[Reader-list] ** Iraq moves to sharply restrict US occupation forces (+ my 2 dinars) **

[Sarang Shidore]

Many have wondered about the nature of the relationship between the Shia Islamist government in Iraq and the occupying US government from the point the first Iraqi elections were held (under great pressure from Ayatollah Sistani). Was it (and is it) a simple master-puppet relationship as it has been alleged? Or is it something more complex?

My sense is that after being forced by Sistani's agitational tactics to abandon plans to create a non-democratic authoritarian government in Baghdad run by Pentagon's favorite strongman Iyad Alawi, the Shia Islamists (i.e the alliance of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and Nouri Maliki's Da'awa party) and Washington cut a deal. On its part the Shia Islamists agreed to have the American army complete hegemony over all military/defense/foreign affairs areas in return for primacy in civil and religious law of the new Iraq. In this sense, Iraq emerged as an American colony with some internal autonomy. However, the Sunni tribes in western Iraq never accepted this arrangement. Implacably hostile to the US occupation, they launched a deadly insurgency against the occupation army. Meanwhile in the south, the Moqtada Sadr faction of the Shia Islamist movement also rejected the de-facto deal and launched its own (less lethal) insurgency, primarily against the
 British army which had seized the south in 2003. The end result was four and a half thousand American and a couple of hundred British dead. 

By early 2007 it was clear that the American army was losing the war in Iraq. The casualties were heavy and mounting, and no amount of lethal aerial bombardment and mass arrests of young Iraqis and their subsequent brutal torture at Abu Ghraib was succeeding. Bush had become deeply popular as a result of the war, and the international isolation of the United States was reaching a perilous state. This is when the Bush team adopted a two-faced strategy. At home they sold the idea of a major troop surge that would destroy the insurgents by purely military means. However, in Iraq, they opened the first serious negotations with the Sunni militant leaders (most of whom were Islamist-oriented Iraqi nationalists and not "Talibanic" Wahhabi fundamentalists, contrary to the claims by Washington.) The negotiations were conducted in secret and they led to a deal in which the Americans agreed to put all insurgents on their payroll (the so-called Awakening Councils
 that suddenly and mysteriously formed allegedly disgusted at the fanaticism of Al-Qaida). Probably much larger sums of money were paid off to the Sunni leaders. There was also a secret deal with the Sadrists, which resulted in Moqtada Sadr announcing a 6-month truce in August 2007 (which has since been repeatedly extended). The Shia government, which had also begun to assert itself with covert Iranian support, also insisted on a deal for the foreign occupation armies to leave Iraq entirely by December 2011. Subsequent to that, no US combat forces or permanent or temporary military bases are supposed to exist in Iraq (except small contingents needed to guard US diplomats). The last months of the Bush administration were focused on signing this deal, a major climbdown by the US government.

Since Obama has come to power, the tussle between Baghdad and Washington seems to be intensifying, even as Iran again comes under the cross-hairs of a still-aggressive Washington under Obama. The rubber will meet the road next year, when it will become clear whether the commitment America has made to fully pull out of Iraq is real or just a stalling tactic which Barack Obama has no intention of honoring.

Sarang
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Iraq Restricts U.S. Forces

American Officials See Link Between Limits, Spate of Attacks



By Ernesto Londoño and Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, July 18, 2009





BAGHDAD, July 17 -- The Iraqi government has moved to sharply restrict
the movement and activities of U.S. forces in a new reading of a
six-month-old U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that has startled American
commanders and raised concerns about the safety of their troops.

In a curt missive issued by the Baghdad Operations Command on July 2
-- the day after Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal of U.S. troops to
bases outside city centers -- Iraq's
top commanders told their U.S. counterparts to "stop all joint patrols"
in Baghdad. It said U.S. resupply convoys could travel only at night
and ordered the Americans to "notify us immediately of any violations
of the agreement."

The strict application of the agreement coincides with what U.S.
military officials in Washington say has been an escalation of attacks
against their forces by Iranian-backed Shiite extremist groups, to
which they have been unable to fully respond.

If extremists realize "some of the limitations that we have, that's
a vulnerability they could use against us," a senior U.S. military
intelligence official said. "The fact is that some of these are very
politically sensitive targets" thought to be close to the
Shiite-dominated Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The new guidelines are a reflection of rising tensions between the
two governments. Iraqi leaders increasingly see the agreement as an
opportunity to show their citizens that they are now unequivocally in
charge and that their dependence on the U.S. military is minimal and
waning.

The June 30 deadline for moving U.S. troops out of Iraqi towns and
cities was the first of three milestones under the agreement. The U.S.
military is to decrease its troop levels from 130,000 to 50,000 by
August of next year.

U.S. commanders have described the pullout from cities as a
transition from combat to stability operations. But they have kept
several combat battalions assigned to urban areas and hoped those
troops would remain deeply engaged in training Iraqi security forces,
meeting with paid informants, attending local council meetings and
supervising U.S.-funded civic and reconstruction projects.

