"Obama loses, US troops stay in Iraq"

* Posted on Friday, October 24, 2008

Iraq's prime minister won't sign U.S. troop deal
By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Fearing political division in the parliament and in his country, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki won't sign the just-completed agreement on the status of U.S. forces in Iraq, a leading lawmaker said Friday.

The new accord's demise would be a major setback for the Bush administration, which has been seeking to establish a legal basis for the extended presence of the 151,000 U.S. troops in this country, and for Iraq, which won notable concessions in the draft accord reached a week ago.

"No, he will not" submit the agreement to the parliament, Sheikh Jalal al Din al Sagheer, the deputy head of the Shiite Muslim Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, told McClatchy. "For this matter, we need national consensus."

Instead, Sagheer said, Iraq's political leaders are considering seeking an extension of the United Nations mandate for the presence of U.S. troops, which will expire on Dec. 31. Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has assured Iraq that it wouldn't veto an extension, he said, adding that one was likely to last between six months and a year.

Ali al Adeeb, the chief of staff of Maliki's Dawa party, said Wednesday that the Iraqi parliament "cannot approve this pact in its current form."

Top U.S. military officials have warned of serious consequences if the agreement isn't signed. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier this week that Iraq's forces "will not be ready to provide for their security" after the current U.N. mandate runs out. "And in that regard there is great potential for losses of significant consequence," Mullen said.

Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told USA Today: "Without (a security agreement), we would potentially have to cease all operations."

Iraqis, however, are adamant that the accord must be open to further amendments if they're to approve it.

"The problem is that when we were given the latest draft, we were told the American negotiators will accept no amendments to it, and the Iraqi government has more requirements," said Sagheer, an Islamic cleric who later led the Friday prayers broadcast on national television.

He said that Maliki had come to the Political Council for National Security, a top decision-making body, and said the new accord was the best he could obtain, but it didn't include everything that Iraq wanted.

If Maliki signed the accord and turned it over to the parliament, "I'm sure that the agreement will not be approved for 10 years," Sagheer said.

The cleric said the draft accord was "good, in general," but its timing was bad. If an Iraqi negotiator accepted the agreement, "he will be taken as an agent for the Americans," and if he were to reject it, "he will be taken for an agent for Iran."

A second factor is that the accord comes just before the U.S. elections, and an Iraqi negotiator had to ask whether it was best to negotiate with the lame-duck Bush administration or wait for its successor. More important, Sagheer said, are the approaching provincial elections in Iraq, which could be held early next year.

"Iraqi politicians don't want to give their competitors the chance to use this agreement to destroy them," he said.

The accord contains a number of American concessions, calling for U.S. troops to withdraw to their bases by June 2009 and to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 — both dates subject to extension, but only if the Iraqi government requests it.

The accord also would allow Iraq to prosecute U.S. troops except when they're on U.S. bases or on military operations, strips private military contractors of U.S. legal protection and reclaims control over Baghdad's "Green" zone, the location of the U.S. Embassy and military headquarters and much of the Iraqi government's headquarters.

Sagheer said that setting a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal was a "historic" accomplishment.

He also acknowledged that an extension of the current U.N. mandate might not reflect the gains made in the status of forces draft.

"For everything there is a price," he said. "And although (the accord) has many advantages, it also has many disadvantages, as it does for the coalition forces."

The problem for Iraqis, he said, was "the feeling with some of the parties that America has no intention of withdrawing within the timetable." Iraqis, he said, had so many negative experiences while a British mandate under the League of Nations from 1920 to 1932 that they fear a written agreement. "We have the feeling that if the Iraqi government accepts the demands, it will give a legal right to be occupied, so we don't have any kind of sovereignty."

Other politicians said that if Washington agrees to extend the negotiations, the talks will never end.

"This is all a game to win time. When the current issues are settled, they will just find new ones. . . . They are delaying to appease Iran," said Mithal al Alusi, a secular Sunni legislator whos' critical of the current Shiite-led government.

(Corinne Reilly of the Merced, Calif., Sun-Star, and McClatchy special correspondents Hussein Kadhim and Mohamed al Dulaimy contributed to this article.)

Obama Victory Alters the Tenor of Iraqi Politics

Joao Silva for The New York Times


By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: November 6, 2008

BAGHDAD — Barack Obama may have been elected only three days ago, but his victory is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.


Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”

Mr. Obama has said that he favors a 16-month schedule for withdrawing combat brigades, a timetable about twice as fast as that provided for in the draft American and Iraqi accord.

