[Senate Hearing 108-578]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-578
IRAQ TRANSITION: CIVIL WAR OR CIVIL SOCIETY?
[PART II]
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 21, 2004
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio BARBARA BOXER, California
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BILL NELSON, Florida
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire Virginia
JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, opening
statement...................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Hashim, Dr. Ahmed S., professor of Strategic Studies, U.S. Naval
War College, Newport, RI....................................... 36
Prepared statement........................................... 39
Joulwan, General George A., U.S. Army, (Ret.), former NATO
SACEAUR, Washington, DC........................................ 21
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening
statement...................................................... 1
O'Hanlon, Dr. Michael E., senior fellow, Foreign Policy Studies,
The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC...................... 31
Prepared statement........................................... 35
Pollack, Dr. Kenneth M., director of research, Saban Center for
Middle East Policy, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC.. 11
Prepared statement........................................... 15
Sheehan, Hon. Michael A., deputy commissioner for Counter-
Terrorism, New York City Police Department, New York, NY....... 24
Prepared statement........................................... 27
(iii)
IRAQ TRANSITION: CIVIL WAR OR CIVIL SOCIETY? [Part II]
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 2004
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m. in room
SD-416, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar
(chairman of the committee), presiding.
Present: Senators Lugar, Voinovich, Biden, Dodd, Feingold,
Bill Nelson, Rockefeller, and Corzine.
opening statement of senator richard g. lugar, chairman
The Chairman. This meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee is called to order.
Today, the Foreign Relations Committee will hold its second
in our series of three hearings on Iraq. We will continue to
explore whether American and Iraqi authorities are ready for
the transition to Iraqi sovereignty on June 30, and what steps
are required to fill out a comprehensive transition plan.
Our experiences with inadequate planning and communication
related to Iraq contribute to the determination of this
committee to impose a very high standard on the information
provided about Iraq. Within the substantial bounds of our
oversight capacity, we will attempt to illuminate United States
plans, actions, and options with regard to Iraq, both for the
benefit of the American people and to inform our own
policymaking role.
We have asked that the administration present a detailed
plan to prove to Americans, Iraqis, and our allies that we have
a strategy and that we are committed to making it work.
At yesterday's hearing, I posed a set of questions to form
the basis of our hearings. Clear answers to all these questions
would constitute a coherent transition plan for Iraq.
The questions were, first, what are the details of
Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi's plan for an interim Iraqi
Government to which a transfer of sovereignty is planned on
June 30, 2004? Specifically, what executive and legislative
positions will be established in the interim government, and
how will these positions be filled? Are we confident that
Iraqis will support the United Nations' formula for a new
government? And what will the United States do as a backup if
Iraqis reject the Brahimi plan?
Let me say, parenthetically, for our committee record, that
a memo from the Council of Foreign Relations, dated April 16,
2004, contains suggestions about where Ambassador Brahimi
probably is at this point. The memo explains Brahimi's search
for a president, two vice presidents, a prime minister, and a
ministerial council. The names of the persons to be nominated
for these positions are still left blank, but there have been
suggestions that prominent members of the Governing Council may
be considered for the top roles, or for other roles in the new
government.
My second question at yesterday's hearing was: What status-
of-forces agreement will make clear that the United States and
Coalition armed forces will continue to provide internal and
external security for the new Iraqi Government? Will that
agreement make clear the chain of command and the relationship
of Iraqi police reserves and army personnel with U.S. and
Coalition forces?
Yesterday, our witnesses, by and large, felt that it would
appear to be common sense that the United States and the
Coalition must continue to provide security during the training
of Iraqi personnel. Less clear, however, was the problem of how
specifically a status-of-forces agreement might come about, and
with whom. Probably it would be negotiated with the new
government, including the president, the vice presidents, and
the prime minister. What if, once again, the persons involved
in that government have different ideas with regard to security
or the missions of security? How these are to be resolved? That
issue still lies ahead of us.
My third question yesterday was, will the United Nations
Security Council resolutions undergird the international
legitimacy of the new Iraqi Government and all of the security
arrangements that it will require? Continuing and expanded
support of the new Iraqi Government by other nations may
require additional Security Council resolutions.
Our witnesses yesterday generally felt that the Security
Council may, indeed, adopt resolutions after June 30 or July 1,
and that it would be in the best interest of the United States
and of other nations to seek this. We were attempting to
resolve the international legitimacy issue as explicitly as
possible so there are not bad surprises.
My fourth question was, will elections for the transitional
and permanent Iraqi Governments, scheduled for January 2005 and
December 2005, respectively, be held under the auspices of the
United Nations or some other authority? How will that authority
provide security for the elections and assemble a registration
list, or otherwise determine who is eligible to vote? How will
we deal with elections that are postponed or deemed to be
fraudulent? Will the national assembly that is to be elected in
January 2005 have full authority to write a constitution and
construct the framework of a permanent government?
Now, yesterday we had a variety of answers to these
questions from our witnesses, including from, ``We will just
have to muddle through,'' which may be an honest answer, but
hardly a confident one. One witness yesterday suggested that
even if there were explosions and other security difficulties
such as knocking out some polling location, or lack of security
in some parts of the country. Nevertheless, you do the best you
can. At least, you tally what is there. It is important to get
on with elections, yesterday's experts generally felt. Iraqis
are voting. That is what matters, rather than a fastidious
regard to security or voter registration rolls. They suggested
that Oil-for-Food rolls might be utilized in the absence of
something more definitive.
My fifth question yesterday regarding President Bush's
designating Ambassador John Negroponte as his nominee to be
U.S. Ambassador to the new Iraqi Government. Our committee
looks forward to addressing this important nomination as
expeditiously as possible. Let me put a fine point on that. We
have offered to the administration a hearing, which I plan to
conduct, with my distinguished colleague, Senator Biden, next
Tuesday, with a business meeting to occur next week. At this
point, we are uncertain whether the administration is prepared
to get the papers and what have you here. I'm simply suggesting
that this is urgent. I hope that they will submit the
paperwork. That's why I explicitly suggest next Tuesday as a
time to get on with this important nomination.
Beyond that, we will ask the Ambassador next week, and we
will ask State Department witnesses tomorrow, for the roster of
who will be in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. When will they
arrive? How will security be provided for them?
Now, finally, the sixth point was, will the costs
associated with the new diplomatic presence be covered by a
transfer of funds under the umbrella of the $87 billion
appropriated last year by the Congress? If not, what is the
plan for providing the necessary funding?
Yesterday there were two answers, essentially, to this. One
was that there will be transfers of funds that are adequate, at
least for the time being, for maybe several months down the
trail. Another answer from one witness yesterday, was that
about $70 billion will be called for in a supplemental
appropriation at some point. That is a large sum of money.
There is quite a difference between muddling through with a
transfer of funds on the one hand, and a request for $70
billion on the other. But this would be part of a plan, a
coherent plan that we are hopeful, at some point, the
administration will propose.
Let me just add, parenthetically, that I have had a good
telephone conversation with Under Secretary of Defense
Wolfowitz. He regrets that he will not be able to testify
before the committee due to important personal reasons--a
family wedding, in fact, tomorrow. He will be testifying again
today, I understand, before a House Committee, and he is
prepared to testify before our committee at a later time. I
appreciated the call. We will have Peter Rodman, from the
Department of Defense, tomorrow. He is an important witness,
and we appreciate the Defense Department providing that
substitute for our hearing tomorrow.
The Foreign Relations Committee will be persistent in
asking these questions and others, because Americans should
have the opportunity to understand the Bush administration's
plan and to carefully monitor its progress.
Our witnesses yesterday underscored the importance of
expanding the international role in Iraq to improve the
political legitimacy of the Coalition and the interim Iraqi
Government. There was general consensus that some transfer of
sovereignty will occur on June 30, but that United States
forces will be required to provide security in Iraq for perhaps
several more years.
They also spoke to the importance of going forward with the
elections, even if security and registration procedures are
imperfect. Dr. Juan Cole noted that local elections have been
successful in many parts of Iraq already, and often produced a
more moderate result than expected. Dr. Toby Dodge underscored
that elections would force Iraqi factions to enunciate policy
choices, and would stimulate dialog between potential leaders
and the Iraqi populace. In the absence of elections, factions
would continue to bid for influence through violence, cronyism,
or anti-American demonstrations.
Until elections can be held, however, we must find a means
through which the various Iraqi factions can share power
peacefully in an interim government. For more than 30 years,
Saddam Hussein prevented any rival leaders from emerging in
Iraq. Religious leaders had little or no political or governing
experience. They're divided amongst themselves. No secular
leader has developed strong support among any major portion of
the population.
Dr. Dodge presented interesting polling data from Iraq,
with questions based on recognition factors, such as ``Have you
ever heard of - - - ?'' The percentages of Iraqis who have
heard of any of the conspicuous Iraqi leaders, in most cases,
were small single digits. In response to questions about
confidence in any of these people, likewise, there were very,
very small percentages of Iraqis who had heard of the people.
This is an important political fact, which, as politicians, we
recognize. If there are candidates who are virtually unknown,
and even those who know them have reasonably little confidence
in them, the prospects of their success, to say the least, are
chancy. That is the situation that we're heading into, and
maybe we all need to understand that.
We'll continue to examine possible strategies aimed at
ensuring that the new interim government is viewed as
legitimate by Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis. We must think
creatively about how the Coalition and the international
community can facilitate the emergence of national leaders in
Iraq who are viewed as legitimate and prepared to govern.
We have asked our experts to provide us with their
recommendations for U.S. policy leading up to this transition
and beyond. Today we are very fortunate to have the benefit of
a panel with extraordinary expertise on these questions.
We welcome General George Joulwan, former Supreme Allied
Commander, Europe; Dr. Ken Pollack, director of Research of the
Saban Center for Middle East Policy, and senior fellow at The
Brookings Institution, and author of a book that was very
informative for all of us about Iraq as we prepared for our
last debates; Ambassador Michael Sheehan, currently the deputy
commissioner for Counter Terrorism of the New York City Policy
Department, and formerly the State Department Coordinator for
the Office of Counterterrorism; Dr. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior
fellow at The Brookings Institution; and Dr. Ahmed Hashim,
professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Naval War College.
We look forward to your insights and your recommendations.
We thank each one of you for joining us. Before I recognize the
witnesses, I would like to recognize my colleague, Senator
Biden.
opening statement of senator joseph r. biden, jr.,
ranking member
Senator Biden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for holding this series of hearings.
I am pleased to hear that Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz will,
at some point, make himself available.
I, quite frankly, think it's critical, before these three
hearings are over, that we have the Secretary of Defense and
the Secretary of State before this committee. This is a
historic moment. And you and I have been here a long time. I
recall, with regularity this committee had up the Secretary of
State and the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War,
during the Bosnian crisis, during the Kosovo crisis. And,
ultimately, we have to speak to somebody who says, ``I don't
have to ask anybody else what the plan is.'' And I'm confident
that they will be forthcoming out of our mutual interest.
At the outset, let me say that this issue of cost--this
morning I happened to ride down on the train, as I do every
day, sat at a table in the dining car, or the cafe car, with a
very informed fellow, a very bright guy. He runs a company that
does environmental remediation, a very strong and active
Republican from Pennsylvania--and he asked the question, which
made sense--he said, ``I read in the paper you saying that the
administration should produce witnesses. Didn't they produce
the witnesses for the Armed Services Committee, and isn't this
issue of cost a bit of a red herring?''
Well, when I gave him an answer, I think he understood two
points. No. 1, this new embassy falls totally under the purview
of this committee. Totally, completely, absolutely,
unequivocally, without any question under the purview of this
committee, No. 1. No. 2, there are two principal dynamics at
play in Iraq. One is the security side, which the Armed
Services Committee has significant interest in, but the other
is the political side, which falls totally within the purview
of this committee. The ultimate solution to victory or failure
in Iraq will be a political solution. The question of whether
or not other nations are engaged or not engaged, whether the
U.N. engaged or not engaged, is totally within the purview of
this committee, lest I have to remind the administration.
And with regard to cost, I hope we will not hear any longer
what we heard all of last year, as some of the witnesses will
recall, because several have testified before. Whenever we
asked a question of the Secretary of Defense or the Under
Secretary, we heard, for the first time--the first time I've
heard, in my 31 years--to almost every question, ``Those facts
are unknowable.'' That was a neat phrase, ``unknowable.'' Well,
there's a lot of things that are, quote, ``knowable.'' It's
going to cost billions of dollars. There's not one single
penny--not one single penny in the fiscal year 2005 budget--for
Iraq or Afghanistan. And I will say it as politely as I can. If
it is still unknowable to the administration what the
proportions are, the broad numbers, then they are totally
incompetent. Let me say it again. If the answer is, ``That's
unknowable,'' as to the scope of the kind of money we're going
to have to spend, then they are incompetent. But I'm confident
they are competent. And I'm confident they're not telling us
what they know.
Curt Weldon, a conservative Republican, senior Congressman
from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, is publicly chastising the
administration for not telling his people how much this is
going to cost--in broad numbers, anyway. And the reason for
that is, he's going home, like the rest of us, and our
constituencies think we're incompetent if we can't tell them.
It's somewhere between zero and a hundred billion, I mean, give
us a range here.
In my judgment, success in Iraq is still absolutely
possible, and clearly necessary for our national self interest.
But, in my judgment, there are two things that are required for
success, in broad terms. First, we need to promote the
emergence of that silent majority of Iraqis. This is a truly
distinguished panel. I'm not being solicitous. I have heard Dr.
Pollack, I've heard General Joulwan, I have heard Dr. O'Hanlon,
I've heard them speak on these subjects. And everyone
acknowledges--left, right, and center including Dr. Hashim has
also said this, if I'm not mistaken--there's no possibility of
success unless the Iraqi people embrace the notion of a
representative government.
Somewhere along the line, they've got to buy in on the
deal, they've got to embrace it. And the question is--only that
silent majority of Iraqis can provide an alternative to the
extremes, and the only outfit that can create the kind of
negotiating that needs to take place to generate a
participatory democracy in that country. That can't be imposed.
We all keep saying that. It can't be imposed. But we're having
trouble going down and finding this middle.
Second, we need to get help from the outside, in terms of
troops, money, manpower, and, maybe most importantly,
legitimacy to see this mission to completion. Establishing
security, in my view, is critical to both these goals. And I
realize this is not unique to me. I'm not implying that all of
a sudden I've found this out. I know you all know this, and
we've been saying this for over a year. But establishing
security is important to both these goals. Without securities,
that silent majority of Iraqis, assuming that it's correct
there is a silent majority, will not step forward and
participate in the political process. Without security,
militias will move in to fill the vacuum. And we have seen that
in the recent upsurge in violence. Without security,
development projects and economic reconstruction cannot go
forward apace of what is needed. The huge $18.6 billion aid
package we approved last fall cannot be spent. And, by the way,
of that $18.6 billion, less than three billion has been
obligated. Six months after it was approved. Now, that may be
procurement problems. If it is, the administration should send
us a note and say, we'd like a change in the law. We'd like a
change to be able to expedite this. But tell us. I suspect it's
also a consequence of lack of security, being able to expedite
these projects.
And we now learn that somewhere, well in excess of the 5
percent, closer to 20 percent of that $18.6 billion will not be
spent for reconstruction, but to pay for private security
guards to protect those who are doing the reconstruction. I
don't begrudge that. Can't blame these folks for not willing to
go out there. But how can we say we don't need any more
troops--I'm going to ask you this, general--when we, the
taxpayers, are paying the Halliburtons--and I'm not trying to
single out one firm--or whomever is doing the contracting
work--enough money to pay a Navy SEAL $1,500 a day. There's
over 20,000 private security folks there. I'm not suggesting
they're not needed; I think they are. And we're going to pay
them, according to the reports--and I assume we'll have a
hearing somewhere along the line on this. That must go a long
way for morale, when you send an active-duty SEAL in, he's
probably not making much more than that a month. And you've got
someone making $1,500 a day working for a company, that's being
paid for by us. I don't get this. It doesn't quite jive for me.
The second-largest force we have in all of Iraq is a private
army, or a series of private armies, paid for by the American
taxpayers.
Even under the best of circumstances, even if we succeed in
bring a semblance of law and order, we're still going to be
facing an enormous challenge. What I hear from Iraqis, what I
hear from people on the ground, what I hear--and I haven't been
there--last time the Chairman and I were there was at the end
of last summer--is that they understand we need troops there
for force protection, but they thought we were sending troops
there to make sure their kid didn't get raped, their daughter
didn't get stolen. I can remember--and maybe it's changed now;
we'll find out from witnesses--but in September, October,
November, we had a great thing, we opened the schools. Yet here
were stories about cars parked all the way around the schools
with their motors running all day, with mom or dad sitting
inside, because they were afraid for their daughter to do
anything further than walk from the front door of the school to
the car, for fear of being kidnaped or raped.
So what's the deal? Is it only force protection? And that's
the first and foremost thing I want to make sure, our forces
are protected and they can protect one another.
Iraq is recovering from 35 years of trauma, 35 years of a
brutal dictatorship. And one of the things they learned during
that period is to keep their heads down. Iraqis learned to stay
out of public life for the sake of self preservation. And old
habits, understandably, die hard. And while some Iraqis have
stepped up to the challenge, the moderate majority has stayed
silent, watching events unfold, acting on instincts that were
finely honed over three decades.
According to the polls, at a maximum, no more than 20
percent of the Iraqi people want to see an Islamic state, like
an Iranian situation. But the overwhelming majority, more than
70 percent, openly say they support the establishment of a
democracy, and we have to empower this largest group to get
them engaged in building their own future. It's kind of hard to
do that, I would argue, without security.
But these are not the best of circumstances, to state the
obvious. Security is still sorely lacking. And it would be
probably lacking in many ways even if everything that I and
others had suggested 6 months ago and 10 months ago had been
done. But it would be a little bit better, I would argue.
You know, this is one place where a significant dose of
humility is in order. It's one thing for me to say what was
done wrong; it's another thing for me to be able to say, ``If
we had done what I thought we should do, that things would be
markedly better.'' I don't know that they would. But I'm pretty
sure I know what's being done now is not working, in my view.
Indeed, the Iraqis consistently identify the absence of
security as the single most urgent issue facing them day to
day. Far from being unknowable, as the Secretary of Defense
likes to say, this absence of security was predicted by dozens
of congressional hearings, think tanks, some of you sitting
before us, and work of some of the administration officials
themselves. The administration failed to heed those warnings.
That made it more difficult, in my view, to build security in
Iraq from the outset.
First, the administration failed to come up with enough
forces because of the Pentagon's desire to validate a new
theory of warfare. General Shinseki was ridiculed for
suggesting, before a Senate committee, that it would take
several hundred-thousand troops to secure Iraq. He's looking
fairly prescient now. And so is whoever wrote the NSC memo. The
NSC's own memo, contemporaneous, said, ``Extrapolating from
past missions, they estimated we would require a force of
500,000 people to stabilize Iraq.'' I'm not a military man. I
don't know which of those is right. But I know there's not
enough.
The failure to provide those forces made it difficult to
establish full control of Iraq, to stop the looting, and to
guard more than the 100 large depots, which our military guys
told us, general, there were 600,000 tons of arms and
ammunition in open depots, and we had helicopters, we'd see on
TV, flying over at night with night-vision goggles, determining
who's going in and out, instead of having the wherewithal to
destroy those and/or fully guard them.
I remember shortly, after we got back from Iraq, being told
a story--I don't know whether it's true or not, but I believe
it to be true--of a young captain. Remember, we were paying
$500 to retrieve shoulder-held rocket launchers. And a young
Iraqi comes up with two of them, to a young captain. The
captain gets him a thousand bucks and says, ``Can you get any
more?'' About 2 hours later, the Iraqi comes back with a pickup
truck full of them, and says, ``I couldn't fit any more in
here.''
Now, I don't know whether that's apocryphal or not, but I
think it's probably true, and I'm trying to run down this
source so I can use the name, which I haven't gotten permission
to do yet.
Six-hundred-thousand tons of arms and ammunition, some of
which wound up in rejectionist hands. It also put us in a
position that we were unable to give the Iraqi people a sense
of security, and it produced the power vacuum I mentioned
earlier.
Second, the administration failed to understand that it
would take years, not months, to train Iraqis to provide their
own security. The former boss of the outfit that you're now a
part of, Mr. Sheehan, he was over there. His people told us,
when we were there, it would take a minimum--a minimum--of 5
years to train up 75,000 Iraqi police to do the job that police
do, to protect that kid coming out of school, to make sure that
home wasn't looted, to make sure that the traffic lights work,
to make sure that there was order. Five years, they told us.
We said, ``What would happen if we gave you all the money
you need right now?'' They said, ``We could do a lot in the
next 2 years for Baghdad, but it'll take 5 years for the
country.'' We're also told that it would take 3 years to train
a small Iraqi army of 40,000 that was a real army. They told us
that we needed 5,500 gendarmes before we went in.
I remember you testifying before our committee before the
war, General Joulwan. You said, ``The military planning's going
incredibly well but there's not''--I remember you going like
this with your hands--``but there's not simultaneous planning--
in terms of civil order and civilian corps to follow and
police.'' It's not like this is only 20-20 hindsight.
Again, on the ground, after Saddam fell, the boss of the
New York City Police Department, Bernie Kerik and his people
were telling us, ``You need 5,500 outside police in Iraq,
working with the Iraqi police, training them and patrolling
with them, for this to have any chance of working.''
But the administration insisted on putting 20,000 Iraqis in
uniform right away, telling the American people ``don't worry,
we've got someone to hand off to,'' and sent them out the door.
Now, fewer than 10 percent of those police and army have been
fully trained, and virtually none are adequately equipped. Over
half of the first army battalion that we, quote, ``trained''
has quit, while another battalion refused to fight in Fallujah.
And some of the Iraqis that we trained even took up arms
against us.
Last week, General Abizaid called Iraq's security forces,
quote, ``a great disappointment,'' end of quote. And Ambassador
Bremer made it clear that Iraqis will not be ready to take over
security on June 30, or anywhere near that date.
Mr. Chairman, it's clear the Iraqis will not have the
capacity to establish security for months, and probably several
years, at least without reverting to a dictatorship, and that's
something none of us want.
While Iraq's security forces are being trained, I believe
we need substantially more outside forces--more American
forces, and more international forces. But, again, I yield to
the experts on whether that's literally true. All I know is
there's not enough security now. Otherwise, the militias will
continue to proliferate, intimidating Iraqi moderates,
hampering reconstruction, threatening our overall objectives of
establishing a stable representative government.
I know we're using those militias now, and we have to use
them, and we're cooperating with them. But how do you
transition from that to tell these very folks, who are
essentially other versions of warlords, that, by the way, now
we've got a democracy, disband your militias, all of you go
home. Don't use them for bartering for your position in this
new constitution, this new government.
It reminds me of my conversation with--and I'll end with
this, Mr. Chairman--with the National Security Advisor, a woman
I have great regard for. I was meeting with her on a fairly
regular basis last year, once a week or thereabouts, and it was
about Iraq. And I said, Dr. Rice, we've got a real problem in
Herat. Ismail Khan is really just totally in charge over there.
Kabul has no impact on him. And she said, Well, we have
security. I said, I beg your pardon? I'm paraphrasing. I beg
your pardon? She said, Well, that's the way it's always been.
That's the way it's always been. Taliban's not there. Al-
Qaeda's not there. I said, but Iran's there. She said, No,
that's the way it's always been. So we didn't expand the
international security force, because that's the way it's
always been.
If that's what we're going to be doing, then we should just
say that's what we're going to be doing in Iraq. But we've got
to understand, if you rely on these militias, because we need
additional force--and I think we should do anything any general
on the ground, or captain or colonel, thinks he needs to
protect an American force on the ground--but that's not a
prescription, it seems to me, for handing over anything
remotely approaching a democracy.
Mr. Chairman, I've stated the two things I think are wrong.
I'd invite the panel to tell me--and I mean this sincerely--
where I'm mistaken; I hope I'm mistaken--about the security
need. And I look forward to hearing our witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
IRAQ: THE SECURITY SITUATION
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing. I look forward to
the testimony. In my judgment, success in Iraq requires two things:
First, we need to promote the emergence of that silent majority of
Iraqis who can provide an alternative to the extremes . . . and who can
create a participatory republic that will endure when we leave.
Second, we need to get the help from outside Iraq--in terms of
troops, money, manpower and, maybe most important, legitimacy--to see
this mission to completion.
Establishing security is critical to both of these goals.
Without security, Iraqis will not step forward to participate in
the political process. Without security, militias will move in to fill
the vacuum, as we have seen with the recent upsurge in violence.
Without security, development projects and economic reconstruction
cannot go forward--the huge $18.6 billion aid package we approved last
Fall cannot be spent. And by the way, of that $18.6 billion, less than
$3 billion has even been obligated--six months after we approved it.
That may be a procurement problem. If so, the administration should
tell us and we'll fix it. But a lot of this is security. And some 20
percent apparently will be used not for reconstruction, but to pay for
private security guards to protect those doing the reconstruction. I
don't begrudge that--they shouldn't go out there without security. But
we're paying them up to $1,500 a day. Yet our active duty forces are
probably making that a month. And our Reserves are making 30%-50% less
than they did in the private sector back home, but they've still got
the same mortgage, car and tuition payments.
Finally, without security, other nations will be reluctant to send
troops and aid to help shoulder the enormous burden.
Even under the best of circumstances--even if we had succeeded in
bringing a semblance of law and order to Iraq--we would still be facing
an enormous challenge.
Iraq is recovering from the trauma of 35 years of brutal
dictatorship. Iraqis learned to keep their heads down and stay out of
public life for the sake of self-preservation.
Old habits die hard. And while some Iraqis have stepped up to the
challenge, the moderate majority has stayed silent watching events
unfold, acting on instincts finely-honed over three decades. According
to the polls, about 20 percent of Iraqis support an Islamic state.
Nearly 30 percent want a strong leader. But 50 percent support a
democracy. We have to empower that largest group and get them engaged
in building Iraq's future.
But these of not the best of circumstances. Security is still
sorely lacking in Iraq. Indeed, Iraqis consistently identify its
absence as the most urgent issue facing the country.
Far from being ``unknowable,'' as the Secretary of Defense likes to
say, this absence of security was predicted in dozens of congressional
hearings, think tank studies and the work of some in the administration
itself. The administration failed to heed these warnings. That made it
more difficult to build security in Iraq.
First, the administration failed to go in with enough forces
because of Pentagon's desire to validate a new theory of warfare.
General Shinseki was ridiculed for suggesting it would take several
hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq. He's looking prescient today.
So is whoever wrote an NSC memo that, extrapolating from past missions,
estimated that we would require a force of 500,000 to stabilize Iraq.
The failure to provide those forces made it difficult to establish
full control of Iraq . . . to stop the looting . . . to guard more than
100 large depots with six hundred thousands tons of arms and
ammunition, some of which have wound up in Rejectionist hands . . . or
to give the Iraqi people a sense of security. And it produced the power
vacuum I mentioned earlier.
Second, the administration failed to understand that it would take
years, not months, to train Iraqis to provide for their own security.
When Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel and I went to Baghdad last summer, our
experts on the ground were clear and candid.
They told us that it would take 5 years to train an Iraqi police
force of 75,000, and 3 years to train a new, small Iraqi army of
40,000. They told us that 5,500 international gendarme were needed for
an effective police training program.
But the administration insisted on putting 200,000 Iraqis in
uniform right away. We rushed people out the door.
Now, fewer than 10 percent of the police and army have been fully
trained. Virtually none are adequately equipped.
Over half of the first army battalion we have trained has quit,
while another battalion refused to fight in Fallujah. Some of the
Iraqis that we ``trained'' even took up arms against us.
Last week, General John Abizaid called Iraqi security forces a
``great disappointment.'' And Ambassador Bremer made it clear that
Iraqis will not be ready to take over security on June 30.
Mr. Chairman, it is clear that Iraqis will not have the capacity to
establish security for many months, and probably several years, at
least without reverting to dictatorship--and that's something none of
us want to see.
While Iraqi security forces are being trained, I believe we will
need substantially more outside forces. More American forces, and more
international forces.
Otherwise, the militias will continue to proliferate, intimidating
Iraqi moderates, hampering reconstruction, and threatening our overall
objectives to establish a stable, representative Iraq.
That's my judgment of the situation. I look forward to hearing the
judgment of our witnesses, and their ideas for building security in
Iraq.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Biden.
We thank the panel for your patience in hearing us.
Obviously, we are seized with these issues, as you are.
I'll ask that you testify in this order. First of all, Dr.
Pollack, then General Joulwan, and then Michael Sheehan, then
Dr. O'Hanlon, and Dr. Hashim.
Let me just indicate that all the prepared statements that
you have submitted will be made a part of the record, and you
may summarize or proceed in any way you wish, hopefully in
about 10 minutes of time, but we'll not be rigorous about
enforcing a set time period. The point of the hearing is to
hear you and to receive the points of view that you bring to
us.
Dr. Pollack, would you proceed.
STATEMENT OF DR. KENNETH M. POLLACK, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH,
SABAN CENTER FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Dr. Pollack. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senator
Biden, members of the committee. Thank you for giving me the
opportunity to appear before you to discuss the issue of
security in Iraq.
This month has been more than just a bad month. The events
of this month are a warning. They're a warning that all is not
well in Iraq, and that if the United States does not make some
major course corrections quickly, worse will likely follow. For
this reason, I hope that the events of this month will serve as
a wake-up call to those in Washington and Baghdad charged with
the reconstruction of Iraq.
We're not doomed to failure in Iraq. There is still much
good in that country, and many positive forces which could be
harnessed to build a peaceful, prosperous, and pluralist Iraq.
These positive factors should be a constant reminder that if we
fail in Iraq, the fault will lie in ourselves, not in our
stars.
Mr. Chairman, I am delighted that you've chosen to focus
this hearing on security, because security is the single most
important aspect of our reconstruction effort and the single
greatest failure of our efforts so far.
It's important to acknowledge some of the most important
mistakes that the United States has made in creating the
situation of instability and insecurity in Iraq so that we can
avoid repeating them and, in the future, try to fix them.
We invaded Iraq with too few troops to be able to establish
a secure operating environment for ourselves, for aid workers,
and for the Iraqi people. As a result, we did not have enough
troops to blanket the country, to establish a presence in every
village and neighborhood, to go into holdout areas, like al-
Sadr City in Baghdad and the towns of the Sunni triangle, to
passive nascent insurgent groups and to send an unmistakable
message to every Iraqi, good guy or bad guy, that the United
States will not allow a vacuum or a state of lawlessness to
emerge in their country.
We compounded this mistake, in sizing our force, with the
mission we gave our troops. We continue to make force
protection and hunting for insurgents who attack our forces
higher priorities than providing security for the Iraqi people.
U.S. forces generally remain penned up in their formidable
cantonments. They are cutoff 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 usually conducted mounted in
Bradley fighting vehicles or Humvees at speeds of 30 to 50
kilometers per hour. These, the Iraqis consider useless, since
it is impossible for those troops to see anything, and they are
not present long enough to serve as a deterrent.
Rather than bringing the necessary American troops, or
building a multinational coalition, capable of filling the gap,
we, instead, turned to the Iraqis themselves. To quickly stand
up the needed Iraqi forces, we short-circuited proper vetting
procedures, drastically reduced training times, and neglected
to properly equip the Iraqi security forces before turning them
loose on the country. The results have, so far, been extremely
disappointing.
Many of those inducted have proven to be part of the
problem, rather than part of the solution, and there are now
considerable criminal elements in the police and other security
services, who engage in bribery, extortion, kidnaping, rape,
arson, burglary, and murder. When faced with the determined
fighters of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army earlier this month,
most of the Iraqi security personnel simply melted way; others
joined the insurgents. Too few stood and fought with the
Coalition personnel.
This is not to say that there are not many good, brave,
honest, and well-meaning Iraqis in the Iraqi security forces.
It is only to say that there are too few of them right now to
shoulder so great a burden.
Now, Mr. Chairman, let me follow your injunction to focus
on constructive measures that the United States can take to
remedy this situation.
First, we must make security the highest priority for the
next 6 months. I believe that certain extreme measures are
justified in the short term to get the security situation under
control, recognizing that we can probably only sustain these
measures for a brief period of time. But given how far the
current situation has deteriorated, it is going to take some
dramatic steps to right the listing ship of Iraqi
reconstruction. Hopefully, these steps will do the trick, and
it will not be necessary to try to sustain them for longer
periods of time.
Two, we must change the military's mission. We must direct
U.S. military forces in Iraq to make securing the streets and
neighborhoods of the country their highest priority. If we do
not begin to take responsibility for providing security for the
Iraqi people, we will never create an environment secure enough
for the Iraqi economy to revive, for Iraqis to actively
participate in a new political process, for international
organizations and foreign aid workers to return, or for us to
deal with the problems of the Iraqi security forces currently
saddled with this mission.
I agree with the many British and American military
officers in Iraq who privately argue that the United States
should be employing the kind of foot patrols, backed by
helicopters and/or ground 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.
Three, we must reinforce the American military presence in
Iraq to establish the conditions for real security. We are
going to need more American troops in Iraq. Few of the current
members of the Coalition can be counted on to provide troops
capable of dealing with the full range of security problems we
currently face in Iraq. Indeed, over the past few weeks, we
have seen American forces called on to rescue those of other
Coalition nations when faced with circumstances beyond their
ability to control. At present, we do not have enough high-
quality Coalition forces to handle the mission of providing
basic security for the Iraqi people throughout the country.
Obviously, American forces are limited in number, and they
are stretched thin. But they are not yet at the breaking point.
By redeploying some units that just returned from Iraq, and
freeing up others currently being held back for other
contingencies, we could probably come up with another 40,000 to
60,000 American troops that could be redeployed to Iraq for a
brief period of time. But we must recognize that although we
can still ramp up our presence in Iraq by considerable numbers,
we can only do so for a short period of time, after which we
are going to have to find other forces to take over much of the
security burden.
Four, we must seek additional foreign forces. Because the
U.S. troop presence in Iraq can only be increased for the short
term, and Iraqi forces are unlikely to be able to take over
significant aspects of the security mission anytime soon, we
must find another source of competent troops.
These troops can only come from our allies in Europe and
Asia and possibly elsewhere. At the moment, the Europeans are
claiming they have no more to spare. I think this is an
exaggeration. A continent of over 300 million people, with some
of the most professional armies in the world, a continent that
can scrape together 50,000 security personnel to guard the
Athens Olympics, can pull together several tens of thousands of
troops for a mission as important as the rebuilding of Iraq, if
given 6 months or more to do so. And if Europe does, our other
allies will likely follow their lead.
I believe that Europe simply has no desire to find these
troops. The Europeans lack the desire, because they have made
clear that they will only provide large numbers of troops if
the United States agrees to make the U.N. a full partner in
reconstruction, along the lines of the experiences in Kosovo
and East Timor.
I suspect that if the United States were finally to agree
to Europe's terms, terms that are reasonable and under which
U.S. forces have operated successfully before, I think it would
be hard for our European allies to refuse a U.N. request for
more troops. At the very least, I think we ought to put them to
the test.
In addition, many European leaders have no desire to put
their troops into the shooting gallery that Iraq has become
over the past 12 months. This is ultimate why an increase in
U.S. troops and a change in American military tactics must
accompany our request for more foreign troops. Only when we
have diminished the current levels of violence in Iraq are we
likely to receive the contributions that we need, contributions
that should then allow us to scale back our own presence when
we begin to feel the strain from reinforcing our units in Iraq.
Five, we must remake the Iraqi security forces. The rapid
reinforcement of American troops, later supplemented, and then,
to some extent, supplanted by foreign troops, should be used to
buy time to create a secure environment in which to properly
reform the new Iraqi security forces. As American and other
Coalition units become available, Iraqi units should be pulled
off the streets and thoroughly re-vetted. Those who were
conscientious, those who showed up for work, those who tried to
help their fellow citizens, and those who stood and fought when
there was trouble should be retained. The rest should be moved
into job retraining programs and, ideally, found new employment
before being mustered out so that they do not simply swell the
ranks of the insurgents for lack of other employment.
These units should then be given thorough and comprehensive
training, without regard for the exigencies of the moment.
Before being redeployed, they should be adequately equipped so
that when they do finally return to service, they will have
every chance of succeeding in this crucial mission.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Pollack follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Kenneth M. Pollack
SECURING IRAQ
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for giving me
the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the issue of
establishing security in Iraq.
This month has been more than just a bad month. The events of this
month are a warning. They are a warning that all is not well in Iraq
and that if the United States does not make some major course
corrections very quickly, worse will likely follow. For this reason, I
hope that the events of this month will serve as a wake-up call to
those in Washington and Baghdad charged with rebuilding Iraq.
We are not doomed to failure there. There is still much good in
that country, and many positive forces which, if harnessed could be
used to someday build a peaceful, prosperous, and pluralist Iraq. I
would not yet use the term ``quagmire'' to describe our situation
there.
Indeed, some of the events of the past weeks underscore just how
powerful some of the forces working in our favor remain. While the
fighting raged in Fallujah, Kut, Kufa and several other cities, the
rest of Iraq remained relatively quiet--or at least no more dangerous
than usual. Most of Iraq's leaders, including most of Iraq's Shi'ite
religious establishment counseled their followers not to cast their lot
with Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, and many expressed disdain and
anger at his bid to tear down the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq. The
people of Iraq, mostly did not heed his call to arms. Most continued to
express the sentiment that his path was the road to civil war, and that
was a road they did not wish to travel.
These positive factors should be a constant reminder that if we
fail in Iraq, the fault will lie in ourselves, not in our stars.
Mr. Chairman, I am delighted that you have chosen to focus this
hearing on security in Iraq because security is the single most
important aspect of our reconstruction effort, and the single greatest
failure of our efforts so far. It is no exaggeration to say that our
failure to provide security is threatening the entire reconstruction
effort. We must get security right and we must do so very quickly or
the events of last week will soon become a far more common, more
widespread, and more deadly occurrence.
INSECURITY UNDERMINES ALL ASPECTS OF RECONSTRUCTION
Security is critical to reconstruction because insecurity
undermines every other aspect of the process. This impact is most
readily apparent in the economic sector. Goods and people cannot travel
safely on the roads for fear of bandits and booby-traps. Looting and
sabotage cause regular--but not predictable--losses of power and other
utilities. Factories, warehouses, stores, and other businesses are
often prey to break-ins, robberies, or extortion rings. At times,
workers do not show up for work because they are fearful of being out
on the streets or away from their home. In this climate, investors
generally will not invest and business owners are often reluctant to do
business. Imagine being a factory owner and not knowing who will show
up for work in the morning, whether the inputs you need to produce your
product will have been delivered, whether you will have electricity to
start your line, and whether your plant will get robbed that day. These
are the kinds of real-world problems that many Iraqis must deal with on
a daily basis because we have failed to provide them with a secure
country.
Public opinion polls have consistently shown that the vast majority
of Iraqis want the reconstruction to succeed. They want a new
government based on pluralistic political principles, a new economy
based on free-market economics, and they want a new society based on
trust and mutual respect. But the persistent instability prevents them
from being active partners in the effort to build a new Iraq. Iraqis
feel extremely vulnerable to retaliation for collaboration. It is true
for members of police and fire services whose uniform makes them prime
targets for the insurgents. It was true for public figures such as
Akila al-Hashemi, a female member of the governing council; `Abd al-
Majid al-Khoi, a moderate Shi'ite cleric; and Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim,
the leader of one of the main Shi'ite groups, all of them killed by
rejectionists of one kind or another for cooperating with the United
States. And it is also true for average Iraqis who fear that in the
lingering state of lawlessness, they too will be killed if they try to
help rebuild their country.
The United States cannot rebuild Iraq alone. Not even with the help
of a much bigger Coalition could we do the job without the active
participation of the Iraqi people. But that participation will not be
forthcoming if we do not make it safe for them to do so.
And they do not feel that it is safe enough for them to do so. A
poll conducted in October by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic
Studies found that 60 percent of Iraqis felt ``not very safe'' or ``not
safe at all'' in their neighborhoods, and virtually the same percentage
had either ``not very'' [sic] or ``no'' confidence that coalition
forces would make their cities safe. Only a little more than a quarter
of those surveyed felt ``very safe.'' Similarly, a February 2004
nationwide poll conducted by Oxford Research International for ABC News
and several other international news organizations found that, ``. . .
security at the national level is a vast concern; the public's top
overall priority, by a huge margin, is `regaining public security in
the country.' Sixty-four percent give it `first priority' for the next
12 months; out of a dozen issues tested, no other even breaks into
double digits.'' Similarly, at a local level, the poll found that more
Iraqis cited security as the single greatest problem in their lives,
and this figure was nearly twice that of the next highest problem--
unemployment.
The security situation also hinders reconstruction by crippling the
operation of those foreigners who went to Iraq to try to help the
Iraqis rebuild their country. Too many Americans and other members of
the Coalition hide in fortified enclaves like the Green Zone in Baghdad
for fear that they will be killed if they go out into Iraq proper. As a
result, many have little feel for the country and the people they are
supposed to be helping. For the Iraqis, it means too little contact
with Coalition personnel, leaving them angry, frustrated, fearful, and
resentful at the seemingly aloof Americans who sit in the same palaces
as the former regime, seem to pay just as little attention to the fears
and aspirations of the Iraqi people, and seem to issue edicts governing
life in Iraq in the same manner as Saddam.
Insecurity has also meant that the non-governmental organizations
that have proven so important to other postwar reconstruction efforts
in the Balkans, in East Timor, in Africa, and in Afghanistan, are
generally unwilling to operate in Iraq. Their absence has been a very
important blow to our efforts. When I was in Iraq in late November, I
had U.S. Army Civil Affairs personnel say to me flat out, ``Where is
the UN? Where are the NGOs? In the Balkans we just served as liaison
between the U.S. military and them, but they are the ones who did the
work of going out into the people and helping them rebuild their
country.'' Until Iraq is safe, we will not have those NGOs at our side.
In part for the reasons I have enumerated, and in part for a
variety of other reasons also related--directly or indirectly--to our
failure to provide security throughout Iraq, we are losing the battle
for hearts and minds. More and more Iraqis are concluding that either
the United States cannot or will not create a more secure Iraq and so
they decide that they should take matters into their own hands. We have
seen this shift in the events of the past few weeks. The CPA was caught
off-guard by how many Iraqis supported al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Many do
not seem to have been his loyal followers, but instead are average
Iraqis expressing their rage and frustration at our failings. Our
failure to secure the country, and the broad range of secondary
problems this creates, is increasingly taking Iraqis who at one time
supported the reconstruction and turning them to the Muqtada al-Sadr's
of Iraq--not necessarily because they want an Islamic theocracy as he
does, but because right now, he is the voice of resistance to the
American occupation.
Thus our failure to provide Iraq with security is costing us the
two most important positive factors we have had going for us from the
start. It is eroding popular support for the U.S.-led occupation, and
it is undermining the authority of moderate Iraqi leaders who urged
their followers to cooperate with reconstruction as the best course of
action for themselves, their families, and the country as a whole. The
more we fail to deliver on security, on jobs, and everything else that
goes with it, the more those Iraqis who argued for cooperation with the
Coalition look like dupes or foreign agents, forcing them to tack back
toward the extremists or risk becoming dangerously out of step with the
sentiments of their countrymen.
HOW DID WE GET TO WHERE WE ARE?
It is important to acknowledge some of the most important mistakes
the United States made in creating the situation of instability and
insecurity in Iraq so that we can avoid repeating them in the future
and try to fix them now.
Most of these mistakes were made right from the start. Indeed, the
lesson that looms largest from our previous experiences at post-
conflict reconstruction around the world is the absolute necessity of
establishing absolute security at the very start. If you can do that
early on, everything else becomes easy, and you can usually start to
relax your security presence and procedures within about six months.
Unfortunately we did not do that.
Of greatest importance and I will say this very bluntly, we invaded
Iraq with too few troops to be able to establish a secure operating
environment for ourselves, aid workers, or the Iraqi people. As General
Shinseki and others, including myself, warned beforehand, we probably
needed a force twice as large as the one that we employed. As a result,
we did not have enough troops to blanket the country; to establish a
presence in every village and neighborhood; to go into holdout areas
like al-Sadr City in Baghdad and the towns of the Sunni triangle to
pacify nascent insurgent groups; and to send an unmistakable message to
every Iraq--good guy or bad guy--that the United States will not allow
a vacuum or a state of lawlessness to emerge in the country. We did it
in Tikrit and it largely succeeded. We failed to do it in Fallujah and
we are reaping the whirlwind. That is what we needed to do and that is
what we failed to do.
We compounded this mistake in sizing our force with the mission we
gave our troops. At first, we did not tell our troops that preventing
looting and other forms of lawlessness was their responsibility. We did
not order them to protect the Iraqi people and their society. And
unfortunately, we allowed that trend to persist. We continue to make
force protection and hunting for insurgents who attack our forces
higher priorities than providing security for the Iraqi people.
Many Iraqis resent the fact that American forces take such pains to
protect themselves and do so little to protect the Iraqi people. A
constant (and fully justified) complaint I heard from Iraqis when I was
in Iraq was that the Americans have no presence and make no effort to
stop the worst manifestations of street crime or the attacks on them by
the insurgents. U.S. forces generally remain penned up in their
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 usually conducted mounted in Bradley fighting vehicles or
Humvees--at speeds of 30-50 km per hour. Although Coalition forces
claim that they make 700 patrols per day in Baghdad, and that at least
some are on foot, there is little evidence that this is the case.
During my time in Baghdad I never saw a single Coalition foot patrol,
and found that there were intervals of several hours between the
mounted patrols--which the Iraqis justifiably considered useless, since
it was impossible for those troops to see anything and they were not
present long enough to serve as a deterrent, let alone to talk to
people in the street to find out what the problems were.
Rather than bring the necessary American troops, or build a
multinational coalition capable of contributing the difference, the
Administration instead turned to the Iraqis themselves to try to fill
the gap between what we need and what we have. This too has proven to
be a mistake. Rather than follow the meticulous schedule laid out by
those charged with rebuilding Iraq's security forces, we short-
circuited proper vetting procedures, drastically reduced training
times, and neglected to arm and equip the Iraqi security forces before
turning them loose on the country. The results have so far been
extremely disappointing. Many of those inducted have proven to be part
of the problem, rather than part of the solution, and there are now
considerable criminal elements in the police and other security
services who engage in bribery, extortion, kidnapping, rape, arson,
burglary, and murder for their own benefit or for that of anyone who
will pay them. When faced with the determined fighters of Muqtada al-
Sadr's Mahdi Army, most of the Iraqi security personnel simply melted
away. Others joined the insurgents. Too few stood and fought with
Coalition personnel.
This is not to say that there are not many good, brave, honest, and
well-meaning Iraqis in the Iraqi security forces; it is only to say
that there are too few of them to shoulder so great a burden, and those
there are have not been given the training and the equipment to handle
even a much smaller portion of the load.
Finally, we must recognize that through our own actions we have
created a popular base of support that sustains the insurgents. We
should always remember Mao Zedong's parable of the fish and the sea;
the people are the sea and the guerrilla is the fish, and as long as
the sea is hospitable to the fish, you will never catch them all, but
as soon as the sea turns against the fish, they are as good as dead. By
alienating the Sunni tribal population of Iraq through an arbitrary and
excessive policy of de-Ba'thification devised by Iraqi opportunists
seeking to exclude potential rivals from the political process; by
failing to provide alternative employment for Iraq's security services;
and by creating a new Iraqi governmental structure from which the Sunni
tribes were largely excluded, we have convinced the Sunni tribes that
in the new Iraq they will be as oppressed as the Shi'ah and Kurds were
when they ruled Iraq. And this fear and anger of the U.S.-led
reconstruction has produced a very comfortable sea in which insurgents
foreign and domestic can move, hide, recruit, and mount attacks on
Americans and those who would help us to rebuild their country.
WAYS FORWARD
Although the way ahead is increasingly murky, there is no question
that the United States simply cannot abandon Iraq--nor should it at
this point in time when the opportunity to get reconstruction on the
right path still exists. Nevertheless, I think we must all acknowledge
that we cannot be certain what the right answer is now. We know what
the right answer was back at the start of reconstruction, and it is a
tragedy that we did not do the right thing at that time. If we had,
while I am certain there would still have been mistakes and problems
galore because rebuilding Iraq was always going to be very difficult, I
am equally certain that we would be in an infinitely better situation
than we currently face, and likely would not be debating whether we are
staring disaster in the face.
Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that the suggestions I will
make are still largely derived from those things that we should have
done at the start of the occupation which the experiences of Panama,
Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Cambodia, Kosovo, Timor, and Afghanistan all
indicated was the right way to handle post-conflict reconstruction in
Iraq. At this late date--a year later, with so many problems festering
in the country, so many opportunities missed, and so much anger and
resentment already simmering there--we cannot be certain that they will
still work. Unfortunately, I believe that they are the course we must
take, if only because nothing else seems likely to work better.
1. Make security the highest priority for the next six months
Getting control over the security situation must be made a
priority, possibly even at the expense of other operations currently
ongoing. However, it cannot remain so forever. Moreover, I believe that
certain extreme measures are justified in the short term to get the
security situation under control that the United States and its
coalition partners can probably only sustain for a brief period of
time. Given how far the current situation has deteriorated, it is going
to take some dramatic steps to right the listing ship of Iraqi
reconstruction. But if these steps prove successful, it should not be
necessary to sustain them for excessively long periods of time.
2. Change the military's mission
First and foremost, we must direct U.S. military forces in Iraq to
make securing the streets and neighborhoods of the country their
highest priority. If we can do this, we will have a profound impact on
the lives and attitudes of average Iraqis. If we cannot, it is
exceedingly unlikely that reconstruction can succeed. What's more real
security is the essential pre-requisite for all of the other steps that
will follow. If we do not begin to take responsibility for providing
security for the Iraqi people we will never create an environment
secure enough for international organizations and foreign aid workers
to return, nor will there be an opportunity to deal with the problems
of the Iraqis security forces currently saddled with this mission.
I agree with the many British and American military officers in
Iraq who privately argue that the United States should be employing the
kind of foot patrols backed by helicopters and/or ground 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.
This was also the demand I heard regularly from the Iraqis themselves.
Their preference was to have mixed American and Iraqi patrols. However,
I found that most Iraqis were so desperate that they would settle for
American soldiers alone on the streets. An NDI study of Iraqi public
opinion conducted last summer found the same; one Shiite woman in
Diwaniyah asked about the reconstitution of the Iraqi police said, ``If
there is an [Iraqi] officer standing there, no Iraqi would be afraid of
him. But if an American soldier were there, they would be afraid of
him.'' Even though Iraqis generally want Americans to be more in the
background in every other aspect of reconstruction--and some Iraqis
will doubtless bristle at an increased American presence--in this one
area most Iraqis seem to want to see more Americans, not less, at least
for the short term.
