Order Code RL31339
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Iraq: U.S. Regime Change Efforts
and Post-Saddam Governance
Updated April 26, 2005
Kenneth Katzman
Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress
Iraq: U.S. Regime Change Efforts and
Post-Saddam Governance
Summary
Operation Iraqi Freedom accomplished a long-standing U.S. objective, the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but replacing his regime with a stable, moderate,
democratic political structure has been complicated by a persistent Sunni Arab-led
insurgency. The Bush Administration asserts that establishing democracy in Iraq will
catalyze the promotion of democracy throughout the Middle East. The desired
outcome would also likely prevent Iraq from becoming a sanctuary for terrorists, a
key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission report.
The Bush Administration asserts that U.S. policy in Iraq is now showing
substantial success, demonstrated by January 30, 2005 elections that chose a National
Assembly, and progress in building Iraq’s various security forces. The
Administration says it expects that the current transition roadmap — including votes
on a permanent constitution by October 31, 2005 and for a permanent government
by December 15, 2005 — are being implemented. Others believe the insurgency is
still widespread and that the Iraqi government could not stand on its own were U.S.
and allied international forces to withdraw from Iraq. Some U.S. commanders and
senior intelligence officials say that some Islamic militants have entered Iraq since
Saddam Hussein fell, to fight what they see as a new “jihad” (Islamic war) against
the United States.
During the 1990s, following the 1991 Gulf war to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait,
U.S. efforts to change Iraq’s regime failed because of limited U.S. commitment,
disorganization of the Iraqi opposition, and the vigilance of Iraq’s overlapping
security services. After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States,
President George W. Bush decided against continuing to contain Iraq, characterizing
it as a grave and gathering threat because of its refusal to abandon its weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) programs and its potential to transfer WMD to terrorist
groups. After a November 2002-March 2003 round of U.N. WMD inspections in
which Iraq’s cooperation was mixed, on March 19, 2003, the United States launched
Operation Iraqi Freedom to disarm and change Iraq’s regime. The regime fell on
April 9, 2003.
This report will be updated as warranted by major developments. See also CRS
Report RS21968, Iraq: Post-Saddam National Elections, CRS Report RS22079, the
Kurds in Post-Saddam Iraq; CRS Report RL32783, FY2005 Supplemental
Appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, Tsunami Relief, and Other Activities; and
CRS Report RL31833, Iraq: Recent Developments in Reconstruction Assistance.
Contents
Anti-Saddam Groups and U.S. Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Iraqi National Congress (INC)/Ahmad Chalabi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Iraq National Accord (INA)/Iyad al-Allawi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Major Kurdish Organizations/KDP and PUK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Monarchist Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Shiite Islamist Leaders and Organizations: Ayatollah Sistani,
SCIRI, Da’wa Party, Moqtada al-Sadr, and Others . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
U.S. Relations With the Major Factions During the Clinton
Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Congress and the Iraq Liberation Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Operation “Desert Fox”/First ILA Designations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Bush Administration Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Pre-September 11: Reinforcing Containment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Post-September 11: Implementing Regime Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Run-up to Military Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Post-Saddam Governance and Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Occupation Period and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) . . 17
The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The Handover of Sovereignty and Run-up to Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Transitional Administrative Law (TAL)/Transition Roadmap . . . . . . 19
Interim (Allawi) Government/Sovereignty Handover/
Resolution 1546 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Post-Handover U.S. Structure in Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
January 30, 2005 Elections/New Government/Next Steps . . . . . . . . . 23
The Insurgent Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Insurgents’ Size and Strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Insurgent Goals and Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
U.S. Counter-Insurgent Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Other Programs and Options to Stabilize Iraq/”Exit Strategy” . . . . . . . . . . 31
Building Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Coalition Building and Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Altering the Level of U.S. Military and Political Involvement . . . . . . 39
Negotiating a Power-Sharing Formula/Negotiating with Insurgents . . 39
Rejuvenating Iraq’s Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
The Oil Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
CPA Budget/DFI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
International Donations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Supplemental U.S. Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Lifting U.S. Sanctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Debt Relief/WTO Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Congressional Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
List of Figures
Figure 1. Map of Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
List of Tables
Table 1. Iraq’s Oil Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Table A1: U.S. Assistance (ESF) to the Opposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Iraq: U.S. Regime Change Efforts and
Post-Saddam Governance
The United States did not remove Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from power in the
course of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, and his regime unexpectedly survived post-war
uprisings by Iraq’s Shiites and Kurds. For twelve years after that, the United States
sought to remove Saddam from power by supporting dissidents inside Iraq, although
changing Iraq’s regime did not become U.S. declared policy until November 1998,
amid a crisis with Iraq over U.N. weapons of mass destruction (WMD) inspections.
The Bush Administration placed regime change at the center of U.S. policy shortly
after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) was launched
on March 19, 2003, and had deposed Saddam Hussein by April 9, 2003.
The Bush Administration’s stated goal is to transform Iraq into a democracy
that could be a model for the rest of the region and would prevent Iraq from
becoming a safe haven for Islamic terrorists. Iraq has not had experience with a
democratic form of government, although parliamentary elections were held during
the period of British rule under a League of Nations mandate (from 1920 until Iraq’s
independence in 1932), and the monarchy of the (Sunni Muslim) Hashemite dynasty
(1921-1958).1 Previously, Iraq had been a province of the Ottoman empire until
British forces defeated the Ottomans and took control of what is now Iraq in 1918.
Iraq’s first Hashemite king was Faysal bin Hussein, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca
who, advised by British officer T.E Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), led the Arab
revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Faysal ruled Iraq as King
Faysal I and was succeeded by his son, Ghazi (1933-1939). Ghazi was succeeded by
his son, Faysal II, who ruled until the military coup of Abd al-Karim al-Qasim on
July 14, 1958. Qasim was ousted in February 1963 by a Baath Party - military
alliance. Also in 1963, the Baath Party took power in Syria. It still rules there today,
although there was rivalry between the Syrian and Iraqi Baath regimes during
Saddam’s rule.
One of the Baath Party’s allies in the February 1963 coup in Iraq was Abd al-
Salam al-Arif. In November 1963, Arif purged the Baath, including Baathist Prime
Minister (and military officer) Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, and instituted direct military
rule. Arif was killed in a helicopter crash in 1966 and was replaced by his elder
brother, Abd al-Rahim al-Arif, who ruled until the Baath Party coup of July 1968.
Following the Baath seizure, Bakr returned to government as President of Iraq and
Saddam Hussein, a civilian, became the second most powerful leader as Vice
Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. In that position, Saddam
1 See Eisenstadt, Michael, and Eric Mathewson, eds, U.S. Policy in Post-Saddam Iraq:
Lessons from the British Experience. Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2003.
Members of the Hashemite family rule neighboring Jordan.
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developed and oversaw a system of overlapping security services to monitor loyalty
among the population and within Iraq’s institutions, including the military. On July
17, 1979, the aging al-Bakr resigned at Saddam’s urging, and Saddam became
President of Iraq. Always repressive of the majority Shiite Muslims, Saddam’s
regime became even more abusive of Iraq’s Shiites after the 1979 Islamic revolution
in neighboring Iran, which activated and emboldened Iraqi Shiite Islamist movements
that wanted to oust Saddam and establish an Iranian-style Islamic republic of Iraq.
Some attribute stepped up repression to a failed assassination attempt against Saddam
by the Shiite Islamist Da’wa Party (see below) in 1982.
Anti-Saddam Groups and U.S. Policy
The major factions that now dominate post-Saddam Iraq had been active against
Saddam’s regime for decades, but only received U.S. support after the 1991 Gulf
war. Prior to the launching on January 16, 1991 of Operation Desert Storm, which
reversed Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush called
on the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam. The Administration decided not to
militarily occupy Iraq or overthrow Saddam Hussein in the course of the 1991 war
because the United Nations had approved only the liberation of Kuwait, and there
was concern that the U.S.-led coalition would fracture if the United States advanced
to Baghdad. According to former President George H.W. Bush’s writings,2 the
Administration also feared that the U.S. military could become bogged down in a
violent, high-casualty occupation. Within days of the end of the Gulf war (February
28, 1991), opposition Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq and Kurdish factions in
northern Iraq, emboldened by the regime’s defeat and the hope of U.S. support,
launched significant rebellions. The Shiite revolt reached the suburbs of Baghdad,
but the Republican Guard forces, composed mainly of Sunni Muslim regime
loyalists, had survived the war largely intact, and they defeated the Shiite rebels by
mid-March 1991; many Shiites blamed the United States for standing aside as the
regime retaliated against these rebels. Kurds, benefitting from a U.S.-led “no fly
zone” established in April 1991, drove Iraqi troops out of much of northern Iraq and
subsequently remained relatively autonomous.
According to press reports, about two months after the failure of the Shiite
uprising, President George H.W. Bush forwarded to Congress an intelligence finding
stating that the United States would undertake efforts to promote a military coup
against Saddam Hussein. The Administration apparently believed that a coup by
elements within the current regime could produce a favorable new government
without fragmenting Iraq. Many observers, including neighboring governments,
feared that Shiite and Kurdish groups, if they ousted Saddam, would divide Iraq into
warring ethnic and tribal groups, opening Iraq to influence from its neighbors.
Reports in July 1992 of a serious but unsuccessful coup attempt suggested that
the U.S. strategy might ultimately succeed. However, there was disappointment
within the George H.W. Bush Administration that the coup had failed and a decision
2 Bush, George H.W., and Brent Scowcroft. A World Transformed. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1998.
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was made to shift the U.S. approach to supporting the diverse Kurdish, Shiite, and
other opposition elements that were coalescing into a broad and diverse movement.
This coalition was seen as providing a vehicle for the United States to build a viable
overthrow strategy.3 The following sections discuss the organizations and
personalities that are major players in post-Saddam Iraq; most of these organizations
were part of the U.S. effort to change Iraq’s regime during the 1990s.
Iraqi National Congress (INC)/Ahmad Chalabi. After 1991, the growing
exile opposition coalition took shape in an organization called the Iraqi National
Congress (INC). The INC was formally constituted when the two main Kurdish
parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK), participated in a June 1992 opposition meeting in Vienna. In October 1992,
major Shiite Islamist groups came into the coalition. The INC appeared viable
because it brought under one banner varying Iraqi ethnic groups and diverse political
ideologies, including nationalists, ex-military officers, and ex-Baathists. The Kurds
provided it with a source of armed force and a presence on Iraqi territory. Its
constituent groups publicly united around a platform of human rights, democracy,
pluralism, “federalism” (Kurdish autonomy), the preservation of Iraq’s territorial
integrity, and compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions on Iraq.4 However,
many observers doubted its commitment to democracy, because most of its groups
have an authoritarian internal structure.
Ahmad Chalabi. When the INC was formed, its Executive Committee
selected Chalabi, a secular Shiite Muslim from a prominent banking family, to run
the INC on a daily basis. Chalabi, who is about 60 years old, was educated in the
United States (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as a mathematician. His father
was president of the Senate in the monarchy that was overthrown in the 1958 military
coup, and the family fled to Jordan. He taught math at the American University of
Beirut in 1977 and, in 1978, he founded the Petra Bank in Jordan. He later ran afoul
of Jordanian authorities on charges of embezzlement and he left Jordan, possibly
with some help from members of Jordan’s royal family, in 1989. In April 1992, he
was convicted in absentia of embezzling $70 million from the bank and sentenced
to 22 years in prison.5 Chalabi maintains that the Jordanian government was
pressured by Iraq to turn against him. In April 2003, Jordan’s King Abdullah
publicly called Chalabi “divisive;” virtually saying he would be unacceptable as
leader of Iraq.
The INC and Chalabi have been controversial in the United States since the INC
was formed. The State Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have, by
many accounts, believed the INC had little popularity inside Iraq. In the George W.
Bush Administration, numerous press reports indicated that the Defense Department
3 Congress more than doubled the budget for covert support to the opposition groups to
about $40 million for FY1993, from previous reported levels of about $15 million to $20
million. Sciolino, Elaine. “Greater U.S. Effort Backed To Oust Iraqi.” New York Times,
June 2, 1992.
4 The Iraqi National Congress and the International Community. Document provided by
INC representatives, Feb. 1993.
5 The Jordanian government subsequently repaid depositors a total of $400 million.
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and office of Vice President Cheney believed the INC was well positioned to lead a
post-Saddam regime. Chalabi’s supporters maintain that it was largely his
determination that has now led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
After the start of the 2003 war, Chalabi and about 700 INC fighters (“Free Iraqi
Forces”) were airlifted by the U.S. military from their base in the north to the
Nasiriya area, purportedly to help stabilize civil affairs in southern Iraq, later
deploying to Baghdad and other parts of Iraq. After establishing his headquarters in
Baghdad, Chalabi tried to build support by searching for fugitive members of the
former regime and arranging for U.S. military forces in Iraq to provide security to his
potential supporters. (The Free Iraqi Forces accompanying Chalabi were disbanded
following the U.S. decision in mid-May 2003 to disarm independent militias.)
As an Iraqi governance structure was established, Chalabi was selected to serve
on the Iraq Governing Council (IGC, see below) and he was one of the nine that
rotated its presidency; he was president of the IGC during September 2003. He
headed the IGC committee on “de-Baathification,” although his vigilance in purging
former Baathists was slowed by U.S. officials in early 2004. Since 2004, Chalabi
has criticized U.S. policies and allied with Shiite Islamist factions; he was high up
(no. 10) on Ayatollah Sistani’s “United Iraqi Alliance” slate of candidates for the
January 30, 2005 elections. He now has a seat in the National Assembly.
Chalabi’s political comeback has occurred even though he has run afoul of
some of his erstwhile U.S. supporters. The deterioration in his relations with
Washington was demonstrated when Iraqi police, backed by U.S. troops, raided INC
headquarters in Baghdad on May 20, 2004. They were investigating allegations that
Chalabi had informed Iran that the United States had broken Iranian intelligence
codes;6 that INC members had been involved in kidnaping or currency fraud; or that
the INC had failed to cooperate with an Iraqi investigation of the U.N. “oil-for-food
program.” Investigators seized computers and files that the INC had captured from
various Iraqi ministries upon the fall of Saddam’s regime. In August 2004, an Iraqi
judge issued a warrant for Chalabi’s arrest on counterfeiting charges, and for his
nephew Salem Chalabi’s arrest for the murder of an Iraqi finance ministry official.
(Salem had headed the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein and his associates, but his
role on that issue ended after the warrant was issued.) Both were out of the country
but returned to fight the charges in August 2004; Ahmad Chalabi met with Iraqi
investigators and the case was subsequently dropped. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff General Richard Meyers said on May 20, 2004, that the INC had provided
some information that had saved the lives of U.S. soldiers. (A table on U.S.
appropriations for the Iraqi opposition, including the INC, is an appendix).
Iraq National Accord (INA)/Iyad al-Allawi. The Iraq National Accord
(INA) was founded just after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Supported initially by
Saudi Arabia, the INA consisted of defectors from Iraq’s Baath Party and security
organs who had ties to disgruntled, sitting officials in those organizations. During
the mid-1990s, the INA reportedly had an operational backing from the Central
6 Risen, James, and David Johnston. “Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code.”
New York Times, June 2, 2004.
