Mid-East Meets Midwest

One month ago today, celebrations filled the streets of Baghdad as Iraqis marked “National Sovereignty Day,” commemorating the official withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi cities.  But in Kirkuk, just 150 miles north of Baghdad, the cheers and high spirits were replaced with screams and panic when a car bomb exploded in a crowded market, killing at least 34 people.

This incident caused me to take a step back and ask, ‘Is Iraq ready to stand on its own two feet?’

Over the last six years American troops, advisers and diplomats have been working to establish a stable Iraq, combating violence, training Iraqi soldiers and police, and planting the seeds of democracy for the first time in Iraq’s history.  What more can the United States do to help this war torn nation?

Perhaps the answer is to stop helping. Read more…

Iraq is certainly exercising its sovereignty over the last week.

With a new reading for the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement (the same document which set a deadline for the American troop withdrawal from Iraqi cities) the Iraqi government has sharply restricted the movement and activities of American forces. This control has rubbed many U.S. commanders the wrong way, who have become increasingly concerned with the safety of their men and women.

The Washington Post reports:

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.”

In an e-mail obtained by the Post, Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, commander of the Baghdad division, wrote “Maybe something was ‘lost in translation.” He continued, writing, “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 indicated that U.S. troops intend to continue to engage in combat operations, even in urban areas, in order 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.”

These new guidelines are a reflection of rising tensions between the American and Iraqi governments. Iraqi leaders are using this agreement as an opportunity to show their countrymen that the are in charge and that Iraq’s dependence on the U.S. is decreasing.

Governor Pat Quinn made a surprise visit to Iraq this weekend, visiting Illinoisan troops at bases around the country.

On Sunday, Quinn held a town hall meeting at Tallil Air Base, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, which has a large concentration of members of the Illinois National Guard.

Describing his trip, Quinn said he “received a lot of sympathy” from troops who had followed his rise to governorship after the shambles of former Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this year. He also indicted that troops were very curious about the educational opportunities for them after they return home.

Compared to his visit in 2004, Quinn said he was impressed with the increased security and stabilization of the country overall. Known for attending the funerals of service members killed in combat, Quinn said the major changes that have taken place in Iraq since his previous visit prove that their lives weren’t given in vain.

“I was in awe, really, of the men and women here,” Quinn told reporters via conference call from Kuwait. “I think it’s important that the governor of the fifth-largest state in the Union personally thank special Illinoisans. They are the best of the best, and I said at every gathering I was at that ‘you are the pride of our nation.’ ”

Quinn was joined by the governors of Missouri, Minnesota, Nevada and Texas.

In 2003, a Raed Jarrar watched American planes drop bombs on building after building near his home in Baghdad.  Now Jarrar is in Washington D.C. serving as the Iraq consultant for the American Friends Service Committee, as well as facilitating communication between Americans on Capitol Hill and Iraqi politicians and citizens.  When I spoke with Jarrar last week, he said he was frustrated by the misinformation being disseminated by the media about the violence on conflict in Iraq.

He said, “When I hear the U.S. coverage on Iraq, it’s similar to, for example, an Iraqi saying that the US Civil War was a religious civil war, or that it was a racial civil war that put some white people against some black people.”

He acknowledged that the Civil War was full of political intricacies like the desire to keep a central government and the question of whether individuals in newly inducted states should be allowed to hold slaves.  He emphasized that just as Americans would not stand for misinformation about our past, Iraqis should not have to hear misinformation about the present situation, saying “I think that the same way that Americans understand the Civil War with its complexity, and they will not buy any argument about it being a religious civil war or some other descriptions, I think Iraqis, including myself, think the US understanding of the current Iraqi conflict is really wrong.”

“It’s not a war based on ancient hatreds between Sunnis and Shiites,” Jarrar said. “It’s not a religious war.  It’s way more political and economic.  It has way more complicated layers than we hear in covered in the U.S.”

Throughout the war in Iraq, comparisons have been drawn between the current occupation and America’s military intervention in Vietnam.  As troops withdrew from Baghdad, blogger George Berkin referred back to this comparison once more.

