U.S. Tries to Adapt as Options Dwindle

With a new Iraqi government due in less than seven weeks, U.S. officials have been trying to build a future for the country on lofty concepts of constitutional democracy. In real time, though, a different principle increasingly guides the U.S. mission: Go with what works.

The Bush administration has junked one plan after another since last fall as it has groped its way, by trial and error, to a new order in Iraq. Officials have dumped a plan for grass-roots electoral caucuses, accepted former members of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime in the Iraqi government and military, and turned to the United Nations to design the caretaker administration -- all despite earlier vows to do otherwise.

This week, American officials took another step sideways by signaling that they will give more power in a transitional government to members of the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council, a group that is resented by many Iraqis and was omitted from earlier plans. The interim government is expected to take office when the United States transfers sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30 and serve until the elections that are planned for next year.

The reversals by administration officials show that, again and again, “they’ve made compromises and adjustments on the ground, even though they inevitably conflict with their democratic vision,” said Geoffrey Kemp of the Nixon Center in Washington. “They have an extraordinary capacity to do the practical.”

U.S. officials acknowledged that the latest turnaround could undermine their goal of building a government that is acceptable to the Bush administration and legitimate in the eyes of Iraqis. But U.S. choices are increasingly limited by a shortage of time and of Iraqis willing to do business with Americans.

“We’ve got to get this thing moving, and we just don’t have that many friends,” said a longtime government expert on Iraq, who asked to remain unidentified. “That means we’ve got to husband the people who are with us in this. We are very weak.”

The transitional government could hold a great deal of power, given Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s statement Friday that, if asked by the Iraqis, the U.S. military would leave.

The latest shift on the interim government, like earlier policy reversals, follows a pattern in which the U.S. adopts a sensible-sounding plan, then collides with reality.

Lakhdar Brahimi, a U.N. envoy asked to draw a blueprint for an interim government, had convinced U.S. officials to support an administration run by nonpolitical technocrats. The plan offered the possibility of preventing ambitious Iraqi politicians from shaping next year’s elections in a way that would perpetuate their own hold on power.

Brahimi, an Algerian who served as U.N. envoy in post-Taliban Afghanistan, feared a transitional government tainted by politics would be questioned by Iraqis who felt excluded and could undermine the legitimacy of the elected government that is expected to follow next year.

The U.S. endorsed Brahimi’s proposal. Soon, however, Iraqi groups allied with the United States were reminding the administration how much it depends on them.

Two leading Kurdish groups that are part of the current Iraqi Governing Council made clear that they would not support a caretaker government that did not include their leaders, which would be a heavy blow to U.S. goals in Iraq. Influence over predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq, which has delicate relations with neighboring countries that have restive Kurdish populations of their own, is seen as vital to U.S. objectives.

“If you don’t want the Kurds messing things up for you, you want to have them in the tent,” said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department official and an expert on the region.

U.S. officials also value the support of Shiite Muslim political parties represented on the Governing Council, including the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Although their bases are relatively small, they could offer some support at a time when Iraqi backing for the U.S. has been plummeting. Shiites make up nearly two-thirds of Iraq’s population.

A poll by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority this month showed that 80% of the Iraqi respondents have no confidence in the CPA and 82% disapprove of the U.S. authorities and their allies, the Washington Post reported.

Yet, as they changed course on the transitional government, American officials also acknowledged the risks of giving the politicians a larger role. The U.S. effort would be damaged if Iraqis came to see the caretaker government as favoring one group or another and if they “support it, disagree with it, or oppose it, based along sectarian lines,” one official said.

Another risk is that Iraqis would view the interim government as corrupt, he added.

The decision wasn’t the first instance in which the administration’s Iraqi allies have forced its hand.

Earlier this year, pressure from Kurdish allies led the Bush administration to reverse itself and throw its support behind wording in Iraq’s temporary constitution that would allow three of Iraq’s provinces to block any constitutional provision. Kurds consider the measure an important safeguard of their autonomy. But some Shiite leaders have considered it a challenge to majority rule.

Pressure from allied groups has caused the United States to flip-flop twice on the question of keeping former members of Hussein’s Baath Party out of government. Although retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the first civilian administrator of Iraq, favored a relatively permissive policy, his successor, L. Paul Bremer III, adopted a much tougher plan in keeping with the desires of Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi.

More recently, coalition leaders have worried that the policy was contributing to the alienation of Sunni Muslims, who played a prominent role in Hussein’s regime, as well as making it hard to draw qualified personnel into the new government. Last month, Bremer announced they would revisit the de-Baathification policy to see if some Iraqis were being unfairly excluded.

Also last month, the coalition executed a reversal that would have been inconceivable a year ago by agreeing to allow former generals from Hussein’s army to lead an Iraqi military unit to police the stubbornly anti-American city of Fallouja and the surrounding area, in hopes of defusing a bloody struggle there.

This week, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey went a step further, saying the coalition might enlist some members of the militia of the violent radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr for a civil defense force they hope to organize to patrol the holy city of Najaf, which Sadr has used as a base of operations.

The administration made a major strategic shift last month when President Bush asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to have Brahimi draw up the blueprint for the transition to Iraqi sovereignty. After a long period of wariness of U.N. involvement in the Iraq issue, the prevailing view inside the administration now, one U.S. official said last week, is: “Whatever Lakhdar wants, Lakhdar gets.”

Bush’s comment that the next steps were up to Brahimi “was an astonishing remark, considering what a climb-down it was from where he had been before,” said Graham E. Fuller, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council and a specialist on the Middle East.

But although the U.S. has made a series of practical compromises, it remains to be seen whether it will take the ultimate step of granting control over security to Iraqis, or to a combined authority of Iraqis and the U.N., Fuller said. Such a step would allow the Americans to disengage but would risk having the Iraqis install a government the White House finds unacceptable.

“In effect, the real question is how much the United States is willing to give up to get out in a peaceful way,” said Fuller, who is now an independent analyst and writer. “I think that struggle is far from resolved within the administration.”