Such an emphasis on foot patrols, presence, and the eradication of
crime and attacks on Iraqis would doubtless expose U.S. personnel to
greater risks. However, this is 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. If our overriding goal
is to protect American troops, we should get them out of Iraq and bring
them back to the United States where they will be perfectly safe. The
fact is that they 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 prioritization--
focusing on force protection and offensive operations against the
insurgents--is misguided. If it does not change, the reconstruction may
fail outright.
3. Reinforce the American military presence in Iraq to establish the
conditions for real security
We are going to need more American troops in Iraq. Few of the
current members of the Coalition can be counted on to provide troops
capable of dealing with the full range of security problems we
currently face in Iraq. Indeed, over the past few weeks, we have seen
American forces called on to rescue those of other coalition nations
when faced with circumstances beyond their ability to control. At
present, we do not have enough American troops (or other high-quality
coalition forces like the British and Italians) to handle the mission
of providing basic security for the Iraqi people throughout the
country. Indeed, this is one reason I find it hard to blame our
military commanders for handling security as they have. They don't have
the forces to accomplish the mission we need them to accomplish even if
they were ordered to do so. Consequently we must provide them with
those resources.
Obviously, American ground forces are limited in number and they
are stretched thin. But they are not yet at the breaking point. By
redeploying some units that just returned from Iraq and freeing up
others currently being held back for other contingencies (like a Korean
war) we could probably come up with another 40,000-60,000 American
troops that could be deployed to Iraq for a brief period of time. But
we must recognize that if we do so, we will not be able to sustain that
presence for very long--again 6-12 months at most--and that in doing so
we likely will diminish our ability to sustain even a smaller presence
once our initial surge is over. In other words, we can still ramp up
our presence in Iraq by considerable numbers, but we must recognize
that we can only do so for a short period, after which we are going to
have to decrease the American presence significantly.
4. Seek additional foreign forces
Because the U.S. troop presence in Iraq can only be increased for
the short term, and Iraqi forces are unlikely to be able to take over
significant aspects of the security mission for something on the order
of 12-24 months, the United States must find another source of
competent troops. These troops can only come from our allies in Europe
and Asia, and possibly elsewhere. At the moment, the Europeans are
claiming that they have no more to spare. I think this a bit of an
exaggeration. Surely a continent of over 300 million people, with some
of the most professional armies in the world--a continent that has
managed to scrape together 50,000 security personnel to guard the
Athens Olympics--can pull together another 25,000-50,000 troops for a
mission as important as the rebuilding of Iraq if given six months to
do so. And if Europe does, our other allies will likely follow their
lead.
I believe that Europe simply has no desire to find these troops.
The Europeans lack the desire because they have made clear that they
will only provide large numbers of troops if the United States agrees
to make the UN a full partner in reconstruction, along the lines of the
experiences in Kosovo and East Timor--a role that this Administration
has stubbornly and, I would add, gratuitously refused to this point. I
suspect that if the United States were finally to agree to Europe's
terms, terms that are reasonable and under which U.S. forces have
operated successfully before, I think it would be hard for our European
allies to refuse a UN request for more troops. At the very least, I
think we ought to put them to the test.
In addition, many European leaders have no desire to put large
numbers of their troops into the shooting gallery that Iraq has become
over the past 12 months. This is ultimately why an increase in U.S.
troops must precede our request for more foreign troops: only when we
have diminished the current levels of violence in Iraq are we likely to
receive the contributions that we need--contributions that should then
allow us to scale back our own presence when we begin to feel the
strain from reinforcing our units in Iraq.
5. Remake the Iraqi security forces
The rapid reinforcement of American troops, later supplemented and
then to some extent supplanted by foreign troops should be used to buy
time to create a secure environment in which to properly reform the new
Iraqi security forces. As American and other Coalition units become
available, Iraqi units should be pulled off the streets and thoroughly
re-vetted--relying on the actual behavior of the Iraqi soldiers in
their various security missions over the past year as a primary guide.
Those who were conscientious; those who showed up for work; those who
tried to help their fellow citizens; and those who stood and fought
when there was trouble should be retained. The rest should be moved
into job retraining programs and, ideally, found new employment before
being mustered out so that they do not simply swell the ranks of the
insurgents for lack of other alternatives. New recruits should also be
enlisted and they too should be thoroughly vetted before being
enrolled. These units should then be given thorough and comprehensive
training programs without regard for the exigencies of the moment.
Before being redeployed, they should be adequately equipped, so that
when they do finally return to service they will have every chance of
succeeding.
What's more, it would probably be wise, at least initially, to
marry up Iraqi units with similar sized American and other Coalition
units--both to add Iraqi faces to Coalition operations, and as a final
check and source of training to ensure that when the unit is finally
deployed on its own it will be able to handle the mission it is
assigned. It is crucial to the morale of the Iraqi security forces and
to the people of Iraq that their security forces be seen as succeeding
and assuming the burden of securing their country.
In an ideal world, which I recognize that this may not be, the
progression from a beefed up American security presence, to a more
even-handed balance between American and multilateral forces,
eventually to an Iraqi-dominated security presence should be fairly
seamless. The U.S. would increase its forces and bring down the level
of violence in the short run making it possible to bring in more
foreign troops; this in turn would allow the U.S. to scale back its
commitment. In the meantime, the Coalition would use the window
afforded to train new, more reliable and competent Iraqi security
forces, which can then slowly take over for American and Coalition
forces, allowing for a further drawdown in foreign troop strength.
6. Reach out to the Sunni population
Finally, we must remember that no aspect of Iraqi reconstruction is
purely military. Every aspect has a political and economic component as
well. In the long run, the security of Iraq will rest heavily on the
support of the populace. If the populace turns on the insurgents and
actively supports the Coalition, reconstruction has every likelihood of
succeeding. If not, reconstruction is probably doomed to failure.
Although this is true everywhere across the country, it is a
pressing concern with the Sunni tribesmen who have become the principal
popular support for most of the Sunni Arab and foreign insurgents. The
United States must take immediate steps to begin to remedy this urgent
problem.
If the Administration had prepared to do so, there were much better
ways it could have handled the Sunni tribes right from the start.
Unfortunately, it did not, and we must deal with the situation now at
hand. In the short-term, we must reach out to the tribal shaykhs,
largely as Saddam did, and offer to provide them with resources if they
will ``assist with security''--i.e., stop attacking the roads, power
lines, oil pipelines, and coalition forces in their territory and
prevent other groups from doing the same. Our payments do not
necessarily have to be cold cash, like Saddam's, but we too need to
find ways to provide resources that will give the tribal shaykhs and
their people an incentive to cooperate with us. This can come in the
form of goods, construction equipment or funding for projects, or even
the projects themselves. It can come by ``deputizing'' tribal military
leaders, enlisting their personnel in an Iraqi security force (probably
the ICDC, which is locally based) and then paying them for their
service. The key is to start meeting with the shaykhs and convincing
them that if they cooperate, there will be resources and other benefits
for them and their followers.
Over the longer-term we must work to repair the deeper
psychological damage created by Saddam's misrule and our own initial
mistakes. We need to begin a process of education among Sunni tribesmen
(indeed, all across Iraq) that will make them understand our vision of
the new Iraq and their role in it. For instance, we need them to
understand that in a system where the rule of law prevails they will
not have to fear being oppressed by the Shi'ah as they oppressed the
Shi'ah themselves. Similarly, we need to persuade them that while they
will no longer enjoy the privileged position they had under Saddam, and
so will no longer be relatively better off than the rest of the
country, if the reconstruction succeeds, Iraq will be so much more
prosperous than it was under Saddam that in absolute terms, they will
be much better off.
The United States must also help the Sunnis develop new political
institutions. Here the need may actually be even more pressing than it
is for the rest of the country. The Kurds have their two great parties.
For the present, the Shi'ah at least have the religious leadership of
the Hawza--although that too is an imperfect vehicle for expressing
their true political aspirations. But the Sunnis have nothing. Their
principal political institution was the Ba'th party and it has been
proscribed, along with all of its senior members. Consequently, the
United States is going to have to revise its arbitrary and draconian
de-Ba'thification measures to allow prominent Sunnis, including Sunni
tribal leaders, to participate in Iraq's political process and help
them create new, progressive political institutions that will allow
their voices to be heard. Even in these, the Sunni tribesman cannot
predominate, and should have no more political power than their
demographic weight, but they cannot be excluded entirely as they
effectively have been so far. Overall, the U.S. military and political
authorities must remember that insurgencies are not defeated
principally by military operations. They are defeated by eliminating
the underlying political and economic grievances that gave rise to the
insurgency. Overly aggressive military operations can therefore be
extremely counterproductive by exacerbating those grievances (or
creating new ones).
CONCLUSION
When I wrote The Threatening Storm two years ago, I argued that the
we would likely have a honeymoon period after an invasion when most
Iraqis would be receptive to the efforts of the United States to help
them rebuild their country. However, I also warned that that honeymoon
would not last forever. I cautioned that unless the Iraqis saw real
improvement in their lives during that honeymoon, they would likely
begin to turn against us, and I suggested that that honeymoon period
might last no more than about six months. In November, when I was in
Iraq, I found Iraqi public opinion still overwhelmingly supportive of
the United States, defying my six-month prediction. But I also found
that this support was becoming fragile, and if the United States was
not able to deliver basic security and basic services better than we
had so far soon, more and more Iraqis would conclude that either the
United States could not or would not help them to rebuild their country
and so they should take matters into their own hands and get rid of us.
Unfortunately, in the events of the past weeks we are seeing this
prediction come true. Our failure to secure the country, and the broad
range of secondary problems this creates, are increasingly souring
Iraqis on the reconstruction and turning them into our opponents. All
is not lost in Iraq, but the clock is ticking. If reconstruction is to
succeed, we must address the security of the Iraqi people and we must
do so promptly. I do not know how many more chances we will get to do
so. But I urge this Administration to treat this one as our last.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Pollack, for that
very compelling testimony. We appreciate that.
General Joulwan.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL GEORGE A. JOULWAN, U.S. ARMY (RET.),
FORMER NATO SACEAUR
General Joulwan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to once again testify before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. You, Mr. Chairman, and this committee
represent a true bipartisan approach so vital in addressing the
threats now facing our country.
At the outset, if I may, Mr. Chairman, I want to pay
tribute to the men and women of our Armed Forces who have
displayed uncommon bravery and courage in the past year, in
Iraq and elsewhere around the world. Many of today's leaders
served with me in numerous assignments around the world, and I
can attest to their professionalism and their commitment. And
nothing in my remarks today should be construed as reducing our
resolve or commitment in support of our troops and in bringing
true peace, stability, and normalization to the people of Iraq.
And, to me, failure is not an option.
Mr. Chairman, you asked for my assessment and
recommendations on several key issues facing us in Iraq and on
the pending transition to Iraqi sovereignty on 1 July. Let me
respond to those issues and then answer your questions. But,
first, two observations, I believe, that are relevant to your
inquiry.
The first observation. As is now evident, prior planning
for winning the peace, as well as for winning the war, was
inadequate and shortsighted. Past experiences in similar
conflicts mandated as much planning for the former as for the
latter. In my view, the tougher task is winning the peace, and
requires an attention to detail and an integration of effort
that includes not only military units, but also non-
governmental organizations, U.N. agencies, and numerous U.S.
and international civilian firms and agencies. A year later, we
are still suffering from this lack of initial detailed planning
for the stabilization of Iraq.
The second observation. A year ago, we had a clear warning
of the violence ahead in Iraq. A battle-tested corps commander,
after skillfully maneuvering his forces with minimum casualties
to secure Baghdad, reported to his superiors that he ran into
resistance, more resistance than he anticipated. For his candor
and integrity, the corps commander was criticized and
contradicted by the senior civilian leadership in the Pentagon.
Mr. Chairman, the assumptions that we would encounter
minimum resistance, as well as being greeted as liberators by
the Iraqi people, were wrong. When the assumptions in your
battle plan are proven false, you must immediately adapt your
war plan. Winning the first battle is not winning the war. We
did not impose our will on the enemy. Not to do so, in my
opinion, was a strategic error, a strategic error we are now
paying for, and one that we must correct.
Now to the issues you asked me to address. I'll try to be
brief. First let me reinforce what you and Senator Biden have
already said in your opening statements. First and foremost,
Mr. Chairman, I believe that the primary requirement for a
successful transition on 1 July in Iraq is, indeed, a secure
environment. And I'd like to explore that a little bit with
you.
Right now, that secure environment, as many of you have
said, does not exist. This basic requirement should have been
met at the very outset of the war. A secure environment
includes sealing the borders, preventing lawlessness, disarming
remnants of the defeated military, and demobilizing the enemy's
security forces. Those actions are critical in the follow-on to
the end of major hostilities. If that was not a clear objective
of our civilian and political leaders, it should have been. The
resources required to do so should have been provided, whatever
the cost. We did not do so then, we must do so now, or there
truly is a high probability of civil war, rather than a civil
society, in Iraq.
Mr. Chairman, let me, again, be clear. While the
requirement for a secure environment still exists one year
after the end of the conflict stage, it will be more difficult
and require more resources, both in troops and materiel, but it
must be done. Without a secure environment on 1 July, we should
anticipate continued violence confronting the new Iraqi
Government as well as Coalition forces.
And, second, for clarity, we must understand the difference
between the warfight and stabilization. The warfight is what we
witnessed in the brilliant tactical maneuver from Kuwait to
Baghdad by our soldiers and marines, supported by Air Force and
Navy air. The warfight was superb use of the capabilities and
effects of joint and combined forces. In very short order, our
troops reached Baghdad and accomplished the mission of regime
change.
But while the military can win the war, only civilian
agencies can secure the peace. And to secure the peace requires
stabilization within Iraq. And, Mr. Chairman, stabilization is
a mission. And I would urge you to request from those in the
Department of Defense, and our military and civilian leaders,
what is the strategy for stabilization in Iraq? It is a
necessary phase in the operation when you go from the warfight
to stabilization and, perhaps years later, to normalization.
Stabilization is not just nation-building, as we want to try to
call it. It is not. But, rather, it is a combination of
military operations and actions by civil and non-governmental
agencies and organizations to begin the task of creating
everything from constitutions, elections, national police,
border forces, justice systems, jobs, and all those things that
give people hope and dignity--food, shelter, hospitals, and
schools. This is what needs to be done now and after 1 July. It
is a daunting task. And to do so will take a great deal of
coordination, planning, and cooperation between the military
command structure and the new U.S. Embassy being established in
Baghdad. In doing so, we must have unity of effort, as well as
unity of command between the military command in Baghdad and
this soon-to-be-established U.S. Embassy. Clarity in terms of
mission, as well as roles and responsibilities, is essential
prior to the 1 July transition.
Mr. Chairman, as has been mentioned by you and others,
stabilization and a secure environment will mean more troops--
troops to seal the borders, troops to ensure safe passage on
roads, troops to disarm and to mobilize former warring
factions, troops to buy time for indigenous Iraqi police and
military to organize, equip, and train. Clearly, such a mission
will be an added hardship for our military and their families,
but realistic troop-to-task analysis needs to be done by our
field commanders in order to provide a secure environment in
Iraq. And I would urge the Congress that resources must match
those requirements.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, in my view, we also need to broaden,
as has been mentioned by others, the political and military
base of the Iraqi campaign. We cannot, nor should not, go it
alone. And it should not be ``our way or the highway.'' NATO
and the United Nations need to be consulted and included in the
planning for a free and democratic Iraq.
This year, we celebrate the 60th anniversary of D-Day and
the end of Hitler's fanatical dream of world domination. This
year, we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain and the demise of communism. A
decade ago, we saved thousands of Muslims from atrocities in
Bosnia. We did not do so alone, but with an alliance of like-
minded nations. It took 40 years in the cold war, 14 million
U.S. soldiers back and forth to Europe, and billions of
dollars. They were joined by millions of other soldiers from
the Alliance, and we, the Alliance, prevailed. We have more in
common than we have in differences. We share common values and
ideals. We have mutual trust and confidence.
The attack on September 11 was an attack not just on the
United States, but also civilization as we know it. NATO
declared an Article V against terrorism, for the first time in
its history, the day after September 11, 2001. NATO, as an
Alliance, is in Afghanistan, commanding the International and
Security Assistance Force. And I believe NATO can play a
significant role in Iraq, but we need to give them a seat at
the table and a voice in the political as well as the military
operation.
Those are my brief comments, Mr. Chairman, and I look
forward to your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, General Joulwan.
Commissioner Michael Sheehan.
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL A. SHEEHAN, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER FOR
COUNTER-TERRORISM, NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT
Mr. Sheehan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to appear before your committee again today. It's a
pleasure to return and discuss my experiences in dealing with
the problem of building police and security structures in post-
conflict environments.
Let me say, at the outset, Mr. Chairman, that I am not an
Iraqi expert, but I have been involved in training of
indigenous military police, civil defense, and constabulary
forces for the U.S. Government for over 22 years, as a U.S.
Special Forces officer, as a State Department diplomat, and
with the United Nations. And I say this not to bolster my
credentials, but to underscore that we've been doing this for
at least 22 years that I've been associated with it. I've
worked in four continents in these missions, from Central
America to the Caribbean, the Andes, the Balkans, Africa--
Central Africa, East Africa, and West Africa--and in East Asia.
I've worked in American-only operations, American-led
coalitions, U.N. civilian police operations, and I've also
worked, to a lesser extent, with the European Union and OSCE
efforts in these. Depending on how you count them up, probably
about a dozen experiences in this business over the past 22
years.
Mr. Chairman, I'm sure Iraq is unique in many aspects. In
all of the cases I worked with, they all had unique
characteristics. But they also all had the same haunting
problems over and over again.
First, let me just review quickly what some of those
problems are. They're well known, and I'll go through it very
quickly.
Normally in post-conflict environments, law and order is
completely broken down, there are no viable state institutions.
Local police have stopped to function completely, overtaken by
military and paramilitary forces running around the
countryside. There are no functioning judicial or penal systems
in place. There is a minimal or no functioning civil society,
such as a free press or civic organizations, and normally the
country is bankrupt, unable to hire and retain public workers,
including the police.
And also, in each of the cases I worked with, but to
varying degrees of success, you heard complaints about building
police forces, primarily from my military partners and
colleagues in the military, but also from other sectors of U.S.
Government action. They always complain that police forces
started too late, were proceeding too slowly, and, because of
this, were emboldening trouble-making factors in the country.
There were never enough forces to train, equip, or pay the
police. There was a shortage of expertise in developing
leadership in the police, and specialists, such as forensics
and other special skills. And almost in every case, there was
no judicial system to handle criminal activity and put them in
proper correctional systems.
Also, two other issues I'm going to return to later that
are also prevalent in every one of those cases, the issue of
the security gap between police and military functions, and the
issue of political legitimacy.
Let me briefly outline six steps that are required to
rebuild the police force in a post-conflict situation. It could
be more or less, but I've picked six.
No. 1, vetting the force. That was mentioned before. In
each of these cases, you normally don't want to start a police
force from scratch. You want to take what's formerly there, the
good ones--you need good intelligence to figure out which ones
were good--and build around them in order to jumpstart the
process. Virtually impossible to start with a clean slate of
paper, so you have to build with the original force. Often
you're faced with the dilemma of, do you deal with integrating
paramilitary forces into the police forces? There are pros and
cons of this. By integrating them, they buy into the security
structure. But they can also threaten the development of a new
and democratic police force. Again, the issue is how you vet
them--how you vet the old police, how you vet people that want
a stake in the process that served, some admirably, in
paramilitary and other resistance groups. That issue of vetting
the force is probably the most important and difficult aspect
of building--of beginning a force.
Second, you need to shape the force. How large a force do
you need, one that can be sustained by the new economy there?
What types of religious, political, and different factions
need--ethnic or other factions need to be integrated in the
police force. Most police forces that I've been involved with
were too big before the war. They need to be made smaller, but
more effective at the same time. And normally the demographic
makeup of the force has to be adjusted.
Third, you need to train this force. This is actually one
of the more straightforward of the challenges. We know how to
train police and security forces. We've done it over and over
again for many, many years. The problem is, we normally start
too late and without enough resources. Once you get the
training institutions up and running, it's a fairly
straightforward process.
I've seen, for instance, our ICITAP at the Department of
Justice program, does a very good job once it's up and running,
in training police and other forces. It's just all, normally,
too late, too slow.
We have to train leaders and specialists. Training cops and
security personnel, as I mentioned before, fairly
straightforward. Training leaders is more difficult, and
specialists. You can't train a leader and grow a leader
overnight, but you can accelerate the process. If you can
properly identify leaders, give them specialized training and
mentoring, you can accelerate the process. You can't wait
around, to develop leaders, for 10 or 15 years. You can help
accelerate. In order to do that, you have to have special
trainers to provide specialist training for leaders and other
specialists, as I mentioned before--forensics, special
investigations, and internal investigations.
Fifth, you need to monitor the force. Once you provide
training, you need monitors to make sure the training that you
provided in the academy is properly executed in the field. That
requires international or other types of monitoring forces to
mentor them and bring them along in the process.
Finally, and the last step I want to emphasize, you have to
police the police. And in this regard, I want to mention a
great American, named Chris Kriskovich, who was a veteran of
Special Forces in Vietnam, retired FBI agent, and founder--
father of ICITAP. He taught me about this in the mid 1990s, in
Haiti and the Balkans and other countries we operated in. You
have to, from the beginning, create an internal policing of the
police force to ensure that these people that you're empowering
with new authorities respect the rule of law and the democratic
institutions they're sworn to protect.
Let me mention quickly a couple of other key factors
involved in building the police force.
First, political legitimacy. If you do not have a solid
political legitimacy, a solid political process moving forward,
building a police force is not going to solve your problem. You
should do it anyhow, because it's going to take you a long
time, but don't expect it to bring security, don't expect it to
bring stability, alone, to the situation. You have to have a
viable and legitimate political process or your police forces
will be left to the sidelines. We saw this in Somalia, we saw
this in the early parts of the Balkans, we saw it in many other
occasions where, without a political legitimacy, if the process
is broken down and armed factions are going to be fighting, the
police will be pushed to the side.
Second, on the issue of the security gap, this comes up
also in every one of the problems, and again in Iraq. The
security gap is that area where the problem is a violent--
generally of violent mobs, too large to be handled by local
police, too civilian to be handled by military problems.
Normally the solution best used to deal with this problem is
using paramilitary gendarmerie or carabiniere-type forces to
deal with that gray area of large mobs that are often
orchestrated by troublemakers. And that is an area that has to
be addressed early on. It's an area that overlaps between
police and military. There are forces that are good at doing
that. Work has been done on that in the Balkans that was
delayed, but ultimately fairly successful, and lessons can be
learned there.
Time and money. You can't do this overnight. Senator Biden,
you mentioned one of my boss's predecessors, Bernie Kerik. Five
years, that's exactly the timeline. I'd say at a minimum you're
going to need 5 years. Actually, it's a generational process to
create a new police force. And actually a contract between the
people of the post-conflict environment and new judicial and
security forces takes a generation. At a minimum, our presence
and international presence has to be at least 5, more like 10
years.
Let me take a few minutes to talk about the U.S. Government
and make a few recommendations on how to deal with this, and
for Iraq.
First of all, we have to admit that we're going to be in
this business that I've been involved with for 22 years. The
U.S. Government has not admitted it. We reinvent it every time.
Because normally these interventions are politically
controversial, so the U.S. Government hasn't defined this as a
task. It's been done ad hoc over and over and over again.
Second, once we admit this is a task for the U.S.
Government, assign central responsibility for managing it. In
my view, it should be in the State Department, and it should
group all the different organizations that are out there doing
it now under one roof. That would include the Justice programs,
including ICITAP, into the State Department to manage these
type of operations.
Third, I think we should create an international academy
for police training--I made this suggestion when I was
Ambassador for Counterterrorism--to train our partners in
counterterrorism around the world here in the United States,
not only to give them skills, but to build the relationships
that are necessary to fight the war on terrorism. We also have
interests in counter-narcotics and in civilian police
structures. We should build an academy, bring people together
here. And, by the way, that academy will also give a home to
the policymakers, to planners, and the people that develop
doctrine, like the U.S. Army has, that we could use for startup
missions in these situations in the future.
Third, we should create a small, but standing, Federal
international police training force. We could probably do this
initially with 100 or 150 people, but at least they would have
a home, and there would be a place for them to reside, and they
could be drawn upon in the early phases of the planning and the
startup of these missions.
Finally, we need to plan early and often. If there is a
political process moving forward in U.S. Government that is
going to create one of these post-conflict environments, the
planning for police should start immediately, concurrent with
the political planning. Also, if the military starts planning,
the day they start planning, the police and judicial planning
should start, as well.
Finally, we're going to need money in order to keep this
operation moving, a commitment, time, resources, and people to
do it. I can hear the red light going off, and I'm at the end
of my comments.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to express
these today, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sheehan follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Michael A. Sheehan
BUILDING POLICE FORCES IN A POST-CONFLICT ENVIRONMENT
Introduction
Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear here today. It is
a pleasure to return to this Committee to discuss my experiences in
dealing with the problem of building police and security structures in
post conflict environments.
I have been involved in the training of indigenous military,
police, civil defense and constabulary forces for the US government for
over 22 years, as a US Army Special Forces officer, a State Department
diplomat, and United Nations official.
My current duties at NYPD have furthered my understanding of
training police officers, although this training is focused almost
exclusively on counter-terrorism. New York City has been targeted on
multiple occasions by terrorists, but we are certainly not in a post
conflict scenario as was usually the case when I have worked with
police forces. New York is bouncing back from the terrible 9-11 attacks
and despite an enormous effort to fight terrorism, the City has
continued to reduce crime by about 11% over the past 2 years under the
leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond
Kelly.
