Several weeks later, the Hakim family arrived and the granddaughter walked right up to me and said, “I want to be foreign minister too.” I remembered how her grandfather had beamed when he talked about her. Maybe he wasn’t so reactionary after all.
Hakim kept his distance from the rough-and-tumble of daily politics, delegating much of that to Adel Abdul Mahdi. He too had been in Europe as an exile but seemed to have a better feel for the politics of the street in Iraq. In many ways, he was our best interlocutor on the Shia side.
It was challenging to manage the personalities. But unresolved issues dating far back into the history of Islam made it even harder. In AD 632, when Islam split into two confessional groups in a fight over who should lead the faithful after the Prophet Muhammad’s death, the Shia were unified under a single authoritative leader—a figure whose writ was not unlike that of the Holy Father in the Catholic Church. For centuries that leader was a member of a religious council operating in Najaf, now in modern Iraq. But as Sunni leaders cracked down on Shia in the country, the council had to operate underground and could not be a source of inspiration for the people. Some of the putative leadership of the Shia shifted to Qom in modern Iran. Though Persian, the ayatollahs, the latest of whom is the Ayatollah Khamenei, sought to speak for Shia wherever they lived. This, along with Iran’s more traditional Persian geopolitical aspirations, is at the core of the Sunni concern about a rising “Shia crescent.”
When Saddam was overthrown, Najaf was reborn. The man whom Iraqi Shia saw as the rightful heir to leadership—the Ayatollah Sistani—emerged. He was a powerful presence and wielded enormous influence. But he would very rarely meet foreigners, and no American official ever saw him. He spoke through his son, who issued statements on his behalf.
While this might have been a challenge, it turned out to be a blessing—a remarkable gift. This cloistered cleric had democratic instincts far beyond those of many of his countrymen. His first edict was to declare that clerics should not serve in government. There needed to be a separation of religion and politics. We often found ourselves in the odd position of wanting this religious man to say something political.
Unfortunately, he was not the only religious figure in Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr, a rival of Hakim, was a minor cleric who had not completed his theological studies and thus lacked religious standing. But he was a fire-breathing nationalist whose father had been murdered by Saddam. He was virulently anti-American and directed a violent militia that targeted our forces all of the time and often the security forces of his own country. Many Iraqis said that he was crazy. Maybe—but he was a power to be reckoned with in the landscape.
Sorting out the politics of the Shia was thus really difficult. One man, one vote promised to create a Shia-led Iraq. That was a red flag for Sunni Arabs—those living in the country, and those who led the powerful countries of the region.
We so wanted the Sunni states to embrace Iraq—in part as a counter to Iran’s influence. After several attempts, I finally managed to get the Iraqi foreign minister invited to my meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council (the Arab monarchies), Egypt, and Jordan in 2006. Hoshyar Zebari, a highly regarded Kurdish leader, entered the room proudly. But after listening to harangues from his colleagues about instability in Iraq, he had had enough. “You treat us like a virus,” he said. I held my breath for what he would say next. “I’m not sure if you’re more afraid of the Shia part or the democratic part,” he said. That was brilliant, I thought to myself. But it really underscored the problem. The Sunni states felt vulnerable on both fronts, which caused them to vacillate between resignation and aggression.
To make matters worse, the Iraqi Sunnis lacked coherent leadership. Before the war, Sunnis had been 20 percent of the population, and one of them—Saddam—had held 100 percent of the power. In truth, they too had been tortured by him, persecuted and exiled by him, and subjected to his misrule. But dictators rarely rule just by fear. They have their ways—bargains that make it easier to control the population. Some Sunnis had benefited from those arrangements.
And the deteriorating security situation complicated matters further. It was sometimes difficult to tell when the Sunnis were part of the solution and when they were part of the problem. In this complex environment our military could not stem the violence. The chaotic situation on the ground robbed our political strategy of needed breathing space to mature.
