U.S. MILITARY SLOW TO FILL LEADERSHIP VACUUM LEFT BY WAR

  Informe de Rajiv Chandrasekaran en “The Washington Post” del 5-5-03

 BAGHDAD, May 4 -- Abbas Hussein Zubaidi, a 31-year-old electronics technician who recently proclaimed himself director of Baghdad's Kindi Hospital, has never been to medical school. He has no professional experience. His only claim to power is a one-page edict from Iraq's most influential group of Shiite Muslim scholars, secured under a glass pane, that deputizes him to run the 350-bed facility.

On that authority, he commandeered the keys to the stores of medicines, food and fuel. He placed the ambulances and other vehicles under his control. He deployed armed guards at the entrances. He even seized the hospital's rubber stamp, using it to make permission slips that are doled out to his supplicants.

The hospital's doctors want Zubaidi to leave. Fearful that asking him to go could provoke his armed supporters, the doctors have repeatedly asked U.S. officials to remove Zubaidi. But more than a week after the first request was made, they said they have received no definitive response.

"This is the responsibility of the Americans," said an orthopedist. "They are occupying our country. They should be protecting us. Where are they?"

After seeking to project an image of incontrovertible force on the battlefield during the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein's government, U.S. military commanders have done relatively little to crack down on the legions of religious clerics, tribal sheiks and once-exiled opposition leaders who have since grabbed power without permission in postwar Iraq.

Many Iraqis, and even some U.S. officials here, warn that the failure of the commanders and the Pentagon's civilian reconstruction team to assert more authority could significantly complicate efforts to form a stable interim government for this factious nation of 24 million people. The military's laissez-faire posture, they contend, could allow a host of religious and tribal interests that were quick to flex their muscles to gain disproportionate and unwarranted influence, potentially jeopardizing the transformation of the military victory here into a political one.

"If we are not careful," one U.S. official warned, "we risk altering the political landscape, and that could have serious, long-term consequences."

In the three weeks since U.S. forces seized control of Iraq's key cities, the grass-roots power seizure has been profound. In towns and cities across this California-size country, clerics and sheiks have proclaimed themselves mayors and councilmen. Others have taken control of schools, clinics and government offices. Religious leaders have started to adjudicate disputes and sentence offenders. Some have formed armed militias.

As in the case of Zubaidi and Kindi Hospital, those claiming to be in control often profess to be acting under the authority of a higher figure -- a political party leader, a council of religious scholars or a tribal sheik. The edict on Zubaidi's desk was issued by the Hawza Ilmiya, a powerful group of Muslim scholars in the city of Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad, who are regarded by many Shiites as their unquestioned religious -- and now political -- leaders.

"I take my orders from Najaf," Zubaidi said as he pointed to the edict, which was surrounded by pictures of turbaned Shiite ayatollahs. "They are the authority now -- not the Americans."

Upstairs, in the doctors' offices, Zubaidi's allegiance to a group of Shiite clerics instead of medical professionals has prompted chain-smoking distress.

"Why can't the Americans do something about him?" an administrator said. "Every day he sits in that office he has stolen, he gets more power."

A senior official in the U.S.-led reconstruction effort acknowledged that he and others were aware of the problem at Kindi Hospital, although he said there was no consensus on how to proceed. Should troops be sent in to evict Zubaidi, the official asked, and risk a confrontation with his armed supporters? Should they wait for Iraqis working for the reconstituted Health Ministry to approach him? Or should they leave him alone on the grounds that the hospital is running at normal capacity?

"There is no good, clear answer," the senior official said. "It's a very complicated problem."

But others involved in the process contend that the problem stems from the isolation of U.S. military and reconstruction officials from ordinary Iraqis, a reluctance to be seen as an occupying force and a lack of enough troops and civilian personnel to address unsanctioned power grabbers.

The U.S. officials who have been selected to administer postwar Iraq, drawn largely from the Defense and State departments, remain cloistered in the 258-room, marble-floored Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris River, where they lack working phones or regular e-mail access. Because of security requirements, they can venture outside the gated compound only if they are escorted by gun-toting soldiers in a Humvee. Iraqis cannot enter the palace grounds without a military escort.

"If we traveled around more, we'd know more," one senior official in the building said. "We'd feel this authority vacuum more. We'd have a better sense of the situation."