In today's remarks, I will draw on my experience previous to NYPD,
which includes service in post conflict zones on four continents--from
Central America, the Caribbean, and the Andes, to the Balkans, Africa,
and East Asia. I have worked with American-only operations, American-
led coalitions, UN civilian police and to a lesser extent the European
Union and OSCE efforts. Depending on how you count them, I have
participated in about a dozen police training experiences in 22 years.
I am sure Iraq is unique in many respects, but I am equally sure
that the principles that I have encountered in each of these twelve or
so cases are equally valid there. I hope my testimony adds to the
discussion on how this enormous task of stabilizing Iraq can be best
accomplished by our nation and its allies.
Defining the Problem
In each of the post conflict scenarios in which I worked, the local
situation varied dramatically. Each situation had its own unique
challenges based on the nature of the conflict, the degree of ongoing
violence, the status of political reconciliation and the local
tradition of law enforcement. The international response also varied
dramatically--from the well prepared and financed (clearly the minority
of cases) to the more normal hap hazard and ``shoe string'' financing
of the police and justice programs.
Despite the unique variables of each case there were constants, in
fact all too familiar constants, that faced us every time:
Law and order had completely broken down; there were no
viable state institutions.
Local police had stopped to function and were overtaken by
military and paramilitary forces.
There was no functioning judicial or penal system.
There was minimal or no functioning civil society, such as a
press or civic organizations.
The country was bankrupt with no resources to hire and
retain public workers including police.
Three consistent complaints were heard concerning the response to
this challenge, most often coming from the military forces that were
forced to move into the security vacuum created by broken police
forces.
The training of the new force started too late and proceeded
too slowly, emboldening trouble-making groups.
There were not enough resources to train, equip or pay the
police.
There was a shortage of expertise in developing leaders and
specialists.
There was no judicial system to handle criminals and other
trouble makers if apprehended by military or police units.
There are two other important issues in this equation that I will
address later in my remarks, the so called security gap and political
legitimacy. For now, I will turn to the basics of building a police
force.
Six Steps in Building a Police Force
For the purposes of this discussion I have listed six key
components in building a police force. There could arguably be more,
but I think these six capture the most essential elements. They are:
vetting the old force, shaping the new force, training recruits,
training leaders and specialists, monitoring the force, and last but
not least, policing the police.
Let me make a few observations about each of these components:
Vetting the Force
Building a policed force from scratch is not easy; in fact, it is
practically impossible. It takes time. In most post conflict
situations, those responsible for building a new force try first to
screen out the best from the previous force and build upon their
experience. The problem is in identifying who is acceptable. It is a
challenge to build a whole new policing culture. Retaining too many
from the previous regime risks infecting the new force with old
practices of corruption, abuse of authority, or politicization. A
second challenge is whether or not to include paramilitary or other
military groups that were part of the conflict. In the short term it
may pay to take on some of these people and reduce their threat to the
stabilization process; but they also must be carefully vetted and be of
sufficient numbers to dominate the new police force.
The challenge is to have a vetting process that includes trusted
locals, coupled with intelligence information gathered before and after
the vetting process. It is essential to weed out the problem officers.
It is a difficult and time consuming process, but is absolutely vital
for success.
Shaping the New Force
In most cases in which I have served the previous security forces
were ineffective, too large, under-paid and often corrupt. The goal is
to create a smaller police force that does not bankrupt the national
treasury and is paid sufficiently so that its members are not tempted
to engage in street-level corruption to make up for low or non-existent
pay.
The host government is normally broke--and the International
Financial Institutions are reluctant to pay salaries. However, funding
must be found, at least during the initial phases, from international
donors to pay police. It must be factored into the beginning of any
planning for an intervention.
In shaping the force, it is important to have political, ethnic or
religious groups represented appropriately. In most cases, it makes
sense to keep the old traditions of the police and justice systems (for
instance did it derive from colonial structures from the British,
French or Italian systems?). This action needs to be coordinated with
coalition partners that may bring different traditions to the process.
Training the Force
Training new recruits is an important but fairly straight forward
challenge. We have many people who know how to do this--and they do it
fairly well. The Department of Justice International Criminal
Investigative Training Assistance Program (or ICITAP as it is known)
has been involved in establishing police academies in various countries
around the world. I have visited several of these and they are
relatively effective in turning out new recruits. Generally, training
should take at least sixteen weeks to get it right, and should include
time on the street to monitor recruits as they develop their law
enforcement skills. The challenge here is to get it up and running
within the first months of an intervention so that new cops are being
turned out within months. This takes advance planning and resources.
Training Leaders and Specialists
More difficult than training recruits is training ``bosses'' as
they are known in the NYPD vernacular. You can not substitute for years
of street experience in the classroom. However, leaders can be
identified and put in accelerated programs to develop their capacities
and mentor their development. This requires exceptional trainers and
monitors for senior level personnel. However, as is the case in the
specialist areas, like forensic science and special investigations,
there is always a premium on recruiting the quality of people necessary
to do this job. To do it well, you need long term police experience and
the willingness and ability to translate that experience in a foreign
land. That is not easy, but again, is essential to the task.
Monitoring the Force
New police need to be monitored to ensure that the training they
received in the Academy is practiced on the street. That is the primary
job of a monitoring force. Relatively speaking, this is also a task
that can be accomplished. The US and the international community have
built up quite a bit of experience in the past 10 years monitoring
police forces. The quality of the monitoring effort, however, will
often depend on the leadership of its force. Without strong
supervision, these cops have a tendency to get in trouble with
prostitution, black marketing, or other abuses. If well supervised,
this is a task that can be done well.
Policing the Police
Let me take a quick moment to discuss another important and often
overlooked aspect of these operations that was taught to me in the mid
1990s by Kris Kriskovich. Kris was a veteran of the 5th Special Forces
Group in Viet Nam and retired career FBI agent and the founding father
of ICITAP. Kris underscored to me the importance of policing the
police--of building strong independent and effective internal affairs
structures into a police force from the beginning to ensure that the
police uphold the rule of law that they are attempting to re-impose on
the society they serve. Unfortunately, Kris died in a helicopter crash
north of Sarajevo, Bosnia in September 1997; doing what he loved--
training police. But his lesson should be remembered--police the
police.
Other Key Factors: Political Legitimacy, Military Back-up, and Time
Political Legitimacy: Without political legitimacy, training a
local police force will not guarantee stability. It still should be
done anyway, but it must be understood that a newly trained, lightly
armed police force will not be able to stop a civil war or prevent
massive civil unrest in a tense post conflict environment.
In Somalia, the US intervention force commanded by LTG Johnston had
begun training the remnants of a fairly well respected Somali police
during the initial US intervention phase. This was done, completely
``under the radar'' of Washington by a contingent of US Army MPs, and
particularly a very creative LTC named Spataro. The military took on
this function not because it wanted to, but because they had to, it was
deemed essential by the commanders. The training and assistance worked
to a degree; the old police was brought out, their stations re-opened
and they assisted the MNF with traffic control and petty crime.
Ultimately, the police force proved irrelevant in the face of an
ongoing civil war of heavily armed militias. But for a short period of
relative stability, they were appreciated by the US military and the
local population both.
The Security Gap: As in Somalia, in the Balkans, local police
forces were not able to stand up to heavily armed militias or large
rampaging civilian mobs, backed by heavily armed thugs. Even after the
Dayton agreement, the ethnic cleansing began again in Sarajevo, but in
this case it was the Serbs (and to a lesser extent Croats) who were
being run out of their traditional neighborhoods (or leaving and
burning on their own volition) in the previously ethnically diverse and
cosmopolitan city. This led to a long and continuing discussion of the
security gap. The security gap is the security challenges that fall
between the traditional military and police missions. These threats,
which were managed mob violence, were too big for police to handle--and
too ``civilian'' for military force to handle without the risk of
massive civilian casualties.
There is no silver bullet for these challenges, but what has proved
to work best in the Balkans and other locations is a combination of
military units, a paramilitary police such as French-style gendarmerie
or Italian-style Carabineer--coupled with regular local police.
Time and Money: In Haiti, the police got off to a relatively good
start but were eventually starved for resources (even in this better
case scenario there was plenty of complaining about the slowness of the
program). The political process has also come apart, but even before
that, a once promising police force was deteriorating and beginning to
look more like its predecessor force than the new modern force
contemplated by its trainers after the US-led intervention in 1994.
Conclusions
I have been involved in these post conflict security operations for
over 22 years, but during this period the US Government has denied that
this is an enduring task that will serve our national interest. Each
case is seen as sui generous and limited in scope. I can assure you
that we will be doing these missions for the next 22 years and probably
poorly, relearning the lessons over again each time. It is time to
prepare the US Government to conduct post conflict missions--and to do
it correctly.
What is needed:
Define the task and assign responsibility
Admit that the US Government has been performing this
mission for years and will continue to need to do it for the
foreseeable future. We have been in denial too long; we need to
build the institutions to conduct these operations effectively,
particularly with police training and development.
Create a unified Bureau to manage police training
Create a unified law enforcement training and assistance
agency within the State Department. It should include planning
and doctrinal development staff. Police, justice and penal
programs should be under one roof; this would include ICITAP
and other administration of justice programs.
Create an International Police Academy in the US
Training for international police is required for counter-
terrorism, counter-narcotics, and peacekeeping. A new federal
institution could provide a home for federal police trainers,
and act as a basis for creating new police academies in post-
conflict scenarios. Police training could be conducted for
counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics officials in the same
institution--another clear national interest that I proposed
when I was Ambassador at Large for Counter Terrorism at the
State Department.
Create a standing national police force for contingency operations
Initially, this force could be no more than a few hundred
full time employees that agree to be assigned long term
overseas in post-conflict environments. A smaller number of
these officers could be assigned as instructors and planners at
the stateside Academy or within the policy bureau at State
between missions. Their most important value would be in the
planning and initial start-up of new missions.
Plan early and often
Write contingency plans and exercise often. Start planning
during the peace negotiations. If you start after they are
completed, you will be late by at least one year. If the
Pentagon has a plan or starts planning, do it concurrently--
don't let them get a head of you.
Properly fund well before and through a deployment
These operations need consistent funding streams to work
effectively, from well prior to a mission being launched
through to its completion and after action review.
Stay with the program for at least five years
Ideally, it takes a generation to train and gain experience
and to rebuild what amounts to a social contract between police
and the community. Five to ten years engagement, at a minimum,
is required.
Build international partners
It is not feasible to effectively conduct these operations
unilaterally. The USG should work with other partners on a
bilateral and multilateral basis to establish a division of
labor and share the burden of financing these operations.
Police monitors and basic training can be done by many
partners (including the UN, the EU and the OSCE). The
disciplined supervisory work and special training should come
from well established, democratic and professional police
forces that have the strength and credibility to pull off that
important task.
All of these recommendations will help build a long term capacity
to more effectively conduct post conflict stability operations.
However, I would also argue that they should be implemented immediately
for Iraq as well. I suspect we will be in Iraq a long time, and these
measures will immediately begin to strengthen a vital component of the
equation--the training and mentoring of local police forces.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Commissioner.
I would just say each of the three panelists have presented
so much material in 10 minutes that clearly this committee,
and, I suspect, the American public, would like to hear you for
several hours. We're hopeful at least, through having this open
hearing, that all of us in Congress, and hopefully in our
administration and elsewhere, are likewise able to take
advantage of some very, very important counsel. I appreciate,
again, your summation. I regret the abruptness of the buzzers
and the bells, but, I encourage you, if you come to that point,
please continue beyond the ring of the bell to complete your
thoughts. You know, we really are here to learn.
Dr. O'Hanlon.
STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL E. O'HANLON, SENIOR FELLOW, FOREIGN
POLICY STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Dr. O'Hanlon. Thank you, Senator. It's an honor to appear
today.
And I have learned a lot from listening to my colleagues,
as well. And I agree with their generally somber mood, as well
as that of yourself and Senator Biden. But let me, for the sake
of argument, try to underscore some of what is still going well
in Iraq, on the grounds that even though I'm not as optimistic
as I once was, and would concede to having been overly
optimistic last fall, there is some good news, and we have to
keep that in mind even as we adjust course on a number of
security fronts, as I'm sure you would agree.
And I say this, again, not to try to counter the general
mood of sober thinking, because obviously that's needed and
we're in a tough time. But we also need to maintain our
conviction that we have a good chance of success here.
Starting with the politics, the Kurdish region remains
remarkable, and it has been well before the overthrow of
Saddam. And there are still some problems up there. Namely, we
have to convince the Kurds not to get too greedy about their
veto rights in any future Iraqi constitution or future
governance, and we have to convince them not to make a land-
grab around Kirkuk for property that they feel was once theirs
and is no longer in their people's hands. But, generally,
that's an encouraging part of the country.
Likewise, let me say, even though I'm not an Iraq expert
the way Ken Pollack and others are in this room, I'm generally
impressed by how the Shiite groups have conducted themselves.
The Shia have been remarkable in basically sticking with this,
in remaining relatively optimistic about their country's
future. Various Shia leaders--of course, Mr. al-Sistani is the
most notable--have certainly given us a hard time, where they
didn't like what we were up to, but, generally speaking,
they've been peaceful. They're trying now to convince al-Sadr
not to continue on with violence. And we have 60 percent of the
country that's generally happy to be liberated, happy about its
new power in a democratically oriented Iraq, and very glad
Saddam Hussein is gone.
So there are obviously problems in large segments of the
Shia population, but I'm generally impressed by how they've
conducted themselves, and I'm cautiously optimistic that the
al-Sadr problem will be at least temporarily diffused. That's a
lot of caveats. I don't mean to say that the situation is one
we can take to the bank. But I'm worried a lot more about
Fallujah than al-Sadr. That could be wrong, but, still, that's
my broad image of Iraq, where 80 percent of the country is
generally happy Saddam is gone, and with us in trying to build
a better future.
Looking now to economic trends, I don't have a lot of good
news to report on the security side, and I will acknowledge
that. All the trends that I've been tracking at Brookings--with
my colleague, Adriana Albequerque, and with Ken Pollack's
support--in this Iraq Index \1\ we do at Brookings, all the
trends on the security side are almost uniformly bad in the
last few weeks, so I'm not going to try to push my argument too
far.
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\1\ The Iraq Index referred to can be found at: www.brookings.edu/
iraqindex
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But, on the economic front, we do see some real
improvement, and there was a plateauing; frankly, not a lot of
improvement in much of last fall--it's gotten better. Oil
production, we've heard from the administration many times, is
up in this calendar year a substantial amount. The facility-
protection service, which is helping provide protection against
sabotage and other kinds of problems and attacks on the oil
infrastructure, is doing a passable job. Now, granted, these
are just people with guns told to man one post and not let
somebody come at them and attack. It's not a very complicated
job. It's not as instrumental to the security of Iraqis in
their daily lives as the police. We've heard a lot of very
compelling critiques of the police competence, which is not
very high, but I think the facility-protection service, 75,000
people who are involved in protecting key infrastructure, are
doing a passable job, and I'm encouraged that oil production is
up.
Most quality-of-living indices in Iraq, as we indicate in
our index, are up, as well, anywhere from 25 to 50 percent,
sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but in that
broad range. Whether it's the availability of cooking fuel, the
availability of electricity, the availability of diesel, the
use of cars in Baghdad, which, of course, still leads to long
lines at the gas station, but, nonetheless, is a sign of life
in the economy, a lot of these indicators are up by, again,
roughly a quarter to a half, depending on which metric you
examine.
Telephone service has been restored to roughly pre-war
levels. Water is now apparently in better shape than it was in
the last months or years of Saddam's regime. There is a lot of
progress. And even though only $3 billion of the $18 billion
has been obligated, we've started to see some benefits even
from that limited expenditure so far.
So that's just a broad once-over on what I do see that's
good. I certainly agree with Ken Pollack's point that security
for most Iraqis is not nearly good enough. I agree with Michael
Sheehan's point, we have to be much more effective in our
training of police. That piece of the security puzzle is not in
very good shape.
But let me also quickly say a brief word about the Civil
Defense Corps in Iraq. Even though it did not step up as much
as we might have liked in the last month, frankly, I have to
admit, I partially understand where they're coming from,
because the nature of the insurgency that they are now being
asked to help us counter is taking on an anti-American, anti-
Colonial-like flavor in Iraqi minds. It is not simply people
trying to restore the Ba'athists to power or trying to attack
Americans for the sake of killing them. And we are essentially
asking the Civil Defense Corps, as its first main mission, to
go in and support the United States in a highly politically
contentious operation. So I'm not going to be too hard on the
CDC for having had a bad month. They didn't step up, but I hope
they'll step up more once Iraq is back in their hands, once
Iraqis rule their own country.
So even on the CDC, I'm not going to be too harsh. It
really is the police of the five main services where I see the
greatest shortfall in capability. It's a very serious
shortfall. And, as a result, crime rates and other things are
way too high in Iraq, security is way too limited. I agree with
Senator Biden and Ken Pollack on that. But I'm still hopeful
the other pieces of the security forces are moving in a more
optimistic direction. Admittedly, the army is still way too
small, but, again, I think at least we're trying to establish
some levels of competence that may be the right way to go
there.
So now let me sum up a couple of thoughts on where I think
we should go from here, with this not optimistic, but at least
balanced, view of where Iraq stands today.
The first point, of course, is, we have to hang in there.
And Senator Biden said this, you've said this, Senator Kerry
has said this. We all, as a Nation, I think, agree, we have to
keep at it. And there's a good reason to think that if we keep
at it, we will do pretty well.
Second, I support the effort to transfer sovereignty on
June 30, if we really can pull it off, but I share, Senator,
your questions about, not only the composition of this new
transitional government, but the powers of the new government.
And I do think we have to start a debate on this, as well. I
hope, if we have the debate, we can actually make the June 30
date possible.
But let me tick off four quick questions I have about that
transitional government.
One, if you're in the transitional government, can you also
run for elections next year? Run in the elections, run for
office? This is an important question. Maybe there's already an
answer, but I haven't heard the answer if there is. It's
important, because if you want a technocratic care-keeper
government, you perhaps can ban people who are in this
transitional government from running for office in January. But
if you want this to be a very politically contentious and
energized body, then you don't want to make that decision. I
would lean toward a technocratic government, that has people
who cannot run in January, in the interest of having a smooth,
gradual transition process and not having too much controversy
over who's chosen and who's left out of that body. That's one
question.
Second question. What budget resources will this
transitional government have to obligate itself in the next 8
months when they are the power-that-be in Iraq? I don't know. I
don't know how much of the $18 billion we're going to ask them
for advice on how to spend. I don't know how much of their own
oil revenue is going to essentially be available to them that's
not already obligated. I'd like to see more discussion of their
budget power.
A third question. What's their role going to be in the war-
crimes process? And, in particular, if somehow war criminals
are tried and convicted before January, or whenever elections
actually do occur, will this transitional government be the
body that has the power to grant clemency or to negotiate some
kind of a plea bargain with anybody they want to, perhaps, ask
for help in calling off the insurgency, defusing the
insurgency? Are you going to give this body any role in the
war-crimes process, or are we simply going to try to hope that
the trials last long enough that this transitional body doesn't
have to make any of those tough decisions?
And, finally, if you see future Fallujahs, will this new
transitional government make a big part of the decisionmaking
on how to handle them, or is the status-of-forces agreement
that we're asking for going to accord us all the power to
handle Fallujah-like situations? I think we have to wrestle
with the issue of who's going to negotiate with insurgent
leaders, and who's going to try to defuse future Fallujah-like
situations, of which there will probably be several between
July 1 and January.
These are some of the questions I have. But if we do answer
some of these, I'm still hopeful that we can make the June 30
transition, and that will help the Civil Defense Corps and
other Iraqis feel like they're defending their own country, not
just defending our mission and our vision of what should happen
in Iraq.
Two last points and I'll stop. One, I agree 100 percent
with Ken Pollack, and I think with much of what Michael
Sheehan's driving at, although I won't put words in his mouth,
we need to do more foot patrols. We're doing a lot of patrols
in Iraq, 1,500 a day, by the latest count I get from DOD data.
But they're in motorized vehicles, and I question whether
they're effective enough.
And crime is way too high, still, in Iraq. It's better than
it was last summer, and that is some good news, but it's still
way too high for most Iraqis to feel that there's meaningful
progress in their daily lives.
And, finally, I think, we have to increase the size of the
standing U.S. Army. I'm wading into a politically controversial
topic that is more maybe Armed Services Committee territory,
but it's really not just Armed Services Committee territory,
because the limits on the size of our army are constraining the
debate about how many forces to add in Iraq in the near future.
People are already thinking ahead to, how do you keep that
force going if you need to sustain it next year? And I think we
need to act quickly, because once you decide you need a bigger
army, it takes you 2 to 5 years to actually produce it. And if
we're going to be in Iraq for the rest of the decade, we need
to do at least what some of the Members of this Congress, on
both sides of the aisle have done, at least 50,000 more
soldiers in the U.S. Army for the foreseeable future.
I'll stop there.
[The prepared statement of Dr. O'Hanlon follows:]
Prepared Statement * of Dr. Michael E. O'Hanlon
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* Written remarks prepared by Michael O'Hanlon and Adriana Lins de
Albequerque.
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Thank you Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, and other members of
the committee for the honor of testifying on the crucial matter of
current U.S. Iraq policy. The body of my testimony is a statistical
analysis of trends in Iraq since last April that my colleague Adriana
Lins de Albequerque and I have been conducting over the past year,
based largely on DOD data but also on journalistic accounts, other
official information, and our own analytical judgments. We believe that
tracking various metrics of progress (or lack thereof) in Iraq over an
extended period provides useful perspective on what is going well, and
what is not going so well, in that country today. It will come as
little surprise that little is going well of late in the security
sphere, even if one looks beyond recent coalition casualty figures to
subtler and longer-term trends. Thankfully, there is reason for some
tempered optimism on the economics and politics fronts--though as an
analyst who has been generally positive about how the post-Saddam Iraq
mission would unfold, I must concede that on balance things have not
gone nearly as well as I had hoped or expected.
Before presenting some of the key information from the index, I
would like to briefly answer the questions you posed, Senator Lugar, in
your April 8 letter inviting me to testify:
What are the critical elements needed for a comprehensive
transition plan?
Of course, many things are needed here--such as a proper pathway to
true elections next year and to creation of an Iraqi constitution,
assurances of minority rights and women's rights, a delicate balance
between according Islam an influential role in Iraqi public life while
protecting freedom of religion, methods of dealing with Saddam Hussein
and other war criminals and more generally former Baathists, and
adequate security for future leaders and public servants.
But one thing above all else is needed now, and that is a
legitimate body to which to transfer sovereignty in two short months. A
key issue is whether those individuals in the interim government will
be eligible to run for office in subsequent elections; my instinct is
that they should not be eligible to run in next winter's planned
elections, but in any case this is a critical matter to resolve. If the
United Nations, through Mr. Brahimi, is successful in developing a
caretaker government with general acceptability to most main Iraqi
factions and key leaders, the general notion of transferring
sovereignty by June 30 seems sound and workable. Not only that, it is
desirable, given the need to defuse the growing feeling of anti-
Americanism in Iraq, which increasingly appears to fuel the insurgency.
What should the roles, missions, and responsibilities be of
the United States, other Coalition partners, the Iraqis, the
United Nations and NATO to ensure the transition can succeed?
Again, this is a complex question, but the most important policy
point is that the United States must unambiguously support the United
Nations, and exercise its leadership through that organization. We have
lost a good deal of our legitimacy in Iraq, so we need to hope the UN
can do better. On balance, the Bush administration now seems to agree
with this argument, albeit very belatedly.
Do we have enough resources, the right people and the right
organizational structure to do the job?
We may need further tactical increases in troop strength,
especially in Sunni regions, on the order of several thousands of
additional troops. This makes me more persuaded than ever than we need
a substantial, sustained increase in the size of the U.S. Army, to deal
with subsequent rotations in Iraq and other missions, of some 50,000
more active-duty troops (above and beyond what Secretary Rumsfeld has
authorized using emergency powers and funds).
I am hopeful that the Shiite uprising of al-Sadr's forces can be
contained, since it does not appear to enjoy a wide following.
Unfortunately, the same sort of conclusion may not be true in regard to
Sunni regions in general and Fallujah in particular. President Bush's
remarks at his 4/13 press conference that the insurgency is nothing
more than a small group making a grab for power does not seem correct
in reference to the Sunni region. There, it has taken on a more general
anti-occupation/anti-American flavor (which is why I do agree with
President Bush's desire to transfer sovereignty as soon as possible;
doing so should help defuse the anti-American aspect of the
insurgency).
We may need more money but not yet. The key is to get the $18
billion flowing, not worry too much right away about whether it will be
enough.
With that I will proceed to our Iraq Index,\1\ statistical metrics
gauging trends in that country.
------------
\1\ The Iraq Index referred to can be found at: www.brookings.edu/
iraqindex
The Chairman. Thank you very much, doctor.
Dr. Hashim.
STATEMENT OF DR. AHMED S. HASHIM, PROFESSOR OF STRATEGIC
STUDIES, U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE
Dr. Hashim. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Biden, members
of the committee, ladies and gentlemen.
It's a great honor to be able to testify before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee today. I'm testifying here in my
capacity as a private citizen. The views expressed here do not
represent the views of the Naval War College or any of its
sponsoring agencies at all. My testimony, thus, is not the
opinion of any government agency that I serve in or may have
served in, knowingly or unknowingly. But my views are
bipartisan----
Senator Biden. We feel the same way.
Dr. Hashim [continuing]. And to help our Nation navigate
through these trying times. My views may not be popular, and,
indeed, may be wrong, and even the recommendations unworkable.
