Rupert Cornwell: Does America have the patience to rebuild Iraq?

WASHINGTON - With last week's award of a major contract to the giant (and politically well connected) Bechtel group, the US has moved from fighting a war in Iraq to rebuilding Iraq. But the early signs are that while the first phase was immaculately planned, the second is anything but.

The Bechtel deal, worth up to $1.2 billion, covers everything from power grid repairs to road, airport and port reconstruction. But even that is a tiny fraction of the total cost of restoring Iraq, at anywhere from $45bn to $180bn. And no one can say how this process, not to mention the simultaneous task of endowing Iraq with a stable political system, will unfold – not even the man in charge of it, retired General Jay Garner.

In the last 10 days, as the war wound down, Gen. Garner has been in and out of the country he will superintend, as head of an Iraqi Interim Authority – most visibly to chair a first meeting of religious, civil and exile group leaders in Nasiriyah last Tuesday.

Thus far, he has been seen little and heard even less. But in a rare interview last week he confessed just how hard the job would be. "You're feeling your way through it, holding your hand out in the dark to try to touch all the furniture and the walls," he told the Washington Post.

What worried him? "Everything worries me."

To judge an enterprise which has barely begun is unfair; General Eisenhower, when asked in 1945 whether the creation of a democratic stable Germany was possible, replied that the true answer would only be clear in 50 years. The same goes for the even more daunting task of remaking Iraq. But the beginning has hardly been auspicious.

Humanitarian assistance has been slow to arrive. Failure by US troops to prevent the pillaging of priceless historical treasures in Baghdad's museums, and the apparent indifference of the Bush administration, sent its own message about American priorities and American sensitivity.

Flush with victory, Washington will have to make compromises to get the United Nations and the international community behind it. The temptation is to go it alone – but without a UN deal, and a prominent UN role in reconstruction, the job will tax even America's resources.

Without the UN – and by extension the blessing in the Security Council of France and Russia, prime opponents of the invasion and powers with the right of veto -- the US will be unable to lift sanctions, and may even be unable to sell Iraqi oil to help pay for reconstruction.

Right now Washington does not acknowledge these problems exist, let alone have an answer for them. Iraq's foreign debts, of anything up to $360bn, must also be sorted out. But, as Gen. Garner implied, the economic obstacles pale beside the political perils ahead.

They are apparent in the ambiguity of the reception for the American/British forces. Many cheers to be sure – but also the mass demonstrations outside the mosques after Friday prayers against both Saddam and the US.

"You are masters today," said one Shi'ite cleric to a US reporter, "But I warn you against thinking of staying. Get out before we force you out."

They are apparent too in the debate over the role of Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the INC, the highest profile Iraqi exile group. The row over Mr Chalabi reflects a debilitating Washington dispute between the Pentagon (pro-Chalabi) and the State Department (which mistrusts him).

But he also symbolises the tensions between the exile groups, and untainted Iraqi leaders, in particular religious leaders, as cossetted carpetbaggers.

Stripped of Saddam and the Baathist party, politics in Iraq consist of family clans and tribes, and religious sects whose dangerous eddies became tragically apparent last week with the murder of the cleric Sayyed Abdel Majid al-Khoei, who had returned from exile in London to attempt to reconcile Shi'ite factions only to be killed by a mob in the holy city of Najaf.

Yet official Washington disdainfully brushes off such worries. And maybe in a week or two things will look better. But Richard Lugar, the wise old chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Republican who supported the war, put his finger on the contradiction that may doom the entire enterprise: between the desire to hand everything over to Iraqis as soon as possible and the ambition to make Iraq a democracy for the ages.

In the US, impatience trumps patience every time.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq war