The U.S. Doesn't Know How Alone It is in Iraq Friends Like These

The U.S. Doesn't Know How Alone It is in Iraq
Friends Like These

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Over the past five years, America and its Iraqi allies have pointed triumphantly at a series of spurious milestones meant to mark turning points on the road to stability and security. But the ongoing stalemate over a new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which the Iraqi government refuses to sign despite intense American pressure, marks a true turning point in the conflict: it is a clear sign that American political influence in Iraq is weaker than ever.

It is the first time that an Iraqi government has rebuffed the US on a crucial issue since the invasion of 2003. The agreement, the subject of prolonged and divisive negotiations since March, was rejected by the Iraqi cabinet and is unlikely to be submitted to parliament in its present form. The Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al Maliki, who could not have obtained nor held his job without American backing, says he will not sign it as it is.

Meanwhile the US is increasingly desperate to conclude the status agreement before the UN mandate that legalises the US occupation runs out at the end of the year. The US ambassador Ryan Crocker petulantly threatened that without an agreement “we do nothing – no security training, no logistical support, no border protection, no training, equipping, manning checkpoints, no nothing.” President Bush has himself pushed hard for the accord over the last eight months without success. His failure to secure the pact shows that the US is unable to get its way despite exaggerated claims of military success by the White House and the Pentagon.

The accord that has been rejected is markedly less favourable to the US than the original draft that was first discussed in March. The Americans, who could have presented the agreement to the Iraqis as a means of bringing the occupation to an end or eliminating its most objectionable aspects, instead produced a blank cheque that suggested no limit to the number of American troops in the country and no date for eventual withdrawal.

The March draft was a typical example of the US tendency to overplay its hand in Iraq, where the agreement was denounced as a successor to the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi treaty that gave Britain de facto control over a nominally independent Iraq. The draft provoked a nationalist backlash, and many Iraqi politicians who supported the agreement did so covertly for fear of being labelled American pawns.

The final draft of the accord agreed by negotiators on October 13 was very different. By then the Bush administration had been forced to concede a timetable for an American military withdrawal: combat troops were to leave Iraqi cities, towns and villages by the end of June 2009, and all American forces were to depart by the end of 2011. Contractors lost their immunity from Iraqi law. The US tried to make the military retreat from Iraq conditional on the security situation at the time, but by the end of the negotiations even this had been conceded.

Nothing better illuminates the real political landscape in Iraq – and the absurdity of the fantasies pumped out in Washington and broadly accepted in the US – than the concessions forced on the Americans. The American problem in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has always been political rather than military. Simply put, the Americans have had too few friends in Iraq, and their allies have sided with the US for tactical reasons alone. The majority Shia community initially co-operated with the US in order to achieve political domination, and it needed American military force to crush the Sunni Arab uprising of 2004-7. But the Shia leaders always wanted power for themselves and never intended to share it with the Americans in the long term. The Sunni guerrillas did surprisingly well against the American army, but their community was decisively defeated in the bloody battle for Baghdad fought by government death squads and sectarian militias. It was this defeat – and not simply hostility to al Qa’eda in Iraq – that led the Sunni rebels to seek their own alliance with the US.

I was in Baghdad during the first half of October and then flew to New York. Never has there been such a deep gap between what Americans think is happening in Iraq and the reality on the ground. Senator John McCain keeps celebrating the supposed triumph of the “surge”, and seems to imagine that “victory in Iraq” is now in sight. His exotic running mate Sarah Palin sneers at the “defeatist” Barack Obama. And Obama, afraid to appear unpatriotic, has recanted his earlier doubts about the surge and attempted to avoid discussion of Iraq in general. With American voters understandably absorbed by the financial crash and coming depression, attention to events in Iraq has evaporated: the American media have barely mentioned the rejection of the SOFA.

In New York I found it strange that so many people believed the surge had brought an end to violence in Iraq. It was a curious sort of military victory, I observed, that required more troops in Iraq today – 152,000 – than before the surge began. The best barometer for the real state of security in Iraq, I kept telling people, is the behaviour of the 4.7 million Iraqi refugees inside and outside the country. Many are living in desperate circumstances but dare not go home. Ask an Iraqi in Baghdad how things are, and he may well say “better”. But he means better than the bloodbath of two years ago: “better” does not mean “good”.

Driving around Baghdad I tried to avoid particularly dangerous areas like Tahrir Square in the centre of the city. This turned out to be very sensible: a few days after I left, a suicide car bomb attack there on the convoy of the Labour and Social Affairs minister killed 12. The suicide bomber had reached Tahrir Square despite the fact that there are military and police checkpoints every hundred yards and gigantic traffic jams throughout the city. There is now a little more activity after dark, particularly in Karada and Jadriyah districts, but Baghdad is still the most dangerous city in the world.

The government should be able to do better. It has money. Reserves total $79 billion. The state is vast and employs some two million people. But it is also dysfunctional. Government employees like teachers and army officers are better paid but half the population is unemployed. The Labour and Social Affairs Ministry, the head of which was so nearly assassinated, is meant to help millions of impoverished Iraqis but has only spent 10 per cent of its budget. The private sector is languishing. One sure sign of economic activity is cranes, but in Baghdad I do not recall seeing a single one of them aside from those rusting beside Saddam Hussein’s uncompleted mosques.

The inability of the Iraqi government, many of whose members have long co-operated with the US, to reach a new accord with the US underlines a simple truth about Iraqi politics. The occupation has never been popular. The only part of the country where it is acceptable is Kurdistan, which has never been occupied by US forces. Some Sunni Arabs, under pressure from the Shia, may now look to the US as their protectors, but overall Iraqis blame the occupation for their present miseries. Dislike of the occupation is so great that many Shia politicians think they would be signing their political death warrant to go along with it – though they are also nervous about coping without American military support.

The Kurds say privately that Maliki is overconfident. This may be so, but he has a strong hand. It is too late for the Americans to try replace him. He owes his greatest triumph – facing down the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al Sadr in Basra, Sadr City and Amara earlier this year – as much to Iranian restraint of the Sadrists as to American military support. It would be dangerous for him to make an enemy of Iran by signing a deal to which they are vehemently and openly opposed.
Maliki seems to have been of two minds about the SOFA: uncertain whether the greater danger is signing or not signing. He is looking ahead to the provincial and parliamentary elections next year when he will want to present himself as a patriotic Iraqi leader who stood up to the Americans. If he does not then the Sadrists and possibly the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq will denounce him as an American pawn.

The danger in Iraq is that neither McCain nor Obama seem to understand how far the US position in Iraq has weakened this year or why Iraq refuses to sign the security accord. The overselling of the surge as a great victory means that few Americans see that they are increasingly without allies in Iraq. The US no longer makes the political weather there. No matter who inherits the White House, American military retreat is now inevitable. The only question that remains is who will hold power in Baghdad after they have gone.

Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
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