40 CLAIRE BRESCHARD
building operations. The main issue with the American strategy in Iraq was the
unwillingness to get involved in a big operation, which resulted in short-term policies
with narrow timelines, little funding and unprepared soldiers and administrators
(Ucko 2009, Ansari 2006). The Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) made choices
that furthered the sectarian divisions of Iraqi society by limiting its action to
establishing a new regime that was in accordance with the Pentagon’s views. The
CPA gave power to existing militia leaders of various ethnic groups (which would
resemble a democracy in appearance, but would suffer from endemic sectarianism)
who had no legitimacy amongst the Iraqi people (Berdal and Ucko 2009: 96).
Because the CPA had no reintegration strategy (Berdal and Ucko 2009: 91), the
leaders of the factions that held positions in government used their armed factions to
further their interest, encouraging a great part of the civilian population to join
militias through fear of being left behind, or simply to seek protection (see figure 1
for more details on the various militias in Iraq). This would have been avoided had
the CPA implemented a bottom-up strategy allowing Iraqis to gain popular support
and govern with a legitimate base and the future of Iraq would have been different:
“through this rushed accommodation of Shia militia leaders – and the refusal to coopt, while still failing to coerce, the Sunni resistance – the United States sowed the
seeds of many Iraqi’s later problems” (Ucko 2009: 98).
By contrast, the second phase of the war is characterised by a more culturallyinformed approach that resulted in more successful policies. After three years in Iraq,
the coalition expressed a better understanding of Iraqi society. According to Mintz
and Wayne, from the end of 2006 the decision-making process that led to the ‘New
Way Forward’, or the troop surge (30,000 additional troops were sent to Iraq in
2007), was a ‘con-div’ group dynamic. “In many ways, the con-div dynamic can be
thought of as a type of group-based integrative complexity that results in a more
nuanced understanding of policy issues and can therefore promote balanced and
successful policymaking” (Mintz and Wayne 2014: 335). From the end of 2006, the
Bush Administration sought advice from the Iraqi government and a range of experts.
Ucko (2009) argues that the bottom-up reintegration process implemented from the
end of 2006 worked more effectively than the previous strategy. Tackling the issue of