete the

writing of a draft constitution. And a majority of political leaders

from across the ethnic and religious spectrum also remain committed to the August 15 and October 15 deadlines for adoption of

the final constitutional text, and it’s ratification, respectively.

[Note.—The ‘‘IRI National Opinion Poll’’ mentioned throughout

this hearing will not be printed due to length but will be retained

in the permanent record of the hearing and can also be accessed

on the IRI Web site: http://www.iri.org/pdfs/NovemberSurvey Presentation.ppt.]

Beginning with the June 28, 2004, hand over of power, and more

recently, with the January 30, 2005, national elections, we have

witnessed the Iraqi people’s desire and determination to meet the

objectives set out in the transitional administrative law for the full

restoration of Iraq’s national sovereignty, and the creation of constitutional democracy by the end of the year.

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We should support these intentions and the momentum they

have generated.

If the constitutional committee fails to present the assembly with

a draft constitution for approval before August 15, or if the assembly fails to meet the deadline for its final adoption of a draft, the

coalition should seek to persuade Iraqi legislators to extend the

deadline for approval of a complete constitution for a period of no

longer than 30 days. A more extended prolongation of the process

would allow political focus to shift away from this crucial task. It

could also undermine what opinion research has consistently

shown to be the public’s stubborn and critically important phase in

the country’s forward momentum.

Second, delinking the most contentious issues from the broader

body of the constitutional text and dealing with them in a separate

and less time-constrained negotiation could have serious negative

consequences. The risk of further deterioration in relations between

Iraq’s three principal communities grows in proportion to the duration of the time it takes to resolve these issues. The longer these

key issues remain unsolved the more likely it is that the positions

of the major interested parties will harden. The continuing evolution of facts on the ground will increasingly threaten to overtake

and complete negotiations. The longer the period of legal fluidity is

allowed to exist the less likely it is that mutually satisfactory outcomes can be achieved with respect to these issues.

We must also consider that absent inclusion of provisions on

such key issues as federalism and the religious character of the

state, how far Iraq’s Government would be able to move ahead in

building legal and institutional structures pursuant to elements of

the constitution that do get adopted.

For example, without the form and structure of Iraq’s new federalism agreed upon and in place, efforts to establish a national

budgeting process and develop and implement fiscal policy could be

hampered or rendered impossible.

Likewise, efforts to move ahead confidently with legal and judicial reforms will be retarded to the extent that issues pertaining

to the relationship between religious and civil law, and the roles

of civil and religious adjudicating institutions, are left unsolved.

I believe we should continue to support the current deadlines for

adoption and ratification of a complete constitution until such time

as developments lead us to conclude, beyond a doubt, that one or

both of these deadlines present an impossible target. If an extension of the August 15 deadline, in particular, becomes absolutely

necessary it should be measured in weeks and not months so as to

avoid loss of momentum and political focus.

And the constitution that the Iraqi public is finally asked to ratify should be a complete document that addresses all of the key

issues. Opening the door to prolonged debate on these politically

sensitive matters will only serve to more sharply contrast the differences between major ethnic and religious groups and contribute

to further polarization.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Van Rest follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF JUDY VAN REST, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC

Option 1—Should the coalition encourage Iraqis to forego writing a full constitution at this time, or should we encourage a strict adherence to the current deadlines

for finishing a constitution? Does the current compressed timetable for drafting and

approving the constitution aggravate the destabilizing differences among the parties?

Delay would involve setting aside thorny issues that could undermine national cohesion, like regional autonomy, the status of Kirkuk, the role of Islam, etc. Instead,

should we be encouraging Iraqis to promulgate a miniconstitution covering electoral

law and other items on which agreement can be reached? Would agreements on limited subjects build momentum toward cooperation on more difficult items? Or should

we stick to the current schedule by pressing for a completed constitution by the deadlines that have already been established? What pressures, if any, can or should the

coalition exert on the Iraqi Government to adopt either of these courses?

Response. The coalition must continue to encourage adherence to the August 15

deadline for the Iraqi National Assembly’s (INA) adoption of a complete constitution.

The risks associated with a prolonged or multistage process, and with delinking the

most contentious issues from the broader body of the document, would outweigh the

potential benefits. This is an option that should be strongly resisted and adopted

only as an absolute last resort. Several arguments, I believe, support this view.

First, most Iraqis, according to a recent IRI national opinion poll, indicate that

they do not favor an extension of the August 15 deadline for the INA to complete

the writing of a draft constitution. And a majority of political leaders from across

the ethnic and religious spectrum also remain committed to the August 15 and October 15 deadlines for adoption of a final constitutional text and its ratification, respectively. Beginning with the June 28, 2004, handover of power, and more recently

with the January 30, 2005, national elections, we have witnessed the Iraqi people’s

desire and determination to meet the objectives set out in the Transitional Administrative Law for the full restoration of Iraq’s national sovereignty and the creation

of constitutional democracy by the end of this year. We should, unequivocally, support these intentions and the momentum they have generated.

What should our position be if the INA’s Constitutional Committee should fail to

present the assembly with a draft constitution for approval before August 15, or if

the assembly, having received the committee’s draft, should fail to meet the deadline

for its final adoption? The coalition should seek to persuade Iraqi legislators to extend the deadline for approval of a complete constitution for a period of no longer

than 30 days. A more extended prolongation of the process would, in my view, allow

political focus to shift away from this crucial task. It could also undermine what

opinion research has consistently shown to be the public’s stubborn and critically

important faith in the country’s forward momentum.

Second, delinking the most contentious issues—including the nature of Iraq’s new

federalism, the status of Kirkuk, and the role of Islam in Iraqi law and State institutions—from the broader body of the constitutional text, and dealing with them in

a separate and less time constrained negotiation, could have serious negative consequences.

The risk of further deterioration in relations between Iraq’s three principal communities grows, I believe, in proportion to the duration of the time it takes to resolve these issues. The longer these key issues remain unresolved, the more likely

it is that the positions of the major interested parties will harden. The continuing

evolution of ‘‘facts on the ground’’ will increasingly threaten to overtake and complicate negotiations. We are already seeing evidence of this dynamic, for example,

in Kurdish efforts to alter the demographic makeup of Kirkuk and strengthen the

institutional legitimacy of Kurdish regional militias, and in the south of the country,

where some religious groups are attempting to exert increasing influence within the

university system. The longer the period of legal fluidity is allowed to exist, the less

likely it is that mutually satisfactory outcomes can be achieved with respect to these

issues.

We must also consider, absent inclusion of provisions on such key issues as federalism and the religious character of the state, how far Iraq’s Government would

be able to move ahead in building legal and institutional structures pursuant to elements of the constitution that do get adopted. For example, without the form and

structure of Iraq’s new federalism agreed upon and in place, efforts to establish a

national budgeting process, and develop and implement fiscal policy, could be hampered or rendered impossible. Likewise, efforts to move ahead confidently with legal

and judicial reforms will be retarded to the extent that issues pertaining to the relationship between religious and civil law, and the roles of civil and religious adjudicating institutions, for example, are left unresolved.

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In sum, I believe that we should continue to support the current deadlines for

adoption and ratification of a complete constitution until such time as developments

lead us to conclude, beyond doubt, that one or both of these deadlines present an

impossible target. If an extension of the August 15 deadline, in particular, becomes

absolutely necessary, it should be measured in weeks and not months so as to avoid

loss of momentum and political focus. And the constitution that the Iraqi public is

finally asked to ratify should be a complete document that addresses all of the key

issues. Opening the door to a prolonged debate on these politically sensitive matters

will only serve to more sharply contrast the differences between major ethnic and

religious groups and contribute to further polarization.

Option 2—Should the coalition conduct a massive public education campaign designed to stimulate interest in the constitutional referendum and discussion of the

insurgency? This would include holding townhall meetings carried on radio and television on the future of Iraq. Could such a campaign reach the Iraqi people and

would Iraqis participate despite threats of retribution? Would unscripted townhall

meetings enhance the credibility of the message, thereby building public disdain for

the insurgency and support for Iraqi political development? Could security be provided to prevent terrorist attacks during the townhall events?

Response. Let me start by saying that I believe we are now at a point in the process where the role of public education is most crucial.

Unlike an election, where voters are asked to express a personal preference from

among a list of options or candidates, the constitutional referendum will ask Iraqis

to support the product of many compromises—some of them touching extremely sensitive cultural and political nerves. People will not have the option of choosing only

that which suits them, as they can in an election. Iraqi voters will have to understand the compromises that went into writing the constitution and, despite the fact

that there will be elements in it with which they personally disagree, conclude that

it offers the best hope for moving the country forward and improving their lives.

They will have to reach this conclusion, moreover, despite what will almost assuredly be opposition from more radical and hard-line elements within their respective communities.

To succeed in encouraging and preparing voters to make this choice, a comprehensive, consistently visible and broad-based public education campaign is absolutely

essential. We must, however, distinguish between a ‘‘coalition campaign’’ and an

‘‘Iraqi campaign.’’ What is crucial is to insure that Iraqis are provided with the support that they need to design, produce, and implement a campaign to educate the

population about the process that is underway, the issues under discussion, the content of the constitution, and the importance of participation in the referendum

scheduled for October 15.

I am pleased to say that such a campaign has, in fact, been initiated and that

it is gathering momentum with each day that passes. The International Republican

Institute (IRI), whose programs in Iraq are being funded by American taxpayers

through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has been a

principal motivator and supporter of these programs. Other American organizations,

first among them the National Democratic Institute (NDI), are also contributing to

this effort through their own civic and political networks in regions across the country.

Though not in the context of townhall meetings, as we know them in the United

States, much is already being done at the grassroots level to inform Iraqis’ about

the constitution. IRI is supporting a broad array of civic groups that are involved

in a coordinated nationwide voter education campaign to raise public awareness of

constitutional democracy and the constitutional drafting and referendum process in

Iraq. Led by Iraqi civic groups working under the banner of the Civic Coalition for

Free Elections, the campaign, entitled ‘‘A Constitution for Everyone,’’ consists of direct voter contact through workshops based on an IRI-developed curriculum and

printed materials. Using prepared flip charts and distributing some 600,000 copies

of the ‘‘Constitution for Everyone’’ pamphlet, 1,400 workshops are planned—more

than 100 have already taken place—and we hope to reach more than 60,000 voters

in all 18 of Iraq’s governorates.

It is also encouraging to note that the members and leadership of the INA’s Constitution Committee are themselves becoming more active and engaged in public

education efforts. IRI has been in close contact with the Constitutional Committee

over the past several weeks to offer assistance to its outreach efforts. In addition

to offering weekly focus group reports on questions important to the constitutional

drafting, IRI has already produced four television interviews with Constitutional

Committee leadership, in which they have discussed process and content issues and

answered questions from the public about the constitution. One of the programs feaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00099 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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1The survey can be accessed at: http://www.iri.org/pdfs/NovemberSurveyPresentation.ppt.

tured the committee’s chairman, Sheik Hamudi. Another featured women members

of the committee in an effort to focus discussion on issues of particular interest to

women. These 30-minute programs, of which more are to follow, are each being

aired several times on major Iraqi television networks and will reach an audience

of millions.

IRI is also producing the Constitution Committee’s first public service announcements (PSAs) and helping it develop and eventually distribute printed material. Our

public opinion and focus group research, I am pleased to say, is being actively utilized by the committee in the design and development of these products.

Iraqi women, through organizations such as the Rafadine Women’s Coalition and

the Women’s Leadership Institute, are also doing a great deal to advocate for women’s rights in the constitution drafting process and to publicize key issues through

outreach to women across the country. IRI’s Constitutional Consulting Team, composed of six eminent legal and academic specialists, is providing counsel to the leadership of these and other organizations, and IRI is supporting the production of

their public education materials and their television broadcasts. I am also very encouraged by the extent to which the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Dr. Azhar Al

Shakly, has taken a leadership role in the public education effort. Later this month,

in fact, Minister Al Shakly will be hosting two national women’s conferences in

Baghdad on issues related to the constitution. These events will be highly visible

and provide added focus and momentum to the public education effort on behalf of

women’s rights in the new constitution.

Option 3—Should we take new steps to forestall a Sunni-Shi’a conflict? Is international and Arab intervention feasible? Could an international working group that

includes participation by Sunni Arabs from outside Iraq—Jordanians, Egyptians,

and others—help broker negotiations between the parties? Is there some other vehicle

that could provide technical support and mediation services for Sunnis and Shi’as

to come to a peaceful accommodation? Could credible Sunnis be enlisted to participate in this process? Should de-Ba’thification be revisited?

Response. At every transition point on Iraq’s path to democracy—including the

handover of sovereignty in June 2004 and the election of the Iraqi National Assembly in January 2005—some very bright people said it could not be done, the ethnic,

sectarian, and geographic divides were too great, the risk of violence was too high,

and that even civil war was imminent. Yet, time after time, Iraqis have proven

them wrong.

Now, the actions of determined insurgents have again raised fears that the situation is on the brink of collapsing into conflict because of Sunni-Shi’a divides. History

has shown us that divisions between these two branches of Islam can lead to conflict. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s 35 years of murderous rule, including widespread

abuses against the Shi’a majority, only contributed to suspicions between the two

sects.

Yet, once again Iraqis have expressed confidence that the democratic institutions

they are creating offer them the political framework for resolving these differences

and moving toward greater cooperation and trust as they build a united Iraq together.

No one should be surprised that Sunni-Shi’a issues are part of the debate surrounding the drafting of a new constitution and the new Iraq. Rather, the fact that

this debate is taking place should be viewed as a major step forward. This view was

expressed by one Iraqi leader during a meeting with IRI staff. While he and fellow

Iraqis argued about what system of government should prevail, he paused to comment, ‘‘Under Saddam I would not even debate such issues in my own head. Now

we are free to debate them among ourselves.’’

This commitment to democratic debate and a confidence in the framework is

found across Iraq and across various sectors of society. Notably, it is found among

Sunnis. We have seen Sunni representatives brought into the constitution drafting

process. We have heard Sunni leaders say they made a mistake by not participating

in the January election, a mistake they are encouraging their followers not to make

in the upcoming elections.

The evidence is not only anecdotal. Support for, and confidence in, democratic solutions among Iraqis has been expressed time and again in the nationwide polling

done by IRI (‘‘Survey of Iraqi Public Opinion’’ 1) The latest survey revealed that

nearly 73 percent of Iraqis believe that the new Iraqi transitional government is

representative of the Iraqi people as a whole. Among self-identified Sunnis, the percentage is 67.4 percent. For Shi’a it is 78.3 percent.

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Equally revealing is the strong support for coming elections; 75.6 percent of Iraqis

say they are very likely to vote in the upcoming constitutional referendum. Again,

support is strong among both Sunni and Shi’a, at 63 percent and 83 percent, respectively.

It is also worth noting that polling data reveals that the Sunni-Shi’a divide is not

that wide in comparison to self identification as Iraqis. Twice as many Sunni most

strongly identify with their country in relation to the number who identify with

their ethnic group. For Shi’a, four times as many identify with their country. When

comparing strongly identifying with country to identification with religion, the ratio

for Sunnis is 3:1 and for Shi’a it is 2:1. National identity is a necessary component

in creating a willingness to make the compromises necessary to bridge the gaps that

might otherwise be created by more divisive elements.

These numbers are being reflected by action on the ground. Across the country,

courageous Iraqis are standing up to those who would use violence to undermine

the move toward a peaceful and democratic Iraq.

IRI is working with numerous Sunni and Shi’a organizations, including clerics associations to educate Iraqis about the constitution drafting process and support for

elections as a way of creating a more peaceful and prosperous Iraq today and for

future generations.

It is in this context that the response to what steps should be taken to avoid

Sunni-Shi’a conflict should be found. The answer is to support the Iraqis in finding

their own solutions, including that of de-Ba’thification, within the democratic political framework to which they have committed themselves. The Sunnis and Shi’as

are already engaged in accommodation through political channels. Leadership is not

advocating such violence for civil war. Such elements, while tragically conspicuous,

are marginal forces. The United States and its coalition partners would do well to

encourage, even pressure, neighboring governments and those of other Islamic

States in the region that benefit from stability in Iraq to be more outspoken in their

condemnation of terrorist violence in the name of Islam.

Option 4—How can the United States cultivate emerging leaders among the various political actions in Iraq and ensure that they will interact politically, rather

than using violence or exclusionary political tactics? Is such involvement feasible, or

would it be counterproductive? How divergent are the views among the various new

leaders on such issues as democracy, the appropriate political structure, the role of

religion, or future relations with the West and Iraq’s neighbors, and can the United

States influence these views?

Response. As outlined above, Iraqis are finding their own voice and leaders in

support of political interaction rather than violence or exclusionary tactics.

IRI and NDI have taken an active role in supporting this effort. Drawing on 20

years experience of assisting countries emerge from authoritarian rule to democracies, with technical training, we are helping Iraqis to build the political parties,

civil society, government institutions, and other components necessary to have representative government. Encouraging this process is an important part of helping

the majority in their fight for freedom against those whose agenda is hatred and

violence.

We do so keeping in mind that democracy is not an off-the-rack concept. One size

does not fit all. Rather, democracy works best when it is tailor made. Basic elements

are universal, but style and fit vary. By concentrating on providing training and

support for the basic elements, we are helping the Iraqis to fashion a new free and

democratic Iraq.

One of the primary ways of doing this is by drawing on the experience of other

countries. Central and Eastern Europe provides particularly helpful examples for

the Iraqis to study. For example, trainers from Romania are well received because

Iraqis can relate to someone who was imprisoned or had a family member killed

by an oppressive dictator but who is now part of a successful transition away from

authoritarian rule.

Successful transitions in the Slovak Republic, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic

as well as other regions in countries such as Indonesia, have all proved useful in

providing Iraqis case studies for what has worked, and what hasn’t, in making the

move to a free and democratic society.

These lessons are not only learned from trainings or exchanges. IRI’s staff in Iraq

includes those who helped to lead such transitions in their own home countries of

Serbia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Part of their motivation is to bring others the support they received when they were activists for freedom. It is a lesson that has not

been lost on Iraqis.

As for opinion on issues of democracy and related topics, I would again cite a few

results from the most recent national poll conducted by IRI:

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• I will now read to you a list of human rights that have been recognized by the

international community. On a scale of 1 to 5, how important do you think it

is that they be part of Iraq’s new constitution? Those choosing very important:

Æ 71.4%—select and change their government through peaceful, fair elections

Æ 70%—fair and public trials

Æ 69.1%—no discrimination based on religion, race, sex or ethnicity

Æ 67.8%—no torture or degrading treatment/punishment

Æ 65.9%—individual privacy, including the family, home and correspondence

Æ 65.7%—no arbitrary arrest or detention

Æ 60%—freely practice religion

Æ 55.8%—free speech and press

Æ 51.9%—own and sell property

Æ 41.8%—organize political, civic or labor organizations

• Which do you think would be the most appropriate system for a future Iraqi

government?

Æ 33.36%—mixed parliamentary/presidential

Æ 30.3%—parliamentary

Æ 22%—religious

• Which of the three branches of government do you think should exercise the

most power or influence in Iraq’s future government?

Æ 41%—executive

Æ 27.9%—divided equally

Æ 9.9%—legislative

• Were Iraq to have a presidential system, which of the following methods would

you prefer to select the president?

Æ 72%—direct election by the Iraqi people

Æ 12.9%—appointed by national assembly

Æ 5%—appointed by clerics or religious leaders

• Which would be the best way to organize the structure of the national and

governorate levels of government?

Æ 76.2%—maintain current system of 18 governorates

Æ 12.1%—group governorates according to geographic regions

Æ 5.1%—allow governorates to determine regional groupings

• Some people say that religion has a special role to play in the government while

others believe that religion and the government should respect one another but

remain separate. Do you believe that:

Æ 48.1%—religion has a special role to play in the government

Æ 45.9%—religion and government should respect one another by not impeding

on the rights roles and responsibilities of the other

• Which of the following statements most closely fits your view of the role of

Islam in the creation of laws and legislation?

Æ 39.8%—Islam should be the main source (among many) of legislation and

laws in Iraq

Æ 34.7%—Islam should be the sole source of legislation and laws in Iraq

Æ 12.3%—Islam should be one source (among many) of legislation and laws in

Iraq

• To what extent do you agree or disagree that people or groups who could not

(or did not) participate in the January 30 elections have the right to contribute

to writing the constitution?

Æ 35.7%—strongly agree

Æ 35.2%—agree

Æ 8%—disagree

• Do you think that the new TNA should keep the 25 percent quota for women

in the National Assembly in the new constitution?

Æ 51.6%—yes, it should remain the same

Æ 25.5%—yes, but it should be higher

Æ 10.1%—yes, but it should be lower

Æ 3.1%—no

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much Ms. Van Rest.

Dr. Feldman.

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STATEMENT OF DR. NOAH FELDMAN, PROFESSOR OF LAW,

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NY

Dr. FELDMAN. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee,

thank you so much for this opportunity.

There are essentially three different factions on this constitutional committee, the elected Shi’a, the elected Kurds, and the

unelected Sunnis. Each has a different perspective, I think, on the

issue in front of us, and I think that should influence our policy

decision.

The Shi’a and the Kurds have a constituency because they were

elected, and as a consequence of that they want to move forward

relatively quickly because it’s in their interests to satisfy a constituency that’s very frustrated with what has, on the whole, been

a relatively slow progress.

That’s understandable. They’re also the two sides that have the

most experience negotiating constitutional deals. They’ve been

dealing with each other for the better part of 3 years now. Beginning before the war, they negotiated the transitional administrative law together. They’re very well experienced in this kind of negotiating, and their positions are relatively clear, both to them and

to many of their constituents, because they’ve done this deal once

before.

And the reason that there’s been so much progress so far in

drafting, on the part of this constitutional committee, is that the

players are not operating on a blank slate. They understood the

deal in the transitional law, they understood the deal that they cut

privately before the selection of the Prime Minister and the President, and they’ve been in the process of putting that deal into

place.

The Kurds have a further interest, which is an interest in making things happen as quickly as possible because of their perception, accurate in my view, that they have greater influence the further we are from a big public political debate. The more influence

we put on the process, the Kurds believe, the greater their influence. This is because they feel—and I’ll return to this a bit later—

that the ordinary Iraqi, the ordinary Arab Iraqi, will experience

sticker shock on looking at the provisions of the federalism arrangements that are set out in the TAL.

Now the Sunni members, the Sunni Arab members, of the constitutional committee are in a completely different position because

they were not elected. And I think they’re the ones whose view on

whether we should go forward quickly or whether we should delay

the process, or on whether we should come up with some sort of

a compromise, which I’ll mention, probably should weigh the most

heavily with us. So let me say why they think this, and also why

I think their view should weigh heavily for us.

They are central, these Sunni Arabs are central to the process

of bringing the Sunni community, which is—some of which, at

least, is sympathetic to the insurgency, not all—into the political

process so as to marginalize the extremist jihadi wing of the insurgency, which will, of course, never compromise on its own.

These relatively brave—and I’ll say more about that in a moment, too—Sunni Arab members of the committee are putting

themselves on the line and may need to be able to show their poVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00103 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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tential constituency, the people whom they want to represent when

they run for office in the near future, that they actually got something done in these constitutional negotiations.

If it looks to the Sunni population as though these Sunni members, 10 voting members and 15 nonvoting members, were named

to the committee and then rubber stamped a deal that had already

been privately done by the Shi’a and the Kurds, then they will be

discredited with their own constituency. All of the work—the good

work in my view—that the United States and other coalition partners have done to convince the Shi’a and the Kurds to bring Sunnis

into the political process will be lost if it turns out that the Sunnis

themselves, that is to say the ordinary Sunni Arab, sees the participation of his putative representatives as having been empty.

That’s a substantial danger.

Now some of the members of this committee will probably want

to move to elections relatively quickly because they want to get

Sunnis into elected office, they understand the boycott was a huge

mistake, and they want elections relatively quickly to begin the

process of reversing that boycott.

So they may want to move forward quickly, but they will be hampered by two things. One, the danger that they’ll be seen as rubber

stampers, which is bad for them; two, the distinct possibility that

when their constituents get a look at the full degree of Kurdish autonomy that’s envisioned by most of the people who are close to

this process, that they will be unwilling to vote for the constitution

because of what I described earlier as sticker shock. They may believe it over time, just as the Shi’a Arab community has come to

accept a fair amount of autonomy for the Kurdish regions.

Their constituents, too, might over time develop this view. That’s

how it happened among the Shi’a; it took some time. And if that

is to be the case then they may judge that some delay is appropriate. I don’t think they would want too much delay because of the

realities of needing an election. If they wanted some delay on that,

something short of the 6 months, I don’t think that it would be the

right policy to oppose their getting that delay because they would

be doing it in the hopes of getting the Sunni constituency on board.

If they think they won’t get the constituency on board because of

it, then they won’t push for a delay, they’ll just push for the elections relatively soon to get their jobs in office.

Now the delicacy of the situation of these members of the committee is enormously significant here, and in written comments

that I submitted last week, I said that their personal safety was

in danger. And unfortunately, today, we saw a very tragic substantiation of just that, and I’m sure we all share the sorrow over the

fact that one member of the committee, who was a voting member,

and another member, who was a nonvoting member, were killed,

and their driver was killed as well.

This is the kind of thing that is preventable to the extent that

we can provide security for them, and we ought to be doing that,

at least if they’re willing to accept it. It is the kind of thing that

is terribly harmful and it’s similar in kind to the attacks on the

Ambassadors of non-Iraqi/Sunni Muslim countries who have been

in the country recently.

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The reason that the jihadi wing of the insurgency is attacking

these folks is, precisely, that they see them as the route to a negotiation between the government, as it stands, and the moderate

wing of the insurgency, and I use the word ‘‘moderate’’ in a very—

in quotation marks if you will, because they are, of course, involved

in a violent armed insurgency and so in that sense they’re not moderate at all. What I mean by moderate is only those people who

might be willing, pragmatically, to cut a deal with the government.

Now the reason I bring this up is just to mention that the jihadi

wing of the insurgency will do everything it can to discredit the

constitutional process and discredit the people who are participating in it, and, obviously, to try to kill those people if they can’t

discredit them.

We, therefore, need to encourage Shi’a and Kurdish politicians to

make sure that the Sunni politicians involved in the constitutional

process have something to show for the fact that they’re risking

their lives. We need that, not out of a pure sense of honor, although

I suppose that might be part of the picture, we need it because we

need the constitution not to make the insurgency worse. If what

emerges is a constitution that’s ratified by Shi’a and Kurds, and

they could well ratify it, and is opposed by Sunnis, it will harden

the divisions in the country.

So while I agree with Dr. Marr that the constitution alone can’t

solve the insurgency—that would be asking too much of the constitution—it can make things worse if it’s not seen as fully inclusive.

So I believe that the U.S. policy, at this point in time, should be

to follow the wishes of the members of the constitutional committee, and particularly the Sunni members, to make certain that

they have something that they can deliver to their constituents,

and can be seen to deliver to their constituents, that’s also acceptable to the Shi’a and to the Kurds.

A last word on deferral strategies. One thing these Sunni members of the committee might want, and this may be true of some

of the Kurds and Shi’a on the committee as well, is that they may

want a partial constitutional deal that reflects agreement where

they can get it, and defers questions where they can’t get it. Now

this form of compromise is, as Ms. Van Rest says, risky. In the long

run there’s always—in fact, not just a possibility, there’s almost a

certainty that unresolved issues will come back and resurface as

serious problems down the line.

Nonetheless, deferral is a hallmark of successful constitution

writing, because very often the only alternative to a deferral in a

deal is no deal at all. Our constitutional history certainly reflects

that, perhaps not in the most creditable way, because as we all

know the true deal that had to be struck in Philadelphia in 1787

was the deal over slavery, and the Founding Fathers compromised

on that question and we paid the price of the Civil War ultimately

for it.

But in the interim we did, in fact, have a functioning Republic,

and I think it is relatively clear that we would not have had a

Union and a ratified Constitution had that deal not been struck.

Now, fortunately, the compromises that have to be made and the

questions of deferral that will have to happen in Iraq are nowhere

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near as morally problematic as slavery was. They are questions of

federalism and they are questions of religion to a lesser degree. But

it basically amounts to leaving things like the Kirkuk question out

of the equation at present, using just the most general principles.

Similarly, perhaps even leaving the question of the allocation of

resources by region, which will be a very contentious and difficult

issue, out of the equation in any explicit way. So I’m not disagreeing with Ms. Van Rest when she says that these will be problems down the line, I’m sure she’s right that there will be. I’m suggesting that the alternative might be having no constitution just

now, or even in the next 6 months. And so under those circumstances it may well be that deferral is a constitutional solution

that we may not be very happy with, but it may be the best thing

going, and I think probably the Iraqis on the committee are the

ones best placed to determine that.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Feldman follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF NOAH FELDMAN, PROFESSOR OF LAW, NEW YORK

UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NY

TIMING OF THE CONSTITUTION

Because of the addition of Sunni Arab Iraqis who were not elected members of

the national assembly, the final composition of the constitutional committee charged

with drafting a permanent Iraqi Constitution was not determined until the early

days of July, 2005. This leaves the members of the committee with three choices:

(1) Moving rapidly to release the constitutional draft for debate in the national assembly and eventual submission to a referendum on ratification; (2) delaying the

formulation of a draft so as to encourage participation by the newly appointed Sunni

members of the committee; or (3) offering a compromise between these two positions, producing a draft of a partial constitution now, and deferring some major constitutional questions until later.

It is likely that the key decision among these options will be driven by the newly

appointed Sunni members of the committee. These committee members face an extremely difficult and delicate challenge. On one hand, they understand that the

Sunni boycott of Iraq’s first post-war election was disastrous for their constituency.

The sooner a new constitution is ratified, the sooner they can run for office in the

hopes of giving Sunnis an elected voice in the government. A delay in ratification

of the constitution would mean a delay for new national elections. This gives the

Sunni committee members an incentive to encourage the rapid release of a constitutional draft. Furthermore, these members have now received a certain degree of national recognition, and most or all of them could be expected to stand as candidates

in the new elections.

On the other hand, the Sunni members of the constitutional committee must demonstrate to their potential constituency that Sunni participation on the committee

has had a material impact on the substance of the new draft constitution. If it looks

to the Sunni public as though the constitutional committee members chosen to represent them have merely rubber stamped a previously existing constitutional draft

negotiated before their appointments by Shi’a and Kurdish members of the committee, the Sunnis on the committee could well be discredited, and the new constitutional draft with them. It is extremely important for the Sunni committee members

to have an impact in the drafting process, and what is more, to be seen to have

such an impact.

The Sunnis on the constitutional committee are crucial participants in the nascent

movement to get Sunni Arab Iraqis involved in Iraq’s new political process, with the

eventual goal of ending the insurgency by weakening support for it in predominantly Sunni areas. The outcome of this political process is by no means certain.

The Sunnis on the constitutional committee need to be able to show results in order

to advance the process. Violence is likely to continue while constitutional process

proceeds, certainly perpetrated by the jihadi wing of the insurgency, but also by

other insurgents when they think it will advance the Sunni cause.

The more visible gains accomplished by Sunni leaders, the more ordinary Sunnis

will come to see politics as preferable to violence as a means to accomplish their

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credit the violent jihadi wing of the insurgency, which rejects political compromise

altogether. It is no coincidence that the jihadi wing of the insurgency has been kidnapping and killing diplomats from Sunni Muslim countries in Iraq. Those diplomats have the potential to forge connections between a pragmatic Sunni leadership and the new Iraqi Government. The jihadis understand such connections as a

major threat to their goal of keeping violent insurgency alive and resisting political

compromise of the kind that more pragmatic insurgents—as well as much of the undecided Sunni Arab community—find potentially appealing. Killing these diplomats

is aimed at the specific strategic goal of blocking political progress designed to bring

the Sunni community into a pragmatic and nonviolent relationship with new Iraqi

Government. The Sunni members of the constitutional committee are, therefore,

also themselves at risk, both politically and in terms of their personal safety.

Meanwhile, the Shi’a and Kurdish members of the constitutional committee would

like to see a rapid move to the release of a constitutional draft. As elected officials,

they share desire to end street progress to an increasingly frustrated public. On the

Kurdish side, there is a lingering (and warranted) concern that an extended constitutional process might lead to the loss of some of the gains that Kurds have made

in convincing, at least, the Shi’a political leadership to accept substantial de facto

Kurdish regional autonomy under the rubric of federalism.

The best posture for U.S. policy at this juncture is to express the view that, if

the Sunnis appointed to the constitutional committee prefer some circumspection so

as to consider the draft constitution and promote the interests of their constituents,

the other members of the committee should show substantial concern for this desire.

Having labored to bring these Sunni members to the committee, with the goal of

developing Sunni politics and eventually marginalizing violent insurgents, the

United States would not be well served by an approach that ran roughshod over

Sunni interests in a way that rendered Sunni political participation useless.

It may well be that the Sunni members of the constitutional committee would

themselves prefer some sort of compromise option, with the deferral of many of the

difficult constitutional decisions that are ahead. If so, such a compromise should be

perfectly acceptable from the U.S. standpoint. Deferral is a standard strategy for

constitution drafting under difficult circumstances. It does not work indefinitely, as

the American Civil War demonstrates. But it can accomplish the short-term goal of

shifting, at least, some underlying tension into the political realm and away from

the use of force.

THE RATIFICATION PROCESS

It is crucial that, unlike the Transitional Administrative Law, which by necessity

was drafted privately and was not subject to national ratification, the final Iraqi

Constitution be ratified through a process that involves substantial public involvement and discussion. Only such a public process can save the constitution from the

inevitable criticism, which will be heard in Sunni areas of Iraq as well as elsewhere

in the Muslim world, that it is the product of political elites sequestered in the

green zone, who may have been elected, but who govern at the sufferance of the

coalition.

This said, the United States should be extremely cautious about designing or directing a public campaign, either to promote or discuss the constitution. Instead, the

coalition should stand prepared to fund efforts in this direction designed by members of the national assembly and the constitutional committee. The Transitional

Administrative Law provides for a popular referendum on the constitution, thus affording a formal measure of democratic legitimacy. Beyond this formal structure,

the new Iraqi Government needs to develop its own, distinctively Iraqi process for

discussing and analyzing the constitution. United States officials are poorly placed

to determine the right format or forum for such debates.

