Lineamientos para la Elaboración del Reporte de Estabilidad Oscilatoria

Among the American dead, many were NCOs or junior officers. The number of Iraqi dead has not yet been confirmed. After Hussein's demise, looters appeared in their thousands and began to pillage. Initially their targets were the office buildings of the regime in the government quarter of Baghdad. They then turned to non-government facilities, including hospitals and schools, stealing anything that was portable, i.e. computers, air-conditioning units, and later removing anything else. During this period, valuable documents essential for reconstruction were destroyed (Garrett, 2005). Later on copper wire was stripped out of telephone networks, rendering communication almost impossible. There were also cultural damages. For example, Iraq as one of the world’s oldest civilisations, was a treasure trove of antiquities, originally collected by European scholars. It was initially thought that the Iraqi National Museum had been emptied, but fortunately it was discovered that the museum staff had been able to hide almost all the exhibits.

After a short period of time there was nothing more to steal and to carry away, and US troops established order in the streets. After the fall of Baghdad, all authority had vanished; there was no government, no army and no police. It was clear that many Baghdad residents were relieved that Saddam had been overthrown (Hakki, 2002). Looters burned the Iraq National Library, which held ancient manuscripts and editions of every book published in Iraq and every newspaper printed in Baghdad since the mid- nineteenth century.

By not protecting Iraq’s museum and the National Library, the Bush Administration failed in its legal duty as an occupying power to safeguard the country’s cultural heritage. This can be described as incompetence. The soldiers were professional but

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unfortunately their political counterparts were so focused on providing a reason for war that they failed to make even elementary plans following military victory (Hakki, 2002).

The Bush Administration argued that their failure to restore law and order in Baghdad was because of the ease and speed of the military campaign. However, Rumsfeld thought that the oil ministry was important, which is evident from the protection which was given to it (Gilbert, 2004). The British troops in the South of Iraq took the pragmatic view that the priority was to establish law and order; therefore they worked with anyone who appeared co-operative to restore essential services. Electricity was restored in Basra and most other facilities such as schools and hospitals were operating efficiently. Crime was also under control, the streets were safe and terrorism was crushed.

A new Iraqi police force with an initial strength of 40 000 was created. Training academies were established and Western police leaders were brought to Iraq to instruct the trainers in Western policing methods. Recruitment remained a difficulty. It was also decided to exclude members of the Ba’ath party from new government employment. An amount of one-hundred-million dollars was made available for reconstruction by the US treasury, but in the long term finance for reconstruction would be supplied by Iraqi oil revenue (Allawi, 2007).

The UN Security Council extended its approval of post-war arrangements in Iraq by adopting Resolution 1551, which recognised the Coalition Provincial Authority and urged the establishment of a constitutional conference to assist the Iraqi Governing Council in establishing the future Iraqi government. The governments who opposed the war were France and Germany, and they also continued to express their hostility against the Coalition’s actions. Russia was initially an opponent, but later supported the US.

However, France and Germany remained hostile and also declined to provide troops for the international force, which by 2004 consisted of troops from thirty-five countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Portugal, Norway, the Czech Republic, Romania, Denmark, the

Netherlands and Italy. One area in which the Coalition forces made no progress was the inspection teams, UNSCOM and UNMOVIC, relating to the allocation, possession and development of weapons of mass destruction.

On the whole, the majority of the American people remained supportive of their former President and armed forces, but this was not the case in Europe, where the French and German remained hostile. In Britain opinions started to change. Many professional politicians and the media raised concerns whether Britain had gone to war for unsubstantiated reasons (Hakki, 2002).

The Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular, were convinced that the West was prepared to use its overwhelming military superiority to perpetuate the subordinate position of the Muslims. George Bush Senior’s proclamation of a new world order had persuaded many in the West that the world’s future could be managed within a legal framework, i.e. discussion and conciliation. Bush's son’s warning to bring other enemies of nuclear weapons to book, i.e. Iran and North Korea, was found unsettling by his political opponents (Keegan, 2007:204-220; Galbraith, 2006:102-114).

As mentioned previously, the US left a trail of incomplete reconstruction plans, and the Iraqis experienced daily chaos on the streets, confusion and shortages. During this struggle the new Iraqi government was silent about how to extricate the country from its current predicament.

The corrupt state of Hussein was replaced by an inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order. Where does this leave the Iraqis? Time was running out; the Iraqis had gone through many hardships under the old regime, and under the War on Terrorism. But somehow they have kept the light of hope burning, hoping that they would find solutions to their difficulties (Allawi, 2007:453-460; Cordesman, 2003:559- 572).