Iraq Marks Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Cities

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Iraq Marks Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Cities ​

Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal of American troops from the country's cities and towns, in Baghdad on Tuesday.​

BAGHDAD — With parades, fireworks and a national holiday, the Iraqi government celebrated the final withdrawal of American troops from the country’s cities on Tuesday, trying to exploit a political milestone to trumpet what the prime minister called sovereignty from foreign occupation.

Even with a deadly car bombing and other mayhem marring the day — the deadline for the American troop pullback under a Jan. 1 agreement — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki seized on the occasion to position himself as the proud leader of an independent nation looking ahead to the next milestone, parliamentaryelections in January.

He made no mention of American troops in a nationally televised speech, even though 120,000 remain in the country and most had already pulled back from the cities in advance of the deadline. Rather, he focused his praise on Iraqi troops and security forces for their role in fighting the insurgency that developed under the occupation.

The hoopla, however, has rung hollow for many Iraqis, who fear that their country’s security forces are not ready to stand alone and who see the government’s claims of independence as overblown.

Many people stayed home fearing violence, and with reason. Late in the day, a car bomb exploded in a crowded outdoor market in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 24 people.

Despite the bombing and several others in the last week, Mr. Maliki assured Iraqis that government forces taking control of urban areas were more than capable of ensuring security. “Those who think that Iraqis are not able to protect their country and that the withdrawal of foreign forces will create a security vacuum are committing a big mistake,” he said.

But in an indication of the dangers that remain, rhe American military announced on Tuesday that four soldiers had been killed in combat operations on Monday in Baghdad. It did not provide further details, pending notification of the soldiers’ families.

In the past few weeks, nationalist sentiments have spread within the Iraqi government and military, with officials all but boasting that they are ready to handle the security situation on their own.

Speaking as a military parade marking the event was held deep inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, Mr. Maliki took credit for ending the vicious sectarian fighting that exploded in 2005. The government, he said, “succeeded in putting down the sectarian war that was threatening the unity and the sovereignty of Iraq.”

Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the American commander in Iraq, brushed aside the public remarks of many of Iraq’s leaders and people, saying that Mr. Maliki had personally thanked him on Monday night and again on Tuesday for the sacrifices of American troops.

“I do not get these negative comments from the political leaders that are in the government,” he said at a news conference at the American military headquarters at Camp Victory. “In my mind, I frankly don’t worry about those comments because I understand that we are working this together.”

Ordinary Iraqis generally welcomed the arrival of a day they long doubted would come. Although some worried that the security forces may not be able to control the insurgency, they were also relieved to have the Americans out of sight. Some said the American presence had given insurgents a pretext to stage attacks.

The American presence here is associated with better security in some places, but it is despised in others for its often heavy-handed security techniques, for creating traffic jams and for generally reminding Iraqis that they are not in control.

“It really is a sovereignty day,” said Balqis Eidan, a 30-year-old state employee. “I agreed with Maliki. It is a very important day in our history. But we are still worried about security. We hope that our forces will be able to handle security. The way will be a long one.”

In accordance with the security agreement, there were few American troops to be seen on Baghdad streets, and the Iraqi authorities stressed that they did not want to see them unless their help was requested. The American military has obliged, ordering soldiers to remain in garrison for the next few days to give the Iraqis a chance to demonstrate that they are in control.

The great majority of American troops withdrew before Tuesday and closed down their urban outposts, in some cases several weeks ago, and moved to central operating bases. At the request of the Iraqi authorities, Americans remain at a handful of urban outposts in Baghdad. There were still American armored vehicles to be seen on Tuesday near one entrance to the Green Zone and on the airport road.

The military parade in the Green Zone on Tuesday — at the official monument to the unknown soldier — was attended primarily by Iraqi reporters and dignitaries. The public could not reach it because of extensive security restricting access to the area. Several American news organizations were also barred, including two television news networks and The New York Times, on the grounds that they did not have the appropriate badges.

This seemed in part intended to signal that the Iraqi authorities were in charge. In the past most checkpoints were run jointly by Iraqis and Americans, and if a Westerner lacked the correct credentials, exceptions could be made.

Many of the celebrations on Tuesday seemed contrived. Police cars were festooned with plastic flowers, and signs celebrating “independence day” were tied to blast walls and fences around the city. On Monday night, a festive evening celebration in Zahra Park with singers and entertainers drew primarily young men, many of them off-duty police officers.

Some Iraqis were skeptical about the significance of the event, which the government called National Soveriegnty Day.

“There is no doubt this is not national sovereignty because the Americans will stay inside Iraq in military bases,” said Najim Salim, 40, a teacher in Basra. “But the government wants to convince the citizens that there is a withdrawal of foreign troops, although the government could not protect citizens in some cities in Iraq even with the presence of U.S. forces.”

