WP/Pincus: Analysts Say Iraqi Agencies Unlikely to Follow U.S. Rules

[kskiska]

By Walter Pincus

With less than two months before the Coalition Provisional Authority is to transfer sovereignty to an Iraqi government, CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer III has been establishing rules for key agencies in the fields of intelligence, defense and the law that analysts say may not survive long because they reflect American rather than Middle Eastern values.

The new Iraqi intelligence service, which the CPA has created to replace Saddam Hussein's Mukhabarat, will not collect intelligence that helps or harms any "legal" political party or Iraqi government official, under an order Bremer signed April 1. Nor will the agency carry out covert activities against "any Iraqi citizen or group based on race, religion, sect, gender, language, origin or tribal affiliation," the order said.

In some cases, Bremer's orders go beyond U.S. government practices. For example, after the U.S.-led coalition transfers limited sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government June 30, officers in the new Iraqi armed forces will have to wait 18 months after resigning or retiring before they are permitted to hold any political office, under Bremer's order establishing the new Ministry of Defense.

"There is no chance at all that a follow-on government will observe these orders," said Patrick Lang, a retired colonel and former head of the Middle East division of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "They need to walk away from us."

"No one has any illusion that it all is going to last," said Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a specialist in the Middle East. He said Iraqis will reshape all the orders and ideas that Bremer's group is promulgating, no matter what is put down on paper.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12896-2004May9.html