But as that great American General Patton once said--reputedly
said, ``If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn't
thinking.'' And, last but not least, I do not claim ideological
or divine infallibility.
And my goal here today is to assess the security situation
as it stands in Iraq. Studying the insurgency and helping to
develop a counter-insurgency campaign has been the focus of my
entire academic and field experience for the last year, since
May.
I do not wish to dwell on mistakes or assumptions that got
us here, but to really spend most of the time dealing with how
we move on from this point.
The twin goals of ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein and of
bringing about a stable democratic country were laudable goals
that I support wholeheartedly. The first was achieved. The
second, alas, has faced severe challenges. Without a doubt, the
tenuous security situation in Iraq, in the country, since May
2003, when the insurgency erupted, has contributed enormously
to the slow pace of reconstruction, rebuilding, reconciliation,
and the establishment of political stability.
The violence in Iraq is not conducted by a small band of
individuals, nor is it yet a full-fledged nationalist
insurgency that incorporates the entire country. Once we
realize and accept these two facts, we would be on the first
step toward formulating a coherent counter-strategy.
Most insurgencies have never witnessed a majority of the
people effectively under arms. Populations either passively
support an insurgency, in the sense that they do not betray it
to the opposing side, or they actively support it by providing
intelligence, food, supplies, and recruits. But, as I stated,
it's not yet a full-fledged insurgency. Our task is to ensure
that it does not become one.
A chronological analysis basically shows that the situation
has worsened immeasurably and that the number and kinds of
people involved has changed. It's a dynamic situation. The
insurgencies got more proficient. We killed most of the dumb
ones. The tactics, techniques, and procedures of the surviving
insurgents were more lethal. Second, their proficiency
increased as a result of the role of former professional
military personnel, who increasingly opted for the path of
violence out of nationalistic reasons, including, in their
view, the disbanding and dissolution of the Armed Forces.
It is important to realize that, initially, most of the
insurgents were truly former Saddam loyalists, FRLs--or
``frills'' as we call them. By fall, disgruntled military
personnel, with no profound sympathy for the defunct regime,
but outraged over the loss of status, privilege, and jobs as a
result of the disbanding of the Armed Forces, had increasingly
joined the ranks of the insurgency. Therefore, November 2003
was a terrible month in terms of casualties.
However, our response, which hit the FRLs hard after
November, had an unintended consequence. It allowed the rise to
prominence of what I've decided to call an Islamo or Islamic
nationalist element within the insurgency, which is made up of
former military personnel, and which has received its
motivation and encouragement from the preaching of the Sunni
clergy, which has shed its traditionally insignificant role in
the affairs of the community, and has come into greater
prominence.
We thought that Iraq would be on the way to civil war by
early this year. But, instead, what has happened is the
unleashing of a kind of Shia insurgency by Muqtada al-Sadr and
his Mahdi army. What we need to understand about the Muqtada
phenomenon is that it's not primarily a religious one; rather,
it is a populist one. Therefore, attacking his nonexistent
religious credentials simply because he's young and has not
reached a level of religious learning within the Shia clerical
establishment is really quite beside the point.
Muqtada is political. He is a populist with xenophobic
tendencies, does not like foreigners, particularly Iranians,
even as he takes material aid from them. Indeed, among the
reasons of Muqtada's distaste of Ayatollah al-Sistani is the
fact that the latter is Iranian by origin. Muqtada al-Sadr's
constituency is the young, disgruntled men of towns such as
Madinat al-Sadr, a large, sprawling, squalid and fetid suburb
of Baghdad, where the unemployment rate hovers around 70
percent, and al Kut, which faces a similar unemployment problem
of 80 percent.
It is clear from my analysis of the situation on the ground
and from statements of various Shia clerics over the course of
the past several months, that the Shia were prepared to
challenge the authority and legitimacy of the Coalition if the
gap between its promises and its achievements were too great.
And the Shia leader best prepared to undertake that challenge
was none other than Muqtada. As Hassan Zirkani, a pro-al-Sadr
cleric in Madinat al-Sadr, bluntly put it in November 2003,
``We had hoped that some of the problems might have vanished by
now.'' What were these problems? Lack of law and order, rampant
unemployment, lack of basic services in Shia urban areas, and
alleged Coalition disregard for the cultural and societal norms
of the population.
Before I move on to discuss what we need to do, I must
reiterate my starting assumption. We are faced with a
phenomenon that is bigger and more dangerous than a small band
of thugs and extremists, but it's somewhat less than full
national insurgency. We are closer to the latter than the
former. Our task is to roll back any dynamic progression of the
insurgency. That task should begin now, before the transfer of
sovereignty, but it does not end with the transfer of
sovereignty. It will take a long time, but where do we start?
Let me propose some ideas. They're not particularly original,
but they need to be reiterated constantly.
First, we must develop a clear and coherent political goal.
If we do not, the result will be the continuation of reactive
ad hoc measures that are simply reactions to the insurgency. We
must take the initiative. This is a war in which the political
is paramount. The insurgents have a goal, and we should have a
clearly articulated goal.
Our task is to ensure that the population understands and
believes in this goal. To many Iraqis, we don't seem to have a
goal that they can believe in. We need to reiterate and to
repeat that the goal is to establish a sovereign, stable, and
secure Iraq, and that this will proceed in stages, and that
much of this depends on combating the insurgency.
Second, we must have a coherent and integrated plan. If we
know what the political goal is, we must develop an overall
plan in support of that goal. Fighting insurgency is a complex
job.
Third, within that overall plan, we need to restore
stability and security in the short term. By the short term, I
mean, the next 3 months to a year. I want to focus on this,
because thinking about the long term is irrelevant until we
restore security.
What could we do? Increase the number of troop levels. And
I want to reiterate what my colleagues said, and I don't want
to repeat it, though. I agree with most of their assumptions.
Second, seal and police Iraq's porous borders. Iraqis have
complained bitterly about the open borders. Begin
reconstituting Iraq's security forces. Deal with the militias,
deal with the shadow warriors, implement a two-pronged
information-operations campaign, and we must ensure that our
counter-insurgency functions within the law.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have made some points here that I
hope have given you a flavor of the situation. We face major
challenges, but we should maintain a steady and determined
course in trying to bring order, security, and stability in
that hapless country. We should not ``cut and run.'' It's
difficult to change course in mid-term, in midstream, but that
is no excuse for not trying. The ability to learn or move
forward under stress is the hallmark of a great organization
and of a great country.
Thank you very much for your patience.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hashim follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Ahmed S. Hashim
Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great honor to be able to testify before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. I am testifying here in my capacity as a private
citizen. The views expressed here do not represent the views of the
Naval War College or any of its sponsoring agencies. My views are
intended to be bipartisan and to help our nation navigate through these
trying times. My views may not be popular and indeed, they may be wrong
and the recommendations unworkable. But as that great American general,
Patton, once reputedly said: ``If everyone is thinking alike, someone
isn't thinking.'' Last, but not least, I do not claim either
ideological or divine infallibility.
My goal today is to assess the security situation as it stands
today in Iraq. The last two weeks have been horrific in terms of the
violence and casualties; while we need to understand how and why we got
to that point, dwelling on mistaken assumptions and failures is not as
important as assessing what we need to do from this point onwards
within the dictates of the President's speech of April 13, 2004, which
showed an unswerving determination to transfer sovereignty to a
provisional Iraqi government by June 30, 2004. Of course, dealing with
the insurgency and with the general issues of lawlessness, terrorism,
and organized crime will continue to be mettlesome problems beyond the
transition to sovereignty.
``the perfect storm?''
The twin goals of ridding Iraq of the incorrigible and brutal
regime of Saddam Hussein and his cronies and of bringing freedom and a
semblance of stable democratic governance to Iraq were laudable goals
that I support wholeheartedly. The first was achieved by our
magnificent armed forces with the help of our coalition partners. The
second, alas, has faced severe challenges. Without a doubt the tenuous
security situation in the country since May 2003 has contributed
enormously to the slow pace of reconstruction, rebuilding,
reconciliation, and the establishment of political stability.
The violence in Iraq is not conducted by a small band of
individuals, nor is it yet a full-fledged nationalist insurgency that
incorporates the entire country. Once we realize and accept these two
facts we would be on the first step towards formulating a coherent
counter-strategy. Most insurgencies have never witnessed a majority of
the people effectively under arms. Populations either passively support
an insurgency in the sense that they do not betray it to the opposing
side; or they actively support it by providing intelligence, food,
supplies and recruits. But the Iraqi insurgency is not yet a full-
fledged self-sustaining insurgency. Our task is to ensure that it does
not become one.
A chronological analysis of the political climate in Iraq from
spring 03 to spring 04 shows a depressing and steady downturn in the
security situation. First, we began in May 2003 with the outbreak of a
persistent insurgency by elements of the Sunni Arab population. The
grievances of that minority group, our mistaken assumption that they
would accept their loss of status and privileges ``lying down,'' and
certain aspects of our response to their discontent fanned the flames
of violence. Second, the law and order situation in the country was
challenged by the total collapse of an already ineffective police force
coupled with the rise of vicious criminal gangs that terrorized the
Iraqi populace and which also engaged in massive smuggling of goods and
drugs into the country through its unguarded borders. Saddam Hussein
had let out of his prisons over 200,000 hardened and petty criminals.
We simply did not have enough manpower to police Iraq and protect the
citizens while at the same time fully engage in combating the
insurgency.
By fall-winter 2003 matters had gotten worse. Firstly, the
insurgents got more proficient. We had killed most of the dumb ones;
the Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) of the surviving
insurgents were more lethal. Secondly, their proficiency had increased
as a result of the role of former professional military personnel who
increasingly opted for the path of violence out of nationalistic
reasons. It is important to realize that initially most of the
insurgents were truly Former Saddam Loyalists (FRLs). By fall
disgruntled military personnel with no profound sympathy for the
defunct regime but outraged over the loss of status, privilege, and
jobs as a result of the disbanding of the armed forces in May 2003 had
increasingly joined the ranks of the insurgency. November 2003 was a
terrible month in terms of casualties for us. The response of U.S.
forces was to go after the insurgents with greater vigor. However, the
response which hit the FRLs hard and disrupted them significantly,
particularly following the capture of Saddam Hussein, had unintended
consequences. It allowed the rise to prominence of an Islamo-
nationalist element within the insurgency which is made up of former
military personnel and which has received its motivation and
encouragement from the preaching of the Sunni clergy which has shed its
traditionally insignificant role in the affairs of the community and
has come into greater prominence.
These ``Islamo-nationalist'' insurgents showed greater motivation
and dedication than the FRLs or the free-lance insurgents of the early
months of the insurgency. More ominously the new insurgents showed a
dramatic improvement in small-unit fighting skills during the bloody
outbreak of fighting in the Sunni areas in April 2004. They have shown
an ability to stand and fight, rather than merely to ``shoot and
scoot'' or ``pray and spray'' as in the past, to conduct coordinated
small unit ambushes and attacks against U.S. forces as in Ramadi in
early April, and to press attacks on supply convoys.
Thirdly, young men from the various Sunni Arab tribes had also
begun to swell the ranks of the insurgency. They were infuriated by
what they saw as outrageous behavior by U.S. forces. Fourth, foreign
terrorists and Sunni extremists began to play a larger role in the
insurgency. These groups went for the suicide bombs and the massive car
bombings that devastated several targets in Baghdad and elsewhere with
serious loss of life. The influx of foreign terrorists and religious
extremists is not a massive one; what is more important than their
relatively small numbers is the fact that they constitute a force
multiplier and are willing to engage in operations that most Iraqi
insurgents would prefer to stay away from such as extremely bloody
suicide attacks. By January-February 2004 many commentators believed
that Iraq was on the verge of civil war since the modus operandi of the
Sunni extremists had contributed to the widening of a yawning chasm
that existed between the Sunni and Shi'i communities.
Instead, by the end of March 2004--and to everyone's surprise--
significant elements of the Shi'i community rose in open rebellion
against the coalition when the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
unleashed his so-called Mahdi's Army against the coalition. Suddenly,
the coalition was faced with the unsavory prospect of a two-front war.
What we need to understand about the Muqtada phenomenon is that it
is not primarily a religious one rather it is a populist one.
Therefore, attacking his non-existent religious credentials simply
because he is young and has not yet reached a level of religious
learning within the Shi'i clerical is besides the point. Thus attacking
his superficial religious credentials as part of our counter-campaign
is a waste of time, effort, and resources. Muqtada is political: he is
a populist with xenophobic tendencies who does not like foreigners,
particularly Iranians, even as he takes material aid from them. Indeed,
among the reasons of Muqtada's distaste of Ayatollah al-Sistani is the
fact that the latter is Iranian by birth. Muqtada caters to the most
dispossessed elements within the long-suffering Shi'i community. His
constituency is the young disgruntled men of towns such as Madinat al-
Sadr--a large sprawling squalid and fetid suburb of Baghdad where the
unemployment rate hovers around 70%; and Al-Kut which faces a similar
unemployment problem. It is clear from my analysis of the situation on
the ground in Iraq and from statements of various Shi'i clerics over
the course of the past several months that the Shi'is were prepared to
challenge the authority and legitimacy of the coalition if the gap
between its promises and its achievements were too great. And the Shi'i
political leader best prepared or able to undertake that challenge was
none other than Muqtada. It was not easy for the senior and more
established Shi'i political leaders on the Iraqi Governing Council to
take a strident role of dissent. As Hasan Zirkani, a pro-al-Sadr cleric
in Madinat al-Sadr bluntly put it in a November 2003 prayer meeting:
``We had hoped that some of the problems might have vanished by now.''
What were these problems: lack of law and order, rampant unemployment,
lack of basic services in Shi'i urban areas; and coalition disregard
for the cultural and societal norms of the population.
Muqtada's revolt has won support and admiration among Sunni
insurgents who have plastered his picture on the walls of Sunni-
dominated towns. This would have been unheard of just several weeks
ago. Members of the Mahdi's Army have begun to cooperate with the Sunni
insurgents and there are rumors that a number tried to infiltrate into
Fallujah. However, there has not yet been a coalescing of the Sunni
movement and that of Muqtada's. Muqtada's poorly-trained and ill-
equipped militia has more to gain from the Sunni insurgents than the
other way round.
More importantly, Muqtada has gained traction with many Shi'is
because of his perceived courage in standing up to the coalition.
Whether he did this in self-defense or whether he saw it as an
opportune time, his act of defiance struck a chord with many Shi'is
because by late March 2004 many within that community had begun to see
the June 30th agreement to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis as bogus and
that Iraq would continue to remain under barely concealed U.S. control
beyond that date. As one Shi'i radio outlet reported: . . . ``The
supposed restoration of national sovereignty, of course should be
preceded by an end to U.S. occupation. The plan, however, entrenches
the occupation and legitimizes its presence . . .''
Nonetheless, what we need to understand is that Muqtada has not yet
been able to foment a Shi'i-wide revolt. First, many Shi'is are simply
terrified of his political vision of an Islamic government ruled by
politicized clerics. Second, while he has made some headway in becoming
a more nationally-recognized leader as a result of his pugnacious
statements calling upon Iraqis to launch a nation-wide revolt and upon
the coalition to leave; this has not been enough. He has yet to
transcend the bounds of his own uncouth constituency. Third, if
political power grows out of the barrel of the gun, Muqtada has the
least number of barrels in Iraq. His militia is the weakest in the
country; and it does not even begin to compare with the formidable
militias of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (the
Iranian-trained and commanded Back Organization); the Da'wa Party, and
Iraqi Hizbullah. In this context, what can happen in the coming days
really depends more on what further mistakes the Coalition Provisional
Authority makes vis-a-vis Muqtada as much as any moves the Iraqi cleric
himself may make.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Before I move on to discuss what we need to do, I must reiterate my
starting assumption: we are faced with a phenomenon that is bigger and
more dangerous than a small band of thugs and extremists but somewhat
less than full-scale national insurgency and terrorism. Alas, we are
closer to the latter than the former. Once the entire Shi'i community
rises up in arms, our position in Iraq becomes totally untenable and
there would be no option but to leave. Our task is to roll back any
dynamic progression of the insurgency. That task should begin now
before the transfer of sovereignty, but it does not end with the
transfer of sovereignty. It will take a long time. But where do we
start?
First, we must develop a clear and coherent political goal. If we
do not, the result will be the continuation of reactive ad hoc measures
that are simply reactions to the insurgency. This is a war in which the
political is paramount. The insurgents have a goal and we should have a
clearly articulated goal. Our task is to ensure that the population
understands and believes in our goal. To many Iraqis we don't seem to
have a goal that they can believe in. We need to reiterate and to
repeat that the goal is to establish a sovereign, stable and secure
Iraq and that this will proceed in stages; and much of this depends on
successfully combating the insurgency. And in order to combat the
insurgency, terrorism and lawlessness we should tell the Iraqis that we
need their active participation. We can no longer adhere to the fantasy
that we will be able to control Iraq behind the scenes or impose whom
we want on the country, a major reason why April 2004 has been such a
bloody month to date. The spike in the insurgency this month and the
greater participation of the U.N. in smoothing the transition to
sovereignty have had the unintended consequence of losing our control
over Iraq's political dynamics and future. Nonetheless, we can still
turn this to our advantage by informing the population that what they
seek--stability, law and order, and economic revival--is our paramount
goal too.
Second, we must have a coherent and integrated plan. If we know
what the political goal is; then we must develop an overall plan in
support of that goal. Fighting insurgency or terrorism is a vastly
complex job. It was the British officer, T.E. Lawrence who said that it
is akin to eating soup with a knife. It is one that incorporates
military/police, information operations, intelligence, administrative,
political and socioeconomic measures implemented in parallel moving
along a spectrum from security focused measures to nation-building
measures as stability and security are progressively restored.
Third, we need to restore stability and security in the short-term.
By the short-term I mean between the next three months to a year. I
want to focus on this, rather than the long-term which we cannot afford
to think about at the present until the situation stabilizes. We could
do the following:
Increase the number of troop levels: This is a highly
controversial issue. We simply do not know where the extra U.S.
troops will come from or ultimately how much will be available.
It does not look likely that we will take them out of
Afghanistan. It is more than likely that we will be activating
reserve and National Guard units. Hypothetically, we will need
tens of thousands to deal with the insurgency with any degree
of success.
Seal and police Iraq's porous borders: Iraq's borders are
wide open; the new Iraqi border guards face considerable
challenges: they are ill-trained, poorly-equipped, and few in
number. Iraqis have complained bitterly about their unpoliced
borders. The influx of foreign terrorists and insurgents has
not been great in terms of quantity; however, what matters is
the quality of the infiltrators. They have had a combat
multiplier effect with respect to the insurgency. Last but not
least, control over the country's borders will affect the
burgeoning drug trade into Iraq which is being undertaken by
organized criminal groups.
Begin reconstituting Iraq's security forces: There are
several integrated elements to the reconstitution of the Iraqi
security forces. First, we need to recall most of the former
military forces back to service. Although it may be too late
because tens of thousands were alienated by the dissolution of
the armed forces last year; if we were to succeed in bringing
back a substantial number into service, we will deprive the
insurgency of a vast pool of trained manpower. Second, we
simply cannot throw the Iraqi security forces, particularly the
ones we have stood up, into them the COIN fray because they are
not trained, equipped or cohesive enough as forces. Creating
effective Iraqi security forces is a long hard and painstaking
task. Moreover, as we proceed in this task the focus of our
efforts should be on the police and the internal security
forces, rather than the New Iraqi Army. Internal security and
the re-establishment of law and order is what the Iraqis need.
Deal with the militias: In theory, we should be able to
begin to disband and disarm militias and possibly integrate
former members into the Iraqi security forces. Militias are one
of the greatest obstacles to political stability and economic
reconstruction in societies endeavoring to recover from
conflict. The Coalition Provisional Authority has already
indicated its intention of doing something about the militias.
This is easier said than done. Making militias go away has not
been easy in other post-conflict societies and it will not be
easy in Iraq. Militias justify their existence by stating that
they provide protection for their neighborhoods, communities,
ethnic and religious groups. If the state cannot provide
security and law and order, this view is understandable. The
militias also justify their reluctance to disband or disarm by
stating that they are not provided with the incentive to do so.
In Iraq, the state or coalition forces have faced considerable
challenges in providing nation-wide and equitable security and
have not provided incentives for the militias to lay down their
arms. Instead, of trying to force them to disband right away,
we could implement a disarmament process in stages. The
militias would be asked to surrender their heavy weaponry, thin
out their numbers, and then surrender their light arms. This
would, of course, be dependent on the state being able to
slowly but surely increase and expand its security functions,
its implementation of basic services to the communities, and on
the provision of monetary incentives for the surrender of the
arms. We would not insistent that the militias disband we would
hope that their members either integrate into the security
forces or become ``regular'' members of the political parties
that they ostensibly serve.
Deal with the ``Shadow Warriors:'' We need to thin out the
number of private security providers or rein them in. Many of
them have done a great job in Iraq, but they are unregulated,
often not effectively trained for particular jobs, and most
important of all, it has been said that their attitudes towards
Iraqis have been suffused with contempt. The Iraqis have
complained more about them than about any other armed foreign
force in the country. They are simply a hindrance to the
effective implementation of a hearts and minds campaign.
Implement a two-pronged Information Operations campaign: Our
IOC has faced severe challenges in Iraq. We need to revisit it
and we need to implement a two-pronged campaign that is
directed both at the insurgents and at the population. The aim
of the first prong is to reduce the willingness and
determination of the insurgents to continue fighting. The aim
of the second is to motivate the population to the side of the
government. In order for it to have a chance of success, we
need to tie such a campaign to our overarching political goal
and we need to denigrate the goal(s) of the insurgents (You are
fighting and dying to kick us out? We are going to leave. What
is your vision for the future of Iraq? Do YOU have one? If you
do why are you fighting and dying for it when Iraq will be
free?), while promoting ours.
Fourth, our COIN effort must function within the law. In order to
be successful in our political goal and the overall operational plan,
we need to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. I know that many
people, particularly after the atrocity in Fallujah in early April, are
not interested in winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. However,
to believe that a COIN campaign is solely about sticks rather than
carrots and sticks is mistaken. The Iraqis believe that our COIN
campaign has been largely one of sticks with few, if any carrots. If
this is accurate, we would need to rectify it. If we do not act within
the bounds of the law, we risk inflaming the insurgency and fanning the
flames of violence. To act within the law does not preclude the
implementation of tough counter insurgency and counter-terrorism laws.
If it is merely a perception, we would need to counter it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have made some points here that I hope has
given you a flavor of the situation in Iraq. We face major challenges
there, but we should maintain a steady and determined course in trying
to bring order, security and stability in that hapless country. We must
temper our long-term visions and desires and focus on what is
practical. It is difficult to change course or try alternative
approaches in mid-stream, particularly, when one is under a challenging
and dynamic environment, but that is no excuse for not trying. The
ability to learn or move forward under stress is the hallmark of a
great organization and of a great country. Thank you very much for your
patience.
REFERENCES
Hashim, Ahmed, ``The Sunni Insurgency in Iraq,'' Middle East Policy
Brief, August 2003 (electronic article).
Interviews and Observations in Iraq, November 2003-March 2004.
Ricks, Thomas, ``Insurgents Display New Sophistication,''
Washington Post, April 14, 2004.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Hashim.
We will ask the committee members to take a 10-minute
period for questioning. We will have rotation after the first
round. Other Senators may join us. I know that Senator Dodd
will return after his responsibilities.
Gentlemen, let me just set the stage for my questioning by
quoting from a story in the Los Angeles Times, written by Mary
Curtis and Janet Hook. They're describing the Senate Armed
Services Committee hearing that proceeded simultaneously with
our hearing yesterday. The authors say, ``Stifling private
concerns about the direction of events in Iraq, Senate
Republicans, on Tuesday, gave the Bush administration a largely
supportive platform for restating the case for war as Congress
began 3 days of hearings. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, appearing before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, used the friendly forum to focus on the atrocities
committed by Saddam Hussein before U.S. invasion, not on the
challenges ahead. He offered only sparse details on the
questions of what the administration thought would emerge in
Iraq or the relationship the U.S. military would have with the
Iraqi Government after the transition.'' He said, and this is a
quote, `` `I cannot sit here today and predict the exact form
of the permanent government,' Wolfowitz said, `but even an
imperfect Iraq democracy would be an improvement, light years
beyond what the country has endured for the past 35 years. The
interim Iraqi Government will be selected by procedures being
developed through intensive consultation among Iraqis, led by
Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations Secretary General
special advisor on Iraq,' Wolfowitz said. He described
Brahimi's ideas as forming an interim government as promising,
and added, `We look forward to more details from the United
Nations.' Yet Republicans on the Armed Services Committee
closed ranks to support the administration's policies, even
though some acknowledge, outside the hearing room, that
pressure from constituents is growing. Republicans are joined
by many of the panel's Democrats, suggesting that most members
of the Senate, thus far, see few political benefits to be
gained from challenging the administration's conduct of the
war. Indeed, a senior Republican strategist said he viewed this
week's Iraq hearings not as an occasion to grill administration
officials or pose skeptical questions, but as an opportunity
for the administration to come up here and lay out their case
and talk about why they are doing the right things.''
The authors then diverged from that hearing with this one
sentence, ``Separately, the veteran chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Indiana Richard Lugar, reiterated
his concerns about the direction of U.S. policy, but such
moments were rare,'' and so forth.
Now, I mention this simply because, obviously, our hearing
yesterday was of a very different character. Your testimony
today obviously shows some substantial concerns that Senator
Biden and, I suspect, other members, when they have an
opportunity, might bring to the fore. I say all that in
preface, because the questions that I'm going to ask now, on
the basis of your testimony, are not necessarily disturbing,
but they are ones that I think really have to be answered.