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Intelligence Agency (CIA).7 It has been headed since 1990 by Dr. Iyad al-Allawi
(now interim Prime Minister ) who that year broke with another INA leader, Salah
Umar al-Tikriti. Allawi is a former Baathist who, according to some reports, helped
Saddam Hussein silence Iraqi dissidents in Europe in the mid-1970s.8 Allawi, who
is about 59 years old (born 1946 in Baghdad), fell out with Saddam in the mid-1970s,
became a neurologist and presided over the Iraqi Student Union in Europe. He
survived an assassination attempt in London in 1978, allegedly by Iraq’s agents. He
is a secular Shiite Muslim, but many INA members are Sunnis. Allawi no longer
considers himself a Baath Party member, but he has not openly denounced the
original tenets of Baathism, a pan-Arab multi-ethnic movement founded in the 1940s
by Lebanese Christian philosopher Michel Aflaq.
Like Chalabi, Allawi was named to the IGC and to its rotating presidency;
Allawi was president during October 2003. On June 1, 2004, after being nominated
by the IGC, he became interim prime minister; he assumed formal power upon the
June 28, 2004 sovereignty handover. His INA-led candidate slate (The Iraqis List)
in the January 30 elections garnered about 14% of the vote, giving his bloc 40 of the
275 seats, but apparently not enough to enable Allawi to remain as prime minister.
He apparently will lead the “opposition” in the Assembly, as discussed below.
Major Kurdish Organizations/KDP and PUK. (For an extended
discussion of the Kurds in Iraq, see CRS Report RS22079, The Kurds in Post-
Saddam Iraq.) The Kurds, probably the most pro-U.S. of all the major groups have
a historic fear of persecution by the Arab majority and want to preserve the autonomy
they have experienced since the 1991 Gulf war. (The Kurds are mostly Sunni
Muslims, but they are not ethnic Arabs.) Turkey, which has a sizable Kurdish
population in the areas bordering northern Iraq, particularly fears that the Kurds want
outright independence and that this might touch off an effort to unify with Kurds in
neighboring countries (including Turkey) into a broader “Kurdistan.”
Iraq’s Kurds have fought intermittently for autonomy since their region was
incorporated into the newly formed Iraqi state after World War I. The two main
Kurdish factions are the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani
and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by Masud Barzani. Together, the
PUK and KDP have about 75,000 “peshmergas” (fighters). Some of these fighters
are now operating as unofficial security organs in northern Iraqi cities, and some are
integrated into the new national security forces and deployed in such cities as Mosul
and Baghdad.
In post-Saddam Iraq, both Barzani and Talabani were placed on the IGC, and
both were part of the Council’s rotating presidency. Talabani was IGC president
during November 2003, and Barzani led the body in April 2004. Their top aides and
former representatives in Washington, Hoshyar Zibari (KDP) and Barham Salih
(PUK), have been high-ranking officials in the interim government.
7 Brinkley, Joel. “Ex-CIA Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90’s Attacks.” New
York Times, June 9, 2004.
8 Hersh, Seymour. “Annals of National Security: Plan B.” The New Yorker, June 28, 2004.
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The Kurdish parties are maneuvering to maintain substantial autonomy in
northern Iraq in post-Saddam Iraq — a demand largely enshrined in the Transitional
Administrative Law (interim constitution, see below). The Kurds’ uncertainty about
the eventual shape of the post-Saddam political structure has caused the KDP and
PUK to combine their political resources and to re-establish joint governance of the
Kurdish regions. They offered a joint slate in the January 30 elections, which won
about 26% of the vote and gained 75 seats in the new Assembly. A moderate
Islamist Kurdish slate (Kurdistan Islamic Group), running separately, won 2 seats.
The Kurds have succeeded in having PUK leader Talabani become president
in the post-January 2005 government. Another Kurd is deputy speaker of the
National Assembly. One of the pressing issues for the Kurds as they negotiated to
form a new government was the status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which might
contain 10% of Iraq’s oil reserves. The Kurds apparently have succeeded in gaining
a tentative promise from other Iraqi leaders to eventually integrate Kirkuk into the
Kurdish-administered regions.
Monarchist Organizations. One anti-Saddam group supported the return
of Iraq’s monarchy. The Movement for Constitutional Monarchy (MCM), is led by
Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, a relative of the Hashemite monarchs (he is a first cousin
of King Faysal II, the last Iraqi monarch) that ruled Iraq from the end of World War
I until 1958. Sharif Ali, who is about 50 and was a banker in London, claims to be
the leading heir to the former Hashemite monarchy, although there are other
claimants. The MCM was considered a small movement that could not contribute
much to the pre-war overthrow effort, but it was part of the INC and the United
States had contacts with it. Sharif Ali returned to Iraq on June 10, 2003, but neither
he nor any of his followers was appointed to the IGC or the interim government. The
MCM filed a candidate slate in the January 30, 2005 elections, but it won no seats.
Nonetheless, Sharif Ali is widely mentioned as a candidate for a senior position in
the new government.
Shiite Islamist Leaders and Organizations: Ayatollah Sistani, SCIRI,
Da’wa Party, Moqtada al-Sadr, and Others. Shiite Islamist organizations
constitute major factions in post-Saddam Iraq. Several of them had some ties to the
United States during the regime change efforts of the 1990s, but several other Shiite
factions had no contact with the United States until the fall of the regime. Shiite
Muslims constitute about 60% of the population but have been under-represented in
every Iraqi government since modern Iraq’s formation in 1920. In an event that many
Iraqi Shiites still refer to as an example of their potential to frustrate great power
influence, Shiite Muslims led a revolt against British occupation forces in 1921.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani/United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). Grand
Ayatollah Sistani was largely silenced by Saddam Hussein’s regime and was not part
of U.S.-backed efforts in the 1990s to change Iraq’s regime. By virtue of his large
following among Shiites in and outside Iraq (he is the supreme “marja-e-taqlid,” or
source of emulation), he is a major political force in post-Saddam politics. He is the
most senior of the Shiite clerics that lead the Najaf-based “Hawza al-Ilmiyah,” a
grouping of seminaries; his status is recognized by many Shiites worldwide. Other
senior Hawza clerics include Ayatollah Mohammad Sa’id al-Hakim (uncle of the
slain leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Mohammad
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Baqr al-Hakim); Ayatollah Mohammad Isaac Fayadh, who is of Afghan origin; and
Ayatollah Bashir al-Najafi, of Pakistani origin. Sistani also has a network of
supporters and agents (wakils) throughout Iraq and even in other countries where
there are large Shiite communities. Sistani is about 75 years old and suffers from
heart problems that required treatment in the United Kingdom in August 2004.
Sistani was born in Iran and studied in Qom, Iran, before relocating to Najaf at
the age of 21. He became head of the Hawza when his mentor, Ayatollah Abol
Qasem Musavi-Khoi, died in 1992. Sistani generally opposes a direct role for clerics
in government, but he believes in clerical guidance and supervision of political
leaders, partly explaining his deep involvement in shaping political outcomes in
post-Saddam Iraq. He wants Iraq to maintain its Islamic culture and not to become
secular and Westernized, favoring modest dress for women and curbs on alcohol
consumption and Western-style music and entertainment.9 On the other hand, his
career does not suggest that he favors a repressive regime and he does not have a
record of supporting militant Shiite organizations such as Lebanese Hizbollah.
Sistani was instrumental in putting together the united slate of Shiite Islamist
movements in the January 30 elections (“United Iraqi Alliance,” UIA). The slate
received about 48% of the vote and has 140 seats in the new Assembly, just enough
for a majority of the 275 seat body.
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The
largest single party within the UIA, SCIRI is the best organized Shiite Islamist party,
and it is also the most pro-Iranian. It was set up in 1982, composed mainly of ex-
Da’wa Party members, to increase Iranian control over Shiite movements in Iraq and
the Persian Gulf states. It was a member of the INC in the early 1990s, but distanced
itself from that organization in the mid-1990s. Unlike most INC-affiliated parties,
SCIRI had refused throughout the 1990s to work openly with the United States or
accept U.S. funds, although it had contacts with the United States during this period.
SCIRI says it does not seek to establish an Iranian-style Islamic republic, but U.S.
officials have expressed some mistrust of SCIRI’s ties to Iran, which is said to
include substantial amounts of financial and in-kind assistance. SCIRI also runs its
own television station.
SCIRI’s former leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim, was the choice
of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran to head an Islamic republic of Iraq.
Khomeini enjoyed the protection of Mohammad Baqr’s father, Grand Ayatollah
Muhsin al-Hakim, when Khomeini was in exile in Najaf during 1964-1978.
(Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim was head of the Hawza al-Ilmiyah at that time.) SCIRI
and Mohammad Baqr had been based in Iraq after 1980, during a major crackdown
by Saddam Hussein, who feared that pro-Khomeini Iraqi Shiite Islamists might try
to overthrow him. Mohammad Baqr was killed in a car bomb in Najaf on August 29,
2003, about a month after he returned to Iraq from exile in Iran. Mohammad Baqr’s
younger brother, Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, who is a lower ranking Shiite cleric,
subsequently took over SCIRI, and served on the IGC. He was president of the IGC
during December 2003, and was number one on the UIA slate, making him a major
9 For information on Sistani’s views, see his website at [http://www.sistani.org].
CRS-8
force in current negotiations over a post-election government. His key aide is Adel
Abd al-Mahdi, who was Finance Minister in the interim government and has now
become one of two deputy presidents in the post-election government.
SCIRI’s “Badr Brigades”. Some U.S. officials express concern about SCIRI’s
continued fielding of the Badr Brigades (now renamed the “Badr Organization”),
which number about 20,000 and are deployed in unofficial policing roles in Basra
and other southern cities. SCIRI is resisting folding the Badr forces, as a whole, into
the national Iraqi security forces, and there have been reports that Badr fighters have
conducted retaliatory attacks on Sunnis suspected of links to the insurgency. Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard, which is politically aligned with Iran’s hardliners, trained and
equipped the Badr forces during the Iran-Iraq war (most Badr fighters were recruited
from the ranks of Iraqi prisoners of war held in Iran) and helped the Badr forces to
conduct forays from Iran into southern Iraq to attack Baath Party officials there
during that conflict. However, many Iraqi Shiites view SCIRI as an Iranian creation,
and Badr guerrilla operations in southern Iraq during the 1980s and 1990s did not
spark broad popular unrest against the Iraqi regime. The Badr Organization
registered as a separate political entity, in addition to its SCIRI parent, for the January
30 election.
Da’wa Party/Ibrahim al-Jafari. The second of the most prominent UIA
parties, the Da’wa (Islamic Call) Party is Iraq’s oldest Shiite Islamist grouping. It
was founded in 1957 by a revered Iraqi Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al
Sadr, an uncle of Moqtada al-Sadr, and a peer of Ayatollah Khomeini. Da’wa was
the most active Shiite opposition movement in the few years following Iran’s Islamic
revolution in February 1979; Da’wa activists conducted guerrilla attacks against the
Baathist regime and attempted assassinations of senior Iraqi leaders, including Tariq
Aziz. Ayatollah Baqr Al Sadr was hung by the Iraqi regime in 1980 for the unrest,
and many other Da’wa activists were killed or imprisoned. After the Iraqi
crackdown, many Da’wa leaders moved into Iran; some subsequently joined SCIRI,
but others rejected Iranian control of Iraq’s Shiite groups and continued to affiliate
only with Da’wa. Da’wa has fewer Shiite clerics in its ranks than does SCIRI.
(There are breakaway factions of Da’wa, the most prominent of which calls itself
Islamic Da’wa of Iraq, but these factions are believed to be far smaller than Da’wa.)
Ibrahim al- Jafari, who is about 58 years old, (born in 1947 in Karbala) has been
a Da’wa activist since 1966. He attended medical school in Mosul and fled to Iran
in 1980 to escape Saddam’s crackdown on the Da’wa. He later went to live in
London, possibly because he did not want to be too closely linked to Iran.
During the 1990s, the Da’wa remained distant from the U.S. effort to overthrow
Saddam Hussein. In post-Saddam Iraq, Jafari, and Da’wa’s leader in Basra, Abd al
Zahra Mohammad (also known as Izzaddin Salim) served on the IGC.10 Also on the
body was former Da’wa member turned human rights activist, Muwaffaq Al-Ruba’i.
Jafari was one of the nine rotating IGC presidents; he was first to hold that post
(August 2003), and he then became deputy president in Allawi’s interim government.
10 Salim was killed on May 17, 2004, in a suicide bombing while serving as president of the
IGC.
CRS-9
He was number 7 on the UIA slate and, on April 7, he was formally named prime
minister, giving him one month (until May 7) to name a cabinet.
Da’wa has a checkered history in the region, although there is no public
evidence that Jafari was involved in any Da’wa terrorist or guerrilla activity. The
Kuwaiti branch of the Da’wa Party allegedly was responsible for a May 1985
attempted assassination of the Amir of Kuwait and the December 1983 attacks on the
U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait. The Hizballah organization in Lebanon was
founded by Lebanese clerics loyal to Ayatollah Baqr Al Sadr and Iran’s Ayatollah
Khomeini, and there continue to be personal and ideological linkages between
Lebanese Hizballah and the Da’wa Party (as well as with SCIRI). The Hizballah
activists who held U.S. hostages in that country during the 1980s often attempted to
link release of the Americans to the release of 17 Da’wa Party prisoners held by
Kuwait for those attacks in the 1980s. Some Da’wa members in Iraq look to
Lebanon’s senior Shiite cleric Mohammed Hossein Fadlallah, who was a student and
protege of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al Sadr, for spiritual guidance; Fadlallah also
reportedly perceives himself a rival of Sistani as a pre-eminent Shiite figure.
Moqtada al-Sadr/”Mahdi Army”. Relatives of the late Ayatollah
Mohammed Baqr al-Sadr, most notably his nephew Moqtada Al Sadr, have become
active in post-Saddam Iraq. The Sadr clan stayed in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s
rule, and it was repressed politically during that time. Although the Sadr clan has
traditionally been identified with the Da’wa Party, most members of the clan
currently do not identify with it. Some relatives of the clan are in Lebanon, and the
founder of what became the Shiite Amal (Hope) party in Lebanon was a Sadr clan
member, Imam Musa Sadr, who died in murky circumstances in Libya in 1978.
Moqtada Al Sadr, who is about 31 years old (born in 1974), is the lone surviving
son of the revered Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr. He and his other two sons
were killed by Saddam’s security forces in 1999 after the Ayatollah began publicly
opposing Saddam’s government. Using his father’s esteemed legacy, Moqtada has
gained a prominent role in post-Saddam Shiite politics by adopting hard-line
positions against the occupation. Moqtada Al Sadr, as did his father, has a significant
following among poorer Shiites, particularly in a Baghdad district now called “Sadr
City,” which has a population of about 2 million.
