IRAQ'S UNTIDY POSTWAR

 Editorial de  “The Washington Post” del 13.05.2003

The bush administration now appears to have a good chance of succeeding in its single-minded campaign to exclude the United Nations and most other governments from any significant role in managing postwar Iraq. Though a draft Security Council resolution empowering the United States and Britain to govern the country for the next year assigns only a token political position to a U.N. representative and excludes any mention of U.N. arms inspectors, many governments that refused to support the war now appear inclined to give in to Washington rather than engage in another damaging quarrel. An end to the diplomatic feuding would certainly be welcome, especially if it led to an early lifting of the sanctions that continue to choke Iraq's economy and impede reconstruction. Yet the logic behind the administration's strategy -- that Iraq can best be secured and stabilized through a transition process dominated by the United States -- is looking shakier by the day.

White House officials smugly cited the troubles of U.N. operations in places such as Bosnia and Cambodia in justifying their insistence on concentrating power over postwar Iraq in the Pentagon. But the first month of American rule suggests that the administration was unprepared for the challenges it would face and continues to lack the resources and skills to manage them. Though it expected the Iraqi army to crumble and Saddam Hussein's regime to collapse, the Pentagon failed to deploy sufficient forces to keep order in the country: Looters and criminal gangs continue to roam Baghdad at will, undeterred by the 12,000 U.S. soldiers deployed in a city of 5 million. Garbage is piling up on streets, water and electricity remain spotty, and Iraqis wait in days-long lines for gasoline. U.S. administrators remain isolated inside a palace, without adequate communications, transportation or translation services; they are now to undergo a time-consuming leadership reorganization that appears to be driven as much by the administration's internal feuding as by needs on the ground.

Any operation to restore order after the abrupt collapse of a totalitarian regime might be expected to be "untidy," to use the arrogant understatement of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. But it's hard to fathom how and why U.S. forces failed to exercise control even over the critical weapons sites for which the war was fought. Around the country many suspected storage and production areas for weapons of mass destruction have been burned and looted; one of the trucks suspected as a mobile biological weapons lab was stripped. According to several media reports, looters were allowed to sack even the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, where tons of enriched uranium and supplies of radioactive isotopes were stored. Iraqi scientists at the site told Newsweek magazine that barrels for storing uranium oxide were being used as play equipment by local children, while stainless steel uranium canisters were for sale in nearby markets. U.S. commanders say some of the looting happened before troops arrived or while the war was being fought -- but they also acknowledge that they still do not have sufficient forces to secure important sites.

More U.S. troops and a contingent of military police are trickling into Iraq. But Mr. Rumsfeld still refuses to offer a public plan for their deployment, and policymakers appear to be concentrating on a scheme to withdraw most U.S. forces within months. Given the situation on the ground, such a strategy makes little sense; instead, Bush administration officials should be deploying additional forces as quickly as possible, and delaying any withdrawals, until order can be restored in Baghdad and other large cities and critical weapons sites secured. Mr. Bush also ought to rethink whether administrative and technical experts from the United Nations and other Western governments should be invited to collaborate more extensively with the Pentagon team in reconstructing Iraq's government over the coming months. Much solid expertise is available; the administration need only conclude that it doesn't have to rebuild Iraq by itself.