[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE FOLLOWING MILITARY OPERATIONS: OVERCOMING
BARRIERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 18, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-88
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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WASHINGTON : 2003
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Peter Sirh, Staff Director
Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
DAN BURTON, Indiana DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio TOM LANTOS, California
RON LEWIS, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota CHRIS BELL, Texas
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
Thomas Costa, Professional Staff Member
Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on July 18, 2003.................................... 1
Statement of:
Garner, Lieutenant General (retired) Jay M., president,
Sycoleman, former Director, Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance.................................... 21
Westin, Susan S., Managing Director, International Affairs
and Trade, General Accounting Office; Joseph J. Collins,
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Stability
Operations; Richard Greene, Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration;
and James Kunder, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia
and the Near East, U.S. Agency for International
Development................................................ 40
Willcuts, Tammie, humanitarian operations specialist, Save
the Children; Serge Duss, director of public policy and
advocacy, World Vision, Inc., USA; and Pat Carey, senior
vice president for programs, Care.......................... 102
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Bell, Hon. Chris, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Texas, prepared statement of............................ 20
Carey, Pat, senior vice president for programs, Care,
prepared statement of...................................... 129
Collins, Joseph J., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense,
Stability Operations, prepared statement of................ 61
Duncan, Hon. John J., Jr., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Tennessee, article entitled, ``Iraq, We Win.
Then What?''............................................... 11
Duss, Serge, director of public policy and advocacy, World
Vision, Inc., USA:
Letter dated July 17, 2003............................... 112
Prepared statement of.................................... 117
Greene, Richard, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, prepared
statement of............................................... 67
Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio, July 18, 2003 article................... 7
Kunder, James, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia and
the Near East, U.S. Agency for International Development,
prepared statement of...................................... 74
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut:
A list of the men and women who have died in battle...... 90
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Westin, Susan S., Managing Director, International Affairs
and Trade, General Accounting Office, prepared statement of 43
Willcuts, Tammie, humanitarian operations specialist, Save
the Children, prepared statement of........................ 105
HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE FOLLOWING MILITARY OPERATIONS: OVERCOMING
BARRIERS
----------
FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2003
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats
and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays, Duncan, Kucinich, Lynch,
Maloney, Sanchez, Ruppersberger, Bell and Tierney.
Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and
counsel; R. Nicholas Palarino, Ph.D., senior policy advisor;
Thomas Costa, professional staff member; Robert A. Briggs,
clerk; Joe McGowen, detailee; Chris Skaluba, fellow; David
Rapallo, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant
clerk.
Mr. Shays. I would like to call this hearing to order.
It has been observed that modern warfare consumes
governments and civic order, leaving anarchy and chaos in its
wake. Lasting victory can only be declared when security, the
rule of law, and economic vitality have been restored.
The liberation of Iraq was a modern war. Superior military
force brought down a brutal, repressive regime, but also
severed all the sinews of a highly centralized governmental
control system. The resulting lawlessness and instability
dispersed the field of fire into the alleys and byways of
Baghdad where the battle for the hearts, minds, health, and
welfare of the Iraqi people is also being waged. Coalition
armed forces must defend against the elusive, but lethal
remnants of the Hussein regime. At the same time, Ambassador
Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, CPA are
working to build the physical infrastructure and democratic
institutions needed to sustain a victory still being purchased
in blood.
On May 13th, General Jay Garner, then serving as Director
of the Department of Defense [DOD] Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance, set before the subcommittee 11
essential tasks, which, if achieved by now, would put
assistance efforts in Iraq on what he called a positive slope
to success. They were, No. 1, establish security in Baghdad;
No. 2, pay Civil Service salaries, catch up by June 30, 2003;
No. 3, get police trained and back to work; No. 4, get
government ministry functioning; No. 5, restore basic services
in Baghdad to prewar levels or better; No. 6, prevent a fuel
crisis; No. 7, purchase crops; No. 8, solve food distribution
system gaps; No. 9, install town councils in all communities;
No. 10, reestablish provincial governments, target specific
needs; finally No. 11, prevent disease, such as cholera
outbreaks.
At that hearing, representatives of nongovernmental
organizations [NGO's], providing humanitarian assistance in
Iraq, also testified on the urgent need for basic security and
their hopes for a more effective civil/military coordination
that does not compromise their impartiality. Yesterday, nine
relief agencies wrote the President requesting stronger steps
to increase security, mobilize the Iraqi civil service, and
provide greater access to CPA officials.
Today we ask what progress has been made achieving these
goals, what lessons from previous conflicts can be applied to
Iraq, and what barriers will still block the path of food,
medicines and other essentials needed by the Iraqi people?
Winning the war required courage, strength and speed.
Securing the peace demands humility, flexibility and patience:
Humility to acknowledge the enormity of the task, flexibility
to learn and adapt, and patience to nurture the democratic
aspirations of a long-oppressed people.
To help us better understand the pressing issues
surrounding humanitarian assistance in Iraq, we are joined this
morning by three panels of witnesses. They all bring impressive
expertise and experience to our discussion. We are grateful for
their time and their dedication, and we look forward to their
testimony.
Testifying first will be Lieutenant General (Retired) Jay
M. Garner, former Director of the DOD Office of Reconstruction
and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq. In May, General Garner
provided the subcommittee a videotape statement from Baghdad on
the status of coalition efforts to stabilize postwar Iraq. We
agreed then that we would invite the General to testify and
answer questions after he returned to the United States, and he
agreed to do that, and he is here with us. He joins us today as
a private citizen, but as a citizen to whom this Nation owes a
great deal for his long and most distinguished career and his
continued willingness to serve whenever asked.
General, we welcome you. It's good to have you here in the
flesh.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
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Mr. Shays. And at this time I would call on Mr. Kucinich,
the ranking member of the subcommittee.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for
calling this hearing today. And welcome to General Garner.
Thank you for your service to our country.
I'd like to call to the subcommittee's attention two
newspaper articles. The first is from May 2, 2003, from a
Newsday in Long Island. As we remember, on May 1st the
President landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln off the coast of
San Diego, and he stood before the U.S. servicemembers and the
American people, and he declared victory in Iraq. He said the
hostilities were over and unfurled a banner that read,
``Mission Accomplished.''
Now, in contrast, here is a front page of yesterday's
Washington Post: Guerilla war acknowledged. Army General John
Abizaid, the new head of the U.S. Central Command, acknowledged
for the first time that American troops are in a, ``classical
guerilla-type war,'' against rogue Iraqi forces and that the
attacks are growing. They're growing in organization and
sophistication.
And when the President first came to office, he promised to
level with the American people. Recently it became clear that
the President made misleading statements in his State of the
Union Address relating to the intelligence on which his
decision to go to war in Iraq was based. The White House has
now conceded that the President should not have claimed in his
speech that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Niger,
because this allegation was based on crudely forged documents.
At the same time the White House still appears to be clinging
to the idea that it was forthright with Congress and the
American people, using phrases like ``technically accurate,''
that the President no doubt would have criticized if someone
else said them. But the State of the Union Address is just one
part and one particularly crystallized example of a larger
pattern in which the President and his White House advisors
stretch the truth, overstate the threat, and understate the
true risks, the costs.
Anyone looking at the two headlines I just showed can see
that the administration did not adequately prepare and
implement a plan to achieve security in postwar Iraq, and they
definitely did not level with the American people about it. But
this pattern began even before the war. Veteran military
officials with decades of experience warned the White House
that the task of security was a daunting problem. The Army's
Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki testified before the
Senate Armed Services Committee. When asked how many troops
were necessary to secure Iraq after the war, he said, ``several
hundred thousand.''
Not only did officials in the administration refuse to
listen, they actively attacked these military experts. Two days
after the general testified, the administration sent Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to publicly rebuke him, saying
his estimate was, ``way off the mark.'' Today it is clear Mr.
Wolfowitz was off the mark. He is in Baghdad this morning, and
he will see firsthand the extent of his miscalculation.
This week the Nation passed a grave threshold. The lives of
more U.S. servicemen and women have now been lost in combat
than the total number of U.S. personnel killed in combat during
the first Gulf war. By my last count 147 servicemembers have
been killed in combat, surpassing the number killed in the
first Gulf war. In the near future I'm concerned we may surpass
another awful milestone. We will have lost more U.S. lives than
in the first Gulf war just since the President declared the end
of hostilities in his aircraft carrier speech on May 1, 2003.
Clearly the mission has not been accomplished. The
hostilities are not over. This question relates to the
nongovernmental organizations represented here today and
whether they can effectively deliver their critical services. I
look forward to hearing from representatives from Save the
Children, CARE, and World Vision, who will testify in the
second panel. Your work is tremendously important, and the fact
that you're still doing it despite the monumental increases and
challenges you face is a testimony to your commitment and your
faith in humanity.
But this issue also relates to the people of Iraq who have
been starved of hope for so long and have been promised,
promised by this administration that they will have a new
start.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mr. Shays. The third panel is where we have the NGO's.
We'll have the government witnesses in the second panel. That's
a change.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate it.
Mr. Shays. At this time the Chair recognizes the
distinguished gentleman from Tennessee Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I heard former Senator Dole on the national radio program
this morning remarking critically about the fact that President
Clinton had promised that we would be out of Bosnia by the end
of 1996, that would we would stay there just 1 year, and we're
still there.
I remember reading in Newsweek Magazine just before the war
started in Iraq that country had a total GDP of $58 to $60
billion. Now by some estimates we've spent--we passed that
supplemental appropriation for $830 billion for the war. Nobody
seems to know exactly how many billions we've spent so far, but
it's many, many billions. A few days ago Secretary Rumsfeld
said we're spending almost $4 billion a month there now.
I can tell you this: Many Americans, and I can tell you a
great majority of people in my district, are questioning why.
Why in a time of $455 billion deficits are we doing all this,
when a few days ago the leading Shiite cleric, big opponents to
Saddam Hussein, and the leader, the most respected leader, of
the largest population group in Iraq said that the United
States should get out and leave Iraq to the Iraqis? I've heard
all the cliches. I know that it's--the politically correct,
sophisticated, intellectual thing is to say that we have to do
this, and that we have to be there for many years to come, but
I can tell you more and more people are asking why.
Fortune Magazine said in its November 25th issue before the
war started that--an article entitled ``We Win, What Then''--
and they said that if we stayed in Iraq that we were going to
make our troops sitting ducks for Islamic terrorists. A few
days ago we read about an American soldier being shot in the
head at point-blank range as he stood in line to get a soft
drink. We're reading more and more stories like that. I know we
have people in this country and all of these departments who
want to feel like world statesmen and make their name in
history, but they're doing this at great cost to the American
people, and they're risking the lives of young Americans. And I
can tell you that I think the sooner we get out of Iraq, the
better off everybody is going to be.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
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Mr. Shays. Before asking you to address this, General
Garner, we have Mrs. Maloney, a very effective Member.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and ranking member,
and thank you, General, for your wonderful service to our
country.
And I first would like to state that our troops did an
excellent job in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and we are all proud
of their dedication and commitment to freedom and democracy,
and their success really to this point. They were assigned a
very difficult task, and they performed it in an extremely
capable and efficient manner, and we are all grateful.
I would also like to thank the representatives we'll be
hearing from later from the NGO's, CARE, World Vision, Save the
Children, for their ongoing work in Iraq to help the Iraqi
people. You are our best diplomats, and we thank you for the
important work that you do.
According to all reports, we won the war in Iraq. The
question is are we going to win the peace? And every day that
we remain in Iraq, we are putting U.S. lives at risk. Since
President Bush's May 1st speech, 36 U.S. soldiers have been
killed in the so-called peacetime, and today it has been
acknowledged that it's a guerilla-type war as the front page of
the Washington Post yesterday that we're confronting a whole
different kind of challenge.
I met yesterday with the President of the U.N. General
Assembly. I represent the United Nations, it's in my district,
and I'm proud of the work that they have done in places such as
Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and East Timor, working with the
United States and our allies to bring stability to the regions.
And we can rely on them because they have organizations such as
UNCA, UNICEF, UNFPA and others that have been successful
working in 170 different nations, with roughly 150 other
nations supporting them. So I feel that as we go forward, we
should do it in a more multilateral way with support from other
countries. And I would say the United Nations with--working
with the United Nations, our Arab allies could help us with the
peace there and assume some of the responsibilities so that our
troops are more protected and the necessary services and
supplies are given to the Iraqi people.
We are spending, my colleague said, 4 billion; I read
yesterday it was 3.9 billion. Whatever you call it, it's a lot
of money a month in Iraq. As we are galloping toward a $455
billion deficit here at home, it would be, in my opinion,
prudent that we would share the burden in Iraq not only with a
multilateral approach to the peacekeeping, but share the burden
and the cost of keeping the peace. So I am hopeful that
Secretary Powell will succeed in securing a U.N. mandate so
that other governments can be brought in and other
nationalities can be there to help with them.
After September 11, which happened in the district that I
represent, I lost 500 constituents in it, the world literally
came to our side and aided us jointly in our war on terrorism,
and it represented global cooperation at its best. And now that
we are in Iraq, it is our duty to American citizens and Iraqi
citizens and the citizens of the world, in my opinion, to work
in a more international, cooperative way with other countries
in not only bringing the peace, but humanitarian assistance and
really helping to restore peace and democracy in Iraq for the
Iraqi people.
But I look forward to your comments, General. We thank you
for your service and thank you for this hearing today.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
We've been joined by Mr. Lynch.
Mr. Lynch.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Garner, I want to welcome you before the committee.
Last time we spoke, we were actually at your headquarters in
Baghdad, and I want to thank you for your good work in that
area. I know that we had a menu of problems that we were
dealing with at that time both from a security point of view
vis-a-vis our troops; also a humanitarian; a civil
administration task that was in hand, but still not quite
stabilized. And I'll be very interested in hearing about the
progress since May 18th when we were in Baghdad.
But I do thank you for your courtesy in helping this
committee with its work. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Shays. Ask unanimous consent that all members of the
subcommittee be permitted to place an opening statement in the
record and that the record remain open for 3 days for that
purpose. And without objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Chris Bell follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1134.013
Mr. Shays. I ask further unanimous consent that all Members
be permitted to include their written statements in the record,
and without objection, so ordered.
General Garner, we swear our witnesses in. If you would
just rise, we'll swear you in. This is an investigative
committee. We do that.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Note for the record the witness has responded in
the affirmative.
Again, General Garner, it is nice to have you here. We
appreciated the very extensive video that you sent when you
were actually in Baghdad. It's nice to close the loop. We
recognize without your having to say that there are some
limitations. You've left Iraq, so you can't tell us what
happened yesterday, but you can give us some insight on the
effort to begin this process, and that will be very helpful to
this committee.
We thank you, and with that we welcome your testimony.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL (RETIRED) JAY M. GARNER,
PRESIDENT, SYCOLEMAN, FORMER DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF RECONSTRUCTION
AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
General Garner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all of the
Members. It's an honor to be here, and I thank you for your
kind words and your support of our team and your support of
what is going on in Baghdad even today.
Let me give you a quick synopsis of my tenure there. On
January 17th I accepted the task from the Secretary of Defense.
On January 22nd I tasked the interagency for people, the people
began coming in this the first week in February. On March 16th
we deployed to Kuwait. On April 21st I went to Baghdad with
eight people, and on April 24th my team from Kuwait arrived in
Baghdad. And on May 10th I met Ambassador Bremer in Qatar, and
he and I went to Baghdad. On June 3rd, with my task complete, I
departed Iraq.
I was given an excellent team by our government. I had five
retired flag officers. I had four retired Ambassadors and four
active Ambassadors. The overwhelming majority of volunteers I
got from each of the agencies were excellent people. Sometimes
we're a little short on quantity, but we were never short on
quality.
We planned for a humanitarian crisis. We felt that there
would be a large number of refugees and displaced people at the
termination of the war. I can go into that further later if you
like. We also planned on substantial reconstruction of the
infrastructure and the restoration of the oil fields. We also
planned on the restoration of the ministries at the national
level and restoration of the local governments.
The actual situation we found as we entered into Iraq and
got into Baghdad, was there really was no humanitarian crisis.
There were humanitarian issues, but no crisis at all, and we
had preserved the oil fields. Now you can credit that to the
skill of the military and specifically to the skill of
Lieutenant General Dave McKiernan, who is the Land Force
Commander, and his two Corps Commanders, General Scott Wallace
of V Corps and General Conway of the 1st Marine Expeditionary
Force.
The immediate problem we had was the restoration of basic
services and the reconstitution of the infrastructure. One of
the problems with the infrastructure is that it had been
absolutely abandoned for the last 30 years. No money was spent
on it. I can go into that more if you'd like. But to deal with
this we established immediately the April 11th task that the
chairman went over as he opened this session.
What I'd say is despite the conditions that we had, the
environment that we found initially was we're dealing in a
country the size of California, had no power, shortage of
water, no police, no communications, and 17 of the 23
ministries had been destroyed mostly by looting, not by
military damage or collateral damage. But despite these
conditions, the magnificent Americans and British that I had on
my team, I think in the first 30 days they established and paid
a $20 minimum payment, emergency payment, to all the public
service workers. They began payments to all pensioners. On May
24th they began paying salaries to all the public servants.
That's close to 2 million people. They arranged to purchase the
harvests. They restored basic services to 80 percent of Iraq.
They restarted all the schools, returned the police forces to
duty, installed town councils in 17 of the 26 cities above
100,000 people, re-established the ministries with interim
leadership, found workplaces for the ministries, began the
refurbishment of buildings, and, very importantly, they avoided
epidemics and met all the pressing health needs.
Now, this was accomplished by civilian and military teams,
very dedicated people that are working in temperatures above
120 degrees, with very little sleep. I'll guarantee you all of
them missed at least one meal every day.
Things are still hectic, but I see the glass as half full.
I think in Ambassador Bremer we have a very talented, very
skilled diplomat who is doing all the right things. He's got a
wonderful team over there. And on top of that, Iraq is not a
Third World country. The people of Iraq are extremely skilled.
They have excellent engineers, excellent doctors, excellent
academics, and they are marvelous administrators, as you find
in most totalitarian regimes. On top of all that, they have the
wealth of oil that's never been shared with them before and
will be shared with them now.
So I know where we are is a dicey road right now. I know
there's a lot of complaints about where we are. But I see this
getting better. The noose is tightening on the terrorists. I
think the noose is tightening on Saddam Hussein. I think in 4
or 5 years from now, you'll see a completely different Iraq.
You will look across and see an Iraq with a democratic
government, an Iraq that's secular, an Iraq that has a good
economy, and I think that will establish the baseline for
change in the Middle East without doing anything else. There is
incredible potential for our Nation to make this successful
because we--by making it successful, we will change what's
going on in the Middle East.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members, for the opportunity
to come here and talk to you. I'm ready to answer any of your
questions that I can answer.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, General.
Why don't I begin and just ask you, in your judgment, what
are the basic humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, such as
are they starving, do they need potable water, do they lack
shelter, are they waiting for medicines and medical care?
General Garner. The first problem is a problem of neglect
of 30 years. There has been no money spent on the Iraqi people
during the reign of Saddam Hussein, the services available are
minimal to the people. And the facilities, you can go into the
largest hospital in Basra, and there is open sewage running
down the middle of the street between the buildings. So the
humanitarian needs really are in the form of infrastructure.
I'll give you a quick story. I walked into the oil fields,
and outside Basra and I walked into the control room, and there
were two British gentlemen there about my age wearing British
uniforms. I knew they were too old to be in the army. I said
``are you guys in the army?'' They said, ``oh, no, that's what
they gave us to wear.'' I said, ``what are you doing here?''
