Imperial Life in the Emerald City (21 page)

Iraqi politicians had been complaining that the closure was causing miles-long traffic jams on other roads and bridges. Although insurgent attacks in the capital were on the rise, the CPA was still clinging to the idea that the country was becoming safer by the day. When Force Protection officials objected, CPA staffers noted that the city's zoo and a surrounding park, which was on the other side of the expressway from the al-Rasheed, had been opened a month earlier without incident.

At five-thirty the next morning, a white pickup truck towing a trailer loaded with what appeared to be a blue electrical generator drove down the expressway and turned into the park opposite the al-Rasheed. The driver stopped in a clearing with a line of sight to the hotel. He, and possibly an accomplice, opened the side panels of the supposed generator. Inside was a crudely welded array of forty rocket tubes. Half were French-made. The other twenty were manufactured in Russia. The launcher was booby-trapped, and a battery-operated timer was activated.

Afterward, Dempsey told Wolfowitz that the attack revealed the weakness of the forces opposing the American occupation. The launcher was a makeshift contraption. Only one hotel occupant, a psychological operations specialist on the Strategic Communications team, was killed. The hotel was damaged but far from destroyed.

Many in the Green Zone drew the opposite conclusion. To them, the attack demonstrated that the Emerald City was no longer an oasis of safety. The insurgents had struck at the heart of American power in Iraq and killed a CPA staffer. Dempsey and other generals eventually conceded that months of surveillance and planning probably had preceded the assault.

The sight of bloody Americans sprawled on the lobby floor scarred many in the CPA. They had never before witnessed the impact of their war. A few staffers ran outside to retch.

The Fourteenth of July Bridge and the expressway were once again closed off to Iraqis, but security officers, fearful of a copycat attack, still decided to shutter the hotel. The rockets had damaged the plumbing and electrical systems anyway. Some floors were covered with a foot of water or scorched by small fires.

Hotel residents had no choice but to move back into the palace. Some slept in their offices. Halliburton and the army set up cots in the gargantuan ballroom, in the hallways, even in the closets. The building came to resemble a large orphanage. Morale plummeted as CPA staffers, who already had been complaining about having to share rooms in the hotel, were forced to sleep with hundreds of their colleagues and line up at Porta-Potties.

The only upside was that people felt safer. The palace was far enough inside the Green Zone that insurgents couldn't get a straight shot at it, and the foot-thick walls seemed like protection against future rocket attacks. But two days after the al-Rasheed assault, insurgents lobbed mortars into the Emerald City. They did it the following day too, and for many of the remaining days of the occupation. They rarely hit anything of significance. Instead of calibrating successive shots to improve accuracy, the insurgents would set up their mortar tubes across the Tigris and let several rounds fly in rapid succession before they sped away. American radar could pinpoint the origin of a shot within seconds, but the army didn't automatically retaliate because it wasn't clear if the attacks had been launched from populated areas. The army didn't want to drop an artillery round in the middle of a bazaar.

Whether the insurgents actually hit anything, the simple act of tossing a few mortars inside the bubble sowed anxiety among residents of the Emerald City. Danger was everywhere.

Whenever there was a mortar attack, loudspeakers in the palace boomed. “Take cover! Take cover!” Staffers called it the Giant Voice, and it was always a minute or two late. Usually by the time the announcement echoed through the marble hallways, the mortars had already landed. But everyone went through the motions anyway. They strapped on their flak vests and helmets and ran toward the basement shelter.

The almost daily bleating of the Giant Voice began to fray nerves. Many staffers had difficulty sleeping. Others took to smoking and drinking. Visits to the Combat Stress Clinic increased. Some CPA personnel started popping tranquilizers and antidepressants.

