For the first two weeks of the war, Baghdad South chugged along as usual. Then one night, a massive power surge shut down the plant, as it did every other power station in central Iraq, plunging Baghdad into darkness and panic. Nobody—not U.S. military engineers, not Iraqi technicians—had any idea what had happened. Had Saddam ordered the lights out? Had the Americans bombed a power station? Months later, they would conclude that a loop of high-voltage lines encircling the capital was severed during the fighting, unbalancing the power grid and sending surges to every plant on the network.
With no idea what had caused the problem and with fighting raging around the capital, Khallaf and other employees decided to go home. They returned to work three days after Baghdad fell to find a contingent of marines hunkered down at the plant. A day later, officers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arrived. They saw the broken pipes, frayed wires, and computerless control room, where the antiquated dials were the size of wall clocks. “When I first looked around, I said, ‘Holy moly. This is not good,’” recalled Lieutenant Colonel John Comparetto, who was the army’s chief electrical engineer in Iraq. “I hoped it was an isolated incident. But it wasn’t true. It was typical.”
It was then that Comparetto saw that the war planning had been far too optimistic. “We were underestimating how bad it was, no doubt about it,” he said.
With no power on the national grid, he and Khallaf realized that it would be impossible to restart Baghdad South quickly. Electrical plants, like cars, need power to get running. Baghdad South required about eight megawatts, far more than the capacity of the army’s largest portable generator. The engineers eventually came up with a solution: divert power from a hydroelectric station, one of the few generating facilities in operation. Two weeks later, Baghdad South was operating again. But its output was 25 megawatts less than before the war. Once other plants started, they faced the same problem. The shock of the sudden shutdown, the lack of spring maintenance because of the war, and general fatigue had made an already ailing system even sicker. Although Iraqi and American engineers turned on as many units as they could, they could not get overall national output above 3,500 megawatts—well below the 6,500 megawatts needed to satisfy the nation’s demand or even the 4,400 megawatts produced before the war.
Bremer hoped to increase generation to 4,400 megawatts by authorizing emergency repairs funded with the $230 million set aside before the war. He directed his electricity adviser to aim for that target, and he began promising Iraqis that power would soon return to prewar levels.
Then, with the stroke of his pen, he put the CPA into a no-win position. Some CPA staffers thought that instead of diverting the lion’s share of power to Baghdad, Iraqis should share it equally. It made perfect sense to the Americans: in a democracy, the government doesn’t pick favorites. The CPA’s electricity team consulted Iraq’s Electricity Commission. “They thought we were nuts,” said Robyn McGuckin, who worked on the electricity team. “They warned us that it would cause all sorts of problems.” But nobody listened. Bremer signed an edict mandating that power be allocated equally across Iraq.
Residents of Basra and Najaf and the rest of the south got a few more hours of electricity a day. People were pleased, but it didn’t win the CPA any admirers. Baghdad, however, was short-circuited. The capital, which was accustomed to receiving uninterrupted power, found itself without it for at least twelve hours a day. The blackouts began to foster almost overnight nostalgia for Saddam among people who had cheered his fall. “We figured the Americans, who are a superpower, would at least give us electricity,” said Mehdi Abdulwahid, an unemployed oil engineer, as he sold drinks on a busy sidewalk. “Now we wish we had the old times back.” Saddam, Abdulwahid said with a sigh, “was a ruthless man, but at least we had the basics of life. How can we care about democracy now when we don’t even have electricity?”
Bremer was unmoved. He insisted that doling out power equally was the right thing to do, and it pleased Shiite politicians from the south whom he was trying to woo onto the Governing Council. The shortage in Baghdad, Bremer reasoned, would end as soon as production increased.
But that never happened. The production figures he received every morning showed little movement above 3,500 megawatts. As summer temperatures surpassed 130 degrees, thousands of angry young men rioted in Basra, which was receiving just twelve hours of power a day. It was more than they had gotten before the war but nowhere near enough. Taps were running dry because there was no power to operate water-pumping stations. The blackouts shut down gasoline pumps, causing miles-long lines at fuel stations.
The riots alarmed Bremer, who decided he needed one person to oversee Iraq’s infrastructure. He chose Steve Browning, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers specialist who had headed four ministries in the first weeks of the occupation. Browning was no electricity expert. He was a disaster-response specialist, but he had a knack for organization and leadership. He also had Bremer’s confidence. And unlike most other CPA officials, he spoke a little Arabic.
Browning was a trim man with thinning hair. More of a listener than a talker, when he did speak, his voice was soft and unfailingly polite. If he was offered tea, he drank it, and when Iraqis came to see him, he was one of the few Americans who served them tea. “We have to always remember that we are guests in their country,” he would say to his colleagues. “We have to respect their customs.”
His new title was director of infrastructure. Roads, water systems, phone lines—all were in his purview. But the top priority was electricity. His marching orders were simple: find out what’s going wrong and fix it.
Browning asked the CPA’s electricity team to show him their plan to restore power to prewar levels. There was no plan. Nor was there a budget to allocate the ministry’s operating funds. Every other aspect of Iraq’s government was being micromanaged. The education advisers were going through textbooks line by line to determine what should be expunged. The health-care team was studying every single prescription medication used by the Health Ministry. Americans assigned to Iraq’s Foreign Ministry were vetting every single Iraqi diplomat. But the Ministry of Electricity had been left on its own. Iraqi managers and technicians had been allowed to resume control of power plants. An American contractor was conducting emergency repairs at a few power stations, but the overall challenge of increasing output had been inexplicably handed off to the Iraqis. The CPA’s four-person electricity team was taking a hands-off, advisory role. The group was led by a hydropower expert from the Army Corps of Engineers, though only a few of Iraq’s generating stations had water-powered units; most ran on oil or natural gas.
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 f
or 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.
Imperial Life in the Emerald City Page 17