Iraqi Army Can Ride to the Rescue

Before the start of the war in Iraq, I attended a conference on Middle East security at which I sat next to an Iraqi exile -- a college professor -- whose most significant advice for reconstructing post-war Iraq was to retain the regular army. The Iraqi army, he said, would be vital to subduing the chaos that we both agreed would ensue following a successful invasion.

I assured him that the United States intended for the Iraqi army to remain intact. As a former commander of Central Command, I had inherited a long-standing psychological operation plan designed to convince the Iraqi regular army to cooperate with the U.S. rather than to fight when the time came.

But in the end, the U.S. disbanded the army anyway. Now the professor’s prescient words haunt the ongoing occupation. The operation took place as planned in the 1990s, after the Persian Gulf War. When there were bombing campaigns in Iraq, we dropped leaflets and sent messages to Iraqi army units to tell them that they were not the enemy and that, as long as they didn’t engage our forces, they would be protected and kept intact. During those years, in interviews with regional media, including Al Jazeera, I routinely described the regular army conscripts as victims of Saddam Hussein’s evil ambitions. In fact, after the Desert Fox bombing campaign in 1998, the Iraqi regime angrily reacted to what it called U.S. efforts to foster a coup among the regular units -- a result of our communications directed toward the army.

In 1999, a plan called Desert Crossing was developed to address the problems that would be faced post-Hussein, in the aftermath of military action or an internal collapse. The central aim of the plan was to quickly establish security to fill the power vacuum and prevent an insurgency or the rise of criminals and foreign terrorists. To meet this need, we added U.S. ground forces to our military plan and nonresistant Iraqi army units to the reconstruction plan.

I always believed that preserving the army would be critical to reconstruction. I had already been involved in rebuilding political, economic, social and security institutions in Africa, the Mideast and Asia, and I knew that if we could reshape existing structures rather than starting from scratch, we would have an advantage. The regular Iraqi army -- not the Hussein-loyal Republican Guard -- offered this opportunity.

So I was surprised when the Iraqi army was disbanded after the invasion. This decision, along with the complete “de-Baathification” of the government, has proved a miscalculation.

It is not too late to recover. The regular Iraqi army should be recalled, its leadership screened and purged of Hussein loyalists and war criminals. These units can be the foundation for a new force that will bring trained, unemployed young men into a productive effort rather than leaving them angry in the streets.

In addition, de-Baathification should be reexamined to ensure we are not excluding capable people from participating in the reconstruction. A vetting process and a credible reconciliation process could be put in place with the cooperation of the Iraqi Governing Council, some of whom are advocating these options. Restoring the civil service and civilian ministries to Iraqi control would give the moderate, secular Iraqi nationalist leadership, whose interests are congruent with our own, the means to offer ordinary Iraqis the public and humanitarian services now available largely through clerics.

Iraq will recover only if the Iraqis themselves are committed to and involved in the reconstruction. Our choice is clear: We can either start from scratch -- a long and difficult task that will continue to alienate many and increase the cost in lives and money -- or we can pursue the policy we long had in place, salvaging viable institutions and qualified people who can contribute to a new, democratic Iraq rather than working against it.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni was responsible for U.S. forces in the Horn of Africa, the Mideast and Central Asia from 1997 to 2000. He has also served as a peace envoy in the Mideast.