They said, ``well, we're here getting the oil field stood back
up again.'' And I said, ``why are you here?'' They said,
``well, we're both retired, and we began operating with British
Petroleum in 1960, and it was on this kind of equipment, and
we're the only people they could find that knew how this kind
of equipment worked again.'' Now, that's not just the oil
fields, that's everything in Iraq because nothing has been
spent on the infrastructure.
So the basic humanitarian needs are really to restore the
infrastructure that services the people, such as the health,
the school, the food, and that type of thing.
Mr. Shays. I had a constituent who said we have been out of
Iraq for so long, we don't know what the hell is going on
inside. This was before the war began. And he said that we have
no real intelligence. It strikes me that this is kind of
obvious information that I wasn't aware of before the war. I'm
wondering how prepared our military and our civilian folks were
for this just unbelievable backwardness in its infrastructure.
In other words, we tell these stories almost in disbelief, as
if we didn't know before. Maybe you could just touch on that.
General Garner. Well, I think you're correct. I think we
had very little knowledge of what goes on inside Iraq because
it was so--Saddam Hussein had everything tightened down so
tight that you couldn't get information out of there. I don't
think we had as much knowledge as we would like to have had of
what was going on there. And certainly the infrastructure, I
knew the infrastructure would be bad, but it was worse than I
thought it would be. The only place where you have good
infrastructure there is in the palaces.
Mr. Shays. Why weren't we able to take advantage of the
numerous defectors that were involved? Let me ask you, did you
have in your organization any Iraqis who had defected who were
there to help you with providing this information? Did they, in
fact, know about the actual backwardness of this infrastructure
and just think that maybe you knew and didn't bother to tell
us, or did we not think to ask? It just seems to me like this
shouldn't have caught us by surprise.
General Garner. By the time we deployed to Baghdad, we had
about 180 free Iraqis that were in our organization, but most
of when had been free Iraqis for several years, and they
eventually deployed to Baghdad to help us. The free Iraqis
never mentioned to me or anyone else that I know of how bad the
infrastructure was, but that infrastructure was all they knew.
So I can see why they wouldn't have mentioned that to us.
Mr. Shays. Now, a lot of us voted to use force against
Saddam Hussein, some didn't, but even those who have voted to
use force may have a disagreement on our task now. I think, for
instance, that I have a big disagreement with my Republican
colleague Mr. Duncan. I believe that if we were to fail, if we
were to leave Iraq, if we were to fail, that anything we said
in the future would almost be meaningless. I guess I'd like you
to touch on the issue of whether there's room for failure and
what the consequences would be if we failed to stay the course,
failed to help Iraq introduce democratic government, introduce
a market economy and grow economically. If you could tell us
about your view of that.
General Garner. Well, first of all, Mr. Chairman, I can't
imagine that we would walk away from this. If we did, and if
Saddam Hussein is still alive, he'd return immediately, and our
credibility worldwide would be zero.
Second of all, like I said earlier, the potential for us
staying the course, and I think we will stay the course, in
being successful, and I believe we will be successful. The
potential is incredible, because restoring Iraq, putting in a
democratic government, having a Constitution, having a
government that expresses the freely elected will of the people
will change the nature of the Middle East. You'll have the
Iranians looking across saying, ``why can't I have that; the
Syrians looking across saying, why can't I have that; the
Egyptians and Saudis the same thing.'' So the potential there
is enormous.
Mr. Shays. Before recognizing Mrs. Maloney, I would also
say some Members that felt it was not wise that we went into
Iraq now that we're there clearly don't want us to leave and
don't want us to fail.
General Garner. Well--you know, I had over 70 meetings with
Iraqi people, garbage workers, schoolteachers, police,
politicians etc. Every third day I walked through the market,
and I get 400 people following me, and I would stop and talk to
them. When you begin talking with them, they raise hell with
you in the first 20 minutes, like they do in any town meeting
in America. But at the end of that, it gives you a chance to
address all their problems, tell them what you're doing and say
thank you for your time. As I walked away in all 70 plus
meetings, I always got a thumbs up. ``Thank Mr. George Bush for
taking away Saddam Hussein, and please don't leave.''
I don't like the words ``silent majority,'' but there is a
tremendous amount of silent majority of Iraqi people who are
glad we're there, who are thankful we're there and don't want
us to leave.
I think right now the tasks that are in place to be done
are being done. We just started reconstituting the Army and we
just established the committee for government. I think all
these are positive things.
I believe three things need to happen that will have a huge
turnaround in Iraq, I believe: No. 1, find Saddam Hussein dead
or alive; No. 2, reestablish a government, and that's going on
right now, and Ambassador Bremer has his arms around that; and
No. 3, reestablish an Iraqi Army that can pick up some of the
security tasks, and that's beginning to happen now under Walt
Slocombe. I think we bottomed out of this thing, and from this
point on I think we'll see an increase.
Now, you got the terrorists there, and we tighten the noose
on them every day. In my estimation, part of the increased
contacts with terrorists is because we're now taking the fight
to them. We're seeking them out, and we're having more contacts
with them, but I see that as good. The noose tightens every day
on Saddam Hussein; the noose tightens on the guerrillas every
day.
Mr. Shays. If other Members don't get to my 11 points. I'll
choose in my second round to ask about that.
Let me just say I used 8 minutes, so I'll apply that same
amount of timing to the Members that follow.
Mrs. Maloney, you have the floor.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very disturbed
at the mounting number of American soldiers that are being
killed during the peacetime, and I am very, very concerned
about it. And if we continue at the rate that we're going, we
will lose more of our people, our men and women, during the
peacetime than we lost during the war, and it's very upsetting.
They're doing very innocent things, buying a Coca Cola, and
they're shot, walking down a street and they're shot. So I was
very encouraged with reports this week that we were moving
forward to employ Iraqi Army members in securing the safety
sites around Iraq, therefore relieving our people.
But could we do other things? Could we call upon our Arab
allies to come in and help us in maintaining the peace? Could
we call upon the United Nations to come in and help us maintain
the peace? What can we do to really move forward to stabilize
the economy and the government, to help the Iraqi people, but
at the same time to really protect the American men and women
who are there trying to help the Iraqi people?
General Garner. I think you're absolutely correct. To get
an international flavor of stability forces in there would be a
positive thing. To reestablish elements of the Iraqi Army that
could do things like border security and guard static locations
would be a good thing, and that would allow our forces to--free
up our forces to do more mounted and dismounted patrolling,
which is somewhat safer than being static. It allows us to
relieve some of the forces there.
I think you're right, but also what I see evolving now is
with the governmental committee that Ambassador Bremer has
established now, you have some Iraqi voices now to talk to the
people. And as a result you have fundamental Shiites, moderate
Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds. So I think over time, you
will see them taking more control, and they have great
influence over the Iraqi people.
Like I've said, I think we hit the bottom now. It's going
to be a slow climb up, but I think the climb is going up.
Mrs. Maloney. How long do you expect we'll need to stay in
Iraq?
General Garner. Oh, I don't know, ma'am. It's certainly
going to take more than a year just to get the government
process in place. I think once we get that in place, once
there's a Constitution, once we have elections, and once we
have an Iraqi Government and we have handed back the
administration and the basic services of running Iraq back to
an Iraqi Government, I think you'll see great change after
that, positive change. How long that process takes is unknown
right now.
Mrs. Maloney. You have no sense of how long it will take to
set up a government and a stable economy?
General Garner. I think it can be done in a year to a year
and a half.
Mrs. Maloney. Year to year and a half.
General Garner. Say you did it in a year, but once you've
established it and set it up, there's a period of time there
that you still have to remain with it to make sure it's stable,
it's running right, and to give it the overhead cover that it
needs to do what it needs to do. We're dealing with people who
have been living in one of the worst regimes of the century for
the last 35 years and have had really no democratic government
for 1,000 years, so it takes--you're dealing with people that
have been locked up in a black dark room for 35 years, and we
just opened the door and let the light in. They're now trying
to adjust their eyes and see. So it takes time to do that.
Mrs. Maloney. We're receiving assistance now from the
British Government in the south and the Kurds in the north, and
there appears to be some resistance from our government to work
with the United Nations. Do you think it would be helpful if
the United Nations went there and worked with the Kurds and
worked with the British Government in the south? Would that
alleviate some of the pressure that we're feeling?
General Garner. I'll give you my opinion. I don't think the
Kurds care anything about having the U.N. in there. I think the
Brits do, because the Brits have always been large supporters
of the U.N. in this endeavor.
My personal experience with the U.N. is they do subtasks
pretty well; they don't to do major tasks very well. So I
wouldn't turn the government over to them.
Let me give you a thought here. If you went north and went
into what we loosely call Kurdistan, three provinces we call
Kurdistan, you'd want to vacation there. It's incredible. It's
beautiful. The cities are marvelous, they're clean. The economy
thrives. The people, most of the people, dress like Westerners.
Women have equality there. You have women running for the
government. Many of the schools are coeducational, and that's
just happened in the last 12 years.
When I walked out of northern Iraq in 1991, it looked like
Basra. It was rubble. It was terrible. It was horrible. Now all
we gave them was a guarantee that we wouldn't let Saddam
Hussein back in there, and in 12 years they've turned that
around without really any help from us and without any money
from us. Think what can happen in the rest of Iraq now when you
have us there, we're going to be there, we're spending money
there. And they have the wealth of oil. The rest of Iraq will
turn around in half that time, if not sooner. There's a great
lesson learned, I think, as you look up north, and that they
accomplished that with only freedom. That's all. No other help
from us.
Mrs. Maloney. That's wonderful to hear.
What is the probability that guerilla warfare and social
unrest would subside if we were able to provide stability and
humanitarian assistance and services more quickly and directly?
From what you're saying, there is a huge infrastructure
challenge, and we're having a lot of problems on the
humanitarian side. Is the guerilla warfare connected to that,
or is that a totally separate----
General Garner. I don't know whether it's connected or not.
One thing that we all know is if the economy gets better, and
if things get better, then those that are mildly disgruntled
will quit being that way. The hard-core people aren't going to
change. We're going to have to root them out and capture them
or kill them.
Mrs. Maloney. What happens if we have an election and they
elect a restrictive government that is restrictive toward
women, such as the Taliban, and restrictive in other ways
toward the people?
General Garner. I think you control that with the
Constitution.
Mrs. Maloney. With a Constitution.
General Garner. You ensure rights for everyone in the
Constitution, and you ensure in the Constitution that it
represents all of Iraq, that it's a mosaic of Iraq.
Mrs. Maloney. We've had great success with our
Constitution. I wish the Iraqi people will have as strong a
Constitution, too.
My time is up. I thank you, General, very much for your
time and testimony.
General Garner. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentlewoman.
At this time recognize Mr. Duncan for 8 minutes.
Mr. Duncan. I won't take 8 minutes.
General, let me ask you this: First of all, let me say I
know that General Garner and all the military have all done
great jobs in Iraq based on what they were told to do. What my
problem is how we justify spending $4 billion a month in Iraq
and paying the back salaries of the military, paying Iraqi
retirees, building or rebuilding 6,000 schools, giving free
health care to Iraqi citizens, all of these things that we're
doing, because while I have voted--I have always voted for the
Defense Department, and I'm very much in favor of national
defense. I'm not in favor of turning the Defense Department
into the Department of International Social Work or the
Department of Massive Foreign Aid, because most conservatives
that I know have traditionally been against massive foreign
aid, and this is massive foreign aid on an unprecedented scale
that we're doing in Iraq right now.
I know that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that
a 3-month--they estimated before the war that a 3-month war and
a 5-year occupation would cost us $272 billion, and that was
when the estimated monthly costs were far less than the $4
billion that we're apparently seeing now.
But, General, let me ask you this: Did you happen to see
the reports on the national news last night, or have you read
the report of the CSIS team that just got back from Iraq that,
according to the report, said that the window of opportunity in
Iraq is greatly narrowing, and the country is about to slide
into total chaos?
General Garner. I briefly read that this morning in the
Washington Post. Yes, sir.
Mr. Duncan. Let me say this: You know, when you talk about
the Iraqi citizens wanting us there, I think that in a country
that poor, they would want anybody there that was willing to
spend $4 billion a month. I mean, that is a great boon to their
economy. And I know you--and I know everybody that's in this
room is connected to the agency or department or company that
wants us to be there.
So I know that all these things I'm saying are very
unpopular, and that makes me very uncomfortable, and I
apologize because I don't mean to offend anybody, but I can
tell you that we forget how much a billion is up here. We just
talk about it like it's almost nothing. And $4 billion exceeds
the yearly budget of most major cities in this country. I mean,
it's just mind-boggling. You know, I'm sorry, but I just can't
see it. I think that, you know, you've mentioned that Iraq has
humongous oil wealth. I think what we should do is we should
let them use that oil wealth to rebuild their own country.
We have a lot of needs in this country. Yesterday in one of
the subcommittees on which I serve, we passed a bill that was a
$20 billion bill over a 5-year period to rebuild what everybody
agrees is a really aging, deteriorating waste-water
infrastructure in this country, and people do not realize how
poor that waste-water infrastructure is in this country. And
yet we were told that even though that money has been
authorized, we won't be able to fund that, and that is $4
billion a year, and we're not going to be able to fund it. And
it's hard to justify to my people, because, you know, my people
have the quaint notion that the American Congress should put
the American people first.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Do you want to comment on anything that----
General Garner. Just one thing. I share your concern with
the cost, Congressman. I really do. And one thing that I think
gets a little confusing is when you talk about the burn rate on
money of paying salaries, paying pensioners, and doing basic
things, you have to remember that money is not appropriated
money. Those were frozen assets. Those were Iraqi money. So
what the coalition is doing now, they're paying salaries and
they're doing an awful lot. There's close to $3 billion in
frozen assets. I think what you'll see as soon as the oil
fields get up and running, you'll see that the oil money will
be going into an account that will be very visible and very
audible, and that money will be spent also. So it's my hope, as
yours, that those two things together will diminish the amount
of money that we have to spend on Iraq.
Mr. Duncan. Well, some of it is frozen money, but we did a
supplemental appropriations bill for $80 billion on top of the
biggest increase in defense spending ever, both of which I
voted for, but there's an awful lot of appropriated money being
spent and already having been spent.
All right. Thank you very much.
Mr. Shays. Thank the gentleman.
I would recognize Mr. Lynch for 8 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, in mid-May when I was in Iraq, we had a chance to
go into Baghdad and into Kirkuk, and at that time, talking to
our people on the ground, our troops, they explained that in
the early weeks of our military operation, there was, you know,
pretty much chaos. They hadn't had--I think they said that they
hadn't had the garbage picked up on the streets in Baghdad in
something like 10 weeks, and that as the utilities were turned
on and the garbage was picked up and the basic services started
to come online, that the temper of the people themselves, it
was moderated considerably.
Now, in mid-May we had about 40 percent of the electricity
on, we had 40 percent of sewage treatment and potable water.
What was the percentage of utilities that we had on when you
last were in Iraq?
General Garner. As I left, the north and south had as good
of water and better electricity than they ever had because they
were getting electricity 24-hours-a-day. The problem was in
Baghdad, because Baghdad never had the electrical grid capacity
to generate enough electricity for the city, so that the
electricity for Baghdad had to be ported or transported from
the northern grids and the southern grids into Baghdad. But the
problem was there were--the high voltage lines that did that
were destroyed partly during the war and partly by terrorist or
guerilla-type activities right after the war, and so it took a
month, a little over a month actually, to reestablish those
lines, and as they were reestablished, many of them would get
destroyed or sabotaged after they did that.
I think that's the problem today. But what the coalition
has done, they're buying more capacity by bringing in huge
generators, and they're putting more security on the high-
voltage lines.
Now, even when you get all the grids up and running,
there's not enough electrical capacity for all of Baghdad to
have electricity 24/7, so electricity has to be shared. It will
continue to be a shared activity until the Iraqis build larger
grids or another grid.
Mr. Lynch. Let's get into that, because that is one of the
major problems there is, that country has never really been
fully equipped to provide basic services to all its citizens.
Now, in some of our contacts with your civil administrators in
Baghdad, they were saying that these basic power stations were
totally inadequate, they were a mishmash of not only different
companies, but different nations that had come in there over
the years and tried to provide some type of electrical power.
Given the disastrous condition of basic utilities in Iraq,
do you have any sense of what the cost would be to get them up
to what they need for a decent standard of living in that
country?
General Garner. Congressman, I couldn't give you a number
on that, but there will have to be significant restoration of
the grids. And you put your finger on the problem right now is
every power station, the equipment in there, in them, is from a
different country. So there's no--there's no homogenous set of
equipment there. And most of it is old, so it has to be either
refurbished or restored. Then we have to have more than is
there, and what the cost number is on that, I don't know.
Mr. Lynch. And they need everything. They need basic roads,
bridges, sewage treatment facilities, power stations. I just
don't----
General Garner. That's absolutely correct.
Mr. Lynch. I see some of these estimates that are coming
out about what it's going to cost the American taxpayer to help
these people out and get them stood back up on their feet, as
they say, and I just don't see it as honest and forthcoming as
it should be. I think we're in for a long haul in Iraq if we're
going to try to get these people up to a decent standard of
living and try to do it ourselves.
The other question I had was based on your own
understanding of the oil supply and oil revenue, as Mr. Duncan
had referred to earlier, is there any hope; is there any hope
that with full capacity that Iraq would be able to handle a
major portion of their infrastructure repairs through the oil
revenue?
General Garner. Oh, I believe there is. I think we need
three things there. I think we need to bring the oil fields up
to producing as much capacity as they can, given the equipment
that they have. That's No. 1. No. 2, I think that we need to
have a long-term budget for Iraq for what we're going to do, a
plan for what will be accomplished over the next 10 years, and
apply the revenues of the oil to that plan. And the third thing
I think we need to do, and probably one of the most important
things that can happen, is I think that we need to look at what
is the debt that the people of Iraq are going to be faced with
when all this is over, because if we don't--if we don't
minimize that debt structure, we're looking at a Germany of
1920, 1921.
So I think it's very important to eliminate their debt.
It's very important to get the oil fields to the maximum
capacity we can get them to. It's very important to come out
with a long-term economic plan and budget for restoration of
Iraq and for the economy. I think that's going on right now.
They are working hard on the oil fields. They are working on a
long-term plan.
The thing that can't be done in Iraq by the Coalition
Provisional Authority is elimination of the debt. We have to
take the lead probably here in this body that have you here to
do something like that.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you.
One other issue. I've got a couple of other issues, but in
talking to our people on the ground, military personnel, in
Baghdad and Kirkuk, they were saying that 95 percent of their
contacts are positive with the Iraqi population. They said, but
the other 5 percent are trying to kill us. Now, based on my own
experience going into your former headquarters in Baghdad, and
just given the nature of the job that we've handed to our
military personnel, there is close daily intimate contact with
the Iraqi population every single day; driving into downtown
Baghdad, throngs of people, thousands of people out on the
street; going into your own headquarters, dozens and dozens of
young Iraqi males looking for work or payment. It just seemed
to me that the physical security of our personnel there was
very much vulnerable under the protocols that we had there
given the job we had to do. There's no way around it.
And this goes right out to Mr. Bremer who for most of our
meetings wore a flak jacket at the headquarters. Is there any
way we can minimize these--I think the American people are not
going to accept this daily slaughter of our young people, and
there has to be some way we can do our job there and provide a
greater level of security to our sons and daughters.