The reconstruction effort is headed by retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, who has a staff of about 800 in Baghdad. Their job is to effectively govern Iraq -- providing civil administration, humanitarian aid and infrastructure repair -- until an interim Iraqi government is established. Garner's team also is responsible for setting up the interim government.

Although Garner took a four-day trip across the country when he arrived two weeks ago, he and his staff have been largely out of the public view since then, shut off from Baghdad by coils of barbed wire and M1 Abrams tanks.

To many of the Iraqis seeking jobs and other emoluments who gather near a large sandstone arch at one of the entrances to the palace grounds, where U.S. soldiers have set up a checkpoint, there is little difference between the new tenants and the old one. "Things haven't changed," said Ali Shoukat, a former soldier who heard -- incorrectly -- that he could collect his pension at the gate. "They are just as cut off from the world as Saddam was."

Garner's authority -- and perhaps his future -- now appears questionable because the White House intends to appoint L. Paul Bremer III, a career diplomat and a terrorism expert, to serve as Iraq's top civil administrator, a post that could effectively make him Garner's boss.

That uncertainty has proved a distraction in the palace, where diplomats and soldiers assigned to the reconstruction operation wonder for whom they will be working.

The ultimate authority in Iraq rests with U.S. Army Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the overall ground forces commander. He is stationed at Baghdad's international airport, about 10 miles outside the city, and he is seen in public even less than Garner. Most Iraqis have no idea who he is.

He did step up to assert his authority after a former exile declared himself Baghdad's mayor and repeatedly refused U.S. entreaties to leave. McKiernan issued a brief proclamation stating he is "the head authority in Iraq" and that the U.S.-British coalition "retains absolute authority within Iraq."

But his proclamation, printed in English and Arabic on both sides of a large piece of paper as if it were to be taped to store windows, is nowhere to be seen in the capital. McKiernan's subordinates said they did not have the resources to distribute it and instead broadcast the contents on a U.S.-operated radio station.

"There's a lot we'd like to do that we just don't have the staff to do," one senior official said. But other U.S. officials here said there was concern that the document might have been too blunt.

Worries about being regarded as an occupying power also have shaped the U.S. approach to projecting authority. Concerned about Iraqi attitudes toward U.S. intervention in Iraqi society and local governance -- particularly in light of deep fears here that the United States went to war not because of weapons of mass destruction but to control the oil reserves -- Garner and McKiernan have opted to take a more hands-off approach, choosing to take forceful action when there is a direct threat to public order or the involvement of pro-Hussein forces.

"There is concern that we will be seen as arrogant Americans with a big footprint if we respond to everything," the senior official said.

But among many Iraqis, there is a desire for even greater action. Although a small but vocal segment of Iraqis insists U.S. forces should exit immediately, many here appear to want U.S. troops to stay until order is restored and this nation has a stable, Iraqi-led interim government.

"We were promised peace and stability by the Americans," growled Jafar Abdullah, a former government clerk, as he surveyed his looted furniture store last week. "They must deliver that to us."

Many Iraqis said they were scarred by the wave of looting that decimated government ministries, shopping districts and even the National Museum of Antiquities. U.S. military officials acknowledge that they moved too slowly to stop the bedlam, believing it was a way for people to express anger at Hussein but failing to grasp the longer-term ramifications.

Although many Iraqis want more soldiers on the streets, U.S. commanders have been steadily withdrawing forces from the capital, removing roadblocks and tank emplacements that were erected three weeks ago after the city was seized. Only 12,000 soldiers are now assigned to Baghdad, a city of more than 5 million people.

After many of the soldiers guarding a large downtown hotel pulled away at 4 a.m. today, abandoning checkpoints designed to screen visitors, hundreds of job seekers stormed into the lobby and sparked a small riot, believing that U.S. military officials and self-styled Iraqi leaders were inside.

To address security concerns, U.S. commanders have pledged to place an additional 4,000 military police in the capital. They also have urged all former Iraqi police officers to return to work with their side arms.

But at the Kindi Hospital, the doctors said they want not just more police and soldiers, but orders to deal with Zubaidi and others who have seized power without authority.

"The American Army is very powerful," the orthopedist said. "They need to use their power."