Oh, Here’s Another Crisis You Might Want to Notice (3): Iraq

The "crisis" tag might be a bit surprising, given that the end-of-year media line is how swimmingly everything is going in Iraq. There has been a lot of attention to a report from Iraq Body Count putting civilian casualties in 2008 at between 8315 and 9028, a reduction of 2/3 from the death tolls in 2006 and 2007 (though, unnoted by almost all accounts, only slightly below civilian casualties for 2003 and 2004).

CNN has joined in the feel-good celebrations today with the story that US military deaths in Iraq are down from 906 to 309 this year. The news service recites the official line, ""The people of Iraq are tired of violence, and they are assisting the security forces; the government is improving its ability to govern and to apply the rule of law."

While any decrease in deaths is to be welcomed, the attachment of these figures to the emergence of Iraq under the wise occupation of the US military needs to be recognised as an ongoing public-relations gambit. We've recited the political, economic, and security complications on many occasions, so let's leave it to Juan Cole to put the case in a superb end-of-year column:



Top Ten Myths about Iraq, 2008

1. Iraqis are safer because of Bush's War. In fact, conditions of insecurity have helped created both an internal and external refugee problem:

At least 4.2 million Iraqis were displaced. These included 2.2 million who were displaced within Iraq and some 2 million refugees, mostly in Syria (around 1.4 million) and Jordan (around half a million). In the last months of the year both these neighbouring states, struggling to meet the health, education and other needs of the Iraqi refugees already present, introduced visa requirements that impeded the entry of Iraqis seeking refuge. Within Iraq, most governorates barred entry to Iraqis fleeing sectarian violence elsewhere.'

2. Large numbers of Iraqis in exile abroad have returned. In fact, no great number have returned, and more Iraqis may still be leaving to Syria than returning.

3. Iraqis are materially better off because of Bush's war. In fact, a million Iraqis are "food insecure" and another 6 million need UN food rations to survive. Oxfam estimated in summer, 2007, that 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished.

4. The Bush administration scored a major victory with its Status of Forces Agreement. In fact, The Iraqis forced on Bush an agreement that the US would withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, 2009,and would completely withdraw from the Country by the end of 2011. The Bush administration had wanted 58 long-term bases, and the authority to arrest Iraqis at will and to launch military operations unilaterally.

5. Minorities in Iraq are safer since Bush's invasion. In fact, there have in 2008 been significant attacks on and displacement of Iraqi Christians from Mosul. In early January of 2008, guerrillas bombed churches in Mosul, wounding a number of persons. More recently, some 13,000 Christians have had to flee Mosul because of violence.

6. The sole explanation for the fall in the monthly death rate for Iraqi civilians was the troop excalation or surge of 30,000 extra US troops in 2007. In fact, troop levels had been that high before without major effect. The US military did good counter-insurgency in 2007. The major reason for the fall in the death toll, however, was that the Shiites won the war for Baghdad, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from the capital, and turning it into a city with a Shiite majority of 75 to 80 percent. (When Bush invaded, Baghdad was about 50/50 Sunni and Shiite). The high death tolls in 2006 and 2007 were a by-product of this massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, a Shiite militiaman in Baghdad would have to drive for a while to find a Sunni Arab to kill.

7. John McCain alleged that if the US left Iraq, it would be promptly taken over by al-Qaeda. In fact, there are few followers of Usamah Bin Laden in Iraq. The fundamentalist extremists, if that is what McCain meant, are not supported by most Sunni Arabs. They are supported by no Shiites (60% of Iraq) or Kurds (20% of Iraq), and are hated by Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, who would never allow such a takeover.

8. The Iraq War made the world safer from terrorism. In fact, Iraq has become a major training ground for extremists and is implicated in the major bombings in Madrid, London, and Glasgow.

9. Bush went to war in Iraq because he was given bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capabilities. In fact, the State Department's Intelligence & Research (I & R) division cast doubt on the alarmist WMD stories that Bush/Cheney put about. The CIA refused to sign off on the inclusion of the Niger uranium lie in the State of the Union address, which made Bush source it to the British MI6 instead. The Downing Street Memo revealed that Bush fixed the intelligence around the policy. Bush sought to get up a provocation such as a false flag attack on UN planes so as to blame it on Iraq. And UN weapons inspectors in Feb.-Mar. of 2003 examined 100 of 600 suspected weapons sites and found nothing; Bush's response was to pull them out and go to war.