The car bomb in Kirkuk exploded as the vegetable and poultry market was crowded with people shopping for their evening meal, The A.P. reported. Police and hospital officials said that in addition to the fatalities, about 40 people had been wounded, The A.P. said.

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.

 

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Analysis: US role in Iraq doesn't end just yet​

AP National Security Writer Robert Burns,

WASHINGTON – U.S. troops are out of Iraq's cities but not its future. Even a best-case scenario is likely to feature an American role there for years — militarily as well as diplomatically.

That does not mean a permanent large U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Under a security deal struck with the Bush administration, American forces are to be out by the end of 2011.

But it's no secret that Iraq's security forces are not fully ready to handle even a diminished insurgency on their own.

Some senior U.S. military officers say privately they anticipate Iraqi setbacks in coming months, particularly if the insurgents regroup. But by partnering with American forces, the Iraqis stand a good chance of succeeding. That is why a number of U.S. troops will remain in the cities to assist and advise.

But most were gone Tuesday as Iraqis marked National Sovereignty Day with military parades and marching bands in Baghdad. In a sobering reminder the violence was not over, a car bombing in a crowded food market in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least 27 people.

It's not possible to know how long Iraq will need American help, but it could be well beyond President Barack Obama's current term. Much will depend on the pace of progress toward Iraqi political reconciliation. That is because the success of the Iraqi security forces depends as much, if not more, on their willingness to operate in a nonsectarian, evenhanded way as on their technical competence.

Diplomatically, the U.S. role will be less visible but still crucial. Even with declining levels of violence since 2007, progress toward political reconciliation among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds has been minimal.

Obama made clear Tuesday that while he expects violence to persist, the final outcome is an Iraqi responsibility.

"Iraq's future is in the hands of its own people," he said at the White House. "And Iraq's leaders must now make some hard choices necessary to resolve key political questions" and to provide security.

There are still about 131,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They won't be fighting in urban areas any more, unless the Iraqi government asks for their help. Instead they will focus on securing Iraq's borders, keeping insurgents on the run in rural areas and conducting training with Iraqi security forces.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Tuesday he was hopeful, in part because Iraqis have embraced the U.S. urban withdrawal as a confidence booster.

"They're not ready for us to go yet, but they are ready for us to allow them to attempt to exercise their security responsibilities, and to me that's very encouraging," Odierno said.

Even in the most optimistic of circumstances in which Iraq muddles through its political and ethnic problems — and keeps chipping away at the insurgency — it will still need U.S. support. And the Obama administration has said it wants to build a long-term relationship with a key Arab state in a volatile region.

But if today's relative peace in Iraq unravels within the coming year, Obama will face tough choices, including whether to push back his announced timeline for ending the U.S. combat role in the country by September 2010.

Obama could not reinsert U.S. combat forces in Iraqi cities without Iraqi government permission, under terms of the security deal negotiated by the Bush administration last year. And he could not change the 2011 deadline for removing all U.S. troops from Iraq without renegotiating that deal.

Nor might he want to, even with the prospect of Iraq spinning into a new cycle of sectarian warfare. Obama came into office promising to end U.S. involvement in the war, arguing that Iraq's remaining problems are primarily of a political nature and cannot be solved by continued U.S. military force.

And more recently, Obama announced that his administration was refocusing on what he considers a bigger problem — increasing instability in Afghanistan and a growing insurgency in neighboring Pakistan. In that context, U.S. troop reductions in Iraq are a one-way ticket; once out, they are unlikely to return.

Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the Washington representative of the semiautonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, believes that if security deteriorates in coming months and hot-button political issues are not settled, the 2011 deadline should be renegotiated.

"Regardless of whether things go well or things deteriorate, there is going to be a strong connection between the United States and Iraq," Talabani said in an interview Tuesday. "The nature of that relationship will depend on whether things improve or deteriorate. The U.S. has invested too much in this effort just to walk away."

What would Obama do if Iraq reverted to major violence?

Stephen Biddle, an Iraq watcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a recent analysis that a full-scale civil war could mean a civilian death toll in the range of 600,000 to more than two million.

"Given its role in precipitating the war in Iraq, the United States would bear special responsibility for such a catastrophe," Biddle wrote. He added that if the conflict spread beyond Iraq's borders it would risk a disruption of world oil markets and might derail prospects for successful Israel-Palestinian peace talks.

 

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Have We Forgotten Iraq?

