NEW YORK, 20 October 2003 — The State Department predicted many of the problems that have bedeviled the US-led occupation of Iraq, in a yearlong study whose findings were released in 13 volumes to Congress last week, The New York Times reported yesterday.
Dubbed the “Future of Iraq Project,” the $5 million study gathered more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, business leaders and other experts into 17 groups that beginning in April 2002 considered the possible fate of the country after Saddam Hussein, the report said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell confirmed in a television interview yesterday that the study was done and made available to the Defense Department and others involved in the reconstruction. “It was an extensive piece of work,” Powell told Fox television.
“It was a quality piece of work that was made available to (the former head of the Iraqi reconstruction office) General (Jay) Garner for his use and the use of those involved in the reconstruction efforts,” he said.
According to the Times, the teams of experts had predicted the massive looting that followed Saddam’s ouster and had warned of security problems if the Iraqi Army was disbanded quickly — a step the US civilian boss for the country Paul Bremer took.
The study had recommended finding jobs for demobilized troops to avoid seeing them turn against the US-led forces, as officials believe some have now done, it added.
It also warned that heavy investments were needed to repair the water, electrical and sewage systems, and that many Iraqis would be reluctant to start building a civil society after decades of living under dictatorship.
Powell declined to say whether military leaders had ignored the report, but unnamed State Department officials told the newspaper that the Pentagon had shelved their work.
But the US military office charged with rebuilding Iraq did not even know about the study until February, less than a month before the war, the office’s Deputy Director Ron Adams told the paper.
The Pentagon’s spokesman Larry Di Rita denied that the work had been ignored, but senior defense officials said much of the study was too academic to be useful. “It was mostly ignored,” one defense official told the paper.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported yesterday that the US military is developing a plan to gradually reduce troop levels in Iraq from the current 130,000 to about 50,000 by mid 2005.
Withdrawals would begin in the second quarter of 2004 and would see the force reduced to fewer than 100,000 by the middle of that year, the report said. Rumsfeld has not yet approved the plan.
Plans are also being made to withdraw British and US forces from key cities in Iraq, starting with Basra and Mosul, a military official told the Post. And in another change, the top US military commander in Iraq, army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, will likely be moved out of Iraq sometime next year and replaced by Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the report said.
The Pentagon hopes to turn over as many basic security functions as possible to Iraqi security forces and to foreign peacekeepers. If that goes well, ideally, 40,000 US troops would be deployed in Iraq by mid-2005 — a number considered “sustainable in size for years without placing undue stress on the overall force,” the Post said.
