Chandrasekaran dissects Baghdad’s “Little America” in 2007 Nafziger Lecture

Download an mp3 of the lecture here.

By Quinn Craugh (JBA, x’09)

In a time when the Iraq War was popular with the majority of Americans, one journalist set out to discover life in war-stricken Baghdad and found a slice of “Little America” nestled in the heart of a city desperate to find independence.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of the best-selling book “Imperial Life
in the Emerald City,” spent 17 months in Baghdad chronicling the Americans’ botched effort to rebuild the country. In a talk to more than 200 UW students and faculty in October, he spoke of an American utopia – the Green Zone – embedded deep within a city torn by religion and violence, during the first few years of the war.

He reserved comment as to whether the U.S. should have even been in Iraq, but said, “I thought we could pull it off.”

He quickly explained himself, saying that by “pulling it off” he meant the U.S. government would build a stable democracy and modestly reconstruct the city after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. However, Chandrasekaran found something much worse.

“I found a city, no, in fact, I found a whole nation in the throes of chaos,” he said.

The former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post stressed three key aspects to understanding the problems in Baghdad—people, place and policy. He identified government officials who in 2003 played a key role in crafting ideas that would shape Baghdad in the future.

One such man was imperial viceroy Paul Bremer. Chandrasekaran admitted he did not think Bremer was a bad man for the job but said he failed to listen to the wants and needs of the Iraqis and instead hid behind the walls of the green zone.

Chandrasekaran also noted a 24-year-old with no financial experience was put in charge of the Iraqi stock exchange and a physician with four graduate degrees was sent home after Iraqi liberation because he was not a “loyalist.”

As for place and policy, he said unemployment in Iraq was near 50 percent after liberation and that a “New Deal-type job program” would have been ideal. However, the government was too busy writing new tax code reform laws and enforcing traffic norms.

He compared Iraq hospitals to the sixth circle of hell, saying they lacked life-saving equipment while people died in the hallways. He also noted 40 percent of the city’s essential drugs were out of stock because Bremer and his staff decided to micromanage the situation from inside the Green Zone.

Chandrasekaran conceded no magic bullet exists to rid Iraq of its problems but noted small incremental steps can go along way. He offered a “Plan B” solution that would decentralize power and return authority to Iraqi provinces, giving them a say over budget matters and newly enacted laws.

And while most of his time was spent in the Green Zone, Chandrasekaran said if he could do it all again, he would have spent time figuring out all the small nuances within the imperial walls.

“I would have spent even more time in the Green Zone,” Chandrasekaran said. “I would have tried to understand all the subgroups of people who were in there … I spent a lot of time with people who were making policy, but [given more time] I would have also tried to more spend time with people who were supporting those making policy.”