It wasn't just that they felt scared. The attack on the al-Rasheed and the mortar barrage shattered the illusion inside the Emerald City that Iraq was becoming safe. From the earliest days of the occupation, the CPA had labored under the assumption that Iraq would be a quiescent terrarium in which to cultivate democracy and a free market. Peter McPherson's economic development strategy assumed that the country would be safe enough for multinational firms to establish factories. John Agresto's higher-education strategy assumed that he and his team would be able to travel to every university. Jerry Bremer's political strategy assumed that governance specialists could drive around the country to promote democracy. Reports of insurgent attacks were brushed off. The bad stuff, they assumed, was happening in Fallujah, in Ramadi, in Tikrit—the so-called Sunni Triangle.

The assaults on the Green Zone were the first chinks in the armor. “It was a rude wake-up call,” a CPA friend told me. “All of a sudden, we realized that the security situation was nothing like what we had been led to believe. And people began asking themselves, If things are getting worse, not better, how can we possibly do all these ambitious things we hoped to do? That's what really freaked people out.”

The CPA's daily security reports took on an alarmist tone. Every issue brought a new BOLO warning—Be On the Look Out—for suspicious cars, for fake badges, for booby traps. The few shopping excursions or dinners at fancy restaurants outside the bubble ceased. CPA staffers began carrying weapons in the Green Zone.

There were always rumors of another attack in the works, except the next time it wouldn't involve rockets or mortars, but car bombs and waves of armed insurgents storming the palace. The population of Iraqis in the Green Zone was increasing by hundreds a day, according to one rumor, a sure sign that legions of bad guys had infiltrated the supposedly secure bubble.

Americans began to question the allegiances of their Iraqi interpreters and secretaries. One internal assessment estimated that as many as 60 percent of the Iraqis working for the CPA were compromised. The problem was that the Americans did not know which ones were. The Americans believed that Iraqis assumed to be loyal to the CPA had the lives of their families threatened by insurgents, who wanted to know where Americans went when they left the Green Zone. The Iraqis had no confidence that the CPA would protect them if they reported threats. More often than not, CPA security officers believed, the Iraqis gave the insurgents the information they sought.

Force Protection began posting signs around the palace warning people not to leave sensitive material in places where Iraqis might see it. Rather than becoming more involved in CPA operations, Iraqis were pushed to the margins.

“You couldn't share things with your Iraqi colleagues. You couldn't travel outside the Green Zone. You couldn't stay at the al-Rasheed,” a CPA friend told me. “We felt like we were under siege.” He paused. “You can't run a country that way,” he said. “You can create the illusion that you're running things, but you can't actually do it.”

THE GREEN ZONE, SCENE VII

On a balmy Wednesday night in May, six weeks before the handover of sovereignty, dozens of CPA staffers gathered around the palace pool for yet another farewell party. Jerry Bremer wanted his subordinates to return home in small groups, to avoid the perception that Americans were deserting Iraq en masse. The ambitious ones angled to be on the latest possible flight. Others couldn't wait to head to the airport. Either way, they wanted to have one last round of drinks with their buddies. Every night in May and June was consumed with goodbye events—at the pool, at the al-Rasheed, at the Chinese restaurants.

It had been a quiet night. No mortar thunderclaps. No messages from the Giant Voice warning people to take cover.

Then came the gunshots. A
pop-pop-pop
in the distance. Alex Dehgan, a State Department employee at the pool party, dismissed it as a firefight between soldiers and insurgents. So did his colleagues.

But the popping grew louder, more intense. It seemed to be coming from every direction. Orange tracer rounds arced into the night sky. Bursts of AK-47 fire echoed across the Tigris.

Dehgan began to panic.
This is it,
he thought.
The full-on assault. They're going to crawl over the walls.

He and everyone else by the pool scurried indoors. Some ran into the basement shelter. Others retreated to their offices but stayed away from the windows. They began to wonder if they'd have to leave by helicopter, like the last staffers at the American embassy in Saigon.

Hours later they heard the news: Iraq had defeated Saudi Arabia 3 to 1 in a soccer match, earning a berth at that summer's Olympics in Athens.