Sadr is viewed by most Iraqi Shiites, including Sistani, as a young radical who
lacks religious and political weight. To compensate for his lack of religious
credentials, he has sought spiritual authority for his actions from his teacher,
Ayatollah Kazem Haeri, who lives in Qom, Iran but is associated with the Najaf-
based Hawza al-Ilmiyah. There is also a personal dimension to the rift; Sadr’s father
had been a rival of Sistani for pre-eminent Shiite religious authority in Iraq. The
widespread view of Sadr as an impulsive radical began on April 10, 2003, when his
supporters allegedly stabbed to death Abd al-Majid Khoi, the son of the late Grand
Ayatollah Khoi, shortly after Khoi’s U.S.-backed return to Najaf from exile in
London.11 Sadr subsequently used his Friday prayer sermons in Kufa (near Najaf)
and other forums to Iraqi officials as puppets of the U.S. occupation and to call for
11 Khoi had headed the Khoi Foundation, based in London.
CRS-10
an Islamic state. He was not in the IGC or the interim government. In mid-2003 he
began recruiting a militia (the “Mahdi Army”) to combat the U.S. occupation. Sadr
also published anti-U.S. newspapers, and he inspired demonstrations. U.S. military
operations put down Mahdi Army uprisings in April 2004 and August 2004 in Najaf,
Sadr City (Baghdad) and other Shiite cities. In each case, fighting was ended with
compromises with Sadr under which Mahdi forces stopped fighting (and in some
cases traded in some of their weapons for money) in exchange for lenient treatment
or releases of prisoners, amnesty for Sadr himself, and reconstruction aid. U.S.
operations were assisted by pronouncements and diplomacy by Ayatollah Sistani
opposing Sadr’s challenges. The Mahdi Army has now largely ended armed anti-
U.S. activity and Sadr’s main political base in Sadr City has been relatively quiet, but
armed Mahdi fighters reportedly continue to patrol Sadr City and other pro-Sadr
enclaves, and the force could resume military activity in the future.
Despite U.S. and Sistani overtures for Sadr to participate in the January 30,
2005, elections on the UIA slate, Sadr came out publicly against the elections,
claiming they did not address the real needs of the Iraqi people for infrastructure and
economic opportunity. Sadr might be calculating that the elections will not produce
stability or economic progress, and that he could perhaps rally his supporters against
a new government. Suggesting that Sadr wants the option of participating in the
political process, 14 of his supporters were on the UIA slate, and about 180 pro-Sadr
candidates from Sadr City offered their own separate slate, called the “Nationalist
Elites and Cadres List.” That list won 3 seats. Therefore, Sadr has a total of about
twelve supporters in the new National Assembly. Pro-Sadr candidates also won
pluralities in several southern Iraqi provincial council elections.
Other Shiite Organizations and Militias. A smaller Shiite Islamist
organization, the Islamic Amal (Action) Organization, is headed by Ayatollah
Mohammed Taqi Modarassi, a relatively moderate Shiite cleric who returned to Iraq
from exile in Iran after Saddam fell. Islamic Amal’s power base is in Karbala, and
it conducted attacks against Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s. At that time, it
was under the SCIRI umbrella. It does not appear to have a following nearly as large
as do SCIRI or Da’wa. Modarassi’s brother, Abd al-Hadi, headed the Islamic Front
for the Liberation of Bahrain, which stirred Shiite unrest against Bahrain’s regime in
the 1980s and 1990s. Islamic Amal won 2 seats in the January 30 election.
A variety of press reports say that some other Shiite militias are operating in
southern Iraq. One such militia is derived from the fighters who challenged Saddam
Hussein’s forces in the marsh areas of southern Iraq, around the town of Amara,
north of Basra. It goes by the name Hizbollah-Iraq and it is headed by guerrilla
leader Abdul Karim Muhammadawi, who was on the IGC. Hizbollah-Iraq apparently
plays a major role in policing the city of Amara (which is near the marshes) and
environs.
CRS-11
U.S. Relations With the Major Factions
During the Clinton Administration
Although they are trying to cooperate in post-Saddam Iraq, the factions
discussed above have a long history of friction. During the Clinton Administration,
differences among them nearly led to the collapse of the U.S. regime change effort.
As noted above, in May 1994, the KDP and the PUK clashed with each other over
territory, customs revenues levied at border with Turkey, and control over the
Kurdish enclave’s government based in Irbil. Some tensions exist between the two
large Kurdish factions today. Their infighting contributed to the defeat of an INC
offensive against Iraqi troops in March 1995; the KDP pulled out of the offensive at
the last minute. Although it was repelled, the offensive initially overran some of
poorly motivated front-line Iraqi units. Some INC leaders said the battle indicated
that the INC could have succeeded had it received more U.S. assistance.
Fractiousness among these groups during the mid-1990s had caused the United
States to briefly revisit a “coup strategy,” relying on Allawi’s INA.12 A prime
opportunity for that strategy came in August 1995, when Saddam’s son-in-law
Hussein Kamil al-Majid, organizer of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction efforts,
defected to Jordan, setting off turmoil within Saddam’s regime. After that defection,
Jordan’s King Hussein agreed to allow the INA to operate from Jordan, but the INA
became penetrated by Iraq’s intelligence services and Baghdad arrested or executed
over 100 INA sympathizers in June 1996. In August 1996, Baghdad launched a
military incursion into northern Iraq, at the invitation of the KDP, to help it capture
Irbil from the PUK. The incursion gave Baghdad the opportunity to rout remaining
INC and INA operatives throughout the north. During the incursion in the north, Iraq
reportedly executed two hundred oppositionists and arrested 2,000 others. The
United States evacuated from northern Iraq and eventually resettled in the United
States 650 mostly INC activists.
Congress and the Iraq Liberation Act. For the two subsequent years, the
Clinton Administration had little contact with the opposition. On February 26, 1998,
then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright testified to a Senate Appropriations
subcommittee that it would be “wrong to create false or unsustainable expectations”
for the opposition. During 1997-1998, Iraq’s obstructions of U.N. weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) inspections led to growing congressional calls to overthrow
Saddam, although virtually no one in Congress or outside was advocating a U.S.-led
military invasion to accomplish that. A congressional push for a regime change
policy began with an FY1998 supplemental appropriations (P.L. 105-174, May 1,
1998), which earmarked $5 million in Economic Support Funds (ESF) for the
opposition13 and $5 million for a Radio Free Iraq, under the direction of Radio Free
12 An account of this shift in U.S. strategy is essayed in Hoagland, Jim. “How CIA’s Secret
War On Saddam Collapsed.” Washington Post, June 26, 1997.
13 Of the ESF, $3 million was devoted to an overt program to promote cohesion among the
opposition, and to highlighting Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions. The remaining $2
million was used to translate and publicize documents of alleged Iraqi war crimes; the
documents were retrieved from the Kurdish north, placed on 176 CD-ROM diskettes, and
(continued...)
CRS-12
Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). The service began broadcasting in October 1998,
from Prague. As shown in the appendix, in subsequent years, Congress appropriated
funding for the Iraqi opposition and to publicize alleged Iraqi war crimes.
A clear indication of congressional support for a more active U.S. overthrow
effort was encapsulated in another bill introduced in 1998: the Iraq Liberation Act
(ILA, P.L. 105-338, October 31, 1998). The ILA was widely interpreted as an
expression of congressional support for the concept, advocated by Chalabi and some
U.S. experts, of promoting an Iraqi insurgency using U.S. air-power. President
Clinton signed the legislation, despite doubts about opposition capabilities. The ILA:
! stated that it should be the policy of the United States to “support
efforts” to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein. In mid-
November 1998, President Clinton publicly articulated that regime
change was a component of U.S. policy toward Iraq.
! gave the President authority to provide up to $97 million worth of
defense articles and services, as well as $2 million in broadcasting
funds, to opposition groups designated by the Administration.
! did not specifically provide for its termination after Saddam Hussein
is removed from power. Section 7 of the ILA provides for
continuing post-Saddam “transition assistance” to Iraqi parties and
movements with “democratic goals.”
Operation “Desert Fox”/First ILA Designations. Immediately after the
signing of the ILA came a series of new crises over Iraq’s obstructions of U.N.
weapons inspections. On December 15, 1998, U.N. inspectors were withdrawn, and
a three-day U.S. and British bombing campaign against suspected Iraqi WMD
facilities followed (Operation Desert Fox, December 16-19, 1998). In January 1999,
diplomat Frank Ricciardone was named as State Department liaison to the
opposition. On February 5, 1999, President Clinton issued a determination (P.D. 99-
13) making seven opposition groups eligible to receive U.S. military assistance under
the act: INC; INA; SCIRI; KDP; PUK; the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan
(IMIK)14; and the MCM.15
13 (...continued)
translated and analyzed by experts under U.S. government contract.
14 Because of its role in the eventual formation of the radical Ansar al-Islam group, the
IMIK did not receive U.S. funds after 2001, although it was not formally taken off the ILA
eligibility list.
15 In concert with a May 1999 INC visit to Washington D.C, the Clinton Administration
announced a draw down of $5 million worth of training and “non-lethal” defense articles
under the ILA. During 1999-2000, about 150 oppositionists underwent civil administration
training at Hurlburt air base in Florida, including Defense Department-run civil affairs
training to administer a post-Saddam government, but the Clinton Administration asserted
that the opposition was not sufficiently organized to receive weaponry or combat training.
The Hurlburt trainees were not brought into Operation Iraqi Freedom or into the Free Iraqi
(continued...)
CRS-13
Bush Administration Policy
Bush Administration policy toward Iraq started out similar to that of its
predecessor’s, but changed dramatically after the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks. Some accounts say that the Administration was planning, well prior to
September 11, to confront Iraq; others say that the shift on Iraq was prompted almost
exclusively by the attacks. The policy shift first became clear in President Bush’s
State of the Union message on January 29, 2002; in that speech, he characterized Iraq
as part of an “axis of evil,” along with Iran and North Korea.
Pre-September 11: Reinforcing Containment. Throughout most of its
first year, the Bush Administration continued the basic elements of its predecessor’s
policy on Iraq. With no immediate consensus on whether or how to pursue
Saddam’s overthrow, Secretary of State Powell focused on strengthening
containment of Iraq, which the Bush Administration said had eroded substantially in
the few preceding years. Powell visited the Middle East in February 2001 to enlist
regional support for a “smart sanctions” plan. The plan was a modification of the
U.N. sanctions regime and “oil-for-food” program to improve international
enforcement of the U.N. ban on exports of dual use technology to Iraq in exchange
for a relaxation of restrictions on exports of purely civilian equipment.16 After about
a year of Security Council negotiations, the major feature of the smart sanctions plan
— new procedures that virtually eliminated U.N. review of civilian exports to Iraq
— was adopted on May 14, 2002 (U.N. Resolution 1409).
Even though several senior officials, such as deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, had been strong advocates of a regime change policy, many of the long-
standing questions about the difficulty of that strategy were debated early in the Bush
Administration.17 Like its predecessor, the Bush Administration decided not to
provide the opposition with lethal aid, combat training, or military support.
Post-September 11: Implementing Regime Change. After the
September 11 attacks and as the U.S.-led war on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan wound down in early 2002, the Bush Administration began stressing
regime change in its Iraq policy and it asserted that containment was failing. Some
U.S. officials, particularly deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, asserted that the
United States needed to respond to the September 11, 2001 attacks by “ending
states” that support terrorist groups, including Iraq. Vice President Cheney visited
the Middle East in March 2002 reportedly to consult regional countries about the
possibility of confronting Iraq militarily, although the leaders visited reportedly
urged greater U.S. attention to the Arab-Israeli dispute and opposed confrontation
with Iraq. Some accounts, including the book Plan of Attack, by Bob Woodward
15 (...continued)
Forces that deployed to Iraq toward the end of the major combat phase of the war.
16 For more information on this program, see CRS Report RL30472, Iraq: Oil For Food
Program, Sanctions, and U.S. Policy.
17 One account of Bush Administration internal debates on the strategy is found in Hersh,
Seymour. “The Debate Within.” The New Yorker, Mar. 11, 2002.
CRS-14
(published in April 2004), say that Secretary of State Powell and others were
concerned about the potential consequences of an invasion of Iraq, particularly the
difficulties of building a democratic political structure after major hostilities ended.
The two primary themes in the Bush Administration’s public case for the need
to confront Iraq were (1) its purported refusal to end its WMD programs, and (2) its
ties to terrorist groups, to which Iraq might transfer WMD for conduct of a
catastrophic attack on the United States. President Bush asserted that Iraq was a
“grave and gathering” threat that should be blunted before the threat became an
imminent or immediate threat to U.S. security. The Administration added that
regime change would yield the further benefit of liberating the Iraqi people and
promoting stability and democracy in the Middle East.
! WMD Threat Perception. Senior U.S. officials asserted the
following about Iraq’s WMD: (1) that Iraq had worked to rebuild its
WMD programs in the nearly four years since U.N. weapons
inspectors left Iraq and had failed to comply with 17 U.N.
resolutions, including Resolution 1441 (November 8, 2002) that
demanded complete elimination of all of Iraq’s WMD programs; (2)
that Iraq had used chemical weapons against its own people (the
Kurds) and against Iraq’s neighbors (Iran), implying that Iraq would
not necessarily be deterred from using WMD against the United
States or its allies; and (3) that Iraq could transfer its WMD to
terrorists, particularly Al Qaeda, that could use these weapons to
cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States or
elsewhere. Critics noted that, under the U.S. threat of massive
retaliation, Iraq did not use WMD against U.S. troops in the 1991
Gulf war, although it did defy U.S. warnings of retaliation to burn
Kuwait’s oil fields in that war. (The “comprehensive” September
2004 report of the Iraq Survey Group, the so-called Duelfer report,18
found no WMD stockpiles or production but said that there was
evidence that the regime retained the intention to reconstitute WMD
programs in the future. The WMD search ended December 2004.)
! Links to Al Qaeda. Iraq was a designated state sponsor of terrorism
during 1979-82, and was again designated after the 1990 invasion of
Kuwait. Although they did not assert that Saddam Hussein’s regime
had a direct connection to the September 11 attacks or the
subsequent anthrax mailings, senior U.S. officials said there was
evidence of Iraqi linkages to Al Qaeda, in part because of the
presence of pro-Al Qaeda militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in
northern Iraq. (The final report by the 9/11 Commission found no
evidence of a “collaborative operational linkage” between Iraq and
Al Qaeda.)19
18 The full text of the Duelfer report is available at [http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/
iraq/cia93004wmdrpt.html].
19 Page 66 of the September 11 Commission report.
CRS-15
Run-up to Military Action. As it began in mid-2002 to prepare for possible
military action against Iraq, the Bush Administration tried to build up and broaden
the Iraqi opposition. On June 16, 2002, the Washington Post reported that, in early
2002, President Bush authorized stepped up covert activities by the CIA and special
operations forces to destabilize Saddam Hussein. In August 2002, the State and
Defense Departments jointly invited six opposition groups (INC, the INA, the KDP,
the PUK, SCIRI, and the MCM) to Washington. At the same time, the
Administration expanded its ties to several groups, particularly those composed
primarily of ex-military officers,20 as well as the Iraqi Turkmen Front, a small, ethnic-
based group aligned with Turkey;21 the Islamic Accord of Iraq, a Damascus-based
Shiite Islamic Party; and the Assyrian Democratic Movement, which is headed by
Yonadam Yousif Kanna.22 The Administration also began training about 5,000
oppositionists to assist U.S. forces,23 although only about 70 completed training at
an air base (Taszar) in Hungary.24 (These recruits served with U.S. forces in OIF as
translators and mediators between U.S. forces and local leaders.)
During late 2002, as it became increasingly likely the United States would attack
Iraq, the opposition began positioning itself for post-Saddam Iraq. In December
2002, with U.S. officials attending, major Iraqi opposition groups met in London,
seeking to declare a provisional government. Despite Bush Administration
opposition to the pre-war formation of a provisional government — a position
grounded on the belief that doing so would give the impression that the United States
wanted the exile groups to dominate post-war Iraq — the opposition met in northern
Iraq in February 2003 and formed a “transition preparation committee.”