The town meeting is a particular form of political expression developed in a particular time and place and today not widely used even in the United States. The

Framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a republican, representative form of government, not a direct democracy, and even the ratification conventions that took

place in the 13 U.S. States were not open meetings, but involved representatives

selected by localities and State legislatures. The ‘‘town meeting’’ as such does not

have its roots in Iraqi political culture. Instead, Iraqis will probably develop some

sort of model of consultative discussion more closely linked to the traditional Arab

institution of the majlis.

It is to be emphasized that when a new constitutional draft is made public, many

ordinary Iraqis will experience a kind of ‘‘sticker shock’’ with respect to some of its

more innovative aspects, especially those concerning federalism. An immediate,

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ence to be enjoyed by the Kurdish region. By the same token, religious radicals intent on destabilizing the constitutional process could well criticize the draft as insufficiently Islamic—a process which would be perfectly natural in public speeches or

on television, but which would be potentially destabilizing if it were to take place

in town meetings designed to debate the new constitution.

The members of the constitutional committee have now had experience considering political realities and compromising on the basis of them. They must have the

opportunity to explain the draft they have developed to their constituents in their

own way. We must be vigilant about unwittingly undermining their efforts through

a well-intentioned but ill-executed policy of encouraging town meetings.

AVOIDING SHI’A-SUNNI VIOLENCE

The jihadi wing of the insurgency has continued to make great efforts to provoke

all-out civil war between the Sunni and Shi’a communities in Iraq. In particular,

attacks on Shi’a civilians, holy places, and prominent clerics are specifically aimed

at causing Shi’as to break their restraint, Were it not for the steadying hand of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, it is entirely likely that violent retaliation would already have

occurred on a significant scale. The great risk continues to be an attempt on the

life of Sistani himself, which, if successful, would both provide enormous cause for

retaliatory anger and remove the primaries barrier to its expression. It would be

astonishing if such an attempt were not being planned at present. Many of the

jihadis consider Shi’a Muslims to be heretics, and there is no reason to expect that

they would show any respect at all for the person of Sistani.

To avoid the outbreak of serious interdenominational violence, it is necessary to

develop a network of contacts who can speak credibly on behalf of the Sunni community, and even, indirectly, on behalf of the pragmatic, largely ex-Ba’thist or ex-military wings of the insurgency. The Sunnis appointed to the constitutional committee

may be considered the vanguard of such a group. Some Sunni clerics may also be

useful for this purpose, especially if they would be willing to meet with Shi’a clerics

on terms of equality. Diplomats from Sunni countries can play some constructive

role in this process by identifying potential Sunni spokesmen. But ultimately, there

is no substitute for elected Sunni officials serving in the same government bodies

as their Shi’a counterparts. Developing a formalized mechanism outside of political

institutions for communicating to Sunnis is likely to marginalize those political institutions, with serious long-term consequences.

THE EMERGING POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

The highly fluid political situation in Iraq is generating a new group of political

leaders who are acting as entrepreneurs filling a gap in the market. More such leaders will emerge in the coming years, both from within existing political parties and

from without. The only generalization that is appropriate is that these leaders are

quick to learn and shape the rules of the emerging political sphere. They have general ideological goals, but are typically willing to work with anybody to achieve

them, and those goals are themselves open to rapid change and development.

Muqtada al-Sadr is the model of these new political players. From challenging democracy as un-Islamic, he moved to participating in elections. From fighting the coalition through his militia, he moved to accepting coalition money for projects in

neighborhoods he controls. He challenged Sistani directly, then acknowledged the

latter’s authority. None of these is a marker of any underlying moderation; each was

a tactical decision taken in the light of circumstances.

The chief failing of U.S. policy with regard to Sadr has been its uncertainty. The

coalition needs to decide whether to co-opt and buy off potential militants or arrest

and kill them. Fluctuations in policy are counterproductive given the general uncertainty and fluidity on the ground in Iraq.

More broadly, given the U.S. force posture in Iraq, a policy of pragmatic accommodation with new political leaders is necessary. That means that even those who have

in the past taken up arms against the coalition must be engaged where there is a

chance of redirecting them to political, rather than military means. The key is to

insist that any interlocutor must not simultaneously be involved in violence, and to

demonstrate that giving up violence is rewarded with stature and money. This provides an incentive for mainstreaming that is crucial to encouraging politics in lieu

of violence. Some contacts with violent insurgents will probably continue sub rosa,

and that is not necessarily a bad thing if it encourages other insurgents to choose

politics over violence on the ground of self-interest.

Such interlocutors may be former Ba’thists, militia members, or others. (Two

members of the constitutional committee are reported to have been members of the

Ba’th Party.) If they will participate in peaceful politics, they should not be excluded

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on the basis of past membership alone. Of course criminals must be brought to justice—but in the short term, it is far more important to create political contact with

all factions, especially those who presently threaten the future of the Iraqi political

process.

The CHAIRMAN. At this moment I’d like to recognize Senator

Biden, the ranking member, for an opening comment.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S.

SENATOR FROM DELAWARE

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much. I apologize for being late

and I got to read your statement, Dr. Marr, which I always do, before you testified, and while you were testifying.

I think you’ve all summarized this pretty clearly, and I think

that we all acknowledge that unless we get the Sunnis into the

deal, whatever the deal is, constitution or otherwise, there is no

resolution in Iraq, and so it’s a difficult call.

But I just want to thank you all for taking the time to be here,

your testimony, and you’re about to answer questions for us, is

really genuinely helpful where I think there are very few absolutely clear-cut answers here.

And so I will ask that my statement be placed in the record, Mr.

Chairman——

The CHAIRMAN. It will be placed in the record.

Senator BIDEN [continuing]. And yield to you for gaining whatever—there is.

[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S. SENATOR FROM

DELAWARE

I would like to second the chairman’s welcome to our distinguished guests. The

issues before us today are as important to our success in Iraq as they are complex.

Our commanders on the ground have emphasized that military means alone are

not sufficient to defeat the insurgency. Ultimately, true security and stability can

only be achieved through a political accommodation among Iraq’s major communities and factions.

The constitutional debate in Iraq will play a significant role in determining

whether there will be such an accommodation. I am hopeful the constitution can be

drafted on time, though it will require consensus-building, compromise, and late

nights.

With less than 4 weeks to go, a number of contentious issues must be litigated,

including: Federalism, the status of Kirkuk, the sharing of resources, and the role

of Islam and women’s rights, to name but a few.

But even if all goes well, we shouldn’t expect to see a perfect document on August

15. It’s worth remembering that our own Constitution was 13 years in the making,

and it remains a living document to this day.

Assuming that the Iraqis succeed in putting together a draft constitution, there

will remain several profound challenges.

The first is getting the Sunni Arabs into the political process en masse, Iraq is

scheduled to have two more elections this year—a constitutional referendum in October and another parliamentary election in December.

Many Arab Sunnis boycotted January’s parliamentary elections. I believe many

others were kept away from polling stations by fear. It is absolutely essential to convince this silent Sunni majority to participate in the process and to claim a seat

at the table in Iraq’s first constitutionally elected government.

Our second challenge is ensuring that the constitution is more than just words

on a piece of paper. This requires accountability and transparency; security and judicial institutions that respect individual dignity, human rights, and the rule of law;

and a government whose reach extends beyond the green zone.

An equally profound challenge is sectarianism. On my first visit to Iraq 2 years

ago, very few Iraqis would openly identify themselves as Sunni or Shi’a—it was considered inappropriate.

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Now, it is all too common—the result of a breakdown in Iraq’s social and security

order and the brutal agenda of a small group of religious extremists. We saw a horrific example of this agenda with last weekend’s attack on a mosque south of Baghdad, which has claimed 100 lives.

Thus far, the Shi’a religious establishment has succeeded in keeping the desire

for revenge after such attacks in check, but there is evidence of a growing number

of reprisal killings against Sunnis.

The tentative political progress in Iraq risks being washed away if this rising tide

of sectarianism is not stemmed.

I repeat what I said yesterday. I believe that we can still succeed in Iraq. By success, I mean leaving Iraq better than we found it—a country with a representative

government in which all major communities believe they have a stake, and a country that is not a haven for terror nor a threat to us or its neighbors.

I believe that there is an Iraqi nationalism that unites, at least, Iraqi Arabs. I

believe that Iraq’s Kurds, because they understand the realities of their neighborhood, recognize that autonomy in a federal Iraq is a much more realistic option than

independence.

I look forward to our witnesses’ testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

We’ll proceed then through the remaining three sets, and then

have questions from members of the committee.

Now the second set. I’ll ask you, Ms. Van Rest, to make the first

comment on this occasion.

Should the coalition conduct a massive public education campaign designed to stimulate interest in the constitutional referendum and discussion of the insurgency? This would include

townhall meetings carried on radio and television on the future of

Iraq. Could such a campaign reach the Iraqi people, and would

Iraqis participate despite threats of retribution?

Would unscripted townhall meetings enhance the credibility of

the message, thereby building public disdain for the insurgency,

and support for Iraqi political development? Could security be provided to prevent terrorist attacks during the townhall events?

Would you please proceed?

Ms. VAN REST. We are clearly at the point in this process where

the role of public education is quite crucial. The constitutional referendum is complicated for Iraqis. When they go to the voting

booth it will not be simply a matter of voting for a particular coalition or name of a person, but there are some complicated issues

that they may not agree with, and they need to understand how

the process went along so that they understand the compromises

made and have a full and complete understanding that while they

may not agree with in the constitution, nevertheless, this may be

the best way forward for Iraq.

Public education campaigns by Iraqis are essential. They need to

be done not by the coalition but by Iraqis themselves. What is crucial is to ensure that Iraqis are provided with support, that they

need to design and produce and implement a campaign to educate

the population about the process that is underway, issues under

discussion, the content of the constitution, and the importance of

their participation in the referendum scheduled for October 15.

I am pleased to say that we are very much involved in supporting a campaign by a variety of Iraqi organizations across the

country. This is something that we have been doing along with our

colleagues at the National Democratic Institute to help get the

word out about what the process is. We did this prior to the January 30 election, and what we discovered is that there are no end

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of Iraqi individuals and groups willing to risk their lives to conduct

public education.

Let me give you some idea of what is going on now. The workshops that are going on are not in the context of the townhall meetings as we know them, but they are more like small gatherings

across the country. We’re supporting an array of civic groups that

are involved in a coordinated nationwide voter education campaign

to raise public awareness of constitutional democracy and constitutional drafting and the referendum process. Led by Iraqi civic

groups working under the banner of the Civic Coalition for Free

Elections of which there are about 80 organizations.

The campaign, which is entitled ‘‘A Constitution for Everyone,’’

consists of direct voter contact through workshops based on IRI developed curriculum and printed materials. There are scheduled

around 1,400 of these workshops across the country. They have

begun in a very intensive way, and there have been more than 100

workshops that have been conducted to date.

In addition, we have been working with the constitutional committee to help them become more active and engaged in outreach

to the public. We have weekly focus groups that provide them with

information on the important questions of the constitutional drafting, we have already produced four television interviews with the

constitutional committee leadership in which they have discussed

process and content and answered questions from the public about

the constitution. One of the programs features a chairman, Sheik

Hamudi; another, featured women members of the committee in an

effort to focus discussion on issues of particular interest to women.

There are more of these 30-minute programs to follow; they are

being aired on the major Iraqi television network and will reach an

audience of millions.

In addition, we are helping the constitutional committee produce

public service announcements. We’re in the process of doing that.

And we’re also helping them distribute—or print and distribute—

various things such as posters and pamphlets around the country.

Finally, Iraqi women are so very active in civic education. We

work with several women’s coalitions to get out the word about

what is going on with the process and how they can have some sort

of input into the drafting. And their efforts are ongoing constantly.

Today, for example, a group called the Women’s Leadership Institute held a public meeting and then they met with members of the

constitutional drafting committee to share their views on what they

believe should be in the constitution with regards to human rights

and women’s rights.

We also have on hand a constitutional consulting team and they

are legal and academic specialists who are helping out with conducting different workshops and sessions with various Iraqi groups.

And, finally, we are giving support to the Minister of State for

Women’s Affairs in her efforts to hold national conferences to discuss issues of human rights and women’s rights.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Dr. Feldman.

Dr. FELDMAN. It is crucially important that the members of the

constitutional drafting committee have the opportunity to argue to

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the general public in Iraq their case, to explain why they’ve drafted

what they have drafted.

That said, I think there are some significant concerns that we

should be aware of with respect to the United States directing, and

being seen to direct, a public education campaign, especially one

that focuses on the town meeting. And I think those concerns are

really three.

The first is that the town meeting forum, as we think of it, an

open town meeting where anyone can get up and speak his mind

if he or she—if the person is willing to stand in line behind a

microphone, it’s not an indigenous political forum to Iraq. It’s not

an indigenous political forum even in much of the United States,

although it is used in some places like my native New England.

But the truth is that under such circumstances where anyone

can get up and speak, the odds are very high, I would almost guarantee that in many cases some of the strongest and most vocal opponents of the constitutional process will be the ones who dominate

these meetings. And I’ll say a word in a moment about what it is

that they’re likely to say. But I think that’s the first concern.

In Iraq a model for public engagement developed by the members

of the constitutional drafting committee itself is much more likely

to be effective, and it will probably follow—speaking in very general terms here—something like the consultative majlis model that

is more commonly used in the Middle East, it will be discursive

and dialogic if you will, but it would not be an open mike sort of

situation. And may I add that the ratification conventions in the

United States, when we ratified our own constitution, were not

open microphone—well, there were no microphones, but they were

not open-access affairs. People were selected, or elected, to participate in those constitutional conventions, and I don’t think that undercuts the fundamentally democratic nature of the process, especially given that here there’s going to be a democratic referendum

on the constitution.

The second concern is what I referred to earlier as sticker shock.

There’s been a process for Shi’a Iraqis in particular, Arab Iraqis

that has not yet been undergone by Sunni Iraqis, when they are

informed of just how much autonomy the Kurdish region has requested and is likely to get in the final constitutional draft. Many,

many Iraqis remain uncomfortable with what is, let’s be honest, de

facto autonomy for the Kurdish region under many, many particular circumstances under the rubric of federalism. And a states’

rights position, much stronger than states’ rights, not only now in

the United States but at any point in our history.

It is likely that many people first introduced to this concept, especially in the Sunni areas, are going to react very negatively, and

they’re going to react negatively in public, and such meetings

would be a natural forum for them to do so.

Now some public expression of their shock is perfectly appropriate, and I expect we’ll see it in newspapers and on television

and probably in some public rallies. Having that happen in these

meetings is likely to be very destablizing to the process of constitutional ratification, and I do not think it’s an exaggeration to say

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swell against the constitution, which I think would be a very serious matter indeed.

I would add to this the role of Islam as a factor that is likely to

become much intensified in open meeting style debates. The

Islamists, both on the Shi’a and the Sunni side—we haven’t heard

so much from the Sunni Islamists, yet, in Iraq, but I promise you

we’re going to, in this ratification process—are excellent at essentially taking over public meetings and insisting on the insufficiently Islamic nature of any public governmental decision. They

will not be concerned about the fact that behind closed doors a negotiation has already occurred in which Islam has been delicately

balanced against democracy in a very, very precise formulation

which will require a constitutional scholar to make any sense of it,

and even then will probably make very little sense.

We are opening the door potentially to an Islamist countermovement against the constitution, and among the Sunni Islamists,

who, as I said, we have not heard from very much politically, but

who are most closely connected to the jihadi wing of the insurgency. You’re talking about a constituency that could do real harm

to the constitutional process, and is guaranteed to try to do so. So

I have some concern about that constituency and its participation

as well.

The last point is the desire for people who participate in meetings that are designed as part of the ratification process to be participating in meetings that actually matter. In other words, just as

at our constitutional ratifying conventions in the States many people got up and said we don’t like this constitution without a bill

of rights, we demand that a bill of rights be added, and we vote

to ratify only on the condition that a bill of rights be added, many

people in Iraq participating in such meetings will want there to be

changes to the document. The idea that they are being asked to debate something the text of which is fixed, and the text of which

cannot be changed prior to the referendum, is likely to be an extremely unpleasant one for many people. And I say this partly

based on personal experience in Iraq. I think there is a grave likelihood, at this point, that people who are already skeptical of the

democratic process will say, why are we being asked to talk about

this if a decision has already been made? If we can’t do anything

about it, why are we being asked to get up and express our views?

That, too, is a potential source of frustration. So since there is

no contemplated mechanism for returning back to the drafting committee after the point at which the debate has occurred, you are

going to get frustration in the general public, in this case, just at

the whole constitutional process, a sense of frustration and perhaps

of having tried to participate politically but not having been able

to do so, with the only protest mechanism available being a no

vote.

I would just close my comments by mentioning that many, many

rational observers thought—before the recent constitutional

referenda in Holland, in the Netherlands, and in France—that no

reasonable voter in either of these countries could potentially vote

against the constitution because the consequences were much too

serious. Now admittedly they’re not quite as dire in Europe as they

would be in Iraq, but it is the case that many Iraqis would be preVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00113 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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pared to vote against the constitution if they were sufficiently frustrated with the process. We must be very careful to avoid a situation in which we unwittingly, but in a well-intentioned way, facilitate a process that actually leads people to be dissatisfied with

their constitution rather than happy with it.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Marr.

Dr. MARR. Well, I find myself in agreement on at least two points

with my colleagues, and perhaps some caveats on the others.

I found this question much easier to answer. Like others, I feel

that it’s the Iraqi Government, not the coalition, which should be

conducting any public education campaign on the constitution. I

also feel that this campaign should not include a discussion of the

insurgency.

I do want to elaborate a little on that because I feel that these

are two separate, though related, issues which should not be

mixed. Doing so is going to tie the constitution and its contents to

the insurgency, divert attention from the main subject, and fix the

two together in the public mind. Worse, it could make the constitution’s success appear contingent on insurgent activity and tie the

government’s agenda to the insurgency.

So the discussion of the constitution, as a blueprint for Iraq’s future, should stand on its own, although, of course, the public discussion should make clear that the political process is open to all,

and it’s the appropriate vehicle to effect political goals, not violence.

I believe that there should be a campaign conducted to set the

constitution before the public. The way the question is phrased—

whether it should be massive, whether it should be a townhall

forum—I think is less important. I think, as Judy has said, there

are certain ways in which this can be done in the Iraqi context

which won’t necessarily invite a lot of propagandistic speeches. Certainly, as she has said, campaign can be conducted through the

media, through the press, perhaps in university and school settings, perhaps in the more traditional settings and so on.

There are two virtues to doing this. One is that it helps build

civil society which is very important. Various civic groups formed

to educate the public will be the basis for future interest and

watchdog groups, and, as has been indicated, a number of these

have already been formed and are operating. And I want to add

that special effort should be made to persuade the Sunnis in their

area to lead this process, to encourage Sunni participation. It’s very

important that they get invested in the process, and develop a feeling that they have a stake in the future.

Now, along with Dr. Feldman, I, too, have a problem with the

timing of this process. I believe that a public education campaign

needs to be undertaken, both before and after the draft is submitted, so that the public feels it has some say in the content. I

agree that if you just spread the constitution before them and indicate they simply have an up or down vote, there’s going to be frustration. And you might get a down rather than an up vote. This

is one reason why I think a small extension in the time might be

helpful.

You can’t write a constitution in a townhall, that’s perfectly

clear. But there are instances where the public, through interest

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groups such as those formed by women and others mentioned in

the bill of rights, can have some input. They will feel that they’re

being listened to and taken account of. They will have a more vested interest in the outcome.

So I would like to make sure that this public education process

has some feedback into the constitution committee before the draft

is finalized. Needless to say, I also feel that there needs to be some

kind of opportunity for public education once the draft is completed, for several reasons. First, people do need to understand

what their rights and obligations are under the constitution. Second, I think various interest groups and other civic societies involved in this process will be the building blocks for the legislation

that will fill in the details on this constitution. Third, they will

bring the public and its various sectors into the process; that’s very

important, too.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for those responses.

Now let us proceed to a third set of questions. Should we take

new steps to forestall a Sunni-Shi’a conflict?

Is international and Arab intervention feasible in that process?

Could an international working group that includes participation

by Sunni Arabs from outside Iraq, namely Jordanians, Egyptians,

and others, help broker negotiations between the parties? Is there

some other vehicle that could provide technical support and mediation and services for Sunnis and Shi’as to come to peaceful accommodation?

Could credible Sunnis be enlisted to participate in this process?

And finally, should de-Ba’thification be revisited?

I call upon you, Dr. Feldman, to initiate the responses.

Dr. FELDMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The jihadi wing of the insurgency is engaged in an all-out effort

to create a true civil war in Iraq, and the reason we don’t have a

civil war is just that, although, there are massive killings of Shi’a

civilians by some Sunnis there have not been substantial retaliations in killings of Sunni civilians by the Shi’a. There’s really just

one reason that that hasn’t happened so far, and that reason is

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has the kind of moral credibility in

the country to call on his constituency to act with restraint.

It is certain that an attempt on the life of Ayatollah Sistani is

being planned. It would be unimaginable that no one was trying to

kill him. An attempt will be made and one can only hope and pray

that it will be unsuccessful.

Nonetheless, we need to be well aware that that is not a far

flung or unlikely scenario. Already several of his senior aides have

been successfully assassinated, and again it’s taken tremendous restraint on his part to be able to advise the Shi’a community, which

is aided by a traditional political quiescence, but which will not

hold on to that forever, that they ought to hold back and preserve

the peace.

So we definitely need some mechanisms that might be able to restrain, especially in a crisis situation like that one, and that would

function under ordinary conditions as well.

Now some participation of Sunni diplomats from outside of Iraq

is certainly helpful, and we can deduce that it is potentially helpful

from the fact that the jihadi wing of the insurgency thinks it might

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be helpful, which is why they’re trying to assassinate those diplomats.

It will now be much more difficult than it was the first time, and

it was not easy the first time, to draw those other Sunni Arab

countries into the process of negotiation by sending fresh diplomats. They, themselves, have security concerns, understandably,

and it’s a tremendous blow to their national prestige, and to their

national interests, when they lose an ambassador. That’s a serious

business for obvious reasons that I don’t need to explain to the

committee.

So I think we probably have, to some degree, exhausted, at least,

the public version of that kind of diplomacy, and we may have to

rely more on private versions of diplomacy of other Sunni-Arab

countries going forward. It doesn’t mean it can’t be done privately

in an effective way.

There are essentially two groups of interlocutors that we could

use in the Sunni-Arab community to try to make this happen. The

first are Sunni clerics. These are very often not the people whom

one would choose as interlocutors because to make them interlocutors is to empower them, and they’re not people that have been

elected, and they often have views and values deeply opposed to

those of both the coalition and also held by the Iraqis.

On the other hand, before elections happen, they are often the

only people who are capable of speaking in an indirect way on behalf of those who were participating in the insurgency. They could

be encouraged to meet on equal terms with Shi’a clerics, in clericcleric meetings that would be informal sorts of contacts, nongovernmental, but which might, in the long run, be a first step in the direction of having some line of communication that would be available in a crisis situation. It’s not going to be an easy thing to do.

Many of them lived happily alongside Shi’a for many years but if

you push them, theologically, as the jihadis are doing, it’s difficult

for them to avoid the conclusion that, in fact, the Shi’a are, at best,

heterodox and, at worst, heretics. That’s a serious concern on their

part. But some sort of clergy-clergy contacts, I think, should be encouraged and could be encouraged.

The second group one could speak to on the Sunni-Arab side are

essentially ex-Ba’thist or ex-military or both, members of the—

what I described earlier again with apologies, is it a moderate or

the pragmatic wing of the insurgency, that is people who don’t see

the end game as a permanent jihad but instead see the end game

as some sort of a negotiated solution with the other side.

We are already talking in some limited ways to those people.

Some of them are participating in politics, and indeed, at least two

of the members of this constitutional committee who are Sunnis

are reputed to have been former Ba’thists at some stage of their

careers. That’s a good thing because this situation, although these

are not people whom one would like to deal with, we have very little other choice if we want to stave off the possibility of more extensive violence.

The background for all of this is just to keep in mind that the

insurgency itself needs to be split, and that the jihadi wing is never

going to negotiate, is never going to enter into reasonable deals,

and that anyone who belongs to that line of the insurgency, or

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claims to belong to it, or is even openly allied with it, should be

excluded from these sorts of contacts, but that there are others in

the insurgency who do not feel this way and who can be won over—

and to be blunt about it, bought out through this process. And I

think we need to be open to dealing with those folks as we have

already slowly begun to do.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Doctor.

Dr. Phebe Marr.

Dr. MARR. I think in some ways this question may misdefine the

issue a little. Rather than simply a Shi’a-Sunni conflict, I think the

conflict is broader, and as I said before, involves all of Iraq’s communities as they search for new identity.

In fact, I think there are two processes going on; one is an increased polarization of the Iraqi polity along both ethnic and sectarian lines—Kurds and Arabs as well as Shi’a and Sunnis as Iraq

searches for this identify and a new political center of gravity. The

elections in January revealed this polarity, putting into power an

essentially Shi’a ticket with a majority and a very strong Kurdish

ticket in the second place. Those with centrist or nonsectarian

views either lost the election, or got very few votes.

In any event, helping to move Iraq away from this polarization

and encouraging a sense of national identity, particularly in

speeches, messages and so on, should be one of the coalition’s longterm goals. But I agree with Noah Feldman, it’s well to keep in

mind that both the Shi’a and the Kurds have been disciplining

their own communities and preventing retribution and retaliation,

up to a point, where they can. This has been largely successful because both of these groups have benefited by attaining power in the

new regime.

In the end, however, rather than a Shi’a-Sunni conflict, what I

see is rejectionist resisting the new government and a new political

order. This is most virulently manifested in the insurgency. Most

of the rejection comes from Sunnis; most of those in the government and those shaping the new order are Shi’a and Kurds. But

the Sunni rejectionists need to be understood, not simply as a sectarian group but as a community whose leaders once occupied

power, not as Sunnis but mainly as nationalists. Now they find

themselves to be an increasingly marginalized minority that not

only resent their loss of power and status, but fear discrimination

and victimization by the new ruling groups. And many have lost

employment and economic benefits as well.

As Dr. Feldman has said, they can be divided into several different categories. Like him, I would put the jihadists and the

‘‘Salafists,’’ who are extremist, beyond the pale. I would also put

beyond the pale, Saddam loyalists engaged in violent mayhem. But

I agree that a number of the other Sunni oppositionists—army officers, former Ba’th party members, nationalists opposed to occupation, and unemployed youth riled by current conditions—probably

can be brought into the fold of the new regime in time, and with

the proper incentives.

Conversation with these oppositionists indicate they have roughly four or five concerns. They are, first, the issue of occupation and

the foreign presence; second, the loss of power and prestige; third,

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creased sectarianism; and fifth, the lack of a rule of law and security, especially for their community.

Attempts to alleviate this problem should focus on addressing

these problems. I would make several suggestions. First, as everyone has said, encourage the government to bring Sunnis into the

political process.

Progress has already been made on this—considerable progress—

and if more time is needed on the constitutional process to do that,

I would urge that we provide it.

Second, encourage revision of the electoral law to move the process away from a single countrywide election list to a more districtbased system, which I’m going to say more about later. This would

ensure Sunni seats in the assembly regardless of how many voted

and would certainly go down well in Sunni areas.

Third, encourage the current government to revisit the deBa’thification program. Anecdotal evidence suggests that much of

the educated middle class, especially academics and professionals

like doctors and lawyers, who may have been party members but

have no criminal records, feel alienated and left out. Many are

leaving Iraq. A better vetting system, which focuses on individual

behavior and records rather than a blanket category such as party

membership, would help. But it has to be borne in mind that this

is an extremely sensitive issue for the new Shi’a and Kurdish leaders. This was brought out in many conversations I had with them

in Baghdad.

Fourth, Sunnis complain of a lack of rule of law and security.

They’re not alone in this, of course. Over the long term, strengthening the court system, the prison system, the police system, would

help. I mention this because I think it’s important to remember

that not all of this violence is due to insurgency. A lot is due to

common crime. If you could separate the police problem from the

insurgency problem, strengthen the local police, especially Sunni

police in Sunni areas, it would allow the coalition to take its forces

out of cities and alleviate some of that problem.

Lastly, outright mediation might have some benefit. But, frankly,

I think it has to be handled carefully lest it be seen as interference,

especially by the new Shi’a-dominated government. As for including

key figures in neighboring Arab-Sunni States we have to be careful

here, too. That would be helpful, but many of them may be regarded with suspicion by this government. However, including

some Arab leaders in some kind of an international delegation

might be a good idea. But any mediation effort involving neighboring states would need a clear definition of its mission, what it

would be expected to do to influence and mitigate the Sunni problem.

The current government is interested in efforts to control the

border, to control the finances flowing to insurgents, to get public

support for the electoral process and the new constitution, and to

encourage public rejection of violence. International and regional

efforts along these lines, in return for Iraqi Government efforts to

bring more recalcitrant Sunnis into the government and into local

police forces, might be helpful.

I would like to just add two points to what Dr. Feldman has said

about who might mediate for the Sunni community. Religious leadVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00118 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ers are one group, but let us not forget tribal leaders, who are often

very pragmatic, who have local constituencies, and who certainly

ought to be brought in, at least in the short term, as negotiating

partners.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Marr.

Ms. Van Rest.

Ms. VAN REST. Thank you. To follow up on my colleagues remarks, what I want to describe is what we’re seeing from our working in Iraq through these various groups. We are witnessing a determination among all the groups, Sunni, Shi’a, Kurds, even the

smaller groups, to work together toward the goal of a united Iraq.

One thing that we have been seeing is that there is no end of

debate among the Sunni and the Shi’a about what type of government they should have, and indeed they are taking some joy in embracing the opportunity to have the debate because as we have

heard from several of them, including one recently, that ‘‘under

Saddam I would not even debate such issues in my own head and

now we are free to debate them among ourselves.’’

There is a commitment to democratic debate and confidence in

the framework across Iraq and across various sectors of society. It

is found among Sunnis. We have seen Sunni representatives

brought into the constitutional drafting process, we have heard

Sunni leaders say they made a mistake by not participating in the

January elections, and a mistake that they are encouraging their

followers not to make in upcoming elections.

There is wide support for democratic solutions by Iraqis as

shown in our polls. Support for, and confidence in, democratic solutions among Iraqis has been expressed time and time again in nationwide polling, which we have attached to the testimony in greater detail.

The latest survey has revealed that nearly 73 percent of Iraqis

believe that the new Iraqi transitional government is representative of the Iraqi people as a whole, among self-identified Sunnis the

percentage is 67.4 percent, and for the Shi’a it is 78.3.

Equally revealing is the strong support for coming elections; 75.6

percent of Iraqis say they are very likely to vote in the upcoming

constitutional referendum. Again, support is strong among both

Sunni and Shi’a at 63 percent and 83 percent, respectively.

It is also worth noting that the polling data reveals that the

Sunni-Shi’a divide is not that wide in comparison to self-identification as Iraqis. Twice as many Sunni most strongly identify with

their country in relation to the number who identify with their ethnic group; for Shi’a four times as many identify with their county.

When comparing strongly identifying with country to identification

with religion the ratio for Sunnis is three to one, and for Shi’a two

to one.

National identity is a necessary component in creating a willingness to make the compromises necessary to bridge the gaps that

might otherwise be created by more divisive elements.

These numbers are being reflected by action on the ground.

Across the country courageous Iraqis are standing up to those who

would use violence to undermine the move toward a peaceful and

democratic Iraq. IRI is working with numerous Sunni and Shi’a organizations, and as my colleague Noah suggests, we’re also includVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00119 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ing cleric organizations, and as Phebe mentioned, we have tribal

organizations working to educate Iraqis about the constitutional

drafting process and support for elections as a way of creating a

more peaceful and prosperous Iraq.

It is in this context that the response to what steps should be

taken to avoid Sunni-Shi’a conflict should be found. The answer is

to support the Iraqis in finding their own solutions, including that

of de-Ba’thification within the democratic political framework to

which they have committed themselves. Sunnis and Shi’as are already engaged in accommodations through political channels, leadership is not advocating violence for civil war, such elements while

tragically conspicuous are marginal forces.

The United States and its coalition partners would do well to encourage, even pressure, neighboring governments and those of

other Islamic States in the region that benefit from stability in Iraq

to be more outspoken in their condemnation of terrorist violence in

the name if Islam.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

We’ll proceed now to the fourth option. We’ll start with Dr. Marr

in the response.

How can the United States cultivate emerging leaders among the

various political factions in Iraq, and ensure that they will interact

politically rather than using violence or exclusionary political tactics? Is such involvement feasible, or would it be counterproductive? How divergent are the views among the various new

leaders on such issues as democracy, the appropriate political

structure, the role of religion, future relations with the West and

Iraq’s neighbors? Can the United States influence these views, or

should we attempt to influence those views?

Dr. Marr.

Dr. MARR. Thank you. I’m currently involved, as a fellow at

USIP, in a study of Iraq’s emerging political leadership and their

various visions for the future of Iraq. In conjunction with this I’ve

made two trips to Iraq; one in December to talk to the Kurdish

leadership and one in May and June to Basra and Baghdad to talk

to the newly elected members of the government.

These interviews reveal a rich mix of political leaders emerging

with considerable promise for the future, but that promise is going

to take time to mature. The problem of replacing Iraq’s leadership,

once Saddam and the Ba’th regime was removed, has, in my opinion, always been one of the most difficult problems facing Iraq and

the coalition. Removing and disbanding the previous pillars of state

has allowed for a new leadership to emerge, but has also created

a large vacuum at the center of power. Filling this vacuum has

been difficult.

New leadership can come essentially from three sources. One is

a reintroduction of elements of the previous regime vetted for security purposes; the second is from exile, opposition politicians who’ve

been outside of Iraq for decades; and the third is from the indigenous Iraqi population, most of whom have had little or no leadership experience.

