When the Firing Stops

As Bush administration officials battle over the shape of an occupation government that they hope will move Iraq quickly toward democracy, some cite other countries as possible models.

There are the post-World War II success stories of West Germany and Japan. But both of those already had some experience with democracy -- and the U.S. occupation of Japan lasted seven years.

There are the post-Soviet success stories of Central and Eastern Europe -- although they, too, had democracy in their histories -- and they overthrew their dictators themselves.

There is the potential success story of Afghanistan, where a new government was installed last year after U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban regime. But even Afghanistan, still plagued by warlords and a crime wave, had advantages that Iraq does not enjoy, including a traditional constitutional process to choose a new leader, and an exiled king who was willing to endorse that new leader.

There is also a story of failure -- one U.S. officials rarely mention. Israel’s 1982 occupation of Lebanon, which sought to install a friendly democratic regime, collapsed in the face of international opposition and local resistance.

The lessons, officials and Middle East experts say, are clear: Building democracy isn’t easy. It will likely take longer, and cost more, than you’d like. Get as much international help as you can. Work with local leaders, even though you won’t agree with everything they do. And don’t expect perfect results.

To those lessons, the Bush administration has added a dilemma: It wants to get U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, but it doesn’t want to cede control of the country to the United Nations or any other international body.

“We will leave Iraq completely in the hands of Iraqis as quickly as possible,” national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said last week.

Administration officials initially told members of Congress that they hope to turn full power over to a new Iraqi government within five months of the fall of Baghdad, but now they estimate that the job will take longer.

“It will undoubtedly take longer” than six months, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He said he could not forecast a timetable.

But many Iraq watchers think the job of ensuring basic security inside Iraq -- a job that, at least initially, will fall to U.S. and allied troops -- could require years, not months. They point to Afghanistan, where American and other military forces are still at work more than a year after the Taliban’s fall.

“Democratization takes time,” warned Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq who has been critical of the administration. “You have to have the political will to be in there for the long term.... But as soon as the jubilation wears off, you could well see American soldiers being shot in the back. When ideology meets reality, we’ll start backtracking and ask other [countries] to come in.”

The administration has been debating three basic models for its occupation of Iraq. State Department officials proposed an international effort under some form of United Nations mandate, leading to a constitutional convention. Pentagon officials, far more skeptical of the U.N., proposed a “quick handoff” to an interim authority run by Iraqis chosen with U.S. help.

“If you never take the training wheels off a kid’s bicycle, he’ll never learn to ride without them,” Wolfowitz told a British newspaper last week.

The third and most likely model, officials said, is a compromise. Its first stage would be an occupation that the United States would run with help from allied countries with a modest role for the U.N. The U.S. military would gradually hand power in a “rolling turnover,” ministry by ministry, to an interim Iraqi authority that would administer the country until elections for a permanent government.

The plan hasn’t been completed or unveiled, but it is already controversial. Some members of Congress complain that it would give too much authority to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Some officials, mostly in the State Department, worry that it will lead the Pentagon to install Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile backed by U.S. conservatives, as Iraq’s de facto leader -- and that such a move would backfire. Some Middle East experts worry that the plan still looks too much like an American occupation government, in a part of the world where foreign occupation of any kind has often met with dogged and violent resistance.

“In the long term, no occupation is going to be acceptable,” said Judith Yaphe, an Iraq expert at the National Defense University. “Iraqis are nationalists. No country likes foreigners coming in and telling them what to do.”

Administration officials say they understand that. Indeed, Pentagon officials say that’s one reason they want to begin turning power over to a new Iraqi leadership sooner rather than later. On Sunday, U.S. military forces flew Chalabi, one potential element of that new leadership, and hundreds of his supporters from the Iraqi National Congress from exile into southern Iraq, in what was widely perceived by both his backers and his opponents as a U.S.-sponsored effort to make him the front-runner to head a post-Saddam Hussein government.

After weeks of furious internal debate, the administration appeared to be settling on a policy that blends elements from Pentagon and State Department proposals -- but that puts the Pentagon in charge on the ground.

“The Defense Department has been designated by the president ... as the lead agency,” Rice said. She confirmed that retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner would run the U.S. postwar effort, reporting to Rumsfeld.

She said the countries that sent troops to fight in Iraq -- principally the United States and Britain -- would have “the leading role” in reorganizing the country. That position conflicts with demands from France, Germany and Russia -- all opposed the war -- that the United Nations take over.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has supported the White House position but still hopes to entice more countries to share the burden of pacifying a postwar Iraq.

In many ways, officials said, the debate is a reprise of the administration’s long-running internal debate over the value of the United Nations. Powell and other foreign policy traditionalists seek to build broad coalitions, beginning with the U.N. Security Council, to support their aims. Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and others tend to view the U.N. as an impediment and prefer to assemble ad hoc “coalitions of the willing.”

In another reflection of the debate, officials said, Rumsfeld proposed jump-starting the postwar government by bringing several exile leaders into the U.S.-occupied area of Iraq and declaring them the nucleus of an “interim authority.” But the White House did not embrace the plan, and Rice emphasized that any interim authority should also include “local leaders” who remained in Iraq under Hussein’s rule.

As the argument continues, Rumsfeld has the advantage of controlling events on the ground in Iraq, but Powell has key allies outside the Middle East: British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Blair has said that he, too, wants to find a significant role for the U.N., in part as a way to heal the rifts between his government and his most important European counterparts, Germany and France.

In Washington, the chairman of the Senate committee, Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), and the senior Democrat, Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), have both weighed in on Powell’s side.

“We ought to try to let NATO take hold in Iraq,” Lugar said last week. “The basic objective here, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, is to build successful states -- to make sure these states are not incubators for terrorism....

“But this is very tough lifting. When you hear that within four or five months we hope to have Iraq turned over to Iraqis, I’m not sure I see the kind of stability in the way of building institutions that will be required,” he said.

Biden agreed, and urged the administration to seek as many allies in postwar Iraq as possible.

“You have to provide legitimacy among Iraqis, in the region and in the world,” he said. “Otherwise we rapidly go from liberator to occupier.

“The problem with the Pentagon is that they don’t want anyone else in on the deal,” he added.

One issue that may quickly push the administration into seeking more international support is the problem of policing a postwar Iraq, officials and outside experts said.

“There will be revenge killings, and there may be a violent underground opposition,” Wilson said. “That means you need a significant policing operation. If you can’t do it with the Iraqi police that are still in place, you’re going to have to look around the world for organizations that do policing with military discipline. We did that in Bosnia. That means you have to ask for help from national police forces like Italy’s carabinieri or Spain’s Guardia Civil or France’s gendarmerie -- although I guess we still aren’t speaking to the French.”

The main message from scholars outside the administration’s debates, though, is that building democracy in Iraq is likely to be far more difficult than officials seem to recognize.

“It is possible -- just possible -- that Iraq could gradually develop into a democracy, but the task is huge, and the odds are long against it,” Larry Diamond, a democratization expert at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, writes in an upcoming article. “Rebuilding Iraq into a responsible and lawful state will be the most financially costly and politically formidable task the United States has assumed internationally in decades.”

Michael Mandelbaum, author of “The Ideas that Conquered the World,” cites the 1953 movie “Beat the Devil” on how easy it is to make democracy work in countries that have long lived under dictatorship.

“In the movie, Humphrey Bogart is asked how the English manage to make their lawns so beautiful,” Mandelbaum said. “The answer is, ‘It’s easy: Get some good grass and roll it every day for 600 years.’ ”