VOL. XLVII
No 04
26
The Political Scene (26 January 2004)
The Americans want UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to send a mission to Iraq to tell Ayatollah Sistani that it is not possible to hold elections before July. The man in charge of training the new Iraqi army says that it will be at least three to five years before the country can defend itself.
A Definite Maybe From Annan
For the most part during the current fracas in Iraq, the Bush administration has treated the UN as relevant only when it agreed with the administration’s views (which is not very often). But it gained dramatically in relevance as far as the Americans are concerned after Iraq’s leading Shi'a authority, Ayatollah 'Ali Sistani, let it be known that he would only modify his demand for direct, nationwide elections – rather than the complex indirect electoral process in the 15 November agreement between the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) – if a neutral UN mission selected by Secretary-General Kofi Annan concluded that it was not possible to hold elections by the 30 June deadline for handing sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government. Put bluntly, if the Americans are to salvage a semblance of their plan to hand over nominal sovereignty to a palatable government before November’s US presidential elections, they now need Mr Annan to send a mission to Iraq and they need that mission to determine that it is not possible to hold elections. So when the head of the CPA, Paul Bremer, and a delegation from the IGC met with Mr Annan on 19 January in New York, and as pro-Sistani demonstrations continued in Baghdad and Basra, the Americans were in the unusual position of asking the UN for a favor – and Mr Annan answered with a definite maybe. “Both the Governing Council and the CPA representatives have expressed a strong wish that the UN should quickly send a technical mission to Iraq to advise on the feasibility of elections within the next few months and, if not, what alternatives might be possible,” he said in a statement after the talks. “…As regards a possible role between now and the end of June for the UN, we have agreed that further discussions should take place at the technical level, which would be focused on the most immediate electoral and security issues. On the basis of those discussions, I would be in a better position to take decisions about what the UN can do to help, particularly regarding the possible dispatch of a mission to Iraq to advise on elections.”
Training The New Iraqi Army
One of the responsibilities normally associated with sovereignty is defense, but since the Americans disbanded the Iraqi army shortly after conquering the country, the defense of post-Saddam Iraq will clearly have to be undertaken by others (to wit the coalition) until a new army can be put together. Until this week, no-one had publicly addressed the delicate question – which has obvious implications for the duration of the American presence on the country – of how long this might take. But now the man in charge of training that new army, Major General Paul Eaton, has warned that a minimum of three to five years will be required even if massive resources are diverted from elsewhere – and longer if they are not. Speaking on 21 January, Gen Eaton said that so far two light infantry divisions had been trained and a third was due to complete basic training this week, but that “this is a tough neighborhood, and three light infantry divisions do not provide and will not provide the end-state defensive requirements for the Iraqi ground forces.” Building the necessary new army of eight to twelve divisions is “an extraordinarily complex affair, and it is expensive. So if you rush to do this and you sacrificed the welfare of the citizens of Iraq and had prodigious contributions from donor nations, my estimate is that the earliest you could produce such a force would be between three and five years. As you trade off the amount of money required to bring that in and wish to expand the window, all the while understanding that the coalition is going to have to assure the territorial sovereignty, you open that window to a longer period.”
Charles Snow