In the months leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, I did not believe, and said so in public, that Iraq was in any way directly responsible for 9/11, or that the Iraqi regime had any substantive links with al-Qa'ida, or that it was likely that Iraq was actually able to field weapons of mass destruction. I believed that Iraq had probably tried to obtain weaponsgrade plutonium, and I knew that it had actually obtained centrifuges from Germany, as well as the means to manufacture chemical and biological weapons from Germany and the US. I surmised, from a position of total scientific ignorance, that Iraq probably possessed most of the ingredients necessary to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, but that it was some way off from actually doing so

Sluglett, P.

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PE T E R  S LU GLE T T2 4 I S I M N E W S L E T T E R  1 3 /  D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3In the months leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, I did not believe,and said so in public, that Iraq was in any way directly responsible for9/11, or that the Iraqi regime had any substantive links with al-Qa'ida,or that it was likely that Iraq was actually able to field weapons of massdestruction. I believed that Iraq had probably tried to obtain weapons-grade plutonium, and I knew that it had actuallyobtained centrifuges from Germany, as well asthe means to manufacture chemical and biologi-cal weapons from Germany and the US. I sur-mised, from a position of total scientific igno-rance, that Iraq probably possessed most of theingredients necessary to manufacture weaponsof mass destruction, but that it was some way offfrom actually doing so. I also knew that Iraq had one of the most viciousand unscrupulous regimes in the Middle East, ifnot the world; that Saddam Husayn and hiscronies had between them murdered and impris-oned hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, andthat any Iraqi who could escape from Iraq (and,given the long and largely unguarded frontiers,this was not too difficult) would do so. Therewere, in January 2003, some two million Iraqis liv-ing in exile in other Middle Eastern countries, inEurope, especially in and around London, and in the United States. Iknew that an essential ingredient for peace and stability in the MiddleEast, apart from a just and permanent settlement of the Israeli-Pales-tinian issue, would be the removal of this terrible regime. And finally, Iknew that, much as they might desire its removal, the people of Iraqwere not, and for the foreseeable future would not be, in a position toremove it by themselves. And for that reason, I supported an Americaninvasion whose ostensible objective was to remove this vicious dicta-torship, knowing full well, that Saddam Husayn owed his own survivalthroughout the 1980s to the support of an American administrationwhich included such knights in shining armour as George Bush seniorand his good friends Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Perhaps I wasnaïve, but I could see no other way of removing Saddam Husayn. However, I pretty well withdrew my general approval of the actiontaken by the US to remove the regime on 9 April 2003, 21 days after theinvasion was launched, the day on which Saddam Husayn’s regime fellapart. Every day since then has brought mounting evidence of the al-most incredible bungling and incompetence which has attended theAmerican administration of the peace. It is not as if no one in the ad-ministration had given any thought to what might happen after anAmerican victory—which, of course, could scarcely have been indoubt. An article in the New York Times on October 18 reported atlength on a State Department project initiated in April 2002 involvingover 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers and businessmen, divided into work-ing groups ‘to study topics ranging from creating a new justice systemto reorganizing the military to revamping the economy.’ Surprise, sur-prise, the Pentagon ignored most of the project’s findings, which in-cluded, for example, a much more dire assessment of the dilapidationof the country’s water and electricity supplies than the Pentagon as-sumed. It’s also fascinating that the working groups predicted that afair amount of looting would take place. It is regrettable, to say theleast, that some of the project’s cautionary findings were not actedupon much sooner. It will be fascinating for future historians to try towork out ‘what went wrong’; tawdry turf wars between the State De-partment and the Pentagon are presumably at the root of much of themess. It is not entirely clear how or why the situation unravelled so quickly,but here are some general pointers. In the first place, the invasion it-self lacked the broad legitimacy which a UN mandate would haveconferred upon it. Undoubtedly, the reason why the invasion tookplace when it did was a general sense, on the part of the US adminis-tration, that the large body of troops which it had transported to theregion could not be kept in place there indefinitely. The Bush admin-istration seems to have simply ignored the importance of taking theinternational community along with it, as it has discovered at its ex-pense. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Iraq, when no weaponsof mass destruction were found and went on being not found, it wasargued that as Iraq was the size of California, it was not all that sur-prising that US troops could not find anything—they could notsearch every nook and cranny over such a wide area. At the sametime, Rumsfeld and the US regional and field commanders, to thisday, assert that there are ample numbers of troops in Iraq. One can-not have it both ways; if there are not enough troops to find theweapons of mass destruction, then there are not enough to stabilizeor pacify the country, period. And then there were the issues of elec-tricity and water. Obviously, the infrastructure had been in a messsince the Iran-Iraq war, but it nonetheless seemed almost incredibleto many Iraqis that things took so long to be put right, in spite of sab-otage and the difficulty of getting large electric generators intoplace. Every day we hear on the news that another US soldier, anothergroup of Iraqi civilians, has been killed by forces still loyal to SaddamHusayn, or by terrorists who have infiltrated the ‘porous’ borders. Al-most all these attacks take place in a relatively small area, the SunniCurrent IssuesIraq after the USI n v a s i o nPeter Sluglett is a historian of themodern Middle East, who hasdevoted quite a lot of his career tothe study of late nineteenth andtwentieth century Iraq. His bestknown book, co-authored with hislate wife Marion Farouk-Sluglett, isIraq since 1958; from Revolution toD i c t a t o r s h i p, of which a thirdupdated edition appeared in 2001.In addition to his academic work, hehas also been politically engagedwith the exiled Iraqi leftist andKurdish opposition for perhaps thirtyyears. The author wishes toemphasize that he is a historian ofthe Middle East, not