By Dan Balz
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The celebrations in Iraq marking the pullback of U.S. combat forces from Baghdad and other cities stand in stark contrast to the reaction in the United States. Here the transfer of power has been met almost with public indifference, overshadowed by everything from Michael Jackson's death to the fate of President Obama's domestic agenda.

A year ago, in the heat of the presidential campaign, the issue of whether U.S. forces should stay or go produced pointed debate and disagreement between Obama and John McCain. Now, the transfer of authority for protecting the cities from U.S. to Iraqi forces has been greeted with near-universal acceptance -- if also with some trepidation over what may happen next.

Obama marked the moment with brief remarks yesterday afternoon at the White House, saying that the Iraqi people were "rightly treating this day as a cause for celebration," while noting that Iraqi leaders have many political issues to resolve. He praised U.S. forces for all they have done there.

The president also took note of the recent attacks and killings in Iraq. "There will be difficult days ahead," he said. "We know the violence in Iraq will continue." But he said he remained confident that the forces behind the bombings will fail. He concluded by saying, "There is more work to be done, but we've made important progress."

The pullback from the cities is not, technically, a withdrawal. The United States still has roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq and will for many months. The real drawdown will not begin in earnest until after the national elections in January 2010. But symbolically, yesterday's handoff marks the beginning of a new and conclusive phase more than six years after U.S. forces invaded.

Public opinion long ago showed that a majority of Americans had concluded that the invasion ordered by President George W. Bush was a mistake. Bush's troop increase, which he initiated in early 2007 in the face of much opposition, has been judged successful in contributing to a reduction in violence. But the Bush administration's management of the war in the years between the invasion and the "surge" has been widely judged a failure.

Debate may continue to rage over the war and the roles Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld played in what became the most politically divisive conflict since Vietnam. Critics remain unforgiving of what that trio did. Defenders think Bush may yet be partially vindicated for seeing the conflict through. But the debate is no longer at the center of American politics. The nation grew weary of Iraq.

As a political issue, Iraq has faded into the background, despite the sizable troop presence that remains there. The war's potency as a flash point in the political debate diminished rapidly in 2008 as the economy went into a tailspin. McCain made little headway in trying to discredit Obama as unready to be commander in chief, and the Arizona Republican's resistance to setting a timetable for withdrawal generated no traction for his candidacy.

Obama's ordered troop withdrawal has stirred little public debate. In part that's because the Iraqis are as anxious for the United States to leave as many Americans are to see the end of the U.S. commitment. Under Obama's plan, combat forces will be gone by the end of August 2010. The remainder of U.S. forces, perhaps as many as 50,000, will leave Iraq by the end of 2011 under an agreement with the Iraqi government.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signaled his desire to establish a timetable for the departure of U.S. forces last summer. That hastened the ultimate agreement between the two countries. Maliki's statements in recent days, in which he has claimed victory in ending the "occupation" of his country, underscore the mutuality of interest in drastically reducing the U.S. footprint in Iraq, even if his remarks were targeted to his own country.

The fact that yesterday's deadline passed with so little public comment does not negate the fact that it represents the first big test for Obama's policy. In the days leading up to the deadline, there were a series of bombings and attacks, leaving more than 250 people dead. And yesterday, a car bomb in Kirkuk killed more than two dozen people. On Monday, four American soldiers were killed in combat. Iraq is not fully secure.

Administration officials have insisted, and the president reiterated yesterday, that the spike in violence was expected as the handoff took place and insurgents attempted to exploit the transition. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has publicly expressed his confidence that Iraqi forces can keep their cities secure. Other military leaders have done the same in private to the White House. If they are wrong, there may be questions about what kind of country Americans are preparing to leave behind. Obama could find himself under pressure to adjust the withdrawal timetable.

The president needs a quiet transition in Iraq, given the fullness of his foreign policy agenda. He and his advisers are continuing to wrestle with whether and how to adapt their Iran strategy in the wake of the post-election demonstrations there. Encouraging opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while trying to engage the Iranian leadership over its nuclear ambitions is more complicated now than it was a few weeks ago.

North Korea remains a dangerous problem, albeit a more straightforward one than Iran. Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to consume the administration's energies, as does the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Obama can only hope that the Iraqi security forces are strong enough to meet their new obligations.

Obama's approval ratings on Iraq are among his highest on any issue he is dealing with. The decision to withdraw, on whatever timetable, the sharp reduction in American casualties and the general war-weariness after six years of involvement there have combined to create a political calm over the issue that so convulsed the country.

Unless there is a spectacular reversal there, what happens in Iraq may play out largely outside the consciousness of the American public, despite the lives lost in the war and the fact that so many troops remain stationed there. Who would have thought that was possible not so very long ago?

washingtonpost.com