The Disaffected Sunnis
The institutional landscape among Sunnis consisted of four groups: a few exiles who had lived principally in Europe; Sunni tribes who inhabited territorial enclaves, some of whom had been protected by Saddam and others who had simply been left alone; the army, which Saddam had shaped to serve him and no one else; and a few men who had run afoul of the dictator enough to be imprisoned but not enough to be killed.
When the Iraqi transitional government was formed, everyone understood the importance of Sunni representation. In the lead-up to the war, we were worried about revenge killings and were determined to protect the Sunnis as best we could to make sure that they had a place in the new Iraq.
A few Sunni exiles did play prominent roles in the occupation period. For instance, Tariq al-Hashemi, who, like several others, had lived in exile, was relatively effective. He too liked fine suits and spoke perfect English. But he had an impeccable Sunni lineage—the grandson of a former general in the Ottoman army and a nephew of the tutor of Iraqi king Ghazi. He had attended the military academy but insisted that he had never joined the Ba’ath Party. Hashemi was always cognizant of how his fellow Sunnis viewed him. He craved the approval of the tribes and feared backlash from Sunni terrorists. He had good reason for concern. His sister was gunned down in Baghdad in 2006, one day after he had stood with Shia and Kurdish leaders and called for the insurgency to be put down by force.7 Two of his brothers were killed in the same year.
The interim government also included a few Sunnis who had been imprisoned by the Ba’athist regime. The man who would become speaker of the parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, came from this background. When we met at our ambassador’s house in 2005, he flashed a smile adorned with several gold teeth. “I know who you are,” he said to me. “I’ve known who you are for a long time.” I admit that I was getting a bit uncomfortable and wondered where the conversation was going. “When we were in prison,” he continued, “we heard about the things you were saying about Saddam. During the war, we found a picture of you and hung it up on the wall. All the prisoners loved you. You liberated us.” That frankly gave me the creeps, and I’m not even sure the story was true, but I was grateful for the sentiment he was trying to express.
These men—exiles and ex-prisoners—were entrusted with representing Sunnis during the occupation and several years beyond. But they lacked deep roots in the community. It is fair to say that they were the weakest element of the institutional landscape. Yet we largely depended on them to give Sunnis a voice in the new Iraq.
Unforced Errors
The fact is that we made a number of mistakes throughout the occupation that cost us and cost the Iraqis. From the very start of the war, we simply did not have enough forces on the ground to occupy a country the size of Iraq. We defeated Saddam’s army but we couldn’t secure the country. Colin had been concerned about it and brought it to the attention of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dick Myers. Steve Hadley and I had repeatedly asked the Pentagon to plan for “rear area security,” to protect liberated land as our forces raced through the country.
The president finally raised the issue in an NSC meeting several weeks before the invasion. “Condi is worried about this,” he said, leaving the impression that he was not. After that meeting Steve Hadley came into my office. “I would resign. That was unfair.” “I know,” I said. “I’ll talk to the president, but we’ll just have to keep hammering away at the issue.” He did subsequently discuss the issue again with the secretary of defense. In a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he asked again. And he got the same ans
wer—the Pentagon expressed confidence in the plan and the sufficiency of the troop totals. They were wrong. That made everything else that we did an uphill climb.
And we compounded that problem with other missteps, particularly with the Sunnis. In the fall of 2002, President Bush was trying to better understand the lay of the land in Iraq. He asked to meet with as many Iraqi nationals as possible, and on this particular day we had an Iraqi Shia academic, a businessman in exile, and a former army officer. All had escaped Saddam and were thrilled to be in the Oval Office with an American president who might finally deal with the dictator.
The former army officer had a different take on the message, though. He was a man of about fifty who fled the country in the chaos of the 1991 Gulf War. I kept wondering how he had gotten out alive—but there he was. “Mr. President,” he said, “don’t underestimate how important the army can be in helping you. Most of them hate Saddam. He tortures his own officers. If you treat them well, they will help you.” The president was deeply affected by that exchange and wanted to make sure that we took this view into account.
