News Analysis - The West Has Little Room to Respond to Karzai’s Criticism - NYTimes.com

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By ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — As President Hamid Karzai made more antagonistic statements over the weekend toward the NATO countries fighting on behalf of his government, the West was taking stock of just how little maneuvering room it has.

There are no good options on the horizon, many analysts say, for reining in Mr. Karzai or for penalizing him, without potentially damaging Western interests. The reluctant conclusion of diplomats and Afghan analysts is that for now, they are stuck with him.

Many fear the relationship is only likely to become worse, as Mr. Karzai draws closer to allies like Iran and China, whose interests are often at odds with those of the West, and sounds sympathetic enough to the Taliban that he could spur their efforts, helping their recruitment and further destabilizing the country.

“The political situation is continuing to deteriorate; Karzai is flailing around,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul with long experience in the region. “At the moment we are propping up an unstable political structure, and I haven’t seen any remotely plausible plan for building consensus.”

The tensions between the West and Mr. Karzai flared up publicly last Thursday, when Mr. Karzai accused the West and the United Nations of perpetrating fraud in the August presidential election and described the Western military coalition as coming close to being seen as invaders who would give the insurgency legitimacy as “a national resistance.”

Despite a conciliatory phone call to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday, his comments over the weekend only expanded the discord.

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On Saturday, Mr. Karzai met with about 60 members of Parliament, mostly his supporters, and berated them for having rejected his proposed new election law. Among other things, the proposal would have given him the power to appoint all the members of the Electoral Complaints Commission, who are currently appointed by the United Nations, the Afghan Supreme Court and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The Electoral Complaints Commission, which reviews allegations of voting fraud and irregularities, documented the fraud that deprived Mr. Karzai of an outright victory in the presidential election.

At the meeting, Mr. Karzai stepped up his anti-Western statements, according to a Parliament member who attended but spoke on condition of anonymity.

“If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban,” Mr. Karzai said, according to the Parliament member.

A spokesman for Mr. Karzai, Waheed Omar, could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

In a speech in Kandahar on Sunday, Mr. Karzai promised local tribal elders that coalition military operations planned for the area this summer would not proceed without their approval.

“I know you are worried about this operation,” he said, adding: “There will be no operation until you are happy.”

Given his tone in the last few days, it was unclear whether he was literally extending the elders veto power over the offensive, or merely trying to quell their fears and bring them on board.

Interviews with diplomats, Afghan analysts and ordinary Afghans suggest that the United States and other Western countries have three options: threaten to withdraw troops or actually withdraw them; use diplomacy, which so far has had little result; and find ways to expand citizen participation in the government, which now has hardly any elected positions at the provincial and district levels.

Threatening to withdraw, which Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the “nuclear deterrent” option, would put the United States and other Western countries in the position of potentially having to make good on the promise, risking their strategic interest in a stable Afghanistan. Few experts think the country would remain peaceful without a significant foreign force here. Moreover, withdrawal could open the way for the country to again become a terrorist haven.

Some Western critics of Mr. Karzai believe that the West has no choice but to threaten to leave.

“There is no point in having troops in a mission that cannot be accomplished,” said Peter W. Galbraith, former United Nations deputy special representative for Afghanistan, who was dismissed after a dispute with his superiors over how to handle widespread electoral fraud and what senior U.N. officials later said was his advocacy of Mr. Karzai's removal. “The mission might be important, but if it can’t be achieved, there is no point in sending these troops into battle. Part of the problem is that counterinsurgency requires a credible local partner.”

Diplomacy has so far failed to achieve substantial changes, although some analysts, like Mr. Biddle, who opposes the so-called nuclear option, believe that the West should demand concessions before spending any more money on development projects like digging wells and building schools.

“We do millions of things in Afghanistan, and any of those things can become a source of leverage,” he said. “Far too much of what we do in Afghanistan we just do without asking for anything explicit in return.”

That approach can backfire, some argue, hurting those the West most wants to help.

Greater power sharing, while promising, faces structural obstacles. Under the Constitution, provincial governors, local judges, district governors and most other offices are appointive rather than elective. In some areas, Afghan and American programs have begun to involve communities in local budgeting, but progress is slow and it would probably take several years to expand it to higher levels of government.