Baghdad was celebrating.

10

The Plan Unravels

IN A PALATIAL VILLA
on the Tigris River, members of Iraq's Governing Council milled about an ornate receiving room the size of a basketball court. There were former exiles in Savile Row suits, women wearing colorful head scarves, Shiite religious leaders with black turbans identifying them as descendants of the Prophet Mohammed, a tribal sheik in a gold-fringed black cloak. Butlers offered shot glasses of sweet tea, a welcome dose of warmth on a chilly autumn morning. Young aides ferried chirping mobile phones to their bosses. Weathered Kurdish militiamen and thick-necked former U.S. Special Forces soldiers stood guard in front of the house, a former residence of Saddam's half brother.

After fifteen minutes, Jerry Bremer walked into the room with a gaggle of guards and a half dozen aides. From afar, he appeared the same as ever: pressed blue suit, manicured hair, vigorous gait. Those who looked more carefully saw that his face seemed drawn, the wrinkles on his forehead deeper, the bags under his eyes bigger.

It was November 15, 2003. He had just returned from emergency consultations at the White House and the Pentagon—a trip so hastily arranged that he left Iraq aboard an air force medical evacuation flight. He had summoned the council to discuss the outcome of his discussions in Washington.

As he entered, the usually jovial Governing Council members were chatting in somber tones. Three days earlier, American troops had mistakenly riddled a member's vehicle with bullets as it entered the Green Zone. Although only one Iraqi was wounded, angry members resolved to stop using their Green Zone chambers. When Bremer said that he wanted to talk to them, they told him he'd have to leave the Emerald City and drive to the home of Jalal Talabani, the corpulent Kurdish politician who held the council's rotating presidency.

Bremer normally met with the council on Wednesdays, not Saturday mornings. But everything about this gathering was different. The council, a motley assortment of political veterans and neophytes, had recently become more assertive. They regarded the occupation as troubled, and they saw themselves as saviors. But Bremer still viewed them as lackeys. He thought they were disorganized, craven, and self-centered, but they were also his frontmen, and he needed their imprimatur on big decisions so it would appear that the Iraqis concurred with their occupiers.

After a round of pleasantries, he got down to business. He had an offer that he assumed Iraq's political leaders would not refuse, an offer that would change the course of the occupation.

         

Bremer's seven-step path to sovereignty had run aground.

Step one was the formation of the Governing Council. That was done. Step two was the establishment of a “preparatory committee” to determine how a constitution should be written. That also had been accomplished. Step three was the Governing Council's assumption of more day-to-day governing tasks. That was occurring in fits and starts. Step four was the writing of a constitution—and that's where the plan had stalled.

Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani's fatwa called for the constitution to be drafted by elected representatives. Although Bremer had pledged that the charter would be “written by Iraqis for Iraqis,” he was adamantly opposed to holding elections because he feared a roomful of popularly elected Iraqis might not produce a document that endorsed a separation of mosque and state, provided equal rights for women, or enshrined any of the other elements sought by the White House, which wanted to be able to point to Iraq as a model of an enlightened democracy in the Arab world. The viceroy and his political advisers were counting on the preparatory committee to stand up to al-Sistani by endorsing drafters who were appointed, not elected.

Bremer's unwillingness to give in to al-Sistani was fueled by his Governing Council. Shiite members kept telling Bremer and his advisers that they'd take care of al-Sistani. They claimed that the fatwa simply meant that al-Sistani didn't want foreigners involved in the drafting. Once the ayatollah understood that Iraqis would be doing the writing, he'd drop his objections. The Shiite council members, particularly the leaders of the two largest religious Shiite parties, didn't want a cleric, no matter how popular he was, to inject himself into politics. It was the same concern Bremer had, but it had little to do with principle; the Shiites feared a loss of power and legitimacy if they had to vet policies with al-Sistani.