General Garner. I agree with what you just said, but there
is not going to be a quick solution to this. I think as the
police force develops basic skills, which they never had before
and they are developing now, and as Walt Slocum reactivates
portions of the regular Army, and as we get some international
involvement, and as we're taking daily more and more of this
fight to the guerillas or terrorists, I think this will come
under control, but it's going to be a long route to do that.
Mr. Lynch. Look, I appreciate the job you have done. It's a
tough job, and I appreciate your good work on behalf of this
country.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.
Mr. Tierney, you have the floor for 8 minutes.
Mr. Tierney. General, first of all I think there are a lot
of disagreements amongst policy issues in the Congress and
probably in this country or whatever, but I think everybody
owes you a debt of gratitude for the job that you undertook to
do and did to the best of your ability, and I want to make sure
that you know I appreciate it and folks in my district and I
think throughout the country appreciate the sacrifice that you
made in doing what you did.
I have some serious policy issues, and they're not with
you. I think the consequences are questionable, and I think
dangerous policy, a preemptive first strike, unilateral strike
by this country are now showing. We are in an entanglement now,
alone primarily, that didn't have to be in, and I think it is
unparalleled arrogance of the way we conducted our foreign
affairs in this particular matter and the disregard for the
opinions and the cooperation and the advice and assistance of
our allies and friends have put us in this position right now.
Where Mr. Duncan made the point that we are alone spending
almost $4 billion a month, where I think, clearly, we ought to
be in a situation at worse where we are sharing that burden
significantly with others. And it just boggles the mind that we
could have that kind of failed leadership at this particular
point in time.
We are witnessing what happens when you have intelligence
and make a decision about preemptive unilateral attack that is
incomplete or inaccurate or misinterpreted or misconstrued and
we are bearing the fruits on that. So let me ask you, do you
think that the number of troops that we have in Iraq right now,
which estimates around 150,000. You might want to correct that
if you have a more accurate number. Is that sufficient right
now to fight a guerilla war to provide security and stability
and to train others to step into that role?
General Garner. I am going to give you two answers and one
of them may be right. The first one, I mean, I am a former
soldier, and I never have enough troops. I always want more
troops.
But the other answer is I looked at John Abazaid's remarks
yesterday and he felt comfortable--what he quoted was 146,000--
that he had enough troops now to provide stability and to do
the guerilla war. And John Abazaid, I know him very well, and
to me he is the finest soldier in uniform today. If he thinks
that's enough, then I would have to agree with that.
Mr. Tierney. You also agree with his remarks that, in fact,
we are engaged in a guerilla war?
General Garner. I think we are. I think what's happened is
they've had time now to coordinate and pull it together. I
think it's a low-level guerilla war. It's not low-level to the
troops, but yes, I think we are in a guerilla war now.
Mr. Tierney. Tell me a little bit, if you would, about the
condition that our men and women find themselves in in
different areas of Iraq right now. What are their housing
conditions? What is their food situation? What is their water
situation?
General Garner. It's really a function of where they are.
If they're up north, the conditions are pretty good. If they're
in Baghdad, in some places, their conditions are pretty good
because they have a palace or a huge government building. The
south is in horrible, horrible shape. I mean the south is
representative of 35 years of brutality and neglect.
Mr. Tierney. What percentage of our troops are in the
south, sir?
General Garner. I don't know the answer to that, sir. I
don't know. But the problem right now, as you well know, is the
heat is intense, the days are extremely long, and it's a
dangerous situation. You know, if you take that triangle
Falluja, Tikrit, Baghdad and you look at that and realize that
was absolutely Baathist-centric, Sunni-centric, the bad side of
the Sunnis. And there are over a million in there--I am talking
about real-hard core Baathists and hard-core Sunni Baathists.
Where we are right now, even if only 5 percent of those people
are against us, that's a big number, and so there's a lot to
contend with there. Until we tighten the noose on them, until
we eliminate that and show them there's no chance for them,
that's going to continue. But I think the military and the
civilian authorities are doing it now, but it's a long road.
Mr. Tierney. Explain to me what we're doing--I mean,
there's a large young population there, young male population
there. What are we doing to try to keep those folks occupied,
and how do we compensate them in some meaningful way so
whatever currency they get in terms of compensation is actually
a value to them?
General Garner. The basic approach is to try to restore the
economy and try to create jobs. And much of that is being done
through as--I'm dated now, but much of that was being done
through the Ministry for Trade and was being overseen by
Ambassador Robin Rafel, and she had a very comprehensive plan
to do it, but it's slow. The creation of jobs is extremely
important. As you create jobs, you put money in peoples'
pockets. They're less interested to do mischievous things.
Mr. Tierney. What's the relationship with NGO's and others
that might want to provide some humanitarian relief? What's the
status of that right now? And what do you foresee in the near
future?
General Garner. I don't know what the status of it is right
now. The thing about NGO's is essentially, the environment
needs to be fairly permissive for them to work, and if it's not
permissive, then they go in harm's way. The NGO's do a
marvelous job, and they're great people, they're wonderful
people, but I have to tell you when they come to you, they
complain all the time about how terrible things are and how
they don't get supported, because that's the way they get
money. They can't get money without griping. So what we need to
do is find another way to fund the NGO's.
Mr. Tierney. I was going to say they're saying nice things
about you. Thank you for your time.
Mr. Shays. Thank the gentleman, Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. You have done a tremendous job. Thank
you for your service to the United States of America.
I agree with most of what you have said, and I really
appreciate your candid responses to the questions, and we don't
always get that in committees.
The plan is important. There's so much emphasis right now
that's being put on weapons of mass destruction, and we should
because of the credibility issue facing the administration and
also to learn from our mistakes that we can do better. But it
seems to me that the issue--the highest priority is what's
happening now in Iraq and the fact that on a daily basis our
military are being knocked off. It's a guerilla warfare, and it
was probably planned before we started the war, and we are in
that situation.
In your list, No. 1 is establish security and with a plan.
And I think the world and the American public want to
understand, really, what is going on. And if we have a plan, if
we articulate exactly that we are having a problem, we need to
secure the area before we can get to the next level, we need to
move forward. And my question is, is there a plan articulated
by the administration or Defense Department on what we need to
do first to obtain security, so we can get to the issue of the
humanitarian issues?
General Garner. Congressman, thank you for your remarks. I
can't tell you what the plan is right now, but I can assure
that there's a plan. And I can assure you, in General
McKiernan, you have probably one of the most skilled soldiers
that we've had and in General Abazaid together, the two of them
together, I can assure you, have a very comprehensive plan to
do what you just said.
Mr. Ruppersberger. The plan has to come from the top. And
there are issues about the resources, there are issues about
what--there are issues, do we form a coalition with other
countries not only to help with security, but the cost factor,
until we can get the oil fields moving?
General Garner. The more international flavor that we can
put on this, the better off we'll be. We need to maintain the
control of it. On weapons of mass destruction, I agree with
you, we have a credibility issue there, but let me say this,
that he had weapons of mass destruction. If I could take you
right now with me to the marketplace in Basra, and we bring
Iraqis, 100 of them, and you say ``do you think he had weapons
of mass destruction?'' Every one of them would say,
``certainly. I lost an aunt to that in 1984. I lost my uncle in
1985. I lost my brothers in 1986. We could go up north to the
Kurds and get the same response. In 1988, my mother and father
were gassed.'' He used it against Iranians. He used it against
the Shiites, he used it against the Kurds, then we gave him 12
years to learn how to hide it. And it's a big country and
weapons of mass destruction are little things. So he's had the
chance to hide it. I think we'll find those.
Mr. Ruppersberger. It's a matter of priority. And in my
opinion, the priority is what we are going to do to Iraq with
American soldiers being shot?
General Garner. You're colored by your experiences, and so
my problem with all this is if I could have had each of you
stand with me in the killing fields in al-Hillah, which is next
to the ancient city of Babylon, and have you watch them unearth
the bodies of the thousands--and I think the number will
approach a million that he killed in 1991 and 1992. I mean
absolute genocide. And the horrors of that and the emotions of
the people. And as you look at the bodies being exhumed and
laid out on the ground, many of them not even 3 feet long--
children--and you look at that and we're dealing with someone
on the level of Hitler in Germany or Pol Pot in Cambodia. And
if you looked at that, that to me alone is enough to take this
dictator out. And all the people will tell you thank you for
doing this. ``Thank you for eliminating Saddam Hussein. You're
12 years late.''
Mr. Ruppersberger. You know, I don't disagree with you on
that issue, the issue of whether or not we're going to war is
over with, we are there and we have to deal with the reality of
today. If your administration wants to use a good argument,
they were there in Desert Storm. So let's move on and deal with
what's happening today. The focus is clearly going to be on
we're there or we're there not. But the issue is American
soldiers being knocked out everyday, and second, bringing this
country where it needs to be, which you said is going to take a
long time. A lot of times we raise expectations, maybe for
political reasons and that is one of the worst things you can
do because it's going to take a long time.
Let me get to another other issue, the issue of oil. Is
there an aggressive program? And who's overseeing the program
to start getting the oil moving so that the resources can be
used to pay for what we're paying for right now?
General Garner. I can tell you that. Ambassador Bremer
spends a lot of time.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Do you know where we are at this point?
General Garner. I don't know where we are at this point,
but I can tell you there's an aggressive program to make the
oil successful in user revenues for reconstruction for the
Iraqi people.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Do you feel, and I know the question was
asked before, do you feel it would be wise, from a diplomatic
point of view, to reach out to the U.N. or other countries to
come in and put together a plan, not a haphazard situation
where we have all different types of equipment, but a world
plan as we did in Desert Storm to come in and take care of this
situation? First secure Iraq. It's not secure right now, and
second, start the humanitarian issues, the education, the
infrastructure building, all of those issues?
General Garner. Basically, yes, I agree with that. The more
international flavor you can have, there are some things that
the U.N. does that are extremely good. We can use them, but I
wouldn't turn the operation over to the U.N.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Everybody might want to because of the
oil.
General Garner. Well, the oil is something we have to be
very careful with. And we have to be absolutely set up in a way
where it's very audible and that money is very visible, it's
audible and it goes strictly to the Iraqi people.
Mr. Ruppersberger. And use our expertise and other
expertise to set up a banking system, a system where people
will be able to use that.
Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Shays. The Chair recognizes Mr. Bell for 8 minutes.
Mr. Bell. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And General, thank you very much for being here to testify.
And I apologize for missing your earlier testimony. If my
questions are redundant, I apologize for that also, but it
would merely make me like 99 percent of the other Members of
Congress.
But first question I have for you has to do with your
statement regarding standing in the killing fields, and that
being after seeing what you did when you were in Iraq, that's
reason enough. And you know there are a lot of different
opinions on our side of the aisle as to the military action in
Iraq. I happen to support the military action, but I did so on
the basis that we were told that Saddam Hussein was
manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and sponsoring
terroristic activity. And that's what this administration chose
to tell the American people.
And I'm curious as to your earlier statement. And if you
don't think that being there creates some credibility and trust
problems down the road if the reasons that were offered--
because regime change was talked about, but it was not given as
the reason for why we were moving forward. I think there was an
agreement throughout the international community that Saddam
Hussein was an awful leader and an evil leader, but there are
other evil leaders in other parts of the world that we are not
attacking in the same manner. And I am curious as to what your
feelings are now on that particular subject, whether we will
have a trust and credibility problem going forward if the
reasons that were offered for the military action do not prove
to be true?
General Garner. I believe we will have a trust and
credibility problem if we don't find the evidence of weapons of
mass destruction. And we will have that problem from people who
want to make it a problem. But again, I feel sure he had them.
I feel we are going to find them, eventually. I feel very
strongly that we shouldn't allow genocide, and there's much
genocide there. But someone put their finger on it that we are
where we are, and this Nation can do anything that it wants to.
And I think what we all ought to do is we ought to galvanize,
and we ought to make this mission successful because the
potential of that, not only in our reputation, but the future
of the Middle East and the tensions in the Middle East will be
mitigated, I believe, if we're successful here. And I think it
ought to be one team, one fight, and let's get the job done.
Mr. Bell. You assure us that you think there's a plan, and
I realize all you can speak to is your own experience, but some
of us have been a little bit shocked. And I'm very glad you're
here because you can answer some of what has been suggested
previously and at other hearings I have attended what. Has been
suggested is that the administration, that the Defense
Department, that our military leaders believed that once Saddam
Hussein was overthrown, that the American troops would be
welcome with open arms, that their presence in Iraq would be
celebrated, and there would be a smooth transition from that
point forward. Was that your belief going in? Is that what your
expectation was? Was that the plan?
General Garner. That wasn't my belief, and I don't think it
was the belief of the military because the military knew there
was an extremely hard-core element that was going to continue
to be there after the war was over. I don't think that any of
us could stand up here in front of you and tell you we
predicted what is going on today, but we certainly didn't
predict a cakewalk, and we certainly knew that there would be
elements of terrorism. We certainly knew that the
infrastructure would be a problem. The looting, I expected
there to be looting. I didn't expect though the consequences of
looting that we faced. When we went up north in 1991, there was
looting up there, but they simply stole everything, and they
took out the windows and stuff like that, but they didn't
destroy the buildings. What happened this time, the buildings
were destroyed. They pulled out the wire, they pulled out the
plumbing and set them on fire. I think there were certain
things we expected, but the consequences and the depth of it
was far greater than we had anticipated.
And it's like anything you go into, no plan turns out
exactly the way you planned it. But the reason you plan is to
keep you from starting with a blank sheet of paper. And I
think, essentially, the military did an excellent plan. I think
from the time we had, we did a decent plan.
And so like I said, we are where we are. We just need to
stay the course and get the job done.
Mr. Bell. I guess that's why you have to have alternative
plans. You referred to this hard-core element. And we read
everyday about our troops continuing to be shot at, killings
taking place on an almost daily basis, and I'm curious as to
what the plan was to deal with that kind of activity if it were
to occur?
General Garner. Sir, I don't know what the plan is today. I
can't answer that.
Mr. Bell. Was there a plan in place?
General Garner. Yes, sir. There was a plan in place. In
fact, there were daily sweeps in operations to begin ferreting
out these people.
Mr. Bell. We move forward and look at where we are today
and the 11 essential tasks that have been put forth by you
beforehand, as far as those tasks are concerned, we go down the
list establishing security in Baghdad, would you say that's
been accomplished?
General Garner. Yes, I think we have security, but it's not
to the degree that you want it. I mean it certainly falls far
short of where you want it, but it doesn't mean we are not
doing those things necessary to provide security. People are
able to get out and work in Baghdad, but certainly the security
isn't anywhere we want in Baghdad or any other places.
Mr. Bell. I believe we are paying Civil Service salaries?
General Garner. Yes.
Mr. Bell. The police force--there has been an effort to
train police?
General Garner. I was told they just reactivated the police
academy.
Mr. Bell. The government ministries are not functioning are
they?
General Garner. I believe they are. The ability to pay
people says that the Central Bank is functioning. The Ministry
of Trade is functioning. The schools are open. They are not
functioning to the degree we want them to, but they are
working.
Mr. Bell. Restoring basic services in Baghdad to prewar
levels, we're certainly not there?
General Garner. To my knowledge, we are not.
Mr. Bell. Where does the fuel crisis come in?
General Garner. I don't know where that is now.
Mr. Bell. Are we purchasing crops?
General Garner. Yes.
Mr. Bell. The food distribution system gaps.
General Garner. I don't know where we are on that. The
problem since the Gulf war is that they operated on a huge
distribution system. They had over 40,000 nodes in it. And
while there was no food crisis, what we needed to do was
reestablish that system and see what nodes were missing. We
would have to replace those, and we want to make sure that the
food distribution system was up and running, because we knew
within a matter of months, we would have to begin distributing
food.
Mr. Bell. My time has expired, General, but would it be
fair to wrap up by saying we still continue to face huge
challenges given the essential tasks that you had put forth?
General Garner. Oh, yes, sir. There are huge challenges.
Absolutely, I agree with that.
Mr. Bell. Thank you very much for being here.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
General Garner, I am going to let you leave in just a
second. I would just like to ask you a few more questions.
And let me say to the second panel. I think some of the
second panel have something to do with the Heritage Foundation.
We're willing to switch the second panel and have it go third.
Talk to my staff. We have votes that will probably prevent us
from getting back until maybe 10 of 12 or so. I'll let you work
that out with the staff director and try to be flexible in
that.
General Garner, the Center for Strategic and International
Studies had the opportunity to go to Iraq June 26th to July
27th. They had five members, and they came in and made this
point. They basically said, we saw significant progress
everywhere we went, but the enormity of this undertaking cannot
be overstated. There are huge challenges ahead. We hope the
recommendations in the attached report will assist in shaping a
successful reconstruction in Iraq.
And then they had seven major areas needing immediate
attention. One, the coalition must establish public safety in
all parts of the country, which is really your point 1 in your
11 issues. And then they said Iraq ownership, the rebuilding
process, must be expanded at national, provincial and local
levels. And that's really points 9 and 10 of yours. No. 3, idle
hands must be put to work and basic economic social services
provided immediately to avoid exasperating political and
security problems. That was two, three and four of your
recommendations.
Then they had decentralization is essential. That is
something different. They had the coalition must facilitate a
profound change in the Iraqi national frame of mind from
centralized authority to significant freedoms, from suspicion
to trust, from skepticism to hope.
Six, the United States needs to quickly immobilize a new
reconstruction coalition that is significantly broader than the
coalition that successfully waged the war.
And then seven, money must be significantly more
forthcoming and flexible, which is point seven.
What they did not include was in yours, restore basic
service in Baghdad to prewar levels or better. That sounds like
in a sense it's been done. Prevent a fuel crisis, which they
didn't include, which was yours. Food distribution gaps, and
prevent disease and cholera outbreaks, which we will be
interested to hear from the NGO's, but they didn't include
that.
I guess my question to you is, you are an invaluable
witness because you've been there, and you were able to talk
about people you spoke with. One of the points I want to ask
you is, you were very accessible, people interacted with you
and you interacted with them, do you have a sense that the same
interaction is going on by Mr. Bremer and his team?
General Garner. Well, the 3 or 4 weeks that I was there
with Ambassador Bremer and his team, he was very accessible,
and I have seen no evidence that he has changed that. I see
television clips of Jerry Bremer all the time, all over Iraq.
Jerry Bremer is an extremely talented diplomat, so he's going
to be accessible.
Mr. Shays. I agree--he happens to have been a former
constituent of mine and happens to have been a former
Ambassador on terrorism. But there's an accusation that his
team is in the palaces and the public doesn't, interact with
the palaces, that, kind of, almost makes a statement. Is that
something that is advisable, being in the palaces?
General Garner. No. I think you have to get out. I don't
think that statement is correct. I think the people get out
quite a bit. I have not been there for 6 weeks. But I would be
surprised if that team has sequestered itself inside the
palace.
Mr. Shays. The Baath Party, the Republican Guard, basically
a decision. If you were part of either, you don't have a future
in Iraq. A number of people have criticized and some of the
NGO's are going to make this point that there were lower-tier
people in the Baath Party, lower-tier people in the Republican
Guard, people who really had to participate in Saddam's Iraq,
and, therefore, were part of them, but the sense that
redemption is a valuable thing. Why turn all of them against
you, why not co-op some of them. Your opinion about that?
General Garner. Well, I agree with most of what you said.