Essentially the coalition opted for the second solution; bringing

in a group of exile opposition leaders mainly from the West. This

group dominated the early governments under the CPA and the inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00120 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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terim government, but the election now has produced an essential

change in that pattern and brought the expression of popular will

and a shift to new leadership, which probably reflects future trends

in Iraq.

Several points need to be made to understand this leadership

and the challenges it poses.

First, the current government, like it’s predecessors, is dominated in its upper ranks by exiles who have spent most of their

formative years outside of Iraq, or in the case of the Kurds, running their own government in the north. Whereas earlier regimes

were led mainly by Western-educated and Western-oriented

oppositionists, the new government is not. Key positions are now

in the hands of the Shi’a religio-political parties and the Kurdish

parties. The members of this opposition have often spent time not

in the West but in Iran or in neighboring Arab countries like Syria

or Lebanon.

The Shi’a are Arab-Iraqis but they are more interested in instilling an Islamic identity in Iraq. In one sense, Iraq has exchanged

one set of exiles for another. The indigenous leadership from inside

Iraq, though it’s emerging, has still not made its way to the top of

the leadership group.

Second, turnover in posts at the top has been substantial, creating lots of opportunity for mobility but the need to gain experience. The same is true at local and provincial levels where discontinuity may be even greater. Something like 60 percent of the current Cabinet Ministers are new to the job. Some of this change is

to be expected in an era of radical change, but it means that the

new leaders must gain more experience in running a state. This

will take time.

The one exception to this rule is the Kurdish leadership. They

have acquired considerable experience and maturity, often through

the school of hard knocks, in running a government in the north.

And it’s not surprising that their area is quiet and gradually becoming more prosperous. The question with the Kurds, however, is

how committed they are to building Iraqi institutions in the center

as opposed to those in the north, and how to draw this experienced

leadership further into the rebuilding of Iraq.

Lastly, there’s the problem of differing visions of the future of

Iraq and where the various leaders would like to take the country.

In my initial interviews I have found a certain amount of overlap,

but there are also differences. Arab-Sunnis, Kurds, and the dominant Shi’a coalition have different views that need to be reconciled.

That process is being dealt with through the constitutional process

and elections. Of course, it’s going to take time, but in my view the

ongoing political process is one of the bright spots in a sometimes

bleak picture.

How can this process of accommodation be facilitated? How can

the coalition help?

First and foremost, every effort must be made to open Iraq to the

outside world. While exiles have had some exposure to the outside,

those inside have had little. Education at every level has deteriorated and Iraqis, especially professionals, are hungry for outside

expertise and contacts. Let’s give it to them. Visitors programs, fellowships and scholarships to study in the United States, Europe,

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and elsewhere, computers and library facilities in universities and

centers, need to be encouraged and funded. This is being done—I

think these programs are successful—but I’d rather see more

money appropriated for those things and less to some others.

One of the most positive aspects of my trip was in discovering

young people in their twenties and thirties who wanted to come to

the States to study political and social sciences, not engineering

and computer science, for the first time in decades. We should encourage that.

Second, let’s concentrate on the younger generation which is

Iraq’s future. While the vision of most of the 40- and 50-year-olds

has already been formed, often in divergent ways, those in their

adolescence and early adulthood are still flexible. And we should

avoid stereotypes.

For example, among the most hopeful and promising experiences

of my trip to Baghdad was in talking to this generation, including

several young people from Sadr City. We often think of Sadr City

as a poverty-ridden slum, a nest of Islamic radicals, but these

young people dispelled some of that impression, as far as I was concerned. One was a husband and wife team involved in local municipal government. Both were advanced graduates of universities and

one was interested in pursuing a Ph.D thesis on U.S. foreign policy,

but he needs more training in English. He should get it.

Another was a remarkable young woman in her early thirties

who had been encouraged by her family to get an education as a

doctor. She was just about to take her board exams when Saddam

was overthrown. She was appointed to her neighborhood council,

and then in the space of 2 years she went from the neighborhood

council to the district council to the municipal council. She was appointed to the national interim council in 2004, she ran as an independent for the national assembly and she’s just been elected. She

wants to have a political career and to come to the States to learn

firsthand how to engage in one.

What better way to invest in the future than to provide her and

others like her with this opportunity.

Third, encourage and strengthen the many civil society groups

that are already blossoming, despite dire security conditions. Help

think tanks get funded, support interest groups that are emerging,

encourage training and conferences that bring diverse groups together in an environment that allows hands-on discussions and potential resolution of conflicts.

The institution, which is funding my research, USIP, is a good

example of this activity, though not the only one. IRI and NDI are

doing yeoman work as well. These activities do not make the headlines but they’re critical to developing future leadership and the

skills and attitudes necessary for compromise.

Fourth, strengthen government capacity, both at national and

local levels. The political process is justifiably sucking up much of

the time, energy, and resources of Iraq’s elite. Meanwhile, the more

mundane aspects of government—delivery of electricity, garbage

collection, security—are neglected or given over to free lancers and

contractors who may be corrupt or worse. Building government

structures and an honest bureaucracy would greatly enhance Iraq’s

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ability to carry on and to garner popular support while it struggles

to settle these difficult political problems at the national level.

Encouraging a civil service administration based on meritocracy

would be a good step in this direction.

And lastly, economic development by, and for, Iraqis must take

place despite the security situation. All evidence including the polls

from IRI suggests that this element, along with security, is the

number one priority of the population. The constitutional process

must be supplemented by growing prosperity and the strengthening of the middle class. Over time, nothing will better tamp down

ethnic and sectarian tensions, help mitigate past feelings of victimization and fears of reprisal, and provide a new and better vision

for Iraq’s future and its youth.

A failure to complete economic development—to couple economic

development to the political progress being made—may produce an

Iraqi version of what has just occurred in Iran; the election of a

conservative, religiously oriented, President supported by a neglected working class. The potential indigenous leadership in Iraq

today is not hidden secularists and liberals, but the Sadrist movement, which is gaining support by its nativist claims. Its leaders

have not spent time outside of Iraq, and it is championing the poor,

uneducated, and jobless.

The best way to combat this situation is to make sure, first, that

the political process continues to be open to these groups, and second, that the younger generation of underprivileged, such as those

Sadr City residents that I met, are nurtured, encouraged, and

given access to the outside world.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Marr.

Ms. Van Rest.

Ms. VAN REST. I agree with Phebe on all the things she said

about the importance of exchange programs bringing youth to the

universities and the like. In addition to that, IRI and NDI, through

various grants to indigenous organizations, have been doing work

on the ground helping emerging leaders and emerging groups begin

to learn the process of how to work in a democracy.

As you all know the institutes have been doing this for a long

time. We have more than 20 years experience in assisting countries

to emerge from authoritarian rule to democracies, and with our

technical training ongoing, we are helping Iraqis build political parties, civil societies, government institutions, and other components

necessary to have representative government.

We do this—keeping in mind that democracy is just not an offthe-rack concept, one size does not fit all, but what we do know

from our experience is that there are basic elements that are universal in a democracy and as we have with many other countries

around the world we are continuing to assist them in fashioning

their own new and free democratic Iraq.

I would also like to point out that it is a long-term process as

well. We have in the most recent example—well, we have had several experiences, but Ukraine is an example that I like to point out,

we have been working there for more than 10 years and as we saw

last fall that the Ukrainian people finally took the bull by the

horns and decided that they, indeed, wanted to have their own democracy.

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In addition to helping Iraqis with training in their public education, civic organizations, we’re also drawing on the experience of

countries in Central and Eastern Europe. We have a good many on

our staff who are from Serbia and Ukraine. We also have trainers—we’ve had trainers come in from Romania, for example, and

these trainers are very well received because Iraqis can relate to

someone who was imprisoned or had a family member killed by an

oppressive dictator but who is now working in successful transition

away from authoritarian rule.

Successful transitions in the Slovak Republic, Lithuania, and the

Czech Republic as well as other regions in countries such as Indonesia, have all proved useful in providing Iraqis with case studies.

For example, we took a group of Iraqi election officials to observe

elections in Indonesia and other countries prior to the January 30

election.

IRI staff in Iraq are folks who have helped to lead transitions in

their own countries and this is something that is very much appreciated by Iraqis we work with.

With regard to the opinion on issues of democracy and related

topics I would like to refer to our polls. We conduct them on a regular basis, we have a poll currently in the field. The most recent

poll is attached and, as you can see, there is information that we

hope will inform the committee and others. For example, one question is: ‘‘Were Iraq to have a Presidential system which of the following methods would you prefer?’’ and the majority of people want

direct elections. That continues, no question about it. Yet, there are

also differing opinions on what role religion should play.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Dr. Feldman.

Dr. FELDMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with much of

what my colleagues say on this question. I would just emphasize

that in the tremendously uncertain circumstances of present-day

Iraq, the fluidity of the political situation is such as to encourage

the emergence of a new generation of leaders, who are themselves

extremely open to rapid changes both in their techniques and also

in what appear to be their illogical commitments.

Let me take as an example the most notorious, but also the most

influential, young leader, that’s Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr began by

challenging democracy as un-Islamic. One of his first big public

speeches was a statement that Islam and democracy could not

work together. He then moved on to participating in the elections.

He began fighting the coalition violently through his Mahdi army,

and indeed engaged in some very brutal fighting with U.S. forces,

and yet he moved from that point to accepting coalition money for

projects in neighborhoods that he and his political parties control.

Sadr also challenged Ayatollah Sistani directly, in an extremely

overt way, rather shocking to the Shi’a community, but he ended

up acknowledging Sistani’s authority when push came to shove.

Now none of these is a marker of a moderate, this is not a moderate we’re talking about. These are markers of someone who is

learning as he goes, and who is ultimately willing to be extremely

pragmatic, politically, in order to accomplish his goals. He still has

general ideological preferences for something like an Iranian-style

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cumstances that he finds, which are circumstances that are rapidly

changing. And one reason that he has survived thus far—there are

two reasons he’s survived. The first reason he survived is that the

United States was not firm in its initial determination to get rid

of him. If our decision had been to arrest him early on we could

have done so at an early stage. That’s the first reason he wasn’t—

he succeeded.

The second reason, though, is precisely that he’s been extremely

flexible. I think the new generation of political leaders that are

emerging in Iraq now share, not necessarily his particular ideological preferences, but they share this feature of tremendous flexibility, willingness to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.

Now what does that mean in a practical way for the United

States? It certainly means that, at the grassroots level, we should

be interested in educating people because if they are flexible, educating them in U.S. approaches and ideas can actually be effective.

But it also means that we need to be realistic about what they

will do when they go back to their country. It is not realistic to

think that exposure to a Western-style education will make Western-style Democrats out of them. It’s equally likely, or probably

more likely, that such exposure will make them more sophisticated

in dealing with us, a value to them——

Senator BIDEN. It depends on their professor.

Dr. FELDMAN. Everything does, as we’d like to believe in my, otherwise, largely irrelevant profession.

So the truth is that we need to expect that we’re going to be

forced to deal with lots of extremely practically minded young politicians who will be willing, essentially, to say or do whatever is

necessary for them to get ahead politically. And we have to be prepared to deal with them if we are adopting a strategy of dealing

with them. What’s problematic is if we adopt an equivocation strategy. What doesn’t work is to say on day one, we’re going to arrest

you or kill you, and on day two, you are our ally in this democratizing process. Either one will work, often under lots of circumstances, but you’ve got to choose one and then stick with it,

and I think that may be a general principle in life, but in this case

it seems particularly true.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Now let me mention that at the beginning we said each of you

would have an opportunity, at this stage, to add a final comment,

something that has come to your mind, questions that have not

been raised.

Dr. Marr, have you had such inspirations at this point?

Dr. MARR. Well, I’ve certainly been inspired by my colleagues

here, but I did come with a suggestion that I think is worth looking

at. Again, the lead has to be taken by the Iraqis, but after looking

at polarization, looking at the election, and talking to many leaders, I’m seized with the idea that one of the things that would be

most beneficial in Iraq in damping down this ethnic and sectarian

polarization, would be a revision of the electoral law. The fact that

it was a single-list system seems to have contributed to the polarization. If, in fact, you could mix and match these provisions—it

doesn’t have to be all or nothing—but if a new electoral law could

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inces, a law that assures provincial representation in Parliament,

this would shift the balance in the election to local and regional

leaders who have constituencies. We can’t be entirely sure—elections are always a question—but I think that would help. And

there are many people in Iraq who suggested such a revision to me.

For example, let’s take many tribal leaders. I’m not a big fan of

tribalism, but many of these leaders are educated, they’re relatively sophisticated and they’re practical and they have constituents. This would shift the system in the direction of constituents

with interests and leaders with a need to ‘‘bring home the bacon’’

rather than political parties with ideological frameworks. It would

even help on the Kurdish issue.

If we have any opportunity to suggest something, I propose this.

We may not even need to suggest it because I think there’s a contingent—quite a contingent—in the Iraqi political spectrum that

would like that. Revising the election law may take more time, and

may involve some kind of a census, but if this issue comes up we

can give some good advice to Iraqis; that’s my suggestion. That’s

worth taking a look at.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Ms. Van Rest.

Ms. VAN REST. As I alluded to, in my last remarks, I think from

our point of view, it’s very important to understand how long it

takes to help people in other countries realize their own democracy,

and so, therefore, I’m just—and I know that there is a great understanding on this committee of this, is that we need to be in there

with other groups, not only NED and IRI and NDI, but other organizations who can continue to help Iraqis as they develop in setting

up their institutions, in learning how to operate within a democracy. It doesn’t happen overnight, which I know is a very simplistic

thing to say, but it is something that we know takes a very long

period of time, and so that is what I would like to offer as something we need to keep our eye on with regards to democracy-building programs.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Dr. Feldman.

Dr. FELDMAN. I would just very briefly emphasize that there’s an

intimate connection between the progress on security, or a lack of

progress on security, and the constitutional progress. I sometimes

think that Iraq is like watching a split screen. On one side of the

screen is this constitutional process that all in all has gone pretty

well. It’s had steps backward and it’s had steps forward, but it’s

made reasonable progress, and even though Sunnis did not participate in the election there are now Sunnis involved in the political

process, and they will be involved to some degree in the final constitution.

On the other side of the screen, meanwhile, is the continued violence that we do see, literally, on our television screens every day,

which is deeply destablizing to the political process in that it

makes it look like a show. It makes it look as though the political

process is disconnected from reality, and that’s deeply harmful not

just to our interests in Iraq—because it makes it much more difficult to achieve a political balance there which would enable us to

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er efforts in the region to encourage political processes that look a

bit more like democracy than those that presently exist. Because

opponents of democratization in all of the countries in the region

regularly say—now this is a new argument, they didn’t have this

argument before Iraq, but their new antidemocracy argument is,

look how destablizing democracy is. Open up political processes and

suddenly you’ll have suicide bombers, you’ll have people all over

the streets, you’ll be in a very, very risky situation. And that is,

in the long run, just as harmful to our interests in the region as

it is to our particular and very immediate problems in Iraq itself.

So I would just emphasize that inasmuch as we care a lot about

the political process, and today we’ve been emphasizing those aspects of the political process that are good, or that can be improved,

but we recall that as you’ve had even other panels thinking about

this issue to realize that there’s a close and central link between

these, and that we could very easily end up with the best constitution ever ratified in an Arab country—and, in fact, I’m relatively

confident that we will end up with such a constitution, at least

measured by that metric—and that it will possibly mean very little

in practical terms if we don’t have the security to enable it to actually operate in practice.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate, likewise, my colleagues’ patience. Nevertheless, you have set the stage

magnificently. We’ll begin our questioning with 10-minute rounds,

and I’ll start my 10 minutes by making comments.

First of all, I compliment to you, Ms. Van Rest, for giving us this

poll from the International Republican Institute. Now, the poll we

have in front of us is April 11 through April 20, so this is 3 months

ago. You’re in the field now——

Ms. VAN REST. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. You polled the whole country. People said 47 percent most identified with their country, 18 percent with their religion, 16 percent with their ethnic group, 11 with tribe, and 4 with

city and town.

So this is almost half who identify with the country, that is,

being Iraqi is the most important thing, as opposed to being a Shiite. On the other hand, if you break this down, as you have, by the

major groups, Kurds don’t see it quite that way. They would identify with their ethnic group. At least 37 percent think that’s the

most important thing, as opposed to Arabs, of whom only 12 percent think that’s the most important.

But if you’re talking about ‘‘my country,’’ Arabs, by 50 percent,

identify with the country, and 28 percent of Kurds are in this situation. So, as is often the case, in aggregating statistics, why, we

have very different views in terms of prime loyalty. And then you

get to perhaps the most important issue requiring a governmental

solution—we heard this yesterday from our panel—security remains a distinct challenge. Not the insurgency sort, but walk out

the door in the morning to go safely to school, things of this kind.

In this poll, interesting enough, inadequate electricity was the

winner, unemployment second. Well, that’s understandable. National security came in third, and high prices, and far down the

line came crime, terrorists, and health care, for example. Maybe

these are situations for more affluent organized societies, when

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lights go on, for example. And there is some sense that you can

make some money and have a job if there’s 50 percent unemployment.

We’re going to discuss the economy tomorrow because we’ve all

discovered—maybe aside from security concern walking out the

door—after you walk out the door, you hopefully walk to a job, or

some destination. And if there is not a society to enforce those opportunities—well, to say the least, this is destablizing to whatever

is going on downtown in the constitution building.

Having said all that, my thoughts come down to, first of all, this

basic question that I raised with respect to the poll that the Republican Institute did. I’m still wrestling with what sense do Iraqis

have of wanting to be Iraqis. I don’t say this in a divisive way, but

clearly one of the most horrible outcomes of all this will be civil

war. Or even some degree of disintegration, that is, parts of the

population, as we know it, affiliating with somebody else on the

basis of tribe or religion. Dr. Marr, in guiding us in our studies of

Iraq, didn’t describe it as an artificial country, but some have told

of people drawing a line around the land mass we today call Iraq,

maybe the British, the French, others after World War I, encompassing some disporate people, putting a tyrant over them, Saddam

being, maybe, the last iteration of this, but suddenly the tyrant is

gone and now we have to face, well, there you are.

In the midst of this, the Kurds, as we’ve discovered, given some

protection by our aircraft and their location, did develop a certain

degree of self-government. Not surprisingly, they are demanding a

pretty high degree of autonomy in this, a federal principle. Furthermore, they have very strong bargaining positions. Kurd leaders, who have come to visit with members of our committee, individually or collectively, are saying that Kirkuk is extremely meaningful to us. And the oil that is involved in this is equally so.

So we could say, well, now listen, Iraq has got to be Iraq, you’re

all Iraqis, and there needs to be a sharing of the oil wells, and,

likewise, some recognition of whom Kurds might be pushing out of

Kirkuk, or who’s coming and going from this situation.

And they said, well, that’s all well and good, but, nevertheless,

this is our bottom line. As we are negotiating here, it’s not just

simply how many members of the assembly we have, or whether

it’s a two-thirds majority, or so forth, it’s more fundamental. Where

do we stand in all this?

And, of course, we’ll get into our fourth hearing, during which

some of the other countries around will be discussed, but the Turks

have indicated very visibly and publicly that they want the Kurds

to be thinking about being Iraqis, clearly incorporated in Iraq, not

flirting with desires for greater Kurdistan again involving Syrians,

Iranians, and Turks, because if so, then we have a whole set of new

conflicts even as we’re trying to settle one that is fundamental

here.

And I will conclude with this broad question. The thing about

being Iraqi is, there is this problem that you’ve discussed. We have

some very sophisticated people in that assembly dealing with this.

As you said, Dr. Feldman, we have maybe one of the best constitutions we could have hoped to come from such a situation.

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But it appears the United States displaced Saddam Hussein. By

and large we rejoiced, the Iraqi people rejoiced, and the world I

think, by and large, even if they didn’t want to participate in it,

rejoiced that he’s gone.

And we made some assumptions then about democracy. We felt

that this is the shining moment for democracy arising in this particular country, in this very difficult neighborhood. And now there

are some who would say fair enough, but on a scale of 10 it doesn’t

have to be a 9-plus. Maybe if we come out with a 6-plus or something we may claim that headway was made.

Well, maybe so, but as some of you have said, and others who

are looking at this example around there may say, well, what’s the

tradeoff—stability versus a democracy rated as a 6-plus on a scale

of 10 that is somewhat unstable.

If the Chinese statesman was comparing what we have today in

Iraq with his own situation, he might say, ‘‘We’re getting 9 percent

real growth in China. We have an authoritarian regime, and as a

control, it works for us. Let the business people make their money,

but stay out of city hall. Our way ensures security and crime fighting, whereas you idealistic people who are all hankering about democracy are looking at an economy in Iraq where people are unemployed, there’s not much real growth, there’s insecurity and you

don’t know where the oil money is going.’’—we’ll talk about that tomorrow during our hearing on the economy—but you understand,

what’s the world to think as they look at all this?

Fundamentally, is there going to be a way out of this, in your

judgment? Will the sense of being Iraqi be sufficient? At the end

of the day, will the basic elements finally compromise, however

they get to that point, and, likewise, will they have enough pride

in the situation that they actually cut corruption? Will they manage to get the outside investment that will be required to get the

kind of employment levels or the economy that they want? Will

they work with other countries so that their security remains sufficient, and they’re not invaded by somebody else either surreptitiously or overtly while they are getting their fledgling democracy

going? Is there enough stability here, enough sense that this is

likely to work, leaving aside the timetables of how long we stay,

anybody stays, and so forth? Is there something here that is sufficiently Iraqi to assure that?

Dr. Marr, I think you’ve thought about this issue for a bit, and

will you give your judgment?

Dr. MARR. Yes, thank you very much.

On balance it’s going to be difficult but my answer to you is

‘‘Yes.’’ Over the long term, probably. Iraq could fail, it could break

down into Lebanon. However, I don’t think a civil war between the

communities will ensue or the kind of war we see now—the

rejectionists versus something new—will continue.

I’m actually investigating this very issue of identity. I’m relying

on IRI polls and others for the opinion of general population but

I’m trying to determine through intensive interviews with leaders

of various kinds—provincial and national, younger and older—how

they view this issue. My conclusion, in general, is that the real difficulty lies with the Kurds and whether they feel ‘‘Iraqi.’’ This problem has grown tremendously in the last couple of decades.

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I do want to say something about your characterization of a new

state and a dictator. Iraq had a lot of history before Saddam. Governance is a long-standing problem, but the British came in with

much the same problem. Over a long period of time they did institute an imperfect parliamentary system, and we do have to remember that Kurds participated, to a great extent, in that. We had

Kurdish Prime Ministers, Kurdish Ministers of Interior, Kurdish

members of Parliament, and so on.

Then the polity began to fragment and there was disruption especially after 1958. But the fact that the Kurds have been governing themselves for the last—what is it now—13, 14 years, and

that education has been in Kurdish for that time—has created a

younger generation for whom there has been no interaction with

Iraq, and who don’t know Arabic. The older generation is more

pragmatic, they speak Arabic, they have a memory of having

interacted with the rest of Iraq. But integration is going to be more

difficult for the Kurds than others.

There certainly is a sense of Iraqi identity among the Arab population, but in my view this has weakened over time—certainly in

Saddam’s time, and recently. Why? Because many of the new leaders are not secular nationalists, they’re people for whom religion

and Islamic identity is increasingly important. This doesn’t mean

they’re not Iraqi; they are Arab, and Iraqi, but the Islamic identity

has become increasingly important.

And we’re now going to have some problems with the Sunnis who

feel separate, which they didn’t before. We have this issue in the

constitution right now—whether Iraq is part of the Arab world.

That’s a rubric for whether identity is more Arab or Iraqi, but I

think this is a less serious issue among the Shi’a and Sunni Arab

population than it is with the Kurds.

Just one more word about the Kurds. I believe that the Kurdish

identity issue will improve in time, if things go better, we get some

kind of constitution which the parties can agree on, and we get economic development. I keep emphasizing the economics because I

think that’s equally important to the political process.

Economic opportunities are going to create different visions;

something else to think about, something else to work for. The insurgency has succeeded in accomplishing two things in my view. It

has succeeded in cutting Baghdad off from the rest of the country.

I suspect all of you who have been to Baghdad know what I mean.

If you’re in the green zone in Baghdad you don’t travel north, you

don’t travel south. And, of course, the insurgency has cut the country off from outsiders wishing to come inside. This is not helping

integration. I believe integration will take place on the ground

when people in the north come down to Baghdad to do business,

when they go to Baghdad University, or Mosel University, when

they have to interact on a personal level. That is going to knit people together and provide some lessening of this intense feeling of

separation, among communities but for that we’re going to have to

get security.

One last thing I keep mentioning to the Kurds; over time, they’re

going to have to make a decision on whether it’s worth it to try to

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ence is going to be huge. They cannot protect their borders. They

haven’t been able to do so before, they can’t do so now. If they don’t

get independence they’ll be able to undertake some economic development, but they will not be able to develop those oil resources in

the north and there will be constant limit on what they can

achieve.

One of the things I keep reminding them of, is that in their worst

case scenario they could end up like northern Cyprus, part of a

country which is not independent, but which has opted for ethnic

separatism. They may be left behind as, hopefully, the rest of Iraq

picks up and develops.

So they have a problem as well, and it really is worth their effort

to create a better Iraq, a neighborhood in which Kurds feel safer.

The CHAIRMAN. I’ll leave it at that. I’d like to ask the other panelists the same question, but we’ve run well over my time, and I

want to recognize my colleague, Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much. I’ve always been impressed by Dr. Marr, and had a chance to hear from her in my office here and I appreciate it. But I’ve been generally impressed by

both of your testimony.

I’d like to start with you, Ms. Van Rest. I must tell you this may

not be fair but I think your outfit is doing something very, very important along with your Democratic counterpart, and I’m going to

go to the floor and try to make sure you get another $28 million

because I understand you’re going to be ratcheted down. You’re

going to have to start to pull back, you and the whole NDI, and

I think that would be a disaster, and we got an $18 billion bill for

Iraq up there, and I’m going to try very hard to earmark $60 million for both operations.

And second, Senator Dodd, I hope I’m not stealing his thunder,

pointed out to me—this is pretty impressive, the methodology of

this poll, face-to-face interviews of 2,705 when 85 percent of our

diplomatic corps never is able to walk outside the green zone, when

there’s very little intercourse at all out there. Impressive.

And I have one very quick and may seem like an unrelated question, why Dahouk. Why was that excluded, was it security reasons

up there?

Ms. VAN REST. Yes, there are some security reasons up there.

Senator BIDEN. Because you don’t hear much—at least I don’t

hear much about that. You hear about Mosel and you hear about

Ramadi, but I didn’t realize that that was——

Ms. VAN REST. There are some security issues there.

Senator BIDEN. Let me—in the short time I have left I’d like to

raise—I’m going to try to talk about it, and maybe if we get a

chance to come back, Sunni participation, a little bit more about

the Kurds, the insurgents, splitting the insurgency, the political

process and how it’s impacted by the issue of lack of security, and

the timing of the constitution.

But let me start off with Sunni participation, and if you can give

me brief answers, understanding that we’ll have to, maybe, expand

on another round.

Everybody acknowledges that the Sunnis have to be in on the

deal, the Shi’a acknowledge it, the Kurds acknowledge it, they

know the way that law that we know, but the law that the AmeriVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00131 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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cans know is the one guiding them now, says if any three provinces

opt out it’s out, so they know they got to get them in the deal.

But Dr. Feldman, you talk about splitting the insurgency, and we

all understand what you mean, they’re not moderates, but in a relative sense it’s moderate. It seems to me that the one way, the

most likely way for that to occur is for us to get to the point where

there’s another election, not a referendum on the constitution, but

an actual election for Sunni participation. And in my discussions

with the Speaker of the Parliament, and with my discussions with

the Secretary of Defense, they were emphatic about the need to—

because they’re all hanging out there. I mean very individually

hanging out there, they’re among the group you’re talking about

taking real courage to, you know, get in the deal here, that they

need elections.

I’m attracted by the prospect, and mainly because I suggested it,

but you articulated it much better, Dr. Feldman, about the possibility of deferral. I agree that if we can have the election on time

it’s the best way to go. But that’s problematic.

I want to make sure I understand what you mean by deferral.

The way I’ve been talking about it is the possibility that you actually defer the process of the written constitution that requires a

referendum vote until there is a general election. Not preferable

way, but I worry about you can’t write the constitution, or you

write it and it effectively excludes Sunnis even though they participate. It ends up the constitution fails under the existing criteria for

acceptance, or it somehow gets jammed and you end up with the

Sunnis fundamentally opposed to what’s been agreed upon, highly

unlikely one or the other would happen; maybe both.

And so talk to me a little bit more about the notion of, as a fallback position, the deferral idea.

Dr. FELDMAN. Well, Senator Biden, I think there are two ways

to think about the deferral question, and let me try to deal with

each of them.

Obviously, the reason we’re in this situation is that Sunnis didn’t

participate in the elections the first time, they made a total miscalculation and now——

Senator BIDEN. Or I would argue the miscalculation, which Dr.

Marr said as well, we should have organized this not on a nationwide basis, we should have organized this on a provincial basis so

that you get a certain number of delegates even if only two people

vote.

Dr. FELDMAN. I entirely agree.

Senator BIDEN. In my view.

Dr. FELDMAN. I think you’re both absolutely right about that. In

any case once we were in a situation where that wasn’t the case,

we faced a second problem of the fact that that way the transitional law is set up, we’re expected to have the ratification vote

prior to the election. Then the question is how could we change

this?

One option would be—and I think this is closer to the deferral

that you were speaking of—literally, to say that we don’t need to

finish the constitution now, let’s just hold the elections first to give

the Sunnis a second try as it were, a second bite at the apple on

the elections.

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Now if that were doable, and perhaps it is still doable, I would

be strongly in favor of that. I think it would be a good solution.

Some of the Shi’a and the Kurds would say, well, my goodness, this

is unfair, they should have voted the last time, and the answer

would have to be something like, you’re right, and we know you’re

right, but better this than the alternative.

In practical terms, though, I suspect that it will not be possible

to convince either the Shi’a, the Kurds, or perhaps even the present

administration to adopt that radical a change in the TAL framework.

The leads to a second form of deferral which you might call soft

deferral, and this begins with your idea, Senator, and then offers

the following twist on it to meet circumstances.

This view would, essentially, say that the present parties will

sign something that they will call the constitution for purposes of

the TAL.

Senator BIDEN. Yeah, okay.

Dr. FELDMAN. It will, however, be limited in its scope and many

crucial issues will be deferred by its own terms until after there

have been elections and we have Sunnis involved.

That is imperfect from the standpoint of permanence, of course,

but I think would be—it’s a way of preserving the essence of your

idea even if it turns out to be the case that we can’t get people to

agree to it informally.

Senator BIDEN. Again, not my idea in the sense that it’s preferable, but it was chilling to me the meetings I had with the

present elected and appointed representative in the Iraqi Government over Memorial Day. Chilling the way in which they—and I’m

just going to speak generically—spoke of one another. It was

chilling, it was anything but a coherent government, and they all

had their own—understandably—axe to grind.

For example, I was told by one Senator if you think the

Peshmerga the Badr Brigade integrated or not into a Iraqi Army

where Shi’as—Sunnis aren’t joining is going to be able to be the vehicle to bring peace in the Sunni areas, give me a break. I mean,

you know, we view them as more invaders than you, which leads

me to my second question.

How—and I’d ask any and all of you if there’s time, and then I’ll

wait until the second round, there’s a significant discussion among

the military side of the equation here. You talk to the former generals, the security types who approach this from purely a security

point of view, there’s a debate about how much our presence is the

cause of the insurgency, and how much our absence would impact

on the insurgency. And you get both answers. You get one it is not

the major reason for the insurgency, it’s larger than that, and if we

did leave it would get worse; and you get the other point of view

which is, hey, it’s a big deal if we got out of there at a smaller footprint then, in fact, things would get better.

And so, as it relates to the Sunnis, again I did not—this time I

didn’t even get to Fallujah, Ramadyh, or anywhere else, I was just

in Baghdad.

And by the way, it was a lot worse than the first time I got there.

I mean it gets worse and worse every time I’ve gone. And so I don’t

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mean to suggest—in a sense I feel like when I go there I’m in a

cocoon, that you know, my inability to get out—

The chairman and I were able to walk around, literally, the first

time we were there downtown. And it’s just fundamentally

changed.

Anyway, having said that, my impression from the Sunnis with

whom I got to meet inside the green zone, most of whom were related to the government, some were not, including military personnel, were that they would rather have us there now. The last

thing they want to do is ask us to leave now, Sunnis. Sunnis. Yet

there’s an overwhelming sense that no, no, no—the Sunnis, if right

now there is a secret ballot they’d all say get out of here, all go

home. All coalition forces.

What is the read? First of all, what is the public opinion beyond

what it says here? Do you have a sense what that is? And both you

doctors tell me what you think about the impact of U.S. presence

as it relates to Sunni attitudes of participation, toward their participation in this outfit.

Ms. VAN REST. I’ll just try to address it from our viewpoint. We

work—we don’t have offices in the green zone, we work in the red

zone. Because of security issues for staff, out of necessity, we really

do rely on the Iraqi groups we work with, we spend a lot of time

doing more training, ‘‘training-the-trainer’’ kinds of programs so

that they can branch out.

It’s one of those things where, while Iraqis, number one, are

grateful for our assistance, they really want to be on their own. I’m

not sure how they feel about, if our presence there militarily is the

reason for the insurgency; on the other hand, they’re very clear

that they want us to leave, but not now.

And they—I think it’s just one of those things where we’re constantly going to have to take stock of—continue to talk to them, it’s

a little bit of a, maybe, schizophrenic situation for them because

they want their independence, they need our assistance, and so I

think that that’s what we’re just going to have to continue to address.

Senator BIDEN. My time is up, but a short answer from either

one of your colleagues?

Dr. MARR. I’ve looked at this and actually we’ve done some

thinking about it among my colleagues at USIP. We gave something to the new Ambassador to think about.