As U.N. inspectors worked in Iraq under the new mandates provided in
Resolution 1441, the Administration demanded complete disarmament by Iraq to
avert military action. In part to garner international support for a U.S.-led war, the
Administration downplayed the goal of regime change in President Bush’s September
12, 2002 speech before the United Nations General Assembly, stressing instead the
20 These ex-military-dominated groups included the Iraqi National Movement; the Iraqi
National Front; the Iraqi Free Officers and Civilians Movement; and the Higher Council for
National Salvation, headed by a former chief of military intelligence. Ex-chief of staff of
Iraq’s military Nizar al-Khazraji, who was based in Denmark since fleeing Iraq in 1996, may
also be a member of this group. He is under investigation there for alleged involvement in
Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988. His current whereabouts are
unknown. On December 9, 2002, the Administration made most of them eligible — in
addition to the seven groups originally made eligible — to receive ILA draw-downs, and he
authorized the remaining $92 million worth of goods and services available under the ILA.
21 Turkomens, who are generally Sunni Muslims, number about 350,000 and live mainly in
northern Iraq.
22 Iraq’s Assyrians are based primarily in northern Iraq, but there is a substantial diaspora
community living in the United States; the group began integrating into the broader
opposition front in September 2002. In post-Saddam Iraq, Kanna served on the IGC.
23 Deyoung, Karen, and Daniel Williams. “Training of Iraqi Exiles Authorized.”
Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2002.
24 Williams, Daniel. “U.S. Army to Train 1,000 Iraqi Exiles.” Washington Post, Dec. 18,
2002.
CRS-16
need to enforce U.N. resolutions on Iraq. In evaluating the U.S. demands, the U.N.
Security Council received several briefings by the director of the U.N. inspection
body UNMOVIC (U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission)
Hans Blix and the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
Mohammad al-Baradei, based on WMD inspections that resumed November 27,
2002. Blix and Baradei criticized Iraq for failing to pro-actively cooperate to clear
up outstanding questions about its WMD program, but the latter two briefings
(February 24 and March 7, 2003) noted progress in clearing up some uncertainties
and added that Iraq might not have retained any WMD. The Administration began
emphasizing regime change rather than disarmament as it appeared that the Council
would not back war.
Security Council opponents of war, including France, Russia, China, and
Germany, said the pre-war WMD inspections showed that Iraq could be disarmed
peacefully or contained indefinitely. On the Security Council, the United States,
along with Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria, maintained that Iraq had not fundamentally
decided to disarm. At a March 16, 2003, summit meeting with the leaders of Britain,
Spain, and Bulgaria at the Azores, President Bush asserted that diplomatic options
to disarm Iraq had failed. The following evening, President Bush gave Saddam
Hussein and his sons, Uday and Qusay, an ultimatum to leave Iraq within 48 hours
to avoid war. They refused the ultimatum, and OIF began on March 19, 2003.
In the war, Iraq’s conventional military forces were overwhelmed by the
approximately 380,000 person U.S. and British force assembled (a substantial
proportion of which remained afloat or in supporting roles), although some Iraqi units
and irregulars (“Saddam’s Fedayeen”) put up stiff resistance and used unconventional
tactics. No WMD was used, although Iraq did fire some ballistic missiles into
Kuwait; it is not clear whether those missiles were of prohibited ranges (greater than
150 km). The regime vacated Baghdad on April 9, 2003, although Saddam appeared
publicly with supporters that day in a district of Baghdad where he was popular.
After the combat against the Iraqi military, organs of the U.S. government began
searching for evidence of former regime human rights abuses and other violations,
in addition to evidence of WMD. These searches were led by the Iraq Survey Group
(ISG), discussed above. The ISG’s WMD search ended in December 2004, and most
of its 1,200 person staff are now focused on analyzing the insurgency.25
25 For analysis of the former regime’s WMD and other abuses, see CRS Report RL32379,
Iraq: Former Regime Weapons Programs, Human Rights Violations, and U.S. Policy.
CRS-17
Post-Saddam Governance and Transition
There has been substantial debate about the course of U.S. policy toward Iraq
as the post-Saddam insurgency has persisted.26 On December 20, 2004, after growing
questions about the cost and duration of the U.S. action in Iraq, President Bush
acknowledged difficulties by saying that the insurgents were adversely “having an
affect” on U.S. policy. However, following the relatively successful January 30,
2005 elections, the President and many experts have become more hopeful about the
prospects for establishing a stable democracy. Some critics maintain that current
policy will not bring stability or democracy to Iraq and that new steps should be
considered. Some options are discussed in this section.
Occupation Period and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
After the fall of the regime, the United States set up an occupation structure, a
decision reportedly based on Administration concerns that immediate sovereignty
would likely result in infighting among and domination by major factions. The
Bush Administration initially tasked Lt. Gen. Jay Garner (ret.) to direct
reconstruction, with a staff of U.S. government personnel to serve as advisers and
administrators in Iraq’s ministries. He headed the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), within the Department of Defense, created by a
January 20, 2003 executive order. Garner and his staff deployed in April 2003.
Garner tried to quickly establish a representative successor Iraqi regime. He,
and White House envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, organized a meeting in Nasiriyah (April
15, 2003) of about 100 Iraqis of varying ethnicities and ideologies. Another meeting
of about 250 delegates was held in Baghdad on April 26, 2003, ending in agreement
to hold a broader meeting, within a month, to name an interim Iraqi administration.
In parallel, major exile parties began a series of meetings, with U.S. envoys present.
Press reports said that senior U.S. officials were dissatisfied with Garner’s lax
approach to governing, including his tolerance for Iraqis installing themselves as
local leaders. In May 2003, the Administration named former ambassador L. Paul
Bremer to replace Garner by heading a “Coalition Provisional Authority” (CPA),
which subsumed ORHA. The CPA was an occupying authority recognized by U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1483 (May 22, 2003). Bremer suspended Garner’s
political transition process and instead agreed to appoint a 25- to 30-member Iraqi
body that would have “real authority” (though not formal sovereignty). Bremer said
this “Governing Council” would nominate ministry heads, recommend policies, and
draft a new constitution.27
26 Some of the information in this section was obtained during author’s participation in a
congressional delegation to Iraq during Feb. 26-Mar. 2, 2004. The visit to Baghdad, Basra,
and Tallil included meetings with CPA head L. Paul Bremer, the commander of U.S. forces
in Iraq Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and various local and national Iraqi political figures and
other CPA, U.S., and coalition military officials.
27 Transcript: “Bremer Reviews Progress, Plans for Iraq Reconstruction.” Washington File,
June 23, 2003.
CRS-18
Another alteration of the U.S. post-war structure was made public in early
October 2003; an “Iraq Stabilization Group” under the direction of former National
Security Adviser (now Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice was formed to
coordinate interagency support to the CPA. A Rice deputy, Robert Blackwill, had
been the NSC’s primary official for the Iraq transition, but he resigned from the
Administration in November 2004. In March 2005, Secretary Rice named
Ambassador Richard Jones, former ambassador to Kuwait, as her chief advisor and
coordinator for Iraq. The Administration’s post-war policy did not make extensive
use of a State Department initiative, called the “Future of Iraq Project,” that drew up
plans for administration by Iraqis after the fall of Saddam, although some Iraqis who
participated in that project are now in official positions in Iraq’s government. The
State Department project, which cost $5 million, consisted of about 15 working
groups on major issues.
The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). On July 13, 2003, Bremer named the
“Iraq Governing Council (IGC).” During its tenure (July 2003 - June 2004), the IGC
was less active than expected; some believe it was too heavily dominated by exiles
and lacked legitimacy. In September 2003, the IGC selected a 25-member “cabinet”
to run individual ministries. The “cabinet” had roughly the same factional and ethnic
balance of the IGC itself (a slight majority of Shiite Muslims). Among major
actions, the IGC began a process of “de-Baathification” — a purge from government
of about 30,000 persons who held any of the four top ranks of the Baath Party — and
it authorized the establishment of a war crimes tribunal for Saddam and his
associates. The IGC dissolved on June 1, 2004, in concert with the naming of the
interim government.
Reflecting the heavy presence of exile leaders, the major figures on the IGC
included several of the major faction leaders mentioned above, including SCIRI
leader Hakim; Da’wa leader Jafari; Chalabi; Allawi; and Kurdish leaders Talabani
and Barzani. Some new emerging leaders were also on the IGC, including:
! Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Muslim, senior member of the Shammar
tribe and president of Saudi-based Hicap Technology.
! Assyrian leader Yonadam Kanna
! Iraqi Communist Party head Hamid al-Musa, a Shiite Muslim. The
party is making a comeback in Iraq. It had been an adversary and
competitor of the Baath Party, although the two had periods of
cooperation in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
! Senior Sunni figure Adnan Pachachi, who served as foreign minister
during the governments of Qasim and “the Arif brothers.” Pachachi,
a Sunni Arab who is about 80, lived in the UAE during Saddam
Hussein’s rule and heads a secular Sunni party called the “Iraqi
Independent Democrats.”
CRS-19
The Handover of Sovereignty and Run-up to Elections28
The Bush Administration initially made the end of the U.S. occupation
contingent on the completion of a new constitution and the holding of national
elections for a new government, tasks which were expected to be completed by late
2005. However, the IGC made little progress in drafting a constitution due to
factional divisions. Ayatollah Sistani insisted that drafters be elected, and he and
others agitated for an early restoration of Iraqi sovereignty, as well as for direct
elections to choose a new government. On November 15, 2003, after consultations
with President Bush, Bremer and the IGC announced a plan to draft a provisional
constitution, or Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), to return sovereignty to Iraq
by June 30, 2004, and to hold national elections for a permanent government by
December 31, 2005. Sistani’s opposition torpedoed a major aspect of the plan —
that, as an initial step, a national assembly would be selected through nationwide
“caucuses” rather than direct elections.
Transitional Administrative Law (TAL)/Transition Roadmap. The
CPA decisions on transition roadmap were incorporated into the TAL, which was
signed on March 8, 2004.29 Most of the major transition-related provisions of the
TAL are discussed in the appropriate sections below, but some of the overarching
points are that:
! Elections would be held by January 31, 2005 for a 275-seat
transitional National Assembly. The election law for the transition
government “shall aim to achieve the goal of having women
constitute no less than 25% of the members of the National
Assembly.”
! The Kurds maintained their autonomous “Kurdistan Regional
Government,” but they were not given control of the city of Kirkuk.
They did receive some powers to contradict or alter the application
of Iraqi law in their provinces, and their peshmerga militia could
continue to operate.
! Islam is the official religion of Iraq and is to be considered “a
source,” but not the only source or the primary source, of legislation.
It adds that no law can be passed that contradicts the agreed tenets
of Islam, but neither can any law contradict certain rights including
peaceful assembly; free expression; equality of men and women
before the law; and the right to strike and demonstrate.
Interim (Allawi) Government/Sovereignty Handover/Resolution
1546. The TAL did not directly address the formation of an interim government that
28 Information in this section was obtained from various press reports, CRS conversations
with executive branch officials in May 2004, CRS conversations with journalists and other
observers, and CRS participation in a congressional visit to Iraq during Feb. 28-29, 2004.
29 The text of the TAL can be obtained from the CPA website: [http://cpa-iraq.org/
government/TAL.html].
CRS-20
would run Iraq from sovereignty handover (June 30, 2004) until the January 2005
elections. Options considered for selecting the interim government included holding
a traditional assembly along the lines of Afghanistan’s loya jirga or a smaller
meeting or expanding the IGC into an interim government. The United States
decided to tap U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to take the lead role in selecting the
interim government.30 He envisioned a government of technocrats, devoid of those
who might promote themselves in national elections, but maneuvering by senior
politicians led to inclusion of many of them in the interim government. Members of
the interim government were named on June 1, 2004, and they began work
immediately. The formal handover of sovereignty took place at about 10:30 A.M.
Baghdad time on June 28, 2004. The handover occurred two days before the
advertised June 30 date, partly to confound insurgents.
The powers of the interim government were addressed in an addendum to the
TAL. It has had a largely ceremonial “presidency” — former IGC member Ghazi
al-Yawar — and two deputy presidents (the Da’wa’s Jafari and the KDP’s Dr.
Rowsch Shaways). As noted above, Iyad al-Allawi has been Prime Minister, with
executive power, and there was a deputy prime minister, 26 ministers, two ministers
of state with portfolio, and three ministers of state without portfolio. Six ministers
are women, and the ethnicity mix was roughly the same as in the IGC. The key
positions included the following:
! Deputy Prime Minister (for national security): PUK official Barham
Salih, formerly PUK representative in Washington and prime
minister of the PUK-controlled region of northern Iraq.
! Minister of Defense: Hazem al-Shaalan, a Sunni Muslim elder of
the Ghazal tribe who was in exile during 1985-2003.
! Interior Minister: Falah al-Naqib, another Sunni, is the son of ex-
Baathist general Hassan al-Naqib. (Hassan al-Naqib was a member
of the first executive committee of the INC in the early 1990s.)
! Minister of Finance: senior SCIRI official Adel Abdul Mahdi.
! Minister of Oil: oil expert Thamir Ghadban, who played a major
role in rehabilitating the post-Saddam oil industry.
! Some IGC “ministers” were retained. KDP official Hoshyar Zebari,
the “foreign minister” in the IGC cabinet, was retained in this post.
Another KDP activist, Ms. Nasreen Berwari (now married to
President Ghazi al-Yawar) stayed as Minister of Public Works.
Resolution 1546/Coalition Military Mandate.
Many of the powers and
responsibilities of the interim government were reaffirmed by U.N. Security Council
Resolution 1546, adopted unanimously on June 8, 2004, which also contained several
30 Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. “Envoy Urges U.N.-Chosen Iraqi Government.” Washington Post.
Apr. 15, 2004.
CRS-21
provisions spelling out the duration and legal status of U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
Because of Sistani’s opposition to the TAL’s limitations on the authority of a
transition (post-January 2005) president and its provision allowing the Kurds a veto
over a permanent constitution, Resolution 1546 did not formally endorse the TAL.
The Resolution endorsed the handover of sovereignty and provided that
! U.S. officials no longer have final authority on non-security related
issues. The interim government’s primary function was to run the
ministries and prepare for the January 2005 elections. Many
international law experts say that the interim government could have
exceeded this intended mandate, including amending the TAL or
revoking CPA decrees, but it did not take such steps. The Kurds had
feared that the interim government would repeal TAL provisions that
the Kurds view as protecting them from the Arab majority;31 their
fears were heightened by the omission from Resolution 1546 of any
mention of the TAL.
! The relationship between U.S. and Iraqi forces, coordination and
partnership, was spelled out in an exchange of letters between
Secretary of State Powell and Allawi, annexed to Resolution 1546.
The Iraqi government does not have a veto over specific coalition
operations, and the coalition retains the ability to take prisoners.
The Resolution reinforced the TAL in specifying that, at least until
the end of 2005 (the end of the transition period), Iraqi forces will be
“a principal partner in the multi-national force operating in Iraq
under unified [American] command pursuant to the provisions of
U.N. Security Council Resolution 1511 (October 16, 2003) and any
subsequent resolutions.”
