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home > by publication type > backgrounder > What are Iraq’s Benchmarks?
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| Authors: | Lionel Beehner Greg Bruno, Staff Writer |
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Updated: March 11, 2008
Iraqi leaders have been cool to calls from Washington for a timetable to achieve certain benchmarks as a precondition for U.S. military and financial support. President Bush, too, had distanced himself from attaching strings to U.S. funding, but in May 2007 acknowledged “it makes sense to have benchmarks as a part of our discussion on how to go forward” (NYT). These benchmarks include passing laws governing the distribution of oil revenues among the country’s warring factions, reversing a de-Baathification plan, and passing a provincial elections law. A September 2007 progress report by the White House shows that Iraqis made progress toward eleven of the benchmarks since the release of an interim report in July 2007. An independent assessment by the Brookings Institution in March 2008 evaluated Iraqi lawmakers’ progress using separate “Brookings benchmarks.” Researchers there gave Iraq’s government a five—out of eleven—though some have questioned the Brookings criteria (Atlantic). The benchmark assessments delivered periodically by the top U.S. military and civilian officials in Iraq are highly anticipated in Washington ahead of the U.S. presidential elections.
Sometimes referred to as “milestones,” benchmarks refer to specific objectives—or rather quantifiable measures of progress toward a future goal—for the Iraqi government to meet with regard to national reconciliation, security, economic performance, and governance. The goal of these benchmarks is to give incentive to Iraq’s leaders to make political progress and start taking over responsibility for security from American troops. “The purpose is to infuse a sense of urgency into the political process in Baghdad,” says Andrew Exum, formerly of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“I want to see life starting to come back,” Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) told the New York Times in mid-2007. “I want to see people in markets.” Other lawmakers have pressed for more specific metrics to gauge whether or not the surge is working. “The key question is: What have we won?” asks Exum. “Have we set the Iraqi government on a path toward stabilization or reconciliation? Or have we just won the right to stay in the country for another six months?” Like President Bush, Gen. Peter Pace, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, distanced himself from specific metrics. Instead he posed a question: “[D]o the people in Baghdad feel more secure today? If not, then all the other metrics may be of interest but aren’t as compelling as that one is to me.” Pace’s successor, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, has attempted to answer the security question and says progress in Iraq is now self-sustaining. “There is so much going in the right direction that is tied to better security,” Mullen told reporters in March 2008. “The level of violence being down has allowed the Iraqis to focus on the development of their security forces as opposed to focusing on where the next bomb is going to go off.” Yet other observers say progress remains a matter of perspective. W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the Defense Intelligence Agency, argues Iraqi and American lawmakers hold different interpretations of what progress means. “[Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] thinks he is doing the right thing by consolidating Shiite Arab power in Iraq,” he says.
Experts say the benchmarks range in specificity and achievability. They include reaching an agreement on the status of Kirkuk, meeting certain economic criteria like a targeted annual growth, and reducing subsidies on energy and food, which cost Iraq’s economy roughly $11 billion per year, according to the Iraq Study Group. But the most-discussed benchmarks include:
The consequences of failure remain unclear. Some Democratic lawmakers have pushed for a freezing of aid funds to Iraq, while others have sought a more rapid withdrawal, or redeployment, of troops. White House officials say performance benchmarks should not be linked to troop deployments and reconstruction aid disbursements—that is, the consequences of Iraqi inaction should not include imposing limits on the ability of U.S. military leaders or the president to carry out the war. But as Exum points out, “Having benchmarks is worthless unless you have consequences.” Lang, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency, says, the trouble is that Iraqis do not believe there will be serious consequences if they fail to achieve these benchmarks. “Iraqis are every bit as smart as we are,” he says. “Realistically they can figure out that the chances we would pull the plug and leave is just about zero.” Similar U.S.-imposed benchmarks set for the South Vietnamese government during the Vietnam War achieved little, he adds.
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