We all know you can’t generalize about the Sunnis. We have to

peel them back from insurgency like the onion.

Those folks, the pale, we’re all in agreement on, but there are

different layers of opposition, and it’s already breaking. The National Dialogue Council includes Sunnis. The IIP, the Iraqi Islamic

Party has indicated its willingness to participate. The Council of

Vlama has not yet done so. How about ex-Ba’th officers? There are

a whole lot of people who fit in this category—academics, for example, who have shadowy parties. These people can be brought in to

the process. I don’t want to use the word co-opt, but they need to

be constantly brought in, split off. This process is already taking

place, and we ought to do everything we can to encourage that.

I don’t know about deferral, or having an election first, but this

is a process which is happening. There are Sunni possibilities

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there. We have names. Frankly, these are the people whom we

have to rely on. There are some tribal leaders, as well, who have

to be identified province by province and area by area. They have

constituencies. There’s no sense in dealing with people who can’t

bring some other people in.

Dr. FELDMAN. Very briefly. I think it’s not schizophrenic for people both to deeply wish we would leave and recognize that the risks

of that are enormous at the moment.

I do think that in most of the Sunni areas the sense is, broadly,

that we are on the side of the Shi’a and the Kurds, which to a certain extent is true. And as a consequence many people in those

areas think that if we would leave that would strengthen their position. Some in the insurgency, actually, would want to retake the

country. Others think that’s unrealistic, but think they would be

better off vis-a-vis the Shi’a and the Kurds if they were fighting on

their own without us on the other side.

And so there’s probably a range of views about that. The people

in the green zone that you met I would suspect, who are Sunnis,

are in serious trouble if we leave, and I’m not surprised to hear

that they would like us to stay put.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. And thank you, Senator Biden.

Senator Dodd.

Senator DODD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me begin by

apologizing to the chairman for not being present yesterday during

the first round of these hearings. For weather reasons I couldn’t

get a plane out of Connecticut to get down here in time, so I want

to apologize for missing yesterday.

But thank you immensely for having these hearings, these are

tremendously valuable and I know colleagues are busy with so

many other things here, but it’s so, and the way you’ve orchestrated it as well, Mr. Chairman, let me thank you for the way

you’ve laid this out, and asking some basic questions and giving

the panel an opportunity to go through all of that has been tremendously helpful.

I gather my colleague from Delaware made note of the fact that

he regretted, yesterday, the administration has not been present in

all of this, and I know that’s not the fault of the chairman at all,

but I want to second his concerns about it. It’s—the President

started the dialog a week or two ago in talking about this issue.

He needs to do more of it. Exactly the point that Senator Biden has

made, and I think you’ve made as well, Mr. Chairman, that it’s one

thing to be concerned about public opinion in Iraq and how things

are moving there, but I happen to subscribe to the notion that if

the President continues to have eroding support here on this policy

that the question will be answered even before the Iraqis may have

answered the question.

So his engagement and the administration’s engagement, in this

conversation, is extremely important, in my view, and I regret that

they’re not here to participate.

A couple of questions, and I thank all three of you, it’s been very,

very interesting, and very, very helpful. I, too, was struck with this

survey and rather impressed that 200 interviewers can get out all

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across the country and conduct these interviews, and I want to

raise a couple of questions, if I can.

First of all, I want to get to the notion of how you communicate

what’s going on, and I thought about some of your points about

holding town meetings are precarious. Even in New England I

might point out they’re precarious. I think the last one I had some

years ago, when I finally decided I’d do student forums rather than

open public forums, someone showed up dressed as Abraham Lincoln and he got into a fist fight with a world federalist, and that

was the end of the town meeting, and they were the story the next

day and I decided I wasn’t going to provide a forum any longer for

that kind of activity.

Senator BIDEN. If the Senator would yield for a second——

Senator DODD. Yes.

Senator BIDEN. I have a similar experience. I held 2 years ago,

in a Boys Club in a place called Bear, Delaware, a town meeting,

and 13 members of the Ku Klux Klan showed up.

Senator DODD. So to make your point, you know, who shows up

at these town meetings, and how they use them for their own benefits, can be contrary to your stated goals of what you’d like to have

occur at these things.

But what I was thinking, as you were talking, you know, the

founding of this Republic, it was a Federalist papers, that was the

pamphleteer was the way of communicating, and the public was

there making the argument as to why those provisions of the Constitution, and there’s got to be some equivalent in this day of the

Internet, and, of course, the ability with wireless communication

skills to be able to allow the Iraqi people to be a witness to debate

and discussion. I don’t know if there’s something comparable to a

C–Span, but if there is I would hope that in the time that remains,

we’d be looking at means by which the Iraqi people, through radio

or television, could sort of listen in to this debate that’s going on.

And I presume it’s a good heated debate between the various factions so that while they’re not participating themselves in a real

way they’re conscious of the fact that their points of view are being

articulated during those discussions.

I think that has a lot to do with confidence building about whether or not my voice, my point of view, is being heard as they develop

these points of view.

So, again, I’m going to go through a couple of questions here and

then give you a chance to respond to all of them. And maybe that’s

not realistic but it seems to me that’s one sort of answer here.

Second, I don’t know if any of you—and I’m just curious—this Sy

Hersh article. I don’t know if you had a chance to read it in the

New Yorker and so forth, and wondered if you got a chance to

make any conclusions about the correctness or incorrectness of his

conclusions about—and to the extent then that this would have an

adverse impact on the present process.

The point being for those who may not have seen the article is

that we were so deeply involved in influencing the outcome of that

election in terms of even doctoring numbers and funneling money

to preferred candidates, revealing the itinerary of election observers, voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, it’s a pretty extreme set of

conclusions, but Sy Hersh has not been wrong every time he’s writVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00136 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ten an article, and, in fact, he’s been right on a number of occasions.

And I’m curious as to whether or not you have any observations

about it?

Then, I’d like to raise the issue, Mr. Feldman, that you talked

about, and others did as well. But I was too struck with some of

these numbers that the chairman raised in the survey done by IRI.

And the conclusion on page nine of the survey, it’s right direction/

wrong direction. Ms. Van Rest, I’m interested in your survey done,

why do you think Iraq is heading in the right or wrong direction?

In the wrong direction column why is it going in the wrong direction? Security is the number one answer. The lack of it, I presume,

almost 34 percent. And yet when you go down the list terrorism

shows up at 6 percent. And I’m just curious as to why there seems

to be a disconnect between the lack of security and terrorism. What

is going on in the minds of a respondent when there’s so much of

a difference where you’ve given the fact that—now granted this

survey was done in April and we’re in July, and there’s been a

spiked increase, so maybe in the April setting—I can’t recall specific events, it may have been relatively flat, but, nonetheless, it’s

Iraqis who are dying. We’re losing our soldiers, from time to time,

in numbers none of us like at all, but compared to the Iraqis who

are losing their lives on a daily basis I’m struck by the fact that

they would not consider that. And maybe they are in the answer

to the security question, but why they don’t relate terrorism, or do

they not see it as terrorism? Maybe that’s part of the answer.

And I’d like you to try to shed some light for me on that particular point as to why those numbers are different.

And lastly, I wonder if you might—I’ve been very curious as to

why we haven’t taken advantage of our new found relationship

with Libya. Khadafi has foresworn his accumulation of nuclear

weapons, Senator Biden had a unique opportunity to actually address the Libyan legislature. The administration lists it as a major

accomplishment, and I agree with them, I think this was a phenomenal result. Libya is a 97 percent Sunni country. I’ve been told

that they are supportive of what we’re doing, at least generally

speaking, and curious if you might calibrate among those countries

in the region who was in a better position to help us influence

broader Sunni participation in the Iraqi process of the neighboring

states.

We all talk about Jordan and Egypt, but I never hear anyone

mention Libya, and I’d be curious as to whether or not you think

there’s an opportunity there that we may not be taking an advantage of to the extent that there is a new found relationship here.

Those are a lot of questions but I wonder if you might respond

to them.

Dr. MARR. I’d like to take on the terrorism question because I

think I understand that.

Terrorism broadly means what you and I read in our newspaper

every day. The suicide bomber who undertakes massive killings in

a marketplace or a mosque, something that people can’t be sure of,

that’s uncertain. And targeting American forces which affects us,

but not them.

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But I want to go back to something I mentioned in passing.

Frankly, for the ordinary Iraqi, crime that we recognize as crime

is a greater threat. For example, the kidnappings that are taking

place in Baghdad, particularly among the middle and upper class

people; assassinations of people who work for the government, of

many university professors, doctors, and so on. Middle and upper

class Iraqis—particularly people of substance are leaving Iraq because of this crime.

That’s one of the reasons why I think we should focus analytically and politically on that particular issue. This is more a policing issue. Getting more police would free up resources and forces

to deal with the insurgents. These crimes are not always connected

to the insurgency, but this is an issue that is devastating.

Of course—we have to recognize that the insurgency is concentrated in a region, too—mostly Baghdad and the triangle rather

than the north and the south.

I also have some views on the neighbors and Libya. It often looks

to us as though we should involve the neighbors, but inside Iraq,

if you talk to Iraqis, particularly these in government—with the

Kurds and with many of these new Shi’a leaders who are oriented

in a different direction, it’s pretty clear, involving the neighbors is

not going to be helpful. Some of the remarks that I’ve heard from

these people indicate that if you start to involve the Arab world,

which is mainly Sunni, it’s going to provide support for the Sunni

population. There’s suspicion of the Ba’thists; they’re not in favor.

So you’ve got to keep in mind that this is not a friendly environment for some of these regional partners. Libya would be a real

stretch for the Iraqis. It’s hard for me to see how the Libyans could

mediate there.

But even if we use Egyptians, Jordanians, and others among certain elements in Iraq, there’s a great deal of suspicion of them. So

we’ve got to be careful and sensitive.

Ms. VAN REST. I’d like to comment on the question about direct

assistance to political parties as discussed in the article.

I know you all know this, but the National Endowment and the

party institutes have been on record that we work with parties

across the board. We don’t pick any favorites, giving assistance to

the parties in terms of training, communications training, and the

like, and helping them to figure out how to develop messages, that

kind of thing. And these are the techniques that have worked

through the years in helping parties develop.

So I think we’ve been on record with that before, but that characterizes our assistance.

Senator DODD. Let me just say, by the way, and I’m glad Senator

Biden intends to offer some additional resource. We’ve had some—

I remember some very close votes going back through the years,

and I think by a margin of one vote, one year, we were able to sustain the National Endowment for Democracy. That was hotly opposed by many people who saw this as some great—and I think the

record of the NED and the respective two-party organizations have

been terrific, it was long overdue that we weren’t more directly involved in building parties—and by the way, let me focus on the

party aspect of that too. I think one of the problems we’ve been involved in is we’ve tried to be neutral about this to such a degree

135

that our support for civil society in a lot of places is very nice, but

most of the people in civil society don’t run for public office. And

a great spokesman and so forth may show up but they never want

to get out and knock on the screen door, and I wish we did more

with the parties. I love civil society in these countries but we need

to pay more attention to people who are actually willing to put

their name on a ballot and go out and run for public office, and too

often we ignore them, fearful we’re going to be seen as being partisan in some way, and pay attention, the civil society groups which

are wonderful but rarely want to engage in the kind of day-to-day

politics you need to do if you’re going to succeed.

I didn’t mean to digress, but I think it’s a point that needs to be

made.

Dr. FELDMAN. A couple of quick points. First, with respect to

where the debate is going to happen, Senator. Those of us who had

some—who were involved in the transitional administrative law

process—have been a bit surprised by the way the constitutional

committee has operated, because the transitional administrative

law contemplates that the elected national assembly will actually

debate the constitution, and that would be—and was imagined to

be—the natural forum for a public televised debate to be visible on

Iraqi television and, indeed, on regional television where it would

also have a substantial effect. And that debate would also be open

to the possibility of changing the constitutional drafted text after

the process of the debate, because the thing would not have, as it

were, the text would not have gone out for ratification yet.

I think it’s still not too late to do that. I think that’s contemplated by the transitional law. It doesn’t require any changes,

and I think it would be plausible to interpret the transitional law

in the following way: To say that by August 15 the committee is

charged to produce a text, and it can do so. And then at that point

the national assembly would have an opportunity to debate that,

and there is, at least, until October 15 for ratification referendum.

And that date could perhaps be extended, perhaps a little bit, at

least, insofar as this is the Middle East and deadlines are never

understood by anybody to be absolutely hard and fast.

So I think there is a possibility for that, and I think it would be

an ideal context for the debate to occur. It would be an opportunity

for Iraqis to see the people whom they elected actually involved in

the constitutional process.

With respect to the Seymour Hersh article, I did see it. In fact,

I spoke to Mr. Hersh several times in the process of preparing the

article, and I think he even quoted a couple of things that I said

to him there. And I think what is most striking to me about the

article is that I urged, and I think others urged him, to try to see

if he could find some sort of statistical proof of this suggestion

about ballot stuffing, or substantial changes in outcomes.

The one statistic that he pointed to there, which is at least worthy of closer attention—I don’t think it proves anything, but it’s

worth looking at, is the statistic that says that then-Prime Minister

Ayad Allawi received a much larger number of votes at the national level for his party than the same party received at the local

level.

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In other words, that there was substantial ticket splitting. Now

it’s entirely possible that there was simply ticket splitting, that

people were choosing—and this point was addressed in the article—that local people were voting for parties where they knew the

local players, but they wanted a strong hand at the national level.

That’s a perfectly plausible explanation, nothing in the article that

I’ve seen disproves that.

It’s certainly a statistic worth looking at more closely because the

truth is that any allegations on this front are highly risky. We

know this from the situation in Afghanistan where a single and ultimately unsubstantiated rumor led to some significant violence.

Here, too, there could be a real process—perhaps not of direct violence, but, at least, of the discrediting of some of the people who

are, after all, most positively inclined toward us. So it may have

ended up backfiring.

A last thought on this, and this is something that is much closer

to the expertise of the members of the committee than to mine, but

the article at least implied that there may have been some disrespect for the legislative input of Members of the Houses of Congress in the process of whatever decision was made. I, of course,

have no way of knowing if any of that is accurate or not, but it

seems to be of the greatest concern.

Senator DODD. And about Libya, do you have any——

Dr. FELDMAN. I do. Two thoughts on Libya. I basically agree with

Dr. Marr.

The first is that Libya is noted for its—you mentioned that

they’re Sunni, which is true, but the President—or President is the

wrong word—but Colonel Khadafi is noted for a very heterodox

form of Sunni Islam, let’s just say, going alongside his other personal idiosyncracies. I think we can probably say that without giving any offense. And I think that he would—this is known throughout the region, and I think that would make him, to some degree,

disqualified from the perspective of many local Sunnis.

The other is simply, and Senator Biden can speak to this since

he was just there, it may be too soon to place any particular trust

or extra credibility in someone who’s track record—I totally agree

with the substantial accomplishments that have brought him to

where he’s been brought, but his track record is, obviously, not one

that inspired confidence, and I think there are other stories out

there about him that are, even if unsubstantiated, the fact that

such stories are circulating strongly suggests that he might not be

the kind of person we’d want to strengthen in this way.

Senator DODD. Thank you very much. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you, Senator Dodd. I appreciate very

much Senator Biden addressing the appropriation bill that’s on the

floor now, and the need for moneys for the NED and the party institutes, and Senator Dodd’s strong endorsement of that. I would

just add a third voice.

During the 9 years that I was a member of the NED Board, I

was tasked to get the money every year, and this was sometimes,

as Senator Dodd knows, a precarious prospect, but I had——

Senator BIDEN. You had to overcome some Democratic opposition

as I recall.

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The CHAIRMAN. So I was relieved that when I left the board, the

place was still there. They’ve been doing much better since I left

the board, I might add.

Senator DODD. No correlation whatsoever.

The CHAIRMAN. There has been recognition of its value. There is

an important thing that is occurring on the ground in Iraq that is

largely unrecognized. Let me compliment those of you who have

been involved at any level with this.

And second, I just want to note Dr. Feldman’s comments about

the TAL. How might this evolution of the constitution occur? In

various of your comments today, you’ve mentioned when we got

into this that you wonder how the people of Iraq will discover what

is in the constitution, or evaluate it, and if they do so, is it a document that they can change?

One of the truths that I perceive with this set of hearings is that

it really is not too late for things on the ground to be influenced

by the conversations that we’re having here. They are a public

forum, and we mentioned yesterday that we will make all this fully

available to our administration and to others who are involved in

our administration in Iraq for whatever value it may be.

But it seemed to us at the time that we needed some stimulation

of some ideas as to how we proceed. This may be a useful one, because we discussed today the question of do we delay, or do we

semidelay, or do we have a finished product, or semifinished one?

These are critical questions.

I think this is a technical issue and maybe some of you can offer

some thoughts. I think the TAL calls for a two-thirds majority in

each of the 18 jurisdictional provinces of Iraq. A two-thirds majority is a daunting task in many situations, but to get that in all

18—and am I right, or does anybody know the rules of the game

here, because this is the impression that I’ve obtained while listening to others who know much more about it than I do.

Dr. FELDMAN. Mr. Chairman, I don’t have the TAL in front of

me, but as I understand it, the constitution would be ratified by a

simple majority vote unless it were the case that two-thirds of the

voters in, at least, three provinces expressly rejected the constitution. So that’s where the two-thirds came in.

The CHAIRMAN. So it’s a negative influence that—but two-thirds

in three situations?

Dr. MARR. That would take care of the Kurds, but it would also

take care of the Sunnis. The Shi’a, of course——

The CHAIRMAN. Because in one of those two groups you could

produce the three negative——

Dr. MARR. They can veto.

Dr. FELDMAN. And the other point, just to mention on that front,

Senator, is in a pinch many on the Shi’a side never formally accepted that aspect of the transitional law. And I think they did so in

part because they objected to what they saw as the counter

majoritarian feature of the possibility of a veto.

In practice, I think, though it’s well understood by everybody

that if that many people disagree with the constitution, there will

be a serious problem in considering it to be ratified.

But there might be, it’s not inconceivable that it would be held

ratified by some people even if it didn’t satisfy that requirement.

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The CHAIRMAN. Well, given the real world outside with the

French and the Dutch rejection of the European constitution, almost everybody in the world now knows these things might happen.

Now, over in the European Union, which is a pretty well-organized political operation, it’s not exactly clear what they plan to do

about this. So Luxembourg went on and had a referendum and

passed it, and others may—they were all ready for one anyway,

and didn’t want to deny their voters. But, at the same time, the

thought was originally that if the French did this, why you might

finally return to France again, and say, now look, everybody else

has ratified the constitution, why don’t you have another look at

it. So then, maybe, the French have another vote and they vote to

ratify it. But now it appears that that’s not exactly going to work.

So, let’s say that for some reason, and maybe it’s close, but you

get rejection in the Kurd area or the Sunni area, so that, as a result, we finally got through the deadlines of the constitution, we

have gone through the referendum, there was a vote, the country

was not shot up in the process, people got out in good numbers, but

you don’t have a satisfactory outcome. Now what is the process

then? Or is there a process?

Dr. FELDMAN. The TAL does contemplate that potentially happening. It suggests national elections would follow, and then the

constitution—the National Assembly would be reconstituted.

The CHAIRMAN. So you have the national elections anyway?

Dr. FELDMAN. So there’s a second bite at the apple available.

The CHAIRMAN. The December 15 elections happen, so life goes

on from August 15 to October 15 to December 15, but having then

had these national elections, you’ve returned then to the constitutional business?

Dr. FELDMAN. And you give it a second try, and the transitional

administrative law remains—by its own account remains law

throughout this period.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, does the transitional law account for who

would be elected in the December 15 event? In other words, sometimes, maybe some of us have erroneously said, well, you adopt the

constitution and it provides for the officers of the country that are

going to be elected. But if the constitution hasn’t been adopted,

who is it that gets elected on December 15 that doubles back then

to write the constitution?

Dr. FELDMAN. Well, unless the present electoral law were

changed in the way that Dr. Marr was suggesting we’d have the

same—the same electoral law would be in place and we’d have the

same nationalist proportional representation election. It is possible,

though, that the National Assembly sitting after failure to ratify

the constitution could itself pass a new electoral law.

The CHAIRMAN. I see.

Dr. FELDMAN. The only difficulty would be the ordinary political

one of getting a group of elected officials to pass a law that would

change the way that they were elected.

The CHAIRMAN. But in any event I appreciate that, because we

really have not had too much clarification in most news accounts

of what is going to happen. Usually the story is, is it conceivable

that there will be a constitution by ‘‘x’’ date, quite apart from will

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there ever be an election, and does anybody believe they’re going

to get to the third round in this calendar year.

And most people will say, probably not, given the fact that the

Sunnis just got to the table, or various other things were occurring.

But all of you seem to be reasonably confident from your statements that these things are going to happen. Now there may be

some variation as to what occurs, with the failure of the constitution along the way, maybe even an interim suggestion of who gets

elected. But there may be flexibility in this group that is doing this

to be able to talk about these things. They come to station even in

the midst of insurgency and the lights going out and the other

problems that we’re talking about. That in itself is remarkable and

commendable and to be supported. But it’s a very different sort of

story from either total collapse or some sort of remarkable victory

in which everything is tidied up, we leave, and life goes on.

This is outside the scope of what we’re talking about today, but

the Republican Institute poll does put a heavy premium on electricity as a very very important item, with unemployment coming

fairly shortly thereafter. I’m curious how in the poll could there be

such support on a matter that would normally be in one of our own

domestic polls, the right-track/wrong-track question. If you asked

in the United States right now, do you think our economy is on the

right track or the wrong track; a good number of people would

come up with the wrong track. And this is the United States of

America, with 5 percent unemployment and so forth. Here, out in

Iraq, according to this poll, 66 percent or so, if I read correctly,

thought the country was on the right track.

So I’m just extremely curious, given these grave problems of security, or electricity, or unemployment, or so forth, where is this residual optimism coming from? Is this a valid reading or was it

April and maybe they are feeling differently in July?

Do you have a thought?

Dr. MARR. Can I just say—I know Judy is going to answer this—

I think we have to recognize how regional this insecurity is. People

in the Kurdish north are not affected as much by the security, and

much of the south, while it has some turbulence, is also not affected. That’s probably a healthy majority—at least a majority. But

we’re really focusing on Baghdad and the Sunni areas in talking

about insurgency.

The CHAIRMAN. I see.

Ms. VAN REST. That was part of it. The other thing is, is you’re

absolutely correct. I mean polls are a snapshot at that particular

time that seemed to be on the forefront of the people who—the

electricity problem was on the forefront of those folks minds, you

know, it was beginning probably to get quite hot having—I just remembered that surprisingly how hot it gets early on.

The CHAIRMAN. Well over a 100 degrees.

Ms. VAN REST. Yes, I think today was 120, one of our staff said,

so I think it will be interesting to see how this next poll turns out,

and, of course, we will make that readily available to everyone.

The CHAIRMAN. We’ll appreciate that.

Ms. VAN REST. On the subject of optimism just, you know, on a

personal note, having lived there a year and having the actually

honor of being tasked with outreach to Iraqi women, initially, and

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then more into just civil society in general, which also included political parties, but civic organizations and youth groups, et cetera.

I just can’t emphasize enough the optimism that Iraqis have about

their future. It really—I don’t know how they keep it up frankly.

I do keep in very good contact with Iraqi colleagues. I was there

last December, probably will take another trip this fall, and so I

feel like I have a little bit—even though I’ve been home for a

year—a little bit of an understanding of the pulse of Iraqis in general, and it is about their future.

It’s really tough right now, no question, but really compared to

other countries it’s pretty impressive.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I thank you for that personal testimony. I

would just reiterate again, that I’m sure all of our Senate group

feels a debt to all three of you for the extraordinary experiences

you’ve had and your ability to articulate these in trying to think

ahead with us on public policy.

Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much. I echo that view. I mean,

this is really very helpful.

One of the things, the generic point that the chairman was making about one of the reasons why these hearings are held, is to generate ideas, to try to be sort of a cauldron for ideas and debate that

hopefully percolate through this town and through the administration, through the Congress, and maybe beyond.

And I think it’s important to note if you observed that those of

us on both sides of the aisle who have made it a vocation of ours

to try to understand Iraq, to try to understand the region, and have

spent hundreds of hours trying to learn from you all, and from our

own experiences. If you notice we don’t disagree. If you notice

there’s not a Democrat/Republican—not just here in this committee, but those who if you ask if the press said name the 10 or

12 or 15 or 20 senators most involved with American foreign policy,

and who make it their business, there’s virtually no fundamental

disagreement among any of us. And I think that’s an important

point to make.

All we’re trying to do, and I know you know it but sometimes,

you know, assumption is the mother of all screw ups, well sometimes assumptions aren’t grounded in reality. The truth of the matter is, we all desperately want to see this succeed as you do, which

leads me to this point, one of the reasons I’m still optimistic, notwithstanding the incredible—in my view, speaking for myself—

screw ups, and failures that were warned about in advance, and

were overwhelmingly clear, and the failure to change course on

some tactical matters since the statute came, and notwithstanding

that, the reason I’m still optimistic is your point, Ms. Van Rest,

about the Iraqis.

My mother has an expression, she says honey, if you’re hung by

your thumbs long enough you get used to it. And the irony here

is that there’s some truth to that, that the Iraqis—it doesn’t surprise me at all they’d say electricity is the biggest problem and I’m

optimistic. In a strange sense no more than it did years ago by saying we want arms control and a bigger defense budget in the

United States, they seem to be totally consistent.

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But having said that leads me to this—I’d like to posit a potential scenario and get you all to respond to it. I think, Dr. Feldman,

and I’ve really been impressed by your testimony, I think that one

of the reasons why we’re surprised that in the initial iteration and

discussion relating to the TAL it was kind of envisioned, at least

by me which you all did, it was a good job, was that we really

would have this process of constitution writing, there really would

be a debate, essentially, from August to October, in this assembly

that had been elected before the constitution was written. That

would have the impact of informing the Iraqi people of, at least generically, what was at stake here, the big issues, and then there

would be a referendum, and then there would be a vote.

But I think what changed it, and this is a question as well as

a statement, what changed it was, in my view, understandably and

predicable, at the time the election took place, the slow turnout of

Sunnis, and significant turnout of the rest of the country so that

everybody started scrambling saying the Sunnis will not view, as

legitimate, a debate in this assembly where they’re not elected.

And so the Iraqis came up with a way to go out and significantly

increase the participation of the Sunnis in an unelected capacity,

voting and nonvoting, in the constitution writing, which, essentially, sort of renders counterproductive in the minds of many that

I spoke to in Iraq, having this debate in this assembly where there

aren’t Sunnis.

Which leads me to this point, my guess is, this is the plain old

politician in me, this is not any sort of foreign policy insight, this

is just plain old politician in me, if I had to bet—and I don’t want

to bet, but if I had to bet my daughter’s graduate school tuition,

which is almost equal to my salary it seems, on this I would say

what’s likely to happen is that a constitution is written in time,

there is a referendum, three provinces or governance turn it down

by a two-thirds vote, there is a general election again, the Sunnis

participate in this process this time, then the process is underway

again.

If I’m sitting there and I am in one of the Sunni provinces and

I conclude that I am one of the moderate, quote, insurgents, and

I regret having participated in the first place. I mean it’s kind of

interesting what we found when I went with one of our colleagues

here to be, quote, the official observer for the Palestinian elections.

Hamas came out and said don’t vote, don’t vote, don’t vote, don’t

vote, and then they realized the night before that folks were going

to vote and they said, well, vote for Charlie, vote for Charlie, vote

for Charlie, vote for the guy who’s going to screw things up, because they figured out, at the very end, their boycott wasn’t going

to work.

It’s kind of after the fact, it seems to me, that a significant number of Sunnis who aren’t the jihadists or jihadist sympathizers,

have reached that conclusion.

But if there were any organizational capacity within the Sunni

triangle areas and the three governorships that used to be, I’d be

urging two-thirds no-vote in order to get me in the game so that

I was actually part of the process. Ironically, that does not depress

me. That does not make me think that all is lost.

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Now a lot can happen between the cup and the lip on that one.

It may be there’s so much chaos that flows from that quickly that

you can’t predict. But I wonder whether you’d—not whether or not

I’m right, and I’m not sure—I mean on my bet, what do you think

happens, and this is really a tough question and if you don’t want

to respond you don’t have to, what do you think happens if, in fact,

there is a rejection, and the way it reads is the referendum—it says

the constitution will be approved if ratified by a majority of Iraqi

voters and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more of Iraqi’s 18

governances do not reject.

Then it goes on to say, your point, Doctor, the TNA will be dissolved—this is if a referendum rejects, the TNA will be dissolved,

election for a new national assembly will be held no later than December 15. The new national assembly and a new Iraqi transitional

government will then assume office no later than the 31st and will

continue to operate under the TAL. This new national assembly

will be entrusted with writing another draft permanent constitution, drafting deadlines would be adjusted so that this process can

conclude within a period not to exceed 1 year.

Is the center, Doctor, strong enough to hold, not spinning out of

control here, if in fact, the anticipated possibility becomes a reality?

And that is, there’s a rejection and a general election.

I know no one knows, but can you give me your best judgment

if the scenario envisioned as a possibility actually occurs, what do

you think happens. And you get to say I don’t know, and you know,

not respond if you don’t want to because I realize—I’m not being

a smart guy, you’re all extremely well regarded and having you go

way out on the limb on this stuff is, you know, maybe not fair to

ask you to do.

Dr. FELDMAN. I would just make one preliminary comment and

then try to take a crack at it. The preliminary thought is that I

agree that many Sunni politicians might prefer the scenario you

described. The only catch is that if you were one of the Sunnis who

is serving on the constitution committee, for example, then the rejection of the constitution, unless you come out of the committee

and oppose it, undercuts you for the purposes of the election.

Senator BIDEN. Oh, I agree with that.

Dr. FELDMAN. So the other Sunni politicians, I agree, might well

be in a situation where they would prefer this outcome because it’s

a way of redoing the election and getting a second bite at the apple.

I think that the center could hold, for the following reason, those

who would probably be reelected from the Kurdish areas and the

Shi’a areas in the second-round election would probably be close to

the same people that are there today. I mean there would be some

changes as a result of people’s frustration with the lack of success

of the constitutional process, but I think we would probably see

much of those same set of people, and then there would be elections in the Sunni areas and we would probably see greater participation.

I do think it would be negative with respect to the security situation though, in part because it might embolden insurgents who believe that a rejection of the constitution suggests that the Sunni

population is in support of the insurgency. And here’s where as

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gency, and I agree with Dr. Marr that we would like to delink it,

I don’t think it’s realistically doable. The opposition to a constitutional ratification process in the Sunni areas will present itself as

connected to support for the insurgent movement. And so I think,

although the center might hold in the sense that Shi’a and Kurds

would get back in office, the cost in terms of strengthening the insurgents through a public democratic representation would be a

very, very great cost indeed.

I would just add one last thought, it’s possible that even in the

Sunni areas they might not be able to manage two-thirds

rejection——

Senator BIDEN. I agree.

Dr. FELDMAN [continuing]. And I think that one high-risk scenario is that you get something short of two-thirds in three provinces, say two provinces go two-thirds and one province only goes

61 percent against, then you’ve got the equivalent of a broad popular Sunni rejection of the constitution, but under the provisions

of the TAL the constitution is ratified. So you have people saying

we’ve got a constitution and others saying, but it doesn’t mean anything to us.

Senator BIDEN. One of the things that I think is really important

here is when I was speaking to—and by the way as I mentioned,

I don’t want to mention individual names but there were Sunnis

who we met outside the green zone in the red zone, who made the

private argument to us that we thought you are our biggest problem, but you’re not; our bigger problem is the Peshmerga or the

Badr Brigade, our biggest problem is somebody other than you, we

want you the heck out of here but not now.

But it seems to me one of the really important elements, the extent that anyone, any official from any non-Iraqi source is being

sought for advice from this committee that’s doing the writing. If

you said to me, I got to write one provision into this constitution,

no one knows I wrote it, it would be viewed as spontaneously an

Iraqi idea. I would write into this constitution an amending process

that was readily available and not as difficult as ours. Not as difficult as ours. And my impression is there are both Shi’a and Kurds

who understand that, Kurds less willing to take that chance than

Shi’a because the Kurds have more to lose in an amending process.

It’s interesting to me when Senator Hagel and I went to Irbil in

December 2002, before the war. We got smuggled in and we were

asked to address the Kurdish Parliament in Kurdistan. I came

away with two distinct feelings; one, there was an overwhelming

assessment, Doctor, even among the younger leaders that independence was not an option in their lifetime. As much as things

have changed and they’ve become more independent, they’ve also

become more realistic about Iran and Turkey.

But the second thing that came clear to me was they already had

a constitution drafted. They already had their—I mean they asked

us to endorse it. I mean they actually had a written document,

which we didn’t do.

So I acknowledge that the Kurds are—my view is, that the

Kurds would like nothing better than independence, but it seems

to me they are more realistic than they were 15 years ago about

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that prospect. And they also, though, put a higher premium on actual autonomy, I mean republic, but autonomous republic.

But I have digressed, and I apologize. The point is, do you think

that they’re seized with the notion that there’s a need for an

amending process that is not inflexible in order to pull this country

together in light of the failure of Sunni participation in the electoral process in the first round?

Dr. MARR. I put some of this in my testimony. I don’t know

whether they are or not, because any constitution, of course, has

to have some amending process. But I agree with you. I would put

a lot of emphasis on this. There has to be a balance between permanence and change. People need to feel they’ve come to some kind

of general consensus which could persist for some reasonable period of time, but the constitution also has to be flexible enough for

them to grow into. If we have any influence we should be encouraging them not to feel this constitution is grounded in cement, that

it can’t be changed tomorrow or the next year.

I would also like to address your initial scenario. First of all, if

we get a rejection and a continuation of the TAL and Iraqis have

to take a second crack at the constitution, the Sunnis have another

problem we haven’t talked about. They’re split and fragmented.

