Reinventing Iraq
BAY, AUSTIN
Reinventing Iraq The Trieste model. BY AUSTIN BAY WHEN TAMERLANE retook Baghdad in 1401, delivering mail and feeding babies weren't post-conflict priorities. Ticked that the Baghdadis had the...
...The idea isn't to create a provisional Iraqi government, but to provide a forum for debating how to build a new one...
...There is, however, an almost unmentioned model that some U.S...
...Slovenes rejected the lira...
...Rebellious Iraqi Army units, led by officers with legitimate anti-Saddam credentials, will stake political claims...
...But Austin Bay is an author and syndicated columnist...
...Japan is a homogenous society, and MacArthur let the Japanese keep their emperor...
...An allied transition government must be ready to take full advantage of it...
...Trieste, an odd Italian city that was once the AustroHungarian empire's main seaport (and a James Joyce hangout), lies on the fault line where the "Latin, Slav, and German worlds collide" (Denni-son Rusinow's phrase in What Ever Happened to the Trieste Question...
...The AMG also established a special police force manned by locals that was run by Colonel Gerald Richardson, a former London cop...
...Security from thugs, protection from ethnic and political reprisal, and democratic judicial processes (in contrast to Mussolini's despotism) gave the public confidence...
...And Iran is no USSR...
...There was no Fox or CNN to report the massacre...
...On May 5, the Yugoslavs fired on a pro-Italian demonstration, killing at least five people...
...The AMG moved quickly on the judicial front with "proceedings of epuration" (purging) against former fascists...
...The people of the Trieste region also went to work on AMG-directed civil reconstruction projects...
...In post-Saddam Iraq, Kurd and Shiite factions won't be the only armed contestants...
...The democratic reconstruction of Japan and Germany after World War II are the favorite analogies of most pundits...
...Ticked that the Baghdadis had the cheek to revolt, the warlord put the city to the sword...
...There will probably be a "honeymoon" period, as Iraqis of all ethnic and religious groups rejoice in their liberation...
...Identifying and airing issues like these argues for the establishment as soon as possible of a national council in exile—a broad coalition that affirms the territorial integrity of post-Saddam Iraq...
...Rebuilding Iraq's damaged infrastructure, including oil facilities, should be seen as an opportunity to provide the Iraqi people with jobs and point them toward a better, more productive future...
...under any circumstances, Washington must have governing policies, implementing procedures, and Iraqi political personalities in line before the regime's dispatch...
...Of course, how Saddam falls, by internal coup, assassination, or invasion, will deeply affect the initial shape of post-Saddam Iraq...
...In early May 1945, as allied troops assumed control of Trieste, they had to confront armed factions that short days before had been nominal allies...
...The Yugoslavs quickly began forming their own (Communist) military administration...
...A national council, a not-quite-government, becomes a platform for negotiating before rather than after power-grabs...
...Post-Saddam Iraq is sure to be a tough route for any postman...
...Fear, loathing, and lack of money will be the enemies in a post-Saddam Iraq...
...Tamerlane's signal—a message all too often sent by Mesopotamian tyrants past and present—was received nonetheless: Resist and you will die...
...Iraq is fractious, a Baghdad satrapy with rebellious provinces, ruled by a despot who is more Al Capone than Hirohito...
...and allied forces liberating Iraq will attempt—more or less simultaneous-ly—to end combat operations, cork public passions, disarm Iraqi battalions, bury the dead, generate electricity, pump potable water, bring law out of embittering lawlessness, empty jails of political prisoners, pack jails with criminals, turn armed partisans into peaceful citizens, rearm local cops who were once enemy infantry, shoot terrorists, thwart chiselers, carpetbaggers, and black marketeers, fix sewers, feed refugees, patch potholes, get trash trucks rolling, and accomplish all this under the lidless gaze of Peter Jennings and Al Jazeera...
...Bahrain and Kuwait are not interested in seeing a separate Shiite state solidify around Basra...
...The Bush administration's plan to prepare 3,000 to 5,000 Iraqi troops to help maintain order after liberation is in line with the Trieste experience of putting local security forces on the ground...
...However, rebel Iraqi generals, with guns on the ground, will also have a "head start," much as Trieste's Slovene partisans did...
...While Iraqi de-Baathifica-tion could be compared to German de-Nazification—they are both fascist doctrines that morally corrupted and destroyed generations—the postwar German occupation rapidly became a Cold War confrontation...
...Critics who say such advance planning gives certain exile groups a head start have a point...
...Pity General Tommy Franks or, for that matter, any American military commander tasked with overseeing a post-Saddam Baghdad...
...These armed factions had contradictory goals...
...Again, the Trieste precedents are suggestive...
...Yugoslav (Slovene predominantly, with some Croat and Croat Serb) partisans occupied parts of Trieste...
...military planners are beginning to consider: the post-World War II Anglo-American Allied Military Government (AMG) in Trieste...
...The Trieste AMG's experience provides useful insights at what the military calls the operational and tactical levels...
...That's the currency already preferred by Kurds and Shi-ites, anyway...
...The Trieste-region Allied Military Government responded with "show of force" actions that disarmed the partisan detachments, at least in the city...
...Consider the strategic, cultural, and ethnic tectonics...
...It will also help Tommy Franks prepare to deliver the mail...
...Afghanistan is still an experiment, though the interplay of tribal and sectarian factions is instructive...
...The Trieste AMG faced a monetary crisis with political undercurrents...
...But the parallels are weak...
...To avoid such conflicts, we will probably want to dollarize the Iraqi economy...
...That's why the Bush White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and a cost-plus shadow government of Beltway consultants have been hashing and rehashing options for governing a post-Saddam Iraq...
...For in that amorphous, dicey phase the Pentagon calls "war termination," they will be radically departing from the Tamerlane template...
...Resolving "the Trieste question" in the context of the Cold War eventually led to the partitioning of the Istrian peninsula between Italy and Tito's Yugoslavia—an uncomfortable augur given Iraq's internal divisions...
...Frankly, there is no perfect model for reinventing Iraq...
...With the emperor as puppet, the American Caesar pulled the strings...
...An Italian democratic resistance force, the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN) also emerged...
...In Mesopotamia the Iranian, Kurd, Arab, and Turk worlds collide...
...His novel The Wrong Side of Brightness will be published in the spring by Putnam/Berkley Books...
...Turkey rejects a separate Kurd state...
Vol. 8 • December 2002 • No. 13
