Imperial Life in the Emerald City (18 page)

Browning was dumbfounded. The CPA seemed to be treating the problem of restoring power as an afterthought.

“When I went to my first meeting between the Americans and Iraqis working on electricity, all I saw was finger-pointing,” he recalled. “It was really quite embarrassing.”

A few days later, Browning told Bremer that the viceroy's pledge to return Iraq to prewar power levels was impossible “because there's no plan to get there.”

Bremer's response was that the goal had to be met. If he was told what was needed, he would supply it, whatever it was.

Browning said it was possible to make enough emergency repairs to restore prewar levels in two months. He offered to lead the effort with two conditions: “that we weren't going to run wild and crank up power in the short term in a way that destroyed equipment for the long term,” and that Bremer understood that after they reached the goal of 4,400 megawatts, plants would have to be shut down for maintenance.

Bremer told him that he wanted updates every morning at seven. It would be Bremer's first meeting of the day.

“Go for it,” Bremer told Browning. “I'm counting on you.”

Browning's first order of business was to move the electricity team from a closet to a large room next to the dining hall. Then he assigned a young British international-development specialist to assemble a budget for the ministry. Browning instructed Bechtel, the American engineering firm that had received the $230 million government contract for power-sector repairs, to focus its resources on meeting the goal. And he set out to form a new team. He pulled in two electricity specialists working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, grabbed an expert from the Army Corps of Engineers, and asked the top military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, for as many military engineers as could be spared. A week later, Sanchez ordered each of the twelve army brigades in Iraq to contribute two engineers to Browning's team. The engineers were sent to power stations across the country and told to work with the plant managers to conduct a detailed assessment of what repairs could be made in two months to increase output. Browning then summoned all the plant managers and army engineers to Baghdad for a two-day pep talk. He had them share their individual repair plans with the group. If a manager said that he lacked a certain part, Browning asked all the others if they had the item in their stockrooms. He sent them back with an exhortation to meet the deadline. “You are Iraqis,” he told them. “You are smart and proud and resourceful. I know you can meet this challenge.”

The army engineers sent reports to Browning, who compiled a daily update that was presented to Bremer and sent to Washington, where Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice read it almost every day. When one plant had to shut down because of an accidental fire, which sent output tumbling for a week, Browning was inundated with messages from the highest levels of the United States government.
What's going on? Are we going to make the deadline?

Browning's team reached its goal five days late, but still it was a cause for celebration. After working eighteen-hour days for weeks on end, they had pulled off a feat many in the palace had deemed impossible.

The glory didn't last long. Plants began shutting down for maintenance the following day. Within two weeks, the CPA was back where it had started: overall output dipped to 3,600 megawatts. Even more worrisome to Browning was Sanchez's decision to recall all the engineers, which deprived the CPA team of an on-site taskmaster and a reliable way to communicate with each plant. And Bechtel's funds, which were earmarked for emergency repairs, were running out.

If the CPA was serious about fixing Iraq's electricity system, Browning believed it would have to do more than just emergency repairs. It would need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more to renovate and rebuild decrepit stations such as Baghdad South.

One morning, he raised the subject with Bremer.

         

When the CPA's bean counters had begun assembling a national budget for Iraq, they discovered that the country's income, almost all of which came from oil sales, was nowhere near enough to pay for its expenses. Saddam had dealt with the shortfall by withholding funding for ministries, and by not investing in the nation's infrastructure. Power plants such as Baghdad South never received new parts or upgrades. If the engineers there needed equipment, they often scavenged at the junkyard.

To Bremer, this was unacceptable. Building a stable democracy required a government that could balance its books and meet its obligations to the Iraqi people. Cutting back food and fuel subsidies would save money over the long term, but that wasn't something the CPA could do right away. Dismantling the safety net could spark unrest.