The old Ba’th crowd is out. They are required to reject Ba’thism

and there is no new Ba’th party or a substitute for it. They’re fragmented in a number of ways. That’s why I keep coming back to the

electoral law. The way the electoral law is structured now, it favors

people who can get an alliance together. That’s what we saw in this

election—a Shi’a alliance, a Kurdish alliance, and so on. I don’t

think the Sunnis are going to be able to do well enough, under the

current law, to compete successfully.

So I’m not so keen about a second shot under the same electoral

law which, in fact, doesn’t bring them into government.

I’m not so sure we need town meetings, but we certainly need a

process whereby Sunni leaders who control constituencies—whether tribal, religious, or professional—do educate their population to

a certain extent so that they don’t get up the day after the vote

and suffer sticker shock.

Senator BIDEN. Do the Sunni participants in the writing of the

constitution, and I don’t know them individually enough to know

how much swack they have, but do they have enough—I mean I

can envision if the people participating that would have been

brought in, if they had real constituencies among the Sunnis they

would essentially do what we did in a different form in the process

of writing our Constitution, the Federalist papers, they would go

back to their key constituents and try to sell them on that process,

just for their own well being. I mean I can’t imagine whoever the

Sunnis are, and I don’t know them well enough to know, I admit

I don’t know who the dozen or so key people are, Sunnis, in writing

the constitution. If I were them, for my own safety’s sake as they

say, I would be backtalking to the tribal leader who’s a Sunni saying, look, Dick, the reason why we’re doing this is this, and I really

think we can—is there any evidence that that process is—I don’t

know how we would know that, but is there any evidence of that

sort of germination taking—because that’s the place—I mean if you

think about it I realize it’s totally different in terms of electronic

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media access, microphones, et cetera, but who did—our leaders in

writing that Constitution I might add, in 100-degree weather they

went to the second floor in Philadelphia so no one could hear what

they were doing, okay? I mean they didn’t want any part of anybody knowing what was going on. They literally went to the second

floor in Philadelphia, and it’s hot. It was designed not to let people

know what was going on.

And, then, when we finally came to sell it, it was an elite to

elites, it was the equivalent of how many people in America read

the editorial page. It was the Federalist papers where documents

were essentially editorials among and in the only major newspapers in America for the express purpose affecting elites. It didn’t

affect the guy farming in Dover, Delaware, and if he read it, it

would be difficult to digest.

And so the process and the way it worked here even if there had

been media it would not have been to the vox populi, it would have

been to the elites.

And so what I—I guess what I’m grappling with here and I’m

sorry to take this time, Dick, but what I’m grappling with here is,

it seems to me, the key is less a town-meeting forum than communication to the elites, and as you point out, Doctor, and all of you

have mentioned, there are identifiably, in each of these provinces,

2, 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 people. They are the professors, they are the

doctors, they are the lawyers, they are the tribal leaders, they are

the former officeholders that are still around. And so that seems

to me there’s got to be some way—and again I’m just thinking in

terms of pure political organization here, of being able to get to the

elites. And so that’s a long, long trailer to a very short question,

these Sunnis who are in the deal now, in writing the constitution,

do any of them or collectively do they have sufficient standing

among the elites in the Sunni communities to be able to at least

make a case to the elites in the Sunni community?

Dr. MARR. They have some standing, but I wouldn’t say it is

overwhelming. They include the Iraqi Islamic Party, the National

Dialogue Council, which has reached out to others, and so on. We

won’t know their success until it happens. To be very brief, that’s

one of the reasons why I think a little extension in time would

help. It would allow some of this process to take place before they

get sticker shock—not through the town meetings but——

Senator BIDEN. That’s an interesting point.

Dr. FELDMAN. Just to add one word to that, they don’t know if

they have that clout yet or not. They will try, but they’re not automatically guaranteed a hearing, and they’re certainly not guaranteed people listening to them, but I think they will try.

Senator BIDEN. But you get a sense that they realize their futures depend on it, right?

Dr. FELDMAN. Yes.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, we thank you again for your devotion of 3

hours to our edification and hopefully the edification of a broader

group of people who have been witnessing the hearing, and who

will read the record. We thank you for the statements that you

have written, all of which will be made a part of the record, in adVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00149 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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dition to the polling data which we have all acknowledged is very

important.

I thank members of the committee, and the hearing is adjourned.

We look forward to continuing on Iraq tomorrow morning.

[Whereupon, the hearing was adjourned.]

(147)

ACCELERATING ECONOMIC PROGRESS

IN IRAQ

WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2005

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in room

SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar

(chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Murkowski, Biden, Dodd, and

Obama.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S.

SENATOR FROM INDIANA

The CHAIRMAN. This meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations is

called to order. The Committee on Foreign Relations meets for the

third of our series of hearings on Iraq.

Today we will examine ways that we might accelerate economic

development of that country. During the last 2 days, our committee

has had excellent discussions of how to improve security and advance political development in Iraq. The witnesses in both of those

hearings emphasized that demonstrable economic progress is truly

one of the keys to defeating the insurgency and to establishing a

stable Iraqi Government.

As Dr. Ken Pollack observed, in our hearing on Monday, the legitimacy of the Iraqi Government among Iraqis may be more dependent on the government’s ability to deliver the necessities of life

than on their support for a constitution, or even their political identification with Iraqi leaders. If Iraqis perceive that their daily lives

are improving, they are more likely to take risks to oppose insurgents and to restrain factional groups that seek to fragment the

country.

The Foreign Relations Committee has frequently reviewed the

progress of reconstruction spending and other economic development efforts by the coalition. At various intervals, since the invasion of Iraq, we have expressed the urgency of moving forward

more quickly with reconstruction projects and of improving the percentage of aid that actually benefits Iraqis. Thousands of reconstruction projects have been completed so far. Schools, hospitals,

and roads have been built. Tens of thousands of police and security

forces are being trained, and more than 150,000 Iraqis are at work

in United States-funded jobs.

148

But many parts of Iraq still lack a reliable infrastructure, particularly with regard to electricity and clean water. This is a source

of great frustration to the Iraqi people.

The Iraqi economy has many scars from the last quarter century,

which was dominated by war, sanctions, and the command

kleptocracy of Saddam Hussein. Since 1980, Iraq’s GNP has remained flat. An economy that produced 3.7 million barrels of oil

per day in 1979, today struggles to produce half that amount. Sabotage is costing Iraq an estimated $600 million per month in lost oil

export revenues and even more in repair costs.

Corruption has been reported, most prevalently in the Ministry

of Oil, but it also exists in other Ministries and sectors. Some suggest as much as one-third of imported refined oil products are

being illegally diverted.

Despite these difficulties, the Iraqi economy has great potential

in the post-Saddam era. A full restoration of the oil sector would

increase employment and improve government revenues. Underscoring the potential economic impact of greater personal freedoms,

Iraq has seen as many as 3 million new phone subscribers and

more than 100,000 new Internet subscribers since the fall of Saddam. Salaries, especially for government workers, have risen markedly, up 10 or 20 times their prewar levels, according to official

government wage charts.

Iraq also has substantial agricultural capacity. In the late 1970s,

30 percent of the Iraqi labor force was employed in agriculture,

producing wheat, barley, rice, vegetables, dates, cotton, and livestock. Today, agriculture remains the third largest value sector and

the largest employer. I am hopeful that significant USAID and coalition efforts will enable Iraqis to begin to fill their own grocery

shelves and to decrease reliance on costly government-provided

food baskets that most Iraqis continue to receive.

Today, we will ask our witnesses to comment on a number of

subjects. We are particularly interested in how the oil sector can

be revived and protected from corruption and sabotage. We also

will discuss whether our economic development strategy should be

more decentralized and whether it should emphasize creating jobs

and demonstrating tangible improvements in the everyday lives of

Iraqis.

In addition, we will explore what type of statistical indicators

could be produced to provide a clear and credible picture of economic progress in Iraq. Such indicators would be designed both to

inform policy decisions and to give the Iraqi people a better notion

of what is happening in their country.

We will proceed with the same format that yielded excellent discussions in our hearings on Monday and Tuesday. Our hearing will

be organized around four policy options or sets of questions for accelerating economic progress in Iraq. Accordingly, after Senator

Biden and I have offered our opening comments—and I will recognize the distinguished minority leader when he comes in—we will

put the first policy option and associated questions before our expert panel. Each witness, in turn, will provide his views on the

questions being presented.

Then we will present the second option and then the third and

the fourth. Finally, recognizing that ideas exist well beyond our

149

published hearing plan, we will ask our witnesses if they would

like to offer additional thoughts on improving the Iraqi economy

that have not been thus far discussed.

After this sequence, committee members will be recognized, in

turn, to address questions to any members of the panel. My hope

is that through the expertise of our witnesses and the questions of

our members we can achieve a systematic evaluation of the options

presented for accelerating economic progress in Iraq.

We are especially pleased to welcome a very distinguished panel

of experts to help us with our inquiry. Dr. Keith Crane is a senior

economist at the RAND Corporation. He served on the Coalition

Provisional Authority staff during 2003. I would also like to observe that Dr. Crane did his doctoral work at Indiana University,

which gives special credentials to his testimony today.

Mr. Frederick Barton is senior advisor in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

and has taken several research trips to Iraq since the end of the

war.

Mr. Fareed Mohamedi is the senior director of the Country Strategies Group at PFC Energy, has been studying the economies of

oil-producing nations in the Middle East for many years.

These experts have spent a great deal of time analyzing the Iraqi

economic situation. They have presented remarkable papers. Let

me just say at the outset that they will be made a part of the

record in full. We are grateful we can draw upon their experience

and their insights.

Let me ask my colleagues, Senator Dodd or Senator Murkowski,

if they have any opening greeting or comment.

Senator Dodd.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, U.S. SENATOR

FROM CONNECTICUT

Senator DODD. Mr. Chairman, once again—I said this yesterday—I regret I missed Monday’s hearing. I was delighted to participate in almost all of yesterday’s hearing and I am going to try

and be here as much, today, as I can. This is tremendously valuable.

I want to thank our three witnesses in anticipation of your comments. If the quality of your testimony even comes close to what

we have heard over the last 2 days, it is tremendously valuable for

those of us here. I regret that more of our colleagues are not here

to take advantage of this, but with the news last night at 9 p.m.—

in fact, Senator Lugar and I just left, testified together before the

Senate Judiciary Committee. As all three of you are aware, a lot

is going on up here.

But this is tremendously helpful. I believe that C–SPAN is covering this, so I am sure our colleagues on this committee, in their

offices, can listen in to what is being said, as well as it being transmitted to the public. This is exactly what we ought to be doing

more of: Educating people in this country and elsewhere about

what is actually happening on critical areas that are ultimately

going to determine the success or failure of our efforts here in Iraq.

So I am very grateful to the chairman. I think he has set up a

wonderful way of doing this, of giving you the opportunity to lay

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out in four or five critical question areas that all of us appreciate

are right on target as to what we ought to be addressing, and to

give us some ideas about how we, then, can offer constructive ideas

to the administration and others to implement these policies.

Again, I will express my regret that it saddens me that the administration has not been before this committee to talk about this

subject matter. It is a pleasure to have you here and we should listen to you, but it would be also helpful to have the administration

come forward and share its ideas.

The chairman has said this. Senator Biden has said this. It deserves being repeated. Just as it is important to build public support within Iraq for the efforts being made to provide them with

a stable and free government in the future, the support here at

home is critical to that success. And being candid and open with

the American public about the successes, as well as the shortcomings, of policies helps sustain public support for a very complicated and difficult mission. When an administration is reluctant,

for whatever reason, to share its observations here, then you undermine that public support and you have a deteriorating support

for this effort.

I hope that will change in time because this is of strategic importance, the outcome of this issue. So I am very grateful to the chairman and very interested in hearing what our witnesses have to say

about—as the chairman said, this is maybe the critical issue. If we

can get this right and our security issues work well to provide

space and if the Iraqi people see that the quality of their daily lives

improves; that there is a job, that their health care, their sanitation, their transportation systems will work and provide them with

a decent living—and I do not mean ‘‘living’’ in economic terms, specifically, but a decent living set of circumstances—then I think all

the other things can flow.

In the absence of that, if you do not get this right, I do not care

how many troops you put on the ground in Iraq, I do not care how

big the police force is, you will not ultimately build the kind of support you need to have in Iraq.

So I think this may be the critical piece to our discussion over

these 3 or 4 days, and I thank the chair.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Dodd.

Senator Murkowski, do you have an opening thought today?

STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI, U.S. SENATOR FROM

ALASKA

Senator MURKOWSKI. Mr. Chairman, I, too, would like to commend you for your initiative in moving forward with this particular

panel in the series that you have done. I regret that I have not

been able to attend the two prior ones. In looking at the schedule,

though, I looked at this one and said this is one that I cannot miss.

As the good Senator has just pointed out, the success in Iraq

really does depend upon the economic health, the well-being of the

individuals that are there. If we can get this piece right, I agree

with you that it all does begin to fall into place. But it is a precarious initiative when you try to do the rebuilding and you are faced

with sabotage, you are faced with corruption, you are faced with

just the downfall of everything that we try to put up.

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So we need to know. We need to be able to measure how are we

doing, and the Iraqi people need to be able to measure as well and

to know that progress is being made.

So again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for what you are doing. I appreciate the testimony that we will hear from those who have gathered today, and I do hope that the entire Congress is looking to

this particular panel that you have put together as we move forward in looking at what is happening in Iraq.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Murkowski.

Now I want to offer the first block of considerations. Let me say

that I will ask Dr. Crane to comment first, to be followed then by

Mr. Barton and Mr. Mohamedi. Then we will rotate the batting

order. During the second block, we will ask Mr. Barton to start and

then Mr. Mohamedi and then, finally, back to Dr. Crane for the

fourth group; and then, as we indicated, your final comments.

Should the coalition do more to shift additional economic development resources and emphasis from Baghdad to the provinces?

What have been the challenges in achieving this aim? Will

strengthening regional and local authorities outside Baghdad speed

delivery of services and broaden the tangible benefits of aid, and

are the currently formed provincial reconstruction councils up and

running and having the desired impact?

Dr. Crane, would you begin our discussion.

STATEMENT OF DR. KEITH CRANE, SENIOR ECONOMIST, RAND

CORPORATION, ARLINGTON, VA

Dr. CRANE. Mr. Chairman, Senators, I appreciate the opportunity

to be here today as part of this important set of hearings on policy

options for Iraq. As an economist, I guess I respectfully disagree

about the importance of economics. I should not denigrate my own

profession, but security is really important. There is a great deal

of lawlessness in Iraq, not just with the insurgency, and until people and businesspeople feel comfortable on the streets, are not

afraid of kidnapping or robbery or extortion, the economy is going

to have a great deal of problems getting on its feet and going. So

I would really like to underline the importance of efforts on security, especially in terms of our assistance programs.

Returning to the question. Despite the frustrations many of us

have had with dealing with the Iraqi central government, there

really is no way to do an end run around the central government.

I think a number of people have found municipalities, the local levels, a little more responsive, but the key focus of our assistance

really needs to be on getting the central government working better.

This can be done through mentoring, improving tendering, improving contracting. Also we need to have a focus on getting financial management information systems up and operating outside of

the Ministry of Finance. But the problem, currently, is Iraq has a

very, very centralized government, a centralized state, and the municipalities and provincial governments really do not have the

power or the decisionmaking authority to make these, to make decisions in terms of assistance.

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1The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are the author’s alone and should

not be interpreted as representing those of RAND or any of the sponsors of its research. This

product is part of the RAND Corporation testimony series. RAND testimonies record testimony

presented by RAND associates to Federal, State, or local legislative committees; governmentappointed commissions and panels; and private review and oversight bodies. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions

that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

Finally, turning to the question of the provincial reconstruction

councils. In some ways, I think this perpetuates some of the mistakes we have made in the past. Much of our assistance effort has

been focused on having the United States do it. I know in the

United States we have a very can-do attitude, but in the end the

Iraqis are going to have to reconstruct their government. The focus

really should be on trying to channel as much of our assistance

through the Iraqi Government, make sure that we have effective

contracting and auditing and accounting systems in place so we

can actually help them rid themselves of the corruption and the

problems that they have had in their own operations.

But, unfortunately, when we kind of charge ahead and try to do

things outside, around the government, in many ways we weaken

the legitimacy of the government. Also, we are going to be out of

there some time in the near future. What we really want to have

in place is a government that effectively works.

To the extent that we do focus on the regional and municipal

governments, I think the municipal governments are the best place

to go. They need some assistance in budgeting, contracting, recordkeeping, and needs assessment and those types of initiatives can

be quite useful. But unfortunately, they are very dependent on the

central government and we need to get our focus in terms of trying

to coordinate between the regional bodies and the central government by focusing our efforts there.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Crane follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF KEITH CRANE, SENIOR ECONOMIST, RAND CORPORATION, ARLINGTON, VA1

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to be here today as part of this important set of hearings on policy options for Iraq.

Option 1—Should the coalition do more to shift additional economic development

resources and emphasis from Baghdad to the provinces?

What have been the challenges in achieving this aim? Will strengthening regional

and local authorities outside Baghdad speed delivery of services and broaden the

tangible benefits of aid? Are the recently formed Provincial Reconstruction Councils

up and running and having the desired impact?

Because the Iraqi Government remains highly centralized and because there is

still no constitutional basis for devolving authority, technical assistance needs to be

concentrated on making the core Ministries of the central government function more

efficiently, not on channeling assistance through provincial and municipal government institutions that lack the constitutional authority to make and control expenditure decisions. Major efforts to strengthen regional and local authorities should

wait until the new constitution defines their authority. The Provincial Reconstruction Councils are up and running. It is too soon to determine whether they are having the desired impact. They do suffer because they are a U.S. Government initiative as opposed to an Iraqi Government institution.

Unless they become part of the Iraqi Government’s operations, they are unlikely

to survive the eventual U.S. drawdown.

Helping local governments to better manage their affairs is a laudable goal. But

until the legislative and executive authority of these institutions is constitutionally

defined, governorate and municipal governments will remain weak. Currently,

governorates and municipalities rely on the central government for virtually all

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2Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004,

Volume 1, Baghdad, 2005, at www.undp.org. 3The Iraqi Strategic Review Board, Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, ‘‘National Development Strategy 2005–2007,’’ Interministerial Committee on the National Development Strategy, Baghdad, May 2005, p. 5. 4Michael E. O’Hanlon, The Iraq Index, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, May 9,

2005, p. 24, www.brookings.edu.

their revenues. They have little independent expenditure authority. As long as the

Ministries remain the de jure and de facto centers of power, assistance should be

targeted on helping the core Ministries to better manage their affairs, despite the

attractions of focusing on provincial or municipal authorities with whom it is often

easier to work. This said, the Iraqi Government will be more effective, if more government functions are decentralized, A modest effort to help improve the abilities

of local governments to operate would be useful.

Building the capacity of Iraqi central government institutions to run its own affairs, especially to provide security to its citizens, is the most critical task for U.S.

assistance programs. The most important Ministries on which to focus are: Interior,

Defense, Justice, the Judiciary, Finance, Oil, Electricity, Health, Education, and

Municipalities and Public Works. One of the most important lessons of the last 21⁄2

years, a lesson well known by development experts, is that building electric power

generating or water purification plants is a waste of resources if the host government is unprepared to operate and manage the facilities or the systems of which

they form a part. This has been the case in Iraq. Within 18 months, IRRF II funds

are likely to be completely spent. Assisting Iraqi Ministries to better manage their

own affairs before assistance funds run out is key to ensuring that the provision

of government services will improve even as U.S. assistance declines.

Option 2—Should the coalition, in conjunction with the Iraqi Government, increase

resources and emphasis on creating jobs and demonstrating tangible progress on the

ground?

It has been suggested that WPA-type programs for trash cleanup, local repairs,

and the like would let Iraqis see visible progress and make their daily lives more

bearable while putting money into the pockets of the unemployed. Would this strategy work? Could the coalition help the prospects for a functioning economy by encouraging shops and small businesses through microcredit, small grants, loans, and

other programs?

The real problem in Iraq is poverty, not unemployment, as shown by a recent indepth study of living conditions in Iraq.2 Make-work schemes are a stopgap measure

and are of questionable utility at this point of time in Iraq. At this juncture, assistance needs to be focused on improving the environment for economic development.

First and foremost, this means the coalition and the Iraqi Government need to give

first priority to improving security. No economy with the levels of violence and crime

that currently exist in Iraq can sustain rapid growth. Second, assistance needs to

be targeted on improving the capacity of the Iraqi Government to function effectively.

MAKE-WORK SCHEMES

In a long series of opinion polls, high percentages of Iraq’s citizens have consistently stated that their number one concern is security. Surprisingly, the same polls

have consistently shown that most Iraqis have an optimistic view of their economic

future. However, unless security improves, Iraq will not enjoy sustained growth;

with security and sensible economic policies, Iraqis should enjoy sustained increases

in living standards.

Employment, or the lack thereof, has been a contentious issue in Iraq. Difficulties

in finding work and dissatisfaction with job opportunities ranks as a chief concern

in opinion polls of Iraqis. Young men looking for work have reportedly been a major

source of insurgents. The ‘‘National Development Strategy 2005–2007’’ states that

unemployment is as high as 50 percent.3 Other sources cite figures ranging to 40

percent.4

These estimates of unemployment rates are seriously flawed. The only two credible estimates based on nationwide surveys have been conducted by Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology of Iraq (COSIT), the Iraqi equivalent of a combination of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic

Analysis.

One set of estimates based on COSIT definitions estimates that unemployment

rose from 16.7 percent in 1997 to 28.1 percent in October 2003, dropping to 26.8

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5 Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology, ‘‘Report of the Employment

and Unemployment Survey Results 2003 Year,’’ January 2004, p. 15; The Iraqi Strategic Review

Board, Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, May 2005, p. 27. 6Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004,

Volume 1, Baghdad, 2005, p. 104, at www.undp.org.

percent in 2004.5 The other survey, conducted using the International Labor Organization (ILO) definition of unemployment, finds that 10.1 percent of the labor force

is unemployed.6 The ILO definition, accepted internationally, best captures actual

economic activity of households. It defines unemployment on the basis of whether

one has worked in the week prior to the survey; other surveys often ask the

interviewee whether they consider themselves unemployed, not whether they have

worked. Because individuals employed outside their chosen profession frequently respond that they are unemployed, even though they work in some other capacity, unemployment rates are often exaggerated in surveys that do not focus on whether the

respondent worked recently.

Other data support this view of an economically active, albeit poor male citizenry.

Labor force participation ratios, the share of the population in the workforce, are

similar in Iraq to other countries in Arab countries in the Middle East and North

Africa. Ratios for men between the ages of 15 and 65 run 69 percent; those for

women are much lower, at 13 percent. The private sector is the largest employer.

Most people who work in the private sector are self-employed. They either operate

their own businesses or work as day laborers. Detailed studies by anthropologists

of street vendors, subsistence farmers, and day laborers, common occupations in

Iraq, find that these individuals spend considerable time working each day. They

do not receive a monthly paycheck from an employer; their incomes depend on demand for their services. This state of affairs is not unusual in other countries. In

the United States, a large number of people run small businesses, farms, drive

trucks, or work in construction. Their incomes depend on the profitability of their

businesses or what jobs they have lined up. However, in Iraq, productivity and

hence incomes are low. In contrast, U.S. citizens work in an economy in which they

are highly productive, generating much greater incomes.

The Iraqi Government is also a major employer (Figure 1). In poorly monitored

Ministries, some workers treat their government salary as a stipend and spend most

of their energy pursuing private activities after, or during, work or using their positions to seek bribes. In many cases, Iraqi Government workers supplement their incomes by working in the private sector as well. For example, many Iraqi doctors

work in the public health care system, but also take private patients.

I make these distinctions not to minimize Iraqi complaints or perceptions of unemployment, but so as to focus on the real problem, which is poverty, not the absence of economic activity. Because self-employment is often poorly paid in Iraq,

when alternative, better-paid employment is available, self-employed individuals

quickly take them. This is why participation in make-work schemes has been high.

In some instances, make-work schemes can ease social pressures by taking demobilized soldiers off the streets. However, in general the creation of short-term jobs

in an attempt to placate the local population, partly in response to the perceptions

of high unemployment, can be a problematic use of assistance. Make-work schemes,

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if done poorly, can and often do result in a reduction in average real incomes, in

other words by wasting tax revenues on work that does not add value to the society,

the schemes make the country and its citizens poorer, not wealthier. Poorly run programs can teach bad work habits, as well as good. Make-work jobs may teach people

that advancement results from connections or putting in time, not hard work, and

can discourage initiative. Furthermore, if the jobs are truly short-term, the programs can breed more ill will than gratitude, as recent hires find themselves laid

off once the program expires. There is substantial anecdotal evidence to show that

make-work programs employ insurgents without much effect on political views. In

some instances, insurgents have participated in make-work schemes during the day,

then fought the coalition at night.

Some short-term projects can contribute to private business development. Road rehabilitation programs can generate economic rates of return averaging 20 to 30 percent by reducing transport costs. They can be undertaken by local businesses and

involve local resources (gravel, bitumen, labor). Issuing contracts for small private

companies is a good use of funds and teaches good habits. The contractor, if subject

to adequate oversight, learns to bid, to manage his business, and to keep his workers happy and working. The contractor’s emphasis on making the contract profitable

results in appropriate motivations for his workers. Moreover, entry into these businesses is usually easy. The more entrepreneurial workers learn from their employers and then start their own businesses, using their current employer as an example

of what can be done.

TARGETED LENDING AND MICROLOANS

The key economic policy task in Iraq is to create an economic environment conducive to private sector activity. Successful development needs a favorable economic

environment (low inflation, a sound financial system, a legal and commercial framework conducive to business, etc.); the use of markets to allocate goods, services,

labor, and capital; security for persons and property; low transactions costs (the

ability to travel, communicate, and transport goods easily and cheaply); and the

human and physical capital to take advantage of these conditions.

Improving the operation of Iraq’s financial system would be an important contribution to financial stability and growth. The current system is underdeveloped:

Financial assets as a share of GDP are minuscule; financial services contributed

only 1.0 percent to GDP in 2000 and no more in 2003. Banks have a very weak capital base. Bank employees, state and private, lack training in assessing credit risk.

In other transition and developing countries, banking systems like Iraq’s, characterized by a few large state-owned banks and a smattering of small, private banks,

have become timebombs. Because of political pressures to lend and the inability to

properly evaluate credit risk, the banking system tends to make bad lending decisions at this point in the recovery. When these loans go bad 3 to 4 years down the

road, the banking system implodes; the government has to bail out the system at

great cost while the economy goes into recession.

CPA rightly focused on improving the banking system through training, restructuring, and encouraging foreign investment in the industry. All three initiatives, especially foreign investment, have been highly successful in other developing and

transition economies. Building trust in financial transactions is a key part of this

process: Central Bank of Iraq oversight of the banking system will contribute heavily in this regard. Creating a proper regulatory environment and facilitating the development of banking services should result in improvements in the speed and reductions in the costs of financial transactions, increasing financial intermediation as

a share of GDP and improving capital allocation. These changes could add 3 to 4

percent to long-term GDP as the share of financial services in GDP moves to levels

more typical of medium-income developing countries.

Other financial sector policy initiatives need to be pursued with care. In a number

of countries, small-scale microcredit programs have been successful in giving poor

households an economic start, but programs rarely cover costs because making and

collecting payments on small loans is so expensive. These programs are difficult to

expand quickly. Successful microcredit programs entail a great deal of hands-on

work within communities. Quality, not quantity, is key to the success of microlending programs as it is with many other assistance programs.

Directed lending to small- and medium-sized businesses has had a mixed track

record in developing countries. Default rates, especially early in the transition, are

often high and bad loans have contributed to banking collapses and recessions. As

shown by the high degree of liquidity in Iraqi banks, small businesses are currently

financing investment through retained earnings. Later in the recovery, banks will

begin to provide loans to small business as their ability to judge creditworthiness

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and evaluate projects improves. However, with growth in GDP of an estimated 51.7

percent in 2004 and a projected 16.7 percent in 2005, there are no signs that the

small business sector is severely constrained by the lack of credit at this point in

time.

No transition economy has successfully developed mortgage lending in the early

years because of high rates of inflation, the high level of economic uncertainty, the

absence of information on personal creditworthiness, the large numbers of people

without steady incomes, and the lack of objective assessments of the value of buildings. Assistance in setting up titling offices and systems, collecting information on

property sales, removing regulatory and tax disincentives to property sales, and preparing legal changes to make foreclosure easier would prepare the groundwork for

the development of a national mortgage industry; but in my view subsidized mortgages has been a poor use of assistance elsewhere. Housing is relatively expensive

everywhere in the world; as a consequence, to reach a substantial number of people,

mortgage subsidies are very expensive. If programs are kept small, they reach modest numbers of people.

CERP FUNDS

A substantial amount of assistance in Iraq has consisted of smaller grants provided to local communities from Commander’s Emergency Response Program

(CERP) funds. This program has been very popular with commanders, as it is perceived as providing quick results that are readily apparent to local populations. Despite their popularity and the very substantial sums of money recently provided to

commanders through CERP, it is not clear how useful these expenditures are in

terms of fostering sustained growth, permanent employment, or even in counterinsurgency efforts.

A number of analysts have argued that in the aftermath of a conflict, highly visible, quick impact projects are important to sway popular support for the new regime. If this was the case in Iraq, the opportunity has been lost. Coalition forces

have been in the country for nigh on 21⁄2 years. In many parts of the country, popular opinions about the coalition have coalesced around one view or another. For

example, it is not clear whether a highly visible U.S. program of rebuilding Fallujah

would have a significant impact on perceptions of the United States in that city.

There is a case for the use of grants for small short-term targeted projects as part

of an effective counterinsurgency effort. In the case of Iraq, the use of short-term

targeted expenditures on neighborhood or town projects coordinated with other

counterinsurgency efforts have received high marks in Baghdad and the north. On

the other hand, commanders have sometimes focused on construction projects that,

once completed, have not been effectively utilized by the community or have been

targeted for destruction by insurgents because of their U.S. origin. Commanders

have been confronted with pressure to give construction contracts to politically powerful individuals rather than the lowest bidder; a practice that would help perpetuate a culture of corruption in Iraq. In short, with CERP funds less may be more

in a number of instances.

Option 3—Should the coatition put more emphasis on overcoming the twin curses

of the oil sector: Corruption and sabotage?

Can the coalition work with the Iraqi Ministries to develop and fund a full scope

program to enhance security of the oil production and distribution infrastructure

and combat corruption in the Iraqi oil industry? Should the coalition and the Iraqis

develop emergency pipeline repair teams, work with local tribes to protect pipelines,

and offer incentives or rewards for those who turn in corrupt oil industry personnel?

Within the oil sector, where is the corruption problem greatest? Would oil resources

be more productively used for the benefit of the Iraqi people if they were managed

regionally, instead of by the central government?

Corruption in Iraq is primarily a problem of opportunity. If the opportunities disappear, corruption will decline. Thus policies need to be focused on reducing or

eliminating opportunities for graft and corruption. The largest source of corruption

in Iraq is the theft and diversion of gasoline and diesel fuel by government officials.

Although the scale of this activity is impossible to measure accurately, one contractor reportedly stated that a third of imports of gasoline and diesel fuel ‘‘disappear.’’ These will run on the order of $2 billion in 2005, roughly a tenth of Iraqi

GDP. Eliminating this opportunity by liberalizing gasoline and diesel prices is the

single most important economic policy change needed in Iraq today. The second

most severe source of corruption by value is government contracting. Working with

the Iraqi Government to create transparent, simple accounting and competitive contracting systems, is a very important economic policy measure for reducing corruption. Transparent, simple accounting systems, coupled with ‘‘whistle-blower’’ protecVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00160 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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7 International Monetary Fund, Iraq: Use of Fund Resources—Request for Immediate PostConflict Assistance, Washington, DC, September 24, 2004, pp. 15.

tions and severe sanctions, are important for combating the third most important

source of corruption by value: Garnishing wages by more senior civil servants.

It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of liberalizing gasoline and diesel fuel prices for the health of the Iraqi polity and economy. Currently, gasoline

and diesel fuel are sold at about a nickel a gallon; smuggled into neighboring Turkey, they can be resold for more than $5 a gallon. Confronted with these nonsensical

differences in prices, no society is immune from corruption. It is pervasive in the

downstream activities of the Ministry of Oil. The severity of corruption is revealed

in the lengths to which those involved are willing to go in order to preserve their

access to state resources. The last two executives in charge of refining and product

distribution were reportedly shot by organizations involved in stealing fuel, not insurgents. The first executive was wounded; the second was killed. These people were

not victims of the insurgency, but of corruption.

The economic costs of fuel subsidies form the single greatest economic problem

facing the Iraqi economy. Controlled fuel prices are a particularly pernicious form

of subsidization. In the case of Iraq, the IMF estimates that fuel price subsidies cost

the country $7 billion in 2004, a third of GDP.7 Of this, $2 billion was in hard cold

cash used to import gasoline and diesel fuel from its neighbors (some of which was

immediately resold to them at knockdown prices). The rest is the loss to the Iraqi

Ministry of Finance from foregone revenues. With a budget deficit equal to 43 percent of GDP in 2004 and an estimated 28 percent of GDP in 2005, the Iraqi Government cannot afford to squander its resources this way; at a minimum, U.S. policies

should not support this waste.

These subsidies do little to alleviate poverty. Economists at the Coalition Provisional Authority estimated that less than one-fifth of the subsidy goes toward liquid

petroleum gas and kerosene, the two fuels of most important to poor households.

The rest subsidizes truckers, many of them foreign, or car owners, few of whom fall

into the bottom of the income distribution.

Subsidized fuel has created a host of economic and security problems. Because

fuel is cheap, consumption is far higher than if Iraqis paid the true value of the

fuel. The Iraqi Government is unable to satisfy this excess demand, so motorists

find gasoline and diesel fuel in short supply and queue. Queuing wastes the time

of drivers and truckers and creates hordes of irate motorists; witness Basra and

Phoenix in the summer of 2003.