10. Douglas Feith and other Neoconservatives didn't really want a war with Iraq (!). Yeah, that was why they demanded war on Iraq with their 1996 white paper for Bibi Netanyahu and again in their 1998 Project for a New American Century letter to Clinton, where they explicitly called for military action. The Neoconservatives are notorious liars and by the time they get through with rewriting history, they will be a combination of Gandhi and Mother Teresa and the Iraq War will be Bill Clinton's fault. The only thing is, I think people are wise to them by now. Being a liar can actually get you somewhere. Being a notorious liar is a disadvantage if what you want to is get people to listen to you and act on your advice. I say, Never Again.

From the Iraq Archives: When is Permanent not Permanent? (21 June 2008)

In a week when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates predicted that "several tens of thousands of American troops" will be staying in Iraq beyond 2011 and when The New York Times finally noticed the "disquieting talk in Washington", here is a Watching America blog from June that was already foreseeing American withdrawal as a necessary but partial fiction:

WHEN IS PERMANENT NOT PERMANENT? THE US BASES IN IRAQ

Last Friday morning the BBC's flagship radio programme, Today, turned its eagle-eyed attention to a proposed agreement between the US and Iraqi Governments. This which would provide a mandate for the continued presence of the American military, replacing the current UN-sanctioned mandate which expires at the end of 2008.


What ensued was a propaganda piece which not verged on falsehood but sprinted over the line. Correspondent Jim Muir, evaluating the situation from deep inside the Green Zone, assured listeners that the "Status of Forces" agreement was essential to prevent Iraq from falling into disorder. A platform was then offered to retired General Jack Keane, the man "behind the surge strategy in Iraq", to lay down the law, so to speak.

Any Iraqi opposition, Keane assured, was due to the "hubris" of the apparent Iraqi success in establishing control of areas such as Basra and Sadr City. Iraqi security forces still were in need of American support. (Thus, as the expertise of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show has long noted, the perfect argument: If there is instability in Iraq, we need to put in more American forces; if there is some sign of stability, we need to keep those forces there.)

Having put America's supposed ally in its place, Keane could then add that there was no provision in the agreement --- none whatsoever --- for the US to carry out aerial operations without the authorisation of the Iraqi Government. No provision, none whatsoever, for the exemption of American military forces from Iraqi law.

The only problem is that Keane was blatantly lying. And the BBC, had it had the integrity that it claimed in its report, could easily have called up the evidence to show he was lying.

They could have done so because, the day before their report, Patrick Cockburn of the Independent had spectacularly exposed the provisions of the agreement. The US Government is seeking an indefinite right to use more than 50 bases throughout Iraq. And (take note, General Keane) "American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government".

(Cockburn had a bit more the following day. Far from this being a free-and-fair negotiation, the US Government was threatening a "freeze" on $50 billion of Iraqi assets in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The funds are linked to $20 billion in outstanding court judgements in the US against the Iraqi Government. Currently the US Government has kept them "immune" from seizure, but they are threatening to revoke this immunity if there is a hitch in the negotations over the Status of Forces Agreement.)

All credit to Cockburn for pulling this together, but this is far from a new story. The negotiation has been going on for months and, as was discussed during the most recent Petraeus-Crocker show before the US Congress, the Bush Administration is avoiding any reference to the agreement as a "treaty" to avoid putting it up for Congressional approval.

The story has taken on new impetus, however, not just because of the 31 July deadline set for its completion but because of the growing opposition --- private and public --- in Iraq. Unnoticed by most media outlets in the US and Britain, thousands of Iraqis have been taking to the street in demonstrations. Leading clerics in Iraq, including Ayatollah Sistani and Grand Ayatollah Mudaressi, have not only objected but warned of "a popular uprising". The issue may lay behind a serious split in the Iraqi Government, with former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari being expelled from current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party.

And, in the latest development, the Status of Forces Agreement now appears to be playing into the hands of Iran. Only last month, the US Government spin was that Iraqi officials were travelling to Tehran to chastise the Iranians for providing weapons to insurgents. Well, Prime Minister al-Maliki was in Iran last week and --- guess what? --- Iranian duplicity wasn't the Number One item on his agenda.

