Kenneth Katzman is the senior Middle East analyst for the Congressional Research Service, the federal legislature’s nonpartisan think tank. On November 11, 2003, Katzman participated in a Council-sponsored conference call to brief reporters and editorial-page editors at U.S. and foreign newspapers. Following is an edited transcript of the briefing.

What is your view of the current situation in Iraq?

My view, as I’ve outlined in several talks around Washington in the last couple of months, has always been on the pessimistic side of the spectrum. My view is that the resistance is not confined to a few ex-Baathists or criminals let out of jails or foreign fighters, perhaps even linked to al Qaeda— this is a broad movement. It’s gaining a lot of strength. It is against the U.S. occupation. My view is that the U.S. decision to go with an occupation strategy for the postwar period created this degree of resistance. I don’t believe that it will be calmed easily. The only thing, I think, that would calm the resistance would be a real restructuring of how the postwar operation is conducted. Turning it over to the United Nations is one way to do it; there are other ways. Perhaps even a formulation based on the current Iraqi Governing Council, led perhaps by somebody like Ibrahim Jafari or Mowaffak al-Rubaie. These are the moderate Shiites on the council. My view all along has been that eventually the Shiites are going to be the dominant group in Iraq. And even if a moderate Shiite like Jafari is put up as leader, the Shiite clerics will have very strong influence, particularly Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is based in Najaf.

So, as long as Iraq appears to be under U.S. occupation, the resistance will continue?

That’s my view, because the administration says this is about creating a democracy. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. But successful democracies are usually created through foreign aid programs, engagement, and national institutions. Since World War II, I can’t think of another attempt to put a democracy in place through force. In Iraq, we had what many editorialists have called a war of choice. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, but he wasn’t on the march in 2003. We are now learning he did not have any weapons of mass destruction and was not necessarily even working on active weapons programs. The U.S. decision to go into Iraq was clearly a choice, and now we’re attempting to impose democracy on a country that was not being aggressive, at least not this year.

Do you see any potential downside for the United States if it turned over this operation to the United Nations?

If control of postwar Iraq is turned over to the United Nations, it’s not going to be viewed any more as a U.S. occupation, and presumably the United Nations would be, as [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan himself has said, looking to quickly restore sovereignty to an Iraqi entity. That entity could be the Iraqi Governing Council, it could be a revised governing council, it could be something new. The issue is not the United Nations per se, the issue is doing away with the occupation. That would go a long way toward calming the resistance. I do believe it is a resistance to occupation.

How do you account for the opposition within the administration to turning control over to the United Nations?

My analysis is, the administration feels that if the United Nations restored sovereignty fairly quickly, as it has said it wants to, a Shiite Islamist would very quickly become dominant. You’d end up with an Iraq that in the minds of many Americans would look like an Islamic Republic of Iraq, a nation that would approximate Iran. And perhaps there is a sense that this outcome would generate some opinion here in the United States that the decision to invade was a failure or didn’t work out as planned. But my view is that the ascendancy of Shiites, and particularly Shiite Islamists, is virtually inevitable. The Shiites are 60 percent of Iraq. However, of the Arab population of Iraq, if you subtract the Kurds, who are only interested in northern Iraq, the Shiites are 80 percent of Iraqi Arabs. Their numbers are overwhelmingly dominant and their political structure is very well organized by the clerics. The Sunni Arabs have no political structure right now. Their political structure was the Baath Party, which is now back underground and leading the resistance.

Is it possible that Shiite Islamists could be in charge of a multiethnic democratic Iraq?

That’s been my view. There are a lot of interlocking relationships. Iraqi Shiites like Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, who was killed in a Najaf bombing in late August, had worked very well with Sunnis and others who were anti-Saddam. Not Islamists necessarily, they also worked very well with the Kurds. [Massoud] Barzani [the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party] had visited Baqir al-Hakim before his death. I believe Barzani has visited Ayatollah Sistani. So, yes, there could be a political structure in which the Shiite clerics are dominant but there would be room for the Sunnis and the Kurds to participate in a multiethnic Iraq.