Unless refined oil product prices are liberalized, Iraq will always be beset by corruption. Although not a politically popular move, the alternative is worse. In the

case of Iraq, one would be hard pressed to prove that the security situation would

be worse following price increases than it has been over the past several months.

Which is more of a threat to Iraqi security today: Day in and day out, three-mile

lines of irate motorists waiting 24 hours in 120 degree weather to fill their tanks?

Or complaints by foreign truckers and potential blockades by taxi drivers from protests in the immediate aftermath of a price increase? Price increases are not politically popular, but neither are shortages and lines. Moreover, price liberalization provides a solution to lack of supplies by unleashing market forces. Price controls exacerbate the problems.

There are better and worse ways of raising prices. Despite their unpopularity,

controlled prices have been raised hundreds of times around the world. Governments that lay out a strategy for increases, discuss impending increases well in advance, explain where the additional revenues will flow, and then provide concrete

evidence of how the price increases have improved supply or made additional public

expenditures feasible generally have emerged unshaken, although less popular.

Weak, politically unpopular governments that make surprise increases in prices in

periods of economic decline after promising not to raise prices are prone to face

riots.

Sabotage in the oil industry stems from a variety of sources and motives. Iraqis

tap product pipelines (gasoline and diesel fuel) to steal fuel for resale. Some tribes

sabotage crude pipelines so as to blackmail the government into paying them not

to damage the infrastructure, and insurgents attack the pipelines to reduce government revenues.

The provision of security for the oil industry is the responsibility of the Ministry

of Oil and the security Ministries. Because of the distorted pricing system and highly centralized way in which oil revenues are channeled in Iraq, the national oil company, which is overseen by the Ministry of Oil, has few financial incentives to guard

the oil infrastructure effectively. Because all export revenues go directly to the Ministry of Finance, the oil company relies on budget support for its operations. ManVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:17 Mar 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00161 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 963515.SEN SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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8Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004,

Volume 1, Baghdad, 2005, at www.undp.org.

agers do not suffer from pipeline breakdowns nor benefit greatly from preventing

sabotage. This state of affairs calls for change. The most successful state-owned oil

companies around the world are operated as independent, profit-maximizing companies. Management, supervised by an independent board of directors appointed by

the state, is rewarded for pursuing profits and penalized for losses. Products are

priced by markets. In this environment the state-owned company has financial and

governmental incentives to combat sabotage and theft and takes measures accordingly.

Option 4—Should the coatition and the Iraqi Government create a reliable set of

indicators of when and where economic progress has been made?

If the coalition or the Iraqi Government published regular updates on such figures

as hours of electricity generated per day, gallons of fresh water supplied, number

of beds in working hospitals, children in school, economic activity, oil production,

unemployment, incidents of violence and the like for various regions and cities,

could this successfully demonstrate progress to the Iraqis and the Americans and

also point to areas where more effort is needed? Which would be most useful? Could

such statistics be created free from political influence and would they be seen as

credible?

The Iraqi Government should focus on improving the timeliness and accuracy of

those statistics currently collected and ensure that they are disseminated as broadly

and quickly as possible. The coalition may contribute to this effort with technical

assistance to the Central Organization of Statistics and Information Technology

under the Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation. However, it is generally counterproductive for the coalition to collect and disseminate its own statistics

outside of Iraqi institutions. The coalition needs to help Iraq set up systems to collect and disseminate information after the coalition has left the country, not to create an autonomous system of statistical collection of dubious validity for current operations.

The collection and dissemination of timely, accurate statistics is a government

function throughout the world. Iraq is no exception. The Iraqi Government and Iraqi

citizens and businessmen need reliable statistics to run their affairs efficiently and

make considered decisions, The Iraqi Government has a large statistical office,

COSIT, headed by individuals with graduate training in statistics from reputable

foreign universities. Under Saddam, the office regularly published statistics on inflation within 10 days of the end of the month, a very credible record. More recently,

the office undertook a massive, methodologically rigorous survey of living conditions

in Iraq with funding from the Kingdom of Norway and with the assistance of UNDP

and the Fafo Institute of Applied International Studies.8 The work provides the only

credible recent information on living conditions in Iraq.

Although COSIT has shown it can generate accurate, reliable information in a

timely manner, the organization currently faces incentives to hoard or delay the release of information. The provision of bonuses and financial penalties coupled with

performance audits would likely serve to greatly improve the quantity, quality, and

timeliness of statistics collected by COSIT. These national statistics would entail

collecting many of the regional and municipal statistics cited above, which could

also be disseminated to help assess changes in conditions by governorate or municipality.

In most instances, COSIT, in conjunction with other Iraqi Ministries, should be

able to collect standard statistical information on its own. However, in two instances, numbers of violent Iraqi deaths (including insurgents, security forces, and

noncombatants) and numbers of attacks, the coalition could assist the statistical

agency in its work. These two indicators, deaths and attacks, are the most important for tracking trends in security in the country. They are probably the two most

important pieces of information for the Iraqi public to make judgments on how security in the country is evolving.

In my view, a number of the economic indicators on which the U.S. Government

has focused would not sway public opinion and have not been useful for evaluating

economic or political progress in Iraq. In some instances, these indicators have had

counterproductive effects. For example, the focus on spending assistance quickly has

contributed to waste without any noticeable effect on Iraqi public opinion. To focus

on jobs created by infrastructure projects does not make sense in the context of a

strategy of trying to improve public services through capital-intensive investments,

The mixture of inputs, outputs, and outcomes in current reporting at times serves

to obfuscate more than clarify.

159

Congress should think carefully about its own demands for statistics and evaluation. In many instances, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. A number of

colleagues who work in the government have been requested to provide evidence of

program effectiveness that is not possible under any conditions, let alone in a wartorn economy like Iraq’s. It is impossible in any society to definitively link refurbishment of schools to academic progress. Instead of requesting, for example, numbers

of jobs generated by construction programs, Congress would be better served if it

requested detailed strategies of how particular assistance programs are to help the

Iraqi Government improve its abilities to create a basis for sustained economic

growth in the country.

Opinion polling suggests that, unsurprisingly, Iraqis feel they have a pretty good

handle on their own economic situation. They have much more difficulty in assessing the security situation. They also have suspicions about U.S. strategies and exaggerated expectations of what U.S. assistance will do. More important than providing

a steady stream of data on electric power output, number of projects, or dollars

spent, the U.S. Government needs to repeatedly send the following messages: The

U.S. Government is in Iraq to help the Iraqi Government get on its feet and will

then leave. It does not seek to remain in Iraq permanently. Two, the reconstruction

of Iraq is the responsibility of the Iraqi people. The United States has attempted

to provide a leg up, but Iraq, not the United States, will operate and pay for electric

power, water, and other utilities. The sooner Iraq moves to restructure the Ministries and companies involved and to bill and collect payment for services rendered,

the quicker Iraqis will have reliable water and electric power.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Crane.

Mr. Barton.

STATEMENT OF FREDERICK D. BARTON, SENIOR ADVISOR,

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. BARTON. Good morning. Senator Lugar, thank you for the invitation. Senator Dodd, Senator Murkowski, it is good to be here

with you.

As you might remember, we first appeared before you in the

summer of 2003 when we were back from the first independent review of the reconstruction that we conducted for Secretary Rumsfeld. At that time we spoke of a closing window of opportunity.

Well, today, we have a tighter, tougher situation, with many fewer

opportunities because of the choices made and the opportunities

missed and the fear of many violent attacks.

But what we must have is an economic strategy that is at its

core an anti-insurgency strategy. Daily life will only improve if people believe that the entire enterprise is moving in the right direction. We cannot just hope for the best. We have to expand opportunities and hope that they will contribute to Iraq’s safety.

We must, I believe, present an alternative vision that reaches directly to the people, provides them with dramatic and positive

changes in their lives, makes it clear that they are in charge of

their futures, not the United States, not Baghdad, and certainly

not the insurgents.

This is not a time for creeping incrementalism or for tradition.

Opportunities are few and the new direction must be clear and

communicated, massively communicated. The core idea is to put

the Iraqi people first. Every program and every approach, every expenditure, needs to ask: Are we maximizing the engagement and

the ownership of individual Iraqis; are we giving them more opportunities to take charge of their futures?

Few initiatives up to now have made this their central organizing principle. Today there is not only no choice, but this is also

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the wisest way to go. This does not mean throwing money at people. It does mean cutting out the middlemen, be they in Kuwait or

in the central government or in large contracts. It does mean increasing the velocity of money movement, putting the people on the

side of increased oil production, and staying focused on what matters.

These ideas will be popular with Iraqis. Our earlier studies and

measures of citizens in Iraq, including ‘‘Progress or Peril,’’ suggested that. These ideas are also consistent with the American political tradition of the right and the left, ‘‘of the people, by the people, and for the people,’’ and also of our pragmatism, because this

is the wisest course at this time.

These ideas are also counterinsurgent and counter-Iraq’s past,

where control, inside deals, intimidation, favoritism, and cronyism

ran the show. This is an approach that acknowledges that the wisdom of the crowd, or people power, is preferable at a time of nearchaos, untested and unprepared political leadership with too full of

an agenda, living with the overhang of a command economy in a

difficult region.

There will be resistance. Iraq’s developing elites are waiting for

their turn. Our government will hide behind ‘‘obligated funds,’’

‘‘past practices,’’ and the Iraqi sovereignty when it is convenient.

Insurgents will see the radical challenge this presents. Former

Ba’thists will recognize that life will not return to the status quo

ante.

Only Iraq’s people will favor these notions. There is a greater advantage beyond capturing the public imagination. These ideas can

be implemented. In the 25 post-conflict situations that I have been

in, central governments without insurgencies cannot deliver services. The mere act of organizing takes almost all of their time. We

have seen, through the global transfer of remittances, that money

can move from an uneducated immigrant, across the world to a relative in the most rural part of Haiti or Afghanistan. We have also

seen traditional State-owned enterprises, including in Senator

Murkowski’s State, offer—give stock to all the citizens of a State

or a country. We have also seen commodity distributions replaced

by buying power. The examples abound.

So putting people first also has a further charm. It is the best

available way to provide us with more options and moves just at

the moment that the Iraq chessboard is looking more like a stalemate. As a guiding vision, putting people first provides us with the

choices in every area—politics, security, as well as economics and

social well-being.

At the heart of the economic strategy is to get people more engaged, with greater ownership, and to expand the centers of activity. Swarm theory and distributed networks is now the best way

to move ahead. The United States should make it clear we favor

these approaches. We want Iraq’s Government to set aside any recidivist intentions to return to state-centered control, and that we

have confidence in the wisdom of Iraq’s crowd: Its people.

On option one, I would like to just focus on one example: Cut out

the middlemen. The best foreign aid many of us have seen is when

the United States is fighting a war in your neighbor’s country.

Things are going well right now in Kuwait and in Jordan. Probably

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it is their glory day, the best economic times in history. So we have

to look and see how much of that action we can move into Iraq.

I would offer one example that has been studied and shows

promise—Basra. A few miles away, there is a ton of action in Kuwait and there is almost nothing going on in Basra. We have a

rather modern airport. It will need some improvements and some

are being worked on under a lot of U.S.-funded contracts and others. But capacity there is zero to 10 percent, less than 10 percent.

Some people told me zero percent, but let us say it is up to 10 percent. It is not being used. There is an airport that could take

planes from all over the world. It sits in the middle of the desert.

It can be secured. Things can be warehoused. A lot of action that

is going on, and that then is going to be convoyed into the country,

is not touching base in Iraq first.

The same thing with the ports. Our questioning has suggested

that maybe the ports are up to 50-percent capacity at this point.

Use the Iraq ports versus using everybody else in the region. It is

just a first obvious choice.

The same thing with the rails. The rail network needs to be rebuilt, but it has that same kind of potential. Yes, they will need

management help, but actually we have already done that fairly

well. USAID funded a management contract at Khor az Zubayr

which reportedly produced a $20 million profit after 1 year. So fairly good management, not a concession deal, which is what the

Danes did in Umm-Qasr, but nevertheless real potential.

To more quickly answer your specific questions, I say ‘‘yes’’ to the

councils, ‘‘yes’’ to thousands of others. We really need many, many

more outlets. We do not have the time to wait for a government

to take shape and be efficient and honest and all the other things.

It is going to have great difficulty finding, in the next 2 years, if

it has not already failed in some of those areas.

We have got to get Baghdad onto this program at the top, but

not in the implementation. This will do more to cut corruption,

speed economic activity, and engage the Iraqi people than most of

what has been done up to now.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barton follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF FREDERICK D. BARTON, SENIOR ADVISOR, INTERNATIONAL

SECURITY PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, DC

Thank you Senator Lugar, Senator Biden, your Senate colleagues and staff. It is

a pleasure to be with you again.

The task before us in Iraq has never been an easy one. Renewing Iraq’s economy

after decades of Saddam’s totalitarian rule would have been a challenge even in the

most peaceful of conditions. With the insurgency, it has proven near impossible.

The security, political, and economic situations in Iraq today must be seen as part

of an integrated whole. Improving Iraq’s economy will not drive success by itself,

but it is essential to making progress. Fewer choices remain today because of missed

opportunities.

Any successful strategy will reach well beyond Baghdad to empower local governing councils, independent authorities, and individuals. When you get to this

stage of reconstruction, it is imperative to pick winners and to give them the means

to succeed.

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PUTTING THE IRAQI PEOPLE FIRST

My belief is that the status quo, or even the status quo executed more efficiently,

will not achieve the desired results this administration and its Iraqi partners are

looking for.

Iraq requires a dramatic shift in the way we do business. We need to put the Iraqi

people first, and we need to operate in a more creative, entrepreneurial, and agile

way. We cannot hunker down in the green zone and expect results. Nor can we expect that the Iraqi central goverment will be able to deliver.

What does it mean to put the Iraqi people first, in terms of your four questions?

• Don’t count on the central government to find the people.

• Get the money moving faster.

• Give Iraqis a direct stake in their oil flow.

• Create integrated benchmarks that matter.

This shift will not be easy. We will worry about the loss of control, of oversight,

of leverage. We will feel pressure to carry out our work in traditional ways. The reality is that success in post-conflict reconstruction depends on more than stamping

our name on a list of projects completed, goods delivered, or elections successfully

run.

Post-conflict reconstruction must not be ideological or utopian or build off the

grandiose concept of ‘‘nation-building.’’ Rather, it must offer a pragmatic view that

engages local people and encourages the expansion of their basic rights and freedoms.

My belief is that employing such a strategy will be as important to defeating the

insurgency as training the Iraqi Army.

Option 1: Don’t count on the central government to find the people

Development cannot stall in the central Ministries or stop at Baghdad’s city limits. The key challenge in Iraq today is making sure reconstruction funds find the

people. Some reports have it that 60 percent of the $18 billion in reconstruction

funds the United States pledged to disburse by the end of 2004 have not yet reached

Iraqis.

There is a constant tension in post-conflict reconstruction between meeting immediate interests and needs and building long-term capacity. We should work to

strengthen and support the Iraqi Government, but we must recognize that not everyone in it will be able to escape static models of the past or eschew corruption.

We must do an end-run around those who do not share our urgency and principles.

The inefficiencies of the central Ministries are a big part of the problem in Iraq

today. The CPA’s overemphasis on the Ministries from the beginning was unrealistic

and poorly executed. The current climate in Baghdad encourages large-scale corruption. Too little of this money ever finds its way outside of the capital.

To ensure that reconstruction resources get outside the capital and into the hands

of ordinary Iraqis, we need to pick winners rather than go through traditional channels, and we need to make sure resources are distributed in an open and transparent way. Less should be planned through central Ministries, and more should

flow through reliable Iraqi partners in government and civil society.

One available efficiency is to cut out middlemen and move business into Iraq.

Basra, for instance, could serve as a hub for goods now moving through Kuwait. Its

airport is working at under 10-percent capacity, and its two ports at less than 50

percent. Transforming Basra into a hub for Iraq will require a greater investment

in both security and management, but it is possible, and should be tried.

Baghdad’s role should be to establish a national economic vision that captures the

public’s imagination. This has not happened yet. As I will detail later in my testimony, I believe this could be centered on a national wealth-sharing plan for oil revenues.

The insurgency will make getting beyond Baghdad difficult, but the more that we

can channel aid in a decentralized, grassroots fashion, the more diffused our presence will be throughout Iraqi society, the greater the number of Iraqis will be involved, and the smaller, more agile a target we will provide to those wishing to do

us harm.

Option 2: Get the money moving, faster

Creating jobs is an important element of post-conflict reconstruction. Jobs get potential insurgents off the streets and put money into the hands of Iraqi families.

My belief, however, is that a WPA-style jobs program is unlikely to instill Iraqis

with any real hope for the future or stake in the reconstruction effort. Such programs tend to pay low wages, employ people in menial tasks, and engage them for

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only short periods of time. Job creation may serve as a stopgap measure, but a more

far-reaching strategy is needed.

Microcredit, small grants, and loans disbursed on the local level are a far better

option. What we need is to build a network of several thousand distributors who

can help channel money into their communities where it is needed most. Local governing councils, civil society organizations, or women’s groups that have a presence

on the ground could help to implement these programs. It’s been done successfully

in equally tough places as Iraq. The Iraqi Government will not be able to move

these funds fast enough into the communities.

Our own funding methods must be faster and more flexible. Emergency response

funds are a key component of such a strategy, but the U.S. military must not be

the only outlet. Right now the U.S. military controls 70 percent of the $18 billion

Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. We should broaden the number of local actors

who have access to emergency funds. Programs that can demonstrate an Iraqi contribution should be prioritized.

One of the largest carryovers of the prewar period is the food basket that is provided to all Iraqis. It has been estimated to cost up to $18 billion per year, and is

used for the centralized purchase of basic commodities, for distribution networks,

and for other expenses. Iraqis would rather have the cash and make their own decisions on how to use it. Putting the money in their hands would generate more consumer power, accelerate money flows, and reduce the influence of the old state-centered model. The direct distribution of cash would also enhance the banking system

and help develop local market competitors, much like we have seen with remittances.

Option 3: Give Iraqis a direct stake in their oil flow

Iraq’s biggest economic asset remains its oil wealth. From the perspective of the

ordinary Iraqi, however, there is little tangible benefit from oil. Many Iraqis believe

the U.S. Government still has designs on Iraqi oil. Corrupt Iraqi Government officials may also steal profits before they ever reach Iraqi people. Insurgents sabotage

infrastructure in order to thwart reconstruction progress. Ordinary Iraqis do not

have enough of a stake in the results.

A plan must be designed in cooperation with the Iraqi Government to use oil revenue to build the long-term capacity of Iraq and to meet the immediate needs and

interests of the Iraqi people. Here is a sketch of a two-part plan.

The first part is to give Iraqis a direct stake in maximized production by instituting a wealth-sharing plan where each Iraqi family receives a certain amount of

money in a personal account every year to spend on health, education, or livelihood.

By depositing $500 per person into bank accounts, we will also capitalize a fledgling

banking industry. The initial cost of such a program would be around $5 billion.

Such a plan could increase incentives for Iraqis to assist their government and

coalition forces in protecting oil infrastructure. It will require bridge funding, however, since Iraq’s oil production is unlikely to move from 2 million to 4 million barrels per day until 2010 under the best-case scenario. The United States, should consider contributing to this bridge funding, as it will send a clear signal that we are

seeking to use oil revenues to empower the Iraqi people rather than benefit from

Iraq’s wealth.

The second part is to develop a board of overseers comprised of Iraqi officials, regional and international partners, and Iraqi civil society that could be charged with

directing a portion of oil revenue to Iraqi public goods and tangible infrastructure

projects. Such a board could solicit ideas from the Iraqi public and put the choice

to referenda.

The positive consequences that would flow from this plan could ripple across sectors, providing hope not only for Iraqi’s economic well-being but for the security situation and our goals of democratic governance.

Option 4: Create integrated benchmarks that matter

Our project at MS conducted a survey of Iraq’s overall reconstruction progress in

2004. We offered measurable benchmarks for success on the basis of government,

media, and polling reports, as well as interviews and focus groups we conducted on

the ground. Our findings showed then, and the same is true now, that economic

progress in Iraq is directly tied to progress on the security front.

Knowing when Iraq has reached the tipping point—when Iraqis have a legitimate

chance to sustain progress on their own—is not an easy task. Claims of success or

failure are often perceived as merely political spin. But measuring allows decisionmakers to observe trends during ongoing interventions and to make mid-course corrections that advance the stabilization process, reduce political and financial costs,

and save lives.

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Measuring progress is not merely an exercise to collect a random assortment of

statistics on the numbers of children in school, numbers of beds in working hospitals, and the like. The danger in this is that we often count what is easily measurable rather than what matters most. Measuring must be part of an integrated

framework of goals and indicators.

Iraqis, themselves, must play a role in defining progress and measuring success.

We can work with the Iraqi Government and civil society to help to articulate this

plan and to gather measurements. The process must be open and transparent to the

Iraqi people and the international community alike. The risk of insurgents targeting

key benchmarks, if the plan is made public, is a red herring. Insurgents already

know what is vital to success and what is not—sometimes better than we do.

CONCLUSION

A new approach in Iraq should emphasize a decentralized approach and Iraqi

ownership in the process, create long-term employment through microcredit and

small loans, offer a viable plan for oil-wealth sharing and human capital investment, and a method to reliably measure progress. In short, trust more in the Iraqi

people.

Trusting the Iraqi people has been missing for too long. In January 2005 I argued

with two colleagues in the New York Times that we should let the Iraqis decide our

tenure in a referendum that asks if we should stay or go. Doing so could affirm our

commitment to empowering the Iraqis and steal the thunder from the insurgents.

If the majority of Iraqis vote for us to stay, we have a mandate in Iraq we can use

to win Iraqi hearts and minds. If Iraqis vote for us to go, we will leave based on

the popular will of the Iraqi people—supporting our reason for being in Iraq in the

first place.

It is difficult to imagine broad economic progress in Iraq today without a greater

sense of public safety. Many are pinning their hopes on processes to build the formal

government, from constitution writing to elections. I believe it is more important to

encourage an authentic Iraqi political voice to emerge, one that will make its people

proud and reassure them that their leaders represent their best interests. This

might be the only true hope to convince Iraqis to come together and stand up to

the insurgency.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Barton.

Mr. Mohamedi.

STATEMENT OF FAREED MOHAMEDI, SENIOR DIRECTOR,

COUNTRY STRATEGIES GROUP, PFC ENERGY, WASHINGTON,

DC

Mr. MOHAMEDI. Thank you, Senator Lugar, for inviting me, and

to the panel, Senators.

I share with my friends here that security is, of course, of paramount importance, but I feel that the issue of decentralization is

a very sensitive and potentially dangerous one if it is handled

wrongly. Given the fragility of the central government of Iraq, its

bureaucratic disarray, its financial shortages, and the lack of coercive means to assert authority around the country, and the centrifugal forces in the region, in the regions, an overt shift of emphasis and support by the coalition away from the center would have

a very disruptive effect.

I think this is particularly true in the sector that we know a little bit about and that is the oil sector. If the oil sector is allowed

to fragment and be taken over by locals, then you will have local

control over those revenues and that will essentially mean that

they do not need to be part of a larger Iraq. Then you will have

something, in our opinion, that took place in Russia, where the sector effectively fragmented and people grabbed the assets.

But also, short of that and short of, in a sense, the political implications of that, on a very practical economic sense, you break

down the operations and operational efficiency of the infrastructure

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when you fragment it. I mean, when the looting took place and the

south was cut off from the north, in terms of power lines, you had

a really hard time rebalancing the system and you lost quite a bit

of power in terms of running that system. So you need to have a

coordinated system from an operational point of view.

But I do think that the coalition can play a very important role

in Iraq in terms of strengthening local delivery and local institutions that deliver national goods. I think that coordination is very

important. It was, as my colleagues here have previously said, a

very centralized system. I think that in that sense to build up local

capacity to enhance regional delivery of public goods is very important.

That is all.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mohamedi follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF FAREED MOHAMEDI, SENIOR DIRECTOR, COUNTRY

STRATEGIES GROUP, PFC ENERGY, WASHINGTON DC

OPTION 1

Should the coalition do more to shift additional economic development resources and

emphasis from Baghdad to the provinces?

The issue of decentralization is a sensitive and potentially dangerous one. Given

the fragility of the central government in Iraq—bureaucratic disarray, financial

shortages, and the lack of a coercive means to assert authority—and the centrifugal

forces in the regions, an overt shift of emphasis and support by the coalition away

from the center could have a disruptive effect at this point. This is particularly true

in terms of the oil sector. Gaining control over local assets, which are part of a larger integrated whole, and attempts to then grab the revenue streams from crude oil,

gas, and refined products sales and exports will become the objective of the regional

governments or authorities. Once regional governments gain sufficient financial

independence, a push for greater autonomy and eventually secession is quite possible.

Short of this eventuality, an uncoordinated investment/development program,

which gives regions priority over a national one, could lead to greater problems for

the economy from an operational point of view. This, to a certain extent, already

happened with the electricity sector when transmission lines leading from the south

were cut off to ensure that the region had sufficient supplies. In order to rebalance

the national electric power system, the coalition had to rebuild these lines at great

expense. This is one example, but one could see the same problems in other infrastructure, transport, trade, and services areas. Without a national system, fragmentation and increased inequality will impair long-term growth and prevent recovery in the short term.

Will strengthening regional and local authorities outside Baghdad speed delivery of

services and broaden the tangible benefits of aid? Are the recently formed Provincial

Reconstruction Councils up and running and having a desired impact?

Picking up on the point above, if the objective is long-term peace and stability in

Iraq, then a national development program, which is produced by a democratic government at the center and administered by a national and regional bureaucracy, is

essential. Beyond enhancing local security, an essential short-term and long-term

goal for the coalition should be to build up the capacity of both the national and

regional institutions in implementing economic development plans. Here the Provincial Reconstruction Councils could play a constructive role, especially if they enhance local capacity to carry out national plans, provide effective feedback and advise the center on local conditions. A dual role for national and local institutions

in the development process will ensure national integration, economies of scale, be

a check on local power monopolization and lessen the potential for corruption. It will

also ensure the spread of best practices and reduce regional disparities.

In this process of enhancing the capacity of both national and local institutions,

the coalition and other aid donors should coordinate their efforts and play from the

same score. An uncoordinated aid effort would have the same effect on Iraqi longterm development and short-term recovery as uncoordinated regional economic efforts.

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OPTION 2

Should the coalition, in conjunction with the Iraqi Government, increase resources

and emphasis on creating jobs and demonstrating tangible progress on the ground?

A major increase in short-term funding for jobs programs, microcredit and small

business development is highly advisable, particularly if it is done through national

institutions (in coordination with regional/local institutions). Moreover, it must be

done on an equitable basis across the country and targeted at the most needy

groups. Emergency response funds distributed by the United States military have

been effective in the absence of national and local institutions and should be continued and expanded. However, these must be portrayed for what they are: Short-term

relief. Already the Iraqi State budget provides massive subsidies and income support to the Iraqi population, which is to some extent crowding out longer term investment. Short-term relief should not become long-term income support. That will

lead to a sense of entitlement typical of most of the gulf countries surrounding Iraq.

In the longer term, as a national development program takes off, contracting practices have to be improved to ensure a larger part of the reconstruction effort benefits

local companies which employ Iraqis. Local content regulations also have to be implemented to achieve this objective. It is through local content requirements that

the aid used to rebuild the infrastructure of the country will create backward linkages into the economy and enhance longer term employment, which the shorter

term work programs and emergency funding get off the ground.

OPTION 3

Should the coalition put more emphasis on overcoming the twin curses of the oil sector: Corruption and sabotage?

The twin curses of corruption and sabotage could result in further debilitating the

only source of government revenue and, given the size of government expenditures

in the national economy, it is virtually the largest source of private income as well.

In the recent past, and in the short term, sabotage is the biggest problem the oil

sector faces. It has prevented the use of the Ceyhan pipeline through Turkey and

reduced exports by around 300,000–400,000 b/d from the northern oil fields. It is

a constant threat to oil production and export facilities in the south. Through attacks on power infrastructure, feeder pipelines, and refineries themselves, sabotage

has reduced the amount of refined products that can be supplied to the local market

and imposed an additional burden on the treasury because of the need to import

products from a tight regional and global oil/products market. Corruption has been

a lesser problem but theft and misuse of resources have been contributors to supply

disruption and the prevention of rebuilding the sector. Political interference in the

sector, for reasons of financial gain or control over decisionmaking, has also been

a big problem from time to time and has led to inappropriate personnel decisions

and ultimately to hampering reconstruction efforts.

In the long term, corruption could become a critical factor in the underdevelopment of the oil sector and the Iraqi Government. In fact, if oil sector corruption is

not prevented, it will undermine the goal of building a democratic society in Iraqi.

Iraq is the last huge oil frontier. This distinction is magnified by perceptions around

the world that oil reserves are peaking, especially in those countries where private

oil companies have easy access. Therefore, many private companies and consuming,

country governments concerned about the scarcity of resources will be tempted to

offer what ever it takes to secure resources in such a potentially prolific oil sector.

The situation is equally desperate for the Iraqi political class. The need for resources, the ambiguity and uncertainty of power dynamics in the country and the

need and temptation to use money to secure power to fill the vacuum created by

the invasion has increased the receptivity of Iraqi officials to engage in corruption.

The combination of factors makes it more likely than not that the development of

the sector and the country will be distorted by this reality unless enormous efforts

(some which we recommend below) are made to prevent it.

Beyond these two sets of problems, another issue is emerging rapidly and could

severely exacerbate problems in the oil sector and reduce revenues to the government. Due to sabotage, lack of funds, disorganization and physical aging of the oil

fields, below-the-ground problems with lraq’s oil fields are resulting in a stagnation

of crude oil output and the potential for catastrophic declines in the near future.

The Kirkuk oil field’s production capacity has fallen to 600,000 b/d from a prewar

level of 700,000 b/d and could, under conservative estimates, collapse quite sharply

to half the current capacity.

In the south, 12 years of sanctions, combined with a lack of well workovers to

maintain production post-invasion, have taken their toll. Foreign contractors report

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high water cuts, clogged well strings, and declining productivity per well. Iraqis are

apparently using handmade shaped charges for reperforations, there is little, if any,

functioning well instrumentation and there is no current seismic data or reservoir

modeling work (although some foreign companies have attempted to begin work on

the latter). Some wells have responded to recompletion work, but there is a real

need for fracturing and acidizing techniques to be applied. The Oil Ministry has either been unable to organize such efforts or has pursued other priorities, and given

security concerns in the relatively benign south, the cost and logistics of bringing

in such large-scale operations may prove insurmountable. The result has been lower

production, higher water cuts, and more lower quality Mishrif Pay output. According

to reports, the quality of Basra light has declined from 32 API and 1.95 percent sulfur to 31.5 API and 2.7–-2.8 percent sulfur.

As production has declined at the workhorse Rumaila field, the Southern Oil

Company, which is in charge of operations in the south, has sought to increase production at West Qurnah field to make up the difference. However, work delays there

threaten production. Meanwhile, the water injection facilities (particularly Garmat

Ali) that were meant to help restore production in Rumaila and elsewhere are running at only 55–60 percent of prewar capacity, causing further production and well

losses. Bureaucratic impediments have also made it difficult to procure the chemicals and spare parts needed to operate revamped facilities.

Even with the current high oil prices, the Iraqi Oil Ministry must find some way

to efficiently spend its capital budget to sustain production capacity in the one area

capable of more or less unhindered exports. The recent reshuffle of personnel by the

Oil Minister Bahr al-Uloum elevated less-experienced managers at the expense of

seasoned technocrats. This has reduced the effectiveness of what little funds the

government has. The result may be a greater reliance on foreign expertise. The

Iraqi Drilling Company’s recent announcement that it is seeking an international

strategic partner should be seen in this light, and is likely to be a precedent followed by a number of other Oil Ministry companies.

That said, relying on foreign expertise will necessitate improved security, even in

the south. Security problems have slowed and undone some of the work already carried out by Western contractors and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after the invasion, and failing to improve the situation will hold back Western international oil

companies with the necessary expertise and capital back going forward. However,

coalition military forces are unlikely to protect the foreign oil workers and their sophisticated equipment, particularly in the south where U.K. forces are seeking an

accelerated handover to Iraqi security forces. International oil companies, meanwhile, are likely to regard the cost of providing private security on the scale necessary as prohibitive, even if they were willing to take the risk with their personnel.

Thus, the subsurface work necessary to prevent declining production will simply not

get done fast enough in the medium term, if at all.

The oil sector has four critical roles to play in the future development of the Iraqi

economy.

• First, it will provide the revenues to support and later revive what is now, essentially, a failed state. That will buy Iraq time from a humanitarian and institutional point of view to get its true economic development process going. • Second, if done correctly with the appropriate local content regulations, investment by the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) to rebuild capacity to around

3–3.5 million b/d (preinvasion capacity) and by international oil companies

(IOCs) to build new capacity beyond 3–3.5 million b/d in conjunction with INOC

could massively contribute to the local economy. Creating strong ties between

the oil and nonoil sector is critical for employment generation, skills development and in order to retain a greater part of the oil rents at home. Oil and

gas, as an industrial input, could also serve as an important incentive to invest

in Iraq, especially for energy-intensive industries such as petrochemicals, steel,

aluminum, and copper. • Third, as Iraq seeks external investment to develop its huge untapped oil reserves, foreign investors in the nonoil sector will look at developments in the

oil sector with great interest. In the first case, they will view relations between

international oil companies and the government as an indicator of how they will

be treated and what investment conditions could be like. Moreover, as foreign

investment goes in, they will view this as an expansion of the local market and

be interested in taking advantage of new economic opportunities.

• Fourth, the institutional development of the national oil company into an efficient and dynamic business unit, could set the pace for corporate development

in the economy. Around the world, national oil companies that have developed

talent and strategic prowess have become the domestic pacesetters and transferred and spread these skills to other industries. As the sector develops and

168

matures, the national oil company could also be the pacesetter in privatization

programs. This is a powerful signal to international capital markets that Iraq

would be open for business.

