US troops leave Iraq – mission accomplished?

The last US combat brigade has left Iraq, pulling troops out of the country two weeks ahead of President Obama’s deadline. Channel 4 News’s Tim Lambon, who was there the day coalition forces rolled into Baghdad, looks at the rapid drawdown, and Iraq’s uncertain future.

Watching the LAVs (Light Armoured Vehicles) of the 2^nd Infantry Division of the 4^th Stryker Brigade rolling through the murky desert dawn was a surreal experience this morning. Surreal, because this time I wasn’t there.

I was watching the final withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq on a television monitor in the Channel 4 News newsroom.

It’s been exactly 2500 days since the Coalition rolled across the same border – and what a nightmare it’s been. 

Estimates of between 97,000 and 106,000 Iraqis have died. Over 4,600 US service personnel were killed or died as a result of combat operations.

“I pledge to bring the war in Iraq to a RESPONSIBLE end” said President Obama at the beginning of the month, but Iraq is now the forgotten war.

(Tim Lambon with coalition forces the day they entered Baghdad, 9 April 2003.)

Afghanistan and the troubles there have replaced Iraq as the focus for media and Administration.

Last night at a discussion I chaired at the Frontline Club in London,  the panel – a retired UK diplomat, a US author, an Iraqi activist and the person responsible for the Iraq Body Count website – failed to agree on what will happen in Iraq as the US draws down its occupying force.

Our lack of consensus reflects that of the wider world where there is little agreement on what happens now.

The biggest issue is Iraq’s lack of government over five and a half months after the March elections. But once a government is dragged together, then the very real issues that may well tear the nation apart need to be tackled, and with diligence.

The law deciding how oil revenues will be divided, the question of who controls Kirkuk and its rich oil fields, not to mention the pressing everyday problems of electricity generation and sewage removal and treatment.

The US and its allies dismantled first the Iraqi army and then the Iraqi government with the aim of rebuilding both on a solid base of plural democracy.

As they leave the Iraqi security forces now number 700 000, but the government is lacking. Billions of dollars have been misappropriated that were supposed to repair the war damage and then develop the ailing infrastructure.

Daily life is more dangerous and depressed now than during the period of sanctions against Sadam Hussein. 

So with this as the situation US combat troops leave behind, what happens to Iraq now?

Well that largely depends on its two neighbours – Saudi Arabia, who back the Sunni factions and in particular the Awakening Councils (former Sunni insurgents who are turning – to join the Coalition, saved the Sunni minority from the ravages of Shi’ia militias) and Iran which backs multiple Shi’ite factions including those of both Moqtadr-al-Sadr and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Iran was ever the regional counterweigh to a strong and militarized Iraq. An emasculated Iraq leaves the insular kingdom of Saudi Arabia to fill the void, should the US remove all its personnel as promised by the end of next year.

And that will not be pretty. Already the failure to form a government is seen as interference from both Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The party that won most seats in the March elections, represents Iraq’s best political hope – a secular centrist party comprising both Sunni and Shi’ite members. For nearly six months it has been prevented from taking power by objections by smaller factions sponsored, it is alleged, by foreign players.

Iran cannot impose a pliant government on Iraq, but it can stop the formation of an independent one, or destabilise a government formed against the odds. The Obama administration is all too aware of this as it withdraws, but politics at home drive that withdrawal, as the Democrats face the November mid-term elections.

History may show that fanfares, deadlines and numbers, for domestic US political ends, will have served Iraq badly. The rapid draw down (144,000 down to 50,000 military personnel in 18 months) has signaled to internal opponents in Iraq that all they need do is keep their powder dry.

Soon there will be no restraining hand, should they decide they need to recommence the civil war which raged between 2005 and 2008. Experience in the Balkans showed that the unheralded and gradual reduction of peace-keeping forces left belligerents without sudden status changes that would have made them nervous, causing them to re-arm against an uncertain future.

The Status of Forces Agreement signed between the Bush and Maliki governments, provided deadlines and numbers which the Obama Administration embraced.

It may well be the knife in the back of an ill-conceived project, acting as the trigger that embittered and nervous factions use to finish the slaughter.