Instead, al-Maliki is all but pleading with the Iranians to lift their opposition to the agreement, assuring Tehran that “we will not allow Iraq to become a platform for harming the security of Iran and its neighbors”. Significantly, according to reports of the talks, the Iraqi delegation was discussing with Iranian counterparts increased cooperation on issues such as border control and intelligence.

The SOFA episode is the ultimate demonstration, as the Bush Administration approaches its end, of the "hubris" not of Iraqi but American over-confidence. To the end, the US is trying to play a military hand in the belief that the presence of its equipment and troops assures power (not to the Iraqis, I hasten to add, but to Washington). The game, however, is now more political than military. As Iraqi support --- on the street, amongst the clerics, and within political factions --- erodes for the purported US "cooperation", American force is now a bystander. A far-from-powerless bystander, to be sure, but still a bystander as the "new Iraq" emerges in a complex local and regional environment that can no longer be organised by agreements despatched from Washington.

Update: Al-Maliki Showdown with Parliament over Troop Withdrawal?

Here is CNN's headline, which is misleading and misses the point, "Iraqi Lawmakers Reach Deal on Non-U.S. Troops".

What has happened is potentially more dramatic. "Main political parties" have agreed on a way to bypass Saturday's Parliamentary rejection of an agreement under which troops from six countries, including Britain, would withdraw by 31 May 2009. This would come through "a resolution that would empower the Cabinet to authorize international troop presence without requiring Parliament to pass a law".



In other words, Parliament is being asked to withdraw itself from the matter, allowing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to push through the agreement before the current UN mandate for military presence expires on 31 December. Of course, Parliamentarians may bow to the will of the "main parties" --- which I presume include Daw'a and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Then again, members may choose to make a stand, as they initially did with the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States.

If they do, it means British troops will be confined to their bases as of 1 January 2009. Far more importantly, there will be a political crisis in advance of provincial elections next year.

Breaking News: Iraqi Parliament Inflicts Defeat on al-Maliki, "Coalition" Forces

By a vote of 80-68, the Iraqi Parliament has rejected the draft law setting a withdrawal date of 31 May 2009 for troops from Britain and five other countries. Technically, the rejection means that the troops of the six countries should be out of Iraq by 31 December, when the UN mandate for their presence expires.

Practically, it's hard to see how the British contingent of 4100 --- who had a grace period until 31 July under the law to leave --- will be able to load up with all their equipment within the next 11 days. But that's only a secondary issue.



Instead, the significance of this news is symbolic. This is a major slap-down for the al-Maliki Government. For weeks, especially after the passage of the Status of Forces Agreement for US forces, many in the US and British  media have portrayed Parliamentary opposition as limited to the Sadrist faction of about 30 members. This vote indicates that there are a folks beyond Moqtada al-Sadr --- Sunni and Shi'a --- who are ready to see the back of al-Maliki.

That wish is exacerbated by unease at the Government's approach to foreign powers and what it means for Iraqi "sovereignty". The immediate reason for the defeat was that the Government tried to rush through an umbrella agreement, rather than submitting bilateral agreements with each of the six countries. The background reason was resentment at the deal with the US, which --- as it was not a formal "treaty" --- bypassed normal legal processes. As a Sunni member told the BBC, the deals should be "arranged, according to international law, through treaties or agreements".

Iraq Non-Story of the Day: Bye, Bye Britain

Deborah Haynes of The Times, in a near-imperial huff, headlines today:

British Forces will leave Iraq by the end of next July under a humiliating proposal that lumps the once-valued deployment with five smaller contingents, including those of Romania, El Salvador and Estonia.

You know we're in a sorry state on this island when we're lumped with El Salvador, but this is about as undramatic a piece of news as you can get. Britain's mandate to stay in Iraq, like that of US troops, was under a United Nations agreement with Baghdad that expires on 31 December.

That was the reason why Washington had to fight for its extension under the Status of Forces Agreement. No time left for London to get its version, so British forces have to pack up and come home. The proposed Iraqi legislation for Britain and the other five countries sets a deadline of 31 May for military duties, with a two-month grace period for British troops.