Our visitor that day was not the only one who advised us about the army. It made sense, of course, since it is generally not a good idea to alienate men with guns—at least until you disarm them. Moreover, lower-ranking officers could be useful. The challenge would be to distinguish those who had really been with Saddam from those who had simply had no choice but to serve him.
“Have You Seen the Order?”
Colin Powell was on the phone, somewhere between annoyed and alarmed. “Have you seen the order that Jerry sent out in Baghdad?” I said that I had not. “He disbanded the army!”
I was shuffling through papers on my desk trying to see if I had anything to that effect. “I’ll get back to you,” I said and hung up the phone.
“Steve,” I yelled to my deputy in the next office. “Do you have the order?” After some back-and-forth we learned that Colin was right. We had disbanded the army. I tried to get Jerry on the phone but couldn’t. Realizing that I hadn’t told the president, I headed down to the Oval Office. “He is going to be furious,” I told Steve as I started down the hallway. But the president was calm. “Well, that wasn’t the plan, right?” I acknowledged that and went back to my office to see what had happened.
Indeed, the plan was just the opposite of disbanding the army. It was to keep 150,000 forces instead. They were to be vetted, tried out on reconstruction-type work, and then used for security. Needless to say, that plan had been abandoned with the CPA order to disband the army.
To be fair to Jerry, the Iraqi army, like so many other institutions, seemed to have vanished into thin air by the time the order came down. It didn’t remain coherent; whole units disappeared, and in a sense the army kind of disbanded itself. Still, the assault on the men with guns backfired. Not only did we forgo their help, but we threw hundreds of thousands of armed people off the payroll and onto the streets. It was one of the biggest blunders of the post-invasion period.
Jerry was empowered to make decisions on the ground. He did so under time pressure and difficult circumstances. But a decision of that magnitude needed full NSC review. This case was emblematic of communication breakdowns between the Pentagon and the CPA and between the Pentagon and the White House. I felt that I had failed to wire the various parts together into a cohesive whole. The national security adviser has to do that on behalf of the president. After several of these “failures to communicate,” I started to talk directly with Jerry almost every day.
Don was furious, believing that I was usurping his authority and interfering in his chain of command. At one of our weekly lunches, he informed Colin and me that he was washing his hands of the whole thing. “From now on Jerry reports to the White House,” he said petulantly. Colin rolled his eyes. I tried to protest that I was just trying to get better coordination. But Don insisted on his stance. I decided that his pique was worth it if we could avoid screwups like this.
The mistake of disbanding the army was exacerbated by the broader policy of de-Ba’athification. This was an extremely sensitive issue because it threatened so many ordinary Iraqis. People often joined the Ba’ath Party because it was the only way to keep a job or get a promotion. There were thousands of teachers, university professors, civil servants, and scientists, among others, in this category. I understood this from studying the Soviet Union. Membership in a totalitarian party was often the way to get ahead—not a sign of ideological purity. The State Department and the intelligence agencies did careful analysis, suggesting the appropriate level at which people might be trusted. Again, there was room to review individuals on a case-by-case basis.
The question was how to carry out the process. Jerry believed—rightly, in my view—that this sensitive matter had to be handled by Iraqis themselves. It was entrusted to Ahmad Chalabi, but he was not just any Iraqi. He turned out to be a determined and opportunistic politician. Chalabi used the committee to carry out a vendetta against the Sunnis, giving him cachet and enhancing his popularity among the Shia. Or at least that is how he saw it.
In the end, the Iraqis had to undo much of the work that the committee had done. In June 2004, about a year after de-Ba’athification began, Bremer dissolved the commission and Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi allowed thousands of vetted Ba’athists to return to the government and military. But the damage had been done. The Sunni population felt disenfranchised and collectively punished for Saddam’s crimes. It was really difficult to keep them engaged in the effort to build a new Iraq.
The Tribes
Nor did we work effectively with the tribes early on. Iraq’s tribes were not tribes in the sense of Kikuyu in Kenya, with different languages and ethnic backgrounds. Rather, they were highly structured familial groupings—clans—that kept order and managed the affairs of territorial enclaves throughout the country. The most powerful of these were the tribes of al-Anbar province. There were about 150 tribes in all.
