News Compass

Saturday, May 31, 2003

The Brits are Doing a Better Job than the Yanks Handling Post-Saddam Iraq

A Tale of Two Cities After the War :

American-controlled Baghdad: Scene: U.S. soldiers in full combat gear sit nervously atop tanks scanning the horizon through gun sights. Seven U.S. troops have died in escalating attacks -- five since Sunday. Anti-U.S. anger also is erupting into the kind of hostile demonstrations that forced U.S. troops to withdraw from the town of Hit on Wednesday.

British-controlled Basra in the south: Scene: The atmosphere in Basra is more relaxed. The British forces that run the city have restored water and electricity to pre-war levels and have won the locals' trust. Soldiers are barely noticed: Unlike the armored convoys rumbling through Baghdad, an occasional jeep carries one or two soldiers sporting berets instead of combat helmets. British and Iraqi police conduct joint foot patrols. Often, a British officer is seen gossiping with a local sheikh or fixing the plumbing in a hospital. Some looting persists at night, but chaos and shortages are far less than in Baghdad.

The continuing woes gripping Baghdad have led to growing criticism that the U.S. is bungling the country's postwar reconstruction. In other words, the U.S. is failing to achieve the same success that the British have accomplished in restoring Basra to normalcy. .

Learning Lessons for Managing Baghdad

Donald Rumsfeld's solution to Baghdad is to implement new set of guidelines that include:

* the need for better security,
* more patience and,
* increased experimentation in helping Iraqis work out a political system.

At the same time, the U.S. is making plans to keep 160,000 coalition troops in Iraq, rather than reduce the number as it earlier hoped.

Yet even this improved blueprint skips over important groundwork needed to gain the support of local people and understand customs.

The U.S. squandered precious time in failing to follow Britain's lead.

But it is willing to learn from its mistakes. For example, it quickly replaced its initial postwar team of administrators after it failed to stop rampant lawlessness.

And U.S. officials are consulting closely with the British, who have a long history of running countries -- first as a colonial power and later as peacekeepers.

Since the Vietnam War, the U.S. has been reluctant to play that role of peacekeepers. Yet now the US has taken on one of its most ambitious nation-building projects ever. To succeed in that task, Rumsfeld's new guidelines call for a flexible plan based on ''trial and error.''

One fundamental error of the US was to be less prepared than the British for dealing with ugly postwar realities. While that shortcoming can't be wholly overcome, the U.S. still can look for opportunities to borrow its ally's proven methods as it grapples with the difficult times ahead.

The British's Approach for Basra

Basra provides a promising model for success. In Basra, the British moved quickly to:

* Build trust. They got to know local Iraqis, worked to understand their fears and needs, and identified natural leaders.

* Provide information. They began printing and distributing a newspaper in Arabic -- avoiding Baghdad's often anti-American rumor mill. British officers also tour schools and other public places, giving practical information, such as how to handle unexploded ordnance.

* Solve problems swiftly. Rather than following the U.S. military's practice of bucking decisions up the chain of command, they patched up the most important facilities -- such as an oil refinery -- on the spot, using Iraqi know-how and spare parts scrounged from a local market. They avoided Baghdad-style demonstrations over unpaid salaries by smashing their way into a local bank with the approval of a local sheikh.

The proactive approach of the British got Basra functioning in basic ways and brought qualified local figures into running parts of the city based on their competence and reliability. Most important, it took advantage of the early honeymoon days to lay the foundation for cooperation.

Also, Basra is much smaller than Baghdad. It's located where anti-Saddam feelings ran high. And the British had a two-week start on the Americans, who needed more time to capture Baghdad.

Basra still has problems. In addition to continued looting, dirty water has caused a cholera outbreak. Some local leaders who were cooperative early on have since sparked protests.