There is a line, you don't want to end the day with more
enemies than you started with that morning. But I think what is
missing in this, you have to look at where those elements of
the Baath Party were. If they were in the education system,
where you couldn't teach in Iraq unless you were Baathist. So
you find the bulk of the people in the education system are not
hard-core Baathist at all. If you go over to the security
system, military system, they are all hard-core Baathist. So
what is left in that policy, as I remember it, is there is the
chance--there is the opportunity for, even if you were taken
out of your job as part of that policy, there's a chance to
come back in and plead your case and get put back in that job,
based on your personal background.
Mr. Shays. I have basically 2\1/2\ minutes until the
machine technically closes, we are going to insert this into
the record, and I'm just going to say as someone who has
complained to everyone I can, everyone I can, the Defense
Department invited five people in to spend 7 days to do what
the work of Congress should be. And I know that's not your
responsibility, but I just want to put it on the record.
I'm really at my wit's end to know what we have to do to
get this Defense Department to allow Members to see the things
that you see. I don't just want to hear it from you. I don't
want to hear it from the press. I want to see it, I want to
feel it, I want to taste it and I think other Members should be
allowed to do that, and I don't mean taking us from one place
in Baghdad to another. If you're saying the northern part is
safe, then there is absolutely no excuse for Members of
Congress not being part of that.
You have been a wonderful witness. I am delighted you were
here and grateful you were here.
We are going to adjourn, and staff will talk to the next
two panels. I am running out so, please don't think I am being
rude. Thank you for being here. Do you have any closing
comment.
General Garner. Thank you, sir. It was an honor to serve.
Mr. Shays. It's an honor to have you serve our country.
Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Shays. I would like to call this hearing to order and
apologize to panels two and three for the extraordinarily long
wait. While there is a real battle in the Middle East, there is
a skirmish in the hall of the House.
Our second panel is Dr. Susan Westin, Managing Director,
International Affairs and Trade, General Accounting Office; Dr.
Joseph Collins, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Stability Operations, Department of Defense; Mr. Richard
Greene, Principal Deputy Assistant, Bureau of Population
Refugee and Migration, Department of State; Mr. James Kunder,
Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Asia and the Near
East, U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID].
I would request--do we have all--if you would stand, I'll
administer the oath, and then we can take testimony.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. For the record the witnesses have responded in
the affirmative.
Your testimony is very important. I think this hearing is
very important, and I am sorry that you have had to wait. And
it is likely, if there are more votes, I am going to stay here
so we can continue. I know everyone has other things they have
to do today.
With that, Dr. Westin nice to have you here. Thank you for
being here.
What we are going to do you is, you have 5 minutes. You can
roll over another five, but please don't get to 10.
STATEMENTS OF SUSAN S. WESTIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS AND TRADE, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; JOSEPH J.
COLLINS, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, STABILITY
OPERATIONS; RICHARD GREENE, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POPULATION, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATION; AND
JAMES KUNDER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR ASIA AND THE
NEAR EAST, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Dr. Westin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask that my entire
statement be put in the record, which I will summarize.
I am pleased to be here today to discuss GAO's observations
on assistance efforts that followed military conflicts in
Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
First, I have a few general observations about assistance
in post-conflict situations. Second, I will discuss some
essential elements for carrying out assistance effectively. My
third topic of discussion is challenges to providing
assistance. I hope these remarks will prove useful context in
the subcommittee's oversight of post-conflict assistance to
Iraq.
Let me briefly discuss two general observations about post-
conflict assistance in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. We
learned that humanitarian assistance must be part of a broader,
long-term effort that includes military, economic, governance,
and democracy building measures. We also learned that even when
the fighting has stopped, local tensions and conflicts continue
and must be recognized. Local parties have competing interests
in and differing degrees of support for the peace process. For
example, in Afghanistan, war lords control much of the country
and foster an illegitimate economy fueled by the smuggling of
arms, drugs and other goods. Second, our work has consistently
shown that effective reconstruction assistance cannot be
provided without three essential elements: a secure
environment, a strategic vision for the overall effort, and
strong leadership. I will briefly discuss each of these.
Examples abound for the need for a secure environment to
effectively provide humanitarian assistance. In Bosnia and
Kosovo, humanitarian and other civilian workers were generally
able to perform their tasks because they were supported by
large NATO-led forces.
In contrast, throughout the post-conflict period in
Afghanistan, humanitarian assistance workers have been at risk,
due to ongoing security problems caused by domestic terrorism,
longstanding rivalries among war lords, and the national
government's lack of control over the majority of the country.
In our years of work in post-conflict situations, we
learned that a strategic vision is an essential element for
providing assistance effectively. In Bosnia, the Dayton
Agreement provided a framework for assistance efforts, but
lacked an overall vision for the operation. NATO, supported by
the President of the United States, subsequently provided an
overall vision for the mission by first extending the
timeframe, and then tying the withdrawal of the NATO-led forces
to benchmarks, such as establishing functional national
institutions and implementing democratic reforms.
Our work also highlights the need for strong leadership in
post-conflict assistance. In Bosnia, for example, the
international community created the Office of the High
Representative to assist the parties in implementing the Dayton
Agreement and to coordinate international assistance efforts.
The international community later strengthened the High
Representative's authority which allowed him to remove Bosnian
officials who were hindering progress.
Let me turn to four key challenges in providing assistance.
No. 1, ensuring sustained political and financial commitment
for post-conflict assistance efforts is a key challenge because
these efforts take longer, are more complicated, and are more
expensive than originally envisioned. In Bosnia, stabilization
efforts continue after 8 years, and there is no end date for
withdrawing international troops, despite the initial intent to
withdraw them in 1 year. In Kosovo, after 4 years, there is
still no agreement on the final status of the territory. This
makes it impossible to establish a timeframe for drawing down
troops. Moreover, providing this assistance costs more than
anticipated. Total U.S. military, civilian, humanitarian and
reconstruction assistance in Bosnia and Kosovo from 1996
through 2002 was almost $20 billion, a figure that
significantly exceeded initial expectations.
A second challenge to effectively implementing assistance
efforts is ensuring sufficient personnel to carry out
operations and follow through on pledged funds. To give one
example, in Afghanistan, inadequate and untimely donor support
disrupted the World Food Program food assistance efforts. WFP's
deliveries were about 33 percent below requirements for the
April 2002 through January 2003 period due to lack of donor
support.
No. 3, coordinating and directing assistance activities
between multiple international donors and military components
has been a challenge. In Afghanistan, coordination of
international assistance, in general, was weak in 2002
primarily because the bilateral, multilateral, and
nongovernmental assistance agencies prepared individual
reconstruction strategies, had their own mandate and funding
sources, and pursued development efforts in Afghanistan
independently.
A fourth challenge is ensuring that local political leaders
and influential groups support and participate in assistance
activities. In Bosnia, the Bosnian-Serb leaders and their
political leaders opposed the Dayton Peace Agreement and
blocked assistance efforts at every turn. For example, they
obstructed efforts to combat crime and corruption, thus
solidifying hard-line opposition and extremist views.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, GAO will apply these important
lessons as we conduct reviews of the reconstruction efforts in
Iraq.
Let me briefly summarize our ongoing work. First, we are
monitoring the efforts of all U.S. agencies to provide
humanitarian, economic development, security and reconstruction
assistance to Iraq. This work responds to requests from the
House International Relations and Senate Foreign Relations
Committees.
Second, in a response to a request from the House Financial
Services Committee, we are assessing U.S. efforts to locate and
return the financial assets of the former regime to the Iraqi
people.
Third, we are assessing the adequacy of the process used to
award the initial USAID and DOD reconstruction contracts in
Iraq.
And finally, we will begin work to account for the total
and projected cost of the war and the post-war reconstruction
efforts. We hope the GAO's work will provide Congress with
critical information for effective oversight.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I will
be happy to respond to questions.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Dr. Westin.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Westin follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Dr. Collins, thank you.
Dr. Collins. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I
am honored to be here, and I thank you and all of the members
of the committee for their support of the Armed Forces in the
field and our ongoing efforts for relief and reconstruction.
I have a longer statement which, I will presume, will be
included in the record, sir, and so I will just summarize a few
of the high points.
U.S. Government planning for relief and reconstruction in
Iraq was conducted on an interagency basis and was well-
coordinated with CENTCOM. Indeed, between Afghanistan and Iraq,
I have spent enough time with the two gentlemen to my left to
be declared a blood relative of either one of them.
As a result of careful planning in the scale and
professionalism of our combat forces, the widely predicted
humanitarian crisis in Iraq was averted. There's been no food
crisis, no widespread outbreaks of disease, no systematic human
rights abuses, no significant ethnic reprisals, no large-scale
population displacements, and no destabilization of states in
the region, all of which were problems for us that we
considered in our planning.
America owes much to the excellent work of its Armed Forces
but also to the interagency humanitarian planners and to Jay
Garner and his team and his successor, Ambassador Bremer and
his team. The Coalition Provisional Authority is working
closely together with the United Nations under Mr. Sergio de
Mello, as well as a number of NGO partners and friends.
I recently found out that the U.N. and the CPA have both
exchanged liaison officers, and the work of the U.N. in a
number of areas, particularly in the distribution of food, has
been both critical and irreplaceable. In the U.S. Government
effort, Ambassador Bremer has maintained the positive momentum
on General Garner's near-term tasks that were talked about
previously, and he had made great progress on mid to long-term
goals. These are his priorities, and I will speak to a few of
them.
The first priority for our forces and for the CPA is
security. We must eliminate the resistance and safeguard our
people, our most precious asset. Daily progress is evident on a
number of fronts. Reformation and reconstitution of the Iraqi
Police Force. We now have 34,000 Iraqi police that have been
rehired, many more thousands in training. Training of a few
thousand additional facility protection forces, establishment
of an international stabilization force, which will include
participation of about two dozen nations, and the creation of a
new Iraqi Army of 40,000, 12,000 of whom should be trained by
the end of the first year.
A second critical priority is rapid improvement in the
quality of life of the Iraqi people through the restoration of
basic services. Much there, of course, remains to be done,
especially in regards to the Iraqi electrical system. I am
pleased to report that the CPA now estimates that they will
achieve, by the end of July or the first week in August, the
prewar electrical production level. This is still a problem for
the future. The demand is about 6,000 megawatts, and the supply
before the war was only 4,000. So a lot needs to be done.
A third critical priority is to maximize international
contributions. United States and international organizations
have raised over $2.3 billion of international contribution.
And Ambassador Bremer has made good use of the vested and
seized assets. Added to this, of course, will be the revenue
from the production of oil, which again, will be a few billion
dollars in the remainder of this year.
Economic development is a fourth priority and CPA is
enacting a number of promising initiatives. They recently
approved the national budget. They have a planned currency
reform, and there is a new major infrastructure investment
project, which is also an attempt not only to jump start
infrastructure improvement, but also to provide employment for
unemployed Iraqis.
Finally, Iraqi self-government is the ultimate goal and
progress has been made there at the local, ministerial and
national levels. The recent establishment of the Governing
Council is a significant milestone. Constitutional development
will follow. National elections will follow that. And that, of
course, will bring us close to our ultimate goal in the
country.
In conclusion, careful interagency planning and
cooperation, combined with the skill and professionalism of our
combat forces, helped avert a humanitarian crisis and laid the
groundwork for General Garner to quickly establish positive
momentum. Ambassador Bremer has built on this momentum and has
expanded the coalition's reconstruction efforts. In the prewar
combat and stabilization phases of this operation, interagency
and international cooperation in Washington and in the field, I
believe, has been excellent.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Dr. Collins.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Collins follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Greene.
Mr. Greene. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chance to speak
with you again today regarding the current challenges in the
relief arena in Iraq. I just want to say 1 week after the last
time I spoke before this committee, I was on the West Bank
working on some refugee issues, and I had met with some of the
same people that you had met with, and they really appreciate
the time and the way you went about your meetings there. So
thank you, sir.
We remain in the early stages of Iraq's recovery and there
are two major relief and initial reconstruction challenges
facing the CPA and the U.N. system that fall within my area of
responsibility, which is preventing further population
displacements and managing refugee returns.
Certain groups in Iraq are vulnerable, including
Palestinians, some Iranians and displaced Arabs, and they are
increasingly intimidated and often forced to leave land and
homes given to them under the former Iraqi regime. About 4,000
Palestinians are currently taking shelter in very difficult
conditions in a stadium in Baghdad. In northern Iraq, the
reintegration of 800,000 internally displaced Iraqis from
previous conflicts constitutes an additional long-term
challenge to the stability of Iraq. The issues to be faced
there include property dispute resolution, compensation and
assistance to those displaced by the returning indigenous
populations. Tensions have already flared in some communities
between returning Kurds and Arab settlers.
The CPA and others have said the conditions do not yet
exist for large-scale organized refugee returns. And until
security, legal protection and infrastructure problems are
addressed, the system will not be prepared to handle massive
refugee repatriation. And we estimate there's about 500,000
refugees or close-to-refugee status who want to return quickly.
We are working closely with the CPA and various U.N. agencies
to create the conditions that will ultimately ensure well-
managed, sustainable returns. And in the expected economic
transformation of Iraq, it is essential to ensure that the most
vulnerable, including returning refugees and internally
displaced people, especially women and children, have access to
the resources they need.
Regarding lessons identified, there are about four key
lessons I want to point out--or three key lessons that I, want
to point out here regarding my responsibilities.
First is the importance of early funding and contingency
planning. For Iraq, the key agencies, as Dr. Collins said,
within the U.S. Government, carried out quiet contingency
planning. As a result, by February, our plans were complete,
and we were able to present publicly our humanitarian
preparations to minimize suffering in Iraq in the event of
conflict. A major part of these preparations were stockpiles of
food and assistance for up to a million people by AID.
Second, the importance of engaging the multilateral system,
we engaged early and often with senior levels of the United
Nations to have them prepare to carry out their operations.
Third was fostering military planning for humanitarian
issues and civil military cooperation. Failure to conduct such
planning caused some confusion and delays in the Balkans. One
of the lessons of the Kosovo operation was recognition of the
need to minimize internal and external displacements of people.
We applied these lessons in Afghanistan taking steps to feed
the Afghan people while the allied coalition destroyed the
regime that oppressed them. The result of U.S. policy was that
very few people left Afghanistan and 2 million people were able
to return shortly. In the case of Iraq, the international
community anticipated the exodus of over a million refugees and
internally displaced persons. In fact, thanks to the rapid
conclusion of hostilities and our humanitarian preparations,
and some of the preplanning we talked about, there was very
little in terms of population displacements.
In terms of the challenges that we face now in my areas of
responsibility, clearly the first challenge is security.
Security is the fundamental precondition for recovery from
conflict. Refugees and IDP returns will not be sustained unless
security improves.
Humanitarian action, reconstruction, society-building in
general are heavily dependent on the restoration of law and
order and public safety. Clearly, as Chief Administrator Bremer
says, the first job of any government is to provide security
and maintain law and order, and that's the most important
challenge in Iraq now.
Second, property rights disputes need to be channeled and
settled. We remain concerned that pent-up ethnic and religious
tensions in Iraqi society will encourage human rights abuses
and even a humanitarian crisis. Such tensions have already
exacerbated land tenure disputes and competing property claims
inherent in any return effort.
Third, human rights abuses. We're concerned that Iraqi
regime's legacy of terror and persecution might encourage a
popular backlash of retribution and score-settling. To date, as
Dr. Collins pointed out, such retribution has been limited
thanks in part to DART teams from AID, civil affairs units,
U.N. agencies and NGO's, who are identifying potential tensions
and working with community leaders to diffuse them. However,
these tensions are still simmering and need to be carefully
monitored and addressed if we are to avoid population
displacements.
Fourth, coordination between the CPA and U.N. agencies, and
this is about getting value out of the U.N. system and letting
the U.N. do the things that they have proven successful in
other exercises. President Bush said that the United Nations
has a vital role in play in postconflict Iraq. The U.N. brings
resources and experience to Iraq's recovery efforts, and the
administration and CPA are working to clarify the roles and
responsibilities with U.N. agencies in Iraq.
Mr. Chairman, we're all echoing the same themes here.
First, there is no humanitarian crisis in Iraq now. Second, a
lot of postconflict progress has been made because of some
incredible efforts on a number of fronts by a number of
incredibly talented and dedicated people. Third, but a lot more
needs to happen quickly. And, fourth, security and public
safety is key. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Greene.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Greene follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Kunder.
Mr. Kunder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I request my statement
be included in its entirety, please.
We very much appreciate the opportunity to testify today
and the interest of the committee in this important set of
issues. I'll just briefly touch on three critical elements from
my testimony: Planning issues, partnership issues, and the
question of standby capacity.
In terms of planning, in response to some of the questions
raised by the chairman and the committee members earlier, we
very much had a detailed planning process going back to last
fall. We did, in fact, talk to the best experts we could find
on Iraq, NGO representatives who had worked there, U.N.
representatives who had worked there, academic experts. We
literally got these panels together in areas like health and
education and tried to get the best information we could,
because we obviously had not been on the ground, and then based
on our experience in dozens of previous disaster responses, we
came up with planning targets. Obviously, we could bring more
information to the committee on the planning documents
themselves, but I just wanted to assure the chairman that there
was a very substantial and detailed planning process which led
to the outcomes described earlier, which is to say no
humanitarian crisis in Iraq.
In terms of partners, a number of members of the panel
raised the question of multilateral participation. Obviously
the U.N. is on the ground, has been on the ground, and a number
of grants have been made to U.N. agencies, to UNICEF, to the
World Food Program, to the World Health Organization. There is
already substantial engagement with the multilateral
organizations. With the arrival on the scene of the special
representative of the Secretary General, Sergio de Mello, and
his close relationship with Ambassador Bremer, I think that's
going to be strengthened.
But I want to assure the chairman that this work has been
ongoing. We have been giving money to UNICEF, World Health
Organization, World Food Program for months now. Same way with
our NGO partners. And I'm sure you'll hear from some of the
NGO's, and I say as a former NGO officer myself, clearly there
are complex issues when the NGO's must operate in a wartime
environment. But we are pleased that we have more than 20 NGO
partners on the ground with USAID right now. We understand the
complexities of dealing in an environment where the chain of
command is primarily military because of ongoing operations,
but we believe we have worked out and continue to work out good
relations with our NGO partners on the ground.
Third and last topic I'd just highlight is the question of
standby capacity. Ten years ago when I worked in Somalia, we
had relatively little idea of what skill sets we would need,
but now, based on our experience in Somalia, Bosnia, a lot of
these crises, we understand what sorts of troops, if you will,
civilian troops, we'll need to deploy: human rights monitors,
people who can rebuild ministries that have been destroyed,
police trainers. And what we've advocated and what the
statement speaks to is the need to look at the question of
having standby capacity in these areas.
Just as we would not think of going into war without having
standby pilots and tank commanders and mortar units, we've got
to start thinking as a government, we believe at AID, of having
these categories of technical experts on call and ready to go,
because just as the questions from the committee suggested
earlier, we need these things as soon as our soldiers take the
ground and look over their shoulders and look for support in
rebuilding the country to ensure stability.
Right now what we do is we draw upon excellent partners in
the U.N. system and the NGO's and within our own technical
staff, but we don't have the kind of standby capacity that we
can drop in in those critical early weeks and months to really
make a difference in stability and reconstruction.
Overall, sir, the U.S. Agency for International Development
has provided $829 million in humanitarian and reconstruction
assistance in Afghanistan--excuse me, in Iraq. We know we've
got a lot more work to do. We think we've averted the
humanitarian crisis and jump-started the reconstruction effort.
And with Ambassador Bremer's continued leadership, we would
echo what General Garner said earlier, that we think we have a
cup half full rather than half empty. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Kunder.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kunder follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Let me ask again that the chart be put up that
will show the 11 issues. Can you see it on the screen in front?