Bremer also worried about investment in infrastructure. Balancing the budget was only half the problem. He believed that if Iraq's economy was to flourish, foreign companies would have to invest in factories, oil wells, and mines. Perhaps investors would buy government-run companies as they privatized. Perhaps they would set up operations from scratch. Either way, they would employ thousands upon thousands of people, thereby resuscitating the economy. But before foreign companies would invest, they needed to be certain that their factories would have enough electricity and water. Simply getting back to prewar levels was not enough. Iraq had to produce enough electricity not just to meet the demand of the moment, but also for the power-guzzling factories of its future. The same theory held for security. Far more money was required to train existing police officers and to hire tens of thousands of new ones. The way Bremer saw it, there was no way to defer improvements in Iraq's security and infrastructure. Electricity was a catalyst in getting the country back on its feet. He hoped that with a modest upfront investment, Iraq would be able to increase oil production and attract enough foreign investment within a few years to balance its books.

David Oliver, the CPA's budget czar, calculated that Iraq needed to invest between $5 billion and $10 billion a year in its infrastructure, and that wasn't counting the money required to make up for years of Saddam's underinvestment. (Needs assessments conducted by the United States, the United Nations, and the World Bank eventually put the figure at $55 billion over four years.) Iraq didn't have the money. Oil revenue was barely enough to pay for the government's salaries, supplies, and other operating expenses. Oliver decided that approaching other nations for contributions would take too long. He nixed the idea of loans. Iraq already had tens of billions of dollars in foreign debt. To Oliver, there was only one solution: “The gap had to be filled with American money.”

He went to Bremer, who supported infrastructure investment but didn't have a sense of how much it would cost until Oliver showed him a spreadsheet. Tens of billions of dollars. Tens of billions of
American taxpayer
dollars. The sum exceeded the non-inflation-adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan, the $13 billion American initiative to rebuild Europe after World War II, and seemed to represent political suicide. After all, White House and Pentagon officials had promised Americans before the war that Iraqi oil revenue would cover reconstruction. Bremer told Oliver that he'd think about it.

Bremer regarded the prewar statements about reconstruction to be guesses based on sketchy data. It wasn't until CPA officials got a good look at facilities such as Baghdad South that the enormity of the problem became clear. Although he accepted Wolfowitz and Feith's advice on de-Baathification and other matters in his first weeks on the job, Bremer had never shared their view that Iraq would be an in-and-out operation. When he and Bush met in the Oval Office, the president had expressed an impassioned desire to transform Iraq into a model democracy in the Middle East. With search teams unable to turn up any weapons of mass destruction, the primary American justification for the invasion, the viceroy deemed the development of democracy to be no longer just an important goal. It was
the
goal. Iraq would have to become that shining city on a hill in the Arab world. And to accomplish that, the United States couldn't ignore Iraq's need for better infrastructure. In Bremer's mind, the logical progression was simple: improved infrastructure begets economic development, which, in turn, begets stability, a prerequisite for democracy.

He met with Oliver four days later. Poll all the senior advisers and compile a detailed list of Iraq's needs, Bremer told Oliver. The viceroy said he'd take care of selling it to the White House. He had political capital. If there was a time to use it, it was now. But be discreet, Bremer told Oliver. If word leaked that the CPA wanted to spend billions upon billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq, it could prove politically disastrous. The announcement would have to be choreographed in Washington.

Oliver informed the senior advisers that they had a week to submit their wish lists. Browning had the electricity staff assemble a realistic set of projects the CPA could accomplish. Others shot for the moon. One proposal called for rebuilding every mosque in the country. When Oliver added it up, it came to $60 billion. There was no way that would fly, so he began chopping. There was plenty of fat to slice. By the time he was done, the list tallied $35 billion.

He took it to Bremer, who had been holding intense discussions with the White House. The Pentagon was planning to send Congress a request for a massive supplemental appropriation to support the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A request for reconstruction funding could be tacked onto that, the White House said. But Bremer figured that $35 billion was too much. He and Oliver made a decision to halve it. The new target was about $18 billion. Bremer asked Oliver to prepare a detailed budget at that level. It would be sent to the White House and, eventually, to Congress. Within the CPA, the $18 billion became known as the Supplemental.

