After days of
wrangling, leaders of the main political parties
of Iraq agreed on August 2 to hand a joint mandate
to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to negotiate with
the United States on whether some Americans troops
will stay on in Iraq to "train" Iraqi forces
beyond the end of this year.
United States
forces, according to President Barack Obama's
withdrawal plan, are scheduled to vacate Iraq by
the end of year deadline. It's also an "open
secret" however that the long-established American
preference is not to leave Iraq entirely. Pentagon
pundits in Washington, and some of their
fellow-travelers in Iraq, have long been thinking
aloud that some American troops ought to stay on
beyond the deadline, if only to train the Iraqis
in keeping peace and ensuring security once the
Americans are gone.
The ostensible justification for the
Americans to still have their boots on the Iraqi
soil is that the Iraqi security forces are, as
yet, not quite ready to guarantee that the country
will not slide into anarchy and lawlessness once
the Americans disappear from the land.
A
US government report released on July 30 said the
security situation was deteriorating amid a wave
of assassinations and Iranian-backed militia
attacks. Up to 1,000 al-Qaeda militants remain in
Iraq, the special inspector for Iraq
reconstruction warned. June was the bloodiest
month since April 2009 for US troops in Iraq, with
14 soldiers killed in attacks. Another five died
in July.
Powerful and influential voices
within the Iraqi coalition led by Maliki have been
expressing concerns about the readiness of the
Iraqi security forces with impunity. These voices
have lately become more agitated as the deadline
for US withdrawal nears. Encouragement for their
alarm has come from the likes of Admiral Mike
Mullen, the soon-to-retire chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, who "urged" the Iraqis to make up
their minds and take a "quick decision" barely
hours before the Iraqi leaders, bending to his
pressure, threw in the towel.
The US
interest in prolonging its military presence in
Iraq, albeit with less strength, may be dictated
more by security than any other factor. The
generals overseeing the Iraqi operation - from
Washington as well as those on the ground - have
been singing in unison that the Iraqi security
forces weren't quite up to scratch to deal with
the challenges ahead.
In touting the line
that Iraqi forces are inadequate to rise to
challenges that remain largely undefined beyond
the cryptic excuse of sectarian divide, the
generals betray an appalling disregard for their
own failure to train their Iraqi proteges
sufficiently. If they couldn't do it in eight
years, despite all the resources and numbers at
their command, what's there to lend confidence to
anyone that they'd be able to find the holy grail
of a competent and fully trained Iraqi security
force with a thinned-out and scaled-down presence?
Iraqi politicians, representing the full
spectrum of the country's myriad factions and
clans, do seem to a certain extent to subscribe to
the American angst on account of the Iraqi troops'
half-baked ability to take charge of the
gargantuan task of keeping the country secured
against anarchy. Even the maverick Muqtada
al-Sadr, whose opposition to American military
presence in Iraq is well-known, may not mind a
token US presence beyond the deadline of December
31, 2011, if only to train the Iraqi forces.
The official announcement from Baghdad, at
the end of an hours-long conclave, was personally
steered by President Jalal Talabani, and reflected
the shared perception of the disparate Iraqi
leadership that the Americans may still have
limited utility. It said, cryptically: "The
leaders agreed to authorize the Iraqi government
to start the talks with the United States that are
limited to training issues." (Emphasis
added).
But that's where the consensus
ends as many among the myriad Iraqi forces take a
closer look at what really lurks underneath the
American's surface claim that it is motivated
solely by the inadequacy of Iraqi troops.
There's concern, not only among the
Sadrists but also among other Shi'ite factions,
including Maliki's own, that the Americans want to
linger on in Iraq because of their Kurdish
proteges. The history of Iraq since the first Gulf
war of 1990-91 lends enough credence to their
argument that the Americans would like to chaperon
the Kurds for as long as possible.
The
Kurds, led by Masood Barzani, have been sheltered
by the Americans ever since the first Gulf war
ended. They have been ruling and lording over the
Kurdish areas virtually like an independent
entity, and Baghdad's influence over the Kurdish
lands is non-existent.
However, the future
of Kirkuk, the oil-producing heart of Iraq, still
hangs in the balance, with both the Arabs and
Kurds of Iraq claiming it as theirs, exclusively.
The Americans have stood in between the two in
Kirkuk like a referee and still seem to covet, if
not exactly relish, that role.
But the
likes of Muqtada want the Americans to get out of
the way, and aren't ready to fall for the excuse,
posited from Washington and other like-minded
Western capitals, that but for the Americans
outside players, such as Iran, would make a tense
stand-off even worse. For some time, many
self-anointed advisers and soothsayers have been
painting scenarios of open conflict with Iran, if
only to knock the fear of god in the hearts of the
Iraqis. However, the biggest question mark
hanging over the prospects of the American forces
staying on in Iraq as "trainers", if not occupiers
by another name, is the Washington demand that the
trainers be given a completely free hand and,
above everything else, immunity from Iraqi laws.
Muqtada, for one, is dead against any kind of
immunity for the American forces, under any guise
or garb. His representative walked out of the
Talabani meeting on this issue and he commands a
large following among the Iraqi Shi'ites.
The immunity issue is explosive in the
Iraqi context. The Iraqi memories of American
combat troops and private 'contractors' running
amok and going completely berserk, are still quite
fresh; the wounds inflicted by the mercenary
contractors are still raw and bleeding.
It's unthinkable that the Iraqis, no
matter how little faith they have in the ability
of their American-trained security troops to
protect them, will sign on dotted lines marked by
Washington. By the same token, it is highly
unlikely that American regular troops and
contracted mercenaries would stay on Iraqi soil
without the umbrella protection of immunity.
Karamatullah K Ghori is a
retired Pakistani ambassador whose assignments
took him among others, to Iraq. He can be reached
at K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
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