“There are no better angels about to descend on Afghanistan,” said Alex Thier, a senior Afghan analyst at the United States Institute of Peace. “Unless some drastic action is taken, Mr. Karzai is the president of Afghanistan, and he was just elected for another five years.”

That prospect leaves some Afghans uneasy. In interviews with more than a dozen people around the country, there was apprehension and dismay over Mr. Karzai’s clash with the international community, and the specter of renewed chaos it could lead to.

“Karzai delivered this speech based on his own difficulties with the foreigners,” said Gulab Mangal, a tribal leader in the Musa Khel area of Khost Province.

“When the international community criticized his brother, he started to raise these problems,” he said, referring to Ahmed Wali Karzai, a prominent figure in southern Afghanistan. “It shows the relation between Karzai and the international community is deteriorating day by day, and that should not be allowed to happen.”

Mehram Ali, a man from Wardak Province who was shopping in Kabul over the weekend, voiced a similar qualm. “We need the international community to keep supporting us and our government,” he said.

“In this recent situation we do need foreign soldiers to help us in bringing peace and stability for our country, and if the foreigners leave us, then the people of Afghanistan will face adversity from every direction, and Afghanistan will return to what it was like 10 years ago when we had the Taliban government.”

Reporting was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sharifullah Sahak from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.

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Iraq May Hold Vote on Early U.S. Withdrawal

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 18, 2009

BAGHDAD, Aug. 17 -- U.S. troops could be forced by Iraqi voters to withdraw a year ahead of schedule under a referendum the Iraqi government backed Monday, creating a potential complication for American commanders concerned about rising violence in the country's north.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's move appeared to disregard the wishes of the U.S. government, which has quietly lobbied against the plebiscite. American officials fear it could lead to the annulment of an agreement allowing U.S. troops to stay until the end of 2011, and instead force them out by the start of that year.

The Maliki government's announcement came on the day that the top U.S. general in Iraq proposed a plan to deploy troops to disputed areas in the restive north, a clear indication that the military sees a continuing need for U.S. forces even if Iraqis no longer want them here.

Gen. Ray Odierno said American troops would partner with contingents of the Iraqi army and the Kurdish regional government's paramilitary force, marking the first organized effort to pair U.S. forces with the militia, known as the pesh merga. Iraqi army and Kurdish forces nearly came to blows recently, and there is deep-seated animosity between them, owing to a decades-long fight over ancestry, land and oil.

If Iraqi lawmakers sign off on Maliki's initiative to hold a referendum in January on the withdrawal timeline, a majority of voters could annul a standing U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, forcing the military to pull out completely by January 2011 under the terms of a previous law.

It is unclear whether parliament, which is in recess until next month, would approve the referendum. Lawmakers have yet to pass a measure laying the basic ground rules for the Jan. 16 national election, their top legislative priority for the remainder of 2009.

Before signing off on the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement last year, Iraqi lawmakers demanded that voters get to weigh in on the pact in a referendum that was to take place no later than last month. Because it did not happen, American officials assumed the plebiscite was a dead issue.

U.S. officials say they have no way to know how the referendum would turn out, but they worry that many Iraqis are likely to vote against the pact. Maliki billed the withdrawal of U.S. forces from urban areas at the end of June as a "great victory" for Iraqis, and his government has since markedly curbed the authority and mobility of U.S. forces.

Senior Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Odierno probably will make an announcement later this week or early next week the accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which now stand at 130,000, by one or two brigades between now and the end of the year. Each brigade consists of about 5,000 troops. Odierno said Monday that he has not decided whether to speed up the plan, which he said remains on schedule.

The acceleration would still be much slower than if the referendum nullified the agreement.

Still, senior Pentagon officials played down Maliki's announcement, saying it was an expected part of Iraq's political process. Senior Iraqi officials did not raise the possibility of the referendum with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates when he visited the country earlier this month, Pentagon officials said.

Bahaa Hassan, who owns a mobile phone store in Najaf, south of Baghdad, said he would vote for a speedier withdrawal.

"We want to get rid of the American influence in Iraq, because we suffer from it politically and economically," he said. "We will vote against it so Iraq will be in the hands of Iraqis again."

