Mission impossible

Profile Paul Bremer: For an experienced diplomat, Paul Bremer is surprisingly prone to confrontation and while his word is law, he doesn't always paint the full picture, writes Lara Marlowe

His official title is administrator, but L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer III is more often referred to as the US governor, regent or proconsul in Iraq. Viceroy might be more appropriate, for Bremer has virtually unlimited powers.

Last July, after arguing for a mere "consultative council", Bremer grudgingly appointed a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council (GC) - on condition that he have power of veto over all GC decisions.

His word is law. The Transitional Administrative Law, or interim constitution, which is supposed to rule Iraq after a "transfer of sovereignty" on June 30th specifies that Bremer's decrees prior to that date cannot be rescinded.

Bremer's infamous Order 14, for example, allows him to shut down Iraqi media which, in his eyes, instigate violence. Bremer's decision to close Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr's weekly newsletter al-Hawza led to the outbreak of armed conflict between occupation forces and al-Sadr's Mehdi army militia.

For an experienced diplomat, Bremer is surprisingly prone to confrontation. He was the first US official to vow to avenge the murder and mutilation of four guards employed by the private security company Blackwater USA in Falluja on March 31st.

Bremer's own bodyguards are Blackwater contractors. Hugging automatic weapons, the small crowd of former special forces officers accompanies him everywhere, even on his early morning jogs through the oft-mortared gardens of Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace.

It was Bremer who called Moqtada al-Sadr an outlaw, hours before the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA) Israeli-American spokesman Dan Senor announced an arrest warrant for the Shia cleric. Sadr responded by calling Bremer "one of the leaders of evil". As the US Marines' assault on Falluja turned into a massacre and a public relations disaster, Bremer went on US television to announce a US "suspension of activities" and put an acceptable spin on the slaughter.

The ceasefire lasted all of 90 minutes, though fighting subsided enough for many of Falluja's residents to flee. Bremer spoke to Fox News, the right-wing station that is a cheerleader for US intervention in Iraq, and ABC and NBC. As usual, he ignored Arab media.

To Fox News, Bremer made the obviously false statement that there were only 2,000 Iraqis fighting the occupation. He was more frank with NBC when they asked to whom he would transfer power on June 30th. "That's a good question," Bremer replied.

Bremer's optimistic pronouncements bring to mind the press conferences of "Comical Ali" - Saddam's information minister, Mohamed Sa'eed al-Sahaf - who insisted everything was great, even as Baghdad was falling.

As evidence that the CPA is succeeding, Bremer constantly repeats that his administration has rehabilitated 2,500 schools, provided 80 million school books and distributed 5 million kits of school supplies. When Newsweek investigated the claim, it found that many of the "rehabilitated" schools were still dilapidated and unfurnished. But even if it were true, advances in education are an infinitesimal drop in the sea of Iraq's misery.

Iraqi politicians and members of the CPA describe Bremer as a workaholic who rises at 5.30 a.m. every day and retires at 11 p.m. But he has been unable to infuse his own energy into the Ottoman-like bureaucracy of the CPA - 1,200 people, mostly Americans, hunkered down in Saddam's former palaces across Iraq.

Until the escalation of the past two weeks, Bremer zoomed around Baghdad and Iraq in Black Hawk helicopters, trying to "sell" the interim constitution. Everywhere he goes, he wears a navy-blue blazer, silk tie, beige trousers and lace-up desert boots.

The New York Times correspondent John Burns was recently allowed to accompany Bremer to Mosul. "The most striking thing about the entire visit," Burns wrote in a pool report, "was the metaphor it offered for the dilemma facing the American enterprise here: the fact that America's tribune for a democratic Iraq is so constrained by concerns for his personal security that he can only make his case to Iraqis inside a heavily secured military complex, and before an audience of invited guests who, by definition, are already proven friends of America." Western diplomats in Baghdad say Bremer and his friend in the Pentagon, the Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, rely too much on former Iraqi exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi for advice and information.

At Chalabi's prompting, Bremer committed his two original sins: the dissolution of the Iraqi army and a wide-ranging purge of former Ba'athists. Bremer disbanded the army shortly after his arrival in Baghdad last May, depriving 400,000 men of their livelihood. "An Iraqi soldier was getting $50 a month," says an Arab observer. "Keeping these men and their families in food for a year would have cost the equivalent of three days of US occupation. If you starve a man, he's ready to shoot the occupier." Bremer eventually admitted the mistake, and on April 4th he re-established the Iraqi defence ministry and intelligence service.

But "de-Ba'athification" continues, under the supervision of the unpopular Chalabi. "Twenty-eight thousand Ba'athists have been expelled from Iraqi ministries and government organisations," Entifadh Qanbar, Chalabi's spokesman, boasted recently. "We expect to expel about 60,000 in total." Bremer has clashed with Washington's British allies, who see him as too ideological. The more pragmatic British would not have punished the army and Ba'athists, and they enraged Bremer by reaching a modus vivendi with the Iranians across the Chatt al-Arab waterway from British headquarters in Basra. Ironically, the US this week invited Iranian officials to mediate in the stand-off with Moqtada al-Sadr's forces in Najaf.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who as Britain's ambassador to the UN was an advocate of war against Iraq, briefly occupied an office across from Bremer's in Baghdad. But Sir Jeremy was unable to influence what London considers rash US policies, so he went home. For their part, the Americans accuse the British of not believing in Iraqi democracy.

Bremer studied at Yale, Harvard and the Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris. Though he speaks French and owns a house in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, the home town of the French Defence Minister, he is too busy to receive the French ambassador to Baghdad. For his part, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most respected Shia cleric, refuses to meet Bremer.

The Reagan administration first recruited Bremer in 1986, as an "anti-terrorism" expert. Three years later, Bremer went to work for Kissinger Associates, the lobbying firm of the former secretary of state. He has always worked for right-wing administrations and think-tanks, including the Heritage Foundation.

Described as extremely ambitious, Bremer was sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell. But he has failed to accomplish mission impossible in Iraq, so such a promotion appears unlikely.

A Catholic convert, Bremer shares the religiosity of the Bush administration. He reportedly learned Basque so he could participate at Mass in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

In theory, Bremer is to leave Baghdad after the June 30th "transfer of sovereignty", to be replaced by a US ambassador, perhaps Paul Wolfowitz. The CPA is to be transformed into the world's largest US embassy.

I asked Hummam Bakr Hammoudi, the political adviser to one of the Shia factions in the Governing Council, what he thought of Bremer. The cleric smiled a Mona Lisa smile and fingered his worry beads. "I'll tell you after the occupation is over," he said, then added: "Iraq and its problems are bigger than Mr Bremer."