I need to put on the record that I was speaking with
Congressman Wolf, who has been working very hard to get into
Iraq, and had to go with an NGO like I did in order to get in.
And I was kind of complaining about the fact that CSIS got in
to do what I want Members of Congress to do. And he said he had
recommended that they go in to the Secretary of Defense, and
that they were there under his recommendation. I want the
record to show that I shouldn't view this rather as a negative,
that it's somewhat of a plus even if it isn't Members of
Congress. In other words, I'm not just looking to have Members
of Congress go and have photo shoots. I want them to do what a
Peace Corps volunteer would do. I want them to talk with
people. I want them to listen to people. I want them to see
their sweat and feel their anger, and I want them to, frankly,
even feel the danger that may exist as we send NGO's there,
who, I will say parenthetically, to me are my heroes. They go
into the worst of situations, and they are at the mercy in some
cases of whoever is in charge, and in some cases it may not be
the government.
So, at any rate, when they went through again, they said
there are seven major areas needing immediate action, and I'm
inclined to almost want to add to them. They have some of the
11 that are there. What they don't have down is No. 5, they
don't have No. 6, they don't have No. 8, and they don't have
No. 11. So they don't have restoring basic service to Baghdad
to prewar levels or better.
Can I make an assumption from the four of you that--as bad
as services there, they're at least to the prewar levels or
better? Dr. Westin, if you don't know, tell me, but if have you
a sense, tell me.
Dr. Westin. We haven't gotten very far in our oversight
yet.
Mr. Shays. Dr. Collins.
Dr. Collins. Yes. Mr. Chairman, we are watching this on a
daily basis, literally getting daily reports, for example, on
electrical supply and water issues and whatever. This is the
best run-down after going through three of our statistical
reports that I could come up with.
Nationwide, electricity, end of July, beginning of August,
we'll be at the prewar level. Propane: August would be the
target for the prewar level. Oil will be problematical,
probably will get to 2004, but still multibillion-dollar
moneymaker for the regime this year. Health statistics right
now indicate that services are somewhere between 75 to 90
percent in each of the regions, and gasoline somewhere between
65 and 75 percent of the prewar production going on in the
country.
We are not in most of these areas at the prewar level, but
they're working on it. There are wide variations by region. In
many cases, in many cases, things in the south and the north
are much better than they are in the center or in areas where
there was a lot of fighting.
Mr. Shays. I'll just throw it out to whichever panelist
wants to answer this. They didn't include preventing a fuel
crisis. This is CSIS. It was in and is No. 6 in General
Garner's 11 essential tasks. How do you think we're doing on
fuel? You kind of answered that.
Dr. Collins. In the production of fuel, we're doing very
well and approaching the prewar levels. We're also at a point
in time where electricity seems to be the main sore point and
also the hardest to fix.
Mr. Shays. Solving the food distribution system gaps.
Dr. Collins. Food distribution is way beyond where it was
right before the war began, and of all the statistics you
cited, food, the food supply and food distribution in Iraq was
probably the most favorable primarily because of the influence
of the sanctions and the United Nations in the running of that
particular system. But right now there is more food in Iraq by
large measure than there was at the beginning of the war.
Mr. Shays. No. 11, prevent disease, cholera, outbreaks?
Dr. Collins. Minor cholera outbreaks someplace in the
south, but no major problems noted. Lots of repair work going
on in the health facilities and whatever, many of which were
damaged severely in the looting.
Mr. Shays. Now, in the 7 immediate tasks they covered, all
the others, not 5, not 6, not 8 and not 11, but they also
included decentralization is essential. They say the job facing
occupation Iraqi authorities is too big to be handled
exclusively by the Central Occupation Authority, national Iraqi
Government Council. Implementation is lagging far behind needs
and expectations in key areas, at least to some extent, because
of severe constraints, CPA--CPA human resource at the
provisional local levels.
Bottom line is do you think decentralization--and I'll ask
Mr. Greene or Kunder, and Dr. Westin, feel free to jump in when
you have something that have you looked at as it relates to
this.
Mr. Greene. Decentralization is an important objective.
We're trying to put teams out in each of the 18 areas. There
are skeleton teams out there already, there are civil affairs
people out there. We're going--we're also in the middle of just
a massive recruiting effort to get a lot more people out. So
it's a clear objective of the CPA and an important part of our
political strategy.
Mr. Kunder. Could I just comment very briefly on the
humanitarian situation? I would agree with what Joe Collins
just said. All in all, we're--in a lot of cases we're at about
75 or 80 percent and climbing. The one area I would----
Mr. Shays. Seventy-five to 80 percent of prewar.
Mr. Kunder. Prewar levels.
Mr. Shays. May I just put on the record, I don't think
you'll disagree, prewar level isn't a great level.
Mr. Kunder. That's just what I was going to say, sir. There
was enormous deterioration under the Saddam Hussein regime. He
did not invest in health care. We have an inconceivable
disconnect in terms of the child mortality rates in Iraq and
the basic wealth of the country. The rates are much, much
higher than they should be. They are of impoverished nation
levels. So he just simply didn't invest. The education system
is in tatters. So they were lousy before the war. So we need to
exceed them at some point, as the President has pledged we
will.
The one caveat I would throw out is in the water area,
which leads to No. 11, the potential disease outbreaks because
the level of looting was so severe at the water treatment
plants and the sewage treatment plants. When we visited them in
late June, literally the motors have been stripped out, the
wires have been pulled out of the system. They need to be
completely rebuilt. So you have problems with raw effluent
going into the Tigris and Euphrates, which then other cities
are drawing as their water source. So there is a potential
there because of the looting.
On your question of decentralization----
Mr. Shays. Let me ask you, my simple mind tells me you just
bring in a whole new piece of equipment, and you don't worry
about all the rewiring.
Mr. Kunder. There were about 16 major urban water treatment
plants on the order of what we would find at the Blue Plains
treatment plant here in Washington, DC. These are very
substantial engineering projects to put them back together. We
had, in fact, hundreds of motors running, and they--all the
motors--literally bolts cut and the motors taken out.
So, yes, we're bringing the equipment in with our Bechtel
contract and doing the reconstruction, but it is a question of
months until all of this can be done. And then you have damage
to the lines as the--very indelicate topic we're discussing
here, but as the effluent backs up and so forth, so then you
have basic engineering that you have to do, sanitary
engineering.
So this is not a ``snap your fingers and fix it'' kind of
problem, but we are clearly working on it because of the
potential for disease outbreak.
On your question of decentralization, sir, and the CSIS
report talks about this, one of the things we anticipated and
planned for was building local governance councils, recognizing
that we were going to have to decentralize and create effective
demand at the neighborhood and community level. We now have 85
neighborhood councils up and running in Baghdad where
technicians and women and people in the neighborhoods are
joining together and expressing what their neighborhood needs
are. As the CSIS report says, now the trick is bringing that
demand into line with the overall governing council there. So
we assign a high priority to these decentralization issues and
working on them.
Mr. Shays. Hey, Tom, I will ask to you circle 5, 6, 8 and
11, just the numbers--5, 6, 8 and 11. What I'm doing is I'm
going through Garner's 11 tasks, I'm going through what we were
given by CSIS and what they have, what they did not--what they
have in their list that is not in this list. So 5, 6, 8 and 11
were not in their list, but now I'm giving what is in their
list that is not in Lieutenant General Garner's list. So
decentralization is one, and you all basically concur that it's
an essential effort.
Dr. Westin.
Dr. Westin. I wanted to add that I think decentralization
speaks to one of the challenges I mentioned, and that's getting
the buy-in of the local population. So I think that you could
take decentralization as one of the ways to overcome that
particular challenge. And as we've seen, that's a very
important challenge.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Their point 5 was the coalition must
face a profound change in the Iraqi national frame of mind from
centralized authority to significant freedoms, from suspicion
to trust, and from skepticism to hope. Now, this is somewhat
of, I guess, a no-brainer in a way, but their basic point is
that it needs to be highlighted as a gigantic concern. And
without reading their dialog that goes along with it, if you,
all four of you, care to address the issue of a national frame
of mind from centralized authority to significant freedoms,
from suspicion to trust, and from skepticism to hope, do any of
you care to address that issue?
Dr. Collins. Yeah, I'll start. I'm sure everyone will have
something to say about it.
The CSIS report speaks to the issue of cultural change and
changing the culture of the people, the political culture of
the people, from an authoritarian one to a democratic one. This
is difficult. It's not impossible. A number of other nations
have made this leap before in the past.
Two things, I think, are essential here in terms of steps
to get there. The first, Mr. Chairman, I think, is the capture
of Saddam Hussein and the remaining bigwigs, if you will, of
the party out there who are intimidating people and preventing
folks from taking actions which are obviously in their
immediate self-interest. They're preventing them by, of course,
physically intimidating them and making them fear the
retribution of the Baathist spoilers. We're working hard on
that, and we're taking an offensive approach to it. And General
Abazaid had, I think, some eloquent words to say about it a few
days before.
The second part of all of this, I think, is for a national
educational process to take place, and that has to be done in
conjunction with the constitutional development process. The
startup of the governing council in this past week or so is the
critical first step in Iraqis developing a Constitution that
both reflects majority rule and the protection of minority
rights. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Greene. The success of postconflict efforts is a
function of time and resources, time and the number of people
and the amount of dollars you're going to invest in. And so
clearly there's an important time element to making the changes
that the CSIS group emphasizes here.
Two, there's a recognition of everybody involved with the
CPA and all our people there that we talk to on a daily basis
of the need to do exactly what you and General Garner were
talking about earlier, be out more and talking to people and
making those daily connections. But, three, this is where the
security issue is a huge--has a huge impact and right now is a
barrier to those efforts. You look at what is involved with
getting our people out, you look at the threats that are out
there, and it's a challenge. And it's fair to say that it gets
in the way of this.
Mr. Kunder. The only thing I would add, Mr. Chairman, is
that to reiterate two points that General Garner made, No. 1 is
I think you have to--I read the report, but the country has to
be dissected. In the north you have a radically different
attitude than you do in the central and a radically different
than the south. So in some parts of the country I notice this
sort of skepticism. We discovered hope in a lot of parts of the
country, certainly in the north, and some optimism in the south
where people have been liberated from oppression.
And the other point I would make is General Garner's point
about the silent majority. We had exactly the same experience
he described, that people have their complaints, naturally they
do, they're not getting electricity all day long, but then at
the end of the day they come back, and the last comment is
don't leave too early. Whatever you do, don't leave too early.
So there is still a silent majority that I think is upbeat
about the future and is just suffering from the short-term
issues that we all know about and have been describing.
Mr. Shays. Yes, Dr. Westin.
Dr. Westin. We haven't looked very much, as you know, at
Iraq, but GAO has done a number of reports looking at
democracy-building activities of the U.S. Government in various
parts of the world, including a report we put out this past
spring looking at Latin America and Central American countries.
And it's difficult to do. It's difficult to come up with good
measures of success to know how you're succeeding. So I don't
think we should underestimate the difficulty of doing this.
In line also here with communication, I believe, in
September, we'll have a report coming out on public diplomacy
that focuses a lot on the public diplomacy efforts in the
Middle East.
Mr. Shays. Tell me again the studies that we can look
forward to? What are they again? You had about four or five
that you listed.
Dr. Westin. Yes. For the work ongoing in Iraq?
Mr. Shays. Yes.
Dr. Westin. We have work under way looking at the total
reconstruction effort, and our first effort under that is going
to be looking at the planning, the planning that took place,
who the players are, and how much they actually coordinated.
The second effort that we have under way is seeking out and
trying to find what efforts are taking place to find the assets
of the former regime and how they can be returned to the people
of Iraq.
Mr. Shays. Around the world.
Dr. Westin. Yes. As well as in Iraq, right?
Mr. Shays. Right.
Dr. Westin. The third effort, we're looking at the process
of awarding the contracts, the initial contracts that USAID and
DOD put out.
And then fourth we're about to start work looking at the
costs of the war, the whole reconstruction effort and projected
costs.
Mr. Shays. Let me, as it relates to--I'll read you one part
of--they're saying the coalition must facilitate a profound
change in the Iraqi national frame of mind from centralized
authority to significant freedoms, from suspicion to trust,
from skepticism to hope. They said, drastic changes must be
made to immediately improve the daily flow of practical
information to the Iraqi people principally through enhanced
radio and TV programming.
Now, my analogies may be way off, but if I'm on an Amtrak
train and I want to get somewhere, and we start going at 2
miles an hour for about 45 minutes, I know I'm going to be
late, but the one thing I think I have a right to know is what
the hell is going on. When we were coming down, two things
happened. A bridge was hit, and there was a dead body on the
rail. But knowing that made me a lot more tolerant in the bad
service I was getting.
On the House floor, we have a hearing, they're holding the
vote open for 45 minutes. There's a reason. I want to know.
There's all this rumor. I'm talking about Members. We hear that
there's some dispute in Ways and Means and that somebody was in
the library, and then somebody didn't like the vote, and then
we had the whole bill read. I'm getting my information from
lots of different sources, not pretty happy about it, and I
would have just liked someone to just say we have a delay here
and so on.
Now, I use that analogy because it just seems to me like a
no-brainer. They say drastic changes must be made to
immediately improve the daily flow of practical information of
the Iraqi people principally through enhanced radio and TV
programming. Someone tell me what is happening in that regard.
Dr. Collins. I don't know the story well, Mr. Chairman, but
I do know that there are CPA-dominated media sites, both for
radio and TV. There are psychological operations units
operating throughout the country. And there's also local media,
which is free media, which is being influenced to some degree
by our folks and dealing with them.
Getting the word out is extremely important, and it has to
be done on a very basic level. Less than 3 percent of Iraqis
have television sets, although TV is viewed by many as much
more influential than those statistics would give out.
Mr. Shays. Let me just say it is pretty much an established
fact that only 3 percent of the Iraqi people----
Dr. Collins. Have televisions. Much greater percentage, of
course, inside of Baghdad, where satellite dishes, I'm told,
are very much in evidence.
A lot of very primitive work--not primitive, but basic work
is being done to get the word out. For example, the other day
it was brought to the attention of the CPA that a number of
Iraqis had voiced the opinion that we were just like Saddam,
that when we wanted to punish a particular neighborhood, we
would shut down their electricity. And that, of course, was, in
fact, the tactic of Saddam Hussein. It is not a tactic of us
and the CPA.
Mr. Shays. You know what? When our people are living in his
palaces or having their offices in his palaces, it just strikes
me that may be really superficial, and you might say, you know,
that's a dumb comment to make, but to me it strikes me as kind
of saying, you know, we've just changed places.
Dr. Collins. There is that danger, but there is also the
problem of where would you have a suitable facility for a
large-scale organization. And I know you've probably been
there, Mr. Chairman, about the palaces themselves are often
talked about in much more grandiose terms than they are. Most
of the places I went inside of--Mr. Bremer's so-called palace
had no air conditioning. It was 120 degrees outside, and it was
about 95 in most of the offices. So they're in many cases not
much to brag about despite their grand titles.
But they're working the information issue very hard,
putting a lot of money against it, and also trying to at the
same time jump-start a new telecommunications system inside of
Iraq which will both spur communications and help in business
development.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Anyone else choose to comment on this issue?
Yes, sir.
Mr. Kunder. First of all, the points are well taken. I
think Joe is right. Everyone understands that this is a serious
issue and more needs to be done. At the direction of Ambassador
Bremer, our Office of Transition initiative has started--
because of the problems with radio and television and power,
we've started now leaflets, posters on buses and downtown
Baghdad to try to get in Arabic the CPA policy on electricity,
for example, so the people understand why there are electricity
shortages and so forth.
I certainly don't want to claim that the problem is solved
yet. We recognize it's a problem and start trying to reach out
to the people, make sure people at least have an understanding
of what the problems are.
Mr. Shays. I can make the assumption that the number of
people that have radios is significant, correct?
Mr. Kunder. Significant, yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. We were in the Peace Corps, and we didn't have a
TV. A radio was something we listened to a lot, especially for
news, especially to know what was going on around the world.
Let me just take the last point the United States--did you
want to deal with that issue? The United States needs to--this
is point 6, not included in General Garner's list of 11. The
United States needs to quickly mobilize a new reconstruction
coalition that is significantly broader than the coalition that
successfully waged the war.
Now, this is the dialog that goes with that point. The
scope of the challenges, the financial requirements, and rising
anti-Americanism in parts of the country make necessary a new
coalition that involves various international actors, including
the countries and organizations that took no part in the
original war coalition. The Council for International
Cooperation of the CPA is a welcome innovation, but it must be
dramatically expanded and supercharged if a new and inclusive
coalition is to be built.
I think this is significant stuff here. I'd like to know
what your reaction is. You know, this is a third party coming
in and looking at what's going on.
Dr. Collins. Right.
I had the opportunity to talk with John Hamre and some of
his folks who were on this team and made the visit. I think a
new coalition is being forged every day. In the security area
we have--it seems to me to be a number of about a dozen nations
interested in providing troops to the international security
force who don't have troops there now. We have also a lot of
fundraising efforts that are going on that have brought new
members, new nations into the coalition. I think every day out
there the CPA and the U.N. are deepening their cooperation on a
number of issues.
So I think in general this is an important point, and it's
something that has already been started.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Kunder.
I'm sorry. Mr. Greene.
Mr. Greene. It's an extremely high priority for us. There's
a lot of activity on both the security front, on the funding
front. Every day on this there is a large number of high-level
exchanges on both fronts, extensive planning for a major
international fundraising conference that will take place in
October. And we completely agree with this, and we're putting
in place a plan to do this.
Mr. Kunder. I would just add, sir, I don't know what
their--I know all the people who wrote this report. I'm not
sure what their definition of supercharged is, but having
nothing better to do this weekend, I'm off to Europe myself for
a DAC meeting, Development Assistance Committee meeting, where,
again, the whole topic will be mobilizing additional bilateral
support and strengthening the coalition. So I think this has
the full attention of the U.S. Government building the kind of
coalition that is suggested in the CSIS report.
Mr. Shays. Yes, Dr. Westin.
Dr. Westin. I think this is, as I mentioned before, one of
the particular challenges. Coordination among the multiple
donors is a real issue. As I pointed out, in Afghanistan we saw
that the Afghan Government was weak, and therefore there were
many bilateral, multilateral organizations in essence doing
their own thing, planning their own reconstruction efforts,
etc.
Mr. Shays. When I was in Umm Qasr for the brief 8 hours
that are almost sacred to me now, thinking, one, how difficult
it was to get in and how grateful I am to Save the Children for
getting me in, under their rules, not my rules, what I'm struck
with is that these NGO's know their stuff, but they're very
dependent on security, and they're very dependent on funding
from AID. So they're not saying, you know, we can do this by
ourselves. It's a team effort. I was struck by the
extraordinary poverty, by the lack of running water, by how
people had to come to one area. It was a Third World
environment for me, and yet what I was told was a port city
that I expected to see more advanced.
Now, when we were at the port, you had nice warehouses, and
you had nice equipment to take things off ships, though you had
a harbor that had no depth to it. My point, though, is that
when we were there--all the NGO's were together, I wanted to
get them all hugs because they don't realize how cool they are.
To me this is extraordinary what they do.
But one of the ingredients that they all told me at the
time is we need the U.N. These folks know how to do this. I'm
unclear as to what presence the U.N. has. And I just want to
get a sense is this just a contest between the Secretary of
Defense who's decided that we went into this without the French
and the Germans? And I have no great disappointment in some
ways that they don't get to call the shots, because I think
they should have been involved earlier in helping us deal with
Saddam Hussein and not on the sideline, but should they be
there? Should the U.N. be there? First off, what is the
presence of the U.N.? Clarify to me when we say the U.N. is
there, how are they there?