But many Iraqis, particularly Sunnis and Kurds, consider the presence of the U.S. military a key deterrent to abuses of power by the Shiite-led government.

"After six years of Shiite rule and struggle, we still have no electricity, so what will happen if Americans leave?" said Dhirgham Talib, a government employee in Najaf. "The field will be left to the Shiite parties to do whatever they want with no fear from anybody."

A poll commissioned by the U.S. military earlier this year found that Iraqis expressed far less confidence in American troops than in the Iraqi government or any of its security forces. Twenty-seven percent of Iraqis polled said they had confidence in U.S. forces, according to a Pentagon report presented to Congress last month. By contrast, 72 percent expressed confidence in the national government.

Zainab Karim, a Shiite lawmaker from the Sadrist movement, the most ardently anti-American faction, said she was pleasantly surprised that the government is backing the referendum.

"I consider this a good thing," she said. "But we have to wait and see whether the government is honest about this or whether it is electoral propaganda."

As the Iraqi government took steps to force U.S. troops out earlier than planned, Odierno said Monday that he would like to deploy American forces to villages along disputed areas in northern Iraq to defuse tension between Kurdish troops and forces controlled by the Shiite Arab-led government in Baghdad.

"We're working very hard to come up with a security architecture in the disputed territories that would reduce tension," Odierno told reporters. "They just all feel more comfortable if we're there."

Scores of Iraqis have been killed in recent weeks in villages along the 300-mile frontier south of the Kurdish region. U.S. military officials say the attacks bear the hallmarks of Sunni extremists, but local leaders have traded accusations to bolster their positions on whether specific areas should be under the control of Baghdad or the autonomous government of Kurdistan.

The pesh merga currently controls some villages that are nominally outside the three-province Kurdish region. The expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Iraq has prompted Maliki to deploy more troops loyal to Baghdad to northern provinces south of Kurdistan. The new provincial leadership in Nineveh province, the most restive among them, has made curbing Kurdish expansion its top priority and has called for the expulsion of pesh merga forces.

The tension, Odierno said, has created a security vacuum that has emboldened al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group that he said was almost certainly responsible for recent sensational bombings in the province. The number of civilian casualties in Iraq has increased since the urban pullout, Odierno said, largely as a result of attacks in the disputed territories.

"What we have is al-Qaeda exploiting this fissure between the Arabs and the Kurds," he said. "What we're trying to do is close that fissure."

Staff writers Greg Jaffe and Scott Wilson in Washington and special correspondents Zaid Sabah and Aziz Alwan in Baghdad, Saad Sarhan in Najaf, and Dlovan Brwari in Mosul contributed to this report.

U.S. Could End Engagement in Iraq if Violence Erupts, Biden Warns

By Nada Bakri
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 4, 2009

BAGHDAD, July 3 -- Vice President Biden warned Iraqi officials Friday that the American commitment to Iraq could end if the country again descended into ethnic and sectarian violence.

Biden delivered the warning during a three-day visit to Iraq that began Thursday, just a few days after the United States formally withdrew most combat troops from Iraqi cities under a security agreement reached last year. It was the vice president's first visit since President Obama asked him to take the lead on Iraq policy.

In meetings with senior Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Biden stressed that the United States would remain engaged in Iraq, even as its military role diminishes in a withdrawal that is expected to dramatically gather pace after parliamentary elections in January.

But a senior administration official briefing journalists said Biden made that support contingent on Iraqi progress in resolving long-standing conflicts, some that bedeviled Iraq even before the United States invaded in March 2003.

If "Iraq were to revert to sectarian violence or engage in ethnic violence, then that's not something that would make it likely that we would remain engaged because, one, the American people would have no interest in doing that, and, as he put it, neither would he nor the president," the official said.

He added that there "wasn't any appetite to put Humpty Dumpty back together again if, by the action of people in Iraq, it fell apart."

The warning was a dramatic indication of the changing U.S. posture in Iraq, the foremost foreign policy concern of the Bush administration. The statements suggested that the Obama administration would absolve itself of responsibility if Iraq again descended into chaos, dragged down by still-unresolved crises. They include border disputes between Kurds and Arabs and also legislation for Iraq's oil resources.

