Occupation

Volume 94 Number 885 Spring 2012and in response to Security Council demands for an early restoration of localsovereignty. 62 The first legislative elections, the drafting of a new constitution, theelection of a new government pursuant to that constitution, and the Status of ForcesAgreement providing for the withdrawal of all US combat troops by the end of 2011all came after the CPA ceased to exist. 63 Of equal importance was that, as theoccupation progressed, the United States increasingly sought assistance from theUnited Nations both to legitimize its actions in Iraq and to perform critical tasks itproved unable to carry out. Grant Harris has described an ‘invisible hand’ exertingpressure on occupiers to multilateralize their operations, and Iraq is his primeexample. 64 The fourteen-month US occupation may present less a legacy ofunilateral transformation than is often assumed.Inspiration from multilateral missionsThe second area of practice is multilateral, the mostly UN-authorized missions topost-conflict states that have proliferated since the early 1990s. 65 Much recentliterature questioning the conservationist principle cites the UN missions inidentifying a trend toward viewing the post-conflict period as a vital opportunity forreform. 66 And, indeed, reconstructing societies emerging from civil war has becomea central task of international organizations. Many such missions have an explicitlytransformative mandate. The clearest examples are the territorial administrationsapproved by the Security Council for Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and EasternSlavonia. 67 In many other cases the UN (with Security Council approval) hasbeen integral in making transformation a part of winding down armed62 In Resolution 1483, passed on 22 May 2003, the Security Council expressed ‘resolve that the day whenIraqis govern themselves must come quickly’ (UNSC Resolution 1483, 22 May 2003, preambular para. 4).On 16 October 2003 the Council requested the Governing Council and the Occupying Powers to provide atimetable for drafting a new constitution and holding democratic elections no later than 15 December2003: see UNSC Resolution 1511, 16 October 2003, para. 7. And in Resolution 1546 the Council dictatedthe occupation’s end: ‘by 30 June 2004, the occupation will end and the Coalition Provisional Authoritywill cease to exist, and that Iraq will reassert its full sovereignty’ (UNSC Resolution 1546, 8 June 2004,para. 2).63 See James Dobbins, ‘Who lost Iraq: lessons from the debacle’, in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 5,September–October 2007, pp. 61–74; Trevor A. Rush, ‘Don’t call it a SOFA! An overview of the U.S.–IraqSecurity Agreement’, inArmy Lawyer, No. 432, 2009, pp. 34–60.64 G. T. Harris, above note 12, pp. 37–38 and 56–68. ‘Despite a primarily unilateral intervention, the U.S. wasforced to attempt to multilateralize the occupation. The Bush Administration, even despite strongunilateral impulses and the “bad blood” that lingered from the rancorous international debate thatpreceded the invasion, realized that international support and resources were prerequisites to a successfuloccupation of Iraq’ (ibid., p. 57).65 See generally, Ray Murphy (ed.), Post-conflict Rebuilding and International Law, Ashgate, Farnham, 2012.66 N. Bhuta, above note 9, p. 736 (‘The claimed legitimacy of imposing a new institutional and constitutionalstructure [in Iraq] was also strengthened by emergent practice of the international administration ofterritories that has emerged since the end of the Cold War’); B. C. Parsons, above note 13, p. 16;B. S. Brown, above note 15, p. 42; G. T. Harris, above note 12, pp. 25–32.67 See Carsten Stahn, The Law and Practice of International Territorial Administration: Versailles to Iraq andBeyond, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008; Ralph Wilde, International TerritorialAdministration: How Trusteeship and the Civilizing Mission Never Went Away, Oxford University Press,Oxford, 2008; G. H. Fox, above note 5; Richard Caplan, International Governance of War-torn Territories:Rule and Reconstruction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005.251