! The coalition’s mandate is to be reviewed “at the request of the
Government of Iraq or twelve months from the date of this
resolution,” that the mandate would expire when a permanent
government is sworn in at the end of 2005, and that the mandate
would be terminated “if the Iraqi government so requests.” The
Resolution defers to the newly elected government an agreement on
the status of foreign forces (Status of Forces Agreement, SOFA) in
Iraq. Currently, U.S. forces operate in Iraq and use its facilities
under temporary memoranda of understanding. On April 22, 2005,
it was publicly reported that the chairman and ranking Member of
the Senate Armed Services Committee had written to Secretary of
State Rice urging that the United States seek a formal invitation
from the Iraqi government (currently being constituted) for U.S.
troops to remain until security can be ensured by Iraqi forces.
! The interim government assumed control over Iraq’s oil revenues
and the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), subject to monitoring for
31 Filkins, Dexter. “Kurds Threaten to Walk Away from Iraqi State.” New York Times, June
9, 2004.
CRS-22
at least one year (until June 2005) by the U.N.-mandated
International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB). Iraq also
was given responsibility for close-out of the “oil-for-food
program.”32 (In accordance with Resolution 1483 of May 22, 2004,
the program ended November 21, 2003.)
! The Resolution gave the United Nations a major role in assisting and
advising the interim government in preparing for the January 30
elections and in many aspects of governance. It also authorized a
force within the coalition to protect U.N. personnel and facilities.
! Resolution 1546 and the addendum to the TAL provided for the
holding of a conference of over 1,000 Iraqis (chosen from all around
Iraq by a 60-member commission of Iraqis) to choose a 100-seat
“Interim National Council” — essentially an interim parliament.
This body, selected under tight security during August 13-18, 2004,33
did not have legislative authority, but was able to veto decisions by
the executive branch with a 2/3 majority. Nineteen of the 100 seats
went to IGC members who did not obtain positions in the interim
government, as provided for in the TAL. The council was sworn in
on September 1, 2004; it held some televised “hearings,” including
questioning ministers.
Post-Handover U.S. Structure in Iraq. The following were additional
consequences of the sovereignty handover, designed in part to lower the profile of
U.S. influence over the post-handover Iraqi interim government.
! Bremer departed Iraq for the United States on June 28, 2004, and
the CPA and formal state of occupation ceased. Ambassador John
Negroponte, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, confirmed by the Senate
on May 6, 2004, arrived in Iraq and subsequently presented
credentials, establishing formal U.S.-Iraq diplomatic relations for the
first time since January 1991. A large U.S. embassy opened on June
30, 2004; it is staffed with about 1,000 U.S. personnel, including
about 160 U.S. officials and representatives that serve as advisers to
the interim government.34 In February 2005, Negroponte was
nominated to be new National Intelligence Director, leaving the
ambassadorship vacant; U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay
Khalilzad has been nominated to the post. (The FY2005
supplemental request asked $1.37 billion for Iraq embassy
operations and to construct a new embassy in Baghdad; the House-
passed version of H.R. 1268, the supplemental appropriation, cuts
32 For information on that program, see CRS Report RL30472, Iraq: Oil-for-Food Program,
International Sanctions, and Illicit Trade.
33 Tavernise, Sabrina. “In Climax To a Tumultuous 4-Day Debate, Iraq Chooses An
Assembly.” New York Times, August 19, 2004.
34 See CRS Report RS21867, U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
CRS-23
the $658 million requested for new embassy construction, but the
Senate-passed version restores that funding.)
! Some CPA functions, such as the advising of local Iraqi
governments, local Iraqi governing councils, and U.S. military units,
have been retained at the U.S. embassy in the form of an “Iraq
Reconstruction and Management Office (IRMO).” About 150 U.S.
personnel are serving in at least four major centers around Iraq to
advise local Iraqi governments: Hilla, Basra, Kirkuk, and Mosul.
As of November 2004, the IRMO is headed by Ambassador
William Taylor, formerly U.S. aid coordinator for Afghanistan.
! After the handover, U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad
(Combined Joint Task Force-7, CJTF-7) became a multi-national
headquarters “Multinational Force-Iraq, MNF-I”. Four-star U.S.
Gen. George Casey, confirmed by the Senate on June 24, 2004, is
commander.35 Lt. Gen. John Vines heads the “Multinational Corps-
Iraq”; he is operational commander of U.S. forces on a day-to-day
basis. Before dissolving, the CPA extended its orders giving U.S.
military people, and some contractors, immunity from prosecution
by Iraqi courts.36
! The Program Management Office (PMO), which reported to the
Department of Defense and administers some U.S. funds for Iraq,
has been replaced by a “Project and Contracting Office (PCO),”
headed by Charles Hess.
January 30, 2005 Elections/New Government/Next Steps. (The
elections, including competing slates, results, and the establishment of a new
government, are analyzed in a separate CRS Report RS21968, Iraq: Elections and
New Government.) After the handover of sovereignty, and in accordance with the
TAL, on January 30, 2005, national elections were held for a transitional National
Assembly, 18 provincial councils, and the Kurdish regional assembly. As noted
above, the elections gave the UIA a slim majority (140) of the 275 seats in the new
Assembly; the two main Kurdish parties control 75 seats; interim Prime Minister
Allawi’s bloc won 40 seats; and interim President Ghazi Yawar’s slate won 5 seats,
with several other parties splitting the remaining 15 seats.37 With the results now
announced, the new government is taking shape as follows:
! The 275-seat Assembly convened for the first time on March 16.
After several failed attempts, the Assembly chose Sunni
parliamentarian Hajim al-Hassani as speaker on March 29. He was
35 Hendren, John, and Richard Serrano. “Pentagon Intends to Replace Ground Commander
in Iraq.” Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2004.
36 Wright, Robin. “U.S. Immunity in Iraq Will Go Beyond June 30.” Washington Post, June
24, 2004.
37 The Communist Party’s People’s Union slate won two seats.
CRS-24
interim Minister of Industry and was a member of the Iraqi Islamic
Party, which boycotted the election, but he ran for election on Ghazi
Yawar’s slate. Sistani aide Hussein Shahristani and Kurdish official
Arif Tayfour were selected deputy speakers.
! On April 6, in keeping with a UIA-Kurdish agreement that partially
satisfied Kurdish demands on Kirkuk, the role of Islam, and related
issues, PUK leader Talabani was selected President, along with two
deputies, SCIRI official Adel Abdul Mahdi (the interim finance
minister) and Ghazi al-Yawar (the interim president). They obtained
the required two-thirds Assembly vote. The three then nominated
Da’wa leader Ibrahim al-Jafari as Prime Minister, and he was
confirmed the next day. Under the TAL, Jafari has one month (until
May 7) to achieve confirmation of a cabinet (majority Assembly
vote), or he loses his position as Prime Minister.
! Since being named, all major factions have been bargaining over the
30 or so available cabinet seats, particularly the key posts of defense,
interior, foreign affairs, finance, and oil. One issue that has delayed
the cabinet selections is the degree to which Allawi’s faction, as well
as a Sunni Arab umbrella grouping (“National Dialogue Council”)
would obtain key posts. According to press reports on April 26,
Jafari has made his cabinet recommendations and is discussing them
with the presidency council for possible presentation to the
Assembly. It appears that the UIA and the Kurds will control almost
four of the five key posts; a Sunni is likely to be named defense
minister. There is also debate over whether to name two or three
deputy prime ministers. (Ahmad Chalabi is widely mentioned for
one of those deputy slots.)
! As provided for in the TAL, the transitional National Assembly is to
draft the new constitution. In practice, it will likely name a drafting
committee. It is to complete the draft by August 15, 2005, in time for
an October 15, 2005 referendum. The TAL provides for a six month
drafting extension if the Assembly cannot complete a draft by the
specified deadline, but exercising this extension would delay all
subsequent stages of the transition. As noted above, two-thirds of
the voters of any three Iraqi provinces may veto the permanent
constitution, essentially giving any of the three major communities
(Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs) a veto. If the constitution is
not approved, another draft is to be completed and voted on by
October 15, 2006.
! If the permanent constitution is approved, elections to a permanent
government are to occur by December 15, 2005, and it is to take
office by December 31, 2005. If the constitution is not approved,
then the December 15, 2005, elections would be for a new
transitional national assembly.
CRS-25
U.S. Promotion of Civil Society and Local Governance. The national
elections have complemented existing U.S. efforts to promote local governance and
civil society, and there has been some political progress at the local level. U.S.
officials say Iraqis are freer than at any time in the past 30 years, with a free press and
the ability to organize politically. Over 500 courts are operating, and many Iraqi
women are becoming more politically active. On the other hand, the State
Department report on human rights in Iraq, released on February 28, 2005, notes
numerous human rights abuses of the interim government, mostly by the police, but
attributes the abuses to the interim government’s drive to secure the country against
the persistent insurgency.38
According to a State Department report to Congress in April 2005 detailing how
the FY2004 supplemental appropriation (P.L. 108-106) is being spent (“2207
Report”), a total of $905 million has been allocated for “democracy and governance”
activities. Activities funded include U.S. assistance to the election process; political
party development (funded through programs run by the International Republican
Institute and National Democratic Institute); assistance to local governments and
councils; and the “Community Action Program” (local reconstruction projects such
as school refurbishment that are voted on by village and town representatives). U.S.
funds were also used to support for the Interim National Council, training for Iraqi
judges, voter education, independent media promotion, women’s democracy
initiatives, and small employment-generating reconstruction projects. (An additional
$360 million for these activities was requested in the FY2006 regular foreign aid
appropriations request.)
The Insurgent Challenge
The Sunni Arab-led insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi forces has defied most
U.S. expectations in intensity and duration. As of April 26, 2005, about 1,573 U.S.
forces and about 160 coalition partner soldiers have died in OIF, as well as over 90
U.S. civilians working on contract to U.S. institutions in Iraq. Of U.S. deaths, about
1,340 have occurred since President Bush declared an end to “major combat
operations” in Iraq on May 1, 2003, and about 1,200 of the U.S. deaths were by
hostile action. About 140,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, with about another 25,000
troops in Kuwait supporting OIF, and another 22,000 coalition partner forces in Iraq.
U.S. force levels are now back to levels prior to the January 2005 election, during
which time about 12,000 extra forces were sent.
Insurgents’ Size and Strength. Upon assuming his position in July 2003,
CENTCOM commander John Abizaid,39 overall commander of U.S. operations in
the Iraq and the Persian Gulf/Central Asia region, said that the United States faced
38 U.S. State Department, Country Report on Human Rights Practices, Iraq. February 28,
2005.
39 U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is the overall command for U.S. military operations
in the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Middle
East. Syria and Lebanon was added to CENTCOM’s area of responsibility in December
2004. Its forward base is in Qatar, although its main base is at McDill AFB in Tampa,
Florida.
CRS-26
a “classic guerrilla war.” Subsequent to the capture of Saddam Hussein in mid-
December 2003, some U.S. commanders had said the United States had “turned the
corner” against the resistance, but Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said in September
2004 that the insurgency was “worsening.” On December 20, 2004, President Bush
said at a press conference that the insurgency was “having an effect” on U.S. policy
in Iraq. In her confirmation hearings on January 18-19, 2005, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said the insurgency “cannot be overcome by military force alone.”
U.S. officials again turned more optimistic after the January 30, 2005, elections
to the point where some U.S. commanders, such as Gen. Casey, began predicting that
there could be “fairly substantial reductions” in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by
March 2006.40 Abizaid in congressional testimony on March 1 and 2, 2005,
characterized the elections as a rebuke to the insurgents and a key factor in what he
said was a “waning”of the insurgency. U.S. officials point out that no polling
stations were overrun that day. U.S. commanders say they are getting a growing
number of tips from Iraqi citizens and that insurgents might no longer welcome
inside cities, forcing them to operate in poorly populated open areas. However, after
a post-election lull, insurgent attacks have returned to the approximately 60 attack per
day level that existed before the election.
Although they are increasingly hesitant to assess the size of the insurgency, U.S.
commanders now say insurgents probably number approximately 12,000 - 20,000,
with a higher degree of coordination than previously believed. The Government
Accountability Office (GAO) said in testimony on March 15, 2005, that CENTCOM
assessed in October 2004 that insurgent ranks include 10,000 “former regime
elements” (mostly Baathists); about 1,000 foreign fighters (see below); about 5,000
criminals and religious extremists; and 3,000 pro-Sadr fighters. Joint Chiefs of Staff
Richard Myers said in Senate testimony on February 3, 2005 that U.S. forces
estimated they had killed 15,000 insurgents over the past seven months, making
earlier U.S. estimates of 6,000 - 9,000 insurgents not credible. Some Iraqi officials,
including its highest ranking intelligence official, have said that up to 40,000 active
insurgents, helped by another 150,000 persons performing various supporting roles.
Abizaid said in testimony (Senate Armed Service Committee) on March 1, 2005 that
the insurgency fielded about 3,500 fighters on election day.
Outside Support. Some public U.S. assessments say the insurgents receive
funding from wealthy donors in neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia,41 where
a number of clerics have publicly called on Saudis to support the Iraqi insurgency.
Other accounts say that insurgent leaders are using Syria as a base to funnel money
and weapons to their fighters in Iraq,42 an assessment that drew additional credence
when Syria turned Saddam’s half brother Sabawi over to Iraqi authorities in February
40 Comments on CNN by Gen. Casey, as cited in Hendren, John. “General Predicts
Reduction of American Troops in Iraq.” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2005.
41 Krane, Jim. “U.S. Officials: Iraq Insurgency Bigger.” Associated Press report published
in the Philadelphia Inquirer. July 9, 2004; Schmitt, Eric, and Thom Shanker. “Estimates
By U.S. See More Rebels With More Funds.” New York Times, October 22, 2004.
42 Blanford, Nicholas. “Sealing Syria’s Desolate Border.” Christian Science Monitor,
December 21, 2004.
CRS-27
2005. These reports have led to U.S. warnings to and imposition of additional U.S.
sanctions against Syria. Some believe that outside support is minimal and that the
insurgents have ample supplies of arms and explosives; according to the Defense
Department, about 250,000 tons of munitions remain around in Iraq in arms depots
not secured after the regime fell.
Insurgent Goals and Operations. The insurgents have sought to
demonstrate that U.S. stabilization efforts are not working by causing international
workers and peacekeeping forces to leave Iraq, attempting to prevent or lower turnout
in the upcoming elections, slowing reconstruction, and attempting to provoke civil
conflict among Iraq’s ethnic groups. Insurgent targets have included not only U.S.
forces but, increasingly, Iraqi security forces and Iraqi civilians working for U.S.
authorities, foreign contractors, oil export facilities, and water and other
infrastructure facilities. Some insurgents focus on assassinating Iraqi officials,
including local and national government officials and judges in the trial of members
of the former regime. The insurgents are increasingly pressuring U.S. supply lines,
necessitating increasing use of air transportation. Attacks have choked gasoline
supplies to Baghdad, creating long gas lines.
Analysts differ on the motivations of the Sunni insurgents. The bulk of them
appear to be motivated by opposition to perceived U.S. rule, although the insurgency
appears increasingly dominated by younger Iraqis, in partnership with foreign Islamic
fighters, who might want to establish an Islamic state, as well as the generally older
and more well-funded former Baathists. Many insurgents are likely also working to
bring Sunnis back into power. Some of the major insurgent factions include the
following:
! The Islamic Army of Iraq. Claimed responsibility for a January 9,
2005 attack that killed eight Ukranian troops and one Kazakh
soldier.
