2008 Press Releases
Ambassador Ryan Crocker Interview with Gail McCabe of Soldiers Radio and TV
January 10, 2008
QUESTION: Okay. Let's start off with talking about -- if you would, give me a summation of the state of affairs in Iraq from your perspective.
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: Well, in one sentence, we start 2008 in a much better position than we started 2007. You've been out; you've seen the difference just since your last visit. This was kind of a west-to-east progression. It started in Anbar with the risings of the tribes, backed by coalition forces, against al-Qaida. And we've seen it just roll right through, through Baghdad, through the suburbs of Baghdad, out into Diyala and down in the south as well. So the first point is security, far, far better now than it has been really at any point since the very beginning.
QUESTION: How important is security still to this day? And better yet, how important is the role of the Iraqi security forces?
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: One of the little known facts of the surge is how great a role the Iraqis themselves played in this. We put 30,000 additional troops on the field, as you know, and they made a tremendous difference. The Iraqis, in the course of 2007, added 110,000 additional forces, both police and army. So they have always had by far the largest force in the surge, and they've paid for it with casualties running three times as many as our own. So this has been very much an Iraqi process.
QUESTION: How have the events of the last six months altered or sharpened your vision for what needs to take place here in Iraq?
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: With the improvement in security, you actually blow away a lot of the smoke and dust, literally, from the battlefield and get a clearer perspective then on what the next essential steps are. And there are a series of them.
First, of course, maintaining that security and maintaining that security increasingly with the Iraqi phase, which means further development of their forces. Then you have the need for services. The Iraqi people need to feel a difference in their lives. Now that violence is down, they need to see that hours of electricity increase. They need to see they're getting water. They need to see schools reopened. They need to see job opportunities. Unemployment needs to go down. Economic opportunity needs to go up.
And then in a third set of issues, it's the political process. You've heard a lot about bottoms-up reconciliation. That has been extremely important. There also has to be a top-down, and the two need to intersect. And there are efforts underway for that, but that is going to be a key challenge in 2008: solidifying and developing the political reconciliation.
QUESTION: Every commander that we've spoken to on this trip has made it very clear that what they're putting into place is valuable and it's critical to the overall stability, but they need to hear more from the central government. You have more contact with that than they do. What is your summation? Is it going to happen?
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: To a very important extent, it is happening. And where it's happening, most notably, is on the economic front. The central government is distributing revenues. There is no oil revenue distribution law as yet, but oil revenues are being distributed from the central government out to the provinces in a way that is by and large seen as quite equitable. So that needs to continue.
The provincial and the central governments need to improve their ability to execute those budgets. One example that I find particularly amusing, the Iraqis have now discovered the supplemental budget appropriation.
QUESTION: Oh, no. (Laughter.)
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: And the first supplemental went to the Sunni province of Anbar in September, a $70 million increase in their 2007 capital budget. So the economic dimension of political reconciliation is already in action, and that needs to be sustained.
What they need to do more of at the level of national leadership is work together to pass some key legislative initiatives that will bring the people of Iraq together. There's a very important one in front of parliament this week on de-Baathification reform to extend pensions to people who were denied them because of their association with the old regime. So they need to work on pieces like that and to register some real progress that, unfortunately, we haven't seen in 2007.
QUESTION: One of the other more -- one of the stronger tools that seems to be evolving these days are the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, the PRTs. Can you speak to that?
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: That has been a tremendous success in the course of 2007. At this time last year, we had 10 Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Today, a year after the new way forward was launched, we have 24. And that involves about 800 people, civilian and military, Americans and Iraqis, spread all over the country. It's a tremendous example of civil-military cooperation, of the Department of State and military forces working together.
And these combined teams down at the provincial, the district, the local levels, interacting with officials far from Baghdad, far from the seat of national government, to help them make a difference in the lives of people that they serve: advising them, again, on budget development; helping them with technical expertise. You've got veterinarians out in these PRTs, agricultural specialists, economic development advisors, rule of law coordinators. Each one is specifically tailored to the needs of the area. But overall, they've made a remarkable difference in the quality of life and quality of governance in the provinces.
