Iraq: Foreign Contributions to Stabilization and Reconstruction
Released: 2007-12-26T00:00:00

Overview

Securing foreign contributions to the military effort in Iraq, and the follow-on stabilization and reconstruction effort, has been a major priority for U.S. policymakers since before the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003. International participation has been sought to support the initial major combat operations, the follow-on stabilization operations, the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, and the provision of financial support to reconstruction efforts.

For many countries, the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1511 on October 6, 2003, marked an important milestone in establishing the legitimacy of the post-war international presence in Iraq. Resolution 1511 authorized a multinational force under unified (interpreted as U.S.) command to assist Iraqis in securing their country and in training their security forces. Security Council Resolution 1546 of June 8, 2004 reaffirmed this authorization and established the current U.N. mandate under which the U.S.-led multinational force is responsible for "[contributing] to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq." That mandate has since been extended for twelve month periods by Resolution 1637 (November 11, 2005), Resolution 1723 (November 28, 2006), and Resolution 1790 (December 18, 2007).

On November 26, 2007, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Bush signed a "Declaration of Principles," expressing the decisions of both governments to work, by July 2008, to codify a long-term bilateral "strategic framework agreement" intended to replace the current U.N. mandate. The roles of U.S. and coalition forces in combat operations and the training of Iraqi security forces are likely to be key topics in the strategic framework negotiations. In particular, most observers agree that training is one of the activities most likely to be continued under any continuing U.S. or coalition presence in Iraq. The outcome of the U.S.-Iraqi negotiations is likely to shape the size, structure, and focus of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Any changes to the U.S. mission, and any new Iraqi government positions concerning the roles of coalition forces, could easily affect both the need for and the perceived legitimacy of, foreign contributions to stabilization operations and training efforts.

This report characterizes foreign contributions to Iraq in terms of personnel and resources, including trends over time, based on best-available information. The first section addresses financial contributions, including pledged grants and loans, and related debt relief. The second section describes troop contributions to the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I). The third section addresses contributions to the Iraqi security forces training effort. These sections are followed by a detailed chart that includes both financial and personnel contributions, and by a chronology of significant coalition-related events. The report will be updated as events warrant.

Financial Contributions2

In October 2003, the World Bank and United Nations Development Group (UNDG), in conjunction with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), estimated that the potential cost of Iraqi reconstruction needs would amount to $55 billion over a four year period from 2003 through 2007. This figure reflected the sum total of a joint World Bank/UNDG needs assessment of 14 sectors of the Iraqi government and economy—$36 billion—combined with a $19.4 billion Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) projection for security, oil, and other sectors not covered by the World Bank/UNDG assessment. These amounts, calculated in mid-2003, did not take into account the significant costs created by the instability and security disruptions that have occurred since that time.

Shortly after the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1511 in October 2003, an international donors' conference for Iraq was held in Madrid, Spain. At that event, members of the international community, excluding the United States, pledged approximately $13.5 billion for reconstruction assistance to Iraq, including roughly $10 billion in loan pledges. As of October 2007, roughly $2.9 billion in additional pledges had been made, bringing the pledge total to approximately $16.4 billion. Loan pledges represent $10.8 billion of this total, and Iraq has accepted $2.2 billion in pledged loan assistance to date. Of the $5.6 billion pledged for grants, Iraq has received $4.8 billion.

According to the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq, $1.766 billion of the pledged assistance has been channeled to the World Bank Iraq Trust Fund and UNDG Iraq Trust Fund. The UNDG Fund had committed close to $800 million for planned projects by the end of October 2007. To date, the United States Congress has appropriated nearly $43 billion for reconstruction programs in Iraq.

Many observers credit persistent security problems and Iraqi government capacity deficiencies for the slow rate at which pledged international assistance has been committed and disbursed. Iraq's Ministry of Planning has established a Donor Assistance Database "to record donor assistance, analyze donor activities, and monitor the implementation of donor-funded projects." Iraq also has pursued debt relief through negotiations with members of the Paris Club as well as in the context of the International Compact with Iraq (ICI), which was launched at a summit in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, on May 3, 2007. As of December 2006, Iraq's government owed its international creditors $89 billion. During 2007, roughly $28.9 billion in further loan forgiveness has been pledged.

Multi-National Force Contributions

Four countries participated directly and openly in the major combat phase of operations in Iraq: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland. Dozens of other coalition partners sent troops to Iraq in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations, and total troop contribution numbers reached their zenith in the early stabilization phase. The U.S.-led military command in Iraq has been known since May 2004 as the Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), and is headed by U.S. Gen. David Petraeus.

More recently, coalition troop contribution numbers have experienced an overall decline. Some countries have withdrawn their contingents altogether, while others—in a common pattern—have withdrawn the bulk of their contingent, leaving a relatively small number of staff officers at headquarters within MNF-I.

