The election of a transitional government and numerous municipal councils in Iraq on 30 January 2005 is a significant moment in the cycle of war, insurgency and political debate opened by the invasion by United States-led coalition forces in March 2003. One hundred columns in this series have been published in openDemocracy since the launch of the war more than half of those in the series as a whole. It is an appropriate moment to look back over this period with a view to assessing the condition of the American project now.
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When the United States and its coalition partners terminated the Saddam Hussein regime after three weeks of war, the George W Bush administration expected a rapid and peaceful transition to a friendly government. Its aims for the post-Saddam regime were plain: it would be a client state sympathetic to the United States, embracing free-market economics, welcoming US oil interests and ensuring that the US had extended long-term influence in one of the worlds most important oil-bearing countries. More generally, it would enhance US power in the region, render Saudi Arabia less significant and (perhaps most importantly) demonstrate to that other regional member of the axis of evil, Iran, the sheer power of the United States.
The US administration expected the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) it appointed in Baghdad to prepare the ground for these political and economic changes by organising a caucus system to bring the right kind of government to power and taking immediate steps to institute a free-market, low-tax economy attractive to foreign investors. The CPA moved with great speed on the economic front, but its political oversight was far clumsier. Within a few months, an anti-American insurgency was developing with unexpected speed; by the end of 2003, the United States was facing a highly unstable environment, especially in the Sunni regions of central Iraq.
United States commanders initially attributed the insurgency to a few remnants of the old regime. It expected such elements to be severely damaged by the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein in July 2003, and then by the capture of Saddam Hussein himself in December. In practice, neither had much impact.
The US authorities went on to put more emphasis on two external factors - Islamic paramilitaries linked to al-Qaida and interference from Iran. Yet the insurgency continued to gather pace through 2004; thousands of Iraqis died (mainly at the hands of coalition forces) amidst periods of intense violence affecting Baghdad, Fallujah, Najaf, Mosul and many other Iraqi towns and cities.
By August 2004, it was evident that rapid progress towards national elections was needed to prevent the majority Shia communities from becoming more generally opposed to American occupation. After the problems posed in Najaf and Baghdad even by the relatively weak militias of Muqtada al-Sadr, the prospect of intensifying Shia antagonism reinforcing the largely Sunni-based insurgency was of real concern. The respected Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, consistently advocated the holding of national elections.
In these circumstances, elections came to appear inevitable. The result of the 30 January vote held amidst continuing violence, and characterised by a very low turnout in many Sunni areas is likely to be the formation of an administration led by the Shia-dominated United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), probably supported by the Kurds. The political grouping around Iyad Allawi, the US-appointed prime minister, may still retain some influence despite its winning only 14% of the vote.
The nature and policies of the post-election Iraqi administration are still uncertain, but they are likely to be far from what Washington expected.
Instead of a clear-cut client regime, a coalition of parties with good links to Iran may emerge. Indeed, both Shia and Kurdish groupings are indebted in different ways to Iran. Many members of the UIA spent long years in exile there during the Saddam era in Iraq, and the Kurds depended on cross-border trade with Iran during their period of quasi-independence from Baghdad after the 1991 war (see Robin Wright, Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision, Washington Post, 14 February 2005).
A government in Baghdad broadly favourable to Tehran is hardly what the United States expected from a policy that has so far cost around $300 billion; nearly 1,500 American troops have died and over 10,000 have been wounded.
In two respects, the situation may be rather less bleak for Washington. First, the fact that Iraqi security forces are in no position to handle the insurgents may help secure United States influence over the new leadership, whatever its political complexion. Second, John Negroponte - soon to become the USs first director of national intelligence - runs a massive US embassy in Baghdad whose officials permeate every significant branch of the Iraqi administration. Their financial influence is especially great, and reflected in the profile of powerful emerging Iraqi leaders.
For example, Iraqs finance minister Adel Abdel-Mehdi (at one point a close contender for the prime ministership in succession to Iyad Allawi) has tended to take Washingtons line on economic matters. During a visit to Washington in December 2004, he supported privatising the Iraqi National Oil Company, concluding his address to the National Press Club by saying: So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprises, certainly to oil companies. (see Emad Mekay, U.S. to Take Bigger Bite of Iraqs Pie, Dawn/Interpress, 26 December 2004).
An end to insurgency?
For all this, the persistence of violence continues to pose a severe problem for Washington. The period around the election witnessed a relative lull in attacks. US security forces and the Allawi regime had made strenuous efforts at short-term control, including closed borders, curfews and troop reinforcements (see The long haul, 27 January 2005). The containment effect was limited: in the past two weeks there have been numerous car bombings, attacks on police and paramilitary forces, and assassinations. Sixty police, soldiers and recruits were killed in the first twelve days of February, and there are currently sixty attacks a day close to the level before the elections.
Moreover, the training programme for Iraqi security forces is close to a disaster, and the Pentagon is no longer even giving figures of the numbers of Iraqi combat-ready troops available. The Economist, whose track record on the issue is one of caution tempered by realism, is scathing:
The Iraqi forces are utterly feeble. At present only 5,000 of them are a match for the insurgents; perhaps as many as 12,000 are fairly self-sufficient. Most of the rest are unmotivated, unreliable, ill-trained, ill-equipped, prone to desertion, even ready to switch sides. If the Americans left today, they would be thrashed. Indeed, as things now stand, politically and militarily, the war is unwinnable.
In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here.
All this leaves the United States in a remarkable predicament. It must maintain around 150,000 troops in a counter-insurgency role in Iraq (and to fulfil its long-term basing plans), because these forces are necessary to ensure the survival of the new Iraqi administration. Their presence does at least strengthen the weak hand of the current US ambassador in trying to ensure the wished-for client regime; but the new administration that seems likely to emerge is not remotely what Washington had in mind in March 2003.
The insurgency is not ebbing away. It will be years before a secure and stable Iraqi government is in place. Iraq, in short, is likely to remain a difficult, divisive and very costly issue throughout George W Bushs second term.