Mr. Greene. The U.N. has a very strong presence, had a
presence before conflict, during conflict with national
employees and postconflict. Emphasis has been on relief
activities.
Mr. Shays. With all due respect, during the engagement I
don't think the U.N. was much involved.
Mr. Greene. There were national employees involved with--
Iraqi national employees of U.N. organizations who stayed on
the job protecting records for WFP.
Mr. Shays. So let me just clarify. The U.N. facilities and
activities that were there, those folks stayed there.
Mr. Greene. The national employees. The international
employees all left. And with any operation there's always a
large number of national employees.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Mr. Greene. So the U.N. focus and institutional strength is
on relief activities. Probably one of the biggest postconflict
success stories is getting the public distribution system up
and running again, and that has been largely a WFP operation
with plenty of strong support from AID and civil affairs
people, but WFP have been the ones that have gotten that going.
UNICEF has done some pretty remarkable work on water and on
power. It's not United Nations, but the International
Organization of Migration is taking this, trying to get the
property claims system in place and trying to register people
who have claims. UNACR is working on refugee returns. And these
are traditional areas for the U.N. to work on.
I think usually what the point of discussion and the point
of contention is, it's not in the relief area, not in the
initial reconstruction area, it's the degree of U.N.
involvement with the political transformation. And in that
area, I think that Mr. De Mello has played a really key role in
getting the Iraqi governing council set up and has been just a
tremendous mediator, liaison between----
Mr. Shays. And this is the basic U.N. envoy?
Mr. Greene. Yeah. He is the head of the U.N. operation in
Baghdad, and he has established the very good relationships
with the many elements in Iraq and has been a very positive
force in getting this government council established.
Mr. Shays. So I'll put it in my uneducated terms. We don't
have formal relations with the U.N. where they have the
capacity to make a number of decisions; that they are working
with the United States and the British Government, they're
working with Mr. Bremer, let me put it that way, utilizing
their resources, but not in a position to make command
decisions.
Mr. Greene. Well, they're working effectively as they work
in many other situations where they're carrying out their
programs in coordination with Mr. Bremer and his----
Mr. Shays. So they're functioning almost like an NGO would
function?
Mr. Greene. Except they have broader, more formal
international responsibilities in terms of protection, and in
terms of carrying out their responsibilities, NGO's will feed
into the structure that they've created.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Kunder, would it be helpful if the U.N. was
more involved?
Mr. Kunder. Sir, the terms of relationship between the U.N.
system and the Coalition Provisional Authority are spelled out
in very, very precise detail in the Security Council
resolution, which, of course, is approved by all the members of
the Security Council. So, I mean, there were obviously weeks of
debate leading up to the exact wording of that, but that was
approved by the Security Council, so the precise terms are
worked out. We met with Dr. De Mello, the head of the U.N.
while they were there. He has his team on the ground. They are
fully engaged with Ambassador Bremer's team. But the terms of
it are spelled out in the Security Council resolution.
What I was trying to say earlier is I don't think there's
general recognition of the depth of our work with the U.N. on
the ground. I'm looking through our list of grants, $20 million
to UNICEF for health, $10 million for UNESCO for textbooks, $10
million to World Health Organization for health programs. We've
given more than $260 million of the taxpayers' money to the
World Food Program to keep those--to keep number--where is it
here--prevent the food crisis, solve the food distribution
gaps, to keep No. 8 working. So there is very deep, ongoing
cooperation between the CPA and other elements of the U.S.
Government and the U.N. agencies on the ground.
Dr. Collins. One thing, Mr. Chairman, that the United
Nations could do, and I read in the paper that the State
Department has already engaged them in the person of Secretary
Powell on this issue, and that is to clarify their support. If
you read U.N. Security Council resolution, I think it's 1473
that Jim just referenced, there is support for the security and
stabilization force in that resolution, although the United
Nations is not running it. Since then we've had a number of
countries who have used the U.N. as either a or an excuse, take
your pick, for not participating in the stabilization force in
Iraq, and that's not exactly right. And if the U.N. could
clarify their support for that, some nations that are sitting
on the fence may be able to come in.
You mentioned France and Germany in a previous comment. The
Secretary of Defense was asked about that last week, and he
said that he would welcome their participation in the
stabilization force. The French very quickly said that they
wouldn't do that because the U.N. support for it is not
sufficiently clear.
But both France and Germany, it ought to be said, are
participating very strongly in Afghanistan, particularly
Germany, which is leading the international security assistance
force in Kabul right now.
Mr. Shays. Dr. Collins, let me just respond to that because
that leads into a point I wanted to make. One of the things
that my subcommittee gets to do is to travel around to our
various commands. When I was in Tampa, we were there months
ago, it blew me away because then one of the best kept secrets
was--this was before our engagement in Iraq, before even the
resolution, I believe, last year--and it blew me away the
number of countries that were in the room that--at the time
there were 40. You can't see it now, but there are 50 flags
now, but there were 40 countries that were involved, and there
were some sitting at a semicircle desk and then others just
sitting in auditorium seats behind. And they were talking about
what was happening every day, because that's where the command
was for Afghanistan, and they would say, well, we don't have a
transport plane, the Brits are going to take theirs in 4 weeks.
And the French and the Norwegians and someone else said they
would be able to fill in the gap of these four planes. So the
commanding officer turned around and said, you know, who can
fill in? And one said, well, we can. And they checked with the
government.
My point is there is lots of involvement, and it was
extraordinarily impressive, and it was clearly a team effort. I
guess now as a lead-in, what I asked my staff to do--I'm a
Peace Corps volunteer, was a conscientious objector during the
war in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, and I'm being asked to vote
to send troops into battle, which I know we needed to do.
And so what I ask my staff to do periodically is print the
names of the men and women who aren't coming home. Their names
are right here, their names and their addresses. And I rejoiced
that so few were lost originally. But I never want to ever say
approximately 200. So we have right now in my latest list,
updated, 219 who have been killed. Now, some not in battle, but
tell a parent whose son was lost as two vehicles collide that
they weren't killed in battle; 219 have been killed in action.
And I can just look at names, Robert Frantz, I can look at
Michael Deuel, I can look at Andrew Chris; these are all people
who didn't come home to loved ones. Evan James. And names I
can't pronounce.
And I'm just wondering why we were doing such a bad job of
getting others to share and be a part of this effort. So tell
me why we aren't successful in getting some--like we are here
in the Central Command in Afghanistan--why aren't we able to
convince some of our European allies who know how to do better
police action? In other words, our troops basically--I'm told
they're taught to take the hill, keep the hill at whatever
cost. But we have other countries that train their military
folks to be civilian peacekeepers, and I just want you to speak
to the value of doing that.
I think, Dr. Collins, I'm addressing this to you. When is
this going to happen? And what is it going to take?
Dr. Collins. We have a large number of people, probably
going to be greater than 20 nations, participating in the
stabilization force. The United Kingdom and Poland will lead
divisions. It is possible that a third and possibly even a
fourth country will also contribute a division or a division
headquarters and part of that division. Some of the nations
that are also participating, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Honduras,
El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Hungary, United Kingdom,
Slovakia, the Netherlands, and active discussions are under way
with Pakistan, Turkey and Morocco, we're likely going to have
somewhere around 15,000 troops here in the next few months that
come from countries other than the United States. And we
continue to beat the drum. We continue to expand the coalition
as best as we can.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. I'm going to, just as we put in the
Iraqi postconflict reconstruction field review and
recommendations into the record, I'm going to put in the names
into the record--a list of all the men and women who have died
in battle. And I realized that there are also two that are
still missing: Sergeant First Class Gladimir Philippe and
Private Kevin C. Ott. Mr. Philippe is New Jersey, and Mr. Ott
is from Ohio, and they are still missing in action.
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Mr. Shays. I'm going to ask counsel to ask some questions.
Then we'll get to the next panel.
Mr. Halloran. Thank you. There are just two areas I want to
cover a little further because I know it will come up in the
next panel: The issue of NGO neutrality and impartiality and
how that can be maintained in this context. I'm hearing that if
the U.N. flag flies, then I guess they're comfortable. Is it
simply a matter of the breadth of the coalition? Is it a
question of just freedom of movement? If the security situation
stabilizes, they'll feel more comfortable and more at ease
operating outside of the shadow of the force of one country or
another? But what are the touch points or the sensitivities now
that you're seeing between NGO's and the coalition in terms of
coordinating aid that we're going to hear about in the next
panel?
Mr. Kunder. Having served both in the U.S. Marine Corps and
Save the Children Federation, I sometimes am able to take a
look at this problem from two unique perspectives. It's a very
serious issue, and I've taken the time to talk a lot of our
military colleagues about the importance of the NGO
humanitarian space argument, which draws upon a long tradition
of humanitarian law, the Red Cross movement, and basically
battlefield conditions 150 years ago. It's a very important
part of how the world treats humanitarian issues during
conflict. At the same time I've taken a lot of time to talk to
my NGO colleagues about the issues that military commanders
must face on the ground in carrying out military operations.
It's a complex set of issues that has been discussed
extensively between the two organizations. I think----
Mr. Halloran. There was a story after our last hearing that
some of the--two or three of the major NGO's then active in
Iraq were considering not kind of reupping for the next round
based--concerned on this basis. Has that happened? Did you work
that----
Mr. Kunder. I'm sure some of the NGO's will speak for
themselves, but it is my understanding based on newspaper
reports and words I heard at conferences that some NGO's have
chosen explicitly not to participate because the entire U.S.
response, humanitarian and reconstruction response, is embedded
within the command structure that the President has determined
flows through the Department of Defense. And I respect that.
These are good solid organizations. They've made an individual
choice not to participate. They're a private sector
organization. I respect that decision.
But the point I would like to make is that as this debate
goes on, I think it has been confused by the following: That
much of the civilian/military interaction, NGO to military
interaction, that has taken place since the end of the cold war
has been in the context of U.N.-sanctioned peacekeeping
operations like Bosnia so that the soldiers who showed up in
Bosnia were working there under a Security Council mandate and
had particular responsibilities to support humanitarian
operations.
In Afghanistan and Iraq we've been in different
circumstances. We've essentially been in coalition combat
operations, in my view, and so that the rules are different.
The troops there are not assigned to support the civilian
humanitarian organizations on the ground.
Mr. Halloran. In those situations with the U.N. context, is
it common to ask NGO's to kind of screen media comments through
the governmental entity?
Mr. Kunder. That's an important but side issue, in my view,
sir. I mean, it is not related to the fundamental question of
humanitarian space. What happened in this issue was that in AID
doing its contracting work and grant work, we started inserting
a standard clause in the grant and contract documents that
said, notify us before you hold a press conference, if you're
structuring a press conference, so that we can coordinate the
message that we're delivering to the outside world. In the
highly sensitive environment of Iraq, which we've been
discussing, and to try to get some consistent message out to
the Iraqi people about what is going on, we felt that such
coordination was necessary. And, after all, I mean, we're not
trying to impose restrictions on privately funded money, we're
talking about taxpayer-funded grants. So we inserted that. It
said, please come talk to us ahead of time, and let us know
what you're going to tell the press so we can coordinate the
message.
I know some of the NGO's strongly objected to that. They
viewed it as an infringement on their independence. And once
again, I respect their individual judgments as private
organizations, but we felt as Federal officers administering
taxpayer dollars that it was appropriate to ask for such
coordination before media messages were sent out in the complex
environment of Iraq, and we had an honest policy dispute with
the NGO community on that.
Mr. Halloran. OK. Mr. Greene and Dr. Collins, I want to go
to another topic, which is the issue of refugee movements you
talked about earlier. The number of 500,000 came up. Could you
describe who those people are, where they are, and are you
saying that in the--what we have to look forward to in the
future is that when we do build some roads and get the security
situation settled, then we have this significant refugee
movement to handle that is going to kind of be the next problem
over the hill?
Mr. Greene. I'd look at it as instead of a problem, a good
thing that 500,000 Iraqis who were driven out of their country
feel that the conditions are right and that they can return to
their home country. I mean, it's an objective for us, it's an
objective for them. Let's use Afghanistan as an example where
now it's something like 2.5 million Afghani refugees have
returned.
And I think the coalition is going about it in a sensible
way. CPA, Jerry Bremer are going about it in a sensible way in
terms of let's make sure the conditions are right; let's make
sure that we don't have 500,000 people streaming back into the
country when there's not jobs, there's not security, there's
not shelter, and let's get those things in place, sort of
counseling calm among the refugee-hosting countries.
You asked where are they. The 500,000 are primarily in
Iran, Jordan, Syria, with smaller numbers in Europe who might
not have official refugee status, but would still come back.
Even now some are coming back unassisted, just voluntarily
deciding the conditions are right and they want to be back.
They want to participate in basically the rebirth of their
country, and that's a good thing.
Mr. Halloran. Another condition that could have would be
some sort of legal system of a refugee comes back from Iran
saying, oh, somebody is living in my house.
Mr. Greene. That's a very important issue--property claims
have been a very contentious issue in every postconflict
situation, particularly the Balkans, Kosovo, and we need to get
that assessment facility, that adjudication facility to take
place. And it's a long, lengthy, complicated process that is
still even now going on in the Balkans and Kosovo.
Mr. Halloran. What about maybe, though, it was pointed out
before that perhaps the only benefit of a totalitarian regime
is they keep pretty precise records of things. So maybe the
land records are complete anyway.
Mr. Greene. A problem of all the looting is that a lot of
records have disappeared.
Mr. Halloran. OK. You want to comment on refugees in the
work that you've done? I know the relocation issue in the
Balkans particularly was--is still, I think, today a huge
hurdle.
Dr. Westin. Well, I think also it points to another of the
underlying tensions that has to be taken care of. I'm not too
familiar with the refugee problem with Iraq, but certainly our
work on the Balkans and refugee issues that we've done
elsewhere point out that it's likely to be a considerably
difficult situation to overcome.
One thing I did want to add, though, as we were talking
before about the international forces and the involvement in
the United Nations, it's my understanding that in Bosnia, in
Kosovo, and in Afghanistan there was an international
stabilization force, either NATO-led or U.N.-led, whereas I
believe the U.N. resolution for Iraq points out it's the United
States and Great Britain are occupying powers. And I'd be
interested to hear what the NGO's had to say, if that makes
them feel that they're viewed differently when they're working
with the military as opposed to some of the other countries.
Mr. Halloran. And finally, the reference before to the--was
it 400 Palestinians living in a stadium?
Mr. Greene. 4,000.
Mr. Halloran. Where are they from, and what's their fate?
Mr. Greene. These are some Palestinians who were sort of
protected status under Saddam who now have been evicted out of
where they were living. They're getting assistance from UNHCR
and from ICRC, but 4,000 people living in the stadium, just
like the same pictures you see of Liberians living in a
stadium, it's pretty miserable and sort of ties into the
overall Palestinian refugee problem in terms of finding a place
for them to go to.
Mr. Halloran. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Let me just conclude with being a little clearer
about one or two things about our government policy. One
relates to the Ba'ath party and the Republican Guard; and, Dr.
Collins, this may be an area I need to focus with you. I'm
unclear as to what our policy is. If you were a member of the
Ba'ath party, you are not allowed to do what? Participate in
government activities? You're not allowed to own business? What
aren't you allowed to do?
Dr. Collins. I don't know that policy very well. But it is
my understanding that if you were a senior member of the Ba'ath
party, that you are banned from office; and I'm not sure that
there's anything beyond that right now.
A lot of those people, of course, have had security
problems here and there. There's a couple of different lists of
people who are wanted for questioning. There, of course, was
the deck of cards, which was the top 55 and; then there was
another group on some kind of list that was often colloquially
referred to as the ``black list'' and that was a few hundred
officials. Those people, of course, are enduring much more than
a ban on public participation.
Mr. Shays. I think my focus really isn't on that, and I
think this may be outside your area. The real issue is the
accusation, which seems plausible to me, but I have a
disadvantage. I haven't been allowed to go into Iraq to
understand this myself because my government really is not
eager to have Members of Congress go, but the accusation from
the embedded press, which is allowed to go and in whom I have
to get my information, has suggested that there are so many
members of the Ba'ath party and the Republican Guard who are
not major players who are being shut out of a future Iraq. The
question I have is, is that true and is that policy going to be
reexamined? And if you can't speak accurately to that
information, then I would prefer that you just tell me that.
Dr. Collins. I don't know where the dividing lines are.
There has been a lot of concern also about mid-level military
and security force officers as being the cornerstone, if you
will, of these diehards who are attacking our troops. Beyond
that, sir, I don't know the specific answer.
Mr. Shays. Just in this final area as it relates to the
debt which I am told we still don't have a handle on what Iraq
owes to other countries pre war, but I'm told that it is
unbelievable amount, in the tens and tens and tens of billions
of dollars, a lot of it to Russia and France, is some of our
reluctance to have France involved or Russia involved related
in any way to that issue?
Dr. Collins. I have never heard such a discussion that
would suggest that we don't want France and Russia involved
because of that. Iraq also has a tremendous debt to its once
friendly neighbors like Kuwait. So it is a very mixed picture
and a very serious problem.
Mr. Shays. Any of you speak, though, to the issue of the
burden of such a large debt and does that mean ultimately that
oil revenues--originally, I said should come to the United
States to pay for the war, and I think I was rightfully
criticized--not criticized. Let me put it this way. I was set
straight by the administration who said it is going to go to
the Iraqi people. But is there a danger that if there's such a
large debt that it's going to the debtors rather than to the
Iraqi people and then we end up having to pick up the bill?
Mr. Greene. The only thing I will say on this is that debt
forgiveness is going to be a very hot topic of negotiation and
already is.
Mr. Shays. And can I suggest, that rather than saying ``hot
topic,'' an important topic?
Mr. Greene. Yes.
Mr. Shays. Finally, last thing, and the full Committee on
Government Reform is going to get into this whole issue of the
contracts and who got them, but I would like a general reaction
to what I think is plausible but may be totally inaccurate and
that is, in some instances, there are a few companies that are
incapable of doing the work. The task is so significant that,
rather than doing what we usually do in government and that is
take 6 months, and obviously the extreme was a year, to award
the contract and get it out, we said we have to find the best
and the brightest, give them the contract and let them run.
Somehow it seems plausible to me, and yet I realize that I
don't have any of my Democratic colleagues to then point out to
me that some of these contracts seem to go to people that were
friends of the administration. What are we to be expecting from
you, Dr. Westin and Dr. Collins, Mr. Greene and Mr. Kunder? Can
you comment on the need to get contracts out and are these
contracts going to the best and the brightest?
I saw three people pointing this way.
Dr. Westin. I am willing to start. We do have work under
way under the authority of the Comptroller General. We are not
doing this as a result of any request. We are looking at these
initial contracts and the process to make sure that they were
given in accordance with the way that USAID is allowed to give
contracts; and we're looking at all companies, not just
singling out individual companies.
Mr. Kunder. I sat in every one of those contract meetings,
sir; and I can tell you exactly what happened. It was precisely
what you said happened. We had to plan ahead. Nobody knew if we
were going to war, and nobody knew if we went to war how long
it would take to win the war, but we knew this much, that if at
some point if we went to war and if the war--when the war was
over that our soldiers would look over their shoulders and they
would expect somebody to be able to rebuild the bridges and
power plants and water treatment facilities and everything
we're talking about today.