an expert on USforeign policy. A D V E R T I S E M E N TCurrent Issuesrectangle (rather than triangle) bounded by Baghdad, Takrit and Fal-luja, and al-Anba’, the provinces of Diyala and Dulaym. This was andremains the heartland of support for the regime. Although SunniArabs only form between 15 and 20 per cent of the population ofIraq, they have nonetheless ruled the state since its foundation underBritish auspices after the First World War. Under any future regime, itis almost inconceivable that they will continue to do so. This particu-lar form of resistance is probably not the expression of an especiallywidespread sense of outrage at US occupation, although the inabilityof the US to maintain order, and get adequate water and electricityup and running again, means that theUS is not quite as welcome as itthought itself entitled to be. This re-sistance is a kind of last stand, an ef-fort on the part of a fairly small groupof desperadoes who have no future ina reconstituted Iraq and who feel thatthey have nothing to lose. Obviously,those behind such incidents are Sun-nis, because there are no Shi'is in thatpart of Iraq. But this is very far frombeing a ‘religious resistance’, al-though there are undoubtedly somesalafis, or Sunni fundamentalists, amongthe resisters. More pertinently, SaddamHusayn and his circle came from Takrit,and were all Sunnis. But what is muchmore important than the fact that theywere members of the same religioussect is that they were all from the samearea, had gone to school with eachother, knew each others’ relatives, andso on. So, to speak of ‘Sunni opposition’is both misleading and disingenuous.The US administration has made alarge number of serious mistakes. Inthe first place, as I have already im-plied, not enough troops were in-volved in the conquest of the coun-try—or at least, not enough to ensurestability and security after the battlefor control had been won. Neither theIraqi army nor the Republican Guardwas properly disarmed, which is whymembers of both groups have weapons which they are turning againstUS soldiers. In mid-November, it was reported that American troopskilled three Iraqi civilians at an arms market ; that such an institutioncould operate freely under present circumstances suggests an extraor-dinary lack of perception on the part of the US. Perhaps the US civil administration’s greatest weakness is its apparentlack of sense of direction, and what seems to be the lack of any real ex-pertise among the expatriates who are being employed. For example, Ihave read several reports on the general topic of ‘what should be done’;none of the authors are either country or regional experts. They areworthy people who have worked at putting Bosnia back together again,or in regenerating Kosovo, but they have not had any substantial Mid-dle Eastern experience. The repressive situation within Iraq over the last thirty years made itimpossible to develop a viable opposition to the regime, which meantthat opposition forces and groupings had to come together in exile.The US, perforce, relied—far too much, in my opinion—on those whotold it what it wanted to hear. Ahmad Chalabi, who had and still has al-most no name recognition, let alone popular following, in Iraq, appar-ently encouraged the US to believe that its soldiers would be ‘garland-ed with flowers’ wherever they went. Chalabi, incidentally, was con-victed of embezzling $300 million from a Jordanian Bank in the late1970s. He alleges that he was framed by the Jordanian governmentacting under pressure from Baghdad, but whatever the extent of Chal-abi’s actual dishonesty, his apparent lack of judgement should surelydisqualify his candidature for the leadership of Iraq, a project seeming-ly high on the agenda of the US government and that of ProfessorBernard Lewis. The 84 year old Lewis, whose views are often takenquite seriously in Washington, went on record recently as advocatingthe restoration of the Iraqi monarchy. In July, the US created the 25 member Iraqi Governing Council, sup-posedly the first step towards Iraqis taking over control of their coun-try themselves. While it is not intended to be a democratic body, theIGC is supposed to prepare the country for the transition to self-gov-ernment. Unfortunately its functions are rather hampered by the fail-ure, on the part of the CPA and the US’proconsul Mr Bremer, to give even thevaguest indication of a time frame forthis handover. As I said, I do not thinkthis handover should take place, forsome time, at least as long as the secu-rity situation remains as uncertain as itis. To hand over full responsibility forsecurity to the Iraqis with any speedwould most likely result in a version ofthe kind of war-lordism we are familiarwith from Afghanistan. Nevertheless, itwould be wise to give some indicationof the general direction the US envis-ages things will be moving in, a roadmap, to use a term devalued from an-other Middle Eastern context.Of course, in an ideal world, one coun-try would not send an army of occupa-tion to another, nor would it seek tocompensate for its military expendi-ture by awarding a number of lucrativepost-war and reconstruction contractsto its own nationals, in processeswhich are obviously far from transpar-ent, to say the least. I am highly criticalof the incompetence and sheer stupid-ity of US policy in Iraq. But willing theUS not to be there in the first place is todeny reality, however uncomfortablewe may be with this. I do not knowwhether, in the long term, the US willsucceed in what it claims to wish toachieve, that is, bringing democracy tothe Middle East. Of course this laudable objective would also signal theend, or the very great modification, of the present regimes in Egyptand Jordan, not to mention those in Saudi Arabia and Syria, or Iran—al-though there the people may, very painfully, manage that on theirown. Arab regimes are almost universally execrated by those who areunfortunate enough to live under them, and they are often still in exis-tence because of the support which they receive from the UnitedStates. On the other hand, the construction, or the encouragement, ofdemocracy is not an unworthy aim. The main problem, in Iraq at themoment, is getting it right, and I am not sure how long either theAmerican people or the more long-suffering people of Iraq can put upwith the United States’ seemingly unending capacity to get it wrong. I S I M N E W S L E T T E R  1 3 /  D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3 2 5… the construction, or theencouragement, of democracyi s not an unworthy aim. The mainproblem, in Iraq at the moment,is getting it right, and I am notsure how long either theAmerican people or the morelong-suffering people of Iraq canput up with the United States’seemingly unending capacityt o get it wrong.Peter Sluglett, History Department,University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UtahE-mail: s l u g l e t t @ a o l . c o m

Iraq after the US Invasion

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Iraq after the US Invasion

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