Across Iraq, signs are rife of a diminishing U.S. role. Simply by virtue of the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops, the United States is sure to exercise decisive influence. But the power it once wielded inside Baghdad has passed. Along with last month's pullout -- and a far larger one due to end by August 2010 -- staffing at the U.S. Embassy will be reduced over the year as well.

Even the interaction of officials seems to have changed. Early Friday, Biden's aides huddled with advisers to Ayad al-Samarraie, the speaker of Iraq's parliament, trying to figure out a time the two men could meet.

An aide to Samarraie told the vice president's staff that the speaker had no more than 30 minutes to spare for the meeting. "That is the best I can do," the aide said in a conversation overheard at a presidential palace, as workers vainly tried to clean the aftermath of a sandstorm that has buffeted Baghdad for almost a week.

Some lawmakers were irritated by the secretive nature of Biden's visit.

"They have to treat Iraq as a sovereign country," lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said. "They should have let us know, and they should be welcomed like any other leader."

During the day, with the capital cloaked in the sickly yellow glow of the sandstorm, which hampered Biden's travel, the vice president met with Ambassador Christopher R. Hill and U.S. military commander Gen. Ray Odierno. He then met with senior Iraqi leaders and, at least publicly, stressed that the United States remains fully engaged.

"President Obama asked me to return with a message -- that the United States is committed to Iraq's progress and success," Biden said in a statement aired by Iraqi state television after his meeting with Maliki.

"We are looking forward to strengthening our relationship," Maliki added.

In Biden's last visit to Iraq, in January before Obama's inauguration, Iraqi and U.S. officials said he had delivered another message: American patience had its limits, and Iraqi politicians would have to make a more concerted attempt to resolve their conflicts, particularly over the disputed border and the future of the contested northern city of Kirkuk. He seemed to reiterate a version of that message Friday.

"These are challenges for the Iraqis themselves to face and solve," the senior administration official said. "It's not for us to solve it for them."

In Iraq, Biden to Press Officials to Forge Progress

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

BAGHDAD — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. landed in Baghdad on Thursday, beginning a two-day diplomatic mission that he said was intended to “re-establish contact” with Iraqi leaders and prod them toward settling internal disputes over oil revenues and political power-sharing.

Mr. Biden’s surprise trip, just days after American combat forces officially withdrew from Iraqi cities, underscores the concern in the White House about the fragility of the security situation. President Obama has asked Mr. Biden to serve as a kind of unofficial envoy to the country, and the vice president said this would be his first in a series of trips to the region.

The trip is unusually long for such a high-level official; when Mr. Obama visited Iraq, he spent just a few hours here, and President George W. Bush did not spend more than a day. But Mr. Biden said Iraq was at a pivotal moment, “the moment where a lot of Iraqis cynically believed we’d never keep the agreement.” He said the White House wanted to send a message to Iraqi leaders that it was engaged at the highest levels.

Earlier on Thursday, the Iraqi government said it had reached a tentative agreement to buy armaments from France and had signed a series of business deals with French companies to help rebuild Iraq.

The announcements came during a visit to Baghdad by the French prime minister, François Fillon, and about 30 French business executives. In February, President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Baghdad, and in May, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, traveled to France.

The agreements announced Thursday represent a resumption of the close ties that existed between the French and Iraqi governments during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The relationship was interrupted by the United States-led invasion in 2003, which France opposed.

The contracts call for French companies to build roads, railroads, water treatment plants and a cement factory, as well as an airport south of Baghdad between the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala to accommodate the millions of pilgrims who visit the cities each year.

The arms agreement, announced Thursday in a news release by the Iraqi government, states that the two nations intend to sign contracts to “buy, modernize and repair weapons and military equipment,” and that the French will provide training in the use of the armaments.

The release did not specify what sort of weapons Iraq intended to buy. During the 1970s and 1980s, France was a major supplier of arms to Iraq.

While Mr. Obama has hailed the withdrawal of combat troops as an “important milestone,” he has also expressed concern that the Iraqis are not moving quickly enough to forge a stable government. Just last week, Mr. Obama told reporters, “I haven’t seen as much political progress in Iraq negotiations between the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds as I would like to see.”