Sunni council members, both Arabs and Kurds, were also concerned about al-Sistani, but for yet another reason: they didn't want the government to be beholden to a Shiite, ayatollah or not.

Bremer and the council, which had chosen the preparatory committee, expected that the committee would give them cover not only by endorsing the idea of appointed drafters but also by specifying how those drafters should be selected. But the committee's report blindsided Bremer and his council; it called for a constitution to be drafted by elected representatives. The twenty-five-member committee included judges, lawyers, and professors, not political hacks, and it comprised nearly as many Sunnis as Shiites. A majority of the members were secular-leaning academics. But even they didn't want to cross al-Sistani. The vote for elections was twenty-four to zero. “It was very difficult, if not impossible, to disregard the fatwa of Ayatollah al-Sistani,” Yass Khudier, a former judge and a member of the committee, told me a few days after the report was submitted.

Bremer and his political advisers called several Governing Council members and said they needed to fix things. The council leaned on the committee, and eventually a new report was submitted. It proposed three possibilities for choosing drafters: a national election, direct selection by the council, or town hall meetings across the country that would be limited to academics, political leaders, tribal sheiks, clerics, and other notables in each community. The committee did not rank the three options, but it was no secret that most of the group still supported elections. With the options arrayed on the table, it was time for the Governing Council to pick one. Since the council had been so dismissive of al-Sistani, Bremer expected the group to either appoint the drafters or set up town hall meetings.

Once the constitution had been written, there would still have to be a national referendum to approve the document and the election of a government. If the handover of sovereignty was to occur by the end of 2004, the Iraqis would have to get moving.

Bremer's plan required the council to do his bidding at every stage. To Bremer, it didn't seem like an unreasonable expectation. Members of the council, however, didn't see things the same way. The council's most prominent members were former exiles who had been wanting to run Iraq from the day Saddam was deposed. They regarded themselves as legitimate national leaders who commanded Iraq's largest political parties. Other members, who were not prominent politicians but who nevertheless had been appointed by Bremer to cultivate a new crop of post-Saddam political figures, began to grow into their roles. Members such as Ghazi al-Yawar, a tribal sheik, and Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a neurologist, joined the former exiles in demanding more power and independence for the council.

By September 2003, council members began to voice opposition to Bremer's seven-step plan. They argued that the occupation was doing more harm than good. Scores of angry Iraqis were joining the nascent insurgency. Some were doing it because they felt dishonored by the presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil. Others were taking up arms because they blamed the Americans for the lack of security, jobs, and electricity. Mindful of the growing anti-American sentiment, council members called for an end to the occupation. They said that the council should assume sovereignty and administer the country until elections could be held.

“We're in a very dangerous situation,” Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior Shiite politician, told me at the time. “What prevents us from moving forward is this idea of occupation. Iraq cannot be governed if Iraqis don't get more responsibility.” A restoration of sovereignty, Ahmed Chalabi said, “would make the Americans look like liberators again” and would reduce attacks against U.S. troops. “Iraqi people,” he said, “don't understand the logic of occupation.”

Council members made their case to Bremer, who rebuffed them. Unbowed, they chose a different tack. The United States was pushing for yet another UN Security Council resolution aimed both at getting more international support for Iraq's reconstruction and at encouraging UN personnel to return to Iraq after the devastating truck bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad. Members of the Governing Council began lobbying the French, the Russians, and the Germans to support a rapid transfer of sovereignty. One council member traveled to Paris at Chalabi's behest to raise the issue with the French government, and Chalabi himself flew to the United States to press the council's case on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations.

Bremer was incensed that Chalabi, whom he regarded as an opportunist, would turn against his American patrons and embrace the French. He saw the council's request as a smarmy power grab. A rapid handover of sovereignty to the council “would be a mistake,” Bremer told the Senate Armed Services Committee in late September. “No appointed government… can have the legitimacy necessary to take on the difficult issues the Iraqis face as they write their constitution, elect a government and, I might add, undertake a major economic reconstruction effort. The only path to true Iraqi sovereignty is through a written constitution, ratified and followed by free democratic elections.”