As with the army, we knew that the tribes were important to the future of Iraq. Our initial idea was to supplement Jay Garner’s mission with tribal engagement, led by Zalmay Khalilzad. Zal had been born in Afghanistan and had come to the United States to get his PhD. He later became a citizen and taught at Columbia. He had been our ambassador to Afghanistan and was very successful there. But he knew Iraq too. He first visited Baghdad while serving in the Reagan State Department, and he was director of policy planning at the Pentagon during the Gulf War and its aftermath. Zal was well liked among people of the region. I don’t believe that cultural affinity is a result of ethnic heritage—and Zal was, after all, an Afghan. But there was something about Zal—he was at home with leaders in Baghdad and they were at home with him. I once asked him about it. “Well, you have to sit and drink tea—not hurry, take time,” he said. “That’s as true in Baghdad as in Kabul.”
We wanted Zal to use that affinity to bring the various factions into Iraq’s postwar governance. In December 2002, he took the lead in our efforts to work with the Iraqi opposition, attending several meetings abroad including an opposition conference in Iraqi Kurdistan in February 2003. As the war began, he was in Turkey, working to identify external and internal Iraqi leaders who could form a provisional government, and he was ready to enter the country as soon as the security situation permitted.
When Jerry Bremer was appointed, I went to the president and told him that we should go ahead with Zal’s mission. He was reluctant, having just entrusted Jerry with enormous authority in Iraq. “Ask Jerry,” he said. “It would have to be okay with him.” I did. Jerry demurred, saying that he wanted to engage the tribes himself. Perhaps there could be a role for Zal later.
We will never know whether the different approach would have worked. I don’t think that Jerry was incapable of working with the tribes. But he was so busy in Baghdad. And these were not people you summoned to the capital. You had to have tea with them where they lived.
That was not the only problem in engaging the
tribes, though. The insurgency in Sunni provinces that was fueled by a coalition of Saddam’s officers and disbanded army personnel found many tribal allies who also feared exclusion. All of this was exacerbated by the rise of Sunni terrorists who took the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Led by the clever and diabolic Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they carried out a violent campaign in the Sunni provinces. They found ways to accommodate the tribes when possible and to coerce and compel their cooperation when necessary.
We saw this most clearly in Fallujah, where our conventional military tactics did little to stem the tide against any of these forces. As it became obvious that we could not stop the violence, the tribes became even more tolerant of the terrorists. These rough, secular men did not have much in common with Zarqawi’s religious zealots—but they were not going to risk confrontation when we could not protect them.
Further, our military tactics were not defeating the terrorists, but we were angering the population. Raids with heavy military equipment destroyed too many houses and killed too many tribesmen. Saddam had, we learned, never made that mistake. An Arab leader asked me one day, “Why did you try to pacify Fallujah? Saddam never tried to pacify Fallujah. He knew the tribes were smugglers and gunrunners. He just said, ‘You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone.’ That is what you should have done.” As I said, even dictators have their ways of ruling—that was one that had not occurred to us.
And sometimes our efforts were undermined not in Washington but by incidents in the field. None was more damaging in that regard than Abu Ghraib.
Don was contrite as he briefed the president on the horrific story that was unfolding at the Iraqi prison. “I have seen the photographs,” he said, “and they are awful.” American soldiers had been involved in abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners and the full, awful story was about to hit the news. The president said that we would admit wrongdoing and punish those responsible. “I just don’t want to sully the reputation and honor of all of our people,” he said sadly. Don asked if he could speak to the president alone. When I came back into the room, the president told me that Don had offered to resign. “I didn’t accept it,” he said. It was the right call because what had happened at Abu Ghraib was not Don’s fault. But we never recovered fully from the fallout. The images lasted and reinforced Sunni suspicion and distrust of the United States.
Democracy Page 25