QUESTION: The PRTs are also breaking new ground, or strengthening the ground if you will, on the interagency cooperation that's been taking place between Department of State and Department of Defense.
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: Well, that's exactly right, Gail. A few days ago, President Bush spent an hour with PRT leaders and their brigade command counterparts, and some of them here in Baghdad, some were with the President back in Washington. But it has been a tremendously successful endeavor in, again, our two principal agencies, State and Defense, working together, and in the process learning a great deal about each other's culture.
QUESTION: Which can only be helpful. Which can only be helpful.
We didn't plan on this one, but a side question. CLCs, concerned local citizens -- do you see them being an increasingly important factor in the security of Iraq?
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: They have been a critical factor. That's what started all of this out in Anbar.
QUESTION: Mm-hmm, the Awakening.
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: The Awakening movement. And today, you have an Anbar, almost 25,000 young men wearing the uniform of the Iraqi police. Their salaries are paid for by the Ministry of Interior here in Baghdad. And yet they all came out of this Awakening movement.
Here in Baghdad, we think the concerned local citizens, again, have been critical in the stability and security that have come to the capital as a result of the surge. We now have a process underway to work with the Iraqi Government for the incorporation of these young men into the security forces. For example, 5,000 have now been approved for hire by the Ministry of Interior.
Not all of the concerned local citizens can or should go into security services, so we're also working with the Iraqi Government on civilian job creation. USAID has a very extensive program that provides jobs, vocational training and placement for young men of military age, and the Iraqi Government is providing funds for this as well. So the gradual transition of the concerned local citizens, some into the security forces -- some into the civilian labor force -- is going to be an important goal for 2008
QUESTION: We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the announcement of the surge. In February, I think the first troops hit the ground. June is when we had the surge of operations. We had the Baghdad security plan. Highly successful, in your point of view?
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: No question about it. I mean, this is what happens when you take the best army in the world and give them a mission that really makes a difference. We've had our soldiers in some very hard fights, but with the mission of protecting the population and our troops moving into population centers, this is not a war that you can commute to. You've got to be there on the ground and in the neighborhoods. Our soldiers have done that -- our Marines out in the west -- and we can see the difference today.
QUESTION: What's next? Where do we go from here?
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: Well, 2008 has the challenges that we've touched on briefly. The most important one, again, is we can't declare victory, we cannot prematurely let up. Violence has come down, but it has to come down further. And we simply cannot let our attention or our resources be distracted from maintaining these victories that have been so hard to win. So maintaining security is absolutely key.
Then there has to be the process of transition from us to the Iraqis at the security level with Iraqi forces stepping forward, but also in other areas as well. As they develop more capacity in civilian agencies, they will play an increasingly prominent role.
And finally, it's the political piece. And this is hard, it's complicated, as our own history shows. But with security in much better shape, they can now concentrate in a way they couldn't before on political compromises.
QUESTION: As the Iraqis would say, shwa-shwa.
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: Shwa-shwa.
QUESTION: Most of the -- Mr. Ambassador, my audience is primarily military, but we do have a large number of the civilian population that listens and watches. What would you have them know?
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: Well, I think for civilians, first to understand what an absolutely extraordinary job their fellow citizens who wear the nation's uniform have done out here. And it's directly relevant to every American. For Iraq to go very, very bad, to allow a permanent base for al-Qaida, for example, would affect the security of all of us. So to my fellow civilians, next time you see a soldier, thank him or her for what they have done for our nation's security.
And I'd just build on that point a little bit. Iraq can seem far away, can seem like something that we're all tired of now, something that were too expensive, that we have other priorities. We have to stay with this. This is hard. There are going to be more bad days. But increasingly, we're seeing good days as well. The consequences of not succeeding in Iraq for the stability of the region, for the health of the international economy and for America's own security are very grave indeed. So look at the improvement, take heart from that, and I hope that our citizens everywhere will display the resolve to stay the course here. We're on the right track, but we cannot prematurely declare victory.
QUESTION: That should do it. Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it.
AMBASSADOR CROCKER: Thank you, again.