This article provides some useful timelines to keep in mind the next few months: The Iraq Dilemma: Do It Right or Quick? Los Angeles Times 12/27/03. (One might read a bit of humor, intentional or otherwise, into that headline.)
Feb. 28: Interim Governing Council (IGC) to produce new (interim) Iraqi constitution
May 31: Provincial caucuses to choose transitional legislative assembly
June 30: Transfer sovereignty to a new Iraqi government
The article covers a number of the challenges involved. But it doesn't mention three factors which are critical to the outcome. One is the official target, just recently reiterated by the Administration to Congress, of an Iraqi army of around 40,000, compared to a prewar army of around 400,000 (excluding Republican Guard). No independent Iraqi government is going to assume that an army of 40,000 is large enough for minimum national defense, with potentially hostile neighbors like Iran, Turkey and Syria. And recruiting and retaining even that army is proving a worse challenge than expected.
We know how much the Administration is concerned about international law, and the US does have an obligation as the occupying power to provide for defense of the country's borders. There are also pragmatic issues of perhaps more immediate urgency in the eyes of some that also mean that US can't leave Iraq with only an army of 40,000. Meeting the June 30 deadline does not in itself mean that large numbers of US troops can be withdrawn.
Second is a question the answer to which even Congress doesn't have: what are the actual American requirements for the new government? That would include a whole range of issues, from defense matters to human rights to contracts, international debts and reparations to Iran and Kuwait.
Third, unless the UN Security Council - or at least Iraq's major creditor countries - also recognize the June 30 regime as the sovereign government of Iraq, the United States as the occupying power is on the hook for all of Iraq's external debt. Republicans can bluster all they want. But the US cannot resolve that one unilaterally.
3 comments:
40.000 does not seem like a big enough force to defend Iraq from neighboring countries that might like to exact a little revenge for past Iraqi aggressions. Wonder who they'll get to help them out???
Also wonder if the Iraqi Army has the same infiltration problem the police force is having?
I'm sure infiltration is a problem. But the bigger immediate problem seems to be retention of troops. A very high percentage of recruits to the new army have deserted. - Bruce
According to this article,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35053-2003Dec27.html
it sounds like even the modest plan for the Iraqi army has been mostly side-tracked into the high-risk plan to rely on factional militias to fight the insurgents. Bush and Rummy probably are thinking this warlord-type solution worked well enough to get the Afghan War off the front pages, we might as well try it here. - Bruce
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