Mr. Biden said he was here to deliver that message in person. “What is their plan to resolve the real differences that exist?” he asked.

But the vice president, who spent years as a senator developing relations with Iraqi officials, must now navigate a thicket of relationships within the Obama administration and avoid stepping on his colleagues’ toes as he takes on the added role of White House point man on Iraq.

Mr. Biden’s visit comes as the relationship between Baghdad and Washington is changing. Mr. Bush took a deeply personal interest in Iraq and conducted regularly scheduled secure video conference calls with Mr. Maliki. But Mr. Obama ended that practice; aides say he thought it more appropriate for his ambassador, Christopher R. Hill, and the top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, to handle such day-to-day contacts.

In putting Mr. Biden in the role of unofficial envoy, Mr. Obama may have recognized that he needed to pay greater attention to Baghdad. Mr. Biden said the job was Mr. Obama’s idea: “The president said, ‘Joe, go do it.’ ”

Mr. Biden is to meet with leaders, including Mr. Maliki, on Friday and celebrate the Fourth of July with troops. His son Beau is a captain in the Army National Guard in Iraq, and aides said the two would probably see each other at some point during the visit.

Like all high-level trips to Iraq, Mr. Biden’s journey was planned in secrecy.

Amir A. al-Obeidi, Riyadh Mohammed and Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.

Insurgent Groups in Iraq Hail Pullout of U.S. Troops From Cities

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

BAGHDAD — A day after Iraqis celebrated the formal withdrawal of American combat troops from towns and cities, leaders of some of the most high-profile insurgent and opposition groups had their say on Wednesday.

Statements were released by a former senior ally of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni clerical association that has sanctioned armed resistance and Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric, all of which hailed the withdrawal as a victory for the resistance and compared it to the beginning of the revolt against the British occupation in 1920.

Iraqi opposition and insurgent leaders consider themselves to have as much legitimacy as, or more than, Iraqi government officials, and formal statements on such a symbolic occasion are expected.

The statements all commanded Iraqis to continue fighting the American military until it had left the country completely; nearly 130,000 troops remain. The statements also insisted, in unusually clear language, that Iraqis not turn their violence on one another.

This appears to be a noteworthy change for the former Hussein ally, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was deputy chairman of Mr. Hussein’s Revolutionary Command Council and who American officials say has been financing and organizing Baathist insurgents.

We “have decided in this blessed day to direct all combat effort towards the invaders,” Mr. Douri’s statement said, “and forbid absolutely the killing of Iraqis or fighting them in all the formations and organs of the agent’s authority — in the so-called army, police, Awakening and the administration agencies — except for what is required in self-defense, if some spies in these agencies try to stop the resistance or harm them.”

As recently as April, Mr. Douri had called upon people to attack the Iraqi government, which he considers a puppet of the United States.

If Mr. Douri holds to this new stance it could bolster the possibility, raised by some Iraqi and American officials, that the withdrawal of American troops removes a justification that many insurgent groups used to carry out attacks, even if those attacks disproportionately killed and injured Iraqis.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group that has condoned attacks against the American military, issued a statement in which it condemned sectarianism and urged Iraqis to avoid harming other Iraqis. “Resistance is for all Iraqis, across the spectrum, from the north to the south,” the statement read.

Mr. Sadr, who has increasingly distanced his movement from the use of violence, was less celebratory in his statement, expressing concerns that the withdrawal was a mere “media announcement.” It would be “a bright page in the honest Iraqi resistance’s history” if it were real, he said, but he highlighted the continuing presence of American military advisers, who are allowed to stay in the cities under the security agreement between Iraq and the United States, as evidence that June 30 may not be the symbolic victory the government has suggested it is.

Mr. Sadr also said that a military withdrawal was not sufficient, mentioning the continued presence of American intelligence agencies and security contractors in particular. “We want a withdrawal, and not interference, on all fronts — political, social, economic, judicial, and ministerial,” he said in his statement. “Not only the military front.”

