Between 92,000 and 107,000 US combat troops are to leave Iraq by the end of August 2010, four months later than Obama promised in his election campaign. His top generals wanted an even later date. Up to 50,000 troops will remain in the country. These troops are supposed to leave by the end of 2011. However, Defence Secretary Robert Gates has argued for ‘some very modest-sized presence for training and helping’ beyond 2011. Furthermore, a get-out clause in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) allows the Iraqi government to ‘request continued US presence after the 2011 deadline’. The collaborationist Iraqi regime will be dependent on US money and weapons to maintain its power.
Corruption and election apathy
In January’s provincial elections Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki appeared to strengthen his position. His State of the Law coalition now dominates the councils in 10 provinces. Al Maliki, however, has been accused of using the state machinery to buy political support, giving money to tribal councils in return for votes, using the government-controlled media and doling out patronage and jobs. Turnout in the election was 51%, less than in 2005. In Baghdad the turnout was just 40%. As one Baghdad woman told the Financial Times, ‘What’s the point? All the local councils do is give money to their friends.’ In Salahaddin province Faka’a Ahmed Jihad concurred, ‘Electricity, water and employment, these are the three main things. But usually, everyone who comes along just pockets the money and changes nothing.’ The US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction is investigating the misuse of $125 billion of aid, including $50 billion that has ‘gone missing’. Senior US military officers are under suspicion.
Problems for US occupation
The elections have opened up potential clashes that could disturb the relative stability on which the US reduction in forces depends. Sunni candidates won the majority of votes in Nineveh province, which the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) had hoped to incorporate. The Sunni coalition wants the KRG militia removed from the region. The Iraqi government has sent troops to the north, prompting fears that Kurdish plans for an autonomous region are to be spoiled. Kurdish officers had been replaced. Khasro Goran, Kurdish deputy governor of Nineveh, warned, ‘If non-Kurdish military units try to move into disputed areas we will stop them.’ KRG Prime Minister Barzani said that if the Kirkuk question is not settled by the time US troops pull out there will be ‘war between both sides’.
The millions of Baghdad’s poor working class who formed the main support for the Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr did not vote in large numbers. Al Sadr is in self-imposed exile in Iran, reportedly saying it is time to ‘turn a new page’ and ‘forget the past’ and suggesting a possible coalition with Al Maliki. Other Sadrist leaders have been damned by Shia communities for acquiescing in Al Maliki’s attacks on the Mehdi Army. The poverty, unemployment and oppression imposed by the occupying forces and their Iraqi puppets that gave rise to the Baghdad poor’s resistance still remain and could again threaten US strategy.
A February statement addressed to President Obama from the political committee of factions of the Iraqi resistance in Baghdad said, ‘Our people seek a complete end to the occupation and not the fulfilment of a strategic treaty that was rushed against the will of our people in the last days of your predecessor.’ As part of a plan for the liberation and rebuilding of Iraq, it demanded that all foreign advisors leave with the troops, that mercenaries be tried for their crimes and that militias ‘equipped by your country and Iran’ to divert the battle towards sectarianism must be dismantled. ‘The resistance of the people of Iraq will continue until the last boot of US/British/Iranian occupation is thrown across the borders of our country…We continue to fight on behalf of all the oppressed people of the world.’
Jim Craven
FRFI 208 April / May 2009