Major Contributors

The United States remains the largest overall contributor of forces to MNF-I, with 161, 783 pairs of "boots on the ground" as of December 1, 2007. That number reflects the beginning of the drawdown of "surge" forces, beginning with the December 2007 redeployment of the 3 rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1 st Cavalry Division from Diyala province. Overall U.S. troop levels in Iraqi have varied over time, based on operational requirements, and included a peak of about 250,000 during major combat operations, and a post-major combat peak of about 168,000 in October 2007, reflecting the full "surge" force.

Currently, the largest non-U.S. troop contributors to MNF-I are the United Kingdom, Georgia, Australia, South Korea, and Poland. All of these countries' major deployments are currently in some state of flux:

The United Kingdom, under the leadership of new Prime Minister [author name scrubbed] since June 2007, is in the process of drawing down from a force of about 5,500 last summer, to 2,500 by spring 2008. Beginning in March 2007, Georgia increased its forces in Iraq from 850 to 2,000. Georgia will hold early presidential elections in January 2008, in a heated domestic political climate, and the results are likely to have a major impact on the future of the Georgian deployment. In November 2007, Australians elected a new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who had campaigned on plans to withdraw Australia's roughly 500-person "combat force" from Iraq by mid-2008. Some reports suggest that an Australian withdrawal decision, when made, may not affect approximately 1,000 Australian personnel involved with training, logistics and headquarters staffing in Iraq, and with maritime security operations in the northern Persian Gulf. In late October 2007, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun announced a government decision to extend the deployment mandate for another year but to draw down the force from 1,200 to 600; South Korea holds presidential elections on December 19, 2007 and the Iraq deployment has been a key issue in the debates. In November 2007, in his first address to parliament, new Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that his goal is to withdraw Poland's contingent from Iraq—in consultation with coalition partners—by the end of 2008.

Ultimately, foreign government decisions to send forces to Iraq, or to redeploy them, may rest on a number of factors including the overall security situation; the domestic political environment in a donor country; legal restrictions these countries face in deploying troops in Iraq; the potential for foreign companies to invest in Iraq's economy; and bilateral arrangements between the United States and possible donors.

Number of Coalition Troops on the Ground

Public discussions about the extent of the coalition force presence in Iraq have been marked by some confusion. There are several reasons for the apparent discrepancies.

The actual number of troops on the ground is constantly in flux, in several ways: a troop-contributing country may decide to change the size of its contingent and/or the kinds of units deployed; the size of a contingent may change slightly at regularly scheduled unit rotations; and contingent size may vary to some degree based on individual situations such as injury or illness.

Countries may deploy troops to Iraq to one of several different organizations: the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I); the NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I); or the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). Further, some countries, such as Japan and Singapore, deploy troops that directly support MNF-I but are based outside Iraq (see below).

The U.S. Department of Defense, which maintains regularly updated records of troop levels in Iraq, maintains those records in classified format. This is so because some troop-contributing countries do not wish to be publicly identified, and other troop contributors do not wish the details of their contribution to be known. In the absence of authoritative, consolidated, detailed information from the Department of Defense, most public information about specific troop levels in Iraq seems to originate from the respective troop-contributing countries.

The Department of Defense does make available to the Department of State the total number of coalition troops, and an unclassified list of troop-contributing countries (without individual country troop levels), for inclusion in the State Department's publicly available Iraq Weekly Status Reports. According to the December 12, 2007, Status Report, 26 countries, excluding the United States, currently are contributing a total of about 11,586 troops to MNF-I.

Coalition Fatalities

As of December 13, 2007, 307 coalition fatalities, other than the United States, had been reported: United Kingdom 174; Italy 33; Poland 23; Ukraine 18; Bulgaria 13; Spain 11; Denmark 7; El Salvador 5; Slovakia 4; Latvia 3; Romania 3; Thailand 2; Australia 2; Netherlands 2; Estonia 2; South Korea 1; Czech Republic 1; Kazakhstan 1; Hungary 1; Georgia 1.

Training Contributions

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, coalition forces in Iraq have made contributions to efforts to train and equip Iraqi security forces.

Most pre-war planning assumed that at the end of major combat, Iraqi police forces would be available to help provide security, and some Iraqi military forces would be available for recall. Instead, members of local police forces largely "went to ground" and disappeared. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the executive authority for Iraq at the time, dissolved all Iraqi military services. Initial development of new Iraqi police and military forces took place under CPA auspices. Meanwhile, in September 2003, as a stop-gap measure, coalition forces, by CPA direction, launched the formation of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a "security and emergency service agency for Iraq."

Multi-National Security Training Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I)

On May 11, 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 36 assigned the mission of organizing, training, mentoring and equipping all of Iraq's security forces to U.S. Central Command, which created the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) to bring together all Iraqi security forces training under a single lead. Today, MNSTC-I, under the leadership of U.S. Lieutenant General (LTG) James Dubik, maintains dedicated teams to train and mentor all of the Iraqi military services and police services, as well as the Ministries of Interior and Defense.