Putting Iraq on this virtuous cycle of development—oil sector restoration leads to

revenue increases which leads to infrastructure development and ultimately to the

spawning of a self-generating private sector—will require effective political and institutional arrangements, security, and international initiatives to reduce corruption.

For an effective institutional setup, two issues are critical.

• First, a political deal has to be struck between the principal political parties so

that an effective oil sector development model can be chosen. An effective oil

sector development model includes several key ingredients including high-level

political and economic strategy coordination (in order to answer the question

‘‘what does Iraq want from its oil/gas sector over time?’’), operational autonomy

for the NOC (choosing best practices), transparency in contracting, access to the

best skills from the private sector and democratic control over oil/gas receipts.

• Second, since the oil and gas assets are national assets, are spread throughout

the country and needed for national development, national government control

is essential for optimal development of the sector. This will ensure national

unity (see above), seamless integration, rational sectoral operations and enhance optimal long-term development potential. Breaking the sector apart and

managing it regionally will be disastrous for Iraq as a political entity and lead

to increasing regional divergence, monopolization of revenues by key groups for

parochial purposes and ultimately lead to greater instability.

The design of the sector will determine the future viability of a democratic unified

Iraq. If the sector is controlled by a few, it will serve the needs of a few. This was

clearly apparent in the Saddam Hussain regime. Ensuring democratic control

should not be mistaken for operational autonomy. National policies can be set by

the central government in coordination with the regions and then the sector can follow these policies in the most effective manner. Breaking the operations up regionally would fracture the sector and possibly lead to local control which, in turn,

would lead to political problems. Similarly, revenues should not be divided by region. This is the situation in Nigeria and has led to countless problems of regional

competition for resources. But, as in Nigeria during the 1960s, oil producing regions

should not be neglected to point where the region is compelled to violently gain control over, its part of the sector. Today, in Nigeria local groups extort money from

private companies working in their regions. This is also a possibility in Iraq in the

future. So a balance between meeting central and regional needs with effective

democratic controls is essential for the optimal development of the sector and the

political economy of Iraq.

Security is the single biggest impediment to smooth operations of the Iraqi oil and

gas sector and a huge blockage to further development. For the most part, the national oil company, the Oil Ministry, and local and national security forces have

struggled to keep the sector operational with mixed success. More effective security

in protecting pipelines, refineries and ports will require more, not less, support from

the coalition forces and a larger presence of the Iraqi security personnel. A wider

political resolution to the internal conflict will also be critical. At present the expectation in the sector is that there will be less coalition involvement in security of infrastructure and that the Iraqi forces will take some time to become fully effective.

Moreover, there are fears that the violence against the oil and gas sector is moving

south so there could be more disruptions in the larger of the oil producing regions

of Iraq. Over the longer term, no foreign company will be willing to invest in Iraq

without effective security. In fact, the fear is that the presence of foreign personnel

will exacerbate the security situation if a long term political solution has not been

struck.

Preventing corruption is essential for the future development of the sector and for

ensuring the Iraqi people gain the most from their national patrimony. One effective

means of preventing the misuse of the sector for private or political gain would be

to set up effective constitutional constraints and systems. The coalition could guide

the various Iraqi political parties to ensure the constitutional provisions meet this

requirement. Another effective means of preventing corruption would be to enlist

the help of international companies, multilateral institutions and governments to

come together to set up conventions to stanch it from the outside. There are a number of international transparency initiatives which could be subscribed to. However,

a specific initiative, with Iraq in mind, could reduce the competitive pressures to

indulge in corruption and greatly enhance the development process.

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OPTION 4

Should the coalition and the Iraqi Government create a reliable set of indicators of

when and where economic progress has been made?

Improving public information is essential to improve the trust of the Iraqi people

in the new government. However, the most important set of metrics that the Iraqi

people are looking for are reduction in actual crime and political violence, improvement of physical deliveries of public services and jobs/income growth. An improvement in all three of these variables will have a marked improvement on public perceptions of the new government and its ability to deliver progress.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Mohamedi.

Let us proceed to the second options, and I will ask you to give

the first response after I have restated the options, Mr. Barton.

Should the coalition, in conjunction with the Iraqi Government, increase resources and emphasis on creating jobs and demonstrating

tangible progress on the ground? It has been suggested, for example, that a WPA-type program for trash cleanup, local repairs, and

the like would let Iraqis see visible progress and make their daily

lives more bearable, while putting money into the pockets of the

unemployed.

Would this strategy work? Could the coalition help the prospects

for a functioning economy by encouraging shops and small businesses through microcredits, small grants, loans, and other programs? Should we increase the amount of emergency response

funds distributed by U.S. military, especially in areas where the civilian economic and infrastructure is not yet in place?

Mr. BARTON. Senator Lugar, we are doing quite a lot in this area

right now. Some of the estimates we have seen are up to 200,000

people who are receiving some kind of daily job help.

I have real reservations about this as having much promise. Generally, these jobs are very short term. They last up to 6 weeks,

maybe a little longer. They oftentimes are in repetitive functions

that do not really build the capacity there in the country. They are

centrally run, which means that they are slow to get going. So they

have significant disadvantages.

That does not mean that they could not work, but I think they

have to address those inherent weaknesses that are usually—that

usually come with the international model and the international

assistance. So if we make them longer, if we make them tied to

something that has a longer term value, then I think there is some

promise there. But I do not think it is really anywhere near as attractive an alternative as finding existing enterprises and helping

them grow.

One of the problems in these post-conflict places is that the currents are very strong. So swimming against the tide is a difficult

task and we are much better off if we can find anything that is

going on and build upon it. As you mentioned in your comments,

the telephone industry has had a fairly good period. Obviously, the

television and the communications industry in general has been

one of investment during this period of time.

The markets tend to have quite a lot in them. There is a consumer expansion. The economy, as a whole, is growing by most estimates, so there are things going on. Finding those things that are

going on and giving them the juice to grow more is a better way

for us to spend our money and I think it will be faster as well.

170

So, generally, what we are looking for as we look at the economy

of these places is what is practical. To set up new structures and

new programs when it is hard to get anything done and you cannot

get a public official from one place to another just does not make

a lot of sense.

So that would be the last part of the argument, which is that we

really need to widen the circle of trusted partners. We have done

quite a good job, the new Iraqi Government and the international

community, in identifying and building capacity in a lot of places.

But we are going to have to have more confidence in their ability

to deliver than we have up to now. Up to now it has been very

much of a control model and generally in post-conflict places you

are much better off if you are a shepherd, if you are just saying,

we are going toward that wall, let us all try to go this way, as opposed to, come into my corral and I will take you over there. It is

just not going to happen in Iraq right now, and for all the reasons

that you know.

Finally, the foreign responsibility here. I think our responsibility

is to make sure that those funds are distributed fairly, that we

watch for cronyism, we watch for regional favoritism, we watch for

the things that will undermine the public confidence, which again

there are abundant examples of, and in this kind of a rumor-filled

environment they will travel much farther than they would necessarily in a place where you have some checks and where people

feel that justice might be possible.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir.

Dr. Mohamedi.

Mr. MOHAMEDI. I do believe that increasing the funding for jobs

programs, microcredit, small business development, are a good

idea. I think they would be done through national institutions.

They should be done on an equitable basis. I think we should avoid

this cronyism and giving the ability of certain local elites to create

new patronage networks.

However, I do not think that—these programs should be regarded as what they are, that is short-term relief, and not be left

behind as a burden on the government budget. Already there is a

huge subsidy component in the budget, a lot of relief. So I think

that would leave a long-term legacy that we do not want really to

do.

I also think that nothing replaces good job creation and part of

our aid program should start to really focus on contracting practices that enable local businesses, and particularly the issue of local

content and local businesses providing to industries like the oil industry and gas industry, et cetera.

From a longer point of view, a longer term point of view, I think

one issue that should be brought up is the whole issue of foreign

debt. I looked at the IMF figures the other day and, basically, the

debt service for Iraq will be about $10 billion, which is the amount

of the net financial requirements of the budget, basically, is $10

billion. So if you remove the debt payment they would not have to

borrow.

So it is, in a way, ironic that they will be borrowing $10 billion

every year just so their debt situation will stay the same. So I do

not think that is a long-term sustainable situation.

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir.

Dr. Crane.

Dr. CRANE. I concur with both my colleagues about the fact that

make-work schemes are really a stopgap measure and often are of

questionable utility, especially at this point in time. The real problem in Iraq is not unemployment; it is poverty. The only good survey of what is taking place in Iraq today, which was conducted

through UNDP, found the unemployment rate at 10.1 percent by

standard international levels. The problem in Iraq is that people

are very—are very low productivity. It is a country very similar to

those in the rest of the Middle East, where you have normal high

male-labor-force participation, women in many ways excluded from

the labor force, but most of these people work in the informal sector. They run small shops, they are day laborers. Their income depends on what they do, much like many other people in the United

States who drive a truck or work construction.

But, in the case of Iraq, the economic environment has been such

that it is very difficult for people to prosper. So the big focus should

not be on creating make-work jobs that, in many cases, destroy

value and saddle the Iraqi Government with another very large

government subsidy, but it is to really clear the way as much as

possible to make it possible for these small businesses to prosper

and grow.

Looking at the question of targeted lending and microloans,

microcredit has been successful in many parts of the world. It is

expensive. There are no microcredit programs, to my knowledge,

that really can fund completely the cost of collection and making

loans. They are often supported by international financial institutions or donors. Nonetheless, they are a good way to transfer

money.

However, it is often a case of quality as opposed to quantity.

Badly run programs which do not make borrowers adhere to repaying the debt, that kind of dole-out money without looking at the

different projects, can actually lead to be counterproductive.

This condition is even more important in terms of targeted lending to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Iraqi financial industry is in its infancy. It is very underdeveloped. What we have

seen in other transition economies is that if there is a big push to

make loans without regard to creditworthiness, to push money

through the system at this point in time, 3 to 4 years down the

road Iraq will have a banking crisis as these loans are not repaid

and the economy will go into recession.

At this point in time, the growth in Iraq is really driven by these

small businesses, sole proprietorships, and they fund their own development out of their own credit.

Finally, I would like to say a few things about CERP programs.

This is going to be a politically unpopular statement. They have

been very popular with commanders. I think in small doses they

have been quite effective. As I understand it, currently $3 billion

have been allocated to CERP programs. I could be wrong, but it is

a very large sum of money.

Our commanders are busy fighting a war in Iraq. They are not

development specialists. They are not individuals who are really

trained or have the time to look at investments in terms of water,

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electric power, sewage. Many commanders have done a wonderful

job there, but this is—in this case, less is probably more. This is

in my view too large of a sum of money and this money should be

really targeted through our other assistance programs, like USAID

or PCO, through the Iraqi Government. Commanders have other

things to do with their time rather than run development programs.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Crane.

These first two sets of issues, as you all perceived as witnesses

with Senators listening to you, try to address comments coming to

our committee in the past about centralization as opposed to decentralization. How do you move it out of Baghdad and should you do

so in the first place? As Dr. Mohamedi has pointed out with regard

to the oil wells, you have a big distribution problem, given the fact

that we are trying to get people to think as Iraqis.

These are issues that keep swirling about. I appreciate what you

have brought to the discussion. Likewise the WPA idea. We had a

crisis in our country back in the thirties. Many people point out

that one way of getting at it is to get some visible results, to have

people out there with money. Yet, at the same time, as you have

pointed out, some of the consequences of this, including the $10 billion of debt service of the past, would be a lot of debt service for

the future.

So that the visible results, real jobs, real sustainability, and in

the midst of it, the security problems. So it’s all well and good for

us to be talking about decentralization as if this was a normal affair, when all of you have been on the ground and know that it is

not. But I appreciate that discussion.

Now, let me break before we address the third issue, which will

address the oil business, to recognize the distinguished ranking

member, Senator Biden, for his opening comments.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH BIDEN, U.S. SENATOR FROM

DELAWARE

Senator BIDEN. Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent

that my comments be placed in the record as if read.

The CHAIRMAN. They will be placed in full.

Senator BIDEN. And by way of explanation, I was down in the Judiciary Committee guarding the bill I have cosponsored, that you

and Senator Dodd have introduced, the shield law for the press,

and that is why I was not here on time. I am not sure how good

a job I did. The best part was I did not speak at all, so maybe there

is a chance. [Laughter.]

[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S. SENATOR FROM DELAWARE

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think that it is fair to say that the reconstruction program in Iraq has been a

disaster.

Of the $18.4 billion that Congress appropriated at the urgent request of the President in the fall of 2003, just $7 billion has been spent.

And well over half of that has been spent either directly on building Iraqi security

forces or on security-related costs for reconstruction projects.

We have repeatedly missed deadlines for increasing power and oil production. As

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tricity a day. Almost half don’t have regular access to clean water. And most estimates place unemployment at about 40 to 50 percent.

General Webster, the commander of the Third Infantry Division, talks about the

need to clean up what he calls the ‘‘Green lawns and Green streets’’ of Baghdad.

Green is the color of raw sewage as seen from the air.

For anyone who doesn’t think there is a direct correlation between the living conditions and job prospects for ordinary Iraqis and their support for the insurgency,

spend 5 minutes with any of our military commanders.

They will tell you that long power outages, reconstruction delays, factories standing idle, and jobless young men all contribute to the steady supply of recruits to

fill the ranks of the insurgency.

I look forward to hearing the ideas that our witnesses will present. I believe that

we need to do four important things.

First, we must establish realistic goals and make clear what we’re doing to overcome the shortfalls.

For example, the goal was to generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity in Iraq by

last summer. Today, we’re at just over 4,000 megawatts. But demand is nearly twice

that and we’ve scaled back our goal to 5,500 megawatts by December.

The administration said oil would pay for Iraq’s recovery. Yet Iraq is still falling

some 750,000 barrels a day short of the target of 3 million per day. At current

prices, that’s a shortfall of $10 billion a year.

Second, we must have accurate measures of the delivery of essential services if

we want to know what difference reconstruction is making.

Third, we must focus resources on smaller projects that make an impact in the

lives of ordinary Iraqis.

Most Iraqis are simply looking for an improvement in their standard of living, not

state-of-the-art infrastructure.

A general in Iraq told me that instead of building a tertiary sewage treatment

plant, we should be running PCV pipe from people’s backdoors to the river so they

don’t walk out their front doors into 3 feet of sewage.

In parallel, we should increase the amount of reconstruction funds given directly

to U.S. military commanders—one of the few success stories in reconstruction. I’ve

seen for myself the difference these funds make in giving our commanders a weapon

to make Iraqis happier and our troops safer.

Fourth, we have to develop the capacity of Iraqi Ministries.

This is the third Iraqi Government in less than 2 years, and there could be a

fourth by the end of the year. We know the difficulty of transitions between administrations every 4 years. Imagine the challenge in Iraq when the management team

of a barely functional government changes every few months.

We have to help the government deal with rising corruption, which is badly eroding public confidence.

And we must press our allies to help train Iraqi personnel. The British have proposed partnering individual countries with a cluster of Iraqi Ministries. We should

follow up on this idea.

There is a direct correlation between Iraqis supporting their government and children going to school, men and women going to jobs, sick people having a doctor,

families getting the electricity they need to stay cool, and police protecting citizens

from robberies and kidnapping.

In short, if the economy and reconstruction don’t succeed, it’s difficult to imagine

the insurgency being defeated.

I look forward to the testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. We appreciate your endorsement.

Senator DODD. Senator Lugar, Senator Murkowski, and Senator

Hagel may make additional comments on that.

The CHAIRMAN. That will come later in the hearing.

All right, let us move on to the third set. Should the coalition put

more emphasis on overcoming the twin curses of the oil sector,

namely corruption and sabotage, right now? Can the coalition work

with the Iraqi Ministries to develop and fund a full-scope program

to enhance security of oil production and distribution infrastructure, and also at the same time combat corruption in the oil industry?

Should the coalition and the Iraqis develop emergency pipeline

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centives or rewards for those who turn in corrupt industry personnel?

Within the oil sector, where is the corruption problem greatest?

Would oil resources be more productively used for the benefit of the

Iraqi people if they were managed regionally instead of by the central government?

I will ask you to start on this issue, to which you have given a

great deal of thought and scholarship, Mr. Mohamedi.

Mr. MOHAMEDI. Thank you.

I think that the twin curses of corruption and sabotage are very

much with us and are going to continue to play, at least in the

short to medium term, unless we do something about the security

issue. I mean, that is the primary problem right now; short-term

problem. It has debilitated the pipeline, export pipeline to Turkey,

which has reduced the amount that the northern fields can

produce, and, in fact, cut production by something like 3 to 400,000

barrels a day.

Attacks on power plants and feeder pipelines, refineries, all then

lead to shortages of product, refined product, which then adds to

the burden on the treasury because you have to import this product.

The corruption issue has been, to a certain extent, a lesser but

still a very important issue in terms of diversion of supplies and

diversion of products, as you mentioned earlier on. But I think the

corruption issue will be a very critical factor in the future as the

sector is further developed, as foreign companies come in.

We are at a very pivotal point right now when it comes to the

Iraqi oil sector and in terms of the world oil industry. You have

very few new places to go to for international oil companies and

there is a sense out there, as China comes on the market, as India

comes on the market, that there are going to be insufficient resources. At this particular critical point of peak oil and energy insecurity, you have this huge sector coming on line. So there is enormous potential for graft and bribery and corruption to take place.

So there is an enormous demand from the outside, and then on

the inside there is an enormous need for money. The two create the

perfect conditions for some pretty rotten stuff.

Beyond this, I would like to say a couple of things on the short

run, that you have got a potential for catastrophic declines in the

northern oil fields because of insufficient work that has been done

by the Ministry and because of the lack of security the foreign contractors could not get in there and do some of the work. And you

have got aging problems in the southern fields, which are starting

to now push production down to something like 1.5, 1.8 million barrels a day in the south.

The combination is we are seeing production stagnate at around

under—around 2 million barrels a day or under. And if there is

this catastrophic decline in the north, you could see production falling in the future, which will really hurt your revenue streams.

Beyond this and back to the longer term in terms of structuring

the sector, I think that if you do not get the sector, the sector of

the structure right, in my opinion you will not get the future politics of Iraq right, because if you have someone capture the sector

he will turn it into, he or she will turn it into a private preserve

175

for themselves and then go back to the old system of patronage, the

old political economy that was there.

Oil has to be in a sense very much—both the sector and the revenues from it have to be very democratically controlled. Having said

that, I think it is important not to miss out on the opportunity to

give the sector a certain operational autonomy. So strategy is controlled by democratic forces, institutions, but the operations are

done by the sector itself.

One last point on the corruption issue. We have thought that the

U.S. Government and others should embark on an initiative to

bring international oil companies, multilateral institutions, governments together to sign onto an anticorruption initiative and to create transparency—means to create transparency, so that you do

not have the use of corruption to access the sector.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir.

Dr. Crane.

Dr. CRANE. Corruption is primarily a problem of opportunity. In

any society, if you do not have proper controls or proper incentives,

unfortunately, corruption rears its head. In the case of Iraq, the

major largest source of corruption has to do with controlled prices

of gasoline and diesel fuel. Gasoline and diesel fuel go for a nickel

in Iraq. You can walk across the border and sell it for five bucks

a gallon. With these types of opportunities or incentives facing people, people obviously become corrupt.

The second largest source of corruption in Iraq has to do with

government contracting. Here again, the question here is in terms

of opportunity. Whenever you have transparency, open competitive

contracting systems, it becomes much more difficult to engage in

corruption.

Finally, a third source of corruption, not as large as the others,

has to do with the employment of ghost workers or garnishing individuals’ wages. When I was in Iraq we had a riot by police as their

commanders attempted to take 25 to 30 percent of their wages.

It is really impossible to overemphasize the importance of liberalizing gasoline and diesel fuel prices for the health of the Iraqi polity and economy. It is a question not only of corruption; it is really

of the ability of the economy to grow. I have followed 40, 50 economies in my life, especially when I was in the private sector. I have

never seen a more distorted economy than Iraq’s and this is fundamentally due to refined oil product prices.

The cost of these subsidies is extraordinary. They run $7 billion

a year. Our entire aid program to Iraq, in the course of 3 years,

is going to be less than is being currently wasted on subsidies.

These subsidies do nothing, or very little, to alleviate poverty.

Most of the subsidy goes to, in the case of diesel fuel, industrial

manufacturers, people running generators, Turkish truckers, Kuwaiti truckers. In the case of gasoline, car ownership in Iraq is

heavily concentrated in the upper income levels. Very few of the

bottom income levels in Iraq could even afford, even think about

affording a car. We did some work at CPA; 80 percent of the $7

billion goes into diesel and gasoline.

The reluctance to liberalize prices has often been stated because

they see it as a security concern. Although not politically popular,

it is hard for me to see that the security concern—that security

176

could be worse trying to guard lines of irate motorists, day in and

day out, who wait 24 hours in order to fill up in 120-degree weather.

We have had a number of instances where prices have been liberalized. Hundreds of times throughout the world, people, governments, have had to raise these prices. In fact, when I was in Baghdad we had a number of Finance Ministers from the former Soviet

Republics in Central and Eastern Europe came in and said how

they did it. It is important to discuss this with the population, prepare them well in advance, explain where the additional revenues

will flow, and make sure that the public is well aware, and make

sure that every motorist can get his last cheap tankful of gas before

prices go up.

But nonetheless, the government really needs to follow through

with this. It is true that some very weak, very politically unpopular, dictatorial governments have confronted riots when they have

raised prices. These are in very specific situations and usually result from surprise increases, in which case the population has not

been forewarned or in which there had been no public discussion.

Turning briefly to sabotage. Sabotage in the oil industry is not

just a problem of insurgency. Many Iraqis tap product pipelines for

gasoline and diesel to steal fuel for resale. A number of tribes actually sabotage crude oil pipelines so they can blackmail the government into paying them to guard the same pipelines that they have

just damaged. And in many cases insurgents attack the pipelines.

All of these are problems. However, the provision of security for

the oil industry is really a responsibility of the Ministry of Oil and

the security Ministries. Again, I have never seen such a distorted,

inefficient arrangement in terms of—centralized arrangement in

terms of running the oil industry, as I have in Iraq.

I agree with my colleague, there needs to be a decentralization

of control, incentives for managers in the national oil company to

run their operations correctly. I will guarantee that, given the correct economic incentives and decentralization of control, the managers of the national oil company of Iraq will take a much, much

more concerted and much more focused effort in order to guard

their pipelines, guard their assets, than they currently do, if the

government would try to create a modern, state-owned oil company.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Cramer.

Mr. Barton.

Mr. BARTON. I would like to answer yes to your larger question:

Yes, that we do need to put more emphasis on this, because this

has to work. If the oil does not work in Iraq, it is really difficult

to have much of a discussion about an economy in Iraq.

But I do think that this is also another issue that needs a larger

galvanizing idea. You have heard from my colleagues the number

of things that have to be done right to get to a point where we are

going to be better off, and to do all those things in the best of circumstances is extraordinarily unlikely.

So my hope here is that we go for a larger, galvanizing idea.

What I would suggest is that we, obviously, have to get people—

get the people of Iraq on the side of greater production, so you do

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ernment hostage, but maybe the individual members of the tribe

questioning whether that is a good idea.

I do not believe that we should see the fragmenting of production. But the heart of this is wealth-sharing. That wealth-sharing

argument is going to compound the difficulties of the constitutional

process. It has not been resolved. It has not been addressed directly, and I would suggest that a good wealth-sharing model might

be one that gives one-third of the revenues to the central government, one-third of the revenues to the governants, and one-third of

the revenues to the people.

I think it will have a political beauty to it as well as a practical

value of getting most of the public on the side of increasing production, which is ultimately where our interests coincide. The United

States interests and the interests of the Iraqi people have to be

closely aligned if we are going to see the value.

If that sounds too rich—and that is one of the arguments that

people will make against this, that, oh, we cannot afford it, the

Iraqi Government cannot afford it, it is impossible, they can barely

make do with what they have right now—I would suggest that

what we might do is we start with a focus, and the focus could be

consistent with this counterinsurgency economic strategy that I am

suggesting, and that is focus on the youth market, and perhaps

just bite off a piece of the population at large, the 40 percent of

people who are under 18, the 10 million or so young people who

have been undereducated over the last 20 years, and set up personal education accounts for them.

It is not hard to do. An example would be $500 per Iraqi under

18 for education. That would capitalize—that would cost about $5

billion to set up and on a renewing basis it would be virtually nothing. That would be—that would also have the additional benefits—

and this is one of the ideas that we really have to keep in mind,

as we are looking at these post-conflict countries is, whenever you

do anything, you have to make sure that it has two or three benefits, because you do not have the time to just do one-offs.

What we see in these post-conflict countries is 100 successful

projects and somehow one signal failure. That is exactly what is

going on. If you read the reports on all the successful things that

we are doing, the country is going south and yet all the projects

are going north. How does that work?

So, in this particular issue, the beauty of setting up these kinds

of accounts is that you capitalize the banking system and the financial services, if you can call it that, in this country at the same

time. You essentially provide money for other economic activities,

such as local loans, which again is something you have to do because it is not going to come from the center. You are just not going

to get—you do not have the infrastructure or the opportunity with

the insurgency to get out there.

Again, would the international community consider front-loading

such an idea if there is, in fact, a period where we need until 2010

to get the production, the oil production, up to the point where it

will produce these kinds of assets? I suspect that would be necessary. I think that is not a big price to pay in light of what it is

costing us per month to be there right now.

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I think it would also give us the opportunity for greater management oversight and greater transparency, which in the transition

is a pretty good idea and a good place for us to spend our time.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Barton. I know that

idea will form a part of our discussion as members ask questions.

Let me proceed to our final set of thoughts: Should the coalition

and the Iraqi Government create a reliable set of indicators of

when and where economic progress has been made? If the coalition

or the Iraqi Government publish regular updates on such figures

as hours of electricity generated per day, gallons of fresh water

supplied, numbers of beds in working hospitals, children in school,

economic activity generally, oil production specifically, unemployment, incidents of violence for various cities and regions, could this

successfully demonstrate progress to the Iraqis and, likewise, to

Americans who are watching all these areas and wanting to know

how much success is being obtained?

Which figures would be the most useful, and could such statistics

be created free from political influence and would they be seen as

credible?

Dr. Crane, would you have a go at that?

Dr. CRANE. Statistics are important, obviously, and, in fact, the

collection and dissemination of timely, accurate statistics is a government function throughout the world. Iraq is no exception. However, I think, sometimes in the past 2 years that we have neglected

the fact that we have, again, attempted to do an end run around

the proper collection of statistics.

Iraq has a very large statistical office. It is called COSIT, or the

Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology.

The directors have graduate degrees in statistics. Unfortunately,

they have not had proper incentives over the past 2 years to really

issue those statistics and collect statistics in a rapid, timely manner. They have, in some sense, seen it more in their interest to

withhold information, to delay the release of information, than to

provide it quickly and accurately.

Consequently, our real focus there is not for us to go ahead and

try to create our own statistical collection techniques outside of the

Iraqi Government, because we are going to leave some day. What

we need to do is, again, focus on creating incentives within the bureaucracy, through bonuses and financial penalties coupled with

performance audits, to improve the quality, quantity, and timeliness of the statistics collected by COSIT.

If any of your staff have an opportunity to look at this new study

that came out by UNDP, it is really quite amazing what they have

done, and COSIT did this study. They, of course, were paid by outsiders in order to do it, but it is the only good view of what the

economic and living standards are in Iraq today.

In my view, a number of the economic indicators, on which the

United States Government has focused, would not sway public

opinion and are really not very helpful for evaluating economic and

political progress in Iraq. In some instances, I think the indicators

have had counterproductive effects.

I think, for example, the focus on spending assistance quickly

has contributed to waste without any noticeable effect on Iraqi public opinion. I remember when the supplemental was passed I kind

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of hit my head and said the size of this supplemental is equal to

the total GDP of Iraq. If you could imagine pumping $11 trillion

into the U.S. economy in 1 year and then withdrawing that the

next year, the economic dislocations are extraordinary. So many

times slower is better.

I also note the focus on the jobs created by infrastructure

projects really does not make a lot of sense. The infrastructure

projects are designed to create, to provide electricity, water. They

are really not designed to make work for short-term job gains.

I also think, sometimes, Congress should think carefully about

its own demands for statistics and evaluations. Some of my colleagues in the government have been requested to attempt to link

things like refurbishment of schools with decline in what is happening in the insurgency or increases in education. You cannot do

that in any country. There just is not the type of linkages between

having a painted wall and how children perform in school.

I think what is important, what Congress could really do, is request much more detailed strategies of how particular assistance

programs are going to help the Iraqi Government improve its abilities. This is one thing I still find sadly lacking in terms of our own

assistance programs. What is it that we are trying to do? What is

the strategy?

Maybe, unsurprisingly, I think opinion polls find that the Iraqis

have a pretty good handle on their own economic situation. In fact,

it is the one area in which Iraqis are fairly optimistic.

Where the message is not getting through is not in terms of how

many megawatt hours of electricity are being generated each

month or oil production or oil exports. The messages not getting

through to Iraqis are twofold: One, that the United States Government is in Iraq to help the Iraqi Government get on its feet and

will then leave. It is surprising the number of Iraqis think that we

want to be there permanently. This is much more important than

any of this economic information.

Second, a message, that I think we have downplayed but really

need to get through, is that the reconstruction of Iraq is the responsibility of the Iraqi people. It is not our country, it is their

country. We are going to give them a leg up to get going, but the

United States is not going to operate and pay for electric power,

water, and utilities going forward. The Iraqis are going to have to

pay for those services themselves, and I think the sooner that we

make this clear in our own assistance programs I think the better

off we will all be.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Barton.

Mr. BARTON. Thank you. I certainly want to second much of what

Keith said and will not repeat that.

We spent quite a lot of time on measuring progress. We produced

a report last year and a followup that was called ‘‘Progress or

Peril’’ and it tried to develop a more integrated model, because we

realized that the way people live their lives is not based on one indicator or even a handful of indicators. It tends to be a series of

indicators across security, economic and social well-being, justice

and reconciliation, and participation, political participation.

We found that we could also do some of the work that Keith was

describing by hiring local Iraqis and we did, in fact, do our survey

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by hiring seven Iraqis to travel around the country, because we

knew we could not. We could not even get the Canadian diplomat,

who we had engaged to train the Iraqis, into the country for several weeks and finally had to do it up in the north.

But when they did get out and spoke to several hundred of their

fellow countrymen, they found that there was a surprising level of

optimism, based on Iraqis knowing that they had some wealth and

the fact that they were looking ahead. I doubt that if we went there

today, that we would see quite the same sort of feeling.

But, nevertheless, measuring progress we believe is absolutely

critical. It is not done in most of these post-conflict settings. If we

went in today to Haiti, for example, people would wonder where on

the track we are. We always seem to be running around in circles

and people say, have we not done this before? And there is an

awful lot about Iraq that is taking that form and shape as well,

right now.

So the advantage of measuring progress is, at the very least, you

have a baseline. So if you know where you started and you are

going in the right direction, then you can see whether you are making progress. Right now what we have is a series of measurements

that say how much we have spent, how many projects we have

completed, and those are basically inputs and outputs and they

have very little to say about impact or whether people—the outcome of this spending or these efforts really matter. So we would

emphasize those particular elements of any measure of progress.

On the second part of this, which is sort of what to do with the

information, we found in Iraq that the people are very hungry for

information. They are starved for information. They have come out

of a period where virtually nothing was trustworthy. What could

you believe? So, consequently, seeing tends to be believing.

But it is also a marketplace where they are hungry consumers

and so we have to increase the kinds of information, the channels

of information. It gets back to something we spoke about here 2

years ago, which is how could we go into a communications situation like this and set up one television network, when we should

have said, how about 27 television networks? Why would we only

have one $50 million contract to one operator that had never done

it before, when there is a huge country and a huge need and for

$500 million we could have been the tidal wave of Iraqi information?

We missed that option. Still have to do that. There is still that

need to explain everything we are doing. We can help the government, as Keith suggested. I think it makes sense for the government to have the capacity to do some of these measures and whatnot. But obviously the people need this information to make wise

choices. They need knowledge about where we think there may be

instability that particular day. They need to know how much electricity they are going to have.

How could you possibly plan your life under the circumstances

that you have right now? How hard is that to do? We have a traffic

report every single day as we drive into this, or if there is a trainline problem or whatever. All of that information is available to us

readily.

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Senator BIDEN. Why are you looking at me when you say ‘‘train’’?

[Laughter.]

Mr. BARTON. We have that kind of option. But I do not see that

being part of our thinking.

Again, we are working with a group of people, political leaders,

who have essentially one model that they know. It is a state-centered model and they are not in this exploding consumer marketplace that has to be addressed. So it is again putting the people

first and figuring out what they need. Information is at the heart

of making wise choices. We cannot possibly deliver the wise choices

for people on an individual basis. This is the only way to do it as

far as I am concerned.

So finally, the last thing I would like to say is that if we do kind

of trust the marketplace more—however you want to categorize it,

because you can say this from the left or the right; it is essentially

the same idea—we have to be prepared—and this is really, I think,

your responsibility—to not punish the results of this, because the

results are going to be like they are everywhere else. It is going to

look a lot like a bell curve and 20 percent of it is going to be successful and 20 percent of it is going to be abject failures, and in

the middle, what we are trying to do in Iraq, as we are trying in

every post-conflict place, is to get the middle to lean toward the

success quite a bit more. Right now the middle is leaning toward

the failing side.

But those 20 percent of failures, which we are going to have, we

cannot spend all of our time worrying about the fact that there is

some lost money, some misdirected programming, that somebody

ran off to London or whatever it happened to be, because from my

way of thinking in these cases it is not as if every bomb that we

drop is a smart bomb. They may be called that, but they do not

always hit the right targets, as we well know. It is the same in

these kinds of cases. There is an awful lot of loss and inefficiency.

But what we are trying to do is to juice up this marketplace and

get it going, and I believe that getting this kind of information,

these sorts of measures, and a much-expanded communications will

help with that.