Berkin says believes a withdrawal from Iraq will be completely different than the American withdrawal from Vietnam because:

• “…in Iraq, unlike in Vietnam, the U.S. will depart having won the military conflict. A powerful dictator was overthrown, the cities have been secured, and the insurgents are not in control in Iraq.”
• The US learned from its mistakes in Vietnam and has since improved the way the military trains local police forces.
• Iraq has a larger size and greater potential wealth to play to its favor, unlike Vietnam.  Berkin said in his article, “For all the blood and treasure invested in South Vietnam, it was (and is) a small and poor country, and police forces were underfunded.”
• Berkin says the task faced by the local security forces in Iraq is very different than the task faced by South Vietnamese forces.  He stated, “In the Vietnam War, the South Vietnamese faced an enormous army. For the North Vietnamese to gain control of all of Vietnam, it was simply a matter of overrunning what remained of the decimated South Vietnamese forces.  The battle for an independent South Vietnam was a standoff when the Americans bolstered the weak South Vietnamese army. When the U.S. left, North Vietnam’s advantage in forces was overwhelming.” Whereas in Iraq, security forces face pockets of resistance and attempting to “quell violence aimed at pitting factions in Iraq – Shiite, Sunni and Kurds – against each other.”

See full article: Iraq and Vietnam

As our troops pulled out of Iraqi cities last week, the American armed forces are now playing a completely different role in Iraq than they have played over the last six years.  Moving away from the days of armed conflict, soldiers focus on civil affairs, helping local governments and fulfilling their roles as advisers, training Iraqi security forces.

This shift has also required a shift in how the Army trains its soldiers.  Now troops are expected to not just help stabilize Iraq, but to transition their duties to their Iraqi comrades by the end of 2011.

The Associated Press reports:

The 3rd Infantry Division, headed by Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, will lead all U.S. military operations in Iraq’s volatile north. Since January, the Georgia-based division has been training at Fort Stewart to defuse potential conflicts before they flare up — largely with the help of Iraqi forces or through diplomacy.

Training to leave a war, however, is a delicate mission.

Retired Gen. John Hendrix, who used to command the 3rd Infantry Division and the Army’s Forces Command, said military planners probably did not have a good idea of what would happen when U.S. troops pulled out of Saigon in April 1975, months before the North Vietnamese takeover.

Military historians say the Army’s overall strategy during the Vietnam War failed precisely because it did not understand the nature of the society. It’s not a lesson the Army wants to repeat in Iraq, with its rich oil fields and strategic location in the Mideast that will be an important U.S. interest for years to come.

“We never got at the strategic problem in Vietnam. We were not nearly as prepared then as we are now,” Hendrix said in an interview. “When that decision was made, we didn’t have nearly as good a plan as how we were going to come out. These guys do have a little bit more of a challenge — they’ll do the last handshake and the Iraqis will look around and there’ll be no one there.”

…”To secure a victory, you send in your closers,” Cucolo said. “I said [to my unit], ‘Gentlemen, ladies, we are the closers. We’re going there, and we’re going to leave it all on the field because this is the decisive moment.’”

To read full article: Army ‘closers’ train for new mission: leaving Iraq

With the so-far successful withdrawal of American troops from select Iraqi cities and Vice-President Joe Biden’s trip to Iraq topping the week’s headlines, it may appear that Obama has Iraq under control. But experts are warning Obama that taking his eyes off Iraq could jeopardize American relations with the whole region and earn him an unflattering comparison with George W. Bush.

BBC News reports:

[The Obama] administration has… shifted a considerable amount of its attention further east – many have described the conflict in Afghanistan as “Obama’s war”.

But in light of the recent uptick in violence in Iraq, there were growing concerns that the new president risked making the same mistake as his predecessor, albeit in reverse.

George W Bush was criticised for not paying enough attention to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taleban and while he tried to fix Iraq, al-Qaeda regained strength both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Barack Obama cannot afford to lose Iraq,” warned Kenneth Pollack recently.

Mr Pollack, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, added that there was a feeling that the administration’s policy on Iraq was adrift.

He said the regional consequences of instability in Iraq would undermine whatever else Washington was trying to achieve in the Middle East, from peace between Israelis and Arabs to dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Click here to see full article: Has Obama taken his eye off Iraq?