Also on Wednesday, the Iraqi cabinet approved one bid from a public auction on Tuesday for the rights to develop Iraqi oil fields, a government spokesman announced. A consortium of BP and China National Petroleum Company has agreed to increase output of the enormous Rumaila oil field to 2.85 million barrels a day, and will receive a $2 premium for every barrel the field produces over a baseline established by the Iraqi government.

Rumaila, in Iraq’s south, is the largest of the oil fields that were part of the auction, and its development could be a significant contribution to Iraq’s economy.

The cabinet officially rejected six other bids from the auction that asked for larger amounts than the government was willing to pay, the spokesman said.

Mohammed Hussein, Anwar J. Ali and Riyadh Mohammed contributed reporting.

Twittergasms

by Alexander Cockburn

How much easier it is to raise three--or 3 million--rousing tweets for the demonstrators in Tehran than to mount any sort of political resistance at home! Here we have a new Democratic president, propelled into office on a magic carpet of progressive pledges, now methodically flouting them one by one, with scarcely a twit or even a tweet raised in protest, aside from the gallant efforts of Medea Benjamin, Russell Mokhiber and their comrades at the healthcare hearings in Congress.

At the end of June US troops will leave Iraq's cities, and many of them will promptly clamber onto military transports and redeploy to Obama's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There's been no hiccup in this smooth transition from the disastrous invasion of Iraq to Obama's escalation farther east. The Twittering classes are mostly giving Obama a pass on this one or actively supporting it. Where are the mobilizations, actions, civil disobedience? Antiwar coalitions like United for Peace and Justice and Win Without War (with MoveOn also belatedly adopting this craven posture) don't say clearly "US troops out now!" They whine about the "absence of a clear mission" (Win Without War), plead futilely for "an exit strategy" (UFPJ). One letter from the UFPJ coalition (which includes Code Pink) to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in May laconically began a sentence with the astounding words, "To defeat the Taliban and stabilize the country, the U.S. must enable the Afghan people..." These pathetic attempts not to lose "credibility" and thus attain political purchase have met with utter failure, as the recent vote on a supplemental appropriation proved. A realistic estimate seems to be that among the Democrats in Congress there are fewer than forty solid antiwar votes.

Not so long ago Sri Lankan government troops launched a final savage onslaught on the remaining Tamil enclaves. In the discriminate butchery of Tamils, whether civilians or fighters, estimates of the dead prepared by the United Nations ran at 20,000 (the report was suppressed by the current appalling UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon). I don't recall too many tweets in Washington or across this nation about a methodical exercise in carnage. But then, unlike those attractive Iranians, Tamils tend to be small and dark and not beautiful in the contour of poor Neda, who got out of her car at the wrong time in the wrong place, died in view of a cellphone and is now reborn on CNN as the Angel of Iran.

About Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn has been The Nation's "Beat the Devil" columnist since 1984. He is the author or co-author of several books, including the best-selling collection of essays Corruptions of Empire (1987), and a contributor to many publications, from The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and the Wall Street Journal to alternative publications such as In These Times and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. With Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the newsletter and radical website CounterPunch, which have a substantial world audience.

Pullout of U.S. Troops From Iraqi Cities Viewed With Apprehension, Pride

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 29, 2009

BAGHDAD, June 28 -- Salah al-Jbory is in no mood to celebrate.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called on his countrymen to revel Monday to mark the ostensible departure of U.S. troops from Iraqi cities by the end of the month -- a turning point he calls a "major victory."

But across Iraq, the first major deadline in the American military's phased withdrawal from the country is being viewed with a mix of apprehension, pride and incredulity.

"I will celebrate when I see my country living in peace," said Jbory, a tribal leader in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, where no U.S. outposts remain. "I will celebrate when there is electricity and clean water, when people go to the park and feel safe. I'll celebrate when kids on the street look clean and are wearing new clothes. I will celebrate when people can earn a living."

American troops have been thinning out across Baghdad and other restive cities in recent months. Since Jan. 1, the U.S. military has shut down more than 150 bases and outposts.

In deference to the security agreement that set the pullout deadlines, American troops in and near urban areas have begun avoiding nonessential outings during the daytime and will be on virtual lockdown during the first days of July.

But they expect to continue conducting patrols in urban areas alongside Iraqi security forces in the months ahead.

