Iraq: The Whole Thing Was Much Harder Than It Needed To Be

by Robert Tollast

Three former diplomats who served in Iraq during three phases of the conflict share their thoughts on the security, economic and political issues of their time in country.

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Many who worked with Paul Bremer in Iraq believed oil revenues and a re-invented Iraqi private sector would win the peace. Years later however, we see immense infrastructure projects funded by Iraqi oil money and vast foreign investment. They may have jumped the gun in 2003 with a rush to privatize, but were the neoconservatives right all along?

No, those who argued for a quick transition to a fully privatized economy were completely lost to the reality of Iraq in 2003 and more lost to the realities of transition economics. I came to Iraq in 2003 from Hungary, the darling of the Eastern European transition economies (at the time).

I was aghast at those who argued for a forceful transition to a fully privatized economy for Iraq and used Eastern Europe as a model. Hungary did not immediately privatize its economy when the wall fell, in fact it went a full four years through the first democratic transitional government before the Socialists finally implemented the Bokros Plan and began the hard work of economic transition.

The first four years were spent transitioning the political system, the economy was kept stable with no great shocks that would have brought into question whether the whole project was a good idea or not. I argued forcefully, as did every military commander and diplomat in the field, for large scale public works projects of the kind that would employ tens of thousands of otherwise out of work men. All to no avail, we were told to go back and suck it up, Iraq would be dragged into the modern global economy; heaven forbid it should be just another distorted petro economy with a large public sector. It went kicking and screaming all right, at us mostly. The whole thing was much harder than it needed to be.

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Keith Mines served as the CPA Governance Coordinator for Al Anbar in 2003. Currently, he is the director of the U.S Embassy Narcotics Affairs Section in Mexico City.

Gary Grappo served as Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S Embassy in Baghdad from 2009 to 2010. Currently, he is the Head of Mission for the Office of the Quartet Representative. The Middle East Quartet is a diplomatic mission spanning the U.N, E.U, U.S and Russia looking to mediate the Israeli -Palestinian peace process.

Matthew Lodge served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the British Embassy in Baghdad in 2007. Currently, he is Britain's Ambassador to Finland.

Robert Tollast is an English Literature Graduate from Royal Holloway University of London and has published articles for the finance publication AccountingWEB. He became interested in events in Iraq through his late father, who was a Military Intelligence Officer in Iraq with General Sir Maitland Willson's Persia/ Iraq force (Paiforce) in 1942. He is currently learning Arabic and would be interested one day to visit Iraq, although he concedes this is currently quite an eccentric ambition.

All opinions in this article are those of private citizens and do not necessarily reflect the policies of either the British or American Governments either now or during the times in question.