US plans to divide Iraq into three administrative regions

The US plans to divide Iraq into three regions (central, north and south) for administrative purposes after regime change in Baghdad, with civil administrators appointed to run each one.
The scheme is part of a wider structure devised by the Department of Defence for imposing US military and civil rule on Iraq.

US military structure
Head of US Central Command (CENTCOM) is Gen Tommy Franks.
CENTCOM second in command is Gen John Abizaid, with Gen Donald MacKiernan as Commander of Forces in Iraq.
Working alongside CENTCOM will be the 62-member Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), headed by Michael Marx, based in Kuwait, with representations in Turkey, Jordan and Qatar.
Working with DART will be humanitarian agencies and NGOs.

The civil structure
Overall responsibility for this sector is in the hands of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA), set up by the Pentagon in January and headed by retired US army Lt Gen Jay M Garner, with retired Gen Ronald Adams as his assistant.
Below ORHA come four coordinators -- for humanitarian affairs (George Ward -- liasing with DART), civil administration (Michael Mobbs), reconstruction (Lewis Lucke), and budget and logistics.

Some 200 people will be reporting to Gen Garner. Energy and power will come under the authority of the reconstruction coordinator.
Reporting to the coordinator for civil administration will be the civil administrators for the three regions:
-- central (former US Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodin);
-- north (a retired US army general); and
-- south (retired general).

Iraqi bodies
A Consultative Council, comprising 20-25 Iraqis, which will establish two commissions -- one to draw up a constitution, the other to work on legal reform.

Iraqi interim authority
On 15 March, President Bush approved plans for an Iraqi Interim Authority that would gradually take over certain government functions. The authority would include Iraqis from each of the country’s major ethnic, tribal and religious groups, and would eventually help draft a new constitution -- which suggests that it is the consultative council by another name. According to a report on 16 March, the exact role of the authority, when it would begin to take over government functions, and who would be part of it are to be determined.
But US officials suggest that in running a post-war economy, the US plans to substitute the dollar for the Iraqi dinar and shore up the country’s central bank and treasury. The report quoted one official in Washington as saying that in setting up the interim authority, the US would consult with numerous groups, including representatives of the UN and other international organizations, and the Iraqi exile community. According to the Bush administration’s post-war scenario, initial responsibility for running Iraq will fall to the US military and other coalition forces, aided by a cadre of civilian experts from international organizations.

Iraqi opposition leaders, ahead of talks in Ankara on 17 March with President Bush’s special Iraq envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the US had proposed the setting up of a civilian administration to run the country within weeks of the end of a war.
“They are no longer speaking of a military government for two years,” said Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). “This plan envisages cooperation of the Iraqi authority immediately.” Mr Khalilzad said it was one of the issues he would be discussing with opposition leaders.

UK favours UN endorsement for post-war administration
The UK government wants “to ensure that any post-conflict authority in Iraq is endorsed and authorized by a new UN resolution,” Prime Minister Tony Blair said in the House of Commons on 19 March. “That will be an important part of bringing the international community back together again.” Mr Blair said his government was in discussions on this subject with the US and other allies, as well as with the UN itself.
On the same day, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage also spoke of a UN role in post-war Iraq. Not only, he said, would there be “an interim Iraqi authority, which consists of internal opposition, external opposition members representing all the various groupings in Iraq,” but also “some UN involvement will be another part. But I think the real thing we’re driving for is some sort of internationally recognized process which will bring true democracy and representative government to Iraq. And we need to do that in a rather rapid fashion.”

Asked if the US had given up the idea of having a military commander for Iraq, Mr Armitage replied: “We’re not interested in an American commander for Iraq. Once we’ve established our goals, which is making the region safe from weapons of mass destruction and ensuring stability so that ethnic strife and ethnic tension don’t rear their heads, then we would be looking forward to turning Iraq over to Iraqis.”
A call for the UN to be given a major role to play in post-war Iraq was also made on 19 March by former Iraqi Foreign Minister 'Adnan Pachachi. “As far as what will happen after the change of regime,” he said, “we have advocated a transitional period, during which an Iraqi civil administration will be chosen after extensive consultations conducted by a representative of the secretary-general of the UN. That civil administration will be composed of highly qualified technocrats with experience in government and a small political body to oversee the transition period.”

The role of ORHA
Senior US defence officials on 11 March gave a background briefing on reconstruction and humanitarian assistance in post-war Iraq. Commenting on the administrative structure for Iraq, one official said that the civil administrators for northern and southern Iraq would each have a core staff of around 12 people. Around 80 % of the attention of the administrator for the central region would be on Baghdad.
He added that ORHA was “working now to hire and enlist free Iraqis, from the US, from Britain, from democratic European countries, that represent the provinces, each of the 17 provinces and Baghdad, that we can use to go down to the provinces and form groups from the people of each one of those provinces that begin to nominate to us things that need to be done in terms of reconstruction and humanitarian aid… I had great hopes for that process, but it’s not going as fast as I wanted. We’ve hired several free Iraqis, but we need to hire over 100, and we haven’t approached that number yet. We’re putting them under contract, and they are for a short period of time, between 90 and 180 days.”