"On 1 July, we're not going to see this big puff of smoke, everyone leaving the cities," Brig. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, a spokesman for the U.S. military, said recently.

Nonetheless, some Iraqis see the date as an independence day of sorts.

"The 30th of June will be like a wedding," said Maj. Gen. Abdel Amir al-Zaidi, commander of the Iraqi army's 11th Division, currently in the northern city of Kirkuk. "It is a victory for all Iraqis, a national holiday."

That sentiment is far from unanimous. Violence has spiked in recent days as insurgents have sought to make calls for jubilation seem like hubris. A string of bombings last week, including powerful ones in Kirkuk and the eastern Baghdad district of Sadr City, killed more than 200 people.

"We are not happy now," said Abu Noor, a college student, standing outside a market in Ur, a neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. "Why should we be happy? We know that things will turn upside down after maybe a week of the withdrawal. We all know that the militias are hiding because they know the Americans are inside the cities and are ready to be there at a moment's notice."

Many Iraqis have come to regard the presence of U.S. troops in their neighborhoods as a necessary evil. Their hulking trucks often tear down overhead electrical lines, bog down traffic and jam cellphone signals. But those indignities are a small price to pay, Abu Noor said.

"They're trivial when you compare it to the importance of security," he said.

Miles away, in a central Baghdad district where attacks remain frequent, police officer Ala Abdul Majid stood at a small bunker-turned-checkpoint watching cars pass during a recent sweltering afternoon.

"Iraqis are able to handle the job," he said, brimming with confidence. He paused before adding: "At least 80, 90 percent."

He's happy to see the Americans fade into the background, he said. It's time. But they have done more good than bad, he said, providing Iraqi security forces with uniforms, spare parts for vehicles and generators for police stations. If rumors of an uptick in attacks after July 1 prove true, he said, Iraqis will do their best with what they have got.

"We don't have equipment, no radios," he said, suddenly sounding less optimistic. "If someone came here at night and killed us, no one would know about it."

In a country where perception often matters more than reality, some Iraqis see the June 30 deadline as little more than symbolic. After all, more than 130,000 U.S. troops remain on Iraqi soil, and a mass drawdown is not expected until after the Iraqi general election in January.

"The U.S. withdrawal from cities is only propaganda for Maliki" and President Obama, said Farhad Rashid, 44, a schoolteacher in Kirkuk. "How could they leave after sacrificing thousands of their sons here? How could they leave Iraq as a gift to Syria and Iran?"

For Jbory, the withdrawal happened months ago, when American troops left the small combat outpost near his home.

This time last year, Jbory was a busy man. Maliki named him head of a local support council that was to act as the eyes and ears of the government. The Americans, meanwhile, appointed him to oversee the transition and rehabilitation of inmates they released back into his neighborhoods. His office was always crowded and his calendar booked. He said he grew to regard the U.S. troops who came to him seeking information and counsel as his sons.

One night last winter, they left their small outpost quietly, never to come back.

"I'm in charge of rehabilitation of detainees," he said, smoking a Davidoff cigarette with a plastic filter. "And no one told me they were leaving."

Insurgents remain in Dora, Jbory said, and despite his affiliation with Maliki's political machine, he has little trust in the government, which largely cut him off after provincial elections in January.

Asked whether he's optimistic about the future, he shrugged and smiled.

"They are either going to put me in prison or kill me," he said with resignation.

But he's not losing sleep yet, Jbory said. He has the phone number of an interpreter who works with a U.S. Special Forces unit based in Baghdad's Green Zone.

For now, if need be, he said, the Americans can still dash in on a moment's notice.

Special correspondents Dalya Hassan and Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.

U.S. Troops, Civilians to Become Less Protected on July 1

By Ernesto Londoño

Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 26, 2009

BAGHDAD, June 25 -- U.S. military officials fear that the closure of inner-city bases and restrictive guidelines that go into effect next week will leave American troops and civilians in Iraq more vulnerable.

Of particular concern is a new rule that bars U.S. troops from using mine-resistant armored vehicles in urban areas during the day, officials said.

