10.1 |
Reconstruction: March 2003 to June 2004
202.
The US
intended to put a senior US official and a small group of Iraqi
exiles
into each
ministry, having removed “undesirable elements”. US officials would
work
as advisers
to Iraqi ministries, which would be “headed by Iraqi
secretaries-general”.
In practice,
the advisers would oversee the work of the ministries and, in due
course,
begin their
reform and restructuring. The US understood the importance of
calling those
officials
“advisers”, rather than “shadow ministers”.
203.
The IPU
reported that there was “a bitter inter-agency dispute in
Washington”
over the
list of US officials and Iraqi exiles. The UK had been invited to
nominate British
advisers,
but had made clear the need to be sure of the legal basis for their
activities.
204.
Once the IIA
had been established, there would be a phased transfer
of
“the
direction” of Iraqi ministries. The US intended that the Coalition
Provisional
Administration
should retain “considerable control” over the IIA’s handling of
ministries.
The UK
considered that to be “politically unsellable” and
“unlawful”.
205.
The UK model
for the IIA was based on the Supreme National Council
for
Cambodia
(the model proposed in the FCO paper ‘Models for Administering a
Post-
Saddam
Iraq’ in October 2002, see Section 6.4), which met regularly and
took decisions
that would
be implemented provided the UN Special Representative did not
object.
“All the
evidence suggests that the IIA will assert its independence
vigorously from
the outset.
A stately transfer of ministries’ powers from the Coalition to it
may not be
politically
possible. But a light supervisory role for a UN Special
Co-ordinator may
be
acceptable as the price the Iraqis have to pay for the
international community’s
support to
nation building. This might finally convince the US
too.”
207.
The IPU paper
on the UN Special Co-ordinator envisaged the appointee
co-ordinating
humanitarian and reconstruction assistance, exercising “a light
degree
of
supervision” over the IIA, and helping with preparations for the
Central Iraq
Conference
(a consultative conference that took place in Baghdad on 28
April,
described
in Section 9.1).118
Direct UN
administration of Iraq would cross “a red line
for the
US and, probably, the Iraqis themselves”.
208.
The FCO
Research Analysts’ paper on tribes, regions and
governorates
described
the role of Iraq’s tribes as “a question for the
future”.119
Too much
autonomy
and they
could become a rival to the state. If they were ignored, “a
potentially useful
counterweight
to religious leaderships with political ambitions could be lost in
the period
during
which the new state will be forming”. Iraqi interlocutors
maintained that, unlike in
Afghanistan,
because much of the country was flat, it was “relatively easy for
control to
be
exercised over the whole country (the Kurdish mountains being the
main exception)”.
118
Paper Iraq
Planning Unit, 4 April 2003, ‘UN Special
Co-ordinator’.
119
Paper
Research Analysts, 4 April 2003, ‘Tribes, Regions and Governorates
of Iraq’.
39