Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism (Adelphi series) by Dodge Toby

Author:Dodge, Toby [Dodge, Toby]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
Published: 2013-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

Rebuilding the civil and military capacity of the Iraqi state

Among the three drivers of conflict and civil war, the major factor was the collapse of state capacity, both civilian and military, after the invasion of 2003. The counter-insurgency doctrine applied to Iraq by the US military after 2007 stressed that the state’s ‘ability to provide security for the populace’ was one of the six key tests of its legitimacy and future stability.[1] Under this rubric, weak or illegitimate government was identified as the root cause of rebellion, as it allowed the space for violent opposition to organise itself and for alienated populations to support it.

From 2003 to 2011, the US government spent an estimated US$61bn trying to rebuild the civil and military institutions of the Iraqi state, in what Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, described as ‘the largest relief and reconstruction effort for one country in US history’.[2] With the departure of all America’s military forces from the country in December 2011, it is the coherence, competence and capacity of these state institutions that will guarantee the future stability of Iraq. Did the US occupation and the ruling elite it empowered build an adequately coherent state with an armed force capable of imposing order and delivering services in return for the Iraqi population’s loyalty?

Since Iraq’s army and intelligence services were disbanded at the start of the US occupation in May 2003 and then rebuilt from scratch, they are a visible signifier of Iraq’s future. From 2009 to 2011, Iraq’s security forces took increasing responsibility for guaranteeing order across the country. In June 2009, the American military withdrew from Iraq’s towns and cities and was forbidden from operating without Iraqi government permission and oversight. In August 2010, partly to comply with his election manifesto, President Obama ended all US combat missions in the country, leaving primary responsibility for the imposition of order to its new security forces. Finally, all US forces were withdrawn from Iraq at the end of 2011.

The rigid timetable that guided US troop reductions and the resultant responsibilities placed on the Iraqi armed forces were greeted with alarm by some of Baghdad’s ruling elite. The aged Iraqi politician Adnan Pachachi, who served as Iraq’s foreign minister before the Ba’ath Party seized power in 1968, argued that American politicians were ‘deluding themselves’ if they thought that Iraq’s security forces would be ready to defend the country. Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister under Saddam, was even more forthright, declaring from his prison cell that the withdrawal of US troops was ‘leaving Iraq to the wolves’. Of greater concern were the comments made by Iraq’s then chief of staff, General Babakir Zebari, in May 2010. Zebari, citing the Iraqi Ministry of Defence’s own strategic planning, argued that if he had been consulted about a timetable for withdrawal (which he was not), he would have told his political masters that ‘the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020’.[3]

Are these disparate

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