Specifically, Mr. Pollack mentioned that security must be
paramount for the next 6 months. General Joulwan said that
security is a mission, a mission the same way as fighting a
war. Mr. Sheehan then added that a solid, legitimate process
has to be there for security to proceed, whether it's 5 years
or whether it's the next 6 months. I think that the questions
that were raised by Dr. O'Hanlon are important. That is, what's
the relationship between this government of people who are
unknown and the United States security forces? Here we have a
situation in which you're saying that this is paramount. For
the next 6 months, we will devote all of our best efforts. Some
are suggesting that 40,000 additional United States forces
might be required to do this. Perhaps it is time to encourage
our allies, in Europe or elsewhere, to warm up to the task of
sending in more troops of their own within the 6 months. On
June 30, sovereignty or something like it is going to transfer
to people who are now unknown.
Who will these people be? Yesterday, one of our witnesses
suggested at least three or four people now serving on the
Governing Council who look like prime prospects for president
of the country or vice president. To create some balance, there
might be a Kurd among the four, and probably a Sunni, maybe two
Shi'ites.
Dr. O'Hanlon, you mentioned that these people might have
pledged, ``We're not going to run. We are technocrats.'' Well,
perhaps. But the people that were suggested yesterday in the
hearing looked, to me, like fairly viable candidates for
leadership. The suggestion was that those who were not selected
for this group might be very disgruntled by being passed over,
and that those who do make the cut are people who may have some
ambition to rule.
Mr. Brahimi is apparently making the decisions, with his
consultants. Our government, if Mr. Wolfowitz's testimony is to
be taken at face value, says, you know, ``He's working on
this.'' I wouldn't want to hazard a guess right now as to what
the formulation may be.
You're telling us, given this rather vague situation, we go
hell-for-leather for strong security for 6 months, because
without it this fledgling government doesn't have much of a
chance. I've already suggested, as a practical politician, that
whoever these people are, they're basically unknown. Iraqis
don't yet have a great deal of confidence in them, as it
stands.
Everybody seems to be agreed that this is going to happen
on June 30. The President has underlined that again and again.
So did most of our witnesses yesterday, for a variety of
reasons.
I'm trying to gain some clarity as to what the procedure
ought to be. Will we have or need a status-of-forces agreement?
For the next 6 months at least. We're going to be involved in a
very tough mission providing security for the country. This
answers your question, Dr. O'Hanlon, that they are second-
guessing whether we go to Fallujah or not, or what else we do.
Some are suggesting that that's precisely the type of decision
that this group is going to make. This puts the Iraqi face on
it. If U.S. forces go to Fallujah, it's because the Iraqis want
that kind of intervention. Yet it takes time to vet and train
Iraqi forces who might have the confidence of the Iraqi people
and who might be adequately able to maintain security. Only
United States forces, plus some of our allies for the moment,
could suppress large groups of insurgents, or others who might
want to upset the entire democratic state and who may find that
that is in their interest.
So I ask--maybe start with you, Dr. Pollack--given all the
testimony you've heard, as well as the testimony that you gave,
which is a brilliant essay in its own right, how do we achieve
security--which is the focus of our hearing this morning--and,
at the same time, respect this June 30 date, the U.N. process
that we have welcomed, with all of its uncertainties? How much
certainty should we require? In other words, before June 30,
should we know the names, should we have the status-of-forces
agreement? Should we have pinned down the United Nations
resolutions, for legitimacy?
The answer seems to be, thus far, I think, for the
administration, `Not so fast. That will follow.'' The U.N. may
come in behind this with a status-of-forces agreement with this
group. Nonetheless I see a potential for some misunderstanding
and some slippage. What sort of testimony can you give on this?
Dr. Pollack. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First, I'll say that I think you are focusing on an
absolutely critical issue, one that we do have to get right. In
answer, in direct response to your question, ``Do we need to do
all of this before June 30,'' ideally, yes. I think it would be
much better to have it done before June 30. I don't think it
essential. I can think of ways that we could deal with the
issue that would allow it to go past June 30, but I think it
will be harder, and I think we will have to be very careful
about how we do that.
Let me make a couple of quick points to fill out that
broader statement. First, what the Iraqis are looking for on
June 30 is a transfer of administrative authority. They don't
know what sovereignty means. Honestly, we don't either.
Academics debate it endlessly. And sovereignty doesn't do
anything for them. They want to put an Iraqi face on the
occupation. They want to see Iraqis giving orders, not
Americans. And that's something understandable. It's something
that I think the CPA understood. It's why they went forward
with this process.
As far as what June 30 looks like, I think that there are a
variety of different possible solutions. I would agree with my
good friend, Mike O'Hanlon, that one potential solution out
there is to have a purely technocratic government, to forbid
everyone who takes those positions from running again. I would
be perfectly comfortable with that.
I will also tell you that I would also be quite comfortable
with a situation where you did allow true political leaders to
take those jobs. And I can come up with some names for you, if
you'd like; but I think that they are names known to Lakhdar
Brahimi--people who actually do, in some cases, serve on the
Governing Council--if they are the right people. They have got
to be people who the Iraqis themselves respect.
And in that respect, Mr. Chairman, allow me a slight
digression to say Ahmed Chalabi cannot be one of those names.
It is a disgrace that we continue to push Ahmed Chalabi the way
that we do. I read Dr. Dodge's testimony yesterday. I thought
it was excellent testimony. There's one number that he failed
to point out in that remarkable poll that was conducted several
weeks ago, which was that on the list of candidates of people
in Iraq who are most distrusted, those who folks said they do
not trust at all, the candidate who got the highest number of
votes in the ``do not trust at all'' category was Ahmed
Chalabi. He was the only one to be in double digits. He was, by
far, the highest one. He was over three times--more than three
times as many votes as the next-highest candidate on that list,
who was Saddam Hussein. That is the candidate that we have been
pushing.
I think it is a disgrace, as well, that Ahmed Chalabi is
allowed to stand up and say that he thinks the militias should
continue. Is this someone we should be supporting? We, all of
us on this panel before you, and, I think, everyone who knows
anything about Iraq, recognize the militias must be disarmed or
there will never be security in Iraq.
And I will make a prediction to you. It is inconceivable to
me that we continue to provide Ahmed Chalabi with $340,000 a
month to keep control of our treasure trove of documents from
Iraqi intelligence files about other Iraqis. My prediction to
you is this, Mr. Chairman. In a year, or 2 or 5 years, you and
Senator Biden will commission an investigation into exactly
what was done. And my expectation is that you will find that
Ahmed Chalabi systematically destroyed records that
incriminated he and his cronies, and used other records to
bribe and blackmail other people in Iraq into supporting him,
and probably even fabricated others, but that implicated rivals
of his in activity supportive of Saddam's regime. That
certainly has been the record that we have seen from him so
far. And I simply do not understand why we allow him to
persist.
Let me finally say, to come back to your original point,
ultimately what we need before June 30 is, we need an interim
government that is accepted by Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and
other key leaders inside Iraq. And I will tell, very honestly,
whatever Lakhdar Brahimi can come up with that al-Sistani and
other genuine Iraqi leaders can buy into should be good enough
for us, because that's the only way that you are going to
engender any degree of Iraqi popular support for this
transitional government, and that is absolutely critical, as
all of us have said, in helping the political, economic, and
security processes go forward.
The Chairman. Thank you. If others want to comment in this
general round, I'll entertain comments.
Mr. Sheehan.
Mr. Sheehan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me just make one comment about Lakhdar Brahimi, a man
I've known for many years and consider a very close friend, and
tell you some insights on how I think he will do this.
First of all, he will want a process that works, and he
will try to first figure out who are the key players that will
ensure success of this interim leadership. He will gauge which
outside powers to include--obviously, the U.S. Government, and
others that have a real influence on the success of the
operation. In my conversation with him, he discounted some who
I thought he might include on that, because they really, in his
view, won't matter to the success of this interim situation. He
will look at regional players, and, most importantly, what will
work for Iraqi people. And he has the ear of the key
constituencies that will determine whether or not it will be
successful. And I have great confidence that the names he will
select will be what he considers--consulting very carefully
with all those factors of success--will be what he considers
most successful.
Let me make one comment that having a U.N. political
process there will provide great cover for a lot of the
suggestions that were made on this panel and in other fora. And
I just want to underscore, as well, that there are many options
for U.N. involvement in the future, many of which have been
tried in the past. And even if you have a U.N. political
mandate and U.N. resolutions, the U.S. military can retain
virtual complete control, certainly over its forces, but also
of the security environment as a whole. And I think those types
of solutions ought to be reviewed and considered that will
ensure American security concerns are met and give enough
political cover for a lot of the other problems we've
addressed--bringing in other military and police forces,
disarming the legitimacy of the insurrection, and many of the
other issues here--can be worked out with a little bit of
flexibility from the administration and its partners in Europe.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Did you have a comment, Dr. Hashim?
Dr. Hashim. No, sir.
The Chairman. Very well.
Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I must say, this panel is extraordinary, and it absolutely
frustrates me in my ability to adequately express it. Someone--
I won't embarrass him--passed me a note that said, ``Doesn't it
make you want to cry that they didn't listen to these guys?''
Anyway, let me round out the Chalabi piece in just a very
quick second. I wrote a letter, on April 14, to the Secretary
of Defense laying out my concerns about Mr. Chalabi. And I
said, I would appreciate an answer to the following questions.
What amount of funding is provided to the INC every month, and
for what purpose? And what's the funding source? Why are the
payments being made? Is there a contract, a grant agreement or
other document governing the expenditure of these funds? If so,
who do we provide--in other words, who's going to oversee this?
How do we find out how it's used? Is the CPA providing
financial assistance or payments to other political parties? If
so, please provide this. Press reports indicate that during the
war, the INC took possession of a large cache of Iraqi
documents. Has the INC provided these documents to the CPA--the
answer is no--the occupying power? If not, why not? Is
financial assistance being provided to the INC in order to gain
access to these documents?
This is crazy. This is crazy. And, by the way, one of you
pointed out that Chalabi is, by a factor of three to one the
least popular politician in Iraq. I have a recent poll here--
``Who do you trust the least?'' Saddam Hussein, 3.1; Osama bin
Laden, 0; Ahmed Chalabi, 10.3. The next-highest person on the
list registers at beyond--it's 10.3 for Chalabi; 3.1 for Saddam
Hussein--and the next one is 1.8. One of the things we
politicians take solace from when we're running, if there's a
negative opinion of us and there's only a few people who know
us, we think it's curable; but if they know us and still hate
us, we worry about it. Guess who the best-known figure in Iraq
is? The best-known figure? Eight-five percent--of the Governing
Council--85 percent of the Iraqis know who Ahmed Chalabi is.
Well over 50 percent of the population doesn't know any of
these guys, but 85 percent know Ahmed, and very, very few like
him. And we're providing almost $400,000 a month for this guy.
Well, I don't want to belabor that. Let me go on.
Some time ago, I suggested that NATO get in the deal.
General Joulwan, everybody, including the press, said no,
they'll never do it, they want no part of it, they can't do it,
there's no troops. I then went to Europe. I met with an old
buddy of yours, General Jones, Supreme Allied Commander, had
your job--the job you had, met with the NAC, met with heads of
state. They all said, we're ready to endorse the idea of NATO
taking over the operation. We won't be able to put that many
troops in initially. We're probably talking three, five, seven,
ten thousand, depending on how we configured it, front end. The
French said they would vote for that if, in fact, by the way,
there was a real transfer of political authority in a way that
was legitimate, they'd consider, depending on the mission, use
of French troops in Iraq, like, I might add, they are in
Afghanistan.
Question to you, former Supreme Allied Commander, If we did
this the right way--and you don't have time to define ``right
way''--is there a right way where we can get NATO to say,
``Yes, we'll be part of the mission,'' and, at the front end,
is there any reasonable prospect of any number of NATO forces
being able to be deployed within the next 3 to 4 months into
Iraq?
General Joulwan. Yes.
Senator Biden. That's what I thought.
My second question for you----
General Joulwan. Let me, if I can----
Senator Biden. Go ahead.
General Joulwan [continuing]. Elaborate, because I think
there are some opportunities here. But, you know, we have to
understand--and I think the Bosnian model is not a bad one
here, where we had multinational divisions under an integrated
command structure, called the Combined Joint Task Force, to use
other words, that NATO has. This is not a pickup squad.
Senator Biden. Exactly.
General Joulwan. This is an organized staff--works
together, it's integrated. And I'm not sure how the final
organization is going to flesh out on the military side after 1
July, on our side, but there may be a multinational command in
there that I think NATO can play a role in.
Senator Biden. Exactly.
General Joulwan. But you've got to give them a seat at the
table. You've got to let them have a voice. You've got to give
them a vote if their troops are committed. Remember we built
the NATO Alliance over 50 years.
Senator Biden. Exactly.
General Joulwan. So I would say that NATO clearly can play
a role. No one said NATO would get involved in Afghanistan, but
the Alliance did.
Senator Biden. Exactly right. And I spent--I don't want to
get anybody in trouble over there, but meeting with people of
significant command, with more than one star sitting on their
shoulder, they all told me that the following could occur
immediately, meaning by the time we turned over power. No. 1,
border patrol responsibility, the Iraqi border. No. 2, either
taking over the Polish sector and running that with the Poles
and/or the north. Free up a total of up to 20,000 American
forces, front end--not putting in 20,000 NATO forces--free up
up to 20,000 forces initially, and over the next year, a
significant ramp-up if, in fact, the political side of this
equation--if a seat at the table really was given.
And so when I say it, people look at me, including the
press, and go, ah, no, that's not possible. Everybody--former
commanders, present commanders, others who I speak to in NATO--
say we can do this. Our first mission--every permanent rep
says, Joe, our first mission is Afghanistan. We don't want that
to fall apart. We don't want that to fall apart.
But we can. We can. Begin immediately. And, over time, take
over. And I think, by the way, a significant reason why this is
important is to say to the American people, hey, we're not
alone. We're not alone. The rest of the world's invested in
this. The major powers, where the muscle is.
Second, training. And I'd like any of you to comment on
this, but probably the two that could speak most directly are
Mr. Sheehan and you, General Joulwan--training the military. I
remember distinctly the French and the Germans, immediately
after Saddam's statue fell on that circle, which we passed by
and saw the remnants of, said, ``We're ready to help, in a big
way. We need some''--basically, ``some cover of a U.N.
resolution. We'll train the military.'' I just met with the
Hungarian Ambassador when I left here. He said, ``We're
staying, by the way, and we're ready to train the military with
you.'' I don't know whether they are capable of it. They're a
fine army; I don't mean to imply that.
The question is, is it your view that it is possible to get
additional help from major powers in the training piece of the
Iraqi military? How would you go about that, if they offered?
General Joulwan. There is going to be, I believe, a
headquarters with a new U.S. commander that's going to be
appointed to this that's going to be directly involved in the
equipping and training of the Iraqi army. Clearly, other
nations can help us do this. We have created--that's why I keep
going back to NATO--over 50 years, NATO procedures and doctrine
that can help here. And I don't know why there is reluctance.
Yes, it can be done. We have excellent countries that can help
there. And I think it would, again, broaden this base that
would get us the support we're going to need for the long run.
And we're going to need substantive support over the next
several years.
Senator Biden. I agree. And, by the way, unless all these
heads of state and foreign ministers and defense chiefs are
lying to me in Europe, they're all saying they're ready to do
that. They're saying they're ready to do it. And I say, ``Why
not?'' And here's the response I got, without revealing the
source of this one--I'll tell you privately--a guy you know
very well said, ``Nobody asks. Just ask. Don't tell us. Don't
invite us. Just ask us.''
Now, training the police. Let me tell you the article about
the vetting mission, ``Flaws Showing in Iraqi Forces,''
December 30, 2003, an article in the Washington Post. ``Last
were 2-minute-or-so interviews with Mehdi''--he's the guy doing
the interviewing we picked--``who was the head of the student
affairs of the police college before the Americans selected him
to oversee the training. The first candidate for police that
came in was a guy named Allah Abbas, age 22.'' Here's what he
got asked in the total--this is a total vetting--`` `What do
you think of human rights,' Mehdi asked. `It's good, and it
helps humans,' Abbas answered.''
Senator Biden. `` `What do you think of the other sex?' ''
end of quote. `` `They are half or so of society, and help men
in serving the community.' Mehdi nodded, scribbled some notes
in the young man's file. Abbas was in.''
Now, do you have any reason to believe that the vetting
process--you were involved in the vetting--look what we did in
vetting the Medallin Police Department. It worked. It worked.
We essentially knocked out close to, in all of Colombia, 2,000
former police, vetted them out. The new, vetted police force
actually crushed the Medallin cartel.
We can do this, can't we?
Mr. Sheehan. Senator Biden, we can do it, but we re-learn
it every 6 months. And we have done it before--and, by the way,
vetting is a process. I've been personally involved in vetting
of forces before. You have initial interviews, you have initial
intelligence, but it goes on throughout the entire training
program.
We can do it again, but one of my principal arguments in my
testimony is, we don't have the institution in the U.S.
Government that knows how to do this. We contract it out, and
the intellectual property of that knowledge is with
contractors. We don't have the institutional knowledge, we
don't have the capacity, and, right now, we're reinventing it
every year and we're going to be in Iraq a long time--we're
going to reinvent it every 6 months and a year. We need to
build a permanent capacity that does the vetting, training,
monitoring, and the other aspects I mentioned.
Senator Biden. As referenced by this longstanding service
of the chairman of the committee--but you raise questions.
Senator Lugar is a guy who thinks ahead. He's thinking ahead on
post-conflict reconstruction. He's got an outfit that includes
a general and several others, a number of people, including the
administration, trying to figure out a long-term solution for
this so we can help institutionally change the governance
process, so that, in the future, we will be able to deal with a
whole range of these issues. That's underway. But, in the
meantime, we do have enough people who have experience, that we
can have on the ground.
I was truly impressed with the group we had. Last summer we
went out to the Iraqi police training academy in Baghdad, and
we met the first Iraqi police force. A guy who was there, the
equivalent of a captain, an Iraqi--we were standing there
talking casually to him. He said, ``One thing I don't like,
Senator.'' He said, ``I don't like the blue-on-blue uniforms. I
like the green ones. We had the green ones, everybody knew it
was Saddam, and they listened. I want green uniforms.''
Now, last question, and I apologize for just this
indulgence, and it goes to you, Mr. Hashim. You mentioned that
the disbanding of the army was a mistake--I think you mentioned
this. It's easy, in hindsight, for us to say what was--I mean,
there's a lot of mistakes any one of us would have made had we
had this responsibility, and I'm not piling on here. I want to
know--I've wondered, in my mind, how significant a mistake, if
it was, was disbanding--totally disbanding the Iraqi army?
Dr. Hashim. Well, Senator, in my own personal opinion on
this matter, I think it was a significant mistake. Now, of
course, I'm speaking in hindsight here, but a large number of
the people that we disbanded could have been retained, they
could have restored law and order. And, yes, the Iraqi army, as
it existed, sort of melted away, but these people were ready to
come back and work, a significant number.
Senator Biden. Do we have to change the mission of the U.S.
military? I spoke with a former general, who does not want to
be referenced, a former senior member of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and I said, ``Is it true that Abizaid and others really
don't want any additional troops--they say we don't need any?''
Because these are honorable men, and we keep being told the
commanders aren't asking for them. And he said the following to
me. He said, ``Look at the expressions''--this was literally
what this four-star said to me--``Look at the expressions on
their faces.'' They're honest men. They answer the following
way. Deadpan, they look and say, ``I have enough troops,'' and
then the operative sentence, according to this four-star, ``for
the mission I have been assigned.''
Does the mission have to go from troop protection to
policing, at least at the front end of this?
General Joulwan.
General Joulwan. Well, let me reiterate--I think that
you've got to understand the clarity here that--when we talk
about sealing the borders, you know, that's military and maybe
border-patrol people. Preventing lawlessness, that is a police
function. I think there has to be some act of disarming.
Let me just say that, a year later, it's tough. I went
through this in Bosnia, where we found more stuff than you
could ever imagine, but we disarmed--in 6 months, we disarmed
200,000 armed insurgents, and there were no ifs, ands, or buts.
That's what we told the three waring factions they had to do.
And they did it! So I think that if it's only regime
change, then there may be enough troops to do regime change.
But if it's to bring stability--a stabilized environment, we
need to say, what does that mean? And that's the question that
I--what is the strategy, what is the war plan--or the
stabilization plan to match the war plan? And what are the
details of the stabilization plan? Once you get the tasks then
ask General Abizaid again, ``Do you have enough to do these
tasks?''
If I give you one example--I hate to really bare my soul
here a little bit, but when I was asked to go from IFOR, I used
a term SFOR. I was the one that said we're going to change from
implementation to stabilization, because I wanted the troops to
understand that. And I asked three questions of the North
Atlantic Council before I would say what I need to do the
mission assigned. Do you want me to hunt down and arrest
indicted war criminals? Do you want me to do civil police
functions? And do you want me to forcibly return refugees to
their homes? Yes or no. Because that would determine the troop-
to-task analysis that would be done. The answer to all three
was ``no.''
But that's the clarity you need, and I would ask, again,
that this issue of stabilization as a mission, what the hell do
we mean by that? And force the discussion for the clarity here
of, what do you want done? And then say, do you have enough
forces to do it?
Senator Biden. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Well, that is the sort of clarity we need.
General Joulwan. Clarity is my favorite word, Senator.
The Chairman. It's the focus of this hearing.
Senator Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As my colleagues, I remain deeply concerned with the safety
of our men and women in uniform serving in Iraq. And we
continue, in Ohio, to pray for Private Matt Maupin, of Batavia,
Ohio, who is one of the individuals that was taken into custody
by the Iraq insurgents. And I think one of the things that we
haven't mentioned is, is that we need more forces there to
protect our people so that we don't have more of this taking
place.
Senator Reed and I, and others, last year, submitted an
amendment to increase the force structure by 10,000 soldiers,
and that they would be trained specifically in peacekeeping,
because that's where it seems to be the need today. And I think
that I agree with, again, my colleagues, that we need to have a
snapshot of what resources we need immediately to get the job
done, and then a long-term plan for stabilization, as you've
talked about, general, and one that is honest and forthright
with the American people--to recognize, for example, that we've
had troops in Bosnia for 8 or 9 years. The last time I was in
Bosnia, I asked our troops, ``If you leave, what will happen?''
And they said to me, ``They'll start killing each other
again.'' Or, for that matter, in Kosovo, where we've had troops
for 5 years, and, because we weren't paying enough attention,
that blew up and we've got 4,000 refugees there today, and many
people killed, and homes burned, and so forth.
Dr. Pollack, I loved your book, and I always keep referring
this to people that really want to know what's going on over in
Iraq and in that area. And in that book, you said, ``We're at
an important moment in the history of the United States. We
know that we face a great problem with Saddam Hussein, and we
have good evidence that it's going to be a much bigger problem
in the future than it is today. We can ignore the problem and
hope it will just go away, or we can take steps needed to solve
it. Those steps will not be easy, and we should not downplay
them. The question we need to ask ourselves today is, ten years
from now, when we look back at this moment, which choice will
we most regret not having made?''
And you concluded, ``This is our opportunity to create a
stable, prosperous, self-sufficient Arab state that would serve
as a model for the region. This is our one opportunity to turn
Iraq from a malignant growth helping to poison the Middle East
into an engine for change for the entire region, and we must
not let it slip away from us.''
And that's what we're talking about here today. I've been
doing a lot of reading about that area, and we were talking
about fundamentalism, Muslim fundamentalism. What can we do,
recognizing that fundamentalism, to help Iraq move into a new
government--where we can eliminate, it seems to me, this issue
that many are using, which is that idea, ``That the infidels
are here and in charge, and we want to see them leave.'' You've
got a battle, I'm sure, right now in Iraq, in terms of
fundamentalism and people that are more secular in their
thinking. It's wonderful to know that 50 percent of the people
would like to have a democracy, and so on, but the question is,
what kind of a democracy?
And, my concern is, what are we going to turn it over to?
Isn't it important that we really make sure that whatever we
turn it over to is not looked upon by some people in Iraq as
our continuing to control the country?
The next question I'd like all the panelists to answer is,
if we enter into an agreement to help ensure security in the
country, is that going to be looked upon as something such as,
``Foreigners here in our country interfering, and we ought to
try and get them to leave''? Will a United Nations type of
commitment there help, so those loyal to Saddam and others will
not exploit the fact that, here we are with all these people in
our country. Do you understand the question? I'd like you to
comment on it.
Dr. Pollack. I'll try, sir. First, thank you very much for
your remarks, Senator. I greatly appreciate it, and I'm glad
that my book was helpful to you.
I will also point out that another line that I used in the
book was a warning that if we did not go into Iraq ready to do
all the of things that were going to be necessary to stabilize
the country and rebuild it afterwards, that we could create
more problems than we solve in Iraq. That is my fear now, that
if we do not address some of the problems we've undertaken,
that we will wind up creating more problems than we solve.