! Muhammad’s Army. This faction is said to be led by radical Sunni
cleric Abdullah al-Janabi, who was said to be in Fallujah before the
November 2004 U.S. offensive there.
! The Secret Republican Army.
! The 1920 Revolution Brigades.
! The Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front.
Sunni Clerical Relations with the Insurgency. Many insurgents
appear to respect a wide network of Sunni Islamist clerics. Opposition to the U.S.
presence in Iraq caused many of these clerics to call for a boycott of the January 30
elections, a call that added to insurgent threats and suppressed Sunni participation.
The Sunni clerics closest to and who support are perceived as supporting the
insurgency belong to the Muslim Clerics Association (MCA), which claims to
represent 3,000 Sunni mosques countrywide. The MCA is led by Harith al-Dhari,
who heads the large Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad, and a leader of the Abu
Hanifa mosque in Baghdad, Shaykh Abd al-Salam al-Qubaysi. Demonstrating its
CRS-28
influence over the insurgents, the MCA has, on occasion, succeeded in persuading
insurgent groups to release Western or other hostages. Since the January 30
elections, some MCA clerics have indicated that Sunnis should take part at least in
the constitutional drafting process, and join the security forces. This more moderate
position appears to have the support of another Sunni Islamist group, the Iraqi Islamic
Party (IIP) of Muhsin Abd al-Hamid. The IIP participated in the IGC and registered
for the January 30 election, but pulled out of the vote in December 2004, shortly after
the U.S. assault on Fallujah (see below). Other more moderate, non-Islamist Sunnis
are already participating in the new government, as discussed previously.
The Zarqawi Faction/Foreign Fighters.43 A major component of the
insurgency is composed of non-Iraqis. The U.S. military is holding over 300 foreign
fighters captured in Iraq. As noted above, CENTCOM believes that perhaps 1,000
of the insurgents in Iraq are foreign.
The foreign contingent is believed led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a 38-year-old
Jordanian Arab who reputedly fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s alongside
other Arab volunteers for the “jihad” against the Soviet Union. Zarqawi’s faction has
been the subject of substantial U.S. counter-efforts because of its alleged perpetration
of several major “terrorist” attacks — suicide and other attacks against both
combatant and civilian targets. It claimed responsibility for the April 2, 2005 attack
on Abu Ghraib prison (44 U.S. soldiers were wounded) and the U.S. garrison near
the Syrian border ten days later, in which the outer perimeter was breached. These
attacks were deviations from the faction’s previous small unit, suicide tactics.
Previous major attacks attributed to this faction include the August 2003 vehicle
bombings in Baghdad of the embassy of Jordan (August 7) and U.N. headquarters at
the Canal Hotel (August 19).44 An August 29, 2003, car bombing in Najaf killed
SCIRI leader Mohammad Baqr Al Hakim and 100 others. The group, and related
factions, have also kidnaped a total of about 180 foreigners, many of whom have
subsequently been killed. The most notable such killing was the October 20, 2004,
capture of British-born director of the CARE organization in Iraq, Margaret Hassan,
prompting a pullout by that organization; she was subsequently killed. Other relief
organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, have also pulled out of Iraq.
More recently, the group has targeted Iraqi Shiite festivals and ceremonies, most
likely hoping to provoke civil conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.
Zarqawi came to Iraq in late 2001 after escaping the U.S. war effort in
Afghanistan. He fled, through Iran, to Iraq, taking root in northern Iraq with a
43 See CRS Report RL32217, Iraq and Al Qaeda: Allies or Not?
44 Among the dead in the latter bombing was the U.N. representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira
de Mello, and it prompted an evacuation of U.N. personnel from Iraq.
CRS-29
Kurdish faction called Ansar al-Islam,45 near the town of Khurmal,46 occasionally
clashing with PUK fighters around Halabja. There, he was encamped with about 600
Arab fighters who had also fled the Afghanistan battlefield. More recently, Zarqawi
has used other organizational names, including the Association of Unity and Jihad,
which was named as an FTO on October 15, 2004. In early 2004, U.S. forces
captured a letter purportedly written by Zarqawi asking bin Laden’s support for
Zarqawi’s insurgent activities in Iraq47 and an Islamist website broadcast a message
in October 2004, reportedly deemed authentic by U.S. agencies, that Zarqawi has
formally allied with Al Qaeda. Since then, he has changed his organization’s name
to “Al Qaeda Jihad in Mesopotamia” (Iraq’s name before its formation in the 1920s).
There have also been recent press reports that bin Laden has asked Zarqawi to plan
operations outside Iraq, possibly against targets in the United States. His current
whereabouts are unknown, but some reports since February 2005 have said that U.S.
forces nearly caught him on at least one occasion.
An offshoot of Zarqawi’s group is called “Ansar al-Sunna,” or Partisans of the
Traditions [of the Prophet]. This group reportedly blends both foreign volunteers and
Iraqi insurgents. Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the December 21, 2004,
attack on Camp Marez in Mosul that killed 22, including 14 U.S. soldiers.
U.S. Counter-Insurgent Operations
U.S. counter-insurgent operations increased over the past six months, particular
in advance of the January 30 elections. A major focus has been the province of al-
Anbar, which includes the formerly highly restive city of Fallujah. In April 2004,
after the city fell under insurgent control (it was run by a “mujahedin shura,” or
council of insurgents), U.S. commanders contemplated routing insurgents from the
city but, concerned about collateral damage and U.S. casualties, they agreed to a
compromise that former Iraqi officers would patrol it. This solution quickly
unraveled and, as 2004 progressed, about two dozen other Sunni-inhabited towns,
including Baqubah, Balad, Tikrit, Mosul, Ramadi, Samarra, and Tal Affar, as well
as the small towns south of Baghdad, fell largely under insurgent influence.
U.S. forces, joined by Iraqi forces, began operations in September 2004 to expel
insurgents from these cities, beginning with Samarra. Most notable was “Operation
Phantom Fury” on Fallujah (November 2004), involving 6,500 U.S. Marines and
2,000 Iraqi troops. U.S. forces captured the city within about ten days, killing an
estimated 1,200 insurgents and finding numerous large weapons caches and a
possible chemical weapons lab, but most of the guerrillas are believed to have left
before the U.S. offensive began. Some fighting in parts of the city continues, as
45 Ansar al-Islam originated in 1998 as a radical splinter faction of a Kurdish Islamic group
called the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan (IMIK). Based in Halabja, the IMIK
publicized the effects of Baghdad’s March 1988 chemical attack on that city. Ansar is
named by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
46 Chivers, C.J. “Repulsing Attack By Islamic Militants, Iraqi Kurds Tell of Atrocities.”
New York Times, Dec. 6, 2002.
47 For text, see [http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm].
CRS-30
insurgents try to re-infiltrate it, but about half of the city’s 250,000 have returned,
and some reconstruction has begun there. Despite the U.S. operations, violence is
prevalent in virtually all of these same two dozen cities, and election day turnout in
them was far lower than in the Shiite and Kurdish areas of Iraq. (Turnout in all of
Anbar province was well below 10%, and some cities, such as Ramadi, saw almost
no voting at all.) U.S. funds from a $246 million “post-battle reconstruction
initiative,”48drawn from funds appropriated in the FY2004 supplemental (P.L. 108-
106), are being used to reconstruct Fallujah, but the pace of rebuilding has been
slowed by the still uncertain security situation there. Funds from the initiative are
also being used for reconstruction in other cities damaged by U.S. operations, such
as Samarra and Najaf, which was damaged by the Sadr uprisings in 2004.
To assist the counter-insurgent effort, in 2004 interim Prime Minister Allawi
imposed emergency measures, including curfews, and he tried to diplomatically
engage insurgent factions or their supporters to join the political process. A law
offering amnesty to insurgents, except for those involved in killing coalition or Iraqi
security forces, was issued in early August 2004. The death penalty, suspended after
the fall of Saddam, was reinstated in August 2004.
U.S. Military and Reconstruction. The U.S. military has attempted to
promote reconstruction to deprive the insurgency of popular support. A key tool in
this effort is the funding of small projects to promote trust among the population and
promote interaction of Iraqis with the U.S. military. Called the Commanders
Emergency Response Program (CERP), the DOD funds are controlled and disbursed
by U.S. commanders at the tactical level. The total amount of CERP funds for Iraq
for FY2004 was $549 million, of which $179 was from seized Iraqi assets, $230
million was from Iraq’s oil revenues; and $140 million was from DOD operations
and maintenance funds appropriated for this program in the FY2004 supplemental
appropriation (P.L. 108-106). Additional funds for this program are being provided
by the Iraqi government. Over 1,000 small projects were funded under this program
in the first quarter of calendar 2005. According to the “2207” report issued in April
2005, the Administration has made available $218 million in FY2005 funds for the
“Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP),” and the FY2005
supplemental appropriations, both House and Senate versions, provide the requested
$320 million in additional FY2005 CERP funds.
A similar program began in October 2004, called the Commander’s
Humanitarian Relief and Reconstruction Projects (CHHRP). About $86 million was
allocated for this program from the FY2004 supplemental appropriation. These
funds are for small projects mainly in restive Sunni towns such as Ramadi and
Samarra, but also in the Kurdish areas.
48 These funds are derived from the FY2004 supplemental (P.L. 108-106), which provided
about $18.6 for Iraq reconstruction.
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Abu Ghraib Prison Abuses. U.S. efforts to calm ongoing violence were
complicated somewhat by revelations in early May 2004 that U.S. military personnel
had abused prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.49
Other Programs and Options to Stabilize Iraq/”Exit Strategy”
The Bush Administration cites the relatively successful elections and the
negotiations among Iraqi factions to form a new government as an indication that the
existing political and security transition plans will lead to stability and democracy.
However, Administration concerns before the elections had prompted the January
2005 mission of Gen. Gary Luck to Iraq to conduct a broad review of U.S.
operations, with particular attention to the training of Iraqi security forces. He
reportedly made recommendations, some of which have become public, to Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld in late January 2005. The Washington Post reported on February
15, 2005 that Secretary of State Rice had sent in a separate State Department team
to assess how U.S. officials might adjust to new leaders in Baghdad.
Building Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).50 A major pillar of U.S. policy is to
equip and train Iraqi security forces (ISF) that could secure Iraq by themselves and
enable U.S. forces to draw down. A provision of the Senate version of H.R. 1268,
the FY2005 supplemental appropriations, requires an Administration report to
Congress on the status of building the ISF and requirements for U.S. troops in Iraq.
The Department of Defense reports that, as of Arpil 26, 2005, there are about
160,000 “trained and equipped” members of the ISF: about 70,000 military forces
under Iraq’s Ministry of Defense and about 90,000 police/lighter forces under the
Ministry of Interior. They are organized into 52 “Army” (Army and other forces
under Defense Ministry) and 44 “police” (police and other forces under Interior
Ministry) battalions. The force approaching the 271,000 goal set for July 2006.
However, there are varying definitions and assessments of ISF size; in February 3,
2005, Senate testimony, Joint Chiefs Chairman Myers said that, of that total number,
only about 40,000 (about one third) are fully capable of deploying anywhere in Iraq.
In addition, the police-related component of the ISF totals include possibly tens of
thousands (according to the GAO on March 15, 2005) who are absent-without-leave
and might have deserted. The police generally live with their families, rather than in
barracks, and are therefore hard to account for.
Senior U.S. military leaders have become increasingly optimistic about the
performance and tenacity of the ISF since the January 30 elections. U.S. officials
praised their performance on election day, where some ISF put their lives on the line
to protect voters and polling stations. U.S. commanders say that the election has
spurred recruitment for the ISF, and they cite several operations led by various ISF
units during March 2005 as evidence of their growing confidence. These operations
49 For information on this issue, CRS Report RL32395, U.S. Treatment of Prisoners in
Iraq: Selected Legal Issues, by Jennifer Elsea.
50 For additional information, see CRS Report RS22093. Iraq’s New Security Forces: the
Challenge of Sectarian and Ethnic Influences.
CRS-32
include a raid on an insurgent encampment north of Baghdad that ISF officials say
killed over 80 insurgents.
The recent assessments contrast sharply with those before the elections. Gen.
Abizaid said in December 2004 that the ISF “just are not there yet” in their ability to
secure Iraq, and on December 20, 2004, President Bush described their performance
as “mixed.” Other U.S. commanders have noted that the ISF still lacked an effective
command structure, and that ISF forces had often failed or refused on their own to
forcefully combat the insurgency. Some U.S. military personnel told journalists that
they are penetrated by insurgents. In one notable example, about three quarters of the
4,000-person police force in Mosul collapsed in the face of an insurgent uprising
there in November 2004.
As a result of the widespread skepticism of the ISF, the U.S. military adopted
plans, reportedly based on the review conducted by Gen. Luck, to shift up to 10,000
U.S. forces in Iraq from patrolling to training and embedding with Iraqi units. Under
this reported shift, the U.S. military are increasingly turning over patrol operations
to Iraqi units that are stiffened and advised by U.S. military personnel. U.S. forces
are also in the process of turning areas over to Iraqi security control; one such
locality is Baghdad’s Haifa Street area which has been a hotbed of insurgent activity
but is now said to be much quieter. On the other hand, U.S. commanders say some
areas turned over to Iraqi control have subsequently seen collapses or withdrawals
of Iraqi units; some examples include the towns of Tarmiya and Madain, where over
50 Shiites were reportedly massacred during April 2005.
During 2004, the United States and Iraq also conducted some “emergency
recruitment” of former Saddam military units, mostly Sunni ex-Baathists, assisting
security operations but provoking threats by Iraqi election victors that there will
likely be a “purge” of former regime elements from the security forces. During a
visit to Iraq on April 12, 2005, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld warned Iraqi leaders
against major ISF moves such as a purge of ex-regime security people for fear that
doing so could cause turmoil or collapse of the ISF. A related trend that worries
some U.S. officers is that Iraqi and U.S. commanders are allowing unofficial militia
forces to operate against insurgents; some of these are believed to be Badr Brigade
forces retaliating against Sunni insurgent suspects. Other groups are led by former
regime military figures who have recruited their own militias to try to calm Iraq, but
insist on remaining outside the Defense Ministry structure.
The accelerated training and equipping of the Iraqis is a key part of U.S.
planning. Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, who had served until late 2003 as commander
of the 101st Airborne Division, is overseeing the training of Iraqi security forces as
head of the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I).51 The
Administration has been shifting much U.S. reconstruction funding into this security
force training and equipping mission. According to the April 2005 “2207 report,”
a total of $5.036 billion in FY2004 funds has been allocated to build (train, equip,
provide facilities for, and in some cases provide pay for) the ISF. That is about 50%
51 For more information on this mission, see [http://www.mnstci.iraq.centcom.mil/].
CRS-33
more than was originally allocated for this function when the supplemental funds
were first apportioned.
The FY2005 supplemental request sent to Congress on February 14, 2005 asks
for $5.7 billion for this purpose in FY2005, to be controlled by the Department of
Defense and provided to MNSTC-I. That amount is appropriated in the versions of
H.R. 1268 passed by both the House and Senate. If enacted, that would bring the
total spent on Iraqi security forces to about $11 billion. Of the $5.7 billion
supplemental request:52 $87 million for facilities construction for various forces;
$809 million is for “support forces; $180 million is for “quick response funding” for
U.S. commanders in charge of building the Iraqi forces; and $104 million is for
training schools, including Iraqi Army Staff and War Colleges. Other funds are slated
for the Army, Iraqi National Guard, and police, as noted below.