The CHAIRMAN. I would just observe, Mr. Barton, this is almost

like a keynote address for our hearing. The need for information

in Iraq and in this country is just enormous. As pointed out, you

testified and others did a year ago, 2 years ago, and we are still

working at this. But this is one reason for having these sets of

hearings, because I think maybe my staff is hiding these reports

from me so I do not know what is going on in Iraq and, therefore,

have an irrational urge to ask all of you to penetrate the gloom and

work through the details.

But I suppose there is, in fact, more information. You have mentioned, Dr. Crane, that Iraqis themselves are turning out some statistics, and that is sort of a new idea for me today. Others may understand all that goes on in Iraq now, these people collecting this

information. But at the same time, what meaning it has to anybody, or your reports from your foundation, is an extremely important question. How do you ensure distribution?

So I would just encourage each of you, as you have new reports,

please just send one directly to me and to Senator Biden, because

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we would like to know, and my guess is, so would the other members of our committee.

With that anecdotal reflection, Mr. Mohamedi, would you observe

your thoughts on this?

Mr. MOHAMEDI. I really do not have much to add to my colleagues here, who have done an outstanding job of answering this

question. I think, basically, to reiterate, the metrics that the Iraqi

people are interested in are reduction in actual crime and political

violence, improvement in physical deliveries of public services, and

jobs and income growth. I think that is what they are really looking for.

I think our role also should be in a sense, to communicate sort

of in a sense, a meaning of life issue and not concentrate so much

on leaky faucets, in the sense that we are there to provide fairness

and reconciliation and ultimately the right conditions for a better

future. I think that we missed in providing that message right

after the occupation because of the mishandling in general of the

occupation.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

We will proceed, now, to questions of committee members. We

will have a 10-minute round and, perhaps, an additional one as

members may require that in questions to be asked of any member

of the panel.

I will begin my 10 minutes. After the constitution and the election of the officials, a government exists. There is a budget for this

government now. It is not well-known to any of us, although I suppose, once again, if we did greater research we could try to find out

what the anticipated revenues and expenditures are. One of the

thoughts generally, around the world, is that the oil revenue will

be a large component of governmental revenue, whether it be at

the central government or the provincial governments; and furthermore, that that is a pretty good thing as far as the Iraqis are concerned, given the price of oil increasing.

Without getting into a market forecast, there are many who

would say that there are many governments around the world right

now that may very well profit from $60 a barrel or $70 or $80 as

the case may be. Certainly the Iraqis could, if, in fact, they have

the oil to sell, the sabotage does not occur, the maintenance occurs,

and, in fact, there is a fairly good transparency, with the checks

and balances of democracy, as some of you have pointed out, so

that somehow revenues aid all of the people.

I would just ask, parenthetically, what other sources of revenue

are likely to be useful? Are the concepts of corporation taxes, income taxes, and sales taxes part of the ethos of the country? Granted they are going to be passing their tax bills, with whatever advice we might give as to what system it might be. But I am just

trying to think, how does this government pay for itself, and then

deal with the $10 billion debt service that you mentioned overhangs all of this from the past?

We have raised, from time to time around the country, the question of how debt reduction is going, debt forgiveness? Have we forgotten all about that? Have people given up compassion at this

stage, and are they sort of stuck with that, so that as we pass on

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and they have to run it themselves, they are left with this situation?

Finally, I would just ask for any of you to comment, if you have

not had a chance to, on the suggestion that Mr. Barton made, this

extraordinary idea of wealth-sharing of the oil revenue. Other

countries have thought about this. Norway, for example, has had

a far-sighted program, understanding the oil may not be there forever and it is a national heritage. Mention has been made of our

own State of Alaska. Senator Murkowski touched upon this.

You suggested, Mr. Barton, the perhaps extraordinary idea of

personal accounts for those 18 years and younger, who are 40 percent of the population. It is an intriguing idea. It may not be a part

of the Iraqi ethos, as they take a look at the situation. It may be

a bridge too far, even if it might be good advice from ourselves.

But discuss, all of you, how is the country going to pay for itself

down the trail and retire whatever debt is left over that we have

not thought about? Will oil do it in one form or another, or what

else is going to be required?

Would you start with this, Dr. Crane? Would you have a go at

it?

Dr. CRANE. There has been an Iraqi budget for 2004 and a 2005

budget. They are actually working on a 2006 budget. Unfortunately, last year the budget deficit was 46 percent of GDP.

The CHAIRMAN. 46 percent?

Dr. CRANE. 46 percent. We think ours is large.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Dr. CRANE. And this year it is upward in the 20 percent. This

has been financed, of course, by programs that we have provided

and was also financed by some of the Oil-for-Food moneys that

were available through New York.

The budget, 90 percent and upward of budget revenues come

from oil exports.

The CHAIRMAN. 90 percent?

Dr. CRANE. 90 percent. And it is moving upward to 98 percent.

In addition to that, there is a 5-percent tariff that has been imposed and there are some few other little taxes that go. But it is

primarily oil that provides, covers the budget costs.

This gets into, I guess, two questions. There has been some

pushes—there is an income tax that hits some people and a corporate income tax as well, which is not collected. It is just for joint

stock companies and, as we said before, most people work for themselves.

One of the problems of trying to impose or create a modern tax

system on a country like Iraq is, it creates enormous opportunities

for corruption. In the former Soviet Republics, where I have worked

quite a bit, customs agents are thieves, and people who go into the

business are in it for the bribes.

So, at least for the next 3 or 4 years, it makes a lot more sense

to keep the fiscal side based on oil revenues just to prevent the creation of a typical Middle Eastern bureaucracy, which is out there

to destroy business, to hold people up, to subvert the process of

commerce. In fact, even today if you go up to Dohuk—when I was

there we had trucks lined up 4 days on the border. They would go

through seven individuals, drinking tea, who were waiting for

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bribes to let them through. As anybody who knows anything about

trucking knows, to have your truck driver sitting there for 4 days

on the border is extraordinarily expensive.

So part of the problem I have with using oil funds or having an

allocation to the Iraqi people is that that money is already bespoken for. In fact, there is not enough there, and the Iraqi Government has pretty optimistic views of what the donor community is

going to be doing in 2006, 2007, 2008, to cover planned budget deficits.

In addition, this year, in terms of the budget, we have seen a

dramatic bumping up in terms of the number of individuals who

are employed by the government and at the same time less expenditures on the capital side. So despite the high oil prices, also a

great deal of this oil revenue has gone missing.

Turning to your question about debt forgiveness, Iraq just has

not been servicing its debt. So, although, maybe they owe $10 billion, they have not been paying it. In the IMF agreement of last

year, the Paris Club group has forgiven much of the debt contingent on the Iraqis adhering to that agreement. They have not so

far. They are already out of compliance, and again this goes back

to these very, very large, $7 billion, an extraordinary amount of

money, which is wasted on refined oil product subsidies.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, let me just say just in capsule now, a 46-

percent deficit and that is essentially being paid for by our money

plus a little bit of other international. So, at the time we withdraw

militarily—and we may be withdrawing monetarily—now, you are

saying they sort of understand that down the trail in a way. But

still this is a big chunk of the deficit being paid for by us as a part

of our work on the military-diplomatic side.

Now, sort of secondly, since 96 percent or so of the money comes

from oil to begin with, really you are advocating, maybe wisely, do

not start an internal revenue service there because you will just

simply set up another bureaucracy of corruption and complexity. It

would be much more straightforward, if you get right the oil thing

and it is transparent, to collect the money the old-fashioned way

for the central government, but not enough even if you collect all

of it, and if the prices of oil go up, so that ultimately something

else has to happen in terms of economic gain in the country.

Finally, you have suggested, at one point, $7 billion being spent

in subsidies now, so that they can have nickel gasoline that you

can sell for $5 across the border, and whether, politically, you can

ever remove all this, but still it may be easier than some other situations, that if you finally get that right likewise, with the world

economy and oil, you pay for it domestically what the cost is, too.

The CHAIRMAN. Those are interesting.

Mr. Barton.

Mr. BARTON. I would like to pick up on a number of things you

said. I think one of your last comments, that we cannot prepare to

withdraw monetarily necessarily as early as we can if we ever get

to the military question, is something that we have to consider, because, generally, our military presence does drive our financial contributions, and we may not have exactly that luxury if we want to

see a favorable outcome here.

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On the first issue of sort of money, the money that is going to

come into Iraq basically is oil money and international assistance

and, in a hierarchy, remittances from outside of Iraq. Customs is

really, even though exactly what Keith said is true, it is still one

of those things you can get right. There are places that customs

works around the world and it tends to be a pretty reliable source

of revenue, and there is a lot of action right now to look to.

Then, I think you have to look at taxes that will hold in the context, which will be luxury taxes, probably at hotels and what-not—

there are a lot of those that are being collected informally in some

of these places—the communications that you mentioned earlier.

Look to areas where there is some success and where there are

some transactions taking place, where you can actually see how

many transactions are taking place and you could make those taxable. And then fees are probably the simplest way of doing it.

I do think that this is—cutting subsidies, as you just suggested,

is another good idea. How much, as Keith suggested, is a delicate

matter. But I do not think we have—there has not been a really

good discussion of this. It has been seen as sort of an ideological

debate: Do it, or it is stupid, as opposed to maybe we could do

something and it might help a bit.

I do think that this is another place on the tax issue where

wealth-sharing needs to be considered, because you do not want everything going back to the center. One of the reasons that I like

decentralization in these places is because you are going to have

such uneven performance, and one big Minister or Ministry performing unevenly is a multibillion dollar problem, whereas 17 governors misperforming, basically, hardly ever adds up to a billion.

So you do in a way bring the problem down to scale, which you

have to do, because in a place like Iraq and in most post-conflict

places, the problems are larger than we can imagine. So you are

taking the impossible and making it addressable, as opposed to

taking a problem and logically just making it work.

The second thing on the debt service, we did the original paper

on this issue back in 2003, in the beginning of 2003, and we created this $300 billion number, which we then footnoted like crazy

to suggest, do not take it to the bank but it is the best number we

could come up with. I think that the issue has, as Keith suggested,

has been set aside, but it has not been put to rest.

So the United States has actually been a very constructive player

and I think our Treasury and former Secretary Baker really took

the lead on this issue; took it to the world community, and they

have gotten everybody to agree to sort of an 80-percent buyoff number, 80-percent forgiveness number.

I believe that Saddam’s overhang needs probably the full bankruptcy treatment. If you do not go over 95 percent, you are going

to have a legacy problem which is going to sink Iraq’s Government

when it gets to the point that people start expecting it, something

of it.

What we have done is we have bought time. We have essentially

told all of our allies and everybody else: Let us settle on this number, everybody is going to get something, go away for a few years

until this thing gets cleaned up. That is not exactly a solution. So

I think that is the operative model that we have used so far.

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We have let other things continue. The reparations from the Kuwait war are probably something that should have been shut down.

We happen to be the champions of it. It was a good idea at the

time. It is not a good idea now. How much farther do we let these

things go on? So that the U.N. Compensation Commission, which

we are a big part of, is now near the end of its life. But it has got

multibillions of dollars of payments that are still owed to people as

a result of settlements that came out of that process. That is real

money that is going to slow down the recovery or that we are going

to have to replace with our own contributions.

So I think that the debt issue has a counterinsurgency economic

quality to it as well, which is to let the people of Iraq know that

they are finally free of Saddam and that we, in fact, are on their

side on this issue. So it does fit within that same kind of thematic

idea that we have been trying to develop.

Finally, on the wealth-sharing, there are a lot of people who say

you cannot afford it. That may be the case, but if that is the case

then fronting $5 billion when essentially we are spending that kind

of money on a rather, almost a weekly basis, is not a bad notion

if we believe that it has the potential to capture the imagination

of the Iraqi people. There is a political cost. How can the people

of the world be expected to give money to a country that has oil?

But what we are trying to do is to figure out a way to have this

thing end satisfactorily, and that is why I think it is worth doing.

I think that Keith’s concern that it is not affordable diminishes

if, in fact, we could stabilize the oil issue and get to 2010 with

probably $50 oil. Most experts are not suggesting it is going to drop

dramatically in the near future. And we are probably looking at 4

million barrels a day by 2010. That is more than twice the present

production. So there might be some liquidity in there. If there is

an objection to fronting the money, maybe we create the loan fund

that does it and then we expect some sort of payback over 5 or 10

years.

That is not impossible in this case. I think it would be a very

good investment and I think it is possible to do it. Right now, as

we take it, there is about $30 billion of net, is what oil produces

after its own domestic consumption in the country. So it is not a

bad pool to look at.

Those are just some points to your questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, that is really tremendous testimony. I

think we are faced with the practical thought that, at some point,

we might be successful in stopping the insurgency, the Iraqis may

adopt a constitution, they may elect people, may have some degree

of confidence in what they are doing, and suddenly they will have

46 percent of their budget that is not there, and all the debt. As

you say, we made these agreements, but the issue has not quite

been put to rest. If we leave before it is put to rest and we move

on to some other topic, and here these folks are left, and we have

congratulated them on democracy and on a remarkable turnaround, but they are bankrupt year after year, there might be no

possibility of this thing making it.

This is why it seems to me this hearing or these questions are

tremendously important for anybody interested in the future of the

country, because they will not go away. Somebody has to be paid.

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The legacy of Saddam, as you say, has to be addressed and even

the legacy of these payments to Kuwait, which are a delicate matter, but very important to bring up.

Yet life goes on for the Iraqis and everybody else who is involved,

without much discussion. So I hope we can encapsulate each of the

ideas that you are bringing to the fore in some report from our

committee that we can share with others, who I think really need

to be thinking about this agenda even as we have been privileged

to this morning.

With the indulgence of my colleague, I will ask Mr. Mohamedi

for his thoughts and then I will turn to my colleague.

Mr. MOHAMEDI. I think that building nonoil revenues is essential

for the long-term economic development of Iraq. I have seen so

many Middle Eastern oil-producing, and Asian oil-producing, and

Latin American oil-producing, countries that got hooked into the oil

trap. We know all the issues around that. So I think it is very important we have an opportunity right now to develop nonoil, a system to capture nonoil revenues.

I will get into that in a little bit. But I just want to get back to

oil revenues. I disagree with this issue of fracturing oil revenues

or partitioning it off between federal or central, provincial, and people. I think that will lead—especially if you divide it in an automatic formula between central and provincial, you will get a Nigeria situation. In Nigeria the politics has organized itself, the subregional politics, to capture national rents. So you have got this

constant fracturing that is going on and constant strife looking for

that.

I think that the issue of dividing that oil revenue should be done

on the central level through a political—democratic political process.

On the issue of sending some part of that revenue stream to the

people directly, I think in a sense, it is an attractive idea. I do

agree with the issue that there is not enough money right now. But

there could be revenue streams coming in, in the future, from future oil production growth and future royalties and taxes that foreign companies could be paying in. And I think that would be an

idea, that if some of it goes off to individuals or families in Iraq

that could help with national buy-in. It would help with the idea

of foreign direct investment. And if you then attach an income tax

to that, you could possibly create the basis of rolls—of tax rolls—

because people would be getting something and then they will be

deducting it. So that could be the future of an income tax system,

which in a sense, I think, would be good for the future of the country.

Finally, the foreign investment that will come in from the oil sector has two components to it. One, it will be, we think, and if this

is done correctly and without corruption, that there will be things

like signature bonuses, which can be put into a major development

fund which can fund development projects in the nonoil sector.

Hopefully they will not end up in the pockets of leaders or Ministers or whatever and transferred to Switzerland.

The other part will be taxes and royalties that will be coming in

and that will enhance government oil revenues in the future. There

is quite a bit of money there if you think that in say 20 years this

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country could be producing 6 million barrels a day. I think it is a

bit premature to expect that we will be producing—Iraq will be

producing—4 million by 2010. I think that we just do not have the

time to do that on a political level and just the pure physical level

of investment.

Finally, I think that if Iraq is to integrate back into the international capital markets, which will be an important source of

long-term development finance, as you said, we really have to resolve this, the debt issue. I think the quicker it is resolved, Iraq

could come back and be a responsible borrower on the international

markets.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir.

Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your testimony. This all has sort of an Alice in Wonderland quality to it to

me. It sounds like I am being facetious. I am not. Senator Lugar

used the phrase in another context ‘‘a bridge too far.’’ With the significant number of mistakes we have made the last 2 years and the

failure in my view to learn from them, this is getting to be a bridge

pretty far.

When you were here, Mr. Barton, you were here with Mr. Hamre

and the Hamre report. You talked about the window closing and

the window would close by that fall, a year ago. I still think we can

salvage success. But boy, it is getting harder.

We are talking about long-term financial and budgetary opportunities and constraints for a functioning government in Iraq down

the road. We are talking 2010. Pray God that is our problem in

2010.

I have difficulty, especially every time I come back from Iraq,

avoiding the mistake—and sometimes it is a mistake—of connecting directly our economic input and impact with political and

security outcomes.

Now, Mr. Crane, you have been very articulate. You take a long

view and a pessimistic view, which is—I mean, I am not criticizing

either. I am just observing, at least, how it comes across to me.

And you make the case, as well as Mr. Barton. We have to—and

I have made the same speech a year ago—we have to have a better

benchmark to determine what constitutes impact.

We say we are going to build or help open x number of schools,

or we are going to pump y barrels of oil, or whatever—not we; they.

And whether or not we do that does not tell us much about whether or not the impact is what we hope and intend. What is the impact we are trying to have? The impact we are trying to have is

to impact on the possibility of developing a stable government

where everybody feels, every major constituency feels, they have a

stake in the outcome, if not a democracy, that has the capacity to

function.

That is as good as it gets for me. I know we talk about democracy. Hopefully, I am wrong, but probably not in my lifetime anything we consider, I consider a liberal democracy.

So I find myself coming back and being seized, Dr. Crane, with

the notion that, which you have said would not be a popular notion—it may or may not be—but CERP funds, because I sit there

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with a commanding general who flips up on a screen a Powerpoint

presentation that shows—and I take him at his word—shows that

we had x number of attacks on his forces in the following, in a certain grid here; when he took the literally, not figuratively, foot and

a half of sewage off the front streets and literally piles of garbage

12 to 14 feet high and cleared them, subsequently the following 4

months he had no attacks on his forces in that spot; and where you

actually had the street cleaned—and this happened to be in this

one instance I am telling you in Sadr City—when you had the

street cleaned, when people were able to walk out to the equivalent

of the corner grocery store, they had informants telling them: By

the way, around the corner there are some jihadists; around the

corner there are some insurgents. And it has changed the safety

and security of not only the people on the ground who live there,

but our forces.

Now, I have a tendency to extrapolate from that, and I acknowledge in a model you may flip up it does not follow, that it is the

only place I have seen—and again, I have only been there five

times—it is the only place I have seen a correlation between an investment and an outcome.

When Senator Lugar and I were there early on, one of the things

that became very apparent to us—I speak for myself; I think he

agrees, but I do not want to put words in his mouth—is that any

nation that could take down Saddam Hussein as swiftly and as

surely as we did, obviously can get the electric running 24 hours

a day immediately, obviously can provide potable water for everybody, obviously ought to be able to make the streets safe.

So I acknowledge we suffer from an expectation game here, that

the expectations appear to me to be unrealistically high for what

we had the capacity to do, no matter how well we did it. But the

failure to come close to meeting expectations I think has—this is

the plain old politician—a dramatic impact on the willingness of

people to essentially place their bet on the government as it is

emerging and place their bet on us being a positive force.

Which is a long way of leading me to what I keep coming back

to, Mr. Barton, what I think is a central problem today and a significant mistake we made, but I think is correctable still, and I

want to address that. That is what you have all said in one way

or another, access to information by Iraqis, by the people.

To this day, to the best of my knowledge we have not broadcast

widely that we do not expect to remain permanently in Iraq, have

permanent bases. Now, I may be wrong about that. Maybe we have

stated that as a policy. But I do not think anybody in the region

thinks it or knows it.

I do not think, from my observation—the first time we were

there and we were flipping, there’s channels like VH–1 on television. Who would listen to it except somebody who’s watch a test

pattern on a TV tube? It was so absolutely boring, uninformative,

sporadic.

So my question is this. Is it possible—excuse me. Why is it not

still possible for us to move from the single model that is a failure,

in my view, to the model of—facetiously you said 100—to 20, to 50?

Is that beyond our reach? Is there no ability to go back and sort

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of repair that, to change or produce or encourage or whatever more

outlets for information in the country?

That is my first question: Is it too late? Yes, you, Mr. Barton.

Mr. BARTON. Who knows if it is too late, but I think it is still

worth doing, because as long as you are spending multibillion dollars a month in the place you are obviously making a serious effort

at trying to change the environment the way you want to.

I happen to believe it is absolutely central to our moving ahead.

Now, I would say that if you were to put a billion dollars on the

table and say, we would entertain anything from new television

networks to cable systems to bloggers to Internet stations, and we

would just like to see what the universe of responses might look

like, you would be overwhelmed. You would have more than you

have the resumes, when you put a job on the market in your office,

I can assure you of that.

So there would be a wide series of plays, and it should go everywhere from Disney down to 12 teenagers who have a good idea on

how to reach these folks. So I would say that opportunity is there

still. I think—but again, you have got to encourage the entrepreneurial side. You have got to make sure that it has the Iraqi play

in it, which I think you will get a huge Iraqi play. It is a very

young market.

What was the first thing we heard? Everybody got satellite

dishes. What is the second thing we heard? Everybody has gotten

cell phones, even though we were trying to control that market. So

the market has taken off without us and we are still trying to do

this corraling effect: Let us control it, let us set the rules for how

you put on a station.

When we had our very first conversations with the people who

were running this TV station in Baghdad, the operation that we

were setting up, you know what their concern was at that time?

They are getting too independent; those newscasters that we set up

are actually saying things that may be news. Their first notion

was: Shut them down.

We said: What, are you nuts? Start five more stations or five

more news operations. Do not even think about shutting them

down. That is so anti-American in its core concept. Why would you

want to be associated with that idea?

So I firmly believe that there is still an opportunity. There is

clearly an opportunity in the region. There is clearly an opportunity. One of the suggestions we made to Jerry Bremer was: Hire

a thousand unemployed Iraqi students—not hard to find. Give

them cameras, send them out to record what is going on in their

country every day, and then all you have got to do is have a little

editing shop that runs fresh cuts of what is happening, good news,

bad news, all day long. People are interested. It will be like C–

SPAN. There is going to be an audience for it.

So there are lots of ideas there. Every one of these ideas is in

place, somewhere in the world, a thousand times by now. It is not

just America, it is not just in South Bend. People have started their

own little communications systems everywhere, and we could definitely make that thrive.

Again, I believe it would be hugely counterinsurgent. There will

be the fear that maybe the insurgents will use it. Guess what, they

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are figuring out how to do everything already much faster than we

are doing it. So we have got to—we are not going to control their

marketplace. We have to overwhelm their marketplace, and that is

why I like the tidal wave concept here.

Senator BIDEN. Well, I happen to agree with you. By the way,

those satellite dishes pick up Al-Jazeera and pick up everything

else. It is not like they are picking up pro-Western or progovernment or prodemocratic forces and voices. It is not like there is a

plethora of those out there. I think you are right, I think we take

our chances.

I realize my time is up, Mr. Chairman, but if I may, with your

permission, ask one more question.

I am at a loss as to why, to use maybe an unfair slang expression, why we cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. I am

at a loss as to why we cannot, Dr. Crane, focus on the significant

longer term necessary institutional changes that are required, including projects that are required, whether they are a tertiary sewage treatment plant for Baghdad or whether it is a long-term plan

to be able to invest in the oil wells so their maximum production

capacity is able to be met down the road.

At the same time, it seems to me the incredible amounts of

money we are expending, why we do not adopt the notion—and I

think most of us on this committee have adopted it—as Mr. Barton

says, 20 percent of the money we are going to invest there is going

to be an absolute total abject waste.

You know, there used to be a professor at the Wharton School—

I did not go to the Wharton School, but I am told by my friend,

Ted Coughlin, who went there. He said his professor used to quote

John Wanamaker, the retailer. He said: You know, I know that 50

percent of my advertising is a waste of time; my problem is I do

not know which 50 percent.

If we do not approach this investment policy and reconstruction

policy in Iraq with a similar frame of mind, I do not know how we

get anywhere. We cannot manage our own economy all that well,

let alone something that we are taking from 30 years of shambles

in the middle of an ongoing war. So I guess what I am driving at

here is, I do not know why we cannot, for example, rhetorical question: Why did we not take advantage of the British suggestion of

the European Union providing experts to essentially adopt an agency, to actually bring in people like you, Dr. Crane, from Europe

who knew what they were talking about, who were able to have a

concrete input and working with the Iraqis in each of the Ministries, and actually try to use a civilian input to help them get

them up and running?

Maybe it is because it takes too much organizational skill to do

it but we decided it was not worth doing. I do not know, but it confuses me why we did not.

So I will end with this, and I am not asking you to respond now,

but for the record if you are willing, or even give me a call and sit

with me in my office, what are the practical, small-bore things that

we can be doing now in a society, sir, that I think is still significantly tribal in structure?

I mean, I do not get why we do not walk into some of the medium-sized cities and towns in the country and say to the local, in

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effect—and I realize it is misleading to use this kind of terminology

because people have a different image—the local leader and say:

Here, build this dirt road from point A to point B.

We sat in a—it was a moment I had some hope, and I promise

I will end with this. A moment I had some hope. Senator Lugar

and I and as well as our friend, Senator Hagel—and this is how

much things have changed in terms of security as well—got in a

car, drove out to a mosque that had been partially bombed out, in

a neighborhood that—on the fringe of two neighborhoods, one of

which I am guessing had the equivalent of 2,000 homes in the

neighborhood identified and another neighborhood of almost equal

size, and it, to my recollection, seemed to be essentially on the border, ‘‘the border’’ meaning the line, the street line, all within Baghdad.

I witnessed a remarkable thing. You had a very bright young

lieutenant, American, in uniform, standing at the bottom of the

stage with two people setting up, two tables at angles up on what

looked like a high school gymnasium stage, and somewhere between, my recollection is, 20, 30, 40 community leaders, whether

they were leaders in the sense that they were the best-known guy

on their block or not.

They were talking about—I remember the one example. We were

running a water line and the question was they were debating as

to whether or not there was enough PCV pipe that was going to

be available when it hit the road that separated the neighborhoods,

whether they could get the water into the next neighborhood.

They were actually having a town meeting about it. And I

thought, wow. And this young lieutenant was so impressive. He

was sitting there saying: Now look, you got to do this and you guys

do this; we will get you this. And they were making their decisions.

But it was about simple things: Can you turn the spigot and

water come out? So I cannot figure out how we get those small-bore

projects. If it is 117 degrees, if, in fact, there is sewage in my front

yard, if, in fact, there is no prospect for the air-conditioning to be

able to be on more than 6 to 8 hours a day, and my two sons do

not have a job and I do not have one, you got a problem.

So a famous Senator who served on this committee once said:

Maybe we need a bunch of mayors over there with a little bit of

walking-around money, in the best sense of that word, some of

which will be wasted.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is: Why can we not do what

are those things that are going to have the kind of immediate impact that politicians need to be able to generate consensus, to be

able to govern, that they need?

I am finished and if you want to comment, fine. But you do not

need to. We have held you very long already.

Dr. CRANE. I do not disagree with all that you have said, but I

think one of the mistakes we have made, we have tried to do too

many end runs in Iraq. And it is not our purpose to have the Iraqis

like us. It is our purpose to have the Iraqis look at their government as legitimate. I think all too often what we have ended up

doing is we have been focused on making ourselves look good rather than trying to figure out how to make the government at all

levels——

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Senator BIDEN. Now I see what you are saying. I did not understand. That was part of your point before. I do not disagree with

that.

Dr. CRANE. I think Major General Chiarelli’s program in Sadr

City was excellent, but it was not all CERP funds. He, himself,

says it was Office of Transition Initiatives, and it was linked together. One of the things when I talked to him was that, about garbage pickup, he did not hire people for 6 weeks and lay them off

after the garbage was done. He actually contracted it out to local

businesses, and that became a service that they were held accountable for that was turned over to the municipality.

It is precisely these things that get us out of the picture. We do

not want us to be the contractors. We want the Iraqi Government

to get those skills.

Senator BIDEN. Can I pursue that with you just a second?

Dr. CRANE. Sure.

Senator BIDEN. Chiarelli, when I spoke to him—you are exactly

right and you know more about it than I do. But when I spoke to

him he raised the specter, had he not had the ability to have that

startup money and had he sat there, there would be no initiative,

either from the CPA at the time or from the local governance entity. But what he was able to do is what Webster is trying to do now

with the 2nd I.D., is trying to build on that.

So we are saying the same thing. I misunderstood you. The idea

of going out and sinking a well, which may be needed, and then

walking away without figuring out who controls the well, how there

is access to the well, the local governance entity being able to have

some impact on that—one of my problems here is that we seem—

it is my problem with the contracting generally on a larger scale.

The contracting generally on a larger scale seems to take the Iraqis

out of the equation in terms of—look, there are some really competent Iraqi contractors. There are competent Iraqi businessmen.

Now, granted I do not know enough to know, because we had the

de-Ba’thification problem, how many of the competent people were

the people who were on the take or part of the deal and were the

bad guys. Do you follow me? But it seems to me one of the reasons

I am anxious for our new Ambassador to get up and running, I

think he gets what you are saying. I think he gets it.

You just clarified something for me. I misunderstood, doctor,

about what you were saying. I agree, there has got to be a mechanism for handoff to make this thing permanent.

Dr. CRANE. One last point here. It is not how much, it is how.

I think I am a little bit disturbed with people who just say, go out,

spread the money around. One of the real disappointments for me

in Iraq was, as I was saying, that what you want to do is you want

to go out there and make sure every single contract is competitively bid, so these Iraqi companies, they know that finally life has

changed. It is no longer who you know, it is no longer that life is

rigged against you.

Some of the concerns I have had in terms of spending—and this

goes to CERP funds. I think CERP funds have been great. I think

$3 billion is probably too much of a good thing. But I have also

seen this in terms of shortcuts in contracting. It is extraordinarily

important to have everybody know this is as clean a bid as it can

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be, and then people have confidence that life is different, and then

you see a startup of contractors, entrepreneurs.

Senator BIDEN. Do you think we could do that in a timely way?

Dr. CRANE. Yes.

Senator BIDEN. In other words, I happen to agree with you again.

I think we could. I do not think it necessarily slows the process so

the sewage sits in the front street a year longer. It may sit on the

front lawn another 2 days or 3 weeks. But the idea that we cannot

competitively bid this in country I think is—I do not think that is

accurate.

Dr. CRANE. It speeds it up. It will speed it up.

Senator BIDEN. I am sorry to go so long.

Mr. BARTON. Just a couple quick responses. This period now, because it is so fragile, tends to be—the microeconomics tend to be

more important than the macroeconomics. You have got to get

through the microperiod to get to the macro. It does not mean that

you are not walking and chewing gum at the same time, but do not

expect that your macroactivities are really going to produce anything that is going to be felt in this most immediate moment.

So I think that I also want to just reinforce what Keith said, that

the process is really the product. What we are talking about here

is change. The status quo ante does not work in a place like Iraq.

If we go back to the way things were, I do not think many people

will think that that was a significant success.

So change is really the central concept here. So you have to have,

when you go to these local initiatives—and I do believe that we

have lots of agents. I think that if you did have a thousand flowers

blooming strategy in Iraq you would have lots of people that are

out there ready to go, but they have not had liquidity.

The liquidity has been more—the little liquidity that we have

had has been in our control and we have not trusted these people

to have really some money to actually fix a pothole yourself. So I

think that side is still a huge opportunity that exists, whether it

is a women’s center or a local governing council or whatever, as we

spoke about earlier.

But then you are going to have to get to critical mass, and that

is sort of how do you connect this thing so it is not just a thousand

points of light that are all flickering, but it actually comes together

and means something. I think one way you do it is you get enough

of it going on, which is essentially what you were saying regarding

sort of the Great Society or the post-riot period or whatever, the

implementation of some of those programs.

I think liquidity here is terribly important, terribly important. If

you look at the U.S. Government, the CERP funds, OTI, and AID,

there are not a lot of places that you have liquidity where somebody can actually go in and put the money to the problem and to

the potential, as opposed to: I have got AIDS money, I have got

child vaccination money, I have got education money.

Let people be—the beauty of walking-around money is that it can

solve the problem rather than your bringing your prescription to

what exists in the place.

Senator BIDEN. One of the reasons for my observation, and it

may be unfair—I am not making this judgment; I am just making

this observation. One of the reasons I think that CERP funds have

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become so attractive is there is such a, rightly or wrongly, dissatisfaction with our contracting, no-bid contracting methods here,

and the billions of dollars we are spending with American companies in the lead. I am not making a political—I am not doing this

demagoguing stuff that big companies—I am not saying that.

But that is the perception. That is the perception that I think is

fairly widely held. So part of this frustration, doctor, part of this

frustration for guys like me saying, well, I would rather Chiarelli

have the money than I would be focusing it in on the programs

where we are finding out we are spending 40 to 45 percent of it

on security and they are hiring private security guards.

Anyway, I thank you guys very, very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate your testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a comment, Mr. Mohamedi?

Mr. MOHAMEDI. One quick comment, and that is that you talked

about tribes and using tribal leaders to do local work. I think if you

need to get a little job done I think that is not a bad idea. But I

do not think that Iraqis are multidimensional. The tribal affiliation

is one aspect of their identity. It is a much more complex situation.

The other thing is that if you create those type of linkages and

demote the national government and bureaucracy and effective bureaucracy, I think you are contributing to fracturing and creating

local elites and all of that.

Senator BIDEN. I think that is a legitimate point. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Biden.

We thank you, gentlemen, for a very, very thoughtful contribution, which we have cherished and which we are hopeful will be

spread among those who will read the hearing reports and other

summaries we may make of it. But we thank you for working with

us. We may, in fact, have more hearings in due course, so please

stay closely in touch.

Saying this, why, the hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:19 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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