With regard to the problem of fundamentalism, I think that
my good friend Ahmed Hashim made a very important comment in
his remarks, and I want to echo it and perhaps drive it home,
which is that although fundamentalism has been growing in Iraq
over the past 20 years, it is still, or was, a rather minor
phenomenon at the time of the fall of Saddam. But what has
happened both in the Sunni triangle and, to a certain extent,
in the Shia areas is that Islamic clerics, who are opposing the
United States and who cloak their opposition, in Islamic--in
religious terms, are becoming increasingly more popular, not
necessarily because the population is becoming more religious,
but because they are growing more frustrated and angry at the
United States, because the gap between what we are delivering
and their expectations is growing wider and wider. And these
clerics have become the legitimate voice of opposition to the
United States, using the language of Islam, which is a language
that is very resonant, obviously, with every Iraqi. And I think
that what we saw in the last few weeks with the support from
Muqtada al-Sadr, which I think completely caught the Coalition
Provisional Authority by surprise----
Senator Voinovich. Aren't we lucky that we have al-Sistani
there, that we're able to work with? If it wasn't for al-
Sistani, where would we be?
Dr. Pollack. Absolutely. And I think that our efforts to
resist al-Sistani are, in many cases, entirely
counterproductive, because he represents a trend in Shia Islam,
a quietist trend, the dominant trend, which ultimately meshes
very nicely with what it is that we are trying to do over
there.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Sheehan.
Mr. Sheehan. Senator, let me make a comment based on my
experience as Ambassador for counterterrorism and my current
job dealing with counterterrorism in New York. If we do not
succeed in Iraq, we very likely will have a worse situation
than we did have during the Saddam Hussein regime. And let me
take a quick minute to explain why.
The most significant counterterrorism event since 9/11 has
been the takedown of Afghanistan and elimination of that
sanctuary of impunity for al-Qaeda. If Iraq is not stabilized
and controlled throughout its entire borders, what concerns me
most is that it will become the new Afghanistan. And what it
will be is a area where foreign international jihadists will
come to, to become further radicalized, to become vetted in
their own processes, become combat hardened, and build the
types of international relationships that were established in
Afghanistan and still haunt us today.
That specter of a new swamp, as I referred to Afghanistan
several years ago, will haunt us for years. And for that
reason, we have to win in Iraq, and we have to establish a
presence throughout the country to drain the swamp of those
type of jihadists that are pouring into the country right now
and will take, in incubating over 2, 3, 4 years, will come back
to our shores and attack us, without any doubt. So that's why
we need a large presence in Iraq, not just for the immediate
security concerns right now, but for the longer-term concerns
that I have, in the counterterrorism business, of allowing
these jihadists to grow and incubate there and represent a
broad international threat, not only to the United States, but
to freedom around the world.
Senator Voinovich. Dr. Hashim.
Dr. Hashim. Sir, on the issue of Islamic fundamentalism in
Iraq, let me echo some of what Ken Pollack said, and also go a
little bit beyond that.
Iraq has become de-secularized as a result of sanctions,
three wars, a lack of civil society, Saddam's regime, in two
ways. He basically brutalized the country, so people turned
more and more toward religion. But, at the same time, beginning
in 1995, he encouraged the rise of Islamic tendencies, as long
as it was directed against foreigners. Now it has increased as
a result of the foreign presence in Iraq. And what you have
here, increasingly, in both the Sunni Arab and the Shia Arab
communities, a fusion of Islam and nationalism.
Now, a fusion of Islam and nationalism is not jihadism,
necessarily. There is a small minority of Sunnis who are
jihadists. The major problem for the Sunni jihadists in Iraq is
that they cannot really take power. They're a minority within a
minority of the population. But there is mainstream Islamism,
and that has fused with nationalism.
The other point is that the increase in Islamic fervor or
feeling among the population does not necessarily translate
into theocratic government. The Shia population is not
necessarily in favor of a theocracy, a la Iran. They may be in
favor of a more Islamized polity--as in Ayatollah al-Sistani--
--
Senator Voinovich. But what'll----
Dr. Hashim [continuing]. And we have to live with that.
Senator Voinovich. It will have to have that kind of a
dimension to it if it's to be successful.
Dr. Hashim. Yes, sir.
Senator Voinovich. OK. And what we're trying for is
something different than what we have in Iran today--take
advantage of it--because we have the environment there. If we
do it right, we can, indeed, have a democracy. It may not be
exactly the kind that we would prescribe, but one that works.
Dr. Hashim. I agree with you, sir. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Voinovich.
Senator Dodd.
Senator Dodd. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
apologize being out of the room for a few minutes. We had a
conference on youth involvement, and I wanted to be there and
spend a few minutes with them. But I had a chance to listen to
several of you here and go over the testimony of others.
First of all, Mr. Chairman, once again thank you, and I
thank Senator Biden, the two of you here. General Joulwan said
this, but it deserves being repeated. At a time when the label
of partisanship is used almost on a minute-by-minute basis to
describe how politics is being conducted in Washington, this
committee stands out as a glaring exception to that, and all of
us are deeply thankful for your leadership, the leadership of
both of you, and having a set of hearings like this and giving
us an opportunity to air the kind of discussion that we ought
to be having about all of this. Because it's on everyone's
mind. We're all trying to sort this out. And, clearly, it's
only going to come when we have wise and competent people who
can come and share some thoughts about all of this. So I'm very
grateful to you, as a member of this committee, and I must say
a little disappointed, although, while I'll accept the excuses
being provided, but I can't think of any greater sense of
urgency they ought to be than for key administration people to
be here and share with us where we're headed with all of this.
I have, sort of, this Groundhog Day memory of sitting in
this committee when I think we had a hearing on exactly this
subject matter, and we were told that people couldn't make it
up here. I remember that--I think it was about a year and a
half or 2 years ago that that occurred. And it's once again
sort of being repeated.
But let me raise something, if I can. I want to thank all
of you for your testimony. It's been very, very good, and very
helpful. Certainly, all of you, as General Joulwan's pointed
out that planning for keeping the peace was terribly flawed,
I'm struck by--there's a wonderful quote from Ambassador
Freeman, that I had with me--I'll find it in a minute--the
former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia describing the question of
what victory means, in military, as opposed to winning the
peace, and how that occurs. But as a former Ambassador in the
region, someone who's very knowledgeable about that part of the
world, I was taken with his comments over the weekend.
Certainly, Ambassador Sheehan, your call for standing up a
credible and professional police will take years, not months.
And speaking generationally, I like the fact that you talked in
generations. It's sort of our obligation, as members of policy-
setters, to be speaking not in terms of quarters, or a matter
of months, but in years. And too often we don't, we fall prey
to the quarterly argument that businesses have to comply with.
But even successful businesses think beyond the quarters for
long-term success, and I don't think we're doing that very well
here.
Dr. Hashim, you've told us that we are something of a cusp
in Iraq. And I think you're absolutely on target with this. And
that is, this is far more than just the small bands of people.
It doesn't quite rise to the level of broad, widespread
insurgency, but I think we're getting close to that, and I
think suggesting otherwise is kidding people if they think it's
not more serious than that.
Certainly, security is the precondition for moving forward
to build a stable Iraq. I agree totally with that. I agree with
our witnesses, who have said, in describing the challenges that
we face, what must be done.
Here's where I have a problem, and I say this, and I want
to get you to respond to it. It's really one question. It comes
down to this date, this June 30. This is driving me crazy. Why
this is the Holy Grail is beyond me. I think we're kidding
ourselves, in a way, if we're calling for all the things you've
suggested, by and large, here, what needs to be done--to get
more troops in, to get NATO involved, to get the international
community, to get policing on the ground, to get all of these
structures in place--given the difficulty we've had doing that
under the present circumstances, where we call every shot, why
should we believe, for a single second, that if we turn over
something like sovereignty, whatever that is in this particular
case, to a bunch of people we do not know very well, or who
they are, or whether or not they're going to run again or not
run again--are they technocrats, are they politicians, who are
they? The assumption somehow that we're going to be able to do
these things that you've described, which I don't disagree
with, under a structure that is not likely to produce or allow
us to have those--in fact, they may take the opposite view.
They may decide, in order to score points politically, that
they'll join those forces, at least rhetorically, by suggesting
that we're an occupying force, that we're really not wanted
there. I suspect that they have ambitions politically in their
own country. They're not going to be unlike politicians any
other place around the world, they're going to find out where
the parade is, and they want to put themselves someplace in
that context.
And my question to you is, why don't we just come out and
say, dump this June 30 date? This is crazy. Does anyone really
believe, for a single second, that, on June 30, we're going to
successfully turn over sovereignty? Why is anyone afraid to
suggest that it's a bad idea, that date? If we really need to
do these other things, how can we possibly do it if we've
become so wedded to that date?
So I'm struck with the fact that this is an inherent
contradiction if we do want to do all the things you've
described to do, and simultaneously are wedded to the June 30
date, I think you've got a train wreck in the mix here. I don't
think it can happen.
So my point would be that I think we ought to drop the June
30 date. Now, obviously, the administration seems to be
committed to it no matter what I say or anyone else says, but
I'd be interested in what you have to say here. If you were in
a position to decide, or advise this administration, on whether
or not we ought to be wedded to the June 30 date, would you
argue that we ought to get rid of that date, and, rather, focus
on the issues that you've raised here today, with the hopes of
building some stability that would then provide the
environment, at some point in the not too distant future, where
you could have a group of people emerge that would have some
chance of succeeding here?
Yes, Dr. O'Hanlon.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Senator Dodd, my own take is that I would
keep the date for the moment, but I would also be assuming it's
not going to be one we can stick with, and I'd be developing
backup plans and being careful in my rhetoric, as President and
anyone else in the administration, not to make us so committed
to that date that we can't back away from it later on. I think
we need the forcing pressure of a date to require some
decisionmaking. And I also think anti-Americanism is becoming
the rallying cry for that burgeoning movement you describe, and
we need to give sovereignty back as quickly as possible to
quell that. However, if we don't have anybody to give back
sovereignty to, and we haven't answered these key questions, we
will have to postpone.
So my belief is, you're going to have to postpone--or
there's a good chance you'll have to postpone, but it's better
to wait a little longer to do it, try to keep pressure on
people, try to make as many decisions as you can, and then
postpone as little as necessary once the day comes.
I would still expect it's going to be sometime this summer
that we transfer sovereignty. Only a 50-50 chance it'll be June
30. I would keep the date for now, but I would not count on it.
Senator Dodd. General Joulwan.
General Joulwan. Senator, let me try to make some clarity
out of it. I don't know what the date you would come up with,
if not June 30? A year from now? Two years from now?
I would say what is more important here is, what do we
expect to happen with the government after 1 July? But you're
the politicians. I would just tell you that I would go through
a process of saying crawl, walk, run. We're going to be in a
crawl stage, literally, with this government until it matures.
And so what do we expect it to do? What will it have to do it
with? There's going to be a minister of defense, there's going
to be a minister of interior, but they're going to be
fledgling.
You've got to, sort of, hover over this new government and
let it mature. It is important to give the new government some
initial successes and the satisfaction they are started on the
road. But they're only at the first benchmark here, and have to
proceed step by step. That's how I would look at it.
I think that you'd play right into the hands of the
extremists if you would say it's not going to happen on 30
June, unless we have some very clear and good reasons for
delaying that. At least that's my gut reaction.
Senator Dodd. Well, general, do you think you're going to
convince European nations and others to send more troops there
with this government you've appointed on June 30?
Realistically, now.
General Joulwan. Again, that goes back to, what do we
expect? I think that the government's not going to be able to
all of a sudden provide this secure environment. There has to
be clarity here. What is the relationship between this new
government and the U.S. Embassy? What does ``sovereignty''
mean? How is that going to be defined? This has to be laid out.
But I think there is a need for a clear ``road map'' here.
You need a process that it can work. At this stage, given what
we're facing, I think you would play into the hands of those
that are stirring up the problems if we would start backing
away from that date. More importantly, I would want to say,
what are the expectations that we should have for this new
government? What is the role, then, of this huge organization
that's going to go in, particularly on the U.S. side, on the
embassy side, on our military side? Those are my views.
Senator Dodd. Ken.
Dr. Pollack. First, Senator, let me say that I completely
sympathize with the sentiments that you're expressing, and I
think that you're absolutely right, that we have a lot of work
to be done.
I will say I understand where the June 30 date came from. I
was in Baghdad in November when it was formulated, or right
after it was formulated. And it was formulated as part of the
November 15 process. And the point was, like good bureaucrats--
and as a former bureaucrat, I completely sympathize--you need a
date to force people to actually do things. And back in
November, June 30 seemed like a perfectly reasonable date,
because you had a process that was going to get you there; and,
as we know, that process has fallen apart. We don't have the
process anymore; we still have the date. That's obviously very
problematic, and that's obviously exactly what you're getting
at.
That said, I do echo some of the points that both Mike and
General Joulwan have made, which is that, unfortunately, Iraqis
have really invested in this date. We've not really talked
about this, but the Iraqis are very unhappy with the way that
the United States has handled the reconstruction, the
occupation. They find us to be arrogant, they find us to be
arbitrary, they find us, in many respects, to be replicating
the things that they hated about Saddam's regime, and how he
treated them, with the exception that we don't arbitrarily kill
large numbers of them. And they want to see some kind of a
transition on June 30. And, as General Joulwan as suggested, if
they don't see something, I think that this is going to feed
their sense of humiliation and anger, which is driving them to
the Muqtada al-Sadrs of Iraq.
I will also say, I can imagine transitional governments
that we could create between now and then, which I think many
Iraqis would grudgingly find acceptable. I think that if we did
go the Brahimi route, we could come up with groups of people
that Iraqis would largely find acceptable. I think we could
take other routes--Professor Cole made this point yesterday; I
think he's absolutely right--you could go to the local Iraqi
councils, ask them to send representatives to a larger assembly
in Baghdad. They could come up with a new government, which
Iraqis would mostly find to be reasonable and better,
certainly, than the Governing Council that we have now.
That said, I can also see a train wreck occurring on June
30, as you've suggested if we don't go this route, if we
continue to undermine Lakhdar Brahimi's mission by doing things
like going after Muqtada al-Sadr in the midst of his
negotiations, which are clearly not helping him. What I would
say, though, is, if we are going to postpone beyond June 30
because of the reasons I mentioned, because of how much Iraqis
have now invested in this debate, it is critical to do what we
have consistently failed to do all along, which is to reach out
to Ayatollah al-Sistani and other Iraqi leaders, and get them
to say, you know what? June 30th isn't reasonable. We need to
postpone it. If we can get their buy-in, I think Iraqis could
live with a postponement. But if we simply arbitrarily extend
June 30, in the exact same way that we announced June 30, we'll
just cause more problems.
Senator Dodd. Doctor, anything you want to say?
Well, I wish you well. I appreciate your saying it--all of
you have said--we need more troops, we need more policing, we
need to do all of these things to get the security on the
ground. And I think if you think you're going to get that out
of a new government we've imposed, basically--not through
elections or anything else--and I've been around a while; I
think we're dreaming. I think you all made wonderful arguments
for increasing security. I don't think you're going to get it
with this.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Dodd.
Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just some quick subjects here. This so-called cleric, al-
Sadr, who has been giving us some problems--and, as you pointed
out, he's really more of a political leader than a religious
leader--and yet he is posing a problem for us, stirring up
these supporters. At some point, the United States being able
to take him into custody, what does that do in Iraq?
Dr. Hashim. Senator Nelson, Muqtada al-Sadr is a social/
political phenomenon. If we take him down, somebody else may
replace him. He's built up his power on the basis of a network
that his father and two brothers had built up in the 1990s
before they were assassinated by Saddam Hussein, so it's not
like he came upon it as soon as the regime fell, and built it.
He's built it beyond by creating the Mahdi's army, which is a
ill-trained, but highly dedicated militia. Now, if we take him
out, it still does not resolve the issue of his constituency,
which are the disenfranchised Shia poor, who constitute about
three- to four-million inhabitants, primarily of Madinat al-
Sadr, north of Baghdad.
How do we resolve their lack of empowerment? As long as
that continues, they will keep throwing up radical clerics who
promise them a better future.
Senator Nelson. So is it best to deal with al-Sistani, and
let him try to negotiate something?
Dr. Hashim. I think, for the moment, yes, sir. And the fact
is, the vast majority of Shia tend toward what I would call
more moderation, where they would like their country to be
Islamically dominated, in the sense the constitution based on
Islam and more Islamized, so to speak--I'm simplifying here--
but not the rule of the clerics, of the politicized clerics.
General Joulwan. If I can just add a point here. When you
talk about Najaf--correct me if I'm wrong--you're talking a
population of about 900,000 people in this city--a large
number, large population. When you say, we're going to get al-
Sadr, this poses tremendous problems. Fallujah, I think, is
250,000. I mean, these aren't hamlets that we're talking about.
So the idea--and it goes to Senator Dodd's comments. As a
fledgling government takes hold here, part of the challenge is
going to be, what are Iraqis going to do to bring people to
justice? What sort of support can we get from moderate and
other Iraqis to help? And I think we're getting some of that
now, and I think we need to probe that. We need to encourage
that cooperation. Because that, in the end, is going to be, to
me, the best way to not only bring these individual to justice,
but also to separate his extremism from the more moderate
groups that we're trying to get involved.
So I would say you've got to be careful, when you say,
we're going to capture or kill 'em. What does that means in
terms of operations that the military have to conduct. If our
forces go into Fallujah guns ablazing it will be a very, very
costly operation. I think there are other ways to do it.
Senator Nelson. And those other ways?
General Joulwan. Is to get the the Iraqis involved.
Senator Nelson. To do the negotiations.
General Joulwan. Right. Although I am not current in the
last day or two, I think there has been some attempt by the
Iraqis to assist here. The more we can show Iraqi involvement
the better off we will be. When you form a new government, you
need a small success--a half-a-step success. And here is a way
to get some success for the Iraqis. And you build on that
success. And that, to me, is going to be very important for
this new government that's going to be formed. And I believe
they're trying to cooperate. We ought to encourage them.
Dr. Pollack. Senator, just to add to that, you know, I
think that, unfortunately, al-Sadr has become one of the Catch-
22s, one of the many Catch-22s we've created for ourselves in
Iraq. Senator Dodd is alluding to another--or was alluding to
another--of the Catch-22s we've created. I think the honest
answer is, we should have dealt with al-Sadr 12 months ago. We
knew he was a problem right from the start, when he killed
Abdul al-Majid al-Khoei. But instead of dealing with it,
because we didn't, honestly, have the troops to deal with it,
we've allowed this to fester, and now we have a real problem.
The Mahdi army is getting bigger, it is getting more
problematic. There is an argument to be made that maybe we
don't want these guys around, free to do whatever they want to
after June 30. By the same token, going in the fashion that we
did--and especially the timing that we did, which I just cannot
understand, for the life of me--was also a mistake.
You know, in some ways, again, accepting the fact that we
should have dealt with them at the beginning, we had what was
probably the best solution possible, which was the textbook
solution when you get into these foreign interventions, which
is, you want the foreign moderates to deal with their own
extremists. And we had that. The hauza, the moderates, if you
want to call them that, of Iraq, were dealing with al-Sadr.
They had largely marginalized him. By going after him, we stuck
ourselves in between the moderates and the extremists.
I think that, right now, extracting ourselves,
unfortunately, probably is the best thing we can do, and it's
useful in two ways. One, it would be much better to have a
negotiated settlement, as General Joulwan is suggesting. We
don't want a fight in the middle of Najaf. That would be
disastrous. Second, it would be useful to us to empower
Ayatollah al-Sistani. Ayatollah al-Sistani--and, you know, it's
unfortunate that we are making him into such a key figure. I'll
be honest with you, I don't think he wanted to be this key a
figure. But, unfortunately, someone has to stand up for the
Shias. He's the one who is doing it. We need to empower him. We
need to show Iraqis that al-Sistani is capable of standing up
to us.
And that's something I think this administration has a
great deal of difficulty understanding. It's a point that that
Ahmed Hashim and I have both been making. The Iraqis are
increasingly unhappy with us. Their leaders, legitimate
leaders, are going to have to be able to show that they can
stand up to the United States and push back on us and get
results that Iraqis want. Those are the only leaders who Iraqis
are going to follow.
Senator Nelson. In January, I had visited with President
al-Assad, and in a friendly but very, very frank discussion
over a number of issues of which he was giving a certain party
line, which I did not believe, and told him so--but he said one
interesting thing when I was talking about the jihadists going
across the border. He said, ``I would like to cooperate with
the Americans.''
Now, I have come back--I mean, right there, our Ambassador
sitting with me, and immediately reported that. I also called
back to our Ambassador to Israel, who wanted to know about my
visit. I came back, and I reported to the Secretary of Defense,
General Myers, and the Deputy Secretary of State, all of whom
received that information with considerable interest, except
the Secretary of Defense, who somewhat dismissed it out of
hand.
I was curious, because there is an article in a recent
Inside the Pentagon publication, and it says that
administration officials have responded with a stony silence to
Syria's Ambassador apparently giving this same message. Now, I
can tell you General Myers didn't, because I think General
Myers saw that anything you could do to close that border, it's
going to help save our men and women in uniform.
I'd just like your commentary on this. Are the Syrians
giving us a total bill of goods? Do you have any sense that
they might want to have cooperation to help close the border,
even though it's a difficult border to close?
Dr. Pollack. Senator, I think we ought to put him to the
test.
Senator Nelson. What is there to lose?
Dr. Pollack. Exactly. And I think something like border
control is something where you can actually get a real test. If
the guys continue to come through the borders, if our guys on
the other side see the Syrians allowing people to continue to
infiltrate, we've got our answer. But we've shown a willingness
to cooperate with this Syrian regime before. This
administration has been very cooperative with this Syrian
Government on the global war on terrorism, and has received all
kinds of information from them on al-Qaeda and other Sunni
terrorist groups. Why, in this case, are we not willing to see
that same cooperation?
Senator Nelson. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.
Senator Corzine.
Senator Corzine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me just
say that this hearing and the scope with which the witnesses
have addressed these incredibly difficult issues, I think, is
remarkable. I join with Senator Biden, I wish we could have
these folks offering counsel to the people that are making
policy decisions. At least we would see the wide range of
various issues that are at hand, and might come up with more
serious responses and less frequent failures on some of the
strategic decisions that are being made.
I do agree with what Mr. Pollack said, this is more than a
bad month. But I continue to not understand why the central
thought and spokespeople for the administration continue
something else. They take the comments of Mr. O'Hanlon and say
that's all that's going on.
I just want to quote from a senior administration official,
and I'd like to hear your comments on it, describing the deadly
insurgency that flared this month. One official described it as
``a symptom of success that we're having here in Iraq.'' This
is almost as if somebody needs to go see counselors with regard
to how you frame an issue. And we hear this from the highest
officials in our government. A symptom of success that we have
lost 105 people, that this goes on? And I think there is a
right for the American people to be angry, and I certainly--I
feel it, personally.
And that draws me to the conclusion--we've heard
``competency'' mentioned in these hearings--but it draws me
back to something that I asked yesterday, and I feel very
strongly the same that Senator Dodd has spoken about, how can
we believe that we're going to make the right strategic
decisions? How do the American people have the ability to
understand that we're going to be able to make this series of
very, very tough decision between now--I think it's 70 days--
I'm not so good at math--between now and June 30? And maybe it
is that we go, and we futz around, and, you know, 30 days out,
we say, well, we need some more time. And maybe that's the only
answer. But it seems to me that if we create a situation where
the Iraqi people say that this sovereignty that you just
transferred to us is a line of--excuse me--it doesn't fit the
reality of what we think is sovereignty, then all you guys have
done is mislead us and put us into a position that what is, in
the long run, best interests, such as getting to elections and
true transfer of sovereignty, is completely undermined by it.
And I don't understand how, with all of these kinds of
decisions--including, by the way, this point that was just made
with al-Sadr and reaction to Senator Nelson's comments--how
this can be done. How can this be done? We don't know what the
status of forces is going to be. We don't know who. We don't
know how the Iraqi people will look at a situation when there
is conflict, say in Najaf, post-June 30, and the United States
is taking all the decisions through our military powers, and
the folks that are Brahimi-chosen say, this isn't something we
agree with. That's what they're doing. What kind of dynamic are
we setting up?
First of all, like the question about, Are we--am I somehow
missing something, that this is a symptom of success? I'd love
to hear the comments on that. And then a little more follow-
through on Senator Dodd's case, because I think we're setting
up--and, you know, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I
think we're putting ourselves into a box canyon of failure
that's going to end up undermining our ability to develop a
relationship with the Iraqi people and evolving to what I think
all of us want, which is success on the ground.
Dr. O'Hanlon. I'll start, briefly, Senator Corzine. On the
first question, I certainly don't really believe the
administration can make that argument with a straight face. I
don't think they believe that themselves. There have been
background briefings at the Pentagon for some of us think-tank
folks, with high-ranking people. They're background meetings,
so I won't say who gave the comment, but it was a very high
civilian official who agreed with me, there are no good trends
in the security sphere right now to speak of. And so I don't--
if they are giving this public message, it's not one, in my
judgment, they even believe themselves.
And I think Mr. Rumsfeld was clear the other day, when he
said, ``I would never have expected this kind of month of April
a year ago.'' And he didn't say that with a smile on his face
that he was grateful for the fact that we were able to engage
in these firefights. He was obviously concerned. That's my
reading.
On the issue of the government and the transfer of
sovereignty, one of the reasons why I favor the technocratic
government as of June 30, with people who are not eligible to
run for office in January, is because I think it's, therefore,
easier to convince them not to try to make every single kind of
decision under the sun. Because they would, in a sense, be
taking those decisions away from their own fellow citizens, who
will then be elected in January.
In reality, as you point out, they're not ready to make
those decisions, regardless of who they are. There isn't enough
preparation time here, and their country's security is too poor
to allow for full exercise of sovereign power as of June 30.
But it's easier, I think, for them to swallow that idea if
they're viewed as a technocratic caretaker government, and then
the real government will emerge in the course of 2005. But if
we have that approach, I still think it's feasible to aim for
this target date. We may or may not make it, but I want to aim
for it, still, because I think the anti-American feeling is so
strong, it's fueling the insurgency, and we've got to give them
back some control over their own country.
