Global Policy Forum

By Will Hutton

First the UN bomb, then the murder of three British soldiers: peace in Iraq will be elusive until reconstruction is truly international.

The bombing of the United Nations building in Baghdad last week that left at least 23 dead, including the leading UN official Sérgio Vieira de Mello, put the Hutton inquiry into perspective. The drama of Iraq moved centre stage. What happened was an outrage, an assault on humanitarianism, international legitimacy and disinterested multilateralism.

Even if the UN has been compromised by the role forced on it by the United States, it remains Iraq's last best hope. Those who attacked it revealed their fundamental value system to be breathtakingly at odds with those of common humanity. Their action is a commentary on the pre-Enlightenment barbarity of Islamic terrorism which menaces not just the Middle East but the entire West.

Yet there can be no retreat from Iraq now, whatever your original position on the war, as the French government - the leading critic of going to war - formally recognises. But if the rebuilding of Iraq is to be successful we must be realistic about the scale and duration of the engagement that will be required. As the latest atrocity claims three British lives in Basra, we also need to transform the framework and mindset of waging war to one of how to conduct the peace.

The priorities must be legitimacy, legitimacy and legitimacy; and there is no legitimacy in trying to reconstruct Iraq with the same pre-emptive unilateralism which characterised the launch of the war. The reconstruction must be internationalised as quickly as possible. But internationalisation is a two-way process. The US must give up its pretensions; the rest of the world has to be realistic about the scale of the challenge.

The mismatch between post-war reality and the Pentagon's pre-war reconstruction planning is huge, revealing how ideologically blinkered America's conservative leadership has been. Iraq's reconstruction, believed George Bush, would be analogous to that of post-war Germany and Japan, and could proceed similarly but on more ultra-free market lines.

Iraq's interim government would be assumed by a US military viceroy with an Iraqi advisory council to input local advice. The US would run all internal affairs; the United Nations, as May's Resolution 1483 made crystal clear, would be confined to 'promoting', 'encouraging' and 'facilitating' those international efforts that would support the US viceroy in his aims. The US would have complete control.

Security was to be undertaken by the functioning police force which the Americans expected to inherit along with friendly elements of the armed forces; within months the US could expect drastically to reduce troop commitment. If additional help was needed, private security firms could be enlisted.

It was envisaged, for example, that a mere 6,000 private security guards could look after Iraq's 300 kilometres of exposed desert oil pipeline. Production of oil was expected to more than treble to 3 million barrels a day by Christmas driven by a flood of inward investment from the great oil multinationals, and the revenue would be earmarked to finance the vital reconstruction of Iraq's utility infrastructure. This would be led by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the ultimate in anti-state minimalism.

Its 600 officials would not do anything themselves, because it is an article of American conservative faith that state initiative in any form is pathetically inefficient; rather they would commission American companies (leavened with the odd British company as a concession to its participation) to spearhead reconstruction. Its budget could be small; Iraqi oil revenues would quickly kick in to provide the necessary supplementary finance.

Five months later nothing remains of this fantasy put together by the Pentagon, free- market think-tanks and Iraqi exiles. Iraq, it is obvious, is not in the same situation as post-war Germany or Japan. Rather, the entire apparatus of a capitalist democracy has to be painfully created from scratch - an exercise in state building from outside on a scale that has never been attempted before.

The Americanisation of political authority has helped justify the charge that the Americans are invaders rather than liberators; casting the UN as a supporter of American aims fatally discredited it and made it a target for Islamic extremists. Oil production, even before the latest sabotage on the pipeline network, was running at a third of the level needed; the Americans now openly acknowledge there is not a chance of production building up as projected.

As a result the CPA is going to have to find much more cash. Paul Bremer, the US administrator, now estimates reconstruction costs to be as high as $100 billion over the next three years. Just repairing the electrical grid and the water system will cost $13bn and $16bn respectively. This compares with the CPA's original budget for electricity work this year - a mere $229 million.

On top of this there are the ongoing defence and security costs, already more than $50bn and running at $3.9bn a month. Put just the official projections together and the cost exceeds a cool $80bn a year; many private estimates believe it will be half as much again.

As for security, the pre-war assumptions were even more awry. If the US were to match, pro rata, the troop commitments to Bosnia and Kosovo (in which no US soldier died) it would need between 300,000 and 450,000 soldiers on the ground, estimates James Dobbins, variously the US envoy to Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia.

Given the escalating acts of sabotage, the requirement is at the upper end of the range. Since the US claimed it had the security position under control some weeks ago, deaths of American soldiers have continued at exactly the same rate. We need realism now, not propaganda. For, until there is genuine security, there is not a cat- in-hell's chance of securing vital investment, resisting sabotage and making real progress in restoring electricity and water supply. And while these remain inadequate, Iraqi public opinion remains inflamed.

For some months now, the neo-conservatives have been on the defensive, their judgment having proved so obviously wanting. Bremer has upgraded the original advisory council to a governing council, attempting to give it more legitimacy by formally stepping up Iraqi input - even if 16 of the 25 council members are returning exiles.

Now he is admitting what the real financial costs will be, and even Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who before the war dismissed claims that the US would need hundreds of thousands of troops as 'wildly off the mark', has admitted he was wrong, just as he was to assume a functioning police force.

The neo-conservatives are beginning to eat humble pie. With their position weakening, last week's atrocity provided an opening for the onset of rationality. Secretary of State Colin Powell is seizing the opportunity to launch a UN resolution that would enlist more international support, but the key states that would provide it - France, Germany, Turkey, India and Pakistan - are insisting that there should be a proper bargain. Support should be in exchange for wholesale internationalisation.

They are right. And the Blair government, guilty of tamely accepting the American terms for post-war reconstruction, has a chance to redeem itself. It must side unambiguously with the Europeans and fight for a proper approach to Iraqi reconstruction.

A new UN Resolution should entail a decisive move towards the internationalisation of Iraqi reconstruction and the legitimisation of political authority. There must be direct elections to the Governing Council immediately: the US has obstructed these so far on the grounds that the electoral rolls are inadequate but, in truth, because it fears it would lose control of the hand-picked council. On top of that, the US must propose a timetable for the council to become Iraq's de facto Provisional Government with executive authority and full powers over the discredited CPA.

In return, the UN must plan for a peace-keeping operation with troops on the scale Dobbins argues for (more than 400,000). The European Union must commit to deliver at least a quarter of the total. Realism over security must be followed by realism over the scale and cost of reconstruction. This is a 10-year engagement that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, not all of which can come from Iraqi oil revenues.

This would be a deal of Marshall Plan proportions, but is essential if Iraq is to win through. The forces ranged against success are growing; the Armed Vanguard of the Second Mohamed Army which claims responsibility for the attack on the UN said it does not hesitate to spill 'crusader blood'. These men make no distinction between liberal and conservative, hawk and dove, UN official or American soldier; we are all 'crusaders'. We have to get Iraq right. It can no longer be left to the ideological stupidities of the Pentagon and American conservatives.

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