A variety of training initiatives have been undertaken by MNSTC-I that have involved various coalition partners working in concert with U.S. forces, Iraqi officials, and trainees. The training initiatives with the largest international components are those designed to train Iraqi police at locations in Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Iraq (see below). Police instructors from Jordan, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Austria, Iraq, Finland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Singapore, and Belgium participate in various aspects of the police training programs. Initiatives by individual coalition members have included, for example, the Royal Australian Navy's efforts to train Iraq's Coastal Defense Force, and training programs for Iraqi security personnel directed by the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

Since December 2004, the MNSTC-I Commander has been dual-hatted as the commander of the NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I, see below).

NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I)24

Efforts to enlist NATO support for the training of Iraqi security forces coalesced over the summer and fall of 2004. At the request of the Iraqi Interim Government, NATO member countries approved the creation of a security force training mission at the Istanbul summit in June 2004. The first personnel of the NATO Training Implementation Mission (NTIM, the mission's original name) arrived in Baghdad in early August 2004 and worked to identify training opportunities for Iraqi security officials, to train individuals and support staff at the headquarters of Iraq's security forces, and to develop an action plan for a full NATO-supported training program. Under the auspices of NTIM, a small number of Iraqi military officers underwent training at a NATO facility in Stavanger, Norway. Roughly 60 military personnel from Canada, Hungary, Norway, the Netherlands, and Italy participated in the initial NTIM.

Based on the recommendations of the initial NATO mission staff, plans to expand the training program were considered and approved by NATO leaders in the fall of 2004. The North Atlantic Council issued the activation order implementing the expansion and renaming the effort as the NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I) on December 16. Under the approved expansion, the size of the NATO training mission in Iraq grew from 60 to 300 personnel.

Over time, the Mission has shifted its primary focus from training to advising and mentoring Iraqi counterparts. A key current initiative is helping the Iraqi armed forces develop a Non-Commissioned Officer corps.

NTM-I's Training Equipment and Synchronization Cell (TESC) works with the Iraqi Ministry of Defense to evaluate equipment requirements, and out-of-country training requirements, and then coordinates these efforts with donor nations. To date, over 1,000 Iraqi personnel have received out-of-country training in NATO countries.

NTM-I works closely with the Iraqi Training and Doctrine Command, which oversees both tactical training and classroom education through Iraq's new National Defense University and its various colleges and programs. Those include the National Defense College, similar to senior service schools in the United States; the Defense Language Institute, which trains both military personnel and English-language instructors who work with the military; the Joint Staff College at Ar Rustamiyah, which, like the U.S. Joint Forces Staff College, runs programs for junior and senior officers, and which was re-established with strong NTM-I support in 2005; and the Iraqi Military Academies.

At a NATO meeting on February 22, 2005, all 26 NATO member agreed to contribute troops, financing, or equipment to support NTM-I. As of October 2007, 16 countries including the United States had personnel assigned to NTM-I: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Some NATO members (France, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Luxembourg, Germany), reluctant to send troops to Iraq, are providing material support or training support outside Iraq. Some of this support is being provided outside of the NTM-I framework (see " Other Training Contributions ," and Table 1 , below.)

Other Training Contributions

Other countries including Germany, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan (see below) have committed funding, personnel, and facilities for the training of Iraqi security forces on a bilateral or multilateral basis.

Jordan – Jordan has hosted the largest effort to train Iraqi police officers at its International Police Training Center in Muwaqqar, east of Amman. As of February 2007, the U.S.-funded and Jordanian-hosted program had trained over 50,000 police in firearms use, self-defense, and crowd control. The Jordanian military also has trained over 1,500 Iraqi army officers at its Zarqa Military College, along with a small group of Iraqi air force pilots and engineers. Germany/Japan/United Arab Emirates – Although Germany has declined to send training personnel to Iraq as part of NTM-I, the German government, in cooperation with Japan and the United Arab Emirates, has trained Iraqi police officers in crime scene exploitation and police methodology since late 2003. Officials from Japan, the Emirates' police forces, and Germany's Bundeskriminalamt, (federal criminal investigation office), have jointly administered the training program, which is based in the UAE. In December 2004, German officials announced that they would expand another UAE-based program that has trained Iraqi military drivers and mechanics to use and service surplus German military trucks. Egypt – In late 2004 an Iraqi infantry company was invited to Egypt to participate in a joint training program with the Egyptian army. According to the Egyptian government, 134 soldiers from Iraq's 5 th Infantry Division trained alongside Egypt's 3 rd Infantry Division at the Mubarak Military City in northern Egypt. No plans for future joint Iraqi-Egyptian training exercises have been publicly announced, although Egypt have expressed willingness to expand their training program for Iraqi military officers.

Foreign Contributions to Reconstruction and Stabilization in Postwar Iraq

Chronology

Significant Coalition Partner Events Since April 9, 2003