General Joulwan. Let me just try to add another dimension
to it, Senator. I understand the concern about what the Iraqis
will do with sovereignty on 30 June and 1 July of this year.
I'd really try to turn it a little bit and say, what can we do?
What has to happen? And I mentioned in my testimony about
stabilization as a mission. We haven't really defined all of
this, but I would move without the ball here. I would not wait
until 30 June. What can we do to create the best conditions for
success for this fledgling government that is going to be stood
up? Can we get the lines of authority clear between the
military, our embassy, and the new Iraqi Government? Can we get
them together and do a simulation? How do we create the best
conditions for success? What would be, to me, a tragedy--if, on
30 June, we're still bumping heads between the State Department
and Defense Department on what needs to be done. You know, that
ball's in our court.
And so I have been in these situations, particularly in an
election year, Senator, and I can tell you it's tough on the
combatant commander. But we have to do a lot here, and I would
not look at it as if the Iraqi's will fail. What can we do to
help try to ensure success? What can the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee do to help?
I had a saying that I'd like to give to this current group,
``one team, one mission.'' The Americans that are going to go
in there from the Defense and from the State side, have to be a
team. They both have to be focused on their mission and work
together as a team. And that has to begin now--before 30 June.
And I think we have a lot to do in order to try to make the
Iraqis successful.
Senator Corzine. Dr. Pollack.
Dr. Pollack. Senator, let me start by saying that I do want
to make a point that, as Mike O'Hanlon pointed out earlier,
there are, of course, some real positives in Iraq, and I think
we should never lose sight of them. The Iraqi people have been
remarkable. They've been remarkably patient with us. They have
given us, time and time again, chance after chance to
demonstrate that we can do for them what we keep saying that we
will do for them. That is an enormous advantage.
Our troops have also been absolutely magnificent. And being
out in the field with our troops and seeing the stuff that
mechanics and tank-drivers are doing trying to build democracy
in Iraq, again, it's just unbelievable.
But, for me, those positives inject a greater element of
tragedy in the situation, because given the incredible
positives that are going on, if we fail in Iraq, it will be, to
my mind, inexcusable.
I absolutely agree with you that it is ridiculous to
suggest that what we are seeing now in Iraq are the products of
success. You know, the line has been, for a number of months,
that what is going on is a bunch of dead-enders, who don't want
to see the successful transition, trying desperately to take it
down. That's one interpretation. That's not my interpretation
at all.
All of the evidence that I see indicates that the problems
that we have, as we've been talking about, stem from the
increasing skill, the increasing proficiency, the increasing
resources of the insurgents inside Iraq, who are building
networks and becoming more and more skillful, and,
simultaneously, the growing popular support for resistance to
the United States, which, again, is not the majority of the
country yet; but the trend is not a good one.
As we've said about June 30 several times, I think, you
know, Senator Dodd is absolutely right to put his finger on
this----
Senator Corzine. I do want to just say that if you're going
to solve a problem, you have to recognize you have one.
And if you don't recognize it, you're not going to build
any plans, whether it's for June 30 or it's for December 31.
And we seem to have a disconnect between reality and what----
Dr. Pollack. I would absolutely agree with that. And I
think that the answer that you and Senator Dodd and Senator
Nelson have all posed about June 30 is an extremely important
one. We have created a Catch-22 for ourselves. As I've
suggested, as I think others on this panel have suggested, the
only way that we can see out of that June 30 process--June 30
Catch-22--is the possibility that Lakhdar Brahimi is going to
pull a rabbit out of his hat, and that's what he needs to do.
And that's why I don't understand why we're making what is
already a tremendous challenge on his part even more difficult
by doing things like picking a fight with Muqtada al-Sadr, and
pushing Ahmed Chalabi, and other things that are just going to
make it even harder for him to find that rabbit in his hat.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Corzine.
Anyone else have a comment in response? Yes, go ahead.
Dr. Hashim. Sir, just a few personal comments. I really
don't want to make any comments about the symptom of our
success. But I guess, however, one could say that the converse,
which is the lack of an insurgency, would be a symptom of our
failure.
But what we need to keep in mind is that we cannot go back
on the June 30 deadline. It would be a tremendous mistake. The
Iraqis have been unhappy. That is true. They don't want to be
occupied. But if we give them half a loaf, as long as the
security situation and the law and order situation and
reconstruction get on track by stages, they're willing to live
with that. But only in the interim, of course. So they
recognize that. From talking to them, they recognize--look,
sovereignty will not be returned--I mean, genuine, effective
sovereignty, as they see it is going to be a long time coming.
Their main concern is security, law and order, and
reconstruction.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Well, I thought we would start another round
of questioning.
Let me just mention--I know, Dr. O'Hanlon, that you will
need to leave, and we appreciate very much your coming. We are
sorry that our hearing has become a marathon run. We appreciate
the patience and the longevity of each of you. But as you need
to leave, why, you are, of course, excused, and we thank you.
Let me just begin this second round. We will not extend
this unduly, because each of you have other responsibilities. I
was impressed with General Joulwan's recent response to the
question, What can we do?
Some of us wish that the administration was hearing you the
same as we are. We really all are part of the same government.
We, in Congress, have responsibilities. To have a hearing
in which we find fault with everything that has gone before is
interesting if we were historians, but, at the same time, not
so helpful if we're thinking about, ``What can we do?'' And the
``we'' means you, as witnesses, giving the very best of your
advice, as well as those of us who have some oversight and
ability to influence policy through the legislative debates or
the appropriation process, through intervention with the
President or the Secretaries or whoever will talk to us.
Without being presumptuous, we're attempting to help write
a plan for what happens. Ideally, administration witnesses
would come before us and say, now, here is a plan, and let's
fine-tune it and tweak it and think through this.
Unfortunately, that's not the sort of thing that we have been
getting, although we will have another go at it again tomorrow,
after having given a lot of advanced notice of what we're
asking for.
The plan does apparently revolve around June 30. That's
been a big subject of discussion today. However we got to that
point, June 30 does loom. We heard yesterday, in terms of Iraqi
public opinion, it's a very big date. If that is the case,
then, picking up on General Joulwan's thought, we want to make
certain that our team--and that does include the Armed Forces
and the State Department and NSC and Congress, everybody else--
is on the same wavelength, that we're not still discussing,
down to June 30, who does what. That is one reason why I was
intemperate enough to suggest today that we have a hearing next
Tuesday for Ambassador Negroponte. Somebody who's pushing
papers at the State Department might not be able to get them
over here by Tuesday. I would just say, patiently, please come
forward. Let's have a hearing.
Senator Biden. You have a gavel. You have a gavel.
The Chairman. And then that, at least, gets us started.
Having said that, we're not having much luck on the floor
of the Senate right now in confirming anybody for any position
anywhere in the world. I would hope there might be a slight
dispensation with regard to Ambassador Negroponte, in view of
the national interest, that he not be a pawn in any of our
arguments over anything else we're talking about, whether it be
asbestos or the energy bill or whatever.
We've got at least Ambassador Negroponte on the way. And
then we try to think who all is he going to have over there.
How are these people going to interact? We have at least 8
weeks or so to think about the embassy staff roster and
physically how they get into their assigned posts in Iraq. Will
they be embedded with the troops out in the countryside? That
has been one informal suggestion. The security concern for some
of these folks, who are going to be well outside the Green Zone
and so forth, is at hand, and we have to think about that.
We also still have to think about the money. It may be
impolitic to bring up money at this point, but, at the same
time, the Iraqi Government will have to be thinking about how
it will finance itself. What portion of the oil money will go
toward its civil administration? What part of the $18 billion
of our appropriation has been identified? Maybe just $3 billion
has been committed. Why only three? Well, if we got into the
weeds of that, we would find endless bureaucratic difficulties.
Some of these we impose upon ourselves because of checks and
balances and good governance, so that we don't spend money
without bids and without look-see. But, at the same time, as
Senator Biden pointed out yesterday, an article suggested that
before long well over a quarter of that amount of money may be
spent just on security forces to guard the people who are, in
fact, doing the reconstruction work, as opposed to locks and
dams or whatever else.
The money issues do need to be discussed. They need to be
part of the plan, so that as we form the team, we think about
the money, and we try to think through, how we can help
Ambassador Brahimi. I think that the points that you've all
made about that are very good.
It's been suggested that Brahimi probably will ask our
government for advice, as well as all the Iraqis and probably
European countries in his visitations at the U.N. It is very
important that he come up with a reasonably good team. He might
not succeed on the first try. There might be some rebounding
and some other efforts involved in this. At the same time,
that's the name of the game now. The United Nations'
participation leads to legitimization, leads to Security
Council resolutions that we all believe are useful, as well as
status-of-forces agreements. As we are aggressive in getting
the defense thing right, or the security, we will not be
hogtied by our own lack of foresight in thinking through who
does what and how they agree to this.
After this is said and done, it's not really clear whether
everybody will like it. Can you identify a Sunni leader, if not
comparable to Ayatollah al-Sistani, at least in the ballpark?
If we encourage Ayatollah al-Sistani as a confidante here, is
there anybody in the Sunni community who might sign off on all
of this? Or at least to be helpful at this particular point?
Does anyone have a suggestion?
Yes, sir.
Mr. Sheehan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I actually think that
Mr. Brahimi will find that individual. But the reason I raised
my hand is, I also have to leave and go back to New York City.
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Sheehan. But if I could make one comment before I
leave, you asked what could be done? I think we're going to
need a lot of wisdom and a lot of resources to get this done
right, and we don't have a corner on either of them in the U.S.
Government, or in one sector of the U.S. Government. So the
more of a team that we can put together within the U.S.
Government, the more players, like Brahimi, that we can bring
to the table--as General Joulwan suggested, bringing NATO to
the table will bring wisdom and resources to that. And I think
we're going to need large doses of both, and I think that
hearings like this will help bring out wisdom, and hopefully
generate some resources, as well.
And I wanted to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity today.
The Chairman. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. Sheehan. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Let me ask an additional question of the
other panelists. General Joulwan, you may have mentioned that
the Iraqis want the ability, if this is to be a government that
has some credibility with Iraqis, to push back against
Americans. These things are never a clear path, but how would
this fit together with this emphasis upon security in the next
6 months?
It may very well be that you will say, well, still, they
ought to have some say about this. The fact that we are pushing
ahead with security need not mean that we do so arbitrarily.
Should we make all the decisions? How should the dynamics of
this work?
General Joulwan. First, I would say I hope we don't make
all the decisions. I think it has to be a shared--that you have
to include them in what it is that we're trying to do. Again,
in a progressive way, they're capable of doing this.
This government will not survive--this new Iraqi
Government--without the support of the security forces of the
United States and the Coalition. But what is that interface?
That's what I would urge be done between now and 30 June. I
believe you have to be straight forward and up-front with the
troops. If you tell them, ``Take Baghdad, and you can go
home,'' they'll understand that. If you say, ``Well, regime
change, and you can go home.'' They will understand. If you
tell them now, ``We need to stabilize Iraq, and here are the
six tasks that we've got to do, and this is what we're going to
need to do it, and here's the role the Iraqi Government has got
to play in that'' That's the sort of preparatory work, the
anticipation, that needs to go into it now. And these questions
should be raised now, in anticipation of what may be required
after 30 June.
I really think that, rather than wring our hands about it,
we ought to be asking some very detailed questions. The intent
is to build the confidence in the new Iraqi Government. We all
want a win-win here, whatever political party you're in. At
least I would hope that is the case. I am concerned about our
troops in Iraq. We need the clarity of mission. ``What is it
you want me to do?'' Now and after 30 June, the mission needs
to be clear.
The Chairman. Let's say, ideally, that Ambassador
Negroponte and a pretty good team are there, and, likewise,
Coalition members, other countries who are with us.
Conceivably, they may be conferring with the people that
Brahimi has identified. By the 1st of June, maybe, these folks
will be thinking through who is going to do what, so that we
will all be successful in this, and so that, as opposed to June
30 being, you know, an extraordinary date in which we all hold
our breath and wonder what happens, in fact, it comes along
well. It comes after there has already been a lot of massaging
by the parties of these issues. For that to happen, obviously,
you've got to get the people in place around the table long
before you get to June 30, so that that will not be such a
traumatic period.
This is all a short timetable now, but, on the other hand,
it was never meant to be simple. We have agreed that the June
30 thing came about because of planning last November. It
appears to me that these things are doable. Parties can be
found on all sides, including Ayatollah al-Sistani, Sunni
leaders, and others, all affirming that this is an interim
government.
General Joulwan. Mr. Chairman, there probably is a great
deal of thought that's been given to what organization is going
to look like on the 30th of June. It truly needs to be
developed so that Congress is onboard, the Executive is
onboard, and the American people are on board. There needs to
be confidence that we can make it happen. We want and need
success. This new organization needs to be vetted, and I would
urge you to do so. And I would urge you to do so leading up to
the testimony of John Negroponte, who's a good man. I think
that such a dialog could be very helpful to him--so there's a
strong team, a strong confidence going into this on his part,
and it has full support of you and the other Members of the
Congress. I think that's going to be essential.
The Chairman. You make my point. That's obviously what we
hope, too. And that's why we're raising these questions. We do
hope that, in fact, if there is a lot of planning that has
already proceeded, we may learn about it fairly soon. Now, if
there isn't nearly enough, it is important that we raise
questions as to why things are not as far along as they need to
be. I'm not making an assumption either way, but I would just
suggest that our committee will want to have more hearings, if
things are not that well developed. Let's say we find out,
after tomorrow's hearing, that, as a matter of fact, the
administration witnesses seem to be no more forthcoming than
they were yesterday, according to the quote that I gave in my
first round of questions. Then we'll say, well, that's not good
enough. We understand that you haven't quite got your act
together. We'll try it again in a couple of weeks and see how
things are going then. Without being tedious about it, that is
our role.
We ask, what can we do? Well, we can raise questions. We
can have hearings and oversight and persistently indicate that
this is very important, not only to us, but, we think, also to
the American people.
Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm glad
to hear you say that. Quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, you have
been put--the spot you're in is much more consequential than
the spot I was in as chairman of the Judiciary Committee when
the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill thing came down. It was
something I wished never would come before me, but it was my
responsibility. It's unfortunate that you're in the position
you're in. We're fortunate you are in the position you're in.
But the truth of the matter is, Mr. Chairman, you've got to
continue these hearings up until June 30 every day, if need be,
to get an answer--to get an answer--or to formulate an
alternative.
And, look, I am a little less diplomatic than my chairman.
The President has to choose. The President has to choose. I
assure you--I can tell you, with certainty, there is a plan
that has been proposed to him, on his desk. There's a plan.
There's another plan that is underway and has been the way
we've been going that is coming from another direction. Two
distinctly different approaches.
One is, keep your eggs in Chalabi's basket, make sure that
we continue to stay the course alone, make sure we don't have
anyone else, quote, ``screwing it up,'' bring in a new super-
embassy, have that role that Bremer's being played now be
played by Negroponte, and hope that we ``will'' this out.
That's one plan. That's a plan. We're kidding ourselves if you
don't think there's a plan. There's a plan.
There's a second plan. The second plan--and the reason I'm
so frustrated--and as my friend, Senator Dodd can tell you, I
am viewed in the Democratic Caucus sometimes as an apologist
for this President. He is--I've told this joke a hundred
times--he's like the center-fielder who made so many errors, he
screwed it up so badly, no one can play centerfield anymore.
And I find myself in a position of having to acknowledge that
June 30 is an important date--could have been done, still can
be done, but requires him to make a decision.
And the way this could be done on June 30, I would
respectfully suggest, is to do several things. One, work out a
way in which whatever plan Brahimi comes forward with is
implemented.
Brahimi is going to--I just got finished getting off the
phone, literally, 25 minutes ago, with the Secretary General of
NATO--Brahimi's probably going to report to him by the end of
the week. He's going to have a plan. The hope is that by May
this is implemented. Part of that plan could be, by the way,
the U.N. thinks we need to kick this can down the road another
10 days, 15 days, 30 days. The world powers agree that that
makes sense to do it that way.
Early May. International support group. This is a plan. An
international support group, modeled after the Contact Group,
could easily be formed by Annan, the permanent reps, and Iraqis
and including some of its neighbors, even Syria and Iran--that
comes up with a proposal. Late May, Brahimi selects this
caretaker government, after having consulted with this Contact
Group, which he's already done beforehand. International
support group endorses the Brahimi plan.
In June--or late May, early June--the Security Council
endorses that plan. Now you've got yourself in a situation
where you endorsed a Brahimi plan that encompasses other
issues, including setting up a special rep, a special rep like
we had in Bosnia, that coexists with our super-Ambassador, that
doesn't have a 3,000-person U.N. embassy attached to it, but
essentially is a special rep--i.e., a Brahimi-type figure that
stays on. And, simultaneously, ask NATO.
In this context, that will work. That's a plan. That's not
impossible to be done. And I'm confident--it's not just because
I said it in a speech last Thursday--I'm confident that there
are high-ranking officials who have said something similar, if
not exactly, like that to the President. That's a choice he has
available to him. He's got to choose.
The frustrating thing here is, the President's got to
choose, because I know it's not kosher, but I feel like the kid
who says, ``The emperor has no clothes.'' Does anybody in
America now believe that this is a united administration? Does
anybody in all of America think that this administration is not
fundamentally divided?
There's a San Andreas fault that runs through this
administration. One axis is Cheney, and he's a great guy,
Rumsfeld, a brilliant guy, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, politicos
at the White House. There's another axis--Powell and the
uniformed military. Choose, Mr. President. Choose which plan,
because there are plans, and they're two distinctly different
plans. One is able to be, at least theoretically, accomplished
by June 30. The other can be done by June 30, but is doomed to
failure, in my view. Because I think you're right, general,
you've got to move without the ball here.
And what I think you're doing, Mr. Chairman, is incredibly
important. Maybe they didn't listen a lot to us yesterday,
maybe they're not going to listen a lot to us today. Tomorrow,
they'll listen a little more. Next week, next month, the
following month. And guess why? There is a political context to
all this. There's a political context. I, like him the
President--I'm not sure that my plan, or a plan that I outline,
that I'm confident the President has access to, is right. I'm
not sure of that. But I know it's different than the path we're
going now.
And one of two things is going to have to happen. The
President's going to be held accountable. This is his deal.
This is his deal. We're only irresponsible if we do not offer
an alternative if we do not like what he is proposing. And I am
absolutely as certain as I am sitting in this chair that if
it's not physically on his desk at this moment, it will be long
before the week is out, and I think it occurred before this
hearing began. The President has a proposal in front of him
that's different than the course we've been on, that engages,
in some form or another, Annan, Brahimi, NATO, France, Germany,
England, Russia--major powers.
And none of it is borne out of a romantic notion that the
United Nations is some magic formula that can produce any of
this. Get the major powers together in agreement, get the U.N.
to bless it, then, in turn, get them to participate. It's kind
of basic stuff.
And, by the way, if that plan doesn't work, if they ain't
willing to play, if the Washington Post is correct in its
editorial where it says--and I'm paraphrasing--there's no
chance for international support. If that's true, we should go
home. If that's true, we should spare the lives of those young
women and men out there, because this will not be done alone.
This will not be done alone. This will not be done alone. The
American people will not stick around.
And, general, you know better than any man sitting in this
room, if we don't acknowledge what we didn't get right so far--
and we all would have gotten it wrong in some form or another--
I said at the outset of this, if the Lord Almighty came down
when we sat in Bremer's office in Baghdad and gave him all the
answers he still would not have a better than 65 percent chance
of succeeding, because we're trying to do something that's
never been done in all of history. It's never been done.
But I want to tell you something. This is beyond politics.
As I said earlier, I come from Delaware. That last flight home
goes from Iraq to Delaware. And we owe these kids. We owe 'em.
We'd better acknowledge what we got wrong and try something
new, because they're giving everything they have. And so if
there's no new plan--if there's no new plan--we'd better tell
your buddies, general, in the field--we'd better tell them we
don't have a plan, because the one we have now will not carry
the day. As my grandpop used to say when I'd say something to
him, he said, ``Joey, that horse can't carry the sleigh.''
But there's a plan. The President has to choose.
The Chairman. Senator Dodd.
Senator Dodd. Well, again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank
our witnesses.
And I think Senator Biden has said it, and said it very
well--the chairman has--I think staying with this over the
coming weeks.
I, for one, think John Negroponte's a good choice. I've
dealt with John for over 20 years. Our first encounter wasn't a
pleasant one for either one of us, when he was in Honduras,
going back to the days of the Central American stuff. But I
have great respect for him. I think he's a first-class
professional. And I think it's an interesting choice. I think
the U.N. experience can be of tremendous help, and it may be a
signal about where the administration may be going. Hope you're
right. I hope that's right.
And my point about June 30 was, on the assumption that
things won't change.
Senator Biden. That's right.
Senator Dodd. And that's all I'm saying. Because you make a
strong case for getting this security thing right, but I just
think if we're sticking with a plan here that ultimately
involves the United States doing this alone, I think this is
pretty hard; the June 30 date just doesn't make any sense to
me.
Senator Biden. Sure.
Senator Dodd. If there's a chance to come up with a U.N.
resolution--and, by the way, I've known Brahimi for many years.
He's a first-class individual. It doesn't get any better than
this guy. I've dealt with him on Haiti, back a number of years
ago. He's very, very good. I saw him in Afghanistan in
December. I couldn't think of a better choice to make to have
there at this point, out of the U.N. system.
So I want to underscore the points that have been made. I
think if there's going to be a real shift here to move toward a
U.N. resolution, NATO forces, and to build that Coalition, then
I don't have a problem with June 30. I think we do make a
mistake, and it is a technocratic approach to things. Why we
have to set a date, then we get so wedded to it it becomes,
sort of, we're stuck with it, despite the fact that one
recognizes that we have problems with it.
If we don't make the changes here, then my concerns is that
all of the recommendations you've made on security really are
going to be almost impossible to achieve, in my view. So, at
that point there, then you may be looking at alternatives that
no one really wants to consider at this point, if you accept
the notion that failure is not an option. But it may not be a
option; it just may be a decision. Not one we choose, but one,
rather, that's chosen for us. And that's what we're looking at
if we don't get a shift here. And whether it's chosen by the
American people or chosen by the facts on the ground, it's one
that we may not like the answer to, but we may not have any
choice but to accept it.
So I'll be with you, Mr. Chairman, in this process. So
thank you.
The Chairman. Let me conclude the hearing with an anecdote.
I think it's appropriate and will not breach any confidence. We
had a hearing in this committee a couple of weeks ago on the
Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq. It arose from serious allegations
that funds had been misappropriated by Saddam Hussein, and
perhaps by others, and that improper or inadequate supervision
by the Security Council had occurred. The issue came before us
as proponents of the United Nations, as advocates for the
United Nations, but, at the same time, we're now, in this
hearing, putting a great deal of stake in the United Nations,
as an institution, at the same time we are voicing legitimate
criticism.
Following the Oil-for-Food hearing, I had a call from Paul
Volker. Unbeknownst to me, Paul Volker was going, that very
afternoon, to see Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the U.N. He
had listened to our hearing, and he was disturbed, to say the
least, by all of the allegations, as well as the enormity of
perhaps $10 billion, having been misappropriated by Saddam and
by others. So I encouraged him to say yes to the thought that
he might be asked to chair an inquiry. I said, ``You have the
gravitas, the character, the reputation worldwide to do this,
and you should do it for our country, for the United Nations,
for the U.N.'s credibility, generally.'' Apparently he decided
to do it, but then the next thing I heard were the press
reports that the Russians had indicated that the Security
Council resolution Paul Volker wanted in order to make his own
investigation credible and to have clout was likely to be
blocked. Then at last word came that Kofi Annan and others were
working very hard on that.
Yesterday I received a call from Kofi Annan. It's not an
unusual situation that I receive a call from the Secretary
General, but he simply wanted to assure me he personally had
been involved in diplomacy with regard to Russia, that the
Russians had misunderstood, and they were not going to object.
There would, in fact, be credibility for the thing, and he was
grateful that Paul Volker is going to do this.
I indicated that I thought that, first of all, the
Secretary General's diplomacy was very important; likewise,
Paul Volker's acceptance was also significant; and, even more
importantly, I emphasized the credibility that may come if the
U.N. has the ability to investigate itself, to cleanse those
things that are not useful, so that it retains its credibility
for a lot of burdens. I said, ``We're having hearings right
now, Mr. Secretary General, about Iraq, and the U.N. is
mentioned a whole lot, along with Mr. Brahimi and all that we
count upon in this situation.''
I have no idea how Paul Volker will come out with his
conferees and so forth, but I hope that he will do a good job,
and I am confident he will. I mention this simply because other
people listen to our hearings from time to time--two important
people, in this case, Paul Volker and Kofi Annan. Because they
are doing the right things that they ought to do, I would like
them to know that there is support for their efforts out there.
We can be supportive. That's what you've attempted to do
today, exhibiting a can-do spirit in response to our question,
``What can we do''? You have offered extraordinary advice
publicly. Anybody who is listening to this hearing, or is
writing about it, has the benefit of that, as we do.
I remain confident that we're going to make progress. I
thank this panel for your longevity after 3\1/2\ hours, as well
as for your wisdom in helping us.
Senator Biden. Mr. Chairman, this has been an extraordinary
panel, across the board. Really and truly, you have made--
you've been extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary, and I
personally want to thank you. I mean, it's been extraordinary.
The Chairman. And the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:02 p.m., the commitee adjourned, to
reconvene at 9:30 a.m., April 22, 2004.]