Iraqis uneasy over what happens next By Heather Maher and Charles Recknagel
United States President Barack Obama has kept his promise to draw down the
number of US troops in Iraq to fewer than 50,000 by September 1. But
uncertainty about what comes next is easy to find on Baghdad's streets.
As one man tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq, while Obama kept his promise to
withdraw by a certain date, "he left Iraq in a difficult situation, also in a
difficult political situation. Things are not good. He should have kept his
promise to the Iraqi people the way he did to the American people."
The uneasy feelings come as Iraq still has no government five
months after its parliamentary elections produced no clear winner.
They also come as the US drawdown makes it clear that Iraqi troops and police
now must handle the remaining security problems mostly by themselves.
Under the drawdown guidelines, the US forces in Iraq no longer have a combat
mission, but an advisory-and-assistance role only. That means they are not
expected to personally engage in fighting with insurgents but leave these
operations to Iraq's own 400,000 police officers and 200,000 soldiers.
Anthony Cordesman, a regional expert with the Washington-based Center for
Strategic and International Studies, says that the mission of the remaining US
forces is mostly to serve as a deterrent against any renewal of large-scale
violence.
"Those are six combat brigades, with a total strength of around 50,000
personnel, which basically differ from combat brigades in that advisory and
trainer personnel have been added to them," Cordesman says.
"They are not weak or ineffective forces. Now they are there both to serve as a
deterrent to any kind of outside interference in Iraq and serve as a potential
reinforcement to an Iraqi government if it needs it."
The brigades' advisory-and-assistance role means they will help provide both
Iraq's civilian and military agencies with intelligence and equipment support
for counterinsurgency operations. In fact, that continues a role they already
switched to months ago, well before Obama's formal August 31 deadline.
"What we have seen since really June is that it is Iraqi forces which basically
lead and take over virtually all of the missions," Cordesman says. "That was
when US forces left the cities and populated areas in Iraq and that in many
ways was a de facto withdrawal from active combat that occurred months ago, not
in terms of this formal deadline."
Easing Arab-Kurd tensions
However, there still will be US soldiers deployed in the field in some places.
Those deployments will be at joint checkpoints along the so-called green line
in northern Iraq that divides the Kurdish autonomous region from Iraq proper.
The checkpoints are jointly manned by members of the Iraqi Army, Kurdish
soldiers known as peshmerga, and US troops.
James Danly, a former US Army officer in Iraq and a fellow at the
Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, says the US forces take a
low-profile but necessary role in easing Arab-Kurd tensions along the green
line.
"The US forces that have been at these combined locations along the green line
have not been the ones that have actually been stopping and searching cars,"
Danly says. "They have been there to lend their presence so that the
relationship between the peshmerga and the Iraq Army can develop with an honest
broker present during this hoped-for burgeoning friendship between the two of
them."
Arab-Kurd tensions center upon territories in northern Iraq claimed by both
sides, including the multiethnic oil-rich region around the city of Kirkuk.
Under the Iraqi Constitution, the fate of the city is supposed to be decided by
referendum but the vote has been repeatedly put off amid political quarreling
and fears of violence.
Most of the US soldiers remaining in Iraq will be quartered on bases near the
country's still-active hot spots. The locations include near Baghdad, elsewhere
in central Iraq, and near Mosul, which still has a potent al-Qaeda presence.
As Danly puts it, "they are placed strategically so that US forces' influence
can still be felt in areas that need it the most." But they will not patrol -
and indeed have not been doing so since pulling back from the cities in June.
Will sectarian peace hold?
Many analysts believe that US forces would not get involved in combat again
short of a new wave of nationwide violence like that seen during the worst days
of 2006 and 2007. That was when Iraq teetered on the brink of civil war amid
rampant tit-for-tat killings by Shi'ite and Sunni militias.
"As long as the conditions are as they are now, which is to say violent
incidents that are isolated and are not part of some widespread, universal
civil unrest, it is unlikely that the US troops are going to be committed to
direct action," Danly says.
Still, insurgents tied to al-Qaeda continue to launch frequent attacks. A
suicide bombing last month killed more than 60 Iraqi army applicants. Two weeks
later, a series of blasts across the country killed another 60 people.
Germany's Der Spiegel magazine recently reported that in August an average of
five Iraqi policemen or soldiers died every day.
The challenge now will be for the Iraqi security forces to turn the tide
against these remaining insurgents. The insurgents' organizations are
considered to have been badly weakened by the US troop surge of 2007 when US
forces numbered more than 170,000 - and the turning of the Sunni tribes against
al-Qaeda.
Obama's drawdown strategy is based on the hope that the insurgents are wounded
fatally and that Iraq's rival communities themselves would refuse to be lured
again toward civil war.
The president has promised all US troops will fully leave Iraq by the end of
next year and that the current drawdown shows he is sticking to his
commitments.
The end of the combat role for US forces comes after more than 4,400 US
soldiers have died in Iraq. At least 100,000 Iraqi civilians are also estimated
to have died from violence since 2003, when US-led forces invaded Iraq to
topple former dictator Saddam Hussein.
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