Many Shiite politicians had been under intense pressure from Iranian leaders not to sign a security agreement. Iran, which has close ties to Shiite politicians, has feared the agreement would lay the groundwork for a permanent American troop presence in Iraq that would threaten Iran.

But now, the Iraqis appear to be feeling less pressure from Iran, perhaps because the Iranians are less worried that an Obama government will try to force a regime change in their country.

In recent weeks Mr. Ameri, who spent years in Iran and leads the Badr Corps, a onetime paramilitary arm of the Supreme Council, was one of several senior party members who appeared to be reflecting Iran’s concerns with a reluctance to endorse the pact.

Of course, given the volatile and fractious state of Iraqi politics, the security agreement could still be delayed. But with Iraqis believing that Mr. Obama, as president, would move faster to withdraw American troops, Iraqi and American officials said obstacles to a security agreement appeared to be fading.

Jabeer Habeeb, an independent Shiite lawmaker and a political scientist at Baghdad University, put it simply: “Obama’s election shifts Iraq into a new position.”

Gen. David H. Petraeus’s decision to withdraw another combat brigade six weeks ahead of schedule reinforced the assurances by Iraq’s defense minister that his troops could handle more of Iraq’s security and sent a signal that the American troop withdrawals would become a reality.

An Obama administration is also expected to shift the focus to Afghanistan. American officials have said that as the war deteriorates in Afghanistan, any additional forces sent there would have to be from among troops withdrawn from Iraq.

Mr. Obama’s election also coincided with the American negotiators’ acceptance of many of the changes Iraqis demanded in the agreement, which created an overall picture that was easier both for the Iraqis and their neighbors — Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia — to accept.

The American negotiators sent a new version of the agreement to Iraqi leaders on Thursday that included many of the changes Iraqis had demanded. In public, Iraqis said merely that they were studying the document.

Over all, however, there was a new tone of optimism. “The atmosphere is positive with the American attempt to preserve the sovereignty of the Iraqi nation,” the government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told the news channel Al Arabiya. He praised the inclusion of a new provision stating that Americans would not launch attacks on Iraq’s neighbors from Iraqi soil.

The Americans also added language to make explicit what kinds of troops would remain after the withdrawal in 2011, said a Bush administration official knowledgeable about the security pact. Those still in Iraq would be primarily trainers and air traffic controllers, the official said.

“There’s going to be a significant presence, but they are not going to be ‘combat’ forces,” said the administration official. The official said that the most recent talks with Iraqis had given American negotiators confidence that a final agreement was close.

Mr. Ameri, who is chairman of the security committee of Iraq’s Parliament, said that Iraqi politicians did appreciate the Bush administration’s commitment to Iraq. Signing the agreement while President Bush was still in office would be “a minimum sign of appreciation,” Mr. Ameri said.

The security pact, the largest policy issue here since last spring, has become the way Iraqis define themselves ideologically, a shorthand for what they think of the American presence. Sunni parties are particularly nervous about the pact because in the past couple of years Americans have often been their protectors in sectarian fighting, and the withdrawal could leave Sunnis vulnerable to Shiite forces.

The Iraqi government, made up of exiles who were able to rise to power only as a result of the American invasion, has been looking for a way to support the pact without appearing to be kowtowing to Americans.

Mr. Obama’s election, which in many ways tips the balance toward withdrawal, allows the government to parry the calls by more anti-American parties to reject any pact. But many Iraqis are unnerved by the notion of a rapid withdrawal.

“Iraqis are very relieved that Obama won, but this happiness or relief is accompanied by worry,” said Ali Adeeb, a lawmaker and a senior member of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s Dawa Party. “Because even if Obama calls for early withdrawal, there is still a need to rehabilitate the Iraqi security forces.”

Mr. Obama has said that a contingent of American troops would probably stay for a more extended period — to train Iraqi forces, to protect the American Embassy and to root out terrorists. That should help reassure some Iraqis, Mr. Habeeb, the lawmaker, said.

“Everyone believes that the Iraqi forces will be capable of handling things instead of American troops,” he said. “But we need some involvement of Americans to prevent neighboring countries from extending their influence in Iraq. I heard Obama say he would keep some troops, so even after 16 months we will have some, but it will be outside of towns. It will not be seen by Iraqis.”

Mr. Obama’s election could provide a chance for Iraq to start a new chapter, with greater ability to control its own destiny. But it also will leave Iraq more on its own between aggressive neighbors and unable to look to the Americans as mediators when political factions argue. So there is at once a sense of possibility and the potential for implosion.

