Here's a thoughtful response to the post I had last week
about where the post-2011 U.S. military presence in Iraq might be based.
Meanwhile, on the Southern Iraq watch: Someone bombed a
U.S. convoy near Hilla the other day.
By Adam L. Silverman, Ph.D.
Best Defense guest Iraqi affairs analyst
While
I appreciate both Ambassador Ryan Crocker's remarks
and forethought on this, as well as Mr. Ricks' commentary, and keeping in mind
that I've not been in Iraq since the end of 2008, I think that any meaningful
attempt to renegotiate the security agreement, or parts of it, are very
unlikely.
I
do think that you're going to see an ongoing, but comparatively small U.S.
presence of trainers covered under the Security Force Advising concept, but we're
talking relatively small footprint here. The Iraqis, and here I'm referring to
every major faction, have made it very, very clear beginning with our Sawha
allies out in Anbar starting back in 2007, that they are waiting for us to
leave. They are waiting for us to leave in order to settle scores. The Sunnis
and non-expatriate Shiite that make up the Sawha and primary opposition that
composed the Iraqiyya Party (which was disenfranchised from forming the most
recent Iraqi government after winning the largest plurality due to Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki's directing the power of the state at them in a
successful attempt to reverse
the electoral outcome) know they can't really win a head on confrontation, but
they've made it repeatedly clear that they are ready to fight (back). Maliki is
waiting for us to go so that he can cut his forces loose on these folks once
and for all and put an end to them. The Sadrists want us gone -- badly! The
Kurds want their own state and are just waiting for us to stop paying attention
long enough so that they can find an opportune moment to declare independence. Moreover,
given past and/or ongoing Iranian support for the bulk
of the parties in the governing coalition (Dawa, Sadrists, the Kurds,
ISCI/Badr) they won't allow their proxies to agree to anything that
significantly prolongs any significant U.S. presence. They'll tolerate training
of security forces as a large
number of the Arab portion of the Iraqi Army (IA) are Badr Corps, which is tied
directly to the Quds Force. So whatever we teach the IA, we're teaching the
Iranians. No need for subterfuge at all.
No
one is going to argue harder than I that we have a moral responsibility to do
right by the Iraqis, but I don't see how staying helps us do so. We had actual
legal requirements to do certain things, like fix the power grid, when we were
officially recognized as an occupying power. Now we're guests. Without a doubt
the electrical infrastructure in Iraq was terrible when U.S. forces arrived in
2003 and the early attempts at repair and reconstruction led to the creation of
new targets for the insurgent forces, but a lot of what we wound up doing
wrong, or not doing at all, was based on what the CPA enshrined in their bizarre
and ideologically driven attempts to turn Iraq into a test lab for all sorts of
bizarre political and economic ideas. I remember being told that we weren't to
do anything to fix the Iraqi power grid as the Iraqis were going to privatize the power generation
industry. My understanding was that this was based on an earlier CPA decision
to privatize power generation and distribution in Iraq, based on attempts to do
it in the United States, which, as many have documented, have been largely
disastrous and done nothing to improve the United States' aging and crumbling
power infrastructure. In Iraq not enough power doesn't just mean no air
conditioning, it also means not much water being pumped into the irrigation
canals, which means little agricultural production. This has led to migrations
of the population to towns and cities looking for work where they can be
recruited to emplace IEDs and commit other bad acts; not because they hate
Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds or Americans, but because they're desperate for cash
to feed their families.
Despite
all the hard work by the U.S. military, our coalition allies, and civilian agency
partners that led to successes at the tactical and operational level, we have
failed at the strategic level in Iraq. As General David Petraeus stated
before testifying to Congress in April 2008: "Iraqi
leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make
adequate progress toward resolving their political differences." Part of
the failure here was when the leverage was available to push the Iraqis towards
societal reconciliation and the beginnings of societal/social reconstruction
the Bush (43) Administration wasted the space, the COIN break if you will, by
having AMB Crocker try to negotiate a SOFA agreement that the Iraqis wouldn't
and didn't accept. At the same time negotiations were ongoing for provincial
elections. As I've written before here at Best
Defense and in other places too: the Iraqis rolled
us on both sets of negotiations. They ran the clock out on us, forcing us into
the security agreement as the U.N. occupation authority was running out and
into blessing a hybrid electoral process for the provincial elections that was
the worst possible combination -- open list and proportional representation -- if
we wanted to overcome the problems with the 2005 elections. It also didn't help
that one of the State Department's own election specialists did not understand
the system that the Iraqi High Electoral Commission had put into place. I know
he didn't understand it because I had to explain how it was going to work to
him at least five times and that was after he read the
briefing paper I wrote on it for my brigade commander so that he
would understand why it was a potential problem.
I
appreciate that Crocker would like to do right by the Iraqis, I would like to
do right by the Iraqis, but I just don't see any way that they are going to
allow significant numbers of American troops to stay. The major Iraqi factions
don't want a significant U.S. troop presence as it prevents them from settling
their scores, which is what they really want to do. The Iranians that are
direct patrons for Dawa and ISCI/Badr and indirect patrons to the Sadrists and
the Kurds don't want it and won't allow it. They want us out of their near
abroad as well. And how we've been positioning ourselves vis-a-vis the Arab
Spring is making our other allies in the area very nervous too. I honestly hope
I'm wrong about what is likely to happen in Iraq after U.S. forces draw down
the rest of the way -- but I think that the events of the last several years
make that unlikely.
Adam L. Silverman is the culture and foreign
language advisor at the U.S. Army War College. The views expressed here are his
own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S.
Army, or Daisuke Matsuzaka.
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