And the last thing we wanted to have happen was then to
wait 6 months while we had the Federal contracting procedures
churn through the system. Then you would have had us up here
asking us why on Earth we didn't have a contract in place. So
we took the flexible authority that the Congress has given us
under the Federal procurement procedures to do limited
competition. We followed--our procurement executive, who will
go to jail if he doesn't follow precisely the law of the land,
told us exactly what we could do; and we followed the law to
the letter.
Mr. Shays. You said it a little inaccurately. You said you
will follow him to jail. So I want you to say that over again.
Mr. Kunder. I said our Federal procurement executive, who
will go to jail if he does not----
Mr. Shays. I want to emphasize----
Mr. Kunder. If he doesn't follow the Federal procurement
law to the letter on what precisely the Congress has given us.
And within those flexibilities we then used the most flexible
procedures we could according to law to shorten the list,
shorten the timeframes; and then according to the letter of the
law and the spirit of the law, we issued those contracts as
rapidly as we could and got the firms out there who could do
the job; and, thank God, they are doing the job. So the water
treatment facilities are being rebuilt, and we are up to 75
percent of electricity. And we welcome the GAO study. We're
proud of the work that was done. And that's exactly what we
did. We used the law the way you gave it to us to get the job
done.
Mr. Shays. You're doing a little lobbying with GAO right
here, so you're welcome.
Let me just say before you go, is there anything that any
of you wants to put on the record that you think needs to be
put on the record?
Mr. Kunder. Sir, I would like to say something about our
Federal Civil Service employees, because I have enormous
respect for the NGO workers, having been one, and for our
soldiers, but we have 35 civil servants out there unarmed
walking around the countryside and another 320 contractors
working for us who are also part of this picture, and they are
living out there in pretty miserable conditions and doing a
great job as well.
Mr. Shays. I was going to close my remarks before I let you
go to say the exact same thing. I guess I already said that our
government employees are pretty outstanding and--very
outstanding, and I am in awe of the men and women in our
military who serve us, the men and women in the State
Department and USAID. I am in awe of all the people in our
government who are involved in this process. I know they are
working 7 days a week, I know they have been separated from
their families, and I know they believe they have a real
mission here.
I am just going to share one of my disappointments. I just
wish that as a Member of Congress I could see that firsthand
instead of having you tell me about it. I just wish the
Secretary of Defense would at least allow us to go to some of
the areas where General Garner has said it's safe and then
allow us, as Members of Congress, to decide whether we're
willing to go into places that aren't safe and live with the
consequences as you all are doing, as the press is doing and
the NGO's are doing. And I continue to appreciate the work of
the GAO. I am a very proud Congressman to have such fine
employees working in government.
I thank each and every one of you, and I thank you for your
kindness and patience. I know you had other commitments, and I
didn't see a frown on your face even if you felt it in your
heart and thank you for that. So we'll get to the third panel,
but my hat's off to all four of you. Thank you so much.
Our third and final panel is Ms. Tammy Willcuts,
humanitarian operations specialist, Save the Children--and for
the purpose of proper disclosure, Save the Children is located
proudly in Westport, CT, a town I represent; Mr. Serge Duss,
director of public policy and advocacy, World Vision, Inc.,
USA; and Mr. Patrick Carey, senior vice president for programs,
CARE.
We have three extraordinary organizations that will be
testifying. I thank you all for your patience, and I need you
to stand up, and I need to swear you in.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. All three of our witnesses have responded in the
affirmative.
It's been a long day but actually very helpful to have you
listen to the testimony that preceded you, and I am going under
the good faith that our government welcomes you being honest
with this committee--obviously, will be honest but that our
government welcomes you being honest and that you do not need
to fear that honesty somehow will hurt your organizations or
the tasks that you have to do. I think that I'm saying that
with the full confidence that the State Department and the
Defense Department feel that way, and let me say to you as well
that we all can relax. You have been in far worse circumstances
than coming before Congress or a Member of Congress.
I am also going to say to Ms. Willcuts, I will forever be
indebted to what you did to allow me to spend 8 hours in Iraq;
and I remember one thing that just blew me away. We were with
someone who was from the press, Mr. Frank Luntz; and I was able
to travel under the auspices of Save the Children, but he went
in under the press. And at 11 p.m., we were talking about
leaving the next day at 7 a.m., or 6:30--I think it was 6:30--
and, unfortunately, he didn't have a driver or a car; and I'll
never forget, one of your employees--and I'm thinking I brought
him all the way here and this guy is not going to go in, he
can't ride with us. And your employee said, it's only 11 p.m.
We're not leaving until 6 a.m. We've got 7 hours. That ``go
to'' attitude resulting in his having a car and driver, and I
thought that says a lot.
At any rate, I have made it clear you are my heroes; and
now I'll ask you tough questions to learn some stuff.
So, Ms. Willcuts, thank you for being here. You have the
floor, and you have 10 minutes or less.
STATEMENTS OF TAMMIE WILLCUTS, HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS
SPECIALIST, SAVE THE CHILDREN; SERGE DUSS, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC
POLICY AND ADVOCACY, WORLD VISION, INC., USA; AND PAT CAREY,
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR PROGRAMS, CARE
Ms. Willcuts. Thank you so much for inviting us to come and
to speak about the issues that we have faced in Iraq and that
you have had the opportunity to see firsthand. I spent 3 months
in Basra in the south of Iraq leading Save the Children's
humanitarian response.
I would like to say that I have submitted a formal
testimony, and I would like to just focus on three basic
things.
First of all, the importance that we have found in having a
clearly differentiated line from the military. It's essential
for the humanitarian aid agencies to have that and to be seen
as impartial and independent.
Second, the government and private relief and development
agencies must prioritize the needs of women and children and
the protection of women and children in all their dealings with
the Iraqi people.
Third, we would like to request that the role of the United
Nations and other international partners be expanded and
supported.
Before I go into these in too much detail, I'd like to
update you a little bit about our operations in Basra and in
Iraq. Currently, we're employing 98 staff, 80 of whom are local
Iraqi people. Our international staff come from 13 different
countries. Our total funding equals approximately $11 million,
the majority of which comes from USAID, from the Office of
Foreign Disaster Assistance. We receive funding from private
donors, from the International Office of Migration, from the
World Food Program, and from UNICEF and from private donors
individually for Save the Children. While our regional office
is headquartered in Basra in the south, we also are working
with children and their families in Baghdad, in Najaf and in
Karbala.
Some of the different programs we are involved in--we have
five different sectors that we do.
First and foremost, we work with protection and education
of children. That's including, for example, preschool kids.
We've distributed 100 preschool kits to different schools and
children around the south.
We're also working on mine awareness and hygiene education
for these schools in and around Basra.
Save the Children has an agreement with UNICEF and with the
Minister of Health to reestablish the targeted nutrition
centers that were defunct after 12 years to ensure that the
nutritional needs of children are being met.
We are also the implementing partner with the United
Nations World Food Program in Basra and Najaf and Karbala,
where we just completed our second monthly round of
distribution of food to the vulnerable groups as well as those
in orphanages, elderly homes and some other institutions. We
have also been working to do some minor structural repairs in
some of those same locations.
We have a new grant from UNICEF to do a rapid assessment of
protection needs of children throughout Iraq. Save the Children
has been working to improve access to clean water in Basra.
This has included things like replacing pumps and ball bearings
and filters and things that come into a main pumping station
and then are distributed throughout six different smaller
pumping stations in Basra governance, which is ensuring clean
water for children. And, finally we're involved extensively in
providing medication and education to health facilities and
health staff to ensure that the clinics and hospitals get up
and running as quickly as possible.
After 3 months in Iraq in addition to the 70 years
experience that Save the Children has been doing humanitarian
aid, we have learned some things about the way we found that
humanitarian aid works for us. Those are, first of all, that
reconstruction and rebuilding of societies takes a lot of time.
It does not happen overnight. We have learned that it takes not
only the physical structures of the buildings and the repairs
of the windows and the doors, but it also needs the involvement
from the social side. The children that are going to the
schools need to be involved, the teachers, the parents, the
neighborhoods so that they are supporting it.
We have also learned that the backbone of our programs is
our local staff, that our local staff have to be a part of what
we were doing. They need to own the programs themselves. They
need to be able to speak with authority and with knowledge
about who we are and what we represent and what we are doing.
Having that backbone allows us to have our next lessons
learned, which is we need to have a good relationship with our
community, and the best way we need to have good relationship
is that the local staff we have can speak on our behalf because
they are part of that community. They have the language, they
have the context and the cultural knowledge.
And, third, we found that having this combination of local
staff who can support and understand our programs as well as
the community support is what allows us to have an appropriate
approach to security. Security is the main barrier for
humanitarian aid in Iraq for our organization.
One of our main goals is to find this humanitarian space
that's been spoken of by several people today. We need to
remain neutral and independent of the U.S. Military to ensure
the safety of our staff.
Today, the problems that we find for our staff and for both
our international and local staff is crime, drive-by shootings
and kidnappings. We've experienced two of these three just
within a 1-week period. We experienced some drive-by shootings.
We had a person who lived across the street from our office who
was shot and killed. We have a small shop right across from one
of our team houses which is also near the office where some
armed bandits came and robbed this small store. So it's a very
real issue.
We have heard that an Italian NGO working in Basra has had
three drive-by shootings in just a 5-day period. As a result of
this, safety of our staff is the No. 1 priority for Save the
Children.
We are working to reduce the security risks for our workers
by taking a number of steps. First among these is to hire a
full-time security manager for our program in Iraq. Our
security manager is tasked with providing the physical security
of our office and our team houses as well as program sites.
This includes things like lighting and walls and perimeter
areas and making sure it's a safe place for all of our staff to
come to work. It also includes having an appropriate and
rigorous security plan which is followed by all of our staff.
In addition, as I said before, we strive always to maintain
our independence and our impartiality from the military. While
doing that, we've also found that strengthening our ties with
the United Nations has been an appropriate way to have ties
with the community in a way that they understand, because the
United Nations has had a presence in Iraq for a long time and
people are familiar with what they represent and what they
stand for. Increasing those ties has also been a way of
increasing our security.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you for your wonderful testimony. Very
helpful.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Willcuts follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Duss.
Mr. Duss. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to
testify before the subcommittee.
Before I do, I would like to introduce into the hearing
record a letter to President Bush that was sent yesterday and
signed on by nine NGO's that are either working in Iraq or
closely involved in advocacy with this administration. The
letter essentially is asking the administration to address the
problems that are hindering the fulfillment of its obligations
as the occupying power in Iraq, and so I offer the letter here
for the record.
Mr. Shays. Without objection, it will be inserted in the
record.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mr. Duss. World Vision is a humanitarian organization in
the United States. It is a faith-based relief agency serving
the world's poorest children and families in nearly 100
countries. In fiscal year 2002, World Vision and its partners
from 17 industrial countries raised a little more than $1
billion in cash and gifts in kind from private and public
donors.
World Vision anticipates a 12 to 24-month program in Iraq,
operating on an annual budget of approximately $10 million.
This program focuses primarily on children's needs for food,
health care, education and reconstruction of schools and health
facilities. Funding sources include USAID, the World Food
Program, the governments of Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand, as well as contributions from citizens in a dozen
industrial nations, including the United States.
Since beginning humanitarian operations in Iraq nearly 3
months ago, World Vision has worked principally in the city of
Mosul and in the western Iraq city of Al Rutba, along with
towns and villages in the corridor from Jordan to Mosul.
In Mosul, World Vision provides assistance to internally
displaced persons. It provides an adequate supply of essential
drugs to the region's 14 hospitals and has thus far
rehabilitated 15 primary and secondary schools damaged by the
war or post-conflict looting. We are planning to rehabilitate
an additional 80 to 90 schools within the next 12 to 18 months.
Mr. Chairman, you have asked World Vision and other NGO's
to direct its testimony on progress made in achieving the 11
essential tasks outlined by Lieutenant General Jay Garner in
his testimony to the subcommittee on May 13. I am not able to
address all these issues. However, from the viewpoint of a
humanitarian relief and development agency I would like to
offer four recommendations that World Vision considers most
pressing to adequately address human need in Iraq.
No. 1, a secure environment for relief and reconstruction
must be established. The continuing violence, looting and
instability makes security the greatest challenge in attempting
to adequately meet humanitarian need. In the northern area of
Iraq where World Vision works, insecurity prevents us from
reaching some areas and serving others. Just a few weeks ago,
fighting in Mosul wounded 18 U.S. soldiers and forced the World
Food Program to declare 2 evacuation days. While World Vision
did not leave the city, its staff was ``locked down'' and
unable to work.
Already this month there has been a series of hostile
incidents in Mosul, including a grenade machine gun fire attack
on a World Food Program office, a coalition force humvee was
attacked, and a sustained 30-minute mortar attack was launched
on Mosul airport. As a result of these and other incidents,
World Vision has decided to increase its security and relocate
temporarily the majority of its staff to Ahmen Jordan for the
period of July 10 to 20. Two World Vision staff remain in
Mosul.
Insecurity is compounded by the lack of local Iraqi
counterparts with whom to work. Banning all or most former
members of the Ba'ath party--instead of just the top three or
four levels--means that there are very few competent civil
servants. Mid-level and lower level servants in totalitarian
regimes are rarely fanatical supporters of the regime since
they see the government's failings up close. The Coalition
Provisional Authority would be wise to reinstate public
servants subject to subsequent reviews of their history.
Because World Vision and other NGO's typically work with local
private and public partners, we are finding the virtual absence
of a functional civil society a major challenge in operating
humanitarian programs.
No. 2, prioritize the needs of children. Half of Iraq's
population of 23 million is under the age of 18. Children have
suffered the cumulative and catastrophic effects of Saddam
Hussein's regime and now the war. One of every four children
under the age of 5 is severely malnourished. One in eight Iraqi
children die before the age of 5. Nearly a third of all girls
and almost 20 percent of boys are not attending primary school.
The protection and development of children is the very
foundation for the future of Iraq.
High priority should be given to ensuring that children are
enrolled in primary education as soon as possible and that no
child faces discrimination in access to school. Every effort
should be made to preserve official government records that
establish children's identities. New documents should be issued
to children whose records have been lost, confiscated or
destroyed. Girls particularly require special attention and
protection from sexual and physical abuse.
No. 3, clearly separate humanitarian and military efforts.
One of the lessons of the last few years with humanitarian
assistance following military operations is that the military
and humanitarian NGO's have different comparative advantages.
Military objectives and humanitarian objectives are not always
compatible, and sometimes they do conflict. Soldiers should do
the jobs for which they are trained, and humanitarian
professionals must be permitted to carry out their work without
interference. At times, this means the military needs to
establish security so that humanitarian agencies have safe and
unimpeded access to people in need, but the roles of the two
should never be confused.
A blurring of humanitarian and military activities on the
ground carries great risks. The safety of humanitarian workers
often depends on local perceptions. If aid workers appear
partisan, if we play favorites, if our assistance is based on
anything other than genuine need, we risk jeopardizing
ourselves as well as those we seek to assist. If armed forces
or governments insist on jeopardizing the impartiality of aid
organizations, there will be less humanitarian space, fewer
donations from other countries and many more desperate people
whose needs will go unmet.
Finally, the fourth recommendation, Mr. Chairman, is foster
international legitimacy through a leading coordinating role
for the United Nations. World Vision welcomes steps that have
been taken in the past 2 months to achieve a greater
international role in the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The
U.N. vote lifting sanctions against Iraq, its recognition of
the Coalition Provisional Authority as a legitimate interim
government and the recent world economic forum in Jordan to
discuss Iraq's future have been helpful developments toward an
assumption of international responsibility for Iraq. Yet World
Vision and other international NGO's believe that the United
Nations must play a much stronger role in the development of a
civil society in Iraq. We continue to ask President Bush to
invite the United Nations to Iraq so it may carry out its
traditional humanitarian coordination role.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I reiterate the four
recommendations that World Vision considers most pressing in
addressing humanitarian need in Iraq: No. 1, establish a secure
environment for relief and reconstruction; No. 2, prioritize
the needs of children; No. 3, clearly separate humanitarian and
military efforts; and, No. 4, foster international legitimacy
through a leading role for the United Nations.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify;
and I would welcome any questions from you after the testimony
is over.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Duss.
We have really heard two wonderful testimonies from this
panel, very helpful, very well-organized.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Duss follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Carey, I note you are a former Peace Corps
volunteer. And so you are a fellow Peace Corps, as we were
referred to by the folks in the countries we served.
Mr. Carey. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to
testify today.
CARE, of course, is a large international relief and
development organization. We operate programs of poverty
reduction and disaster relief in more than 60 countries around
the world.
As I am sure you also may have been aware from our previous
testimony in May, CARE is one of the few NGO's that has had a
long-term presence in Iraq. So we have been on the ground in
Iraq in the last 12 years since 1991. After the last Gulf war,
we stayed operational during the entire war except for a very
few days except when it was physically impossible for our staff
to continue. So we have a long-term history and commitment to
Iraq.
My testimony today relies both on detailed information from
our staff on the ground in Baghdad and around the country as
well as some observations from a recent visit that I made to
Iraq as well.
When we testified in May, we indicated that we felt the
overriding priority in Iraq was reestablishment of law and
order. In addition, we indicated that basic restoration of
services, water, electricity, were of the highest priority and
that it was important to prevent the deterioration of the
health services to prevent humanitarian crisis. And, finally,
we indicated that we thought it was critically important to pay
civil servants salaries and bring those up to date.
I am now testifying on behalf of CARE 2 months later, and I
have to say those remain the priorities. Those have not
changed. And we feel in general that adequate progress has not
been made in all of those areas. We feel in fact that's also
substantiated by the 25-member Iraqi governing council that has
just come into being and on July 13 stated its overwhelming
priorities were the return to security and the restoration of
basic services. And of course we also feel substantiated by the
study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In the security area, we believe that the day-to-day
security situation prevents us from fully carrying out our
humanitarian task in the way we would like to do it and diverts
funds from helping poor people and malnourished children in
Iraq toward security purposes.
I would give just one anecdote, that we found a health
clinic where we found significant numbers of malnourished
children and wanted to distribute high-protein biscuits in that
center. The people who ran the center said, please don't bring
the biscuits here because, if you do, the looters will be back
and we cannot prevent it. What they asked us to do was provide
security devices--gates, barred windows and so forth--to
prevent looting, rather than in the meantime feeding the
children that needed to be fed out of that center. So we
consider security to be a compelling ongoing priority that
remains inadequately solved.
In terms of basic services, the primary problem remains the
supply of electricity in major parts of the country. Although I
don't want to play the percentages game with some of the
previous testifers, our on-the-ground staff indicate that as
little as 2 weeks ago there were 3 full days in Baghdad without
electricity and that the average electricity supply for most of
Baghdad is down to 3 hours a day. That's certainly not prewar
level--anywhere near prewar level; and, although there has been
some progress, that cascades into a whole range of effects on
health status, reestablishment of the cold chain for
immunizations and so forth.
In terms of the health crisis, the previous testifiers are
correct. There is not a humanitarian crisis, but there are
still alarming signals, and the basis for a health crisis still
remains. Most recent reports indicate that, of referrals to
health centers of children, that 22 percent or more of those
referrals are for diarrheal diseases. That clearly is an
indication of increasing sanitary problems. That's three times
of the percentage rate of a year ago prior to the war, and it
indicates a deterioration in the sanitary conditions brought
about by lack of electricity supply, basic sewage services and
safe water supply.