The Americans have been taken aback by the new restrictions on their
activities. The Iraqi order runs "contrary to the spirit and practice
of our last several months of operations," Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger,
commander of the Baghdad division, wrote in an e-mail obtained by The
Washington Post.

"Maybe something was 'lost in translation,' " Bolger wrote. "We are
not going to hide our support role in the city. I'm sorry the Iraqi
politicians lied/dissembled/spun, but we are not invisible nor should
we be." He said U.S. troops intend to engage in combat operations in
urban areas to avert or respond to threats, with or without help from
the Iraqis.

"This is a broad right and it demands that we patrol, raid and
secure routes as necessary to keep our forces safe," he wrote. "We'll
do that, preferably partnered."

U.S. commanders have not publicly described in detail how they
interpret the agreement's vaguely worded provision that gives them the
right to self-defense. The issue has bedeviled them because commanders
are concerned that responding quickly and forcefully to threats could
embarrass the Iraqi government and prompt allegations of agreement
violations.

A spate of high-casualty suicide bombings in Shiite neighborhoods,
attributed to al-Qaeda in Iraq and related Sunni insurgent groups, has
overshadowed the increase of attacks by Iran-backed Shiite extremists, U.S. official say.


Officials agreed to discuss relations with the Iraqi government and
military, and Iranian support for the extremists, only on the condition
of anonymity because those issues involve security, diplomacy and
intelligence.

The three primary groups -- Asaib al-Haq, Khataib Hezbollah and the
Promised Day Brigades -- emerged from the "special groups" of the Jaish
al-Mahdi (JAM) militia of radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr,
which terrorized Baghdad and southern Iraq beginning in 2006. All
receive training, funding and direction from Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Corps Quds Force.

"One of the things we still have to find out, as we pull out from
the cities, is how much effectiveness we're going to have against some
of these particular target sets," the military intelligence official
said. "That's one of the very sensitive parts of this whole story."

As U.S. forces tried to pursue the alleged leaders of the groups and
planned missions against them, their efforts were hindered by the
complicated warrant process and other Iraqi delays, officials said.

Last month, U.S. commanders acquiesced to an Iraqi government
request to release one of their most high-profile detainees, Laith
Khazali. He was arrested in March 2007 with his brother, Qais, who is
thought to be the senior operational leader of Asaib al-Haq. The United
States thinks they were responsible for the deaths of five American
soldiers in Karbala that year.

Maliki has occasionally criticized interference by Shiite Iran's
Islamic government in Iraqi affairs. But he has also maintained close
ties to Iran and has played down U.S. insistence that Iran is deeply
involved, through the Quds Force, in training and controlling the Iraqi
Shiite extremists.

U.S. intelligence has seen "no discernible increase in Tehran's
support to Shia extremists in recent months," and the attack level is
still low compared with previous years, U.S. counterterrorism official
said. But senior military commanders maintained that Iran still
supports the Shiite militias, and that their attacks now focus almost
exclusively on U.S. forces.

After a brief lull, the attacks have continued this month, including
a rocket strike on a U.S. base in Basra on Thursday night that killed
three soldiers.

The acrimony that has marked the transition period has sowed
resentment, according to several U.S. soldiers, who said the confidence
expressed by Iraqi leaders does not match their competence.

"Our [Iraqi] partners burn our fuel, drive roads cleared by our
Engineers, live in bases built with our money, operate vehicles fixed
with our parts, eat food paid for by our contracts, watch our
[surveillance] video feeds, serve citizens with our [funds], and
benefit from our air cover," Bolger noted in the e-mail.

A spokesman for Bolger would not say whether the U.S. military
considers the Iraqi order on July 2 valid. Since it was issued, it has
been amended to make a few exemptions. But the guidelines remain far
more restrictive than the Americans had hoped, U.S. military officials
said.

Brig. Gen. Heidi Brown, the commander overseeing the logistical
aspects of the withdrawal, said Iraqi and U.S. commanders have had
fruitful discussions in recent days about the issue.

"It's been an interesting time, and I think we've sorted out any
misunderstandings that were there initially," she said in an interview
Friday.

One U.S. military official here said both Iraqi and American leaders
on the ground remain confused about the guidelines. The official said
he worries that the lack of clarity could trigger stalemates and
confrontations between Iraqis and Americans.

"We still lack a common understanding and way forward at all levels
regarding those types of situations," he said, referring to
self-defense protocols and the type of missions that Americans cannot
conduct unilaterally.


In recent days, he said, senior U.S. commanders have lowered their expectations.

"I think our commanders are starting to back off the notion that we
will continue to execute combined operations whether the Iraqi army
welcomes us with open arms or not," the U.S. commander said. "However,
we are still very interested in and concerned about our ability to
quickly and effectively act in response to terrorist threats" against
U.S. forces.