Oliver carved up the $18 billion. Electricity was deemed the most important; it would get $5.7 billion. Water and sewage would get $3.7 billion. Oil would get $2.1 billion. The proposals Oliver had received from the senior advisers were just rough guesses. He told them to give him a detailed plan of how they intended to spend the money.

This is odd,
Browning thought.

“We started with a number and built down,” he recalled. “It wasn't the way I had ever assembled a budget before. It was, ‘You have $5.7 billion. Now fill in the blanks.' It wasn't a very smart approach.” There wasn't much time for Browning to consult with his Iraqi counterparts or international experts. Oliver needed the plan in a week.

Andrew Bearpark, a veteran British post-conflict reconstruction specialist who was the CPA's director of operations, had a bad feeling about the Supplemental. “The planning process was done with such secrecy and such speed that it was never going to be a particularly rational process in terms of creating projects you really needed,” he said. “We were predestined for failure. There is a rate at which you can plan these things. If you do something in five minutes that you should spend five months on, you'll cock it up.”

Bearpark was a chain-smoker with the mouth of a sailor who didn't suffer fools gladly, and he made no effort to hide his habit of an evening glass, or two, of Johnnie Walker. When work kept him late at his desk in his palace office, which was more often than not, he'd begin drinking. But, for all of his eccentricities, Bearpark had far more postwar development experience than anyone else in the CPA. Among his British colleagues, he questioned the basic premise of the Supplemental. “We've got a country whose infrastructure is not up to the standards of this region,” he said. “It's not as good as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. It's not up to the standards of a major oil-producing nation. We want it to be that good and therefore we're going to make it that good. We're American and we're going to throw money at the problem. Well, the world doesn't work that way.” More planning needed to be done to ensure that the right kinds of power plants and hospitals were being built in the right places, he said. Projects needed to be scaled back to make them sustainable, to allow Iraqis to build them and operate them.

Bremer and Oliver listened to Bearpark, but they didn't heed his advice. The stars were aligned in Washington at that moment for the Supplemental. Waiting a few more months for additional planning might close that window, Bremer said. And, more important, he wanted the CPA to begin infrastructure projects as soon as possible. What better way to make the Iraqis love us than to give them electricity?

Browning wanted to use most of the money to build small power stations around the country. He figured that smaller plants, which would be located in cities and towns, would be less susceptible to insurgent attacks because the local population would have an incentive to protect the source of their own electricity. But more senior CPA officials wanted to fund large power stations built by American contractors. If they could show that American business would benefit from the Supplemental, Congress was more likely to approve it. Bremer also reasoned that big projects would generate more electricity overall, which would promote economic development.

The formal Supplemental request was fifty-three pages long and totaled $20.3 billion. Bremer asked for $4.2 billion to fund and equip Iraq's police and army, $900 million to build and repair hospitals, $800 million to upgrade the transportation and communications infrastructure, and $900 million for the development of “civil society.” The $5.7 billion for power would yield 8,000 megawatts of electricity; it was enough, the CPA predicted, to meet Iraq's demands for the next three years.

The document was a glimpse of the country Bremer wanted to build, a country that looked a lot like the United States. There was $4 million to create a nationwide system of area codes and telephone numbers, $9 million for a national ZIP code project, $19 million for wireless Internet service, and $20 million for “catch-up business training” that would “develop and train a cadre of entrepreneurs in business fundamentals and concepts that were missing in the former Iraqi regime.” A $200 million American-Iraqi Enterprise Fund would promote the development of a private sector in Iraq. Bremer even asked for $150 million for a “state of the art” children's hospital in Basra that would handle plastic surgery and pediatric oncology, despite warnings from the CPA's health team that Iraq did not have the resources to fund the ongoing operation of such a facility.