Your view of a growing and broad resistance movement is almost diametrically opposed to what we’re being told by most people in the administration. What do your base you conclusion on?

The evidence is out there every day. The sophistication of attacks is clearly growing. [Insurgents have] downed three helicopters within three or four weeks. I’m looking at geographic spread. We had a bombing in Basra today. We’ve had one Polish soldier killed [near Mussayibin]. Brits have been killed in or around Basra. We’ve had attacks up in Mosul. The Sunni triangle has obviously been very widely talked about. The resistance started out in May and June with RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] attacks— one shot, hit-and-run attacks. Now, [insurgents are using] much more well-developed explosives. The device that hit [U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz’ hotel [in Baghdad on October 26] was indigenously designed by the resistance. We have these roadside explosions. We’re seeing more mortar attacks now. We’re seeing anti-aircraft attacks.

So I think the facts clearly show that the resistance is growing. Whether it’s reached critical mass, who knows? Or whether it’s going to peter out, or where it goes from here? I personally think it keeps growing. Obviously, the administration would say differently. But look at the sophistication [of the attacks] and the [Iraqi] reaction to resistance attacks. When I see Iraqis dancing with pictures of Saddam around burning U.S. vehicles, that tells me that the resistance is not just a bunch of guys running around by themselves. There is some sympathy out there for these guys, and that is what is most troubling.

We also are having increasing trouble with [anti-U.S. Shiite cleric] Muqtada al-Sadr and the Shiite regions. He has come out even more strongly against the occupation. There have been some soldiers killed by forces or various clerics loyal to him. So I don’t see this as confined to Fallujah. I don’t see this as confined to Tikrit. This is a fairly broad movement.

Will the anti-U.S. sentiment end in a full-fledged resistance?

My personal view is, it virtually is a full-fledged resistance at this point. Some of the Iraqis we are recruiting into the police, the army, and the facilities protection service are feeding information to the resistance and may actually be active members of the resistance. I say that because it appears to me that the resistance has recently had very good information on the movements of U.S. officials around the country, the movements of certain U.S. units, helicopters, vehicles. To my mind, [recent] attacks would not have been so successful without substantial help from informants. So I’m very skeptical of the Iraqification strategy— recruiting Iraqis to maintain security. The British did the very same thing when they occupied Iraq in the ’20’s and ’30s. They set up tribal militias, local governing councils. Attempts to localize security and governance and institutions generally fall apart when the occupying power either leaves or gets distracted.

Is the situation comparable to Vietnam?

I compare it to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. They wanted to have a pro-Soviet government there. Similarly, we are trying to install a pro-western moderate government in Iraq. A lot of similar patterns are emerging. In Afghanistan, there were at least seven major mujahedeen parties. In Iraq, the resistance is segregated into many different factions, many different groupings. Among the Sunnis are at least two different groups: the ex-Baathists and the Islamists. The latter are Sunnis who are somewhat sympathetic to a Saudi version of Sunni Islam Wahhabism, somewhat sympathetic to al Qaeda, probably working with some of the foreign Arab fighters who have come into Iraq. Within the Shiites, you have several different camps. I’ve talked already about Muqtada al-Sadr. But I think other Shiite factions are going to become more anti-occupation as time goes on and they become impatient for a major role in governing Iraq.

I don’t see why you feel that the resistance would stop if the United Nations took over political authority. Who would be the military authority? If it remains the United States, why would the resistance stop?

If the United Nations were in control, presumably sovereignty would be quickly turned over to the Iraqis. Then the Iraqi insurgents’ quibble would be with the new sovereign body. Their quibble would no longer necessarily be with the United States, because the United States would have transferred sovereignty to an Iraqi body. The whole dynamic changes at that point. Obviously, we can debate it, it’s all hypothetical. But I really think the dynamic changes dramatically if Iraq gets sovereignty.

If the United States let the United Nations take over and it then transferred sovereignty to an Iraqi body, what would happen to the almost $20 billion Congress approved for reconstruction? Do we not spend the money?

My understanding is that it is the U.S. donation made at the World Bank donor’s conference held in Madrid in late October. The $20 billion would be the U.S. pledge.