Also worrisome, they said, is the recent closure of a small outpost in eastern Baghdad that is adjacent to a site militiamen have used to launch deadly rocket attacks on the Green Zone.

Thousands of U.S. combat troops will remain at a handful of bases in Baghdad and on the outskirts of other restive cities, such as Mosul and Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, past the June 30 deadline. But U.S. troops say their ability to respond quickly to thwart attacks could erode significantly because Iraqi officials will have unprecedented authority over their mobility and missions in urban areas.

"We won't be providing the same level of security for ourselves and Iraqis," said 2nd Lt. Jason Henke, a military police platoon leader who will remain at one of the few inner-city bases in Baghdad. "With only a small window of time that we are allowed to operate in, it's going to be easier to target U.S. forces when we are outside the wire."

Henke's concerns were heightened this week by a string of powerful roadside bombings near his base, Joint Security Station Loyalty, in central Baghdad.

On Tuesday, one of his squadrons was attacked with an armor-piercing bomb that struck the passenger side of a mine-resistant armored vehicle, igniting the fuel line. His platoon lost another truck Thursday in a similar attack.

As other soldiers rushed to help their comrades out of the burning vehicle, insurgents opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles in the densely populated area.

The soldiers returned fire and escaped without injuries, said Henke, 29, of Newbury Park, Calif. But had they been in a Humvee, a smaller, less-fortified vehicle soldiers will use during daytime as of next month, "they would have all been killed -- all of them," Henke said.

Two other powerful roadside bombs that day were placed on the same route, not far from Iraqi National Police checkpoints, Henke said. One seriously wounded a soldier. Another that detonated nearby on Wednesday night killed an Iraqi police commander. The Pentagon spent billions of dollars in 2007 on the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles. They are believed to have contributed significantly to the decrease in American deaths in Iraq.

Ten U.S. soldiers were wounded in an ambush Thursday in Baghdad. A military spokesman provided no details about the incident. Nevertheless, attacks on U.S. troops remain low compared to other periods of the six-year war, but American commanders say they anticipate an increase in coming weeks as insurgents seek to make a statement after the first deadline of a security agreement that charts the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers.

In the past few days, several attacks in urban areas, including two that each killed more than 75 Iraqis, have heightened concern about the readiness of Iraq's security forces to operate with limited American assistance.

Brig. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said U.S. troops would depend on their Iraqi counterparts more than ever to detect and respond to threats.

"We'll be relying a lot on the Iraqis for situational awareness," he told reporters Wednesday.

Several soldiers and officers said they doubt that Iraqi security forces will be willing or even able to stop the types of attacks faced primarily by U.S. soldiers. Those include strikes with armor-piercing grenades and armor-piercing roadside bombs.

"The vulnerability of our soldiers will increase when the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army come to the realization that they don't need to take suggestions from our soldiers," a top U.S. military official said on the condition of anonymity so as to speak candidly. "The only reason they listen to us is we give them equipment and money. Once we pull out, much of that stops."

The security agreement gives U.S. soldiers the right to self-defense. But U.S. commanders have struggled in recent months to clearly define how they will exercise that right after June 30. Any perceived overreaction or violation of the security agreement is bound to anger Iraqi leaders, many of whom have tied their political futures to the U.S. pullout and their ability to handle security with minimal help from the Americans.

Lanza declined to say how many soldiers will remain in urban areas or at how many facilities they will remain, saying the final details are still being worked out.

At least 10 facilities that house U.S. troops in Baghdad will remain open past the deadline, including two bases in the Green Zone, according to officials familiar with the list that the Iraqis agreed to.

In recent days, the Iraqi government declined to allow the Americans to keep a small outpost called Comanche on the edge of Sadr City, in eastern Baghdad, that was instrumental in stopping the barrage of rocket and mortar attacks that terrorized residents of the Green Zone in 2007 and 2008.

Kadhum Irboee al-Quraishi, a leader in Sadr City who has worked closely with the Americans, said residents are bracing for violence in coming days. A bombing Wednesday at a bird market that killed more than 75 people was the deadliest attack in the vast Shiite slum in more than a year.

"Sadr City is huge," Quraishi said. "It's not easy to control it. I'm pretty sure that roadside bombs and mortar attacks will be back just like before."