ISF Components. The following, based on Administration reports from
March 2005, are the status of the major Iraqi security institutions.53
! Iraqi Army. The CPA formally disbanded the former Iraqi army
following Bremer’s arrival in Baghdad; the outcome of that move is
still being debated. The United States intends to establish a 27,000-
person (6 division) Iraqi Army, about 8% the size of the pre-war
Iraqi force. About 10,000 are trained and equipped thus far. New
recruits are paid $60 per month and receive eight weeks of training.
Training is being conducted in Jordan (1,500 Iraqi officers will be
trained at Zarqa Military College), Egypt (155 officers), Poland
(bilateral agreement) and NATO,54 both in NATO facilities outside
Iraq (Norway, Germany) and by the NATO Training Mission - Iraq,
NTM-I inside and outside Iraq, including in Jordan.55 The NATO
training mission is supposed to expand to 300 trainers, graduating
1,000 officers per year, although the current level of trainers in Iraq
is only about 100. In February 2005, Hungary pledged to give the
Iraqi Army 72 tanks. Of FY2004 funds, $731 million is allocated
for Army facilities; $632 million is for equipment; and $433 million
for training and operations. Of the FY2005 supplemental funds
requested, $3.1 billion is slated for the Army.
! Iraqi National Guard (ING). This force, formerly called the Civil
Defense Corps, or ICDC, has now been made part of the “Army,”
52 Information provided by a DOD fact sheet. February 25, 2005.
53 Most of the information in this section comes from State Department weekly summaries
on Iraq, the Government Accountability Office, and conversations with U.S. experts. March
2005.
54 France, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Luxembourg, and Germany have thus far declined to
send troops to Iraq to participate in the NTM-I, although some of these countries are doing
training outside Iraq.
55 For information on foreign contributions to the training of the ISF, see CRS Report
RL32105, Post-War Iraq: A Table and Chronology of Foreign Contributions.
CRS-34
although it is largely a paramilitary force that mans checkpoints and
assists in combating insurgents. Thus far, about 50,000 are trained
and equipped, of a planned force of about 62,000. That number is
expected to be reached later in 2005. Recruits are paid $50 per
month and cannot have served in Iraq’s former army at a level of
colonel or higher. They receive three weeks of training but most of
their training is “on-the-job,” patrolling alongside U.S. forces. Its
members tends to be deployed in areas where they are recruited. Of
FY2004 funds, $225 was allocated for ING operations; $92 million
for equipment; and $359 million for facilities construction. Of
FY2005 funds requested, $268 million is slated for the ING.
! Special Operations Force. Within the Army is a Special Operations
Force, consisting of a “Counter-Terrorism Force” and a “Commando
Battalion.” The forces are given 13 weeks of training, mostly by
Jordanian officers in Jordan. Several hundred are trained or
equipped, and the goal is 2,000.
! Air Force. It currently has about 190 personnel of its goal of 500.
Pilots undergo up to six months of training. It has few aircraft,
although the UAE has said it would supply the force with some
unspecified combat aircraft. About $28 million in FY2004 funds
was allocated for Iraqi Air Force airfields (of those funds for the
Iraqi Army, above).
! Coastal Defense Force. This service has about 525 personnel
trained or on hand, of a goal of about 600. It has a “Patrol Boat
Squadron” and a “Coastal Defense Regiment.” It is equipped with
donated small boats to patrol Iraq’s waterways to prevent smuggling
and infiltration. The Royal Australian Navy is training some of
these personnel.
! Iraqi Intervention Force. This is a relatively new counter-
insurgency strike force and part of the Iraqi military. It is divided
into 4 brigades (about 5,000 personnel) trained and equipped.
Recruits receive thirteen weeks of basic and urban operations
training.
! Iraqi Police Service (IPS). Controlled by Iraq’s Ministry of Interior
(MOI), about 55,000 Iraqi policemen, divided primarily into
provincial police departments, are trained and equipped thus far,
with the goal of 135,000. New police receive eight weeks of
training, are paid $60 per month, and must pass a background check
ensuring they do not have a record of human rights violations or
criminal activity. They are recruited locally, making them
susceptible to intimidation by insurgents in restive areas. Police
training is taking place mostly in Jordan, Iraq, and the United Arab
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Emirates (UAE).56 Of FY2004 U.S. funds, $1.824 billion has been
allocated for police training. The FY2005 request asks $1.497
billion for police and related Interior Ministry forces, below.
! Related forces, all under the Interior Ministry, include a Highway
Patrol; with about 1,000 operational of a planned 1,500; a Bureau of
Dignitary Protection, designed to protect Iraqi leaders, with about
500 personnel; and a more heavily armed Emergency Response Unit,
recruited from among the police, intended to support police
operations and conduct high-risk searches. It has about 250
personnel.
! There are several new counter-insurgency police support units. One
is the Special Police Commando unit, expected to have about 3,000
personnel. A Police Civil Intervention Force unit of police, also
designed to counter unrest and insurgents, might have about 5,000.
This force is to consists of the 8th Mechanized Police Brigade and
Public Order Brigades.
! Border Enforcement. Also part of MOI forces, this force, intended
to prevent cross-border infiltration, has about 20,000 equipped and
trained, with a goal of about 29,000. It has a Border Police
component and a Riverine Police component to secure water
crossings (Shatt al-Arab, dividing Iran and Iraq). Members of these
forces receive four weeks of training. Of FY2004 funds, about $441
million has been allocated for this department.
! Facilities Protection Service. This is a force that consists of the
approximately 75,000 security guards that protect installations such
as oil pumping stations, electricity substations, and government
buildings. This force is not counted in U.S. totals for Iraq’s forces
because it is not controlled by either the Ministry of Interior or
Ministry of Defense. Of FY2004 funds, $53 million has been
allocated for this service.
As noted above, the military forces are being supplied with donated equipment
and equipment fielded by the former regime that has been repaired. On November
21, 2003, the Bush Administration issued a determination repealing a U.S. ban on
arms exports to Iraq so that the United States can supply weapons to the new Iraqi
security institutions. Authority to repeal this ban was requested and granted in an
FY2003 emergency supplemental appropriations (P.L. 108-11) for the costs of the
war and was made subject to a determination that sales to Iraq are “in the national
interest.” On July 21, 2004, the Administration determined that Iraq would be treated
as a friendly nation in evaluating U.S. arms sales to Iraqi security forces and that such
56 The following countries are contributing police instructors inside Iraq, in Jordan, and in
the UAE: United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, Sweden, Poland, UAE, Denmark,
Austria, Finland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Singapore,
and Belgium.
CRS-36
sales would be made in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms
Export Control Act. However, questions have been raised about the slow pace of
equipping the new Iraqi security institutions.
Interim Prime Minister Allawi has also placed a high priority on rebuilding a
domestic intelligence network. On July 14, 2004, he announced a new domestic
intelligence agency (General Security Directorate) to infiltrate the insurgent groups.
Coalition Building and Maintenance.57 Some in and outside the Bush
Administration believe that the United States should have exerted greater efforts to
enlist greater international participation in peacekeeping, including giving up some
U.S. political influence in Iraq, if required. Those who advocated this option
believed it was essential to reducing the financial and military burden of the war.
About 90% of coalition casualties in Iraq have been American.
The Bush Administration asserts that it has consistently sought U.N. backing for
its post-war efforts, and it has supported an increase in the U.N. role since late 2003.
Resolution 1483 (adopted unanimously May 6, 2003) provided for a U.N. special
representative to coordinate the U.N. activities in Iraq and it “call[ed] on”
governments to contribute forces for stabilization. On August 14, 2003, the U.N.
Security Council adopted another resolution, Resolution 1500, that “welcomed,” but
did not “endorse,” the formation of the IGC and established a “U.N. Assistance
Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).” In a further attempt to satisfy the requirements of
several major nations, such as France, for a greater U.N. role in Iraq, the United
States obtained agreement on Resolution 1511 (October 16, 2003, referenced above),
authorizing a “multinational force under unified [meaning U.S.] command.”
Resolution 1546 restated many of these provisions.
The Bush Administration asserts that the United States still has a large
coalition, pointing to the fact that 27 other countries are providing about 22,000
peacekeeping forces. Poland and Britain lead multinational divisions in central and
southern Iraq, respectively. The UK-led force (UK forces alone number about 8,000)
is based in Basra; the Poland-led force (Polish forces number 1,700) is based in Hilla.
Japan has deployed about 600 troops to Samawah, in southern Iraq, and South Korea
has deployed 3,500 troops to Irbil, where the Kurds predominate.58
In late July 2004, Secretary of State Powell said the United States would
consider a Saudi proposal for a contingent of troops from Muslim countries to
perform peacekeeping in Iraq, reportedly under separate command. However, the
idea floundered because of opposition from potential contributing countries such as
57 For additional information on international contributions to Iraq peacekeeping and
reconstruction, see CRS Report RL32105, Post-War Iraq: A Table and Chronology of
Foreign Contributions.
58 A list of countries performing peacekeeping can be found in the Department of State’s
“Iraq Weekly Status Report,” and in CRS Report RL32105, Post-War Iraq: A Table and
Chronology of Foreign Contributions.
CRS-37
Pakistan and reported Iraqi sensitivities to the potential for Muslim foreign troops to
meddle in Iraqi politics.
Critics say that coalition countries are donating only about 15% of the total
U.S.-led coalition contingent in Iraq, and that major potential force donors such as
France and Germany have refused to contribute. Some point to the several
withdrawal announcements since Spain’s May 2004 withdrawal of its 1,300 troops
as an indication that the U.S. coalition-maintenance effort is faltering. Spain made
that decision following the March 11 Madrid bombings and subsequent defeat of the
former Spanish government that had supported the war effort. However, since the
Iraqi election, Spain has said it might train Iraqi security forces at a center outside
Madrid. Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua followed Spain’s
withdrawal, pulling out their 900 personnel, and the Philippines withdrew in July
2004 after one of its citizens was taken hostage and threatened with beheading.
Among other recent changes:
! Hungary completed a pullout of its 300 forces in December 2004.
! Italy announced on March 15, 2005, that it would begin withdrawing
its force of 3,200 in September 2005, although it later said that
timetable would depend on progress toward Iraqi stability. The
announcement came after the U.S. wounding of an Italian journalist
who was leaving Iraq after being released by insurgents.
! Thailand, New Zealand, and Norway withdrew in early 2005,
although Norway may still have about 10 personnel in Iraq.
! In March 2005, Poland drew down to 1,700 from its prior force
level of 2,400. It said in April 2005 that the remainder would be
withdrawn by the end of 2005, despite an Administration decision
in February 2005 to request $400 million (FY2005 supplemental) to
help coalition partners such as Poland.
! In March 2005, the Netherlands withdrew its 1,350 troops from Iraq
in March 2005. Some U.K. forces have taken over the Netherlands
forces’ current duties to help protect Japan’s forces in Samawa.
After the January 30 Iraqi elections, the Netherlands said it might
send up to 100 trainers for the ISF.
! Ukraine, which lost eight of its soldiers in a January 2005 insurgent
attack, withdrew 150 personnel from their base 25 miles south of
Baghdad in March 2005. Ukraine says it will complete its
withdrawal probably by October 2005, but it adds that it might give
equipment to the Iraqi military.
! In February 2004, Portugal withdrew its 127 paramilitary officers.
! Following a “friendly fire” incident in which a Bulgarian soldier
died, in March 2005 Bulgaria announced it would pull out its 460
member unit by the end of 2005, although it will continue to
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contribute to NTM-I and would increase its civilian reconstruction
contingent in Iraq.
! South Korea is withdrawing 270 of its almost 3,600 troops by June
2005.
! British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on April 18, 2005, that
Britain might start withdrawing forces by 2006.
! On the other hand, some countries have increased forces to
compensate for withdrawals. Singapore deployed 180 troops in
November 2004 after a hiatus of several months, and Japan
approved extending its deployments at least through 2005.
Azerbaijan also has said it would increase forces.
! In February 2005, El Salvador agreed to send a replacement
contingent of 380 soldiers to replace those who are rotating out.
! In February 2005, Australia said it would send an additional 450
troops to Iraq, bringing that contribution to over 900.
! In early March 2005, Georgia sent an additional 550 troops to Iraq
to help guard the United Nations facilities, bringing its total Iraq
deployment to 850. In late March 2005, Albania said it would
increase its force by 50, giving it a total of 120 troops in Iraq.
NATO/EU. One major issue in the debate over securing Iraq is the possibility
of greater NATO involvement, and there has been some movement since the January
30 Iraqi election. Since mid-2003, NATO has been providing logistical support to
the international forces in Iraq led by Poland, but increased NATO involvement has
been discussed at every major NATO meeting since late 2003, particularly the June
2004 NATO summit in Istanbul. There, NATO agreed to provide training for Iraqi
security forces (NTM-I), discussed above.
Since the Iraqi election on January 30, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld,
Secretary of State Rice, and President Bush have visited European leaders, and
additional NATO contributions have been agreed. Some countries, such as France,
that have opposed U.S. policy in Iraq have expressed willingness to play a greater
role in helping Iraq secure itself:
! In conjunction with President Bush’s visit to Europe in late February
2005, NATO announced that all 26 of its members would contribute
to training Iraqi security forces, either in Iraq, outside Iraq, through
financial contributions, or donations of equipment. (A list of
contributions of trainers and funds is contained in CRS Report
RL32105, Post-War Iraq: A Table and Chronology of Foreign
Contributions.)
! France has offered to train 1,500 Iraqi police in Qatar. France has
not yet received a response to this offer from the Iraqi government.
CRS-39
European Union (EU) leaders have offered to help train Iraqi police,
administrators, and judges outside Iraq.
! Germany says it is willing to help the new Iraqi government set up
its ministries and write its permanent constitution.
On July 10, 2003, the Senate adopted an amendment, by a vote of 97-0, to a
State Department authorization bill (S. 925) calling on the Administration to formally
ask NATO to lead a peacekeeping force for Iraq. A related bill (H.R. 2112) was
introduced in the House on May 15, 2003.59
Altering the Level of U.S. Military and Political Involvement. Others
believe that the Iraqi security forces are unlikely to be able to secure Iraq alone and
that new major international commitments of peacekeeping forces are unlikely,
necessitating a major change in the U.S. approach to Iraq.
Troop Increase. Some believe that the United States should greatly increase
its own troops in Iraq in an all-out effort to defeat the insurgents. However, some
believe that further troop level increases will aggravate Sunni Arabs already
resentful of the U.S. intervention in Iraq and that even many more U.S. troops would
not necessarily produce stability. Others believe that increasing U.S. force levels
would further the impression in Iraq that the interim government is beholden to the
United States for its survival, and that the United States is continuing to deepen its
commitment to Iraq without a clear exit strategy or victory plan.
Troop Withdrawal. Some Members argue that the United States should begin
to withdraw immediately and unconditionally, although gradually. Some who take
this position tend to argue that the decision to invade Iraq and change its regime was
a mistake in light of the failure thus far to locate WMD, and that a continued large
U.S. presence in Iraq will inflame the insurgency and result in additional U.S.
casualties without securing U.S. national interests. Critics of this view say the Iraqi
government might collapse, harming U.S. credibility internationally and permitting
Iraq to become a haven for terrorists.
Negotiating a Power-Sharing Formula/Negotiating with Insurgents.