“The other thing we witnessed through the Bush period was that when the Iraqi politicians couldn’t reach a compromise, Bush interfered,” Mr. Habeeb said.

“I don’t think Obama will do that; he will not try to set the Iraqi agenda,” he said. “I think the politicians will have to be mature enough to solve their own problems and dare to make compromises.”

* Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008


Under Iraq troop pact, U.S. can't leave any forces behind


By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — The status of forces of agreement between the United States and Iraq is now called the withdrawal agreement, and that's exactly what it is: an ultimate end to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

If Iraq's parliament endorses the agreement, in six weeks American forces would have to change the way they operate in Iraq, and[size=200] all U.S. combat troops, police trainers and military advisers would have to leave the country by Dec. 31, 2011. President-elect Barack Obama's campaign plan to leave a residual force of some 30,000 American troops in Iraq would be impossible under the pact.

Unless the agreement is amended, which would require the formal written approval of both sides, in three years there no longer would be any legal basis for U.S. armed forces or civilian contractors of the Department of Defense to remain in Iraq.

If Iraq wants American forces to leave earlier, it could terminate the agreement with one year's notice. The United States has the option to do the same.

The American military now can come and go as it pleases in Iraq. It raids homes without judicial approval, controls Iraq's airspace, detains civilians without warrants for as long as it wants and conducts unilateral operations against high-value targets, including a recent cross-border attack on an al Qaida in Iraq member in Syria that was condemned by Iraq, the Arab League and Syria.

The agreement forbids attacks on other countries from inside Iraq, and if it were approved, beginning Jan. 1 all U.S. operations would have to be conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government.

"It is not permitted to use Iraqi land, water and airspace as a route or launching pad for attacks against other countries," the pact says, according to an Arabic copy that McClatchy obtained.

The military also would have to get arrest warrants from the Iraqi government, judicial orders for raids on homes and to consult in advance on every operation, including the attacks on high-value targets that American forces now routinely conduct on their own.

Privately, U.S. military officials worry about sharing sensitive information with their Iraqi counterparts, out of fear of revealing intelligence sources and methods but also because many officials still suspect that some of the Iraqi security forces are working with Shiite Muslim militias or Sunni Muslim insurgents.

All detainees in American custody who are wanted by the Iraqi government would be handed over based on arrest warrants or else released, and anyone detained by U.S. forces during approved operations if the agreement is implemented next year would have to be handed over to Iraqi authorities within 24 hours.

The Green Zone, where American contractors, some military personnel and officials live and work, would come under Iraqi control on the first day of next year. U.S. soldiers currently protect the area in central Baghdad, and checkpoints are manned by Peruvian mercenaries. State and Defense department officials breeze through the checkpoints, while most Iraqis are subjected to long searches.

American Embassy personnel plan to move to a new embassy compound before the Green Zone is turned over to the Iraqis at the end of the year. The embassy staff members already live in the new 104-acre compound, but most of the offices haven't been moved yet.

Control of Iraqi airspace would be transferred to the Iraqis the day the agreement took effect, and after that the Iraqi government would issue annual permits to all U.S. military aircraft. Currently, the U.S. controls all air traffic over Iraq, including civilian flights, and it could shut down Iraq's airspace. Of course, the Iraqi government could seek American or other help with air traffic control and with the protection of the Green Zone.

In provinces that have been turned over to Iraqi control, U.S. troops couldn't remain in cities, villages or towns after the agreement took effect, and as of June 30, all American combat troops would have to be in agreed-on locations outside populated areas. They'd have no right, beginning next year, to venture off their bases and outposts without Iraqi authorities' approval and cooperation.

While the agreement doesn't give Iraqi officials blanket authority to search U.S. mail and cargo, it does give them the right to "ask the U.S. forces, in their presence" to open containers based on viable intelligence.

The Bush administration refused to meet Iraqi demands for legal jurisdiction over American military personnel, but the agreement does give Iraqi authorities the right to prosecute private contractors, and it leaves a remote possibility that a U.S. service member could be prosecuted in Iraq for major and premeditated crimes.

The Iraqi government would have to request jurisdiction by notifying the U.S. in writing within 21 days of the discovery of a crime, and a joint American-Iraqi committee would decide whether the service member was off- or on-duty, and where he or she would be tried.

"I am deeply troubled by the sections of the agreement that could result in U.S. troops facing prosecution in Iraqi courts," Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. "I am also troubled by vague language in the agreement that will likely cause misunderstandings and conflict between the U.S. and Iraq in the future."[/size]