Running Iraq’s ministries
Another aim of ORHA, one of the defence officials said, was to bring in two-to-three Iraqi exiles “with the right skill sets for each of the 21 or 22 ministries… the Iraqis are going to continue to run them, as they do now. And we’re going to pay them, pay them their salaries. But what we want to do is bring in a free Iraqi who understands the democratic process to help us facilitate making that ministry more efficient.”
As for the executive authority in ministries, a defence official said that, to begin with, “you have to have a face, a US face, a government, interagency face for every ministry. Then, the ministries begin to fall in categories. One of them is those that you’re probably not going to keep and don’t want to keep, but you still have to have some oversight ability because you have to have a way of dismantling it. The second category would be these that you can turn over pretty quick, hand back to the Iraqi people. The third category is those that will take a while longer to turn over, but you’re going to work on turning them over as fast as you can. The last category would be the ones that are difficult to turn over. An example of that might be defence. And that may end up over time being turned over to an international agency or somebody else. But our intent is to keep the ministry people in place, have them continue to function in ministries until we either disestablish that ministry or turn it back over to the Iraqis.”

Asked how long the US presence was likely to last in Iraq, given that the operation was vastly more invasive and widespread than that in Afghanistan, a defence official replied: “I’m talking -- I’ll probably come back to hate this answer, but I’m talking months. But in Iraq you do have a somewhat more sophisticated country and a somewhat more structured country than you have in Afghanistan. And even though it has been an oppressed country, it has the structure and the mechanisms in there to run that country and run it fairly efficiently. At one time it was probably one of the most efficient countries in that part of the world, and a lot of that talent is still there.”
Another official said it should be remembered that ORHA was intended as “a short-term effort to get this started, just put the wheels in motion, and then to hand that off” to international bodies. “I think probably everybody would agree that a larger international face would be better than a small international face.”

The role of US civil affairs units
Joining the US forces in Iraq after the war will be units of the Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command -- comprised almost exclusively of reservists drawn from a wide range of civilian backgrounds. According to a Pentagon fact sheet, “Civil Affairs units help military commanders by working with civil authorities and civilian populations in the commander’s area of operations to lessen the impact of military operations on them… Civil Affairs specialists can quickly and systematically identify critical requirements needed by local citizens in war or disaster situations. They can also locate civil resources to support military operations, help minimize civilian interference with operations, support national assistance activities… and maintain dialogue with civilian aid agencies and civilian commercial and private organizations.”
According to a report in Washington File on 17 March, the priority of the Civil Affairs units in Iraq will be to minimize the displacement of the Iraqi civilian population and facilitate humanitarian relief. A guiding principle will be to turn over humanitarian assistance operations to aid agencies and provide logistical support. After security, the safety of civilians and providing basics such as food, water and shelter, the group would oversee the transition from a dictatorship to a democracy -- hoping to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and win their support for the US post-regime change goals.

Relief agencies uncertain of role
UN relief organizations and NGOs have said that their efforts to plan for post-war efforts in Iraq have been hindered by uncertainty about how they will be allowed to operate in the country. “We are particularly concerned that the UN takes over the civilian administration as soon as possible,” said Barbara Stocking, the head of the UK-based charity, Oxfam on 18 March. “We have to work under the auspices of the UN, not US military command. We cannot be seen to be under the control of the military, or even closely associated with it.”
UN aid agencies said on 18 March that they were unprepared for war and blamed donor countries for not providing sufficient funds. The World Food Program said it had received just $ 7 mm of the $ 23 mm it had been seeking. The UN has warned that the war could create up to 1.45 mm refugees and uproot a further 2 mm. The UNHCR has predicted that some 600,000 Iraqis might flee from the war, with half heading for Iran and the rest to Turkey, Syria and Jordan.

The head of the UN humanitarian mission in Iraq, Ramior Lopez da Silva, said on 18 March, on arrival in Cyprus with the rest of the UN staff evacuated from the country, that “under present conditions we have the components of a major humanitarian catastrophe on our hands. The problem in Iraq is that you have a population weakened by 13 years of very intrusive and harsh sanctions which debilitated the population in general.” The US State Department announced on 19 March that it had allocated around $ 154 mm to provide food, water, medicine and other humanitarian aid to Iraqis.
Spokesman Richard Boucher said the US had been “pre-positioning stockpiles of emergency supplies and commodities.”

$ 1.5 bn worth of reconstruction contracts for private US firms
Contracts worth more than $ 1.5 bn are being offered to private US firms as part of an ambitious plan to rebuild Iraq and overhaul Iraqi society, according to a report on 17 March. According to the report, “the Bush plan, as detailed in more than 100 pages of confidential contract documents, would sideline UN development agencies and other multilateral organizations that have long directed reconstruction efforts in such places as Afghanistan and Kosovo.” The plan would also downplay the role of NGOs, with only $ 50 mm earmarked for a number of smaller groups such as CARE and Save the Children.
Within weeks of a war ending, the administration plans to begin everything from repairing roads, schools and hospitals, to revamping the country’s financial rules and government payroll system. The White House, the report says, is expected to ask Congress for as much as $ 100 bn to pay for the war in Iraq and the aftermath. Included in this would be a request for $ 1.8 bn this year for reconstruction and about $ 800 mm for relief assistance. However, the UN Development Program estimates that reconstruction alone could cost $ 10 bn a year over three years.

Much of the heaviest work will fall to US companies through a growing web of contracts with the Pentagon and USAID. The latter is expected shortly to choose the main contractor for a $ 900 mm assignment to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, including highways, bridges, airports and government buildings. At least five construction companies had been approached in connection with the main contract: Bechtel, Fluor, Kellogg Brown and Root, Louis Berger Group and Parsons. Kellogg Brown and Root, asubsidiary of Halliburton, were last month awarded a contract to oversee any fire fighting operations at Iraq’s oilfields after a US-led invasion.
The agency is also contracting for five other large jobs, worth a total of $ 300-500 mm, administering Iraq’s seaports and international airports, revamping its schools and healthcare system, and handling large-scale logistics, such as water transport. The US Army Corps of Engineers is also taking bids for work worth up to $ 500 mm for building projects such as roadways and military barracks.