Eager to embarrass the United States and wrest control from Washington, France and Russia seized upon the Governing Council's request for sovereignty to force changes in the UN resolution that Americans were pushing for. The changes demanded so alarmed Bremer that he sent a message to President Bush three days before the Security Council was to vote on the resolution, urging Bush to withdraw it. The gist of the note, according to one person who read it, was that Bremer had reached the conclusion that the resolution was fundamentally flawed, that it would give the UN and the French too much say in America's business. When Powell saw the note, he became apoplectic. He had been working around the clock to persuade France, China, and Russia to support the document, or, at the very least, not to veto it, and he had thought he had a deal. He told the White House he wasn't going to pull the resolution.

The resolution wasn't even Powell's idea. It had been conceived by the White House as a way to help win passage of the Supplemental in Congress. Democrats were demanding that the Bush administration do more to get the United Nations back in Iraq and to encourage other countries to help pay for reconstruction projects. The resolution was supposed to accomplish both goals.

After a final bout of American arm-twisting, the Security Council unanimously adopted the resolution. The document contained two concessions to appease the French and the Russians. It stated that the Governing Council would “embody the sovereignty of the State of Iraq.” It also set a December 15 deadline for the council to present a timetable for writing a constitution and holding elections.

The White House called it a victory, but the resolution turned out to be nothing more than words on paper. No other nation stepped up to send troops or write checks. The United Nations refused to send its staffers back to Iraq because the country had become too dangerous. And the Governing Council didn't receive any additional power from Bremer.

The only provision of significance was the December 15 deadline. Now the United Nations was also cracking the whip on the Governing Council to hurry up with the constitution.

The council, however, remained deadlocked. Sunni and Kurdish members were willing to appoint drafters or hold town hall meetings to select them, but most Shiites on the council refused. Despite their earlier promises, the Shiites had been unable to persuade Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani to amend his fatwa. All talk of standing up to al-Sistani evaporated. The Shiite members knew that the ayatollah had far more legitimacy among the Iraqi people than they did.

Bremer kept trying to persuade the Shiites to select an option other than elections. But they dug in their heels.

“The Iraqi people must be able to choose the people who are going to write their constitution,” Adel Abdel-Mahdi told Bremer at a council meeting. “There is no other way.”

It sounded hauntingly similar to Bremer's remark a few months earlier, when I had asked him about his political plan. “This is the only way to go,” he had said.

         

When it came to dealing with fellow Americans, Robert Blackwill was rarely a diplomatic diplomat. Colleagues at the State Department, even people who considered him a friend, used words such as
overbearing, arrogant,
and
imperious
to describe him. When he was ambassador to India, he chewed out so many embassy staffers, often in full view of their colleagues, that State opened two internal investigations into his management of the embassy. “He was a bully,” said one veteran Foreign Service officer who worked for Blackwill in New Delhi. “He was rude and abusive.”

But, the same officer noted, Blackwill “was a brilliant man.” Raised in Kansas and educated at Wichita State University, he joined the Foreign Service at twenty-seven and rose through the bureaucracy with alacrity. In the 1980s, he was the chief U.S. negotiator at talks with the Warsaw Pact on reducing conventional forces in Europe. At the end of the decade, as the Berlin Wall fell, he served as President George H. W. Bush's special assistant for European and Soviet affairs. One of his subordinates was a bright young political science professor named Condoleezza Rice. Blackwill sat out the Clinton years at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, but returned to government in 2000 as a top foreign policy adviser to GeorgeW. Bush's presidential campaign. When Bush won, Blackwill expected to get a senior job at State, the Pentagon, or the NSC. But one never materialized, partly because of concerns about his management style. India was his consolation prize.