A related idea advanced by some is the substantial scaling back of U.S. involvement
in Iraq by persuading key Iraqi factions to reconcile and achieve a power-sharing
arrangement. A version of this idea is for the United States to put diplomatic
pressure on the victorious Shiite-led UIA bloc to negotiate a power-sharing
arrangement with Sunni Arabs. The Administration has largely exercised this option,
and UIA leaders have said they are assisting Sunnis in obtaining a substantial number
of senior positions in the new government and a major role in drafting the permanent
constitution.
Others believe that the United States and its Iraqi partners should consider
negotiating directly with representatives of the insurgents, possibly under the
auspices of the United Nations, to include them and their grievances into a new or
59 See CRS Report RL32068, An Enhanced European Role in Iraq?
CRS-40
reworked Iraqi power structure. Time Magazine reported in February 2005 that just
such negotiations were taking place between U.S. military officials and Baathist
insurgents, although the talks do not appear to have yielded concrete results.
Rejuvenating Iraq’s Economy
The Administration asserts that, despite the ongoing insurgency, economic
reconstruction is progressing. Administration officials say that life has returned to
normal in most of Iraq, that Iraq’s economy is recovering, and that many Iraqis are
demonstrating their confidence by buying appliances. However, U.S. officials
acknowledge that the difficult security environment has slowed reconstruction.
Electricity was above pre-war levels in mid-2004, but has fallen below pre-war levels
for most of the time since October 2004. As noted above, lines for gasoline often
last many hours. Sanitation, health care, and education have improved statistically,
although some recent studies say that Iraq’s health care system and some health
indicators are in a state of crisis.60 In September 2004, the State Department finished
a review of how to accelerate reconstruction, and it has shifted focus to smaller scale
projects that can quickly employ Iraqis and yield concrete benefits.
The Oil Industry. As the driver of Iraq’s economy, the rebuilding of the oil
industry has received substantial U.S. attention. Before the war, it was widely
asserted by Administration officials that Iraq’s vast oil reserves, believed second only
to those of Saudi Arabia, would fund much, if not all, reconstruction costs. The oil
industry infrastructure suffered little damage during the U.S.-led invasion (only about
9 oil wells were set on fire), but it has become a target of insurgents. Insurgents have
particularly focused their attacks on pipelines in northern Iraq. Those lines feed the
Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline that is loaded at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkey.
A related issue is long-term development of Iraq’s oil industry and which
foreign energy firms, if any, might receive preference for contracts to explore Iraq’s
vast reserves. Russia, China, and others are said to fear that the United States will
seek to develop Iraq’s oil industry with minimal participation of firms from other
countries. Iraq’s interim government has contracted for a study of the extent of Iraq’s
oil reserves, and it has contracted with Royal Dutch/Shell to formulate a blueprint to
develop the gas sector.
60 Vick, Karl. “Children Pay Cost of Iraq’s Chaos.” Washington Post, November 21, 2004.
CRS-41
Table 1. Iraq’s Oil Sector
Oil
Oil
Oil
Oil
Oil
Oil Exports
Revenue
Production
Production
Exports
Revenue
(pre-war)
(2005 to
(April 2005)
(pre-war)
(April 2005)
(2004)
date)
2.08 million
2.5 mbd
1.29 mbd
2.2 mbd
$17 billion
$5.7 billion
barrels per day
(mbd)
Note: Oil export revenue is net of a 5% deduction for reparations to the victims
of the 1990 Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait, as provided for in U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1483 (May 22, 2003). That 5% deduction is paid
into a U.N. escrow account controlled by the U.N. Compensation Commission
to pay judgments awarded.
CPA Budget/DFI.61 The Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), was set up by
Resolution 1483 (May 22, 2003) as the repository for Iraq’s revenue. The DFI is now
held in Iraq’s Central Bank. It contained about $7 billion when it was established in
June 2003, comprised of captured Iraqi assets, Iraqi assets held abroad, the monies
(about $8 billion) transferred from the close-out of the “oil-for-food program,”
revenues from oil and other exports, and revenues from other sources such as taxes,
user fees, and returns from profits on state-owned enterprises.
In late October 2003, a multilateral board to monitor the Development Fund for
Iraq (DFI), mandated by Resolution 1483, was established (the International
Advisory and Monitoring Board, IAMB). It hired KPMG as external auditor. The
IAMB met in late June 2004 and identified some possible problems in how the DFI
was administered, and it produced the first formal audit on July 15, 2004. A KPMG
report produced in October 2004 identified several examples of CPA
mismanagement of the DFI and possible corruption in some cases.62 One example
has been the finding that there might not have been proper accounting of about $9
billion used by the CPA for rebuilding and trying to stabilize Iraq in the immediate
post-Saddam period.
International Donations. A World Bank estimate, released in October 2003,
said Iraq reconstruction would require about $56 billion during 2004-2007, including
the $21 billion in U.S. funding. At an October 2003 donors’ conference in Madrid,
donors pledged about $13.5 billion, including $8 billion from foreign governments
and $5.5 billion in loans from the World Bank and IMF. Another donors’ meeting
was held in Tokyo during October 13-14, 2004, with commitments by donors to
61 For information on the status of legislative consideration of the request for supplemental
funding, see CRS Report RL32090, FY2004 Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq,
Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terrorism: Military Operations & Reconstruction
Assistance.
62 Walker, Tony. “KPMG’s Iraq Audit Turns Up the Heat.” Australian Financial Review.
October 16, 2004.
CRS-42
accelerated payments on existing pledges. Iran joined as a donor country, pledging
$10 million. Of the funds pledged by other foreign governments, about $2.5 billion
has been disbursed, as of December 2004.63 In September 2004, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) approved the first of its loans to Iraq — $436 million for
reconstruction. That came one week after Iraq cleared up $81 million in arrears to
the Fund dating from Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Supplemental U.S. Funding. In part to meet the requirements for
reconstruction funding, two supplemental appropriations were requested. A FY2003
supplemental, P.L. 108-11, appropriated about $2.5 billion for Iraq reconstruction.
When oil revenues continued to lag, U.S. officials decided to ask Congress for
another supplemental appropriation. A FY2004 supplemental appropriation (P.L.
108-106) provided about $18.7 billion for Iraq reconstruction (not including about
$50 million appropriated for U.S. military costs). According to the “2207 Report”
(January 2005), the following is allocated:
! $4.9 billion for security and law enforcement, as discussed above
! $2.8 billion for justice reform, civil society building, and democracy
and governance, including programs for women and youth and the
formation of an independent human rights commission,
! $4.4 billion for electricity infrastructure rehabilitation,
! $1.7 billion for rehabilitating the energy infrastructure,
! $2.3 billion to repair water and sanitation systems;
! $525 million for repair of transportation and telecommunications
infrastructure,
! $360 million to upgrade housing, roads, and bridges,
! $790 million to construct and equip hospitals and clinics, and
! $910 million for education, jobs training, agriculture, and private
sector initiatives, and includes $360 million in debt relief for Iraq.
The continuing violence has slowed spending on reconstruction. As of late
April 2005, of the $21 billion appropriated in the FY2003 and FY2004
supplementals, about $15 billion has been obligated. Of that, about $6.7 billion has
been disbursed.
FY2005 and 2006. No new funds for Iraq reconstruction were requested in
the Administration’s regular budget request for FY2005. One FY2005 supplemental
appropriation of $25 billion will be used mostly for military costs in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The second FY2005 supplemental request, submitted on February 14,
2005, is discussed in the sections above. It asked for about $68 billion to cover U.S.
military costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not including the approximately
$5.7 billion requested to train and equip Iraqi forces, or the $1.3 billion requested for
Afghan security forces. Virtually all these DOD funds would be appropriated in the
versions of H.R. 1268 passed by the House and Senate.
63 For information on international pledges, see CRS Report RL32105, Post-War Iraq: A
Table and Chronology of Foreign Contributions.
CRS-43
As noted above, the Administration regular FY2006 foreign aid budget request
asked for $360 million in funds for democracy and governance activities in Iraq. An
additional $26 million was requested to improve the capacity of Iraq’s police and
justice sector.
Lifting U.S. Sanctions. The Bush Administration has lifted most U.S.
sanctions on Iraq, beginning with Presidential Determinations issued under
authorities provided by P.L. 108-7 (appropriations for FY2003) and P.L. 108-11
(FY2003 supplemental):
! On July 30, 2004, President Bush issued an executive order ending
the package of sanctions imposed on Iraq following the 1990
invasion of Kuwait. Those measures were in Executive Order 12722
(August 2, 1990) and 12724 (August 9, 1990), issued after Iraq’s
August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait. They imposed a ban on U.S.
trade with and investment in Iraq and froze Iraq’s assets in the
United States. The Iraq Sanctions Act of 1990 (Section 586 of P.L.
101-513, signed November 5, 1990) reinforced those orders.
! On September 8, 2004, the President designated Iraq a beneficiary
of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), enabling Iraqi
products to have duty-free tariff treatment for entry into the United
States.
! On September 24, 2004, Iraq was removed from the U.S. list of state
sponsors of terrorism under Section 6(j) of the Export
Administration Act (P.L. 96-72). Iraq is thus no longer barred from
receiving U.S. foreign assistance, U.S. votes in favor of international
loans, and sales of munitions list items (arms and related equipment
and services). Exports of dual use items (items that can have
military applications) are no longer subject to strict licensing
procedures.64 The July 30, 2004 order did not unfreeze any assets in
the United States of the former regime.
! The FY2005 supplemental request asks to remove Iraq from a
named list of countries for which the Untied States is required to
withhold from its voluntary contributions to international
organizations. The requirement is for the withholding of a
proportionate share of the cost of any programs such organizations
conduct for those countries. That provision is included in the
House-passed H.R. 1268.
Debt Relief/WTO Membership. The Administration is attempting to
persuade other countries to forgive Iraq’s debt built up during the regime of Saddam
64 A May 7, 2003 executive order left in place the provisions of the Iran-Iraq Arms Non-
Proliferation Act (P.L. 102-484); that act imposes sanctions on persons or governments that
export technology that would contribute to any Iraqi advanced conventional arms capability
or weapons of mass destruction programs.
CRS-44
Hussein. The debt is estimated to total about $116 billion, not including reparations
dating to the first Persian Gulf war. On November 21, 2004, the so-called “Paris
Club” of 19 industrialized nations agreed to cancel about 80% of the $39 billion Iraq
owes them. On December 17, 2004, the United States signed an agreement with Iraq
writing off 100% of Iraq’s $4.1 billion debt to the United States; that debt consisted
of principle and interest from about $2 billion in defaults on Iraqi agricultural credits
from the 1980s.65 On December 13, 2004, the World Trade Organization (WTO)
agreed to begin accession talks with Iraq.
Congressional Reactions
Congress, like the Administration, has divergent views on Iraq. On December
20, 2001, the House passed H.J.Res. 75, by a vote of 392-12, calling Iraq’s refusal
to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors a “mounting threat” to the United States. As
discussion of potential military action increased in the fall of 2002, Members debated
the costs and risks of an invasion, and they adopted H.J.Res. 114, authorizing the
President to use military force against Iraq if he determines that doing so is in the
national interest and would enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions. It passed the
House October 11, 2002 (296-133), and the Senate the following day (77-23). It was
signed October 16, 2002 (P.L. 107-243).
The 108th Congress held numerous hearings on post-Saddam Iraq. Although
Congress has applauded the performance of the U.S. military and Iraq’s new
freedoms, some Members have criticized the Administration for inadequate planning
for the post-war period. Criticism of Iraq policy subsided somewhat after the January
30, 2005 elections. Many Members have visited Iraq, and many who have done so
say reconstruction is proceeding and that Iraq is more stable than is widely portrayed
in the press.
65 For more information, see CRS Report RS21765, Iraq: Paris Club Debt Relief.
CRS-45
Appendix
Table A1: U.S. Assistance (ESF) to the Opposition
(Figures in millions of dollars)
Unspecified
War
INC
Broadcasting
Opposition
Total
Crimes
Activities
FY1998
2.0
5.0
3.0
10.0
(P.L. 105-174)
(RFE/RL)
FY1999
3.0
3.0
2.0
8.0
(P.L. 105-277)
FY2000
2.0
8.0
10.0
(P.L. 106-113)
FY2001
12.0
2.0
6.0
5.0
25.0
(P.L. 106-429)
(aid in Iraq)
(INC radio)
FY2002
25.0
25.0
(P.L. 107-115)
Total,
15.0
9.0
11.0
43.0
78.0
FY1998-FY2002
FY2003
3.1 6.9
10.0
(no earmark)
FY2004 (request)
0
0
Notes: According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (April 2004), the INC’s Iraqi
National Congress Support Foundation (INCSF) received $32.65 million in U.S. Economic Support
Funds (ESF) in five agreements with the State Department during 2000-2003. Most of the funds —
separate from drawdowns of U.S. military equipment and training under the “Iraq Liberation Act” —
were for the INC to run its offices in Washington, London, Tehran, Damascus, Prague, and Cairo, and
to operate its Al Mutamar (the “Conference”) newspaper and its “Liberty TV,” which began in August
2001, from London. The station was funded by FY2001 ESF, with start-up costs of $1 million and
an estimated additional $2.7 million per year in operating costs. Liberty TV was sporadic due to
funding disruptions resulting from the INC’s refusal to accept some State Department decisions on
how U.S. funds were to be used. In August 2002, the State Department and Defense Department
agreed that the Defense Department would take over funding ($335,000 per month) for the INC’s
“Information Collection Program” to collect intelligence on Iraq; the State Department wanted to end
its funding of that program because of questions about the INC’s credibility and the propriety of its
use of U.S. funds. The INC continued to receive these funds even after Saddam Hussein was
overthrown, but was halted after the June 2004 return of sovereignty to Iraq. The figures above do
not include covert aid provided — the amounts are not known from open sources. During FY2001
and FY2002, the Administration donated $4 million to a “U.N. War Crimes Commission” fund, to be
used if a war crimes tribunal is formed. Those funds were drawn from U.S. contributions to U.N.
programs. See General Accounting Office Report GAO-04-559. State Department: Issues Affecting
Funding of Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation. April 2004.
CRS-46
Figure 1. Map of Iraq
Caspian
Sea
T u r k e y
Zakhu
Dahuk
Tall 'Afar
Al Mawsil (Mosul)
Irbil
As Sulaymaniyah
Chamchamal
Kirkuk
Khurma
S y r i a
Halabjah
Tuz Khurmatu
Tikrit
Anah
Qarah Tappah
I r a n
Balad
Al Khalis
Ba'Qubah
Mandali
Hit
Al Jadidah
Ar Ramadi
Al Fallujah
Al A`Zamiyah
Al Habbaniyah
Baghdad
Ar Rutbah
Al Mahmudiyah
I r a q
Sal Man Pak
Jordan
Karbala'
An Nu'Maniyah
Al Kut
Al Hillah
Kut Al Hayy
Al Kufah Ad Diwaniyah
Al Amarah
An Najaf
Qawam Al Hamzah
Ar Rifa
Al Majarr Al Kabir
As Samawah
An Nasiriyah
Suq Ash Shuyukh
Al Basrah
Az Zubayr
Persian
Kuwait
Gulf
S a u d i A r a b i a
Al-Kuwait
0
100 Miles
0
100 KM
Source: Map Resources. Adapted by CRS. (K.Yancey 7/21/04)