In terms of salaries, we have seen some significant
progress there, but some of the workers that we work with, for
example, the National Spinal Rehabilitation Center, have yet to
receive any back payment of salaries that were promised to them
up to this date, so that still requires substantial progress.
I just want to touch on three problems in the end and to
make one or two comments also on previous testimony. One is we
believe there is a real problem of access on the part of
average Iraqis to the occupying Provisional Authority. When I
was in Baghdad, Iraqi staff over and over again said that they
really don't know what the Authority is doing, that it doesn't
have a visibility and that it's difficult to access. Even we
``as an NGO'' with prior agreement to meet authorities, are
often refused entry at the palace for hours at a time, even
though we have had preclearance to get in there. If we're
having trouble doing it, I think you can imagine what the
trouble for the average Iraqi is.
And the symbolism of them being ensconced in the palace is
not lost on the average Iraqi. Of course, partly for security
reasons, it is a very isolated place; and we do not think that
the authorities of the Provisional Authority are having enough
contact on a day-to-day basis with average Iraqis.
And I want to mention one particular thing. I can't comment
on the overall deBa'athfication policy, but I can say how it
affects us in the health sector, which is one of our primary
sectors. And that is all of the senior levels of the health
ministry were removed by the Provisional Authority under the
deBa'athfication process without any vetting whatsoever of
whether they were compulsory involved in the Ba'ath party or
not. So all the director generals of health were removed. That
removes a layer of civil servants some of which were not
committed to the Ba'ath party at all and could help to restore
the basic services. So we would urge reexamination of that
policy.
Next to the last, I would like to reemphasize that the
issue of United Nations presence and greater international
involvement in there is a fundamental one as far as CARE is
concerned, and we think that needs to happen.
I finally wanted make one comment on a comment that General
Garner made about the NGO's as purveyors of complaints that you
might hear. Although I don't think that our purpose in life is
to complain, I think what our purpose in life is is to make
sure that a humanitarian mandate is accomplished, and it's
important for us to tell people when it's not possible to
accomplish that humanitarian mandate, and I think we have a
unique on-the-ground perspective. Certainly CARE and the other
agencies has had an on-the-ground perspective of how things
operate or how they don't operate, and it is important for us
to tell you like it is, and I'm sorry if it's understood as
complaints by General Garner.
Thank you, sir. We really appreciate the opportunity to
testify.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carey follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I am struck by all three panels being very
candid and appreciate the respect. It's very important to know
what you're seeing and how you feel.
I first want to ask, is there anything you disagree with
any of your fellow panelists? Anything that was said by a
fellow panelists that you would disagree? Is there anything one
of your fellow panelists said that you would have wanted to
emphasize but only slightly differently? Something you heard
you said? Yes, I agree, but I really want to put the emphasis
here.
The reason I ask is you all have said the same thing but
slightly different. But collectively your testimony is very
powerful; and I'm going to make an assumption that, based on
the question that I asked and you not responding in the
affirmative, you basically agree with everything that was said.
Now you had General Garner, and you mentioned--one comment
that he said you wanted to respond to. What I appreciate about
General Garner, he is a pretty straightforward fellow; and you
know there are some things he said about what's going on that
he would--even though he didn't say it as clearly as you, he
happens to agree with some of the things you all have said.
But is there anything that he said or anything in the
second panel that you would take issue with, that you want to
just--not to make a big deal out of it but that you see it
differently and make sure that we're aware that you see it
differently?
Mr. Carey. There was one point I had a difference of
opinion on. And that was in regard to the state of the
infrastructure in Iraq before the war and after the war. And I
agree certainly that there was a gradual deterioration of Iraqi
infrastructure, because the regime did not pay attention to it,
No. 1, and because of the sanctions, No. 2. Certainly that
happened.
But the infrastructure was not in as bad a shape, I
believe, as General Garner indicated; and I think it's really
important to understand that one of the major impacts on the
lack of the basic services being able to operate because of
lack of infrastructure was again not because of the bombing due
to the war but because of the extensive post-war looting.
When I was in Baghdad, people I talked with--for example,
CARE operates significantly in the whole sewage treatment side,
repairing sewage treatment facilities. When I talked to the
U.N. agencies, they mentioned that the sewage treatment
facilities were basically intact at the end of the war in
Baghdad, including the main plants which processed a
significant part of the sewage output of Baghdad. But then the
looting was wave after wave of looting, and that was really
what has brought down the infrastructure in Iraq and the cities
to the state it is now.
Mr. Shays. Your point is that after the major hostilities
had ended, in the case of the sewage treatment plants, they
were fairly intact; and so then and at that point we had an
opportunity to secure them and we chose not to.
Mr. Carey. In fact, the head of the U.N. there, Serge de
Mello's predecessor, told me that when he went back to Iraq
post conflict one of the first things he wanted to look at was
the sewage treatment plant. It was being looted in broad
daylight when he went back, that he had gone to the Provisional
Authority on several occasions asking for a military presence
at the main sewage treatment plant and had not been provided.
And every time he went back to the sewage treatment plant its
facilities were degraded to the degree that I agree with
previous testimony that it will now be 9 months to a year or
more before those facilities are restored.
Mr. Shays. If that information is precisely as you
understand it to be, it's got to be a bitter disappointment,
because it would have been easy to have secured it, as opposed
to having to rebuild it.
Any other comments?
Yes, Mr. Duss?
Mr. Duss. Mr. Chairman, the previous government panel made
mention that the U.N. is on the ground in Iraq; and that is so.
But when the NGO's talk about the presence of the United
Nations, we talk specifically about what has become the
traditional and very effective coordinating role of the United
Nations.
Within the last 10 to 15 years, particularly in the
conflict in Bosnia and even before, the U.N.--particularly the
UNHCR, commissioner for refugees, that office has played the
coordinating role for NGO's, for the ICRC and U.N. agencies to
serve as a forum to cut down on duplication from the various
international agencies that are on the ground in any particular
country from coordinating its efforts. The U.N. coordinating
role provided--was the intermediary in many ways with military
that were on the ground in those countries, particularly
Bosnia, Kosovo and a number of other places. And so the NGO's
and the U.N. have worked very well together over these years in
various post-conflict situations.
The U.N. in this traditional coordinating role is not
present in Iraq, and it makes the coordination of our work and
the communication between ourselves and the various
international humanitarian efforts there much more disjointed.
That's why this letter was sent yesterday to President Bush
asking him to strongly reconsider his decision and to invite
the U.N. in the coordination role that we have asked for.
Mr. Shays. You know what I would love? I would love the
President to meet with the three of you, and I think it would
be a wonderful thing for him to have this information shared
with him, and then he could ask meaningful questions of his
Secretary of Defense and his Secretary of State and the people
that work with him. He needs to hear the very message you're
giving. I would love to see if there's a way that could happen.
Mr. Duss. Mr. Chairman, if you could arrange it, I think
we'll all be available.
Mr. Shays. That goes for Members of Congress. If the
President wants to see you, you drop everything else, for
obvious reasons.
I just want you to talk a little bit more--I'm trying to
put your testimony about the U.N. and its participation and its
coordinating role--because I remember Ms. Willcuts explaining
that to me when I was in Iraq a few months ago. At that time,
she was saying that we needed to do that, that they play that
kind of role. I think that's correct.
Ms. Willcuts. Yes, it is.
Mr. Shays. And I'm having this slight suspicion were you
also in the Peace Corps?
Ms. Willcuts. Yes, I was. I was in Sri Lanka.
Mr. Duss. I served overseas.
Mr. Shays. I apologize to Ms. Willcuts because I think I
now remember our conversations about that. But I want to
understand what it would take to have the U.N.--what I get a
sense is that the U.N. is being treated just like--treated like
it's just another NGO, and it's there doing some of its relief
work that you all would be, but you're saying it could take a
greater role and usually does. And I guess what would it take
to have that happen? Do we have to have a U.N. resolution to
have a different relationship or is it a fairly simple solution
that could get them in in a much bigger way?
Mr. Carey. One thing I wanted to mention in regard to that,
I understand that October there's going to be a pledging
conference sponsored by the United States or the coalition.
Mr. Shays. When?
Mr. Carey. Coming up in October for pledges of funds. It's
common in these international situations to have pledging
conferences and to invite various potential donors.
I think that one of the great ways that you could sponsor a
broader U.N. role would be to move to have the U.N. sponsor
that pledging conference, rather than having it be done by just
the coalition, and that would be one way to reformalize the
U.N. presence. And I think some members are hesitating to come
in as fully as they might because they would like to see a more
formal U.N. presence and coordinating role. This would be a
perfect opportunity for that to happen and might bring in more
money. And I note the more money we bring in from international
sources, the less we will be paying out of U.S. taxpayer
sources, in reference to one of the Members this morning. The
greater international presence we have, the less reliance we'll
have to have on U.S. funding of this rebuilding.
Mr. Shays. I happen to believe that we have two giants
serving as secretaries, Colin Powell as Secretary of State and
Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense; and I think that an
administration is only as good as its people who serve under
it, particularly in those roles, but I am just wrestling with
this feeling that somehow I'm having a hard time understanding
why--and this may sound arrogant for me to say it, since I
haven't been there, but it seems so logical to me that the
things that you have been suggesting to us happen.
And I wonder is it not happening because to do it would be
an implicit acknowledgment that a mistake or a mistake had been
made? And I think, so what? Because, ultimately, the reality is
that this will only get worse, that we won't be able to hide it
and we won't be able to succeed as quickly as possible and we
will lose more men and women in the process and you all won't
be able to do the jobs that you can do as well as you can do it
if things were different.
So do you have some questions? I am going to ask the
professional staff who--I should say a new doctor, having
gotten his degree.
Dr. Palarino. I'd just like to address the issue, if I may,
of impartiality that some of you have mentioned in your
statements and just try to understand that as you
operationalize it, if you will, on the ground in Iraq and in
other situations. I understand the point is to the NGO's
separate from the governments involved, but do you ever rely on
the occupying powers, if you will, for any situations like
that? If you would like to comment on that, I would appreciate
it.
Ms. Willcuts. I think there are appropriate circumstances
where the humanitarian aid community and the military have
interactions, and I think--at least from my experience,
relating mostly to security. We've relied on information that
we get from the coalition in regards to certain areas where
we're planning to go for program assessments or field visits or
something. I think those are appropriate circumstances for us
to have that interaction.
But, again, for security reasons it's so vital for us to
have some distance there so there's no confusion amongst our
staff or amongst the community about who we are there working
for and what we are there to accomplish.
Mr. Duss. In my testimony, I mention about blurring of the
lines between civilian NGO personnel and the military; and in
previous conflicts where the United States has not been an
occupying force, where it was an international force, that was
rarely a problem because the international force that was
there, which also included Americans--and Bosnia is a good
place in point--the lines were clear and military never
conducted their duties and responsibilities dressed as
civilians, and there was never confusion in the minds of the
national population who is military and who is NGO.
This problem cropped up in Afghanistan when American combat
forces, I would imagine in an effort to be able to work in
certain areas, took off their military uniforms and dressed as
civilians. Now the national population there knew who was
military, but then they began to assume that NGO's were also
military because the American military was doing humanitarian
work. They were rebuilding schools and some other projects and
out of the goodness of their heart. But they saw military doing
humanitarian work, NGO's doing humanitarian work, and the
conclusion was that the NGO's were also military.
If there was some type of action where someone was shot or
killed or there was a negative reaction from the local
population and they took retribution on the military, NGO's
would also be involved because the assumption in the mind was
that these are all military. That's why we have pleaded over
and over in Afghanistan--it has not been a problem yet in
Iraq--military, they have their job and have the uniforms,
stick to it. The NGO's, we have our job, we have our uniforms,
which is what we wear, we stick to that as well.
It doesn't mean we don't coordinate. We do. We need each
other, particularly for security. We talk to each other all the
time. But in terms of carrying out our responsibilities and the
ways we do it, that is the key point of this discussion.
Mr. Carey. I certainly agree with my colleagues. We, too,
work in the security environment created by the military
authorities in Iraq. We have no way to avoid that. And we, too,
coordinate and try to coordinate on a day-to-day basis.
I think the problem comes in, again, when there is a
confusion between the U.S. Military Provisional Authority and
its mandates and the NGO's as a community and their
humanitarian mandates. And while there is a considerable
overlap between those two, they are not one and the same.
While we are very grateful for all of the support we get
from the U.S. Government from a variety of sources, and one of
the major grants we have in Iraq is from the Office of Foreign
Disaster Assistance of USAID and we're grateful for that, the
fact is, though, we are not an instrument of the U.S.
Government in Iraq. We have our own humanitarian mandate in
Iraq.
So when we talk about creating a humanitarian space, it's
the ability to differentiate between that, between being an
instrument of the U.S. Government and between solely
concentrating on our humanitarian mandate regardless of
politics and regardless of the political aims of the other
parties involved.
Mr. Duss. Just one further point, Mr. Chairman, on this.
We do receive funding from government, but we also receive
funding from the American people as well. And for many people
around the United States, the only news they get about what is
taking place in the developing world is not from their
newspapers, certainly not from the nightly news unless it's a
catastrophe, it's through the communication vehicles that NGO's
like ours and many others have. So we are serving the American
people primarily, but we are also using taxpayer resources that
flows through the government for the work that we do as well,
and sometimes this point is not recognized or understood by our
government partners.
Mr. Shays. Thank the gentleman.
We are wrapping up here. I would like to know--and if it
doesn't apply then we don't have to do an analogy here--but
does Bosnia, Kosovo or Afghanistan have any comparisons to the
Iraqi situation and, if so, which one most is like what we are
facing in Iraq? I mean, you all have been involved, your
organizations, in Bosnia and Kosovo and in Afghanistan. Are
there some lessons we can learn from those experiences?
Mr. Carey. I think that when we testified last time we
mentioned that some of the lessons learned from experiences
like Afghanistan and Kosovo, that there were four major lessons
that we took away from those. No. 1 was the importance of
rapidly filling the security vacuum that was created by the
military situation; second was the importance of establishing a
broad international presence as soon as possible in a situation
like that to bring in as many players as possible; and the
third was the need to have a long, multiyear commitment for
reconstruction in a situation like Afghanistan or Kosovo; and,
finally, the need to have a quick return to civilian control in
those circumstances. And we would say those lessons apply in
Bosnia, they apply in Kosovo, they apply in Afghanistan, and
they certainly are applying in Iraq.
Mr. Shays. What I'm hearing you say, you're not going to
have a quick involvement of the civilian population if somehow
the lower eschelon in the Ba'ath party and the civil servants
aren't able to participate.
Mr. Carey. And if there's not better interaction between
the Provisional Authority and everyday, ordinary Iraqis.
Mr. Shays. That I think is very clear for Peace Corps
volunteers to understand without being arrogant. I mean, that's
the one thing we know so well and that is you have to have that
interaction.
When Ms. Willcuts took me to Iraq, there was a gentleman
named Abdullah Husan Mohammed, and he almost put his hands on
my shoulder. I had a conversation with him, and he had made a
number of points. One of the points he was making was, he said,
I just wish you Americans would understand that when an Iraqi
woman does this when you extend your hand out she is not
withdrawing her hand in disappointment. She's saying, I respect
what you have done, thank you, but in my culture Muslim women
don't shake hands with strangers. But please know I appreciate
the gesture. He said, I just wish you would, instead of being
offended, just appreciate what that meant.
But then he almost put his hands to my shoulder, and he
said, you don't know us and we don't know you. And too this
Peace Corps heart it said, we need to get to know each other a
bit, and then some good things can happen from it.
And I think there are some lessons to learn from, frankly,
what happened in South Africa, how they knew in order to
rebuild their society that they had a White population that had
been very much involved in the infrastructure and they couldn't
turn their back on that population but they could hope there
could be some redemption. And I can get pretty emotional just
thinking about the lessons learned there.
So, at any rate, let me ask this last area. I am not
looking to end on a negative note, but I do want to face
reality. Some of the things you say should happen aren't
happening. If they don't happen, are things going to get worse?
Are we going to just muddle through? Is it going to take us
longer and then people will never realize that it could have
been done better or do you think things just get worse? Want to
give it a try?
Mr. Carey. I would refer to that Center for Strategic and
International Studies study also that the window is closing,
that if the situation doesn't improve dramatically in terms of
basic security, people still don't feel secure to go to school,
they don't feel fully secure to open businesses and indulge in
economic activity, that the situation will rapidly deteriorate
as the Iraqi population loses confidence in our ability to do
the job. And so we have a relatively short window of
opportunity. We need to redouble our efforts to meet those
primary tasks that General Garner identified.
Mr. Duss. One of the many lessons that we learned providing
humanitarian aid in the post-Soviet world and post-conflict
situations and even during conflict is that unless populations
can return to somewhat of a normal life where people go to
work, children go to school, teachers teach and some semblance
of life, it can only take place if there is security. And it is
the same for Iraq as it is for Afghanistan. Unless there is
security where business can take place, money can be made, it
will be very, very difficult for the situation in Iraq to
improve.
Mr. Shays. Ms. Willcuts.
Ms. Willcuts. On the same note again with security, I think
to have--in conversations I have had with some of our own staff
and women that I have met, Iraqi women, they are afraid still
to send their children to school, as Mr. Carey had mentioned.
Some of our local staff have their fathers or brothers escort
them to our office every day to work because there is fear of
abductions, there's fear of kidnapping and these gangs that are
still roving around. And I think it's an opportunity for the
military to make a difference right now and show that we are
serious with the commitments we've made in coming there and
doing what we started.
People are waiting to see. I think people are withholding
their judgment until they find out how this all turns out, what
kind of services are we going to provide. Are we going to
follow through on the promises and commitments that we have
made. I don't think it's too late, but we will have a lot to
lose if we don't follow through on these things and
specifically security for women and children.
Mr. Shays. Is there anything you all want to put on the
record before we adjourn? I know Mr. Bremer fairly well, even
though I kept calling him Paul when his friends call him Jerry.
But I believe him to be a very intelligent person. And I would
like to think that he hears what you're saying. I said I was
kind of concluding, but I want to know does your organization
have the ability to have the kind of conversation we're having
with him?
Mr. Carey. Not so far.
Mr. Duss. I think we've spoken in some way shape or form
about the difficulty we have in accessing CPA. And as Pat has
said, the fact that the provisional authorities housed in the
palace are far away from the population, that's--perhaps we
don't read it that way but the meaning of that is very
significant for the people of Iraq having access to that.
Mr. Shays. That point was made. I'm going to ask you, Mr.
Duss, if you have extensive interaction with Mr. Bremer.
Mr. Duss. No, I haven't, but I know our staff on the ground
have not.
Mr. Shays. Ms. Willcuts.
Ms. Willcuts. No, I've had no opportunity to meet with him.
Mr. Shays. Or your people in any way. Well, maybe we're
starting too high. Maybe we should start with Mr. Bremer and
then to have you interact with the President. You all have been
and not surprisingly a wonderful panel. And your statements
were so helpful that in many cases, questions weren't even
necessary. I just appreciate your patience. I appreciate all
your good work. The reason I feel positive is that you all are
doing the work you're doing. And that you all are so capable.
And your organizations are so capable.
And I'll conclude by thanking the Science Committee. This
is not our general committee. And it's a lot nicer. We're not
up as high and it's not as tall a ceiling. It's a little
cozier. I think we had a good hearing today. Really appreciate
the three of you. And with that we will adjourn this hearing.
[Note.--The GAO report entitled, ``Foreign Assistance, Lack
of Strategic Focus and Obstacles to Agricultural Recovery
Threaten Afghanistan's Stability,'